“Marge, as soon as we untie this stuff, I want you to scout around for us,” he told her. “I don’t want any surprises, but we’ve got thirty or forty miles to the ice, then sixty on it. We’ll do it on foot if we have to, but if there’s any way to get any sort of transport, it would really help.”
“I’ll check for bus or train stations but I sincerely doubt I’ll find any,” she responded. “I’m also not too sure about horses, once we reach the ice. If it’s relatively snow-free here, then the odds are that ice pack is water, like the Arctic Ocean, and that means that this time of year lots of cracks and crevices. You ever been on that kind of ice before?”
“No,” he admitted, “but after coming face to face twice with Sugasto, I’m not going to let climate stop me.”
Mia chose a broad, flat area closer to the mountains than the sea. To the northwest, perhaps ten or twelve miles, there appeared to be some man-made lights, and another couple of such signs of habitation scattered about. It was as good a choice as possible.
He and Marge decided not to chance a landing; they jumped off and flew, matching the enormous creature as it glided in. It proved a needless precaution; Mia settled down finally as gently as a feather.
It was hazy, though, making Joe wonder just what the temperature might be around here. He and Marge went to Mia and quickly unstrapped the packs, letting them fall to the ground. He looked at Marge. “Quick and thorough, before sunup,” he told her. “Get going. We’ve got to decide what to take and what not to take.”
The price now had to be paid for what they had saved in time. No horses, no pack animals, and still a fair way to go. Although it was difficult to tell jusf exactly where they were on the map, he knew roughly where the ice pack started, and Ruddygore had indicated that if he headed there and looked out, he’d have no problems figuring out where to go.
While getting the stuff together, it suddenly occurred to him that this couldn’t be Arctic-style north; not only was it not far enough north from the subtropical regions for that, the sun wasn’t already up. Since, this time of year, the sun wouldn’t even go down, or not down much, it was clearly still a long way to the Pole, possibly a lot farther than they’d come. If that was the case, then why was it so cold here? And what kept the ice pack so frigid? Since he’d never before been out from between the tropic lines, at least not by much, he hadn’t given it much thought. This would be the equivalent on Earth of Rome or St. Louis, not Anchorage or Stockholm. That was the only reason this were trick had worked.
In the true Arctic, the sun would never have gone down this time of year, full moon or not.
Suddenly Ruddygore’s tale of the great battle, frozen in time in the ice by divine and not so divine intervention, came back to him. This was a place where natural law sort of worked almost all the time unless changed by something. If someone, sometime, had had sufficient power, there was no logic in Husaquahr that could stop him, her, or it from freezing the Equator and having palm trees at the poles. Or, it might just be that Husaquahr was in an Ice Age and nobody bothered to mention it before.
Very suddenly, the enormous creature that had brought them here shimmered and vanished, leaving a lone figure on all fours on the ground. He hardly noticed. He was suddenly Joe again, stark naked, and if the temperature was anywhere near freezing, it was on the wrong side of it.
He gave a holler as the shock hit him and started rummaging through the packs for his buckskin outfit and boots, praying that nothing had been left out. Mia, naked and hairless as before, ran over to him, puzzled. “Master, what is wrong? Did you step on something? Did something bite you?”
His teeth were already chattering as he found first the pants and got them on, then the shirt. She came to help him and he pushed her away, shouting, “Boots! Find me boots! And gloves, if we have them!”
“What is wrong?” she asked, looking through the other pack. “Here is your hat, Master. A bit flat, but—”
“Mia! I’m freezing! I need boots! And gloves!”
She rummaged around. “I did not know you were so sensitive, Master. It is a bit cool, but not terribly uncomfortable.”
“Mia, it’s the spell Sugasto gave you. You don’t feel the weather; it’s as if you have Marge’s flesh or even some kind of spacesuit on you can’t see, feel, or touch. I don’t. Of the three of us, I’m the only one this weather can harm or even kill. Ah! The boots!”
“And here are your gloves, Master,” she responded, still not quite following the reality of the situation. It just didn’t feel, or even look cold. Oh, on the mountains nearby there was snow, yes, but there was grass here, and even some flowers.
Joe felt much better, but he still felt damned cold. This outfit would be uncomfortable around here but would allow him to survive; on the ice pack, though, where it was clearly going to be much colder yet, this would be no more good than a loincloth.
Of course, there were the blankets they had used to keep the stuff together. Irving, the sword, was wrapped in three of them! He knelt down and began unwrapping the great weapon, for the first time more interested in the container than the contents.
“We’ve got plenty of wool and cotton in these blankets,” he told Mia. “You’re gonna have to rig something from them that’ll keep me much warmer.”
“Yes, Master. I will do what I can. Oh, look! When we speak we spout steam like a dragon!”
“That’s because it’s cold,” he told her again, trying to underline the concept. “We humans are always warm inside but the air is around freezing. Our breath, heated from inside us, gets blasted by the cold air and it turns to fog.”
She nodded. “I knew that happened, Master, but it honestly does not feel to me as if it is more than you might feel on a cool, cloudy day in Marquewood. This will take some getting used to. I will not know your requirements.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll tell you,” he assured her. The trouble is, I wish I knew if my requirements can be met, he added to himself.
He strapped on the sword and tested it out with the gloves. A bit awkward, but this Irving didn’t need much in the way of feel—it did its own fighting.
He had finally warmed up to “just chattering and looked around. The mountains were a couple of miles over there, and, from the map, he assumed they were now in Hypboreya and that those were the Scrunder. Since that range was essentially east-west, it put the Lakes to their east and a bit behind him. To the north was almost a tundra; grasslands, rocky outcrops, yet basically flat. Not a lot of cover, but at least nothing much was going to be hiding from them, either. Still, he knew he would have to try and bluff his way through whoever was in the nearest settlement. He needed furs, not leather, around here. Best to wait for Marge to give him the lay of the land.
Mia found some of the bread and vegetables he’d packed. Nothing to drink, though, right around here, unless they wanted to go mountain climbing.
“So how come you came as that thing?” he asked her.
“Well, Master, first the man came and flew the flying horse away, but not before he told his friend that the flying horses could not see well at night anyway, and so I had to think of what would best serve our needs and get me out of there and then I remembered us being chased—”
He laughed. “All right! All right! I figured it was something like that. It’s done, it worked, and we’re here.” He looked around. “Why then do I suddenly long for that lousy cafe and that overpriced little room?”
He was suddenly convinced that they were being watched. That sixth sense that keeps men in his profession alive was tickling the back of his neck, and he suddenly whirled around.