The roof was barely visible in the candlelight. But Nelo, squinting, made out the latticework of iron strips that held the panes in place, and the panes themselves grey with snow. And there, yes, in the centre, he saw a spiderweb of cracks.
‘I don’t know what’s holding it up,’ Mago said. ‘If one pane fails-’
‘The rest will follow.’
‘It’s just like that accursed awning again.’ He shook Nelo’s shoulder. ‘Come on, Northlander. These are your people. Make them listen!’
And then another pane cracked, more loudly. All around them people looked up.
Nelo dropped his blankets and ran to Ywa. His urgency finally got through. She barked out commands, and with impressive speed the evacuation of the makeshift hospital began. All the doors were flung open, including the big ceremonial entrance through which the Annids would process into the room for the Water Council meetings and other great occasions of state. Soon folk were streaming out into the corridors outside, tunnels dug through the ancient growstone of the Wall.
Then that first pane collapsed. A column of snow fell vertically, with a tinkle of glass from the window fragments that came with it. Around the Hall people stopped what they were doing and peered up at the roof. More panes cracked and failed, dumping more snow. Then the iron structure as a whole started to sag like a bulging, overloaded net. As the frames holding them distorted out of shape, more panes shattered with brief pops, and glass and snow showered. As Mago had suggested, Nelo saw, once one pane failed the integrity of the roof as a whole was lost. People, wary, backed off towards the walls.
The roof gave way completely. Amid a hail of glass and bits of iron the snow roared down in a single massive load, falling all at once. People screamed, and ran if they could, but many were overwhelmed by the snowfall as it covered the pallets and operating tables and heaps of blankets and medicine chests. It even washed into the fires in the old hearths, dousing them immediately, Nelo saw.
It was over in a moment. Then came the first groans, the first cries for help. Nelo hurled himself into the drift, digging with his bare hands.
Fresh snow fell, the flakes gliding down from the sky and through the smashed roof, visible in the dim light of the surviving lanterns, fresh snow still falling thick after all these hours and settling on the heaped masses on the floor.
Too fast, Alxa thought. After half the night not moving at all, now we’re going too fast.
Anxious, bundled up, she peered out of the window of her cabin. She could see nothing but flakes of snow, still falling, in the light of her candle. The door was admitting a chill draught, even though she’d tried to stop up the cracks with bits of her own clothing. She had no idea where they were. On the Wall, of course, but the Wall spanned the whole northern coast of Northland. She had no idea how close to Etxelur itself she was, how close to home.
But she did feel that the caravan was rattling along too fast — too fast! After all the trouble the crew had had, all the stops, the times they had to stop to knock ice off the snowblade or to dig out drifts, you would think they would have had more sense than to go plummeting into the dark now. But then, she supposed, the crew themselves were exhausted. They too must be longing to get this nightmare journey over with.
The caravan leaned sideways, to her right, as if taking a bend in the track. For a horrible moment it hovered, as if it might tip over. Then the cabin settled back on its rail with a jolt.
She breathed again. The caravan rattled on.
But the cabin tipped again, once more to the right. This time it was a sickening lean that went on and on, with a squeal of metal on metal. Still holding the candle she hung on to her seat, or she would have fallen against the wall. This is it. . this is it. The cabin was tipping over the seaward face of the Wall. She wondered what would kill her first — the crash itself, the fall into the water, or the ocean’s chill? And what had the final accident been — a frozen point, a rail bent from contracting in the cold? She supposed she would never know-
A fresh jolt knocked her out of her seat, spilling her to the tilted floor. She lost her candle at last, which flickered out. The ride became much rougher, the squeal of metal deafening. Had the cabin jumped the track?
She had to get out.
She scrambled up the sloping roof to the door, and grabbed for its handle. The door, damaged by the officer, fell inwards easily, and the bits of clothing she’d used to stop the gaps fell around her. She grabbed the door frame. One big effort, Alxa. One heave. Don’t think about it. .
She pulled her head and upper body out into the lashing snow. The night was wild, the wind blasting, the noise of the caravan on the track insanely loud. By the few working carriage lights she could see the caravan ahead, scraping along the track with a spark of metal on metal. And the cabins were peeling off the track, one by one, falling into the ocean almost gracefully. Soon it would be her cabin’s turn.
Don’t think about it.
She jumped into the dark.
Fell through the air.
Landed in snow, a deep, soft drift, powdery and uncompacted, but still she hit hard, and the cold stuff filled her mouth and eyes and ears with a rush.
But she was not yet dead.
18
The storm blew itself out overnight.
The next morning the Annids’ priority was to organise teams to dig their way out of the Wall, through snow that lay thick on the roof and was heaped up in deep drifts on the landward side. It took until midday to secure safe access to the roof.
In the early afternoon Ywa and Rina, dressed for the sake of morale in their formal Annid robes, walked up to the parapet. They used a staircase, for the elevators were still out, and would be, along with the heating and running water and other systems, until the mechanikoi could make their repairs to the engines. They emerged into brilliant sunshine, under a clear blue sky. Just here, over Etxelur, the Wall roof had been scraped clean of snow from one face to the other. Further out, Rina could see, only the central track of the Iron Way had so far been cleared; the snow lay heaped up in great banks to either side of the rail. There were no caravans running this morning. Rina saw people plodding through the cleared spaces, dark, slumped shapes in the brilliant light.
‘That sun is actually warm,’ she said now, and she lifted her face to its light. ‘But then it is only early autumn. That will cheer everybody up.’
‘Not the dead or the grieving, it won’t,’ Ywa said tightly. She was drawn, tense, her eyes hollow with exhaustion, and she had a smear of blood on her cheek.
Rina had spent the night huddled in her own apartment in the Wall, simply enduring. Ywa had been out working, trying to stabilise an ever-changing situation, and to save lives. Rina, faintly guilty, realised she had got off lightly But Alxa had not yet come home, and a worm of worry burrowed in her stomach.
They walked to the rim of the parapet and looked out over Etxelur, and Northland. The snow blanketed the land, smoothing out some details but oddly enhancing others, Rina noticed, walls and ridges and gullies picked out by sharp blue shadows. The great waterways, the canals, were plated with ice, shining silver in the sunlight. All over the landscape people were moving, dark huddles trying to force their way through the snow. The snow had drifted in great mounds against the face of the Wall itself, and lay thick on its ledges and walkways and buttresses. From up here the dreadful collapse of the Hall of Annids was clearly visible. People still worked down there, still dug into the bloodied snow.
Ywa said now, ‘What are we to do, Rina? How are we to cope?’
‘We will recover,’ Rina said firmly. ‘The mechanikoi will get the engines started again. We will rebuild. The Coldlanders ought to be a model for us. If they can survive their harsh winters, so can we.’
‘Come, Rina, don’t try to fill me with false hope, that’s not what I need you for. We are not like Coldlanders. We depend on a network of systems, of flows of goods and people. Now all that is disrupted, from the food supply to the drains. Eve
n before the blizzard we were already stretched to the limit. And winter has barely begun, Rina. What if uncle Pyxeas is right that next winter is going to be just as bad, and the next after that?’
Rina said nothing. But now she recalled the advice Pyxeas had given his family. That they must go, flee to the south before the crowd, before it was too late to travel at all. She pushed that thought firmly to the back of her mind, but she knew it would not be forgotten.
‘Mother?’
It was Alxa’s voice, cutting through her thoughts like a knife through soft fat. Rina whirled. A group of battered people, swathed in soaked, filthy clothing, some of them blood-smeared, came limping along the Iron Way track from the east. One separated from the rest and hurried forward, trembling and wide-eyed with exhaustion.
Rina ran to her daughter, who fell into her arms.
19
The First Year of the Longwinter: Midwinter Solstice
Kassu tried to get out of the farmhouse without waking his wife.
It should have been possible. They no longer slept together. Henti had the marital bed, and Kassu a heap of blankets and furs by the big hearth in the main room. He particularly didn’t want to wake her this morning, for today was the day he had asked to see Himuili, his commanding officer, in New Hattusa, for advice on the legal aspects of his divorce.
But of course she woke when he did. Maybe it was the soft rattle of his armour as he buckled it on.
She came storming out of the bedroom. ‘Ha! Off to see the boss, are you? Off to ask him how to fix your marriage?’
He kept silent as he shook out his heavy cloak and pulled it around his shoulders. It was no use being dragged into an argument. She always won arguments. She always had been cleverer than he was, he admitted that — even though, he felt, he had a better sense of what was right, of what was true.
But Henti was not herself this morning. Her hair was tangled, she was wearing a robe she hadn’t changed for too long, her fingernails were still caked with mud from yesterday’s work with the animals. She was distressed and frightened, he thought, behind the blustering anger. As well she might be, for under Hatti law a possible penalty for her adultery was death, for her and her priest.
He couldn’t help responding. ‘Yes, I’m seeing Himuili, if you want to know. He agreed to meet me at the Lion Gate. I’m going to ask him to sponsor me if I decide to go to the courts.’
‘This is you all over. Always asking somebody smarter than you to tell you what to do. Palla is twice the man you are, in every way.’
Kassu sighed. ‘Maybe he is. But he’s not your man. I’m yours.’
‘But I don’t want you.’ She looked at him for a heartbeat, trembling. ‘Not any more. Why did you ever take up the offer to be a Man of the Weapons? My father was a church scribe! I never wanted to be a farmer’s wife. I don’t want this, a farm that’s dust in the summer and frozen in the winter, and we have to give half whatever we do grow in taxes, and I spend my life queuing at the city granaries for the bread dole, and the cattle are scrawny and they kick and try to chew your clothes when you squeeze a drop of milk out of them. .’
‘Nobody wants the drought,’ he said more gently. ‘Nobody wants the winter. At least we’re playing our part. I fight for the King, for New Hattusa, and we produce more food than we eat, and there’s not many can say that these days.’
‘Oh, how noble you are,’ she said blackly. ‘Playing our part. You are a lump of the dirt you love so much.’
‘The whole world is suffering. The story isn’t all about you.’
She lifted her head, her cheeks stained by tears. ‘Oh, of course it is. Of course it’s about me, and you, and him. What else is it about? You useless lump. You understand nothing. Palla understands. . Go.’ She picked up bits of his clothing, scattered on the floor where he’d been sleeping, and started throwing them at him, breeches, socks, tunics, woollen caps. ‘Go! Go to your precious general!’
He left with as much dignity as he could muster. Burning with humiliation. Burning with thwarted passion, for he still loved her.
The morning was still early. No fresh snow had fallen overnight but nor had yesterday’s fall melted, and it lay in the furrows and ridges of the churned-up mud. Everybody was getting used to the snow now, but Kassu remembered childhood winters when snow in New Hattusa had been a rare event.
But he forgot about the snow when he met Himuili at the gate in the city’s Old Wall. For, beneath the gaping mouths of weathered stone lions, Palla, the adulterous priest, was here too.
The gate itself was firmly locked, a great barrier of wood and bronze. These were times of insecurity, and had been even before thousands of Rus and Scand had shown up in the autumn to make camp on the far bank of the Simoeis river. But Himuili’s party, plus Kassu, was evidently going out into the country, not into the city. It was an impressive force. Kassu counted fifty men, all heavily armed — plus himself, though he hadn’t known about the nature of the assignment before now. He thought he recognised a couple of them, Men of the Golden Spear probably, an elite unit close to the King and second only to the Bodyguard. There were no mercenaries among their number, as far as he could tell from their armour and equipment, which was unusual for a Hatti force.
These formidable-looking men stood by a dozen carts, which were covered with leather sheets and harnessed to depressed-looking donkeys, with shivering boys standing by with switches. Kassu wasn’t so surprised by the strength of the force when he glimpsed what the carts were carrying, as one of the wagon covers was shifted to make it more secure. Bread! Loaves, hard-baked, heaped up. They were still warm from the oven and Kassu, never far from hunger himself, could smell their delicious crisp heat. There was no greater treasure in all of New Hattusa just now, he knew that. Kassu had no idea where these supplies were to be taken — some suffering town deeper in the Troad, perhaps.
As for Himuili himself, he knew that Kassu wanted to speak to him, but not for now. Himuili was in deep conversation with his senior officers, a huddle of men in heavy cloaks and expensive plumed helmets. General Himuili looked as if he had been made for days like this, Kassu thought, days of bleak and cold and tough duty; he was a pillar of a man, and his battered face, scarred and asymmetrical, was a mask of defiant strength.
But here was Palla, the priest, wrapped in a military cloak, even wearing a steel helmet. Standing with Himuili himself in the huddle! When he saw Kassu the recognition jolted Palla, there was no mistaking that. Evidently he’d not expected his lover’s husband to show up, not today. Palla was a slim, tall man, a few years younger than Kassu — closer to Henti in age, in fact, and that was probably part of the problem. His hair was dark, but his eyes were a pale blue, blue as a Scand’s. He wasn’t particularly handsome, Kassu thought. But his face bore no scars, his nose hadn’t been broken even once — his face was that of a soft city dweller’s, and so what Henti was used to, that and his evident learning. When Kassu looked at him now there seemed no harm in him. He was not the kind Kassu would ever seek out as a friend, but he was the kind Kassu had sworn to Jesus Sharruma to protect, the kind that made New Hattusa what it was: literate, intellectual, civilised. He seemed likeable. But Kassu had seen this likeable young man kiss his wife.
Inwardly he cursed his fate. Why must life be so complicated? Why couldn’t whatever malicious angel was toying with him have sent him a rival he could cheerfully hate? Because, he realised, thinking about it, such a man would never have been good enough for Henti, as, perhaps, he had never been good enough. And that was a true measure of the angels’ spite. All they had to do was to turn your own weaknesses against you, and your heart was smashed.
The priest looked away and visibly tried to concentrate on the conversation around Himuili. But then the group broke up, for a newcomer approached, walking around the curve of the city walls, and Kassu immediately understood who this shipment of bread was for, why it needed to be so closely guarded.
The newcomer was a Rus.
Wi
th his aides, Himuili walked forward to meet him. All the Hatti save Himuili himself had their cloaks pulled back so their weapons were free, though for now their swords stayed in their scabbards. The Rus was, after all, a representative of a force that had sent assassins into the heart of the capital to murder the King.
The Rus, though, came alone. He was a big man, with the blue eyes and red hair every Hatti associated with his people. He wore a loose cloak over a long tunic and baggy trousers, and linen wraps around his legs over long leather boots. He wore a cap rather than a helmet, and had one weapon, a single-bladed axe a Scand might carry, slung over his shoulder by a leather strap. His hands were empty.
Himuili grunted to his men. ‘Ugly enough to be a Rus. That rust-coloured hair.’
To Kassu’s blank astonishment it was Palla who replied first. ‘Careful, lord — he may understand more Nesili than you think. See how carefully he has been selected.’
‘Selected?’
‘The red hair, the blue eyes — not all the Rus share that colouring. This man looks like a Rus, to us. Notice the brooch that clasps the cloak, quite expensive. A warrior and a prince of the Rus — that is who they have sent to accept our gift. This is a game of symbols, you see.’
Kassu had perceived none of this.
Himuili grunted. ‘You should know, priest, you’ve spent enough time among them. Well, I hope he can read the symbolism of the crowd of big murderous bastards I’ve brought out to meet him.’
‘I’m sure he can, sir.’
The Rus approached Himuili, recognising his authority, and began to speak in his own heavy tongue.
Palla translated smoothly. ‘His name is Jaroslav. .’
‘I come from Kiev originally. I moved south with my family and my men, for we were starving. After the famine there was little left of our country, and what was left was ravaged by the Pechenegs and other scum, and we suffered badly, and so we moved. But in the new place the Scand came, and we fought them, but soon we were all starving again, and we moved on. And so we have come here, to Miklagard.’
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