"Wear away!" Balic roared. "Look to your oars!"
"Aye, Captain!" Tamaro shouted back. He took his place at the tiller and ordered the sailors to dig in. Slowly, the longboat worked its way toward sh.o.r.e. Rowing into the wind made the bow leap and plunge, but Tamaro kept them on course for the flat, rocky beach beneath a frowning glacier. Mixun struggled upright as his tall companion slid down among the boat ribs.
Raegel"s lips were already turning blue. "I"m cold."
"We"re going to be a lot colder," Mixun said. He was glad now he hadn"t cut his hair in Port o" Call. It was well below shoulder length and gathered in a thick hank. At least it warmed his neck a little.
There were no shallows near the beach. The dark water never lightened, never gave way to curling breakers as they rowed in. Tamaro ran the bow right on the stony sh.o.r.e, and the sailors shipped oars.
Drawing his cutla.s.s, Tamaro said, "All right you two, out!"
"You"re murdering us! You know that, don"t you?" Mixun said.
"Captain"s orders," replied the bo"sun. "If I didn"t obey, he"d have me put ash.o.r.e with you."
Sullenly, Mixun stood up and worked his way forward. He swung his leg over the bow post and dropped to the gravel. With much cursing, b.u.mping, and thumping, Raegel staggered through the waiting rowers and joined his companion on the stark sh.o.r.e.
"Are you leaving us any food or clothing?" Mixun gasped, clutching his arms against the knife-sharp wind.
"I"ve none to give you," Tamaro said. The quarter-elf s features were not without sympathy. He came to the longboat"s prow and opened his coat, revealing the hilt of a st.u.r.dy iron dagger. Concealing his movement from the sailors behind him, Tamaro flipped the weapon over the side. Mixun caught it before it clanked on the rocks.
"And now we"re done," said Tamaro. "May you find the fate you deserve."
He resumed his place at the rudder and ordered the sailors to backwater. The longboat grated off the gravel beach, spun around, and rowed briskly away. As it receded, Mixun saw Tamaro"s face, white against his dark wool cloak, as he looked back at them several times.
"Wretch!" said Mixun. "He should"ve used his dagger on Captain Persayer!"
Raegel took the weapon and began sawing through the cords around his wrists. "But it was very decent of him to help us," he said. Lengths of cord fell at his feet. Free, he set to work on Mixun"s bonds. "I always had hope for Tamaro."
Mixun raised a single eyebrow. His partner had the habit of making puns at the worst possible moment, like the time in Ergoth they were caught selling painted lead bars as real gold, and were thrown into a dank, rat-infested dungeon in Gwynned. Mixun remarked about having been in worse jails, to which Raegel said, "As prisons go, this wasn"t so bad, barring the windows."
"Don"t start," Mixun said. He shivered hard. His flimsy city finery, intended to impress the gullible, was no help against the climate. Already the bra.s.s buckles on his knee breeches were conducting blistering cold into his legs. His thin velvet boots offered little resistance to the insistent chill.
It began to snow.
"We"ve got to find shelter," he said. "We"ll be dead in an hour if we don"t."
Raegel stamped his feet, trying to warm them. "Maybe there are caves in the cliffs?"
There was nothing better to try, so they set off for the towering glacier. Before the snow completely closed them in, Mixun cast a last look. Seahorse, topsails set, was driving out to sea. Someday, he fumed, someday he and Captain Persayer would cross paths again, and the result would be much different.
"Come on," Raegel was calling. He"d found a path to the glacier. Different layers of ice had fractured and fallen, creating a broad, slippery set of steps leading to the summit. Mixun untied the ribbon holding his hair in place and combed the long strands forward to protect his dark, frowning face from the raw wind.
Raegel, Rafe"s son, was a country boy from Throt. At twenty-four, he"d been on the run for seven years. While hoeing onions on his family"s farm one day, he was taken by a press gang from the Knights of Neraka. The Knights needed men to fill out the depleted ranks of their army, and lately they"d begun impressing free men rather than hiring expensive mercenaries. Raegel went along without a fight, and the press gang sergeant was the first of many to take him for a simpleton. He didn"t look like he had two thoughts to rub together. Tall, gangling, with a shock of red hair that had the habit of standing up on his head like a worn-out broom, Raegel learned at an early age to let people think what they wanted about him. While everyone discounted his wits, Raegel went about life with a peculiar grace, unhindered by conscience.
He escaped the unwary Nerakans, and after various adventures, made his way to Sanction, where he found work as a footman to the seer Gashini. Old Gashini did a lucrative trade in fortune-telling and dispensing advice to the high and low in Sanction, but his powers were not derived from magic. Gashini was a snoop, and he employed an army of lesser snoops to ferret out gossip and private news which he later dispensed as supernatural revelations. Raegel learned pick-pocketing and eavesdropping from Gashini, among other vices.
While working waterfront grog shops for his master, Raegel met a kindred spirit-a tough, sullen young fellow named Mixun, "short for Mixundan-talus," as he often said. Mixun was down on his luck. He wouldn"t speak of his origins, but he"d come to Sanction as the bodyguard of a steel merchant named Wendelsee. Wendelsee had died-poisoned by a jealous rival-and Mixun was left without gainful employ. It was hard for a bodyguard to find a new job when it was commonly known his last master had perished violently.
The two men hit it off, although a more disparate pair would be hard to imagine. The tall, seemingly guileless Raegel and the dark, dangerous-looking Mixun began running small capers of their own, like rigged dice games, or liberating high-value goods from warehouses. They did well at petty larceny for a while, until the lord governor of Sanction, Hogan Bight, announced his intention to clean up the waterfront and drive out the criminal gangs hiding there. Less than a week after Bight"s decree, Raegel and Mixun found themselves invited to leave town, which they did, taking ship to the west before the leaves changed that fall.
Ironically, the duo did very well in honest, upright Solamnia. Posing as refugees from Nerakan oppression, they worked a number of successful capers in Port o" Call, including the pearl scam. They salted oysters with seed pearls and convinced their marks they could grow pearls of any size by using a magical powder (which was just black sand from Sanction). They worked this scam successfully three times. On the fourth try, they ran afoul of Captain Persayer, who was not fooled. Instead of a handsome payoff, the farm boy from Throt and the sullen bodyguard found themselves taken by the vindictive captain and left to die on the frozen sh.o.r.e.
By the time they reached the top of the glacier, the snow was pelting down in great feathery globs. It was very wet, sticky snow, and they quickly found themselves soaked through to the skin.
Raegel gazed across the featureless plateau of ice. His scarecrow hair was laden with handfuls of fluffy white snow. "I don"t see any place to go."
Mixun replied, "Inland is just ice. We must stay close to the ocean, where the glaciers break off. Maybe we"ll find a cave or something."
They trudged on, the taller Raegel breaking a trail. Every footfall broke through the crust of ice over the last layer of snow, and lifting his heavy feet reminded Mixun of trying to free himself from a bear trap. They blundered on like this for almost a mile, getting colder and wetter with every faltering step, then Raegel broke through an extra deep drift and sank into the snow up to his chest. He struggled for a moment, lost his balance, and fell face down in the snow. Mixun halted. His friend tried to stand, but another sh.e.l.l of ice cracked beneath him, and he disappeared below the surface.
"Raegel! Ho, Raegel!"
Mixun moved forward carefully, but not carefully enough. The ice gave way under him too, and he slid feet first into the depths.
He slid quite a ways-more than twice his own height-before coming to rest against a pile of loose snow. Mixun sat up and saw Raegel lying on his stomach a few feet away.
"Ho!" he said. "Are you alive?"
"So far," was the whispered reply. "Don"t talk so loud, if you want to keep living."
Mixun looked around and saw the reason for Raegel"s concern. They had fallen into a large hollow in the ice, ten feet or more below the surface, and if the rest of the roof gave way, they"d be buried alive under tons of ice and snow.
With great deliberation, Raegel sat up. His face and hands were chalk-white with cold, leaving only the tips of his ears and his nose with any color in them. Mixun was shocked, but knew he was at least as far gone.
"Well, we"re out of the storm," Mixun said in a very low voice.
His lanky friend remarked, "Snow news is good news."
Mixun was too cold to groan. He drew his knees up to his chest and rested his square chin on them.
"Never thought I"d go like this," he muttered. "I always thought I"d die with a sword in my hand, fighting to the end."
Raegel imitated Mixun"s fetal posture and said, "I always wanted to die in the arms of a beautiful lady. A rich, beautiful lady."
They said little more. Breath froze on their lips, sealing their mouth with ice. After shivering apart for a while, Raegel crawled to his friend"s side and huddled close to him.
Last post, Mixun thought. He would never see home again, never complete the task he"d dedicated his life to. Everything had ended in this white desert, forever frozen and dead.
He closed his eyes. With his last bit of strength, he found Raegel"s hand and clasped it. His friend returned the gesture with a slight squeeze, just to let Mixun know he was there.
Shut off from the sensations of his body by the encroaching cold, Mixun fell into a twilight of dreams, images, and lost desires. He saw again the wide sandy wastes of home, the burning sun overhead, and the wind stirring the dust into whirlpools around him.
Strangely, he felt no heat from the sun, which should have been beating down on his exposed face like a torch. He felt nothing at all.
The landscape shimmered, though not with heat. It trembled with a rapid, rhythmic pulse that he first thought was his own heart beating, but it was too fast, too even. The pulsation grew stronger. The darkness around Mixun lightened a bit as he struggled to rise to consciousness.
"Stop kicking me." Raegel sounded slurred, like a drunken man.
"I"m not kicking you, you idiot." Mixun did kick Raegel then, and was delighted to feel his leg respond to his mental command.
A roaring filled the ice chamber, and snow cascaded down. The cold skin of Mixun"s face was still warm enough to melt it, and he opened his eyes, breaking the lacy crust of ice on his lashes. He sat up. Raegel was lying on his side, curled up in a ball. The noise wasn"t in Mixun"s head, it was real.
"Raegel! Raegel, wake up!"
"Scratch my back, will you?" the drowsy man replied.
"Get up, jacka.s.s! The hole"s coming down around us!" Mixun said hoa.r.s.ely. He drew back his foot and planted a sharp kick on his friend"s backside. Raegel flinched hard and rolled over, rubbing the spot.
Dragging his benumbed friend by the collar, Mixun scrambled up the ramp of snow created when "he and Raegel had tumbled down into the ice cave. The tremors were very rapid now, almost continuous, and the roaring, grinding sound was deafening.
Mixun glimpsed the chill gray sky and burst through the last few inches of loose snow. Once in the open, he thrust both hands into the hole and hauled Raegel out.
Towering above them was the source of the noise and shaking-an enormous wheel, fully thirty paces high, made of heavy timbers and strapped with black iron bands. The wheel stood upright and was turning at a goodly rate, digging plow-like teeth into the ice. Snow and ice sprayed out behind the wheel in two high arcs, creating artificial drifts on either side of the deep trench the device was carving. The axle on which the wheel turned was as broad as a man was tall, and protruded some distance from the center of the wheel. Rising from the ends of the axle were two tall wooden masts, topped with windmill vanes, spinning briskly.
"What is it? What in the name of the four winds is it?" Mixun shouted, backing away on his feet and hands, sliding on the seat of his pants across the ice. "Some kind of machine," Raegel said. "I can see that! But what kind of machine?" As if in answer, the churning wheel sounded a shrill blast on a bra.s.s horn. The windmill vanes canted, presenting their edges to the breeze, slowed, and stopped. At once the vast device slowed. The plow blades no longer tore smoothly through the ice crust, but bit and bounced on the stone-hard surface. Lethally large chunks of ice flew, and for some moments the two men were kept busy dodging them.
Without high rotational speed to steady it, the great wheel wobbled. Finally the long axle touched the snowy ground, and the amazing contrivance ground to a halt, leaning on its side like a monstrous child"s top.
A hatch opened on the axle"s upper surface and a head covered by a puffy black hat emerged. Mixun, though stiff and reeling from the cold, stood up and tried to look dangerous. Raegel didn"t bother. He sat crossed legged in the snow, awaiting whatever fate lay ahead.
The puffy black hat was attached to a puffy black suit. The person in the suit climbed out and dropped to the ground, staggered, and fell down. Another round, padded hat appeared in the hatch.
Mixun started toward the strange visitor. Raegel grasped his leg as he pa.s.sed.
"You don"t know who they are," he warned.
"They have warm clothes, and probably have food and drink," Mixun said. "And I want some!"
By the time he reached the axle, four black-suited figures had come out. They all wobbled in circles, as if drunk. Mixun grabbed the closest one. He was small, shorter by half than Mixun, who was not a tall man. Mixun s.n.a.t.c.hed at the lacing on the front of the puffy hat and shoved it back. Out came a ma.s.s of silver-white hair and an ageless pink face.
Gnomes. He should have guessed. The strange giant wheel had all the earmarks of a gnomish mechanism.
"Greetings!" cried the gnome. When Mixun did not promptly reply, he repeated his salutation in Elvish, Old High Dwarvish, Ogrespeak, then whinnied like a centaur.
"Common tongue will do," Mixun said, setting the little fellow back on his feet. "Who are you?"
Eight minutes later the gnome concluded his name.
Three-quarters frozen, the only part Mixun remembered was the first bit: "Master maker of wheels, wheel-rims, spokes, hubs, axles, cotter-pins, bearings (roller and ball), fabricated in wood, bronze, bra.s.s, iron, and steel . . ." In lieu of all that, Mixun thought of him as "Wheeler" from then on.
The other gnomes gradually recovered their equilibrium and surrounded the freezing pair. They chattered volubly about the weather, thickness of the ice beneath their feet, the formation and texture of snowflakes-on and on without pause, as Raegel slumped to his knees and Mixun"s eyelashes grew heavy with frost.
"We"re dying!" he managed to gasp. "Can you help us?"
"What"s the matter with you?" asked Wheeler. The near-identical gnome on his right said, "Over-active glands. Gets "em every time, these big people."
"Maybe they have the Wingerish Fever?" said another.
"You have the Wingerish Fever," said Wheeler severely. The gnome in question put a hand to his neighbor"s forehead.
"How can you say that?" he replied. "My blood pressure feels normal!"
"The c-c-cold," Raegel chattered. His eyes fluttered and closed, and he fell backward in the snow.
"Dear, dear," said Wheeler. "They aren"t dressed for the climate, are they? Come, let us repair to the Improved Self-Propelled Ice Engraver and warm these poor men."
"Did I hear you say the ISPIE needs repair?" asked the gnome with the Wingerish Fever. "No!" said the other four gnomes.
Wheeler took Mixun by the hand and led him to the hollow axle of the stupendous wheel. The rest of the gnomes took hold of Raegel"s hands and feet and dragged him to the open hatch.
The interior of the axle was very tight, sized as it was for beings of gnomish height and bulk. Mixun crawled through a th.o.r.n.y hedge of levers, rods, and pulleys, finally falling exhausted between two brackets of the axle frame. At least it was warm.
The gnomes put Raegel in the niche across from Mixun. One gnome gave him a steaming mug of liquid, and Mixun took it gratefully. He raised the cup to his lips, but the smallest of the gnomes stopped him.
"That"s not a beverage," he said.
Mixun looked over the mug rim at the round, pink-faced creature, framed by a wreath of silver-white hair. The gnome"s wide, round eyes were filled with concern.
"What"s it for?" he asked.
"It"s Supreme Cold Weather Foot Wash. You pour it on your feet."
Mixun stared at his boots-encrusted in snow, which was rapidly melting. The littlest gnome took the mug from his hand and poured the steaming green liquid over his feet. The snow disappeared, and a strong sensation of warmth flooded Mixun"s feet. Unfortunately, the most appalling stench also arose. Mixun covered his nose with his hand and said, "Faw! What"s that stink?"
"A side effect of the compound," said the gnome. "I"m still working on it. But your feet are warmer, are they not?"
He had to admit they were. Pleased despite the smell, he asked the gnome his name.
Seven and a half minutes later (for he was younger than Wheeler, and therefore had a shorter name), the little gnome finished his proud epithet. From it, Mixun understood the gnome was a maker of oils and unguents, a mixer of soaps, greases, and anything slippery. Because of his expertise, Mixun dubbed him "Slipper."
"Take start positions!" Wheeler shouted. Slipper thrust a second mug of footwarmer upon Mixun.
"For your friend," he said, and dashed away.
"Flywheel to neutral! Spring tension sixty percent! Wind velocity, twenty-two!"
"Blood pressure one hundred seventeen over fifty-five," said the gnome with Wingerish Fever.
"Shut up!" said the rest.
Huddled between the axle ribs, Mixun could see the gnomes hopping about, working their mysterious apparatus and happily shouting numbers and figures at each other. The center of the axle was a cage-like structure made of wire and rattan, and inside this stood Wheeler, his feet planted on a narrow board studded with four small wheels. That puzzled Mixun. Why was the gnome standing on a wheeled platform?
"Make secure all loose securables!" Wheeler cried.