For a moment or so only the wind talked. Then Ethan spoke up quietly. “Doesn’t look like we have much choice. We’re much too far from Poyolavomaar or any other known shelter to try to make it to safety before the storm hits. If we sit around and wait for it, we’ll be in real trouble. If we try and outrun it and it overtakes us, it’ll blow us so far off course we might as well go back to Poyo and start over again.”
“Might we not find shelter in the lee of an island?” Elfa wondered.
Ta-hoding shook his head. “We’ve seen none that would be suitable.”
“Then Ethan and Skua are right. We must try this.”
Hunnar looked sharply at his new mate. “I always knew you to be conservative. Have we spent too much time among the skypeople?”
She put two fingers to his lips, letting him feel the claws. “Not that. In your company I would dare anything, lifemate.”
Hunnar let out an appreciative hiss. “Whatever the daughter of the Landgrave dares, can I dare less?”
She withdrew her hand, turned to face Ta-hoding. “Royalty does not command the ice. This is your dominion, your ship. The final decision rests with you. You know what the icerigger is capable of better than anyone else. What are our chances of surviving such a mad enterprise?”
Ta-hoding sighed deeply, executed an intricate gesture with the fingers of his right hand. Fifty-fifty. Ethan had hoped for better odds.
“One is ready to risk all, the other tells me nothing,” Hunnar grumbled. Cat’s eyes turned on Ethan. “What think you, my friend?”
“Why ask me? I’m just a passenger on this boat. I have no authority here. Why don’t you ask Milliken?”
“Because you are no adventurer, by your admission. Because you and not friend Milliken are a counterweight to tall Skua’s opinion. You are cautious where he is rash. You consider where he dares.”
“Well, in the absence of a better alternative I’d have to say that you don’t get anywhere in life without taking a chance now and then. I admit we’ve taken our share, this past year, but that doesn’t alter the situation we’re facing now. That’s all easy for me to say. It’s not my ship.”
“No, but it is your life,” Elfa pointed out.
“Let us do this.” Ta-hoding spoke without looking at. them, already making preparations in his mind. “Everyone who is not a member of the sailing crew will disembark and cross the Bent Ocean on foot, to wait for us on the other side. That way if catastrophe strikes not all will be at risk.”
“Then you have decided,” Hunnar murmured.
“Boldness is not in me. I play only the dice that are given to me. Here we must roll as best we are able and hope for a twelve to show itself. If I cannot have confidence in my ship and my crew, what is left to me?”
“So it is to be tried.” Hunnar could not bring himself to show false confidence. “I wish there was another way. Were there, we would not be proceeding with this insanity.” He turned to Hwang. “My soldiers will work side by side with you to shape the ice. You will choose the angle of the ramp and instruct us accordingly.” He stood. “Now that we have determined our course of action let us move quickly. The sooner we begin, the sooner we will be finished.”
“And the harder we work,” Elfa added, “the less time we will have to think about what we are really going to attempt.”
Blue sky had given way to roiling blackness on the eastern horizon by the time the ramp was ready. Like questing scouts, the first gusts of wind from the advancing storm front slammed into the steady west wind, sending confused air swirling in all directions. Ice devils, miniature whirlwinds composed of ice particles, danced crazily across the flat surface of the frozen ocean. Occasionally one would stumble into the workers, forcing them to drop their tools and hug the ground. One caught Ethan with his visor up and brought tears to his eyes. It was like being battered by cold sand.
Jacalan and Blanchard shut down the two overworked drills and joined the rest of the refugees in slipping and sliding down the south flank of the pressure ridge. Ethan and September hung back, settling themselves in the shelter of a huge upturned ice block. Someone had to watch, Ethan told himself.
Like the approach to a giant’s castle a long, relatively smooth ramp had been hacked and melted out of the ridge’s north slope. The scientists and Hunnar’s soldiers had done their work well. How well there was no way of telling until the icerigger actually attempted its run.
Everyone knew that if the ramp collapsed while the Slanderscree was making its climb, the great ship would be imprisoned on the ridge. Then they would be well and truly trapped in this isolated region, far from human or Tran civilization. They’d built as solidly as possible, given the limited amount of time and equipment at their disposal. Semkin had supervised the work with the drills, making sure that all the gaps between the massive ice blocks had been filled and sealed.
At last there was nothing left to do but to do it.
A glance to his right showed figures standing and waiting on the southern ice sheet: the icerigger’s fighters and the members of the research team. Only Hunnar and Elfa had joined Ethan and September atop the ridge. With the wind whipping his fur Hunnar stood tall and straight as one of the icy spires surrounding them. He shaded his eyes with his right hand.
“I can barely see the ship.” Ethan squinted and looked northward but saw no sign of the Slanderscree. That would change shortly, he knew. “They are putting on sail. Ta-hoding has the spars turned into the wind. Ah, now they are being adjusted. The sails fill. She comes.”
They waited. A few minutes later both men could make out the sleek arrowhead shape of the icerigger racing toward the ridge at high speed. Ethan was startled to realize that this was the first time he’d actually seen the ship under full sail and from a distance. For a hybrid cobbled together from a schoolteacher’s memory it was quite beautiful. There was none of the ungainliness one might have expected, though the absence of a curving hull was disconcerting. The underside of the icerigger was perfectly flat, since there was no water for it to cut through.
“Wish Ta-hoding had given better than an even chance,” he muttered.
September had his visor up so it wouldn’t interfere with his view. “Hell, young feller-me-lad, that’s better odds than life gives most of us.”
Ethan turned his attention eastward. Lightning split clouds black as coal dust. “When will the rifs get here?”
Hunnar Redbeard looked down at him, then turned to face the oncoming storm. “Soon, but not so soon as it might. A bad storm, very bad, but I think it may be moving slightly to the northwest instead of due west. We have been gifted with a few precious additional hours of manageable weather. If it continues to turn, it is possible it might miss us entirely. A havlak full of irony there would be in that!”
“It might also not miss us,” Elfa put in. “And if we do not do this thing we will be no better than where we were before the storm was sighted. We must still cross the Bent Ocean. Now is not the time for hesitation.”
“I was not hesitating, my love. Ethan asked my thoughts.”
“Here she comes!” September roared, bending slightly and pointing. “I swear Ta-hoding’s got his clothes on the line trying to coax another tenth of a kph out of the west wind.”
Ethan found he had to lift his own visor in order to see properly. Cold stung his exposed skin, pins on his cheeks. The icerigger seemed to be accelerating with every extra meter of ice it crossed. Five rooster tails of ice particles flew from the base of each duralloy runner as it cut across the flat surface. When it was half a kilometer from the pressure ridge, Ethan guessed its velocity at between a hundred and fifty and a hundred seventy kilometers an hour. Sails billowed taut from the masts and rigging. The whole vessel appeared to be leaning forward, straining, struggling to gain every last possible ounce of speed. It was near enough now for Ethan to pick out Ta-hoding and his helmsman. They were leaning on the large wooden wheel, fighting to keep the flying Slanderscree on course.