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There was a twang. One of the sailors had armed himself with a crossbow from
the ship's armory. Now he let fly from the mizzenmast and the alarming words
changed to an indecipherable gurgling. There was the faint, distant flump of
something striking the ground.
Too late. Other voices sounded now on shore, called querulously to one another
and to the unresponsive shapes moving about the great raft. Ta-hoding,
drop-ping all pretense of concealment, moved to the helm-
deck railing and roared instructions liberally laced with invective at the
crew.
Ponderously, with adjustable spars turning, the
Slanderscree began to gain sternway and back clear of the pier. Sailors still
on the dock saw armed figures chivaning at them, jumped aboard. There was not
enough time to loosen all the cables.
A concatenation of bizarre clangings, rips and tears, groans and inanimate
protests sounded from the dock. The incredible pika-pina cables held, but the
dock did not. Pinions and cleats ripped free of their sockets, flew toward the
massive raft, while Poyos on the pier turned about and tried to protect
themselves from fly-ing bone and wood.
On board the
Slanderscree the boarding ladders were brought in, several with sailors still
clinging to them. Looking as if they would sweat if they could, Ta-hoding's
helmsmen threw the great wheel hard over. The icerigger continued to move
backward, her bow swinging steadily around to the north. As soon as it cleared
the outermost pier, the spars would shift and the westwind would fill the
sails from behind.
They could see oil lamps massing along the shore, spilling out onto the ice.
Shouts of outrage and confu-sion flared as unevenly and brightly as the
flames. A
few arrows and a couple of spears flew at the great, ghostly shape of the
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icerigger. Most fell short, a pair stuck into the rear of the helmdeck as it
swung land-ward.
Within the waking city, horns were droning like un-dertakers. Drums howled
more urgently, and edgy sol-diers loosed arrows at the moons.
"Over spars!" Ta-hoding bellowed. "Over spars!" echoed his mates. The
Slanderscree's sails came around, there was a whiplike crack, sheets plumped
out like the prow of a woman September had once known, and the icerigger began
to move ahead, pick-ing up speed with every second.
Her crew was much too busy to shout with joy.
Both moons were high adrift in a cloudless sky. The sextuple crags of
Poyolavomaar's circling islands cast quilted shadows across the harbor as the
foremast lookout yelled a warning.
"Pilot raft ahead!"
Ta-hoding looked grimly at Ethan. "Small pleasure would it be if Valsht the
harbormaster, excrement in
Trannish form, were to be aboard it."
Seconds later Ethan heard a faint crunching sound and rushed to the edge of
the helmdeck. Shards of cut wood were sliding beneath the ship. The rear
runners further reduced them to splinters. His gaze shifted aft, to show
tumbling bits of wood and softer fragments strewn in the wake of the
icerigger.
"The gate is closed!" shouted the lookout again.
Ta-hoding stood his place, simply reminding the helmsmen of their course. They
held a touch tighter to the wheel, as everyone else on board braced himself as
best he could for the expected collision.
Ethan imagined disapproving, forbidding faces frowning down at them from the
flanking mountain-tops.
He fell to one knee as the deck shimmied be-neath him. Then they were through,
and he rushed back to the railing for a look astern.
file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Fos...%20-%20Mission%20to%20Moulokin
(1979)[v1].html (81 of 166) [10/15/2004 12:52:51 PM]
Alan Dean Foster - Mission to Moulokin
Angry lights danced futilely on the walls linking the two isles. A pair of
huge wooden gates lay smashed and fragmented on the moonlit ice. Four huge
blocks of stone bounced lightly in the icerigger's wake, their unbroken
pika-pina cables still firmly secured to each.
Damage reports came back from the bow. The
Slanderscree would have to do without a bowsprit for awhile. If their
maneuverability was slightly impaired, their speed was not. They were flying
across the ice now, the powerful westwind shoving them with a gi-ant's hand
from behind, their first attempt at initiating a union of Tran island-states a
dismal failure that re-ceded rapidly astern.
"You must go after them, your highness." Calonnin Ro-Vijar filled his voice
with urgency as he addressed
Rakossa of Poyolavomaar.
Crowded around him in the Landgrave's personal quarters were the high knights
and generals of the city.
Most of them would rather have been anywhere but within verbal range of their
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