Mixun tossed the wet hair out of his eyes. They were still a good fifty paces from dry land.
With amazing delicacy, the ponderous floe pivoted on its natural keel. The ‘bow’ of the island was pushed ashore by the thundering wind. A monstrous grinding filled the air. The ice quivered.
“Here we go!” Raegel shouted.
With a crack as loud as the Splitting, the fore-end of the iceberg, fully half a mile long, broke off. Fragments of ice the size of houses crashed into the raging ocean. Out of balance, the broken segment heeled over on its end and piled ashore amid heavy waves. Now the rear of the iceberg was unsupported, and the floe swung in the other direction, grinding hard onto the sand. The vast crystalline mountain of ice, formerly clear as diamond, seamed with a million cracks.
Mixun got up and ran, ice disintegrating under his feet. Raegel overtook him, long legs pumping. Both men would have bet anything it was impossible to run on a slanting sheet of ice, but panic put spurs on their heels. Passing Mixun, Raegel was a dozen steps from the edge of the berg when the whole section shivered and fell apart. His startled cry was lost in the wind and the grinding of the ice.
Mixun went down on all fours and scrambled to the new edge of the berg. He looked down and saw the surf was dotted with ice-small chunks, large slabs- and Raegel’s head as he tried to keep afloat. The floe was still pushing against the shore, forced by the roaring storm. Mixun’s shouts to his friend could not be heard. When Raegel went under and did not immediately surface, Mixun slid feet first into the foaming water.
He was promptly brained by a piece of floating ice the size of a horse. Driven underwater, he shook off the blow and opened his eyes. He saw Raegel, stuck beneath a large slab of ice, arms and legs swinging back and forth limply with the tide. Mixun sank down until his toes found sand, then sprang forward and upward, catching Raegel around the waist. He pushed the ice aside and broke the surface, gasping.
With a noise like the end of the world, the center of the iceberg, two miles long and still almost a mile wide, heaved ashore. The ridge that ran down the center of the floe exploded into fragments, peppering the water as Mixun dragged his unconscious friend onto drier land. He hauled Raegel up the beach above the high tide line and fell breathless on the sand.
The great floe disintegrated before his eyes. To his right, the bow segment rolled ashore upside down, waves breaking over it. To Mixun’s left, the stern section was still at sea, caught in an eddy. It spun madly, half a mile of ice whirling like a soap bubble in a wash basin. Between these two spectacles, the main portion of the iceberg was breaking up. Each fresh wave helped pound the floe against the unyielding island, and the cyclonic wind threatened to roll the monstrous mountain of ice onto land. Mixun tried to stand and pull Raegel to safety, but he was too drained. He turned Raegel over on his stomach to protect him from flying shards of ice and threw his arm over his face to await what would be.
He heard voices-many voices, high-pitched like children. Peeking out from under his arm, he saw the surf was full of gnomes. Some were bobbing in watertight baskets, other were dog-paddling around with inflated pigskins tied to their waists. They seemed not the least concerned by the tempest or the crumbling iceberg. Indeed, upon sitting up, Mixun realized the gnomes were shouting theories and calculations at each other even as the catastrophe thundered about them.
Mixun began to laugh. Waterlogged, beset by pirates, storm, and mountains of ice, he laughed and laughed.
Shaking Raegel’s shoulder until he revived, Mixun laughed in his comrade’s half-drowned face.
“We’re alive!” he said between guffaws. “Rejoice, son of Rafe! We are alive!”
By the time the storm was done, there wasn’t a piece of ice in sight bigger than a gnomish house. The coastline of Enstar was covered with melting blocks of ice for miles, and all the flotsam of Nevermind South came ashore, too. Not one gnome was lost in the wreck of the iceberg, but there were many broken bones and bruises.
The Chief Designer got his people organized. (Disorganized is more like it, Mixun thought privately.) Teams of gnomes combed the sand for lost equipment. Mixun and Raegel scrounged as well-Mixun for valuables and Raegel for food. They found little of either.
At dawn the following day the gnomes gathered to hear long-winded reports on their situation from a series of designated committees. Mixun let them wrangle a while, then asked, “Now what? How will we all get home?”
“I’ll appoint a committee to study the problem,” said the Chief Designer.
“I’m sure you will. What about the ice?”
The gnome wrung seawater from his long beard and shrugged. “The Excellent Continental Ice Project will have to be repeated,” he said.
Before noon, the first islanders came down from the cliffs above to investigate the strange castaways. They were tough looking folk, darkly tanned and chapped from the wind. They weren’t pirates, but they had dealt with Artagor and his kind before and probably weren’t above wrecking and looting if the opportunity presented itself. The Enstarians looked over the gnomes’ wreckage and scratched their heads. Where was the ship? Where was the cargo?
Raegel watched the hard-eyed men and women poking among the melting ice. He had an idea-a surprising idea. He whispered part of it to Mixun, who grinned when he got the gist of it.
“I’ll ask,” he said, hurrying away.
“Wait, Mix, there’s more to it-”
Mixun did not wait for the full explanation, but sought out the Chief Designer, the calculator, Wheeler, and other important gnomes. With expressive gestures, he pointed to the growing crowd of islanders picking over the remains of the gnomes’ experiment. The gnomes all regarded him blankly.
“Just say yes,” Mixun said tersely.
“What you say is not scientific, so it does not concern us,” said the Chief Designer. “Do as you will.”
Mixun clapped his hands together and waved to Raegel. Together they approached a likely mark-a lean, hungry-looking Enstarian who wore the rod and chains of a moneychanger on his belt.
“Hail, friend!” Raegel said. “Fine morning, is it not?”
“ ‘Tis always fair after a great storm,” the man replied warily. “You’re in good spirits for a shipwrecked man.”
“Oh, we’re not shipwrecked, friend! We were blown off course by the storm, but we meant to land here all along.”
The moneychanger narrowed his already close eyes. “What brings you to Enstar?”
Mixun gestured broadly. “Ice!”
“Ice?”
“Ice. Tons of ice, made from the sweet, pure snows of Icewall and brought to you by the enterprise of my colleague and I, and by the skill of our gnome friends,” said Mixun. He introduced himself as Mixundantalus and Raegel as a count again. In glowing terms, he described their expedition to Icewall to retrieve an iceberg and sail it to Enstar.
“Why here?” said the woman on the moneychanger’s left. “Why bring your ice to us?”
“As a test, dear lady,” Raegel said. “Being close to Icewall, yet surrounded by temperate seas, we wanted to see if we could bring our ice to you without losing too much to meltage. I think we did all right. Don’t you, friend Mixundantalus?”
“We did, Count Raegel.”
“You mean to sell that ice?” said another islander.
“We do,” Raegel said. “One steel piece per hundredweight.”
The moneychanger laughed harshly. “One steel piece! What’s to stop us from picking up your ice from the beach?”
“Why, nothing but the loss of future fortunes to come,” said the bogus count.
“What’s your meaning, stranger?”
Mixun picked up two fist-sized chunks and banged them together. He passed out the resulting slivers to the growing crowd of islanders. They put them in their mouths, chewed on them, or held them in their hands until they melted to pure water.
“You hold the finest fresh water in the world, and the coldest,” Raegel said grandly. “Our company intends to
