Winter Song (33 page)

    "What's happening?" Bera said. She peered into the distance, perplexed.

    "I don't know," Karl said. "He's… he's just walking away. Maybe he was only ever going to guide us. Maybe he's scared of the ship." He looked after their erstwhile companion, barely comprehending what was happening. It came to him, hard, that for all their similarities, Coeo was from such a different culture to his.

    "I know how he feels," Bera said, squeezing his finger. "Part of me wants to go with him. Just turn and run."

    "Why?" Karl said. "It's just a ship." He turned to gaze back over the lake.

    "Maybe to you," Bera said. "What if there are spirits? Or whatever you call Loki?"

    "It'll be OK," Karl said. "You're just overawed, and the fact that it's so quiet isn't helping."

    "I guess the havalifugils can't swim here," Bera said, "if it's frozen solid. The rock-eaters and snolfurs have all gone north for the winter. There's not even a dauskala. That alone shows you how lifeless it is here."

    "Think the W
inter Song
's scared them off?" Karl said, adding quickly, "Joking! Come on!" They slid down and with a running jump Karl cleared the slush. Bera landed short and teetered on the edge of a floe, arms windmilling forward, until Karl grabbed the front of her fur and yanked her onto firmer ice.

    Bera had been right; it sucked warmth from their feet faster than atmosphere rushing from a voided airlock, and was slippery underfoot. She pulled a fur from her bag, and cut it into strips which bending down, she wrapped round her boots. She passed the rest to Karl, who followed her example. It didn't help their grip, but would slow the spread of the cold.

    Karl's fatigue had receded in the face of an adrenaline surge, and the ship took on definition as they approached across the silent ice. The visible part of a half-buried saucer, it was several hundred metres across and about fifty high. Close up, the metal was pitted, gouged and scarred all across its rust-bloomed surface, a metre-long shard of metal jutting out at a right angle. Karl's heart sank. "How can it possibly fly with such damage?"

    Bera gawped. "You're planning to fly it? I thought you just wanted the communication equipment?"

    "Well…" He hadn't seriously considered flying it home. Even if somehow they could adapt it to break into fold-space at the system entry point, it would still take months, perhaps years, to reach that point at whatever dismally slow speed they could coax from the engines. But he had dreamed of getting it above Isheimur's atmosphere so that they could better target the out-system relays. "Doesn't matter," Karl said. "It'll never get off the ice."

    
You may be surprised,
Loki said.
Don't be fooled by the
near-prehistoric design: ships from that region of Terra were
built for efficiency and brute-force, rather than elegance. They
could take punishment that would destroy much newer vessels.

    Even so, Karl sub-vocalised, look how deeply it's buried.

    
Ice melts,
Loki pointed out.
What's the main by-product
of an engine's thrust?

    Heat, Karl said. Oh, of course…

    They circled the ship, and halfway round Karl stopped to allow Bera to catch up. She had hung further and further back, clearly awed by its size, tilting her head to stare up at the hull. She shivered. "I know," she said with a trace of her former asperity. "It's just a ship."

    Karl didn't answer. He felt slightly spooked as well. Probably this uncanny silence.

    Even the creaking he normally expected on ice fields was absent, as if Jokullag was holding its breath. But he couldn't get over the feeling of being watched. He thought he heard a scraping noise drift across the lake, and looking around saw nothing but a raised lump of ice breaking the monotony.

    About two-thirds of the way around, a ramp hung down from the ship's hull, entering the ice at about a thirty degree angle. Only the top two metres of it was visible, most of that covered with snow and ice.

    
To allow ground vehicles of the time to drive up and down,
Loki said.

    A few flat shards of metal were scattered around, but apart from these and some marks in the snow at the edge of the ramp, it looked as if it had been untouched for centuries.

    Karl looked back at the scraping noise. It might have been his imagination, but the piece of ice seemed to have moved slightly. Get a grip, he thought.

    Karl stepped onto the ramp, his footsteps muffled by the furs wrapped around his boots. The cargo bay was mostly empty except for eight or nine two-metre-high crates scattered around the floor. Walking toward a doorway at the far end of the bay, Karl saw a flash of movement in his peripheral vision.

    From behind came a faint noise, then Bera's shout of, "Karl – behind you!"

    Pure instinct made Karl sway to one side rather than the other, and he felt something whizz past where his head had just been. A wooden bolt thudded into the wall.

    Karl spun round, into the grinning face of Ragnar. "Hello, utlander," the Gothi growled. "It's been bloody cold waiting here, but dealing out justice to you will warm us."

EIGHTEEN

Four men emerged from the crates scattered between Karl and the ramp. Thorir looked exultant, while Ragnar's neighbour Orn had a worried frown. By contrast, Arnbjorn's face gave nothing away. Karl noticed that the fourth man – one of Bjarney's Thralls – had had to help Ragnar's son to his feet.

    Bera stood on the edge of the hangar, white-faced, wide-eyed with panic.

    It had taken Karl maybe a half-second to note the scene, his brain racing. If he attacked Ragnar, the others would help leap to their chief's defence. Maybe he could try the door he'd been walking toward? But he couldn't leave Bera, and there were four men between them.

    Ragnar said, "Nothing to say, Loki?"

    Karl stayed silent, determined not to be baited.

    "What shall we do about his slut?" Thorir stepped toward Bera, who lifted her sword. Thorir stepped to one side of the ramp to circle round, and she turned too, keeping him in front of her.

    "Never again," Bera said, and Karl knew – finally – what had happened at Skorradalur.

    He tried to swallow his rage, but his face must have shown something. "Like that, is it, boy?" Ragnar said. "Couldn't keep your hands off her?"

    "I haven't fucked her, Ragnar, if that's what you mean." Karl soaked the words in his contempt, spitting them at Ragnar. "Don't confuse facial hair with maturity, old man. Being a man isn't about your balls dropping. It's about caring for your people, like I care for her, and my family. More than you ever did."

    "What would you know?" Ragnar stepped forward, his knife tip suddenly at Karl's throat. "Don't you
dare
lecture me!"

    "Why not?" Karl said, trying not to swallow and impale his Adam's Apple on the knife. "You behave as if your family are the only ones that count!"

    Then everything happened at once:

    Thorir shouted "Troll!" and stumbling, fell off the ramp. Ragnar and his men turned as one to face the attack, perhaps expecting a war party, and Arnbjorn lost his footing and fell. Bera charged right into the hangar, using the weight of her backpack to catch Orn by surprise, hitting him in the ribs. Orn crashed into the Thrall, who fell with a grunt and lay still, blood trickling from beneath his body. Karl reacted fastest, drew his sword and smacked Ragnar on the back of the head with the pommel, dropping the Gothi to his knees.

    He waved at Coeo, who stood uncertainly on the edge of the ramp, peering in. "Come on!" Karl pushed Bera at the inner doorway.

    Coeo leapt to dodge a slash from Thorir, who was still on the ground, and ran toward Karl. He narrowly avoided the sweep of Orn's sword – fortunately Orn was still semi-prone.

    Karl patted Coeo's shoulder. "Good to see you!" He felt the humanoid's shivering and added, "No need for fear, friend. We mean no harm."

    "What about them?" Coeo indicated Thorir and Orn, who were clambering to their feet while Arnbjorn used the crate to haul himself upright. The Thrall lay unmoving.

    Karl grabbed the still-stunned Ragnar, and now it was his turn to press the blade to Ragnar's throat. "Drop your weapons or I'll slit his throat!"

    It was pure bluff, but maybe the panic in Karl's voice convinced them. Ragnar's men dropped their swords.

    Bera shouted, "Step back!" Darting across the floor, she kicked the swords toward Coeo. The humanoid picked them up, fumbling them, nearly dropping one, as if unused to handling implements. "And the knives you're hiding!" she added. A clatter of knives echoed.

    Karl sensed Ragnar stir. "Keep still, Ragnar, or I'll slit your throat." He might do it by accident, were he not careful, but pressed the point harder.

    "Easy, utlander," Ragnar said and Karl felt him relax.

    "Coeo," Karl said in Kazakh, "can you break their weapons?"

    "That's wasteful," Coeo said. Karl heard the conflict in his voice. Coeo clearly loathed handling the weapons, but Karl had seen over their journey how relentlessly the humanoid reused every scrap, every morsel, every last piece of whatever he found.

    "They'll use them to kill us, given a chance," Karl said.

    "If they sin here, they'll be punished," Coeo said, but put all but one down, which he snapped across his knee.

    "Consorting with abominations?" Thorir sneered at Bera.

    Ragnar said, "Shut up, idiot. They hold a knife to my throat."

    "Very sensible," Karl said. Coeo snapped the other blades one by one.

    "What now, Allman?"

    "On your feet," Karl said, "carefully!"

    "We'll try nothing tricksy," Ragnar said with a grim chuckle. "I get the impression that you're not a coldblooded killer."

    Karl said, "Walk with me. The pressure on your throat should guide you."

    "Worthy of one of us," Ragnar said, chuckling again. "We'll make an Isheimuri of you yet."

    "I doubt they'll let you live that long." Bera kept her sword raised.

    "I thought that you'd left us," Karl said to Coeo, backing away with Ragnar as his shield.

    "I don't leave friends," Coeo said, and Karl could have hugged him. "I had to pray to the spirits of the shrine first." He added, "Best, I thought, that we come here from different directions, and to assume that we were watched."

    A supposed primitive teaches you basic tactics! Karl thought. To hide his embarrassment he said, "How did you avoid being seen?"

    "Cut a block of ice. Lay on the lake and hid behind the block, while pushing it across the lake."

    Karl said, "Can you say the phrase I taught you on the way here?"

    Coeo composed himself. He said in passable Low Isheimuri, "Hello. My name is Coeo. I wish you no harm."

    The most difficult part had been to teach Coeo to keep his voice to the limited range audible to humans. Because they could speak and hear what to humans were ultrasonic frequencies, the humanoids naturally included them in their language. It was one of the reasons the settlers hadn't even recognised it as speech. For Coeo to be comprehensible, he'd had to learn to limit his vocal range. It was like asking humans to speak only in falsetto.

    "So you've taught your pet to speak," Ragnar said. "Impressive."

    "You are Ragnar?" Coeo said, as a delighted Bera clapped her hands and laughed.

    "More mimicry," Ragnar said, sounding less sure.

    "They're intelligent," Karl said.

    "They're human!" Bera added, as if she'd never believed anything else.

    Ragnar wriggled, and Karl shouted, "Now, now!" as Orn and Thorir darted forward. "Enough!" he said, and they froze. "We're going through that door," Karl chincocked the airlock. "Follow us and Ragnar dies. Understand?" They didn't answer, but glared, although no one moved.

    Karl beckoned Coeo and said in Kazakh, "Like this," showing Coeo how to hold the knife to Ragnar's throat.

    "Better idea." Coeo unsheathed his claws. Ragnar's eyes widened.

    "He's going to guard you," Karl said, loudly enough for Ragnar's men to hear. "If you or they try anything – and I mean anything – he'll rip your throat out. Don't provoke him. Bera, you OK?"

    "Yep," Bera said. "I've trained my rifle on them."

    "Brave, aren't you?" Thorir said. "When you've a gun in your hand?"

    "Like most men I know," Bera said.

    While they bickered, Karl examined the airlock control panel. It was incredibly primitive, but when he had married Karla they'd learned archaic pastimes as a shared hobby: jet-packing, weaving, cooking, lasersculpture. Karl had never expected reading printed books to ever prove useful, and he was probably little better than a twelve-year-old during the Gutenberg Era, long before Ayes and downloads had consigned such quaint skills to the recycler of obsolescence. But he recognised many of the sigils which covered the panel – such as "Danger!" Translating more than a few words of the archaic instructions made Karl's head hurt, but luckily there were enough pictograms interspersed to help him. He pressed what he hoped were the right buttons.

    Nothing happened.

    "Shit, shit, SHIT!"

    He kneeled, and fiddled with two hatches at the base of the door. Sliding and pulling did no good, but pushing opened one hatch inward. The other one must open from the inside, Karl thought.

    He turned to the others, catching the end of an exchange between Thorir and Bera. They stared at each other, Bera, trembling with rage, Thorir blushing fiery red. Orn and Arnbjorn stared at the ground.

    "Go through," Karl told her, then said to Ragnar's men, "Follow us and the old man dies."