Iron Winter n-3
Page 27
‘So here you are protecting Carthage. A city that wouldn’t give you a gutter to lie in.’
‘This is where I am, Mother. Perhaps that is part of the mothers’ plan.’
‘And is it part of their plan that you should sacrifice your own life so eagerly?’
‘I knew the risk. We hope to bring doctors here. Scholars. From Carthage, Egypt, even Hatti. Have them study the disease. Find what spreads it. Find how to cure it. Why not? For this thing is surely the common enemy of all mankind, whatever our political differences, or religious. .’ Again her voice tailed off.
A heavy dread pooled deep in Rina’s stomach. ‘Alxa — let me help you.’
‘Mother, stay back.’
‘I will not-’
‘It’s too late!’ Alxa pulled open her tunic, slipped it off her right shoulder, and raised her arm. There was some kind of swelling in the armpit, purple-black.
‘What is that?’
She whispered, ‘The second manifestation.’ She lowered her arm. ‘I’m sorry, Mother.’
‘Oh, my child-’ And though Alxa stumbled back again, Rina crossed the space between them in a few strides and took her daughter in her arms. ‘If only we could have stayed at home — if only you had had a chance to grow into this woman I see before me in Northland — what might you have done, what an Annid you might have become! Oh, child, I’m the one who’s sorry, so sorry. .’
46
The Second Year of the Longwinter: Midwinter Solstice
This hour it was Thaxa’s turn to make the piss run.
He rose from the corner of the huge old cistern, where he’d been reading a scroll by the dim light that came down the air shaft at midday. It was the only light in the room save for the increasingly rare intervals when they lit the lamps. He stood and pulled on his outer clothes, his heavy hooded coat and his waterproof leather trousers and his boots.
Then, carefully avoiding the prone bodies on the floor, he made for the door leading to the passages out to his house at the face of the Wall. It was the time of day when the small children were laid down together to nap. ‘Time to sleep now,’ the mothers were whispering all across the chamber. ‘Time to sleep.’ Some of the adults slept too, if they could, in the muggy air. Sleep was the best way, the only way really, to use up the empty, pointless hours in this growstone box. There was the usual stink of fish, their staple food, on their breath and in their farts, though you would think he would have got used to that by now. In the dimness he recognised Crimm the fisherman, a few other faces.
The people here were not exactly friends; the jealousy over food and floor space was too strong for that. But they were his guests, that was how he thought of them. He had been astonished to learn from Crimm and Ayto that this huge abandoned cistern buried deep within the Wall behind his own house was, in theory, his property. He hoped that if they survived this dreadful winter they would remember his contribution, the last gesture of hospitality from a hospitable man.
At the door he picked up the latest slop buckets. Aranx, the young fisherman who had lost an arm to the frost, was on guard this hour. He offered Thaxa a weapon, a stabbing spear with a rope sling, but Thaxa had never used a weapon in his life and he saw no point in pretending he could now. Aranx shrugged, opened the door, let him pass through, and closed it after him.
After the human fug of the cistern, the corridors and empty rooms he passed through were dark and bleakly cold. In the circle of light cast by his candle, Thaxa walked softly. Crimm and Ayto had endlessly stressed to those who they had brought into this refuge that as the Wall burned itself up this winter their best hope was to stay concealed — not to be discovered at all, because that way they wouldn’t have to fight again, for their food, their lives, as they had had to already.
Ayto himself was waiting for him at the exit from the growstone: another guard on duty, heavily armed with sword and spear and stabbing knife. ‘Go carefully,’ he whispered to Thaxa. ‘And look out for Xree.’
‘Xree? What about her?’
‘She didn’t come back from a piss tour yesterday.’
‘I didn’t notice.’ It was shameful but it was true.
‘Well, there’s nothing we can do for her. But if she’s been made to talk about where we are-’
Lurid rumours were always running through the little group about what might be going on in the world outside the sanctuary of their fortress. Ayto and some of the others had been out there, dealing with whatever was going on in the rest of the Wall. Sometimes Ayto returned splashed with blood, and he would not say what he had seen, what he had done. There was nothing to do, Ayto always said, but to sit here and try to survive, while what he called ‘the big sorting-out’ ran to its conclusion elsewhere. But if Xree, a gentle scholar and good Annid, had fallen into the wrong hands. .
‘Perhaps she got lost.’
Ayto raised his eyebrows. ‘Yes. Maybe she got lost. Just take care, all right?’ He opened the door to Thaxa’s old house, beyond the Wall.
Thaxa hurried through with his buckets.
Suddenly he was in his old courtyard, in dirty, knee-deep snow. The sky above was a slab of blue, and he breathed deep of the fresh air, but the cold felt like a blade in his lungs. The winter had done its damage to his home, of course. The snow had smashed in the roof of the big hall, the very walls were cracked by the frost, the ice had got in through broken windows and coated every surface in the parlours and reception rooms, on the abandoned furniture. But still, this was home, and it was odd to be back out here, after all that had happened. It was not long, he realised, only a few months, since he had sat in these chambers with Ywa and others and discussed the darkness to come, as if it were all a game, a story.
He put these thoughts aside and hurried across the courtyard, where the snow never piled deeply even though no servant swept it any more: an odd effect of the shelter of the surrounding buildings. When he returned he would have to kick the lying snow around to mask his traces; he knew the routine by now, rigorously imposed by Crimm and Ayto.
He came to his linen shop. The light was dim, silvery, for the accumulated snow was piled high against the panes of the shop’s glass front, higher than he was tall, leaving only a strip of blue daylight visible at the very top. The shop was mostly untouched, though his guests in the warehouse had robbed some of his cloth swathes for clothing and bedding — and, he had discovered, some of it had been nibbled by desperate rats or mice. The shop had a privy, with a drain beneath that you could reach by lifting a tile. Here he dumped the contents of the buckets. The drain was surely blocked and frozen, but they hadn’t managed to fill it yet, and this was a better solution for disposing of their waste than any other they had found — at least it couldn’t be detected by any others still surviving in the Wall.
As he worked, he thought of Rina. Wondered what she and the twins were doing right now. If he knew Rina she would have landed on her feet, she always did; she was probably running Carthage by now. And he wondered what she would think if she could see her husband on his hands and knees, pouring the shit and piss of forty people down this old drain in the back of the shop.
The buckets emptied, he wiped them with a scrap of outrageously expensive Carthaginian cloth, and threw it aside into a gathering heap. He made for the front door and pulled it open slightly — he always flinched when he did this, expecting to be buried by the infall — but the fallen snow had frozen to a hard wall that blocked the doorway almost from top to bottom, and he was in no danger. A few flakes drifted down from the looser, fresher stuff at the top, though, and this was what he had come for. He reached up with his mittened hand and scooped handfuls of loose snow into the buckets. This was the only way to get fresh water; the piped supply to the old cistern had, miraculously, worked for a while, but the water had soon turned foul, then failed altogether.
‘Thaxa!’
The whispered voice came from above his head. He dropped the buckets and stumbled back, heart pounding. ‘What? Who?’
‘Xree? What are you — we thought you were lost! What happened to you? Where did you go?’
She lay flat on the snow, grinning, pleased with herself. ‘There’s more than one way out, you know. I wanted to check on the Archive.’
‘The what?’
‘In its new store, deep in the Wall. To see if it’s safe. Dry. No mice or ice or other problems.’
‘That’s insane.’
She frowned, evidently surprised by his tone. ‘Not at all. It’s a duty. I found that apart from a little ice on the walls-’
‘Why didn’t you come back?’
‘Well, I did get lost then. Found myself wandering around empty corridors.’ Now she looked as if she had been badly frightened, despite the front she was putting up. ‘Nobody to ask for help, of course.’
‘By the mothers, Xree, if you’d been found-’
‘So I thought, I know, I’ll go to the Wall front and find Thaxa’s shop, and get in that way. How clever! Wasn’t I?’
‘But were you followed? Oh, never mind, never mind — get in! Come on, climb through the snow, I’ll catch you.’
‘Yes. All right.’ She held out her arms.
But she was snatched back with a muffled cry, pulled out of his sight. He heard voices, a struggle, torn clothing.
‘Xree! Xree!’
He jumped up at the ice blocking the doorway. Of course he couldn’t climb its slick surface. He fetched a short ladder, used for accessing high shelves in the shop, propped it against the ice, climbed, and thrust his head through the gap at the top of the doorway and into clean, fresh air.
Dark shapes, looming over him. Hands grabbed him immediately, his shoulders, arms, even, agonisingly, his hair, and he was dragged out through the gap. He should have gone to get Ayto, he thought now, too late.
He was flipped on his back, in the cold snow. There were forms all around him — legs, hands reaching for him, a stink of blood and piss. They didn’t even seem human. It had happened in a heartbeat, from the security of the shop, to this.
He saw Xree; they had her on her back and were pulling at her clothes, her coat. He tried to roll that way. He bowled into them, two, three, four, and they staggered, stumbling in the snow. ‘Xree! Get away!’
The first kick was to the mouth, knocking him onto his back again. He felt broken teeth, agonising. Yet he raised his arms, tried to fight. Make them come to him, and give Xree the best chance she had to get away, to squirm into the shop, to get to Ayto. But he was weak, ineffectual, he always had been, and there was no force in his punches. His reward was more kicks, more blows.
Then they surrounded him. They got him pinned down, on his back, five of them, one on each limb, one sitting on his chest. He bucked and squirmed in the soft snow, but more punches and kicks rained in; he felt something crack in his chest, more horrific pain in his mouth that might be a dislocated jaw. And the cold dug into him, aiding his enemies. What little energy he had drained away, and he started to grow limp, blood filming over his eyes.
They pulled at his clothes, stripping him of his good coat, his waterproof leather trousers, his boots. Even his mittens went. These were Northlander citizens, he thought, as he was. Maybe he knew them. They might have been customers. Friends. Even relatives. And what would come next, when they had divided up his clothes? The taking of human flesh for the lack of alternatives is actually a logical outcome of our situation. He’d said that himself, in some polite forum in the Wall, or his shop. Drinking nettle tea. Not me. Not me.
When they had stripped him to his grimy underwear they pulled away. The cold of the snow against his bare skin was intense. He rolled, tried to stand in the deep snow, fell forward. Hands grasped after him, but they were still squabbling over his clothes, and he got away. The snow was deep, and as he tried to run his legs sank into it. He lunged forward and fell into a deep drift, the snow bright around him. Still he thought he heard their voices. He burrowed, bare hands working at the snow — by the mothers it was cold — he dug his way into the snow as a mole would dig into the earth. On and on, the snow compacting around him, heavy and dark, until his strength was all gone.
He gave up and lay quietly, breathing raggedly, pain flaring, encased in the snow. He could see nothing. Hear nothing. He lay still. Even their voices were gone now. The snow, pressed up against his bare, wet skin and packed all around him, seemed to suck away his heat. It occurred to him he must be only a few paces from the front door of his own shop.
The shivering began. He pulled his limbs to him, arms against chest, legs up, a child in this womb of ice, his whole body shuddering. He hadn’t been able to see if Xree had got away. Even if she had got into the shop the others might have followed her. But Ayto would have stopped them. Ayto was strong, resourceful. She would be safe with him. .
Perhaps he fainted, or slept.
The shivering had stopped. The pain in his chest and mouth was still there, but distant, somehow separate from himself. And his hands — he couldn’t feel his fingers, his toes. He tried to move them; there was no response.
The pain ebbed further. It wasn’t uncomfortable. He wished he was able to tell Doctor Ontin that; it would console his patients. It wasn’t painful if you just gave in to the cold. Ah, but Ontin had fled before the winter locked in, fled south to Carthage, where Rina had gone. .
There was ice in his mouth. Actually inside it. And on his eyes, he thought, he could no longer close them.
He listened to the deep, slowing beat of his heart, beat, beat. He thought he heard Rina, calling to him, and his children, Nelo and Alxa. And they became the three little mothers in their shrine deep in his house, his proud house with the linen shop that fronted right on to the Wall Way. Time to sleep now, whispered the little mothers. Time to sleep.
47
Snug in the old cistern, Crimm tried not to doze off during the day. But there was nothing else to do for long hours. It was so comfortable to lie back, he could hear the soft snores of the others around him. .
He forced himself to sit up. Something was wrong. What?
It was dark. Too dark for the middle of the day. The cistern was lit only by the glow of the fire in the hearth. There should be light coming down the air vent. There was not. His chest dragged as he tried to breathe. The air felt stuffy, thick, even more redolent of fishy farts than usual.
He got to his feet. He felt even worse when he stood up. He made his way across the room towards the vent, treading on people in the dark, and they squirmed and moaned and growled insults at him. Nobody woke fully. It wasn’t usual for everybody to be asleep. There was generally some brat or other squalling. Something wrong. He got to the air vent and peered up. Nothing but darkness, but, directly underneath it, water puddled. The vent was blocked, by snow or ice probably. It could have happened naturally. Maybe the snow had covered over the whole Wall by now.
Or somebody could have bunged up the vent with snowy handfuls on purpose. Ever since they’d lost Xree and Thaxa a few days ago — they’d seen traces of the struggle in the snow — they’d been aware of being hunted. This would be a good way to flush them out, he thought, to stop off the air they breathed. He wished he’d thought of it.
Where was Ayto? Ayto, a difficult man to work with, but a clear thinker if you gave him the chance, he was the one who had come up with the idea of using this cistern, this fortress for the winter. . Ayto went missing a lot, though. Off on self-imposed missions, into the darkness of the Wall. Sometimes he went alone, sometimes with others. Often he came back bloodied. Once he came back wearing a man’s face, like a bloody cap on his head. Crimm had made him hide it before he scared the children and women. But Crimm never asked him what he was doing out there. He was doing what needed to be done, he always had, and Crimm trusted him that far.
The world greyed. He held onto the door, stood straight, shook his head. H
e could figure it out with Ayto. But Ayto had gone. Now he remembered. This time he’d picked one of the blocked doors at the back of the warehouse, smashed it in, discovered a corridor, and gone looking to see where it led.
Seeking another way out. Now Crimm needed a way out too. He had no better idea but to follow Ayto.
He lit a candle at the fire, and made for the back of the warehouse.
The door Ayto had opened was ajar. Crimm pushed it wide. Beyond was a dark corridor, bitterly cold, the growstone slick with ice. But already the air was a bit fresher.
He needed a coat. To get his coat meant crossing the room again, and he wasn’t sure he’d make it without passing out. There was a heap of blankets by the door, good alpaca wool shipped very expensively across the Western Ocean to Thaxa’s shop. He grabbed one, draped it over his shoulders, and walked down the corridor. Thinking more clearly, he tried to establish a sense of direction. He was heading deeper into the Wall, away from the land-facing side, towards the ocean face. He didn’t know how thick the Wall was here.
He came to the end of the corridor, and a choice of doors, to left, right, straight on. Which way would Ayto go? There was a mark on the door straight ahead, a few concentric squiggles. Ayto’s signature. This way then.
Another corridor, doors branching off, and then a fork, a narrower tunnel off to the right, a broader way straight on. Another scribble: straight on.
The latest corridor opened out into a larger chamber. It was warm, lit by a single oil lamp — and there was a stink of corruption that made Crimm recoil. Blankets and bodies on the floor, a kind of liquid mess.