Iron Winter n-3

by Stephen Baxter

  ‘I recall what was said,’ Rina said precisely.

  ‘Then you recall mocking me. In front of the Giving gathering — in front of the whole world.’ He did not sound angry, merely analytical.

  She didn’t bother to deny it.

  ‘And now you sit before me, begging me for shelter.’

  ‘I do not beg. I can pay you for your trouble. It will be worth your while.’

  ‘Are we to haggle, as if over a box of your disgusting salted fish? Tell me, then. Tell me what you have that I could possibly covet.’

  ‘My family owns extensive lands in Northland. Also properties in New Etxelur, and in the Wall. Many of these are in my own name. I could transfer-’

  Again he laughed, cutting her off. ‘Madam, I am not the fool you take me for. You are abandoning Northland yourself! What value do you imagine your property has?’

  ‘Other forms of wealth, then. Gold. Silver.’ In fact she hadn’t expected him to take property, and had already been converting some of her holdings into portable wealth — at ruinous prices, for she wasn’t the only one with the same idea.

  Now he nodded. ‘Well, that’s a start. You can discuss precise quantities with my clerk later.’ He leaned forward. ‘But the world is full of gold and silver, madam. What else can you offer me? Something special. Something unique.’ And, even though his wife sat right beside him, he allowed his gaze to wander over her body.

  He was treating her like a whore. She was an Annid of Northland, and this Carthaginian animal was treating her like a whore. She would not allow her humiliation to show. She would not.

  ‘Knowledge, then,’ she said now.

  ‘Knowledge?’

  ‘It is our knowledge above all that has enabled Northland to prosper across the centuries, since the days of Pythagoras, and for millennia even before that. I could put this at your disposal — endow a library perhaps, to the greater glory of Carthage. A library of world renown in your own distinguished name. .’

  ‘A bank of dusty old scrolls? I don’t think so. I’ll tell you what I want. I’ll tell you what you can bring to me, what will make it worth my while hauling your skinny backside to Carthage. You and your equally worthless children.’

  She had never before been spoken to this way. ‘Tell me.’

  ‘The bones of the Virgin.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The Mother of the Hatti god-man. What’s His name? Jesus, that’s it.’

  She frowned. ‘Why would you want that? Carthage does not follow Jesus.’

  ‘But our enemies do. The Hatti. And if I have what they want, that gives me power over them. Do you see? Just as now I have power over you.’

  She shook her head. ‘The reliquary of the Virgin — I have no access. And the bones aren’t mine to give.’

  ‘Find a way. Bring me the relics. Or, and you know it as well as I do, by this time next year your own bones will be lying in that Wall. Probably having been gnawed by your own starving children.’

  Anterastilis laughed prettily, as if he had made a polite witticism.

  Rina took a breath, and looked from one to the other. ‘We have an arrangement, then.’

  ‘Not quite. One more thing.’ Again he leaned closer, and she could smell fish sauce on his breath. ‘You aren’t the only craven Northlander trying to escape. You’re not the only one selling off the treasures of millennia, in a desperate attempt to save her children from the ice.’

  She had no idea if that was true. But if she was keeping such a secret, why not others?

  ‘This is the end of Northland’s long and manipulative history — the end of your smugness and arrogance. And it ends like this. You have come here to beg, for all you deny it. I want to hear you say it.’

  She hesitated for one heartbeat, composing herself, ensuring her voice would be strong. ‘Then I beg. I beg you to save me and my children, Barmocar.’

  He laughed, slapped his thigh, and sat back. ‘Very good. If you have the relics before we leave, you come with us. If not, you stay. You can show yourself out.’ He turned away from her, and began to speak to his wife in his own thick tongue.

  She stood and left the apartment, unescorted. She thought of Pyxeas. She had taken his advice in the end, she was fleeing to the south, just as he had recommended. But now she wished with all her heart she had taken her children with her when she had escorted him last year to Hantilios — and wished she had never been foolish enough to come back.

  25

  It had seemed a long winter, so far from home. But at last the morning came when Pyxeas’ party was to leave Akka, and resume the journey east to Cathay.

  Akka was a spacious, handsome town of wide straight streets and stout sandstone buildings, on the easternmost shore of the Middle Sea. Uzzia had brought them here across the ocean from Hantilios when the winter relented, and she had spent the months since scouring the city’s tiny, crowded harbour for berths on a ship going east. The ocean had its own hazards, Uzzia told them, but a journey by sea was a much more feasible way for Pyxeas to travel to far Cathay, rather than to jolt his bones overland. But there were no berths to be had; the whole world was going through a tremendous convulsion, and there were too many precious cargoes to be shipped from one place to another to make room for an old man. So overland it would be, they had reluctantly decided in the end.

  Even Pyxeas had agreed that the journey could not be attempted before the winter was done, but he had spent the whole season fretting with impatience, even while he buried himself in his studies. Avatak suspected he had seen nothing of this place — this beautiful town with the rich Arab-Muslim culture of its latest owners laid over a deep history, all of it utterly unlike anything Avatak had encountered before. Avatak, though, had immersed himself. Now, this early morning, Avatak stood beside the clean stone wall of one of the many mosques that dominated the city. The sun was still low, barely risen over the eastern horizon, but already he could feel its heat on his face and bare arms, a promise of noon.

  And here was Uzzia, walking up to him, wearing her quilted coat, a heavy pack on her back, her whip in her hand. There was a strength, a stillness about her, Avatak had thought since he’d got to know her, stillness and solidity. Which was reassuring, since he was going to have to rely on her to get him and Pyxeas safely through the unknowable days to come.

  She fell in beside him as they walked up the street towards the mustering point, where Pyxeas and their guide Jamil would be waiting for them. They passed a few folk in the street, a bent old woman who sprinkled water to lay the dust, a boy sweeping dirt from a gutter, a couple of young men who might have been Carthaginians staggering home from a long evening. Mostly, the city still slept.

  ‘You’re going to be sorry to leave, aren’t you?’ In the course of the winter her Northlander had grown more fluent, though Avatak could tell she was picking up Pyxeas’ own slightly clipped Etxelur intonation.

  ‘It’s not my place to be sorry. It’s my place to look after the scholar. To go where he needs to go, to keep him safe.’

  ‘Yes.’ Uzzia laughed. ‘As Rina made plain before she left us at Hantilios. My ears are still ringing, and I was in the next room. That’s a formidable woman, and I would not wish to cross her. But still — you have feelings, you’re a human being, not a pack mule or a camel.’

  ‘What’s a camel?’

  ‘You’ll find out.’

  They were passing the wall of a grand private residence, with an open doorway decorated with an intricately carved arch. Looking within, Avatak saw a courtyard centred on a pond above which a fountain bubbled. More archways supported by delicate columns led invitingly to shady rooms.

  ‘Beautiful,’ Uzzia said.

  ‘My home is a place of hard ice and the dark. It can be beautiful.’ He thought of the colours in the big sky at this time of year, the shades of the ice on the ocean, every tint of blue you could imagine. ‘But this, this is beauty of light and water.’

  ‘The Arabs are people of the desert. The
y cherish water. They have turned that sensibility into high art.’

  ‘Cathay will have its own wonders. So Pyxeas says. But-’

  ‘But you’re going to miss this,’ she said gently. ‘Who wouldn’t? And her. You’re going to miss her too.’

  He felt the heat in his face. ‘You saw.’

  She laughed. ‘You’re a man from the northern wastes, Avatak. In a city like this, you stand out. Yes, I saw. So did most of Akka, I think. What’s her name?’

  ‘It’s got nothing to do with you,’ he snapped.

  ‘I don’t mean to pry. She’s very beautiful.’

  ‘Nothing can come of it.’

  ‘Is she betrothed to another? She looks as if she belongs to a rich family.’

  ‘No. It is me. I am betrothed. There is a woman, at home. Her name is Uuna.’

  ‘Ah.’ She thought that over. ‘I never knew that.’

  ‘No, and you never imagined it, and nor did Pyxeas when he insisted I come away with him to study, for you both think me a boy.’

  ‘I don’t think that. In some cultures a man may take many wives. Or one may take lovers.’

  ‘Not in my village.’

  ‘Well, that’s that. You mustn’t blame old Pyxeas. It’s just that in you he’s only looking for one thing, a certain kind of intelligence, or an openness to new ideas, new experiences — no, not even that. My Northlander is still poor; I don’t have the words to express it. A capacity for wonder, perhaps. That’s what he sees in you. Although he was unable to see the young betrothed man, with a life and responsibilities of his own. Well — what’s done is done, and here we are leaving it all behind, for better or worse.’ She took his hand as they walked; her skin was warm, leathery, a worker’s hand. ‘You may see her again, if we come this way when we return.’

  ‘Is that likely?’

  She sighed. ‘The future is even more unknowable than usual these days. I do know how you feel.’

  ‘How can you?’

  ‘I am in the same position.’

  He thought that over. ‘You have a lover in Akka?’

  ‘And others elsewhere. My life consists of long stays in places separated by tremendous journeys, and I seem to give away my heart at each stop. Each of my loves knows about the rest.’

  ‘And in Akka — who is he?’

  ‘She,’ Uzzia said with a smile. ‘In my case, it’s a she. But that’s our secret. Ah, we arrive, and there is Pyxeas looking irritable, and Jamil looking greedy, and his horses looking like lazy overpriced nags. Thus it always was. Jamil!’ She strode forward boldly towards the men. ‘Years of famine and you’re still as plump as ever. .’

  Avatak watched her, bewildered, comforted.

  Jamil wasn’t all that plump, Avatak thought, although he had the slack face of a man who had once been plumper. He was perhaps forty, about Uzzia’s age, and he wore a loose white jacket, trousers whose legs billowed as he walked, and a small round hat. He had bright merry eyes, as if he was used to laughing at the world.

  He was arguing with Pyxeas about the luggage. As Uzzia approached he held his hands out, comically imploring. ‘You explain it to the wise gentleman, please, fair Hatti princess. How these great boxes and bundles will break my beasts’ poor backs!’ He spoke passable Northlander.

  Pyxeas stood by a cart laden with his goods, with a protective hand on the heaviest trunk. ‘And you can tell this fellow that I won’t leave a shred behind, not a page, not a bottle of ink. I spent months in Etxelur rendering this down, the wisdom of centuries crammed into a box. If I’m forced to leave any of it behind then you may as well leave me too, leave me to desiccate in the desert like a dead mouse!’

  Uzzia sighed. ‘Gentlemen, gentlemen. Can’t we come to some compromise?’ She spoke softly, in Greek to Pyxeas, and Arabic to Jamil. It did not take long for her to bring about peace. Avatak marvelled at her skill.

  Meanwhile Avatak cautiously approached the beasts. The Arab had four horses, two of which were being harnessed to his cart and two were loose, and a single mule, already laden with a towering load wrapped in bundles of cloth.

  His dispute settled, Jamil walked up, gaze lively, curious. ‘You’re the ice boy, yes? I heard about you.’

  ‘Yes. I’m from-’

  ‘If you’re not busy give me a hand with this trunk. It needs to go in the cart.’

  They soon formed up for the journey. Pyxeas was to ride on the cart, which was driven by Jamil. For now Uzzia would walk, leading the spare horses.

  ‘And me? What must I do?’

  Jamil grinned. ‘You, boy, can bring the mule.’ And he cracked a short whip and drove the cart away.

  The mule, though small in stature, was a slab of muscle, with a sour smell and a blank, contemptuous stare. Dwarfed by its load it simply looked back at Avatak when he tried to coax it forward, and was immovable as a rock when he tried to drag it. It was only when the cart and horses were almost out of sight that the animal deigned to follow, and even then at its own pace, stopping where it would, to piss or shit or nibble the sparse grass.

  In the days that followed Jamil and Uzzia took turns with the mule. Uzzia bribed it with bits of fruit, while Jamil noisily beat it with his crop. Avatak was the worst at getting anything out of the beast, and they laughed at his efforts. But he developed a grudging respect for the mule’s unshakeable sense of independence, even as it plodded along under its unreasonable load. Maybe in this company, he and the mule had a lot in common.

  And he buried his resentment of their laughter. After all, he came from a country where only dogs obeyed man, where every other beast of air, sea or land was utterly beyond human control, and was maybe the better for it. He dreamed of being able to handle a dog team on the ice, at some point in this expedition. Then they would see what the mastery of an animal, a unity of human will with beast strength, really meant.

  26

  From Akka they turned away from the coast and headed roughly east, crossing higher ground.

  At first the country was quite arid, and they followed dusty trails between water courses. They rarely saw other people, once they’d left the city and the crowded coastal strip. They did come across a few abandoned settlements, collapsed houses of mudbrick and straw, the boundaries of fields given up to the dust. The days were hot, the sun high. Uzzia gave Avatak a thick oil to rub into his skin to protect it from the sun’s heat.

  When they stopped they made camp in a kind of yurt carried folded up on the back of the mule. The yurt was cramped, uncomfortable. Some nights they preferred to sleep outdoors by the fire, all save Pyxeas. Jamil and Uzzia complained of the cold at night, and woke up in wonder staring at the heavy dew or even ground frost. They had never known such cold, they said, not here. Avatak, though, slept deeply and well, enjoying the kiss of ice on his cheek.

  After some days they descended to lower ground, and the nature of the country changed, becoming moister, grassier. This was a country that had evidently been spared the worst of the drought, and they followed trails and a few better-maintained roads through small communities of wary but more or less friendly farmer folk, who grew fruit trees and raised herds of sheep and cattle. At this time of year new lambs clustered around their mothers, cautious of the visitors. Avatak watched them curiously. There were no sheep at all in Northland, and the cattle here were fat, sullen beasts with snow-white hides, nothing like the tall, splendid aurochs, the wild cattle of Northland.

  Pyxeas spoke vaguely of great civilisations which had been nurtured in this clement country, watered by tremendous rivers flowing from the north-east. In an arid valley he pointed to the tumbled ruins of what must once have been a mighty stone city, and pale scratches in the dirt that might have been irrigation channels, now dry and dust-choked. The state of the roads showed that civilisation still prospered here, Pyxeas said, the roads were for tax collectors and armies, but nowadays the great centres were far from here. Avatak thought that these old eastern cultures could never have matched the grandeur and antiqui
ty of Northland.

  Every few nights Pyxeas had Avatak help him maintain his records. They had a journal where Avatak kept a basic record of the date, the nature of the country, the number of days travelled, and the distance, which Pyxeas estimated, remarkably, by counting the steps of the horses’ hooves. With sun sightings Pyxeas kept track of their direction of travel too.

  And whenever they took a rest day Pyxeas brought out his ‘world position oracle’. This was a gadget of bronze and steel the size and weight of a hefty brick, that he kept wrapped in soft leather when they travelled. The front and back were covered with dials, little windows that opened and closed, and images of the sun and moon made of gold and ivory. There were wheels to turn, levers to pull and switches to throw that would make the sun and moon dance against a brass sky. Avatak had seen this thing opened up. Inside was a bewildering mass of brass gears on spindles. Pyxeas expected Avatak to keep it cleaned and lubricated, though effecting any repairs would be far beyond either of them. To use this device Pyxeas took careful sightings of the elevation of the pole star at night, and if possible of the noon sun, made by tracking the shadow of a vertical stick. And wherever they travelled he had Avatak measure the hours of daylight, from sunrise to sunset, using an hourglass filled with fine sand; he wrote down the result every day alongside similar numbers from the oracle.

  Jamil and Uzzia were fascinated by the oracle. Avatak could see how they longed to turn the little ribbed wheels and make the little sun and moon rise and fall, to play with it just like every child who’d ever seen the thing.

  On the third rest day, Jamil broke. ‘All right, I give in. What is that gadget, sage? What are you doing with it? And how much do you want for it?’

  Pyxeas, irritated at being interrupted as ever, glanced up. ‘You could not afford the fees charged by the Wall mechanikoi.’