Arflane only saw them then. He swayed on his skis, peering through red-rimmed eyes at the grinning, aquiline faces of the riders. Wearily he raised his harpoon in an attitude of defence; but the weight was almost too much for him.
It was Urquart who yelled suddenly and flung one harpoon, then another, swinging his own weapon from his shoulder as two barbarians toppled from their saddles.
Their leader shouted, waving to his men; they rode swiftly down on the party, javelins raised. Arflane thrust out his own harpoon to defend Ulrica but was knocked backwards by a savage slash across the face, losing his footing in the snow. A blow on his head followed and he lost consciousness.
23 The Rites of the Ice Mother
There was pain in Arflane’s head and his face throbbed from the blow he had received. His wrists were tied behind him and he lay uncomfortably on the ice. He opened his eyes and saw the barbarian camp.
Hide tents were stretched on rigid bone frames; the riding bears were corralled to one side of the camp and a few women moved about among the tents. The place was evidently not their permanent home; Arflane knew that most barbarians were nomads. The men stood in a large group around their leader, the personage Arflane had seen earlier. He was talking with them and glancing at the prisoners, who had been bound together at the wrists and lay sprawled on the ice. Arflane turned his head and saw with relief that Ulrica was safe; she smiled at him weakly. Manfred Rorsefne was there, and Janek Ulsenn, his eyes tightly closed. There were three sailors, their expressions wretched as they stared at the barbarians.
There was no sign of Urquart; Arflane wondered vaguely if they had killed him. Some moments later he saw him emerge from a tent with a small, obese man, striding towards the main gathering. It seemed then that Urquart had somehow gained their confidence. Arflane was relieved; with luck the harpooner might find a way to release them.
The leader, a handsome, brown-skinned young man with a beak of a nose and bright, haughty eyes, gesticulated towards Urquart as he and the short man pushed through the throng. Urquart began to speak. Arflane gathered that the harpooner was pleading for his friends’ lives and wondered how the man had managed to win favour with the nomads. Certainly Urquart was considerably taller than any of them and his own primitive appearance would probably impress them as it impressed all who encountered him. Also, of course, he had been the only one to attack the barbarians; perhaps they admired him for his courage. Whatever the reason, there was no doubt that they were listening gravely to the harpooner as he spoke, waving his massive lance in the direction of the captives.
Eventually the three of them - the leader, the fat man, and Urquart - moved away from the other warriors and approached Arflane and the rest.
The young leader was dressed all in fine white fur, his hood framing his face; he was clean-shaven and walked lithely, his back held straight and his hand on the hilt of his bone sword. The fat man wore reddish furs that Arflane could not identify; he pulled at his long, greasy moustachios and scowled thoughtfully. Urquart was expressionless.
The leader paused before Arflane and put his hands on his hips. ‘Ha! You head north like us, eh? You are from back there!’ He spoke in a strange, lilting accent, and jerked his thumb towards the south.
‘Yes,’ Arflane agreed, finding it difficult to speak through his swollen lips. ‘We had a ship - it was wrecked.’ He eyed the youth warily, wondering what Urquart had told him.
‘The big sleigh with the skins on poles. We saw it -many days back. Yes.’ The youth smiled and gave Arflane a quick, intelligent look. ‘There are more - on top of a great hill - months back, eh?’
‘You know the plateau of the Eight Cities?’ Arflane was surprised. He glanced at Urquart, but the harpooner’s expression was frozen. He stood leaning on his harpoon, staring into the middle distance.
‘We are from much further south than you, my friend,’ grinned the barbarian leader. ‘The country is getting too soft back there. The ice is vanishing and there is something yielding and unnatural beneath it. We came north, where things are still normal. I’m Donal of Kamfor and this is my tribe.’
‘Arflane of Brershill,’ he replied formally, still confused and wondering what Urquart had said at the barbarian conference.
‘The ice is really melting further south?’ Manfred Rorsefne spoke for the first time. ‘It’s vanishing altogether?’
‘That’s so,’ Donal of Kamfor nodded. ‘No one can live there.’ He gestured with his hand. ‘Things - push up -from this soft stuff. Bad.’ He shook his head and screwed up his face.
Arflane felt ill at the idea. Donal laughed and pointed at him. ‘Ha! You hate it too! Where were you going?’
Arflane again tried to get some sign from Urquart, but the man refused even to meet his eye. There was nothing to gain by being secretive about their destination and it might capture the barbarian’s imagination. ‘We were going to New York,’ he said.
Donal looked astonished. ‘You seek the Ice Mother’s court? Surely no one is allowed there . . .’
Urquart gestured at Arflane. ‘He is the one. He is the Mother’s chosen. I told you that one of us is fated to meet Her and plead our case. She is helping him to reach Her. When he does, the melting will stop.’
Now Arflane guessed how Urquart had convinced the barbarians. They were evidently even more superstitious than the whaling men of the Eight Cities. However, Donal was plainly not a man to be duped. He nudged the fat man’s shoulder with his elbow.
‘We do what this Urquart says to test the truth, eh?’ he said.
The fat man chewed at his lower lip, looking bleakly at Arflane. ‘I am the priest,’ he murmured to Donal. ‘I decide this thing.’
Donal shrugged and took a step back.
The priest turned his attentions from Arflane to Ulrica and then to Manfred Rorsefne. He glanced briefly at the sailors and Janek Ulsenn, and began to tug at his moustache. He moved closer to Urquart and laid a finger on his arm. ‘Those are the two, then?’ he said, pointing to Ulrica and Rorsefne.
Urquart nodded.
‘Good stock,’ said the priest. ‘You were right.’
‘The line of the highest chiefs in the Eight Cities,’ Urquart said. ‘No better blood - and they are my kind.’ He spoke almost proudly. ‘It will please the Ice Mother and bring us all luck. Arflane will lead us to New York and we shall be welcome.’
‘What are you saying, Urquart?’ Arflane asked uneasily. ‘What sort of bargain have you struck for us?’
Urquart began to smile. ‘One that will solve all our problems. Now my ambition can be fulfilled, the Ice Mother mollified, your burden can be removed, we win the help and friendship of these people. At last it is possible to do what I have planned all these years.’ His savage eyes burned with a disturbing brilliance. ‘I have been faithful to the Mother. I have served Her and I have prayed to Her. She sent you - and you helped me. Now She gives me my right. And I, in turn, give Her Hers.’
Arflane shivered. The voice was cold, soft, terrifying.
‘What do you mean?’ he asked. ‘How have I helped you?’
‘You saved the lives of all the Rorsefne clan - my father, his daughter, and his nephew.’
‘That was why you befriended me, I thought . . .’
‘I saw your destiny, then. I realized that you were the servant of the Ice Mother, though at first you did not know it yourself.’ Urquart pushed back his hood, revealing his bizarre hair and his dangling bone earrings. ‘You saved their lives, Konrad Arflane, so that I might take them in my own way at my leisure. The time has come for vengeance on my father’s brood. I only regret that he cannot be here, also.’
Arflane remembered the funeral outside Friesgalt and Urquart’s strange behaviour when he had flung the ice block down so savagely into old Pyotr Rorsefne’s grave.
‘Why do you hate him?’ he asked.
‘He tried to kill me.’ Urquart’s tone was distant; he looked away from Arflane. ‘My mother was the wife of an innkeeper. Ror
sefne’s mistress. When she brought me to him, asking him to protect me, as is the custom, he had his servants carry me on to the ice to expose me. I heard the story years later from her own lips. I was found by a whaling brig and became their mascot. The tale was told in the top-deck taverns and my mother realized what had happened. She sought me out and found me eventually when I was sixteen years old. From then on I planned my revenge on the whole Rorsefne brood. That was more than a score of years ago. I am a child of the ice - favourite of the Ice Mother. The fact that I live today is proof of that.’ Urquart’s eyes burned brighter.
‘That’s what you told these people to make them listen to you!’ Arflane whispered. He tested the thongs holding his wrists together, but they were tied tightly.
Urquart moved forward, ignoring Arflane. He drew his long knife from his sheath and stooped to cut the lines tying Ulrica and Manfred to the rest. Ulrica lay there, her face pale, her eyes incredulous and terrified. Even Manfred Rorsefne’s face had become grim. Neither made a move to rise.
Urquart reached out and pulled the trembling woman to her feet, sheathed his knife, and grabbed Rorsefne by the front of his tattered coat. Manfred stood upright with some dignity. There was a movement behind Arflane. He turned his head and saw that Ulsenn’s hands had come free. In cutting the thongs, Urquart had accidentally released the man. Donal pointed silently at Ulsenn, but Urquart shrugged disdainfully. ‘He’ll do nothing.’
Arflane stared up unbelievingly at the gaunt harpooner. ‘Urquart, you’ve lost your reason. You can’t kill them!’
‘I can,’ Urquart said quietly.
‘He must,’ the fat priest added. ‘It is the bargain he made with us. We have had bad luck with the hunting and need a sacrifice for the Ice Mother. The sacrifice must be the best blood.’ He smiled a trifle sardonically and jerked his thumb at Donal. ‘We need this one - he is all we have. If Urquart performs the ritual then the rest of you go free; or we come with you, whichever we decide.’
‘He’s insane!’ Arflane tried desperately to struggle to his feet. ‘His hatred’s turned his brain.’
‘I do not see that,’ the priest said calmly. ‘And even if it were true it would not matter to us. These two will die and you will not. You should be grateful.’
Arflane struggled helplessly on the ice, half rising and then falling back.
Donal turned with a shrug and the priest followed him, pushing Ulrica and Manfred Rorsefne forward. Urquart came last. Ulrica glanced back at Arflane. The terror had left her eyes and was replaced with a look of helpless fatalism.
‘Ulrica!’ Arflane shouted.
Urquart called without looking at Arflane, ‘I am about to cut your chains. I am paying the debt I owe you - I am freeing you!’
Arflane watched dumbly as the barbarians prepared for the ritual, erecting bone frames and tying the captives to them so that they were spreadeagled with their feet just above the ice. Urquart stepped forward, cutting expertly at Manfred’s clothing as he would skin a seal, until the young man was naked. In a way this was a merciful action, since the cold would soon numb his body. Arflane shuddered as he saw Urquart step up to Ulrica and begin to cut the furs from her until she, too, was bare.
Arflane was exhausting himself in his struggles to get to his feet. Even if he could rise there was nothing he could do, for the thongs held his wrists. As a precaution there were now two guards standing nearby.
He watched in horror as Urquart poised the knife close to Manfred Rorsefne’s genitals; he heard Rorsefne shriek in pain and thresh in his bonds as Urquart cut his manhood from him. Blood coursed down the young man’s thighs and Rorsefne fell forward, head hanging limply. Urquart brandished his trophy, hands reddened with blood, before tossing it away. Arflane remembered the old savage customs of his own people; there had not been a ritual of this kind performed for centuries.
‘Urquart! No!’ Arflane screamed as the harpooner turned to Ulrica. ‘No!’
Urquart did not appear to hear him. All his attention was on Ulrica as, with her eyes mad with fear, she tried unsuccessfully to shrink from the knife that threatened her breasts.
Then Arflane saw a figure leap up beside him, grab a javelin from one of the guards, and impale the man. The figure moved swiftly, turning to slice at Arflane’s bonds with the sharp tip of the javelin while the other guard turned bewilderedly. Arflane was up then, his fingers grasping the guard’s throat and snapping his neck almost instantly.
Ulsenn stood panting beside Arflane, holding the bloody javelin uncertainly. Arflane picked up the other spear and dashed across the ice towards Urquart. As yet no one had seen what had happened.
Then the priest shouted from where he sat and pointed at Arflane. Several barbarians leaped up, but Donal restrained them. Urquart turned, his eyes mildly surprised to see Arflane.
Arflane ran at him with the javelin, but Urquart leaped aside and Arflane only narrowly missed sticking the weapon into Ulrica’s body. Urquart stood breathing heavily, the knife raised; then he moved his head slowly towards the spot where his own huge harpoon lay, ready to finish the pair after the ritual.
Arflane flung the javelin erratically. It took Urquart in the arm. Still Urquart did not move, but his lips seemed to frame a question.
Arflane ran to where the many-barbed harpoon lay and picked it up.
Urquart watched him, shaking his head bewilderedly. ‘Arflane . . . ?’
Arflane took the lance in both hands and plunged it into the harpooner’s broad chest. Urquart gasped and seized the shaft, trying to pull the weapon from his body. ‘Arflane,’ he gasped. ‘Arflane. You fool! You kill everything . . .’ The gaunt man staggered backwards, his pain-filled eyes still staring unbelievingly; and it seemed to Arflane then that in killing Urquart he killed all he had ever held to be valuable.
The harpooner groaned, his great body swaying, his ivory ornaments clattering as he was racked by his agony. Then he fell sideways, attempted to rise, and collapsed in death.
Arflane turned to face the barbarians, but they did not move. The priest was frowning uncertainly.
Ulsenn ran forward. ‘Two!’ he called. ‘Two of noble blood. Urquart was the man’s cousin and the woman’s brother!’
The barbarians murmured and looked questioningly at their priest and their chief. Donal stood up, rubbing his clean-shaven chin. ‘Aye,’ he said. ‘Two it is. It is fair. Besides, we had better sport this way.’ He laughed lightly.
‘Release the woman. Attend to the man if he still lives. Tomorrow we go to the Ice Mother’s court!’
Ulrica wept like a child as they cut her down. Arflane took her gently in his arms, wrapping her in her ripped furs. He felt strangely calm as he passed the stiff corpse of Urquart and carried the woman towards the tent that the priest led him to. Ulsenn followed him, bearing the unconscious body of Manfred Rorsefne.
When Ulrica lay sleeping and Manfred Rorsefne’s wound had been crudely dressed, Arflane and Janek Ulsenn sat together in the close confines of the tent. Night had fallen but they made no attempt to rest. Both were pondering the bond that had grown between them in the few hours that had passed; both knew in their hearts that it could not last.
24 New York
It took them two weeks to find New York and in that time Manfred Rorsefne, his nervous system unable to withstand the shock it had received, died peacefully and was buried in the ice. Konrad Arflane, Ulrica Ulsenn, and Janek Ulsenn rode in a group, with Donal and his fat priest close by; they had learned to ride the huge bears without much difficulty. They moved slowly, for the barbarians had brought their tents and women with them. The weather had become surprisingly fine.
When they sighted the slender towers of New York they stopped in astonishment. Arflane felt that Pyotr Rorsefne had been peculiarly uneloquent in describing them. They were magnificent. They shone.
The party came to a straggling stop and the bears scratched nervously at the ice, perhaps sensing their riders’ mixed feelings as they looked at the city o
f metal and glass and stone soaring into the clouds. The towers blazed; mile upon mile of shining ice reflected their shifting colours and Arflane remembered the story, wondering how tall they must be if they stretched as far below the ice as they did above it. Yet his instincts were alarmed and he did not know why. Perhaps, after all, he did not want the truth. Perhaps he did not want to meet the Ice Mother, for he had sinned against Her many times in the course of the voyage.
‘Well,’ Donal said quickly. ‘Let’s continue.’
Slowly they rode towards the myriad-windowed city thrusting from the ice of the plain. As they drew nearer Arflane realized what it was that so disturbed him. An unnatural warmth radiated from the place; a warmth that could have melted the ice. Surely this was no city of the Ice Mother? They all sensed it and looked at one another grimly. Again they came to a halt. Here was the city that symbolized all their dreams and hopes; and suddenly it had taken on a subtle menace.
‘I like this not at all,’ Donal growled. ‘That heat - it is much worse than the heat that came to the south.’
Arflane nodded. ‘But why can it be so hot? Why hasn’t the ice melted?’
‘Let us go back,’ said Ulsenn. ‘I knew it was foolish to come here.’
Instinctively Arflane agreed with him; but he had set out to reach New York. He had told himself that he would accept whatever knowledge the city offered. He had to go on; he had killed men and destroyed a ship to get here and now that he was less than a mile away he could not possibly turn back. He shook his head and goaded his mount forward. From behind him came a muttering.
He raised his hand and pointed at the slender towers. ‘Come - let’s go to greet the Ice Mother!’
The riding bear galloped forward; behind him, the barbarians began to increase their speed until all were galloping in a wild, half-hysterical charge on the vast city, their ranks breaking and spreading out, their cries echoing among the towers as they sought to embolden themselves. Ulrica’s hood was whipped back by the wind; her unbound hair streamed behind her as she clung to her saddle. Arflane grinned at her, his beard torn by the wind. Ulsenn’s face was set and he leaned forward in the saddle as if going to his death.