By then the icerigger had swung around to where westwind was beginning to fill her sails. She picked up speed, but the sailors of the main Poyo body were visible on the decks of their rafts. A new threat.

"They have cut us off, then," Balavere observed.

"Not yet." Tahoding bellowed new orders. Pain-ful creaks sounded above them, and Ethan anxiously looked upward. The adjustable spars had been twisted around so far that they were holding the sails almost parallel to the raft"s keel line.

"Think you they"ll take the strain?" Balavere was also gazing up into the webwork of singing rigging.

The foremast groaned, appeared to bend slightly from the vertical.

"Did I not, I would never have given the order," replied Tahoding. "If we did not try it, we would truly turn straight into these ten new rafts.

Continuing to accelerate, the _Slanderscree_ curved tightly around back toward the canyon. When it be-came apparent to the infantry on the ice and the ten flanking rafts that their quarry was going to slide past instead of into them, the bowmen unleashed a rain of arrows in the icerigger"s direction.

One stuck tautly into the hessavar hide shield Ethan had been given. He stared at it for a second, then ducked back behind the railing as another shaft whizzed close by overhead.

A small group of Poyo infantry had managed to gain slightly on their companions. Now they were chivaning parallel to the icerigger. A few had even managed to slip beneath her hull, where they could not be seen. As Balavere had guessed, thick pikapina cables were slung on the backs of several of the at-tackers.

Hunnar, looking tired but not worried, appeared on the helmdeck. "We will have to put men over the side." An arrow landed at his feet, stuck quivering in the deck. Both Tran ignored it. "Our crossbowmen cannot pick them off quickly enough before they get beneath us."

"Any we send over who fall behind would be lost instantly," countered Balavere. He gestured at the swarming Poyo infantry, who were gathering in stead-ily greater numbers around the icerigger. "We cannot afford to lose many of our complement."

"We cannot afford to have them jam our steering!" Young warrior confronted old.

A commotion forward temporarily brought the argument to a halt. Despite the danger, Ethan rose so he could see over the bow. A brown-gray arrowhead was streaming toward them from the vicinity of the nearing canyon.

"Looks like a sortie from the city." Hunnar was standing close by him, gazing with satisfaction at the widening silver river pouring from the canyon mouth. "Our new brothers and sisters have come to help."

With the Poyolavomaar fleet close behind and in-fantry preparing to ensnarl the _Slanderscree"s_ steering mechanism in green cable, the arrival of forces from Moulokin saved Balavere and Hunnar further argu-ment. The Moulokinese exploded into the unprepared Poyo troops. With the canyon wind canceling out the westwind, the Moulokinese soldiers now had the advantage of speed and maneuverability. They had timed their charge perfectly.

Half the Poyolavomaar infantry succ.u.mbed to that initial surge, whereupon the Moulokinese arrowhead formation split, the soldiers curving around to left and right to race back toward their canyon.

Some of them, in making the turn, came under fire from the nearest Poyo rafts and were cut down. Most were soon flank-ing the _Slanderscree_ to port and starboard, exchanging victory yells with the sailors on board.

The canyon had become a familiar, gaping slash in the cliff wall. The icerigger slowed as she fought the powerful winds racing off the continent and down through the canyon, but so did the speed of her pursuers.

The Poyolavomaar infantry who remained made it a difficult last few moments, however. Shielded from the strong headwinds by the _Slanderscree"s_ bulk, they were able to overtake her. However, between the escorting Moulokinese and the accurate fire of arbalesters positioned on the huge raft"s stern, no cable-carrying enemy soldier was able to close nearer than a dozen meters to the vulnerable steering skate.

They were within the towering walls of the canyon then, making slow progress inland with the Poyo fleet close behind. Once, one of the smaller pursuing rafts came almost within bow range. It mounted a pair of small catapults, one on each side of its single mast. Both were soon throwing skins filled with flaming oil at the wooden icerigger.

The Poyo catapulters had not compensated for the tremendously powerful headwind, however. Not only did the dangerous, fiery sacks fail to reach the re-treating raft, but the wind held them up and carried them back to fall behind the catapult-mounting craft. Infantry tacking behind it scattered frantically as the flaming skins burst on the ice, sending burning oil in all directions.

The second Poyo ship hit sections of ice temporarily melted by the hot oil and slid awkwardly sideways as its runners lost purchase. Two more rafts piled up behind it, doing their best to avoid smashing into their out-of-control companion.

All this contributed immensely to the enjoyment of Moulokinese and sailors, who added hoots of derision and some especially choice Trannish insults to the con-fusion taking place in their wake.

Balavere permitted himself a crusty smile. "If all their attacks prove as ineffectual, we will have no trouble with these."

" Tis clear-I mean, it"s clear now why the Moulokinese didn"t report the Poyo fleet"s presence," Ethan said thoughtfully. "Any neutral merchant raft was likely captured or frightened off, and those two rafts Minister Mirmib said were still out scouting will probably never return home."

Balavere"s smile disappeared at Ethan"s words. He studied the scene behind them. Their pursuers were untangling and beginning to tack laboriously upcanyon after them. "They still owe much, friend Ethan. I fear that once we are safe behind the Moulokinese walls, they will give up for good this time."

Ethan happened to see two figures conversing by the entrance to the main cabin: Teeliam and Elf a. "I don"t think so, Balavere. So long as this Rakossa has control, I don"t think they"ll ever give up. We may be here for a long, long time."

XVII.

The _Slanderscree_ and its Moulokinese escort slid in through the ma.s.sive gate in the outer wall.

Word of their return and the Poyo attack had resulted in full mobilization of the city. The wall was packed with armed Tran. Others waited in casual but still disci-plined formation on the ice between the two walls, while rafts shuttled supplies out from the city itself. Tahoding brought the icerigger to a halt, reefed in most of her sail. "Why are we stopping here?" Ethan asked.

"Sir Hunnar has conveyed to me a wish to disem-bark, friend Ethan."

Moving to the railing, Ethan saw that the knight and a majority of the icerigger"s crew was swarming iceward. To help defend the wall, naturally. Ethan ran to join them. September was already on the ice, moving awkwardly without his skates. Williams looked up as Ethan neared a boarding ladder.

"Aren"t you coming too, Milliken?"

"No, Ethan." The teacher didn"t look at him. "You know I"m not much good in a fight."

"I"ve seen you in combat, Milliken. You handle yourself as well as anyone."

The teacher smiled gratefully. "Better one of us retain a partly charged beamer. Sure, I can fight with it. But when the charge is gone, I"d be an enc.u.m-brance. Swordplay"s not for me, Ethan."

Unable to decide whether Williams was making a good strategic point or merely an excuse, Ethan said, "You"re probably right, Milliken. We"d better keep a beamer in reserve. Maybe you and EerMeesach can think of something to help."

The schoolteacher appeared relieved. "We"ll try our best, of course."

Ethan went over the side, b.u.mping against the hull of the raft, the soft _chunk, chunk_ of a sailor"s chiv sounding above him. His friend Williams, he knew, was no coward. He was perfectly right in insisting they keep a beamer aboard the ship. And he wasn"t much good with a sword.

Then he was down on the ice, where he promptly fell flat on his fundament, much to the amus.e.m.e.nt of the nearby Moulokinese. Elfa dropped down the ladder ahead of him. She held a crossbow. Sword and bolt quiver were slung at opposite hips. She smiled at his fall but did not laugh.

In the midst of a situation where he might soon find his throat slit, Ethan found himself staring deep into those topaz Tran eyes and thinking unthinkable thoughts. Here and now, he scolded himself, hundreds of kilometers from the nearest outpost of humanx civilization, pa.r.s.ecs from the closest civilized world.

What better place to think uncivilized thoughts?

"Thank you, Elfa," he said as she gave him a hand up, for once not caring what Sir Hunnar made of his words.

Looking down the canyon from the crest of the wall, he could watch as Poyo rafts and soldiers formed a solid line across the ice. Arrows began to fly from the ranks of Poyolavomaar archers kneeling on the ice, from their counterparts aloft in the rigging of many rafts. All sails had been furled and ice anchors held the attackers" rafts steady against the down canyon wind.

Military sophistication wasn"t necessary to identify a completely untenable position. Those Poyo arrows which did have enough force to reach the top of the wall had been slowed by the wind to where they could do little more than nick flesh. On the other hand, having the wind behind them drove crossbow bolts and Moulokinese arrows out and down with sufficient power to penetrate a hide shield.

The officers aboard the Poyo rafts quickly realized the hopelessness of their present position. Drawing in anchors, they let their rafts drift downcanyon and out of range.

Soon shouts of "Down, down!" sounded along the wall.

"That must mean catapults," Elfa explained from nearby. Ethan was acutely conscious of her proximity. While the Tran did not sweat, they exuded a powerful musk which was individually distinctive.

None was more so than Elfa"s.

" "Tis to be hoped they are as accurate with stones as they were with oil sacks." She grinned a battle grin, showing delicate, pointed fangs.

That ferocious, toothy smile was enough to erase the absurd scenarios he"d been dwelling on for the past half hour. At the same time he discovered that the tension which had gripped him during the same period had less to do with combat than he"d thought. Now he relaxed a little.

Some distant heavy _thumps_ sounded m.u.f.fled by the wind. Ethan chanced a glance over the wall.

Several man-sized boulders lay on the ice below. The ma.s.sive stone rampart was barely chipped. War cries and obscenity-flavored laughter were the defenders" response.

An audible _whoosh_, and a slightly smaller boulder sailed over the wall to land on the ice behind.

After a few minutes. Ethan recognized the futility of his new a.s.sault. With perfect accuracy and no misses it would take the Poyos a dozen years to breach the wall which was far too ma.s.sive to succ.u.mb to bombardment from such modest-sized stones. Nor could the Poyo fleet carry an endless supply of such ammunition, and bone and primitive metal tools would not suffice to cut new material from the dense basalt cliffs.

In the crowded canyon, they could not bring enough catapults to bear to drive the defenders off the wall. They had ample time to spot each arriving stone and get out of its way on the rare occasion when one would actually land atop the parapet.

When the Moulokuiese arrived from the city with their own artillery and began using catapults to hurl windblown boulders back at the attacking rafts, the despair of the Poyo soldiers could almost be felt.

They retreated again, still further down the canyon, and sat there. Meanwhile the Moulokinese soldiers and the sailors off the _Slanderscree_ held an informal compe-t.i.tion to see who could concoct the most degrading in-sult to hurl in their attackers" direction.

Despite the situation, the Poyo rafts gave no sign of departing. It was to be a siege, then.

"I don"t think they"ll try that again for a while, young feller-me-lad." September"s leathery skin was flushed, giving him the look of a man generating an internal sunset. No doubt he"d enjoyed the brief battle.

Privately, Ethan suspected the giant was disappointed at the absence of any hand-to-hand fighting. His enormous battleaxe dangled from one burl-sized fist.

"Their arrows got here slowed down enough to pluck out of the air," he commented, sitting down with his back against the wall. "Can"t hurt this wall with their rocks, and they don"t know enough ballistics to put every stone on top."

"What do you think they"ll try next?"

"If I were them, lad, and foolish enough to continue this, I"d make a try at breaking in the gate. Since they can"t sail a ram into this wind, that means bringin" up a handcarried log or something or usin" oil to try and burn it through."

"The Moulokinese cables will still stop any raft from sailing through, Skua."

"Right, feller-me-lad. That means they"d have to get enough infantry through to take over the wall and lower the cables themselves. I don"t see they"ve got a chance. We can have archers and arbalesters pick "em off outside the gate, and can ma.s.s fifty soldiers behind the gate for every one who fights his way in.

Be sui-cidal to try. That doesn"t mean they won"t. Humans have been known to try similar stunts."

"They can keep us bottled up here in Moulokin indefinitely, though."

"That"s so." He fingered the gold ring in his right ear. "Don"t bother me much. I like Moulokin. But it will keep us from gettin" our important discoveries to the padre in Bra.s.s Monkey. More important is what it"ll do by blockading all commerce. Traders and ship buyers will go elsewhere rather than fight their way into Moulokin. Rakossa"s officers probably know that, even if he can"t think of anything but gettin" his hands on Teeliam. I don"t think our friends the Moulokinese will crack, but too many wars are decided by factors economic instead of military.

"Now me," and he fingered the haft of the huge axe, "I"m hoping the Poyos get frustrated and try another frontal attack. It"s more likely they"ll get frustrated and sneak off, ship by ship, for their homes and hearths.

"Meanwhile, we might as well lean back and enjoy the hospitality of our hosts, "till the Poyos decide which way their frustration"s goin" to drive them." He put both ma.s.sive hands behind his head and closed his eyes. After a few minutes, he indicated to Ethan that he hadn"t fallen asleep by popping one eye open.

"Barbarians against us, barbarians with us, and we three supposedly civilized folk helpless to influence "em one way or the other. Think about it, lad."

Then he did fall asleep, oblivious to the cold and the noise of a thousand alien soldiers chattering around him.

"With all due respect, my lord, we cannot attack." The Poyo officer looked uncomfortable under the glare of his mercurial ruler, wished he were back on his own raft instead of here in the royal stateroom.

"Oduine is right, my lord," said another of the a.s.sembled captains. "To have a normal wind before us would be disadvantage enough. But the wind in our faces here would give pause to a G.o.d! At their whim, they could sally out and do us much damage. Their weapons outrange us badly. And these peculiar small arrows," he held up a Sofoldian crossbow bolt, "are fired with a force greater than our best archers can muster."

"Their catapults have the wind behind them too, sire," a third officer added. "I was with the group that entered the city many days ago to search for this accursed great raft. The wall before us is fully half a _suntt_ deep and solid as these cliffs around us. It cannot be breached by any siege weapon I know of."

Tonx Ghin Rakossa, Landgrave of Poyolavomaar, slouched in his chair at the far end of the triangular table and quietly regarded his commanders. He let the silence grow until many were shifting nervously in their seats.

"Do you have any more good news to give us, my soldiers?" They looked at one another, at the walls, their chairs, anywhere but at the dangerously soft-voiced Landgrave. Most of them despised their here-ditary ruler, only a few shared his perverse dreams. There had been mutterings of disloyalty ever since the erratic Rakossa had ascended the throne following the suspicious death of his older brother, but the Poyos were a tradition-minded people. There was no out-right rebellion then. There was none now.

None, however, could deny the wealth (however questionable the methods) which Rakossa had brought to their citystate. Many felt guilty at accepting wealth obtained by devices so callous, yet there were none who brought themselves to refuse it when their share was offered them.

Having spoken with quiet control, Rakossa now leaned forward and screamed at them. "Do you think we are blind, like the doublebody _Gilirun_ who travels the ice by feel? Do you believe that as we face the refuge of that unmentionable woman and those offworld interlopers and that knot of fat merchants we cannot feel the wind blowing hard in our face?" He sat back, dropped his voice to an insinuating purr.

" "Twas not we who failed to jam with cable the steering runner of the coveted ice ship."

One of the other officers held up another crossbow bolt. The tip and shaft were slXined brown. "My lord, this came out of my back this morning." A murmur of support sounded from the other captains.

"We ourselves were also wounded, T"hosjer," said Rakossa. He had always to be careful. As ignorant and stupid as these warriors were, they were all he had to make reality of his dreams. Though devoid of vision, they could still be dangerous.

"Our soldiers would have jammed that raft"s steer-ing, my lord," said T"hosjer emphatically, "would have sent it crashing into the cliffs. Would have jammed it so it would have taken forty men a tenday to untangle it- save for these!" and he snapped the bolt angrily in two.

" "Tis truth sire, save for that-and for this!" A subofficer guarding the door into the cabin shouldered his way into the a.s.semblage. Facing the Landgrave, he stood on one of the chairs and slammed his right leg onto the table. Triple chiv stuck in the hard wood.

A black line only a few millimeters wide ran from just below the furry knee around to the back, which was bulkier than any human calf. "The offworlders did this."

Several of the other captains leaned forward, examined the remarkably symmetrical wound. Fur and skin had been burnt away.

"They have strange weapons which shoot pieces of sun," the subofficer was saying. "They are long and thin and will go through the thickest shield.

"I had a woman in my command hight Zoueadaa. A good fighter, afraid of nothing. She chivaned almost near enough to throw her cable at the raft"s huge run-ner. I myself saw what happened next, for I was closest to her.

"One of the offworlders pointed a tiny piece of metal at her. There was a flash of fire, blue instead of red, that was for a moment brighter than the sun." An awed murmur rose from several officers. "It went through Zoueadaa"s shield, her war coat beneath, her chest, to come out her back and strike the ice, which melted under it to a deep puddle.

"After the fight today, I went out on the ocean to retrieve her sword and armor and cut a muzzle lock for her family." He held up his right paw, extended the index claw. "Were this finger long enough, I could have pa.s.sed it completely through her body, through the hole the light weapon made. I did not watch myself enough this morning, and received this." He brushed his palm sharply, bitterly, across the black line on his leg.

" Tis no clean way to fight, against a weapon that makes one"s own leg smell like cooking meat." He pulled his leg free of the table, stepped down off the chair. "Can we fight those who magic with the sun?"

Angry agreement came from several of the most disgruntled captains. Rakossa let them jabber on for a decent period, then said quietly, "Idiots."

Conversation ceased, though there remained barely masked stares of rebellion. Rakossa stood up.

"Did you know that, that you are all fools and idiots? Your mothers gave water!" He held up a paw.