“Of course not,” said Raegel, standing at last. “Take what you will, excellent Artagor.”
The pirates ransacked Nevermind South with brisk, professional thoroughness. The results were disappointing. A small heap of metal trinkets, mostly steel, grew in front of the impatient chief. As time passed and the pile did not progress, he began to roar again.
“What’s this?” he bellowed, gesturing to the modest haul of swag. “All you tinkers, and this is all the metal you’ve got? And you, from Sanction-if you’re the paymaster, where’s your pay chest?”
“The gnomes are working on account,” Raegel said smoothly. “They’re to be paid off when we reach our destination.”
“Which is where?”
Mixun opened his mouth, so Raegel let him answer. “Sancrist Isle, of course.”
A pirate wearing a mate’s cap ran up. “That’s all, captain. There’s no more to find.”
Artagor shoved the young buccaneer away roughly.
“They’ve hidden their loot!” he declared. “I’ll have it out of them, one way or t’other!”
Torture on his mind, he ordered a fire laid. The pirates tried, but there was no dry wood or tinder on the iceberg, and the ice beneath their feet was too cold and wet to allow a flame anyway. As Artagor consulted his mental repertoire of brutality, lightning flashed overhead.
Slipper sidled up to Mixun. “Sir,” he whispered. Mixun discreetly waved the gnome aside. “Sir,” said Slipper, more insistently.
“What is it? Can’t you see we’re all in peril?”
“It’s going to storm, sir.”
“I can see that!”
More lightning crackled overhead. The wind shifted direction, died, then started again from the opposite side of the compass.
“There’s going to be a cyclone,” Slipper muttered.
Mixun shot a look at the smallest of the gnomes. “Are you sure?”
“Barometric readings do not lie.”
As usual, Mixun had no idea what Slipper was talking about, but he believed him. The wind was increasing in strength out of the southwest. It was so balmy the ice around them began to visibly soften and lose its shape. Artagor was shouting for wood to build a pair of frames. Mixun understood he intended to hang him and Raegel by their feet and question them about hidden treasure.
Thunder boomed. The first fat drops of rain landed, followed quickly by an almost sideways sheet of wind-driven rain.
Signal flags whipped from the masts of every pirate ship. The lesser captains pleaded with Artagor to allow them to withdraw, lest the storm drive them into the ice island.
“I’ll not be cheated of my booty!” Artagor cried. “Not by the likes of them!”
“You already have been!” Mixun shouted back. “This is no natural storm! The gnomes have ways, devices, to influence the weather! Go now, Captain, before your fleet is destroyed!”
At his words, the pirates bolted for their boats. Artagor dithered a moment, then raised his sword. “I’ll not leave you to boast how you bested Artagor!”
He cut and slashed at Mixun and Raegel, who promptly leaped apart, dodging each other and the pirate’s savage swings. Rain and wind tore at them, making the ice impossible to stand on. Down went Artagor, heavily. Mixun would have leaped on the fallen foe, but he fell too. Raegel managed a strange pirouette and collapsed onto the crowd of gnomes.
The Chief Designer was shouting orders. Mixun heard something like “engage the propulsion units,” but the wind made hearing difficult. He got up on his knees just as Artagor did. The pirate thrust at him. Mixun felt the rake of cold iron, and a cut three inches long opened on his left cheek. He threw himself at Artagor’s swordhand and both men spun away, sluicing down the ice hill toward the water’s edge.
All the pirates had fled except Artagor’s boat crew, who stood by their gig anxiously waiting for their master. When he appeared, sliding down the ice on his back, grappling with the short, muscular Mixun, they broke ranks and ran to help. Not one made it two steps before falling. Several went right into the tossing sea.
Mixun was strong, but Artagor outweighed him by sixty pounds. He threw the smaller man off and rose warily. Mixun floundered helplessly at his feet. Grinning through his beard, Artagor raised his cutlass high.
There was a thump, a loud twang, and something struck the pirate chief in the face. He yelled and flung his arms wide, losing his sword. When he came down again, he was in the sea. Artagor surfaced once, spouting water and terrifying curses. It was obvious he couldn’t swim in his heavy breastplate and boots, and he went down again.
From his knees, Mixun saw the tall, gaunt figure of Raegel and the tiny beardless Slipper standing a few paces away. Raegel held some kind of fork-shaped device in his hand. With great effort, Mixun climbed the slippery slope on hands and knees until he reached his friends. Raegel was grinning widely.
“What happened?” asked Mixun.
“Friend Slipper loaned me his hand catapult,” said Raegel. With great ceremony, Raegel returned the device to the gnome, who shoved it in one of the many pockets on the back of his coveralls.
The pirates were gone. Artagor’s gig, rowed by just four sailors, was pulling for his ship. Of the pirate chief there was no sign. The rest of the fleet had scattered before the tempest and were trying to beat their way back to Enstar.
“We must take shelter!” Slipper piped. Most of his comrades had already done so. With the wind and rain pelting their backs, both men and the gnome slowly climbed the hill to camp.
What paddle machines there were still working rapidly collapsed in the storm. Their mountings in the ice had melted loose, and the fierce wind smashed them down. Powerless, the great iceberg turned in the wind, plowing sideways through the heaving sea. Raegel got seasick again.
In the storehouse, the gnomes were furiously working-sewing hides together, painting hot pitch on wicker baskets, and other nonsensical doings. Mixun and Raegel shut the driftwood door and slid to the floor, their backs against the flimsy, quivering panel.
“It’s a cyclone all right,” Raegel said, wiping his face. “We’ll soon be aground at this rate.”
“I estimate we will reach Enstar in ninety-two minutes,” said the gnome who calculated the Splitting so accurately. Despite his earlier success, he instantly had fifty other gnomes disputing his estimate. Mixun ground his teeth.
“Time waits for gnome one,” Raegel said, leaning his head back.
“Shut up! Are we in danger?” asked Mixun.
“Danger enough, even if this floe isn’t a ship. It may be ice, but it’s solid. We’ll go aground and that’ll be that.”
The gnomes were not about to see their great project end so ignominiously. They sewed their store of hides into a gigantic sail, which they announced they would spread between the peaks atop the iceberg. Using the wind, they would sail the floe away from Enstar.
“And what,” Mixun asked, “are the baskets for?”
The explanation was lengthy, but the crux of the matter was that they were gnomish lifeboats, for use in case the iceberg broke apart.
Tied together by an endless rope, the gnomes ventured forth in the storm. Small as they were, they were carried hither and thither by the tempest, hopelessly snarling the makeshift sail. Driven to help by sheer exasperation, Mixun and Raegel climbed the ridge, dragging the heavy sail behind them. At the top, Mixun threw one leg over and surveyed the scene. His heart climbed into his mouth.
The coast of Enstar seemed close enough to touch. Above a white sand beach, a dark headland loomed. Trees tossed in the scouring wind. Under him, Mixun felt the huge floe roll and pitch as it drove relentlessly toward land. Raegel arrived a few seconds later, still dragging the gnomes’ useless sail.