Somewhere a horn was sounded, its clear note ringing through the frigid air.
“Cover your eyes,” Sara shouted in warning.
Ozzie and Orion exchanged a look. No one had mentioned this before. Ozzie quickly stepped in front of the sledge’s windscreen. When he glanced back at the crater, he zoomed in on the farthermost rider out at the end of the crags. The Silfen was perched on his mount, arm back in a classic spear-thrower position. Ozzie just had time to order his retinal insert filters on-line. The Silfen threw his spear. Even on full zoom, Ozzie was hard pushed to see the silver splinter as it sliced through the air at an impossible speed. When he checked, he could see the Silfen on the crater rim opposite had thrown his spear as well.
“What—”
At the top of their arcs, the spears ignited, stretching out to became lightning bolts. Incandescent white light flashed across the crater, casting the waiting Silfen riders into stark relief. Red sunlight was momentarily banished in the silent starburst splendor.
The twin ribbons of energy dived down into the lake of ice granules. Two blue-white circles of phosphorescence erupted where they vanished below the surface, expanding until they were hundreds of yards across, then slowly dying away.
“What was that?” Orion cried.
“I don’t know,” Ozzie replied truthfully. He was mildly surprised that the surface of ice granules hadn’t shot up like a depth charge explosion, but it remained perfectly calm. A plangent boom rolled in across the landscape, reverberating off the crags and hummocks.
The second mounted Silfen on each wing stood up in their saddles, and flung their spears. White light scorched down again. It wasn’t until the fourth set of spears had been launched that Ozzie saw movement out in the crater. A low, smooth arrowhead wave rose up between the twin pools of light and the shoreline, surging along for almost fifty yards before sinking down again.
A chorus of joyful chanting rose from the Silfen waiting for the beasts to be driven ashore, their cadence mingling with the thunderclap of the fourth set of spears.
“It’s working,” Ozzie mumbled inside his balaclava.
More bow waves were visible out in the crater now, all of them heading in toward the rim as the terrifying spears of light continued to fall behind: goading. The two closest to the shore were permanent, rushing forward ever-faster. Ozzie held his breath, eager to see an icewhale at long last.
The first one burst out of the ice granules a hundred yards from the shoreline; a huge gray shaggy mountain of fur sliding up into the air with the ease and grace of a dolphin sporting at sea. It was like a polar bear grown to dinosaur size, but with a row of arm-length tusks curving out wickedly from each side of its muzzle. The legs, of which there was a whole series running along its underbelly, were more like fur-clad fins.
“It’s huge!” Orion squeaked.
“Yeah, man, pretty damn big.”
The icewhale surged back into the ice granules, splashing up great gouts of the dry powder. Spears detonated into pure light behind it, converting the billowing cloud of particles into a seething mass of whirling rainbows. Its head rocked about in fury at this deliberate provocation, but it kept up its dash for the crater rim. Four more waves were close behind it.
Individual Silfen on foot were racing forward, their smaller black spears held above their heads. They had shed their big heavy coats to sprint toward their prey, dark motes skipping grimly over the bleak land. Overhead, the sky careered haplessly from red to white, spinning shadows around and around with giddy discord as the volley of twinned lightning bolts seared their way along steep curves. Ozzie had seen old documentary videos of soldiers storming ashore in wartime, and the charge of the Silfen was almost identical to that. A breathtaking insanity that made him want to scream encouragement.
