Coranda by Keith Roberts

Coranda by Keith Roberts (New Worlds #170, January 1967) is set in the future ice age of Michael Moorcock’s novel The Ice Schooner,¹ a world where primitive communities sail ice ships over the frozen wastes. This story begins in the settlement of Brershill, where a vain and beautiful young woman called Coranda torments her suitors before setting them a challenge: if they want her hand in marriage, they need to bring her the head of a “unicorn”—one of the mutant land-narwhals that live in a distant region.
The next day sees several men set off on their quest:

In the distance, dark-etched against the horizon, rose the spar-forest of the Brershill dock, where the schooners and merchantmen lay clustered in the lee of long moles built of blocks of ice. In the foreground, ragged against the glowing the sky, were the yachts: Arand’s Chaser, Maitran’s sleek catamaran, Lipsill’s big Ice Ghost. Karl Stromberg’s Snow Princess snubbed at a mooring rope as the wind caught her curved side. Beyond her were two dour vessels from Djobhabn; and a Fyorsgeppian, iron-beaked, that bore the blackly humorous name Bloodbringer. Beyond again was Skalter’s Easy Girl, wild and splendid, decorated all over with hair-tufts and scalps and ragged scraps of pelt. Her twin masts were bound with intricate strappings of nylon cord; on her gunnels skulls of animals gleamed, eyesockets threaded with bright and moving silks. Even her runners were carved, the long-runes that told, cryptically, the story of Ice Mother’s meeting with Sky Father and the birth and death of the Son, he whose Name could not be mentioned. The Mother’s grief had spawned the icefields; her anger would not finally be appeased till Earth ran cold and quiet for ever. Three times she had approached, three times the Fire Giants fought her back from their caverns under the ice; but she would not be denied. Soon now, all would be whiteness and peace; then the Son would rise, in rumblings and glory, and judge the souls of men.  p. 240 (World’s Best Science Fiction 1968, edited by Donald A. Wollheim & Terry Carr)

The middle section of the story describes the men’s journey to find the narwhals, an event-filled section that sees some of the men turn back, three crash, and at least one of them killed by another. When the men discuss this latter event, we gain an insight into their primitive culture:

Stromberg made a noise, half smothered by his glove; Skalter regarded him keenly.
“You spoke, Abersgaltian?”
“He feels,” said Lipsill gruffly, “we murdered Arand. After he in his turn killed Maitran.”
The Keltshillian laughed, high and wild. “Since when,” he said, “did pity figure in the scheme of things? Pity, or blame? Friends, we are bound to the Ice Eternal; to the cold that will increase and conquer, lay us all in our bones. Is not human effort vain, all life doomed to cease? I tell you, Coranda’s blood, that mighty prize, and all her secret sweetness, this is a flake of snow in an eternal wind. I am the Mother’s servant; through me she speaks. We’ll have no more talk of guilt and softness; it turns my stomach to hear it.” The harpoon darted, sudden and savage, stood quivering between them in the ice. “The ice is real,” shouted Skalter, rising. “Ice, and blood. All else is delusion, toys for weak men and fools.”  p. 247

By the time they find the narwhals (spoiler), there are only three men left: Karl Stromberg, Frey Skalter, and Mard Lipsill. Skalter harpoons one of the bull whales and then goes onto the ice to finish it off, only to be gored to death against the side of his own boat. Then, after the remaining two have performed the funeral rites for Skalter (which involves two days of labour disassembling his boat), they pursue the narwhal herd, during which Lipsill falls into a crevasse and is caught on an outcrop of ice. Stromberg gathers all his ropes and rigs his craft to pull them both out, a perilous process that only just succeeds. The last scene sees Stromberg back in Brershill, naming the men who died on the quest, and throwing the head of a narwhal down in front of Coronda’s door from the level above. Then he leaves, shorn of his infatuation.
This is a pretty good (if dark) story overall but, even though there are several well done scenes, it’s difficult to keep track of the various characters in the middle section of the story. A more pronounced problem is that Stromberg seems to be the main character, but he only emerges as such late on in the piece. It would have helped to more tightly focus the story if he had been more prominent throughout.
***+ (Good to Very Good). 8,000 words.

1. Michael Moorcock’s The Ice Schooner was serialised in New Worlds’ companion magazine SF Impulse. Roberts was Associate Editor of SF Impulse at the time and prepared the manuscript for publication. He was intrigued enough with the novel’s setting to ask Moorcock for permission to set a story in that world, which Moorcock subsequently published in New Worlds.