Icerigger (1974)

Icerigger is a 1974 science fiction novel by American writer Alan Dean Foster. Like many of Foster's science-fiction novels, Icerigger takes place within his Humanx Commonwealth fictional universe. The book's two sequels are Mission to Moulokin and The Deluge Drivers.

Plot

Following a criminal kidnapping gone wrong, Ethan Frome Fortune, a simple salesman and sophisticated interstellar traveler, finds himself stranded on the alien, deadly frozen world of Tran-Ky-Ky. With him are professional adventurer/soldier of fortune Skua September, the interstellar tycoon and his daughter who were the targets of the kidnapping, a vacationing schoolteacher, and the sole surviving kidnapper.

They survive the frigid conditions and indigenous flora and fauna in their wrecked lifeboat long enough to be rescued by representatives of the local feudal government—who are facing a crisis of their own. Their arrival, and the fantastic wealth represented by the worked metal of their lifeboat, has coincided with an upcoming visit of The Horde. This nomadic swarm descends on various city-states every one to two years, exacting tribute as the price for not destroying their community... while rampaging through it. This time, the locals have decided to put up a fight.

Fortune and his companions soon realize that their only hope of reaching the planet's sole interstellar outpost—a year's perilous journey away by local wind-driven ice-rafts—lies in actively supporting their hosts in their fight for survival.