to its owners with a suitable sum in gold to compensate for those we had smashed. We were using the admiral’s barge, no less, and twenty stalwart wights pulled lustily at the oars. As we cleared the mole and the barge’s head swung toward the mainland, Seg looked back at me, sitting next to Delia. He was puzzled.
“I do not see our ship, Dray. And, why are we heading for the mainland?”
I realized he did not connect the storms that arose when we steered west with our very act of heading on that course, and I had not discussed that problem with him at all, as I had merely hinted at it with Zenkiren. The mysticism of the Krozairs of Zy armored Zenkiren against marvels of that kind. But now the time had surely come when I must be honest with Seg Segutorio and tell him of our means of travel. I told him.
He gaped for a moment at me as the barge pulled through the suns-lit water. Everyone was watching him.
“A flier,” he said, at last, surprising me. “As to them, I have seen them and I welcome the opportunity to fly in one. But—”
“But, Seg?”
“The Stratemsk! The Hostile Territories! Man — do you know what you’re doing? They’re murder.”
Delia said: “We are going home to Vallia, and you, Seg, to Erthyrdrin, if you wish. We would like you to be with us, but if you do not come we understand.” She added, mischievously: “Anyway, that’s the way Thelda and I got here. . .”
Chapter Eight
Through The Stratemsk
“Ossa they would pile upon Olympos; and upon Ossa, Pelion with its rustling forests, that the very heavens might be scaled.”
This ambition of the Aloadai, Otos and Ephialtes, had always seemed to me a laudable goal, seeing that I myself had scrambled my way up through the hawsehole from the lower deck to the quarterdeck, and, since my startling arrival on Kregen beneath Antares, had fought my way to various arrogant-sounding posts and positions. But I had always thought of the tall twins’ activities of ambition as rhetorical. The actual idea of mountains piled one atop another had always seemed to me figures of speech, devices of the imagination. I have seen the Himalaya — the other mountain ranges of the world are subsumed in the lofty and frightening grandeur of the Himalaya — and I had been suitably impressed and awed.
But The Stratemsk — Kabru piled on Nanda Devi upon Kangchenjunga upon Annapurna upon Nanga Parbat — with Chimborazo from the Andes thrown in as foothills — with K2 and Everest lofting beyond reason above — Yes, The Stratemsk, although not the loftiest or most extensive range of mountains on Kregen under the suns of Scorpio, are quite out of this world with the awe-inspiring terror and beauty of outraged nature flaunting her powers. The Stratemsk are big and wide and tall. They shatter reason. Snow mantles their upper slopes and pinnacles in an eternal and unbroken whiteness. The clouds hover around their feet. Savage and voracious animals haunt their lower ranges and gigantic birds and flying animals forever circle their valleys and passes with cruel talons and fangs seeking prey.
Above these mind-freezing precipices and crags and icy glaciers we flew, Delia, Seg, Thelda, and I, in our frail airboat through the cutting air.
We huddled close together warmly wrapped in flying silks and leathers, with immense furs wrapped about us.
The airboat was a mere shell of wood upon metal formers, shaped into the likeness of a petal and streamlined well enough with a windshield and leather thongs and wooden guard-rails. If it failed, as airboats notoriously failed, we were doomed. Below us lay certain death.
That death might come from cold and exposure. It might come from starvation or madness. It might come in the ravening jaws of some semimystical monster of the higher slopes where the tree line thinned and the screes stretched for miles before the snow line was reached in ice and penetrating cold.
Or — that death might come to us from the fangs and talons
“I do not see our ship, Dray. And, why are we heading for the mainland?”
I realized he did not connect the storms that arose when we steered west with our very act of heading on that course, and I had not discussed that problem with him at all, as I had merely hinted at it with Zenkiren. The mysticism of the Krozairs of Zy armored Zenkiren against marvels of that kind. But now the time had surely come when I must be honest with Seg Segutorio and tell him of our means of travel. I told him.
He gaped for a moment at me as the barge pulled through the suns-lit water. Everyone was watching him.
“A flier,” he said, at last, surprising me. “As to them, I have seen them and I welcome the opportunity to fly in one. But—”
“But, Seg?”
“The Stratemsk! The Hostile Territories! Man — do you know what you’re doing? They’re murder.”
Delia said: “We are going home to Vallia, and you, Seg, to Erthyrdrin, if you wish. We would like you to be with us, but if you do not come we understand.” She added, mischievously: “Anyway, that’s the way Thelda and I got here. . .”
Chapter Eight
Through The Stratemsk
“Ossa they would pile upon Olympos; and upon Ossa, Pelion with its rustling forests, that the very heavens might be scaled.”
This ambition of the Aloadai, Otos and Ephialtes, had always seemed to me a laudable goal, seeing that I myself had scrambled my way up through the hawsehole from the lower deck to the quarterdeck, and, since my startling arrival on Kregen beneath Antares, had fought my way to various arrogant-sounding posts and positions. But I had always thought of the tall twins’ activities of ambition as rhetorical. The actual idea of mountains piled one atop another had always seemed to me figures of speech, devices of the imagination. I have seen the Himalaya — the other mountain ranges of the world are subsumed in the lofty and frightening grandeur of the Himalaya — and I had been suitably impressed and awed.
But The Stratemsk — Kabru piled on Nanda Devi upon Kangchenjunga upon Annapurna upon Nanga Parbat — with Chimborazo from the Andes thrown in as foothills — with K2 and Everest lofting beyond reason above — Yes, The Stratemsk, although not the loftiest or most extensive range of mountains on Kregen under the suns of Scorpio, are quite out of this world with the awe-inspiring terror and beauty of outraged nature flaunting her powers. The Stratemsk are big and wide and tall. They shatter reason. Snow mantles their upper slopes and pinnacles in an eternal and unbroken whiteness. The clouds hover around their feet. Savage and voracious animals haunt their lower ranges and gigantic birds and flying animals forever circle their valleys and passes with cruel talons and fangs seeking prey.
Above these mind-freezing precipices and crags and icy glaciers we flew, Delia, Seg, Thelda, and I, in our frail airboat through the cutting air.
We huddled close together warmly wrapped in flying silks and leathers, with immense furs wrapped about us.
The airboat was a mere shell of wood upon metal formers, shaped into the likeness of a petal and streamlined well enough with a windshield and leather thongs and wooden guard-rails. If it failed, as airboats notoriously failed, we were doomed. Below us lay certain death.
That death might come from cold and exposure. It might come from starvation or madness. It might come in the ravening jaws of some semimystical monster of the higher slopes where the tree line thinned and the screes stretched for miles before the snow line was reached in ice and penetrating cold.
Or — that death might come to us from the fangs and talons
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