Blood and Bone by Ian C. Esslemont Read Free Book Online Page B

scraping the ship’s planking tore at her ears and ran its jagged clawed nails down her spine.
    ‘Ice crag!’ came the panicked yell from above.
    Pretty damned late!
Shimmer grabbed her gear and ran for the deck. Up top she found open panic as the sailors ran about, yet the captain was calmly shouting and pointing: ‘Shanks, inspect the damage! Why aren’t the pumps sounding? Stow that cargo!’
    She crossed to the slim figure of K’azz, peering over the side. ‘What happened?’
    He shrugged. ‘Some sort of submerged ice mountain no one saw. Sideswiped us.’
    ‘Bad?’
    ‘We’ll see.’
    Everyone took a hand at the pumps. A bucket line was organized. All the while the ship’s carpenter and his apprentices were below inspecting the damage. Finally, Shimmer was waved to where the captain, K’azz and Rutana were speaking with the carpenter, Shanks.
    ‘Not at sea,’ the carpenter was saying as he shivered, sodden, his lips blue.
    ‘No choice,’ the captain growled.
    ‘Something temporary, perhaps?’ K’azz suggested.
    ‘Land!’ came a shout from the lookout, startling everyone.
    The captain scowled behind his beard. ‘Are you daft, man!’ he bellowed back. ‘There’s no land here!’
    ‘Ice!’
    The captain and the carpenter shared a wary glance.
    ‘What is it?’ K’azz asked.
    ‘The floating ice field,’ Rutana answered after neither of the sailors responded. ‘Haunted. No one goes near it.’
    ‘No choice, I should think,’ K’azz said. He gave the captain a speculative look. ‘We’ll heave up and repair on the ice.’
    The captain waved his dismissal. ‘This is no slim galley. We don’t have enough hands to heave up on to the ice.’
    ‘We have enough mages – isn’t that so, Rutana?’
    The woman’s hard gaze narrowed, perhaps at the implied challenge, then she sneered her answer. ‘Of course!’
    The captain ordered a narrow set of sail and they limped slowly towards the distant white line to the west. They slipped under high clouds and a snowfall began of thick huge flakes that Shimmer could almost hear hissing as they touched the wood of the ship. The captain knocked the snow from his shoulders and tangled hair as if it were some sort of contagion. Watching Shimmer’s amusement at the man’s antics, Rutana crossed to her side to explain: ‘Many name this the Curse of the Demons of Cold. The Jaghut. Somewhere within, a shard of their frozen realm, Omtose Phellack, endures. It is the cause of this. And it hates us – all who are not of their kind.’
    ‘Or perhaps it is we who hate all others who are not of our kind,’ K’azz observed from nearby.
    The Jacuruku envoy appeared surprised by the suggestion – and she startled Shimmer by nodding even as she scowled. ‘You are right to say so.’
    Once the ship came close to the edge of the vast plain of ice, a party containing the Avowed mages Gwynn and Lor-sinn, together with Rutana and Nagal, disembarked to prepare a surface for the vessel. Shimmer watched from the railing while some sort of chute was melted in the jagged shore. Then the crew fixed lines and almost everyone disembarked. With the aid of the mages and Nagal and Rutana, the
Serpent
was slowly eased up, stern first, on to the carved chute of gleaming ice.
    That night they camped on the ice. The captain and crew jumped at every crack and rumble and shot anxious glances to the tall mounds of jumbled shelves that looked to Shimmer like a giant’s heap of carelessly piled timber. The captain had even insisted that pickets be posted, though the waste appeared devoid of all habitation. K’azz acquiesced, murmuring to Shimmer that in fact there might be carnivorous beasts about.
    Shimmer agreed to the pickets, but she did not think anyone at risk, what with the Avowed present, plus the Jacuruku emissaries. That night, while doing a tour of the perimeter, she found K’azz out on the ice with Turgal. The latter still preferred heavy armour, as had been his habit. He