Iron Winter n-3

by Stephen Baxter

  Hastayar regarded her nephew slyly ‘Where would you suggest, Prince?’

  ‘We have a whole empire, much of which is south of New Hattusa. I suppose anywhere to the south would be preferable.’

  ‘And if we went beyond the empire?’

  Arnuwanda goggled, clearly out of his depth. ‘Beyond?’

  ‘Egypt,’ Angulli said. ‘What about Egypt? We could go to the grain, rather than have the grain come to us. We could live in the sun on the banks of their great river, whose waters, as you know, never fail, even in the worst drought.’

  Himuili nodded. ‘Egypt is the key, I agree with you there. But even if we succeeded in taking it from the Muslims we would be vulnerable to attack from the rest of their domains, which are pretty extensive as you know, sir. And there would be the Carthaginians to deal with, who want the grain for themselves. We would step off the boat and immediately be under attack on two fronts, east and west, which is a poor deal militarily. Sir.’

  ‘Then where, man? Don’t drag it out. Where?’

  Himuili deferred to Hastayar.

  And she said: ‘Carthage. We go to Carthage. All of us, every Hatti who can walk or ride or swim. We fight a monumental war, and we drive those pagan camel-traders out of their own city, and we establish a new kingdom in the name of Jesus Sharruma. And then we take Egypt at our leisure.’

  Arnuwanda said, ‘And the empire?’

  ‘The whole of the empire,’ Hastayar said coldly, ‘will serve as a buffer between the new capital and whatever savagery comes out of the freezing north, while we make our escape.’

  There was a stunned silence.

  ‘It’s insane,’ blurted Tiwatapara.

  ‘It’s magnificent!’ cried Angulli, and he half-stood and raised his cup. ‘More wine, boy. I say, more wine! For tomorrow we will be warming our feet in the smoking ruins of Carthage itself.’ And, overcome, he fell back, tipping over his chair. Guards rushed to his aid, and the gathering broke up in confusion.

  21

  While the chaos inside the pavilion was sorted out, Kassu waited outside, in snow that was gathering despite the efforts of frantically sweeping slaves.

  At last Himuili came striding out, blowing on his hands. ‘Shut up,’ he said, before Kassu could say a word. ‘Listen to me, soldier. You asked for my advice. Far be it for me to lecture you on the state of your marriage. My two previous wives will assure you I’m no expert on that. I’ll tell you this, though. Our laws on marriage here in Hattusa, and our customs too, are pretty civilised, at least compared to some shitholes I’ve fought in. The Germans, for instance — well, never mind. Civilised — you know what that means, man? Liberal. Practical. Fair to all parties.

  ‘Having said that, and I consulted a lawyer friend, I can tell you this. You do have a right to prosecute your wife and her lover for their adultery. If you can gather the evidence, and since they both seem to be admitting it that won’t be a problem, you’ll secure a conviction. And then you’ll be able to request the sentence.’ He said this last heavily, emphasising every word. ‘For that is the way we Hatti do things. And you know what the maximum is, don’t you? Tell me, man.’

  ‘Death. For either of them-’

  ‘Shut up. No. Not for either. For both. Both or neither, and that’s the law. If you want to punish your wife for spreading her legs for this Jesus-chaser — well, that’s up to you, but he goes with her. If you want to take revenge on him — fine, that’s your choice. But you can’t keep her, you lose her too. Understood? Good. Shut up.

  ‘Now here’s the next thing.’ He moved subtly closer to Kassu; he smelled of leather, woodsmoke, the expensive wine he’d been drinking with the queen. ‘Here’s why I’m bothering to speak to the likes of you on such a day as this. No matter what you may think of Palla, and I tend to agree with you that he’s a horny little bastard who needs his arse kicking, I dragged your sorry weight along with us today because I wanted you to see what he can do. Do you understand?

  ‘First of all there was the Rus. I can tell you this, it’s Palla who’s been the leader among the priests in our dealings with them. He’s worth ten of that flabby drunken fool Angulli. And then this business of the great walk. As soon as I floated the idea, he was immediately able to come up with the analogy with Jesus. He’s a sharp man, for all his mild looks — a man who knows how to use his religion for the good. I think he could be priceless in the months, the years to come. But you have his life in your hands, and he knows it.

  ‘I understand how you feel. Well, I don’t, it’s never happened to me. You want him dead. And you know what — I want him dead, in a way. Cheating on a serving soldier is despicable. But look, Kassu, you’ve done your duty in the past. I’ve seen it with my own eyes. Not just in the lines, but taking on your farm too. If we had a thousand like you maybe we wouldn’t have to move at all. Now I’m asking you to think about your duty again, before you decide what to do about the priest.’ He stepped back. ‘All right? Good man.’ He clapped Kassu on the shoulder, and turned to walk back to the pavilion.

  Kassu had to ask one question. ‘Sir — will the walk happen? Will we leave Hattusa? Has it been decided?’

  Himuili looked back at him. ‘Ah. If we don’t have to walk you’ll be free to get the priest topped. Is that what you’re thinking? We resolved to wait until the spring. If it looks like a good season, we’ll stay and make the best of it. If it’s bad. .’ He grinned. ‘I suppose Palla will be praying to Jesus for the snow. Now get on with it.’

  ‘Thank you, sir-’

  ‘Shut up.’

  TWO

  22

  The Second Year of the Longwinter: Spring Equinox

  All across the northern lands people watched for the end of a terrible winter. The scholars examined their almanacs, the farmers eked out the last of their stores, the hunters prepared for the migration of the animals they preyed on, and the warriors sharpened their blades in advance of the new campaign season.

  But this year was to be like none that had gone before, not for ten thousand years. This year the growing masses of ice on land and sea, cloaked with cold air, would significantly divert the currents of air and moisture that flowed over them. This year the spring winds would not come from the balmy south-west, but from the chill north. There was a spring equinox. The planet’s orbital geometry mandated it. But there was no spring.

  As the cold endured, all across the northern hemisphere, people began to look to the warm, to the south. Only to find, usually, that there was already somebody there.

  23

  The river rose, and rose. Walks In Mist, standing by the warehouse, drenched by the rain that had lashed down for days, watched in astonishment as the cargo ship lifted on the rising water until it stood high over its jetty.

  This was the busiest inland port on the greatest river in the continent of the Sky Wolf. She had goods on that boat, cotton, a load of copper brought up from the south. She was supposed to be signing for them. The unloading hadn’t even begun. And still the ship rose up, as the river swelled with run-off. People stood around laughing at the sight. Even on the ship itself the crew were laughing, standing by the rail, watching the world descend beneath them. One man mockingly clambered on the rail, arms spread wide in the rain. Every one of them was soaked to the skin, dark hair plastered flat, clothing heavy with the wet; she couldn’t hear their voices over the hiss of the rain in the standing water.

  Walks In Mist had never seen such a sight. She had an odd, sharp memory, of sitting in a bar in the Northland Wall with her friends, with Xipuhl and Sabela, both of them far away now. A midsummer evening when the wind had turned chill, and people had laughed at that too.

  Now, with a great creak of strained wood, the ship tipped. The laughter grew uncertain.

  The man who had been clowning on the rail fell. Tumbled in the air, arms waving as if he was trying to swim. Hit the jetty with a sound like a sack of meat dropped onto growstone. Didn’t move.

  For a heartbeat people
stood there, shocked to silence. Then some of the bystanders ran forward.

  And behind them the ship tilted further, rolling out of its basin towards the dock. The strain on the hull was increasing: wood groaned, and ropes parted with a crack. The people who had gone to help the fallen man moved back, uncertain. A main mast snapped like a toothpick.

  Walks In Mist saw what was to come, with terrible clarity.

  She ran from the river, through the rain. She jumped back on her cart and ordered the driver to take her home, fast. The llamas trotted away, bleating in complaint at the rain that lashed into their eyes.

  Behind her, wood cracked noisily, and there was a groan like a falling giant, and screams. Walks In Mist did not look back.

  Her family home was just outside the great wall that contained the heart of the River City, a ceremonial district studded with holy mounds. The house was small and neat with a steep, thatched roof, and plastered walls painted red and white. Walks In Mist had always liked its modesty; it was far more expensive, far more well built than its deceptively simple design would suggest. But this spring the small fenced garden was coated with the dust that had blown in during the long summers of drought. The solitary chestnut tree was withered. The plasterwork was faded by the relentless sun of the drought years, and stained by windblown dust.

  And now, the rain had come. Walks In Mist had lived in this place all her life. She knew the weather. Every summer it rained; every summer the rivers rose — every normal summer anyhow. But the summers had been dry for years. Now, at last, the rain came, but this was spring, not summer, and never had she known such rain.

  The River City was close to the confluence of several great rivers, including the mighty Trunk that ran all the way to the ocean in the south. The city’s wealth came from the rivers and the trade goods they brought through this place, copper and mother of pearl from the south, buffalo and elk hide from the north, more exotic goods from over the oceans. But anybody who had grown up here knew that the rivers were also a danger, when the rain came heavily. And the rain had never been as heavy as this.

  She approached the house at last. Through a curtain of rain she could see the Mountain of the Gods looming beyond — not a mountain at all, of course, but man-made, the greatest of more than a hundred mounds in the ceremonial district, an artificial mountain built on a flood plain to celebrate the divine generosity that had produced such a rich country as this. The view of the Mountain of the Gods inside its walled compound was one of the house’s best features. But today water was pouring down the mound’s stepped slopes, and as she watched a chunk of one face broke away, disintegrating. Flood-plain clay was not an ideal material for building mounds, she had once learned from a visiting Northlander engineer; now he was proven right.

  The cart pulled up by the house. She told the driver to wait, and ran to the door. Her children were both inside, she found to her relief, Bear Claw and Yellow Moon, fifteen and ten. They were playing chess on the cotton carpet, with the expensive set she had brought back from Northland last year. The rain hammered on the thatch roof.

  ‘Where’s your father?’

  Yellow Moon glanced up, her pretty face pulled into its usual pout. They had named the child for the colour of the moon in the dry, dust-storm spring in which she had been born. ‘Out,’ the girl said. ‘Mother, you’re dripping on the carpet.’

  ‘Where did he go? Did he say?’

  ‘He might have gone to the fields.’ The family owned stretches of the maize fields around the central city.

  She heard a noise now, beyond the hiss of the rain. A dull roar, like the breaking of a wave on an ocean shore. It was a sound she had grown used to in Northland, but in River City, in the heart of the continent the Northlanders called the Land of the Sky Wolf, she could not be further from the ocean.

  ‘Up,’ she snapped. ‘On your feet.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘We’re leaving, now.’

  ‘After the game,’ said Yellow Moon.

  ‘Now!’ Walks In Mist grabbed her hand and hauled her to her feet. ‘For once will you do as you’re told?’

  The girl started to cry.

  Bear Claw got to his feet, eyes wide. He was tall for his age, with a fine black stripe painted down the centre of his face. ‘You’re frightening her.’

  ‘Good. Come on.’

  Bear Claw followed slowly. ‘What about our stuff? I’ll get our cloaks-’

  ‘No!’ And she took his hand too, and dragged them both out through the door.

  Outside the rain still fell hard and vertical, and that roaring noise was louder, coming from the north. People were emerging from their houses to see, curious, some in hooded cloaks, most with bare heads, all peering to the north, shouting questions to each other.

  Walks In Mist thanked the gods of sky and earth that the cart was still there, that the miserable-looking driver hadn’t driven away, or run off. She shoved her children aboard, and clambered up herself. ‘Go,’ she snapped at the driver.

  ‘Where to?’

  ‘That way!’ She pointed. ‘South! Just drive south, as fast as you can.’

  The cart rolled off, the wheels sticking in the muddy ground. They made faster progress once they were on the hardtop main track. They hurried south, heading for the open fields away from the ceremonial district, clattering past more neat houses, mounds bearing shrines and gifts for the deities. People were leaving now, grabbing bundles of possessions, dragging children, pulling cloaks over their shoulders, loading carts. Soon, Walks In Mist feared, all fifteen thousand people in the town, said to be the largest city in the Continent, would be fleeing, or trying to. Probably most would leave it too late. She wished she knew where her husband was.

  And now Bear Claw pointed back, the rain running down his face. ‘Look!’

  Water was breaking over the city’s northern wall. It spilled across the flat countryside, pink and muddy, washing around the holy mounds. Walks In Mist saw people fleeing, crying out, falling before its advance. Swarming like ants, before the water that rushed over them.

  Walks In Mist clung to her daughter, who had been crying since being taken away from her chess game. ‘Go,’ she yelled at the driver. ‘Go, go!’

  24

  It was still snowing on the morning of Rina’s appointment with the Carthaginian noble Barmocar, in his apartment in Old Etxelur. She walked alone to the old town, with a hood over her head. She’d tried to keep this assignation secret. She was, after all, intending to betray her fellow Annids, cousin Ywa, and most of her family.

  As she walked the snow fell steadily, as it had for days, not like the Autumn Blizzard and the storms that had followed, but a slow, unending, dispiriting fall that gathered relentlessly on the ground. Her cloak wrapped close, she passed workers laboriously clearing away yet another night’s fall from the paths. You could see where the new snow was piled up on top of the old, some of which, dirty and layered with muck, hadn’t melted since the early autumn.

  When she reached Old Etxelur she looked back at the Wall, where people were working steadily to repair the damage the winter had done. The Hall of Annids was a huge wreck on its rows of supporting pillars, open to the air. All across the Wall, vast sections had been abandoned as people retreated to core areas and revived older, more robust systems, digging out chimneys, repairing ancient rainfall-trap water supply systems. This was spring! They had all waited for the equinox, and marked the end of winter with lavish celebrations — well, as lavish as possible. And all it had brought was yet more snow, yet more cold, as if the world itself had lost its way.

  She turned, pulled her cloak tighter, and walked on.

  In the anteroom to his lavish rented apartment in Old Etxelur, Barmocar received her graciously enough. His wife Anterastilis was at his side, the two of them resplendent in purple cloaks. The household was in turmoil, however, as the merchant prince’s servants packed everything up in preparation for the long trip back to Carthage, postponed for half a year since Barm
ocar had been caught by the early snow, like so many others.

  He was clearly surprised when she asked him to dismiss his servants, and more surprised when she made her blunt request.

  He actually laughed. ‘You’re serious. You want me to take you to Carthage. You, and who else?’

  ‘Just my children — the twins, Nelo and Alxa, you know them.’ This of course meant the abandonment of the rest of her extended family. Ywa herself was a distant cousin. But to take more would have been like pulling a thread; the whole tapestry would unravel. No, just herself and her children, for now. Not even Thaxa, her husband, would come, not this time; he would follow later, they had agreed. And if things changed — well, the future would have to take care of itself.

  ‘And when we get to Carthage, we will take you into our home.’ Anterastilis was a heavy, expensively coiffed woman. Her Northlander was stilted, but her tone was sharp as an icicle. ‘Is that what you’re saying?’

  Rina squirmed; the woman was clearly enjoying this, and was going to make her suffer. ‘Perhaps initially. Give us somewhere we can live, at least at first. A start in your society. Work for my children, a place for me.’

  Anterastilis actually laughed at her now. ‘“A place.” You could join the Tribunal of One Hundred and Four, perhaps!’

  ‘I can pay my way-’

  ‘Perhaps you can. Perhaps not.’ Barmocar turned to his wife. ‘My dear, you made a note of what this lady of Northland said to me at the Giving last year. Would you mind reading it back? You know the part I mean.’

  Anterastilis took a piece of paper from a desk and unrolled it carefully. ‘“Good Prince Barmocar, I am confused. This tale of woe you recite — are you here to beg for bounty? Begging like these others, the Franks and Germans and the rest, these ‘poor rudimentary farmers’, as I have heard you describe them? And a bounty from us, whom I have heard you describe as ‘a thin godless smear of ignorance and incompetence on an undeveloped landscape’?’”