“Scatter!” Barratong yelled, and pounded the banner junq’s gong. It could not be heard above the scraping, grinding, splashing noise from astern, and the rushing, pounding, battering racket of the new-budded waves that were smashing floes against the rocks. All of a sudden the world rocked and twisted and great hills of water erupted in their path, and sometimes the junqs ascended them at a giddying angle and came close to capsizing and sometimes they crashed into them prow-foremost so they broke and doused the crews and filled the back-wells, soaking the stored food. There was no need to order scattering; the alternative did not exist.
Out from the bay rushed bergs as keen as new-cut fangs, and the junqs panicked in their attempt to dodge. The haodah lashings creaked and the junqs screamed for pain, and some of the youngest sought to escape their burdens by rolling over, but their flotation bladders obliged them to right themselves, and if any riders were lost they were children and old folk too weak to cling on. Primeval reflexes bound the adults to whatever they could grasp, folding their mantles around to reinforce their claws and pressurizing the edges until they were stiff as stone.
In a moment of lucidity Yockerbow thought: Just so must Skilq, or Skilluck, or whoever, have endured that legendary storm…
Yet it was not the storm which had caused this. It went on pelting down, but it was trifling. No storm could make the ocean heave and seethe this way! Louder than thunder the noise of shattered ice conveyed the truth.
That warming of the water which Barratong had detected must have presaged the undermining of the high ice-wall. Once it collapsed, whatever was pent up behind it was turned loose, and the Fleet was washed away across the world as randomly as those vaned flying seeds…
IX
“Has it only been a year?” mourned Arranth, her mantle shrunken by salt and cresh, when next they came to what had been the site of Ripar. There was no more trace of the sea-defenses, no sign of the pumps Yockerbow had been so proud of—only some wilting treetops bending to the water, and a trapped mass of what had been prized personal possessions that washed back and forth, back and forth, in time to the waves. Any corpses must have been devoured long ago, for now a horde of greedy sharqs ruled where the Order of the Jingfired had held sway.
Not all the destruction, of course, had been caused by a simple rise in water-level. Maps and charts explained why Ripar had been worse affected than so many other cities they had visited. Northward, an archipelago had focused the impact of the first gigantic wave, driving it into a single channel where it could no longer spread out relatively harmlessly. Some of the islands had been completely washed away; enough, though, had resisted to ensure that Ripar’s fragile protective banks dissolved under the eventual onslaught. Once the city’s roots were exposed to the intense saltiness of the warm northern water—warm!—they were doomed.
But the melting was certain to continue, as was betokened by the presence of countless bergs following the same currents as the Fleet, and when—if—all the polar ice returned to the liquid state, the world would be transformed unrecognizably.
They had talked long and long about the future as they strove to recreate the Fleet. Barratong had had the foresight to decree what none of his predecessors had thought necessary: a rendezvous in mid-ocean, near four islands with fresh water and ample vegetation. That was where they had waited out the winter, but one of the islands was shrunk to half its normal size and many of the edible plants were dying … as were too many of the reunited junqs. There was a loathsome taint in the air, and every gust of northern gale brought a drift of grittiness that revolted the maw and made the torso itch beneath the mantle. Sometimes the aurora towards the pole was blanked out not by regular clouds but by some kind of dust, not cleanly star-budded dust such as gave rise to meteors—few, come to that, had been seen this year, hidden no doubt by the same ghastly veil—instead, like the much-feared smoke which drifted from the world’s rare drylands when a lightning-strike released wildfire, and could blind and choke those trapped downwind.