Mariners of Gor

“I will not,” I assured him.

I heard a passing mariner say to his fellow, “The weather is clearing.”

I took the blanket handed me at the door to the mess. I dried my feet and legs, and shivered, and stepped inside. I could smell fresh Sa-Tarna bread, roast bosk. My body ached, I was weary. I was looking forward to food, and hot paga.

Chapter Eight

The Ice; I Hold Converse with a Slave; Rations Grow Short; I Consider the Matter of Seremides

The day was dim and cold.

It must be near noon, but it seemed more like dawn. Tor-tu-Gor, Light-upon-the- Home-Stone, was low, lying almost upon the gray horizon.

The ship was not moving.

It was quiet, except for the men below, outside, moving on the ice about us, with their staves, posts, and axes, striking at the ice. Even on deck one could hear the crunch of their boots on the ice below, the striking of the posts downward, each handled by two men, on the ice, the sharp crack of the Torvaldslander axes striking on the horizontal, encroaching wall that seemed about to encircle the mighty ship. Sound carried clearly. One could hear conversations yards below.

“We are in the grasp of Thassa,” said Philoctetes to me.

“She will have her way,” said a fellow.

On the stem castle, one could see the small, misshapen figure of Tersites, hidden in furs, pacing from side to side, sometimes howling in rage, sometimes pausing to shake small, gnarled fists at the thick, white expanse, like rock, that stretched about us.

“This voyage was madness,” said a man.

“Curse Tersites, curse this ship, curse the Pani!” hissed a man.

I had heard no more of sedition from Tyrtaios, who was of the retinue of Lord Nishida. If he harbored thoughts of insubordination, even mutiny, he did not now speak them. They lay dormant, if seething, within the walls of his own dark, coiled, serpentine heart. There is a time to strike, a time to wait. What point to seize a ship, to risk one’s life, when the prize, even if won, would be without profit? Only a fool would hope to steal a wagon without wheels, a kaiila which cannot be untethered, a girl whose chain he cannot loosen, a treasure which cannot be carried away.

“Away!” called a man, standing at the rail.

One of the great saws, heavy, eleven feet in length, with gigantic metal teeth, fashioned from iron timber braces, by the ship’s Metal Workers, on its rope, was lowered over the side, to the men below. There it would be weighted, its back rings fitted with draw chains, and the whole fixed in its pulleyed frame, to be dropped and raised, again and again, and, by means of the draw chains, pulled against the ice.

I had wondered, from time to time, of the hints of Tyrtaios, those of untold wealth for all. Surely that lacked all foundation in fact, and who, save the simplest and most gullible, might be deceived by so obvious and meretricious an enticement, so transparent a fabrication? And yet, I wondered, why would one of the seeming astuteness of Tyrtaios put himself so at risk, as he would be when the vacuity of his promise became manifest, as it must, in time? He, I thought, must be as mad as Tersites himself.

In my turn, I helped draw the used ax, that which had just been replaced, freed of its weight and chains, to the open deck. Its teeth would be sharpened, and then, again, within two Ahn, it would be put to work below.

The days were short, the nights long. In the land of the Red Hunters, farther north, north even of Torvaldsland, it was said that night would reign unremitting for weeks, from passage hand to passage hand, and to passage hand again, as in their summer, oddly, Tor-tu-Gor would never set. Yet even in their night, interestingly, one might see, from the light of moons, from that of stars, and, sometimes, it was said, from mysterious, shifting curtains of light, these many things reflected from the bleakness of the silent, frozen sea.

The mighty ship had been seized by Thassa, in her fists of ice, better than thirty days ago. The ice had formed about her, and lifted her, mighty as she was, from the surface of the sea, aslant, and crooked, yards toward the sky. This had proved fortunate for, as later became clear, the massive press of ice on each side might snap apart even timbers as fearsome as those of the great ship of Tersites, might break them apart as easily as a child might snap the twigs of a play fortress. Thassa had reserves on which she might draw, the vast pressures of her solidifying surface. Twenty days ago the ice had shifted, with a great, splitting roar, and our great, weighty bulk had slid downward, deeper into the ice, then through the ice, and righted itself. We rejoiced that there was again water beneath our keel, and that we might again negotiate a righted deck, but, by morning, as the ice closed in, almost invisibly forming, Ehn by Ehn, hort by half-hort, our joy turned to terror, for one could remark the groaning of timbers, the cracking of stressed beams. “Do nothing!” had cried Tersites. “The ship is strong! She will neither bend nor break. Mightier than Thassa is she, my ship, always, in every way, do nothing!” But the ice, like the forge pliers of a Metal Worker, slowly, little by little, began to close on the wood. “Do nothing!” cried Tersites. But now none heeded him. Aetius, his confidante and loyal apprentice, in whose management was the day-to-day handling of the ship, dared to countermand his orders, this with the support of Lords Nishida and Okimoto, and the counsel of Tarl Cabot, admiral in Port Kar, member of the council of captains, and the war with ice had begun, to keep it at bay, by whatever means necessary. Accordingly, some feet of ice, with great travail, had been cleared about the hull of the great ship, and, by day, and under torches at night, flickering weirdly on the ice, men, in shifts, struck, hacked, and sawed away at the foe, the silent, ever-forming, encroaching ice.

Some men had been lost in this battle with Thassa, men who, for the most part, had been careless, and lost their footing, or beneath whose weight an unexpected edge of thinner ice had given way. Some had been caught under the ice. Most had died from the cold. In such water a man would die within Ihn. The first who had been lost in such a way was Andronicus. I had served at the pumps with him, in the forward port hold. He had been lost at night. Tyrtaios, in his vicinity, had been unable to save him.

I looked over the rail, at the gray sky, the dim globe of Tor-tu-Gor, at the horizon, the flat, white, frozen desert about.

It seemed not unlikely that the voyage of the great ship had now come to her final port, one of Thassa’s choosing.

“Days pass,” said a man, wearily.

“It is endless,” said another.

“Thassa is mistress,” said a man.

“It is hopeless,” said another.

“Be silent,” said another, “or you will be stripped and lashed, and then thrown bound to the ice.”

It was true that the soldiers, or ashigaru, as they were called, of Lord Okimoto were amongst us.

How can one maintain morale, when all is lost?

At least some tarns were aflight.

One even now struck the deck, its wings snapping, soon to be led below.

Its rider, now dismounting, was one of the Pani, a man called Tajima, who was of the retinue of Lord Nishida, but serving in the cavalry.

Even from the height of tarn flight there was seen no break in the ice. It was everywhere about us, perhaps for hundreds of pasangs.

I was pleased to see a tarn return. Several had not. They were, after all, in a way, the eyes of the ship. It was from such saddles that one might see afar. Tersites, in his arrogance, his pride, and waywardness, had not deigned to give his vessel eyes. How then could she see her way? Is it not perilous enough to go forth upon Thassa at all, even in full cognizance, even when assured of her smiles and charms, without venturing upon her in forbidden seasons, blind? It was not known why several tarns had not returned to the ship. One suspects they had been