Iron Winter n-3

by Stephen Baxter

  ‘And any of you could have confirmed the truth of those myths for yourselves, had you gone out in the world and looked, as have I, Pyxeas. If you had learned to read the great book of the world, as I and some others have learned. I have seen the shorelines of lakes long vanished. I have seen ridges of rubble strewn across the continents, left by the retreat of great ice sheets. I have seen valleys gouged by long-melted glaciers. And indeed you could have found the truth in our own Archive. We have records going back millennia — not even the Hatti, not even the Egyptians go back as far as we do-’

  ‘Oh, Uncle!’ Ywa cried. ‘Get to the point. Why did it start to rain five years ago, all across the Continent?’

  ‘Because the air got cooler. You must know that the air, invisible all around us, is a jumble of gases. It contains vital air which sustains a flame, and fixed air which is produced by a flame, and other inert components. And water! In the form of vapour.’ He glared at them. ‘Come on, come on! I taught too many of you these basic principles; have you forgotten how to think while I’ve been away?’

  Alxa said slowly, remembering her lessons as she spoke, ‘When the air cools, it must drop the moisture it holds.’

  He pointed at her. ‘Yes! You have it. The abnormal rainstorms themselves were a sign of the cooling of the air. Then as the rain washed out, the currents of the air were deflected — pushed away by the gathering cold in the north — and settled into a new pattern of persistent and dry winds from the west.’

  ‘Which,’ Ywa said, ‘eventually brought drought to the southern lands. Is that what you’re saying?’

  ‘Yes. But why is the air cooling, and indeed the world as a whole? The ultimate cause seems clear. .’ He dug out a bit of Albian chalk, and rapidly began to sketch on the plaster wall: a spinning sphere, its axis tilted, swooping on a curved path around a scribbled sun. ‘The earth! The world on which we stand, spinning and sailing through the void in a manner long ago determined by the Greek scholars brought to Northland by Pythagoras, and measured in detail by generations of astronomers. It’s a very precise art, you see; you can measure a star’s apparent position in the sky quite exactly. .’

  Crimm the fisherman was a tough-looking man in his thirties. He sat in loose shirt and trousers, arms folded, legs outstretched, and he watched Pyxeas’ performance with a grin. ‘I got this stuff in my ear all the way back from Coldland. You wouldn’t believe he’s talking about sunshine, would you?’

  Ywa seemed baffled. ‘Sunshine?’

  ‘Yes!’ Pyxeas cried. ‘The world’s spin is not unchanging, you see. The axis wobbles and nods, like a child’s top spinning on a table. Why the world behaves this way is not clear. The Greeks were always divided. Some said the whole cosmic apparatus is like an imperfect machine — rattling like a badly tuned steam engine. Others believe that consciousness suffuses the cosmos; perhaps the earth makes a deferential dance around the sun, nodding and bowing like a courtier of New Hattusa.

  ‘But the why is not important. The question is, what difference does this make to us? And yes, fisherman, the difference is the sunshine. No two years are identical. Because of these features of the planet’s orbit and spin, in this epoch year by year the world is getting less sunshine — or to be precise, the strength of the sunshine falling on a given spot on the world, say here at Etxelur, at a particular time, say yesterday, midsummer solstice-’

  Ywa said, ‘So you claim the whole world is cooling.’

  ‘I could tell you that,’ Crimm said. ‘More bergs every year. And the ocean currents are changing too. Any fisherman will tell you. We have to go further and further south to find the warm water that the cod like. And as for the catch itself-’ He went to his chair, pulled a canvas sack out from underneath it, and produced dried fish. He passed them around the group. ‘This is all we’re bringing home.’

  Alxa got hold of one, a fish as hard as a wood carving. Sometimes still called by its traditional name of Kirike-fish, this was the main produce of the Northland’s fishing fleets, cod caught in masses and quickly salted and dried. It would keep for a year or more, and, easy to transport, was the staple of Northland’s provision of food to the rest of the Continent. But the fish seemed small to Alxa, who had seen fishermen return immense specimens before, some as long as the fishers were tall; this was less than the length of her forearm.

  Crimm said, ‘The point is, we’re having to sail twice as far to return half the yield. Before you Annids decide how much to dole out to our continental neighbours, you need to remember that.’

  Now the debate on the Giving Distribution started in earnest.

  ‘We must keep what we have for our own people,’ said one man. ‘If the trends Pyxeas describes continue, if our water courses freeze, if our trees fail to produce fruit-’

  Rina shook her head. ‘That’s short-sighted. There are always more farmers than us — and some of them are already here. Nestspills from their failed farmlands in Gaira and the Continent, even from the fringes of Albia. Our guard and the mercenaries might keep some of them out. Far better to buy them off with a little cod than have them come here and consume everything.’

  There were many objections to that, and the discussion grew heated.

  Pyxeas was growing agitated. ‘You’re not thinking it through. Any of you. You’re not thinking it through.’ But for now, in a swirl of argument, nobody was listening.

  The Coldlander boy was with him, silent and stolid. Pyxeas rested his hand on the boy’s arm. The stranger seemed to sympathise with the scholar, over dilemmas he could surely barely understand, and the little scene surprised and touched Alxa. Alxa suddenly felt very sorry for this ancient great-uncle, tortured by the knowledge that was evidently eating away inside him, knowledge he seemed so poor at sharing. She got up and went to him.

  Pyxeas looked at her warily, squinting. ‘The light is so poor in here. You’re not Rina, are you?’

  ‘No. I am Alxa. Rina’s daughter.’ She took his arm and made him sit down, and knelt beside him, holding his hand. ‘Just tell me, Uncle. What is it that we don’t understand?’

  He looked at her with a kind of bleak gratitude. ‘That this isn’t some anomaly. Some variation from the norm. These recent seasons of cold and rain and drought. The astronomical calculations prove it. . This is the future. It will get colder and colder. This is inevitable. Maybe you can buy off some of the farmers this season. But next summer, when they come again — what then?’

  Still nobody else was listening.

  Ywa clapped her hands to call for order. ‘Pyxeas, your contribution has been — umm, invaluable. Crimm, perhaps we can discuss the question of the fish stocks before we must face our guests again, and decide on the bounty we can afford. .’

  They began to file out of the room.

  Pyxeas, abandoned, collected together the scrolls and slates littering the floor with the Coldlander boy.

  But Alxa stayed beside him. ‘Uncle,’ she said cautiously. ‘Are you saying you understand? You understand why, how, the world is cooling down?’

  ‘Yes. No! Not quite,’ Pyxeas admitted miserably. ‘There was a divergence.’

  ‘A divergence?’

  ‘According to the historical record there was a warming, when the world should have been cooling. Lasted up to about two millennia ago. An anomaly. I don’t know what caused it — don’t know why it ended — I don’t have the numbers to match the anecdotal evidence. Still less do I understand what caused it. And until I know all that, I can’t see the future with any definitiveness. And that’s why I needed to speak to the scholars of Cathay.’

  Much of this went over Alxa’s head. ‘But you quoted the lines about the ice giants. You’re not saying the ice giants were real? And that — what? That they’ll come again?’

  He looked at her, as if seeing her clearly for the first time with his rheumy eyes. ‘No, child. The ice giants weren’t real. People can only describe the things they see in terms they understand. But the ice — that was real.’
r />   Rina came to Pyxeas now, and stood over him, evidently disapproving. ‘Then what must we do, in your opinion, Uncle?’

  ‘Leave here,’ he said simply.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Northland cannot be saved. Leave here — now, if you can, next year, if you must. No later.’

  For a heartbeat Rina seemed so shocked she could not speak. Then she asked, ‘Who?’

  ‘All of you! All the family! And take the treasures — the lore of the ancients, the information in the archives. For that is how we will rebuild in the future, by remembering the past.’

  ‘Leave Etxelur? Leave the Wall? What are you saying? Where should we go?’

  ‘Anywhere that will take you — as far south as you can.’

  ‘Gaira?’

  ‘No — further, further!’

  Rina seemed outraged. ‘Our ancient family should abandon Etxelur, after so long, all for a little cold weather?’

  ‘Not just weather. This is the longwinter, child. And it is returning-’

  ‘You quote myth at us, Uncle. Do you remember the words of the blessed Ana, when the sea first tried to take the land? We will not run any more. Single-handed she built a mound to defy the sea. We will not run. This is the future! This! That is what she said, and she inspired those who followed her, and Northlanders have not run from that day to this.’

  Alxa stared at Pyxeas and her mother, barely comprehending, struggling to believe any of it. ‘And you, Uncle Pyxeas? What will you do?’

  ‘That’s obvious, isn’t it? My understanding is still incomplete, my compilation of information imperfect. I have to get it all together while there is still time. .’

  ‘Where will you go?’

  ‘Cathay, child. Cathay. Oh, do be careful with that slate, Avatak, you clumsy oaf!’

  9

  The First Year of the Longwinter: Autumn Equinox

  In the end it was a poor summer, and a short one, with the heavy frosts coming even before the autumn equinox.

  It had been a summer dominated by the after-effects of the previous winters. Lingering ice masses in the northern lands and in the mountains, though still scattered and separate, reflected away the sun’s heat. Meanwhile more ice tumbled into the northern ocean from growing, unstable glaciers, and bergs marched steadily south. The sudden injection of so much cold, fresh water disrupted the great, warm ocean streams, cooling the land further. All this during the summer months, the warmest.

  Now summer was over, for better or worse, and the world’s relentless orbital dance took the northern lands through the autumn equinox. Even as humans around the planet gathered to celebrate this latest moment of astronomical symmetry, the cold closed its grip once more.

  10

  Kassu was woken by a kick in the ribs, in the dark, in his house.

  ‘Henti?’ It was cold for an Anatolian autumn night. Under a heap of furs, with his wife beside him, he had been sleeping deeply, and it was taking him time to surface. Had he slept late? Today was the day of the nuntarriyashas, New Hattusa’s equinox festival, and his wife wouldn’t want to be late for that. .

  A kick in the ribs, though? Henti was asleep; she hadn’t delivered that.

  He rolled on his back. There was a mass in the dark, looming over him. ‘Palla?’ But through the thin partition walls he could hear the priest, Henti’s cousin, the house’s only other inhabitant, snoring. Who, then?

  A stranger in his house. His heart lurched. The land swarmed with raiders, bandits, the starving. This farm was within the circuit of the city’s New Wall, but that was no safety at all, not if you let your guard down. He kept a steel dagger under his pillow. He reached for it. It was gone.

  And he felt cold metal on his bare chest. ‘Looking for this?’

  ‘Zida. You’re a dog’s arsehole.’ He said this softly to avoid waking his wife.

  Zida cackled, and he pricked Kassu’s chest with the dagger’s tip before he set it down, just to make the point. ‘You’re getting slow, old man.’

  ‘I’m younger than you.’

  ‘Get your finger out of your wife’s honeypot and put your boots on. We’ve got a job. A bit of scouting. Assignment from General Himuili himself.’

  Grumbling inwardly, longing for sleep, Kassu rolled out of bed and searched in the dark for the night-soil pot. Henti’s breath was even, undisturbed. She hadn’t noticed a thing. And in the next room the priest snored on, oblivious.

  When he emerged from the house a little light had seeped into the sky, which was a lid of cloud. He glanced around at his farm, silent and dark, the main house, the meaner shacks of the slaves and itinerant workers, the pens that contained his few scrawny cattle. To the south he saw the great mass of the city within the ancient Old Wall, the central mound of the Pergamos on which the tremendous dome of the Church of the Holy Wisdom was picked out by lantern light. The carpet of suburbs outside the Wall glowed with night fires. This was New Hattusa to kings and administrators, but the city was still Troy to the bulk of its inhabitants, a thousand years after the Hatti kings had made it their new capital.

  He could see Zida standing at the edge of one of Kassu’s potato fields, stirring dry muck with his toe. Kassu walked that way, pulling his woollen cloak around him. A few flakes of snow swirled out of nowhere, heavy and moist, settling on his cloak and on the ground.

  Zida looked him over. Kassu wore his scale armour over his tunic, greaves on his legs, helmet jammed on his head, and he carried his short stabbing spear, curved sword, dagger. Zida, similarly equipped, grinned. ‘Expecting trouble, are we?’

  ‘I don’t imagine the Chief of the Chariot Warriors of the Left got me out of bed to dance for Judas.’

  ‘Oh, yes, it’s Judas Day, isn’t it? Well, we’ve some scouting to do before we join in the hunt for the Missing God.’

  ‘All right. Which way?’

  ‘North.’ Which was beyond the potato field, and away from the city. ‘I don’t want to trample your precious crop of Northlander apples with my big feet. Which way to walk around?’

  Kassu shrugged and set off across the field. ‘Doesn’t make much difference.’ More snowflakes fell on the churned ground, where the potato crop was a mess, with furry growths on leaves that looked black in the low light. A couple of rows had been dug up from the dry earth to expose tubers that were nothing but a pulpy mush. ‘The blight got them,’ Kassu said simply.

  Zida grunted. ‘I once met a Northlander who said you should plant different sorts of potato, because then one kind of blight can’t get them all.’

  ‘Northlanders are full of shit.’

  ‘Well, they’re full of something, for you rarely see them starve.’

  ‘I thought we’d get away with it this year. It hits overnight, you know. The blight. One day you think you’re fine, the next your potatoes are rotting in the ground.’

  Zida laughed, striding out. ‘Your choice, my friend. You decided to become a Man of the Weapons. I prefer my pay in silver, not in dusty land.’

  ‘But somebody has to work the land. If nobody grows any food, what will there be to buy with your silver?’

  ‘Whores,’ Zida cackled.

  Kassu said no more, for he knew there was no more to say. Zida, a few years older than Kassu at thirty, was a solid man with a face left battered by years of warfare, of pitched battles against the enemies of the Hatti King, and in more recent years smaller-scale actions against packs of hungry wanderers and bandits. Zida really did think no further ahead than the next pay purse, the next whore. He was a soldier, he expected to die in battle sooner rather than later, so why worry about the future?

  But Kassu had a wife, they had had a child who had died of an infant sickness despite all the ministrations of the surgeons and the priests, and they wanted to try again. And Kassu had come of age in the years when the great drought had clamped down, and the farmers had abandoned their land. He had seen the reasoning when King Hattusili had set up his scheme to have soldiers made Men of the Weapons, to be gi
ven farmland and tax breaks instead of a regular salary. Somebody had to work the land. It wasn’t just the shortage of food; when the farmlands were abandoned tax revenues imploded.

  But Kassu was a city boy He had not anticipated the impact of the drought, and now the cold that worsened year on year. In the spring the plants would not grow and the trees would not bud; in warmer, moister intervals later in the year you might get a surge of growth, but then the early frost would ruin your crops, and anything that did grow the rabbits would take. They even chewed the bark off your fruit trees. In the very worst months your soil would dry out and blow away, just dust.

  And now snow: snow, on Judas Day! In New Hattusa! He had thought last winter was as bad as it could get. What was to come this year?

  Zida watched the snow fall suspiciously. ‘Let’s hope it doesn’t lie. Don’t want to leave tracks. They say Old Hattusa is cut off already. Snow in the passes.’

  Kassu shrugged. ‘It always snows on Old Hattusa, up on that plateau. No wonder the kings moved out.’

  ‘You’ll be warm enough with that plump wife of yours.’

  ‘Not if you keep dragging me out of bed in the middle of the night.’

  Zida laughed. ‘Who’s Palla, by the way?’

  ‘How do you know about Palla?’

  ‘You asked me if I was Palla before I had your dagger at your throat.’

  ‘A priest. Cousin of Henti. Quite high up; he works in the Church of Our Lady Mary of Arinna. Knows Angulli, I think, the Father of the Churches.’

  ‘So why’s he sleeping in your hovel?’

  ‘He’s close to Henti. Has been since they were kids. He came out a while back to bless the potato fields, when we heard the blight was in the neighbourhood. He’s come out to stay a few times since.’