Bronze Summer

27

The First Year After the Fire Mountain: Spring

Bren and Vala landed on Kirike’s Land, stepping onto a shore of black sand. The rest of the boat’s crew jumped out and hauled up the craft, its skin hull scraping.

Bren staggered up the beach to an outcrop of rock, and sat down. With his delicate-looking fingers the Jackdaw picked at his leather leggings, stained with salt and piss and puke, and pulled his cloak tighter around his body. He’d been ill throughout the journey and had been all but useless in the boat, and he seemed dizzy and disoriented now he was back on the land. He didn’t even look around at their destination, after so many days on the breast of the sea.

Vala shivered in a breeze coming off a land choked by ice and snow. Home again, she thought. At first glance this bay, the Ice Giant’s Cupped Palm, seemed unchanged from when she had last seen it — at least as it had been in the days before the Hood. There was the broad sweep of the water, there the ice-tipped mountains on the horizon. She made out houses at the head of the beach, beyond the waterline. Smoke rose up, so at least there were people here — people alive, when there were some in Northland who had doubted there would be a living soul left on Kirike’s Land after the events of last summer.

But there were still scummy rafts of pale rock floating on the bay water, and washed up on the strand. On the land itself, which should have been turning green at this time of year, the ice still held sway. She thought she smelled ash in the cold air. And the world was much too quiet. She listened for the braying of seals, the cries of the birds who should be nesting by now. There was only the lap of the sea, and the gruff voices of the men as they wearily hauled their gear from the boat.

And towering over it all was a pillar of grey-white smoke, still rising from whatever was left of the Hood, pluming high in the sky. It was hard to believe that she had lived only a day’s walk from that monstrous mound, that she’d had a home almost on its slopes. Now, she supposed, there must be not a trace left of The Black.

A woman came out of one of the houses further up the beach. She waved warily, and Vala waved back. The woman ducked back into the house, emerged pulling a cloak around her shoulders, and walked down the beach towards the boat.

Bren sat listlessly.

Vala thumped his shoulder. ‘On your feet.’

He looked up at her, his once handsome face weather-beaten under a ragged beard. ‘Must I? I think I’ll fall over if-’

‘Somebody’s coming. Look strong. We’re here to help them, remember, not the other way around.’

He looked away, sullen. Vala got her hand under Bren’s armpit and hauled him to his feet. He staggered, but stood.

She had no sympathy for him. She’d left her own children behind in Etxelur to make this journey, to see what had become of her home. After all they’d gone through it had been a huge wrench for her to let the kids out of her sight. But she had come, for she thought it was the right thing to do. And Bren had been ordered to come here by the Annids, after his disgrace when his part in Kuma’s murder had been revealed, and his own House of Jackdaws had disowned him. If he could do some good here perhaps he could begin to redeem himself — that, anyhow, was how Raka had argued. But Bren had only complained about what he saw as a betrayal by his own niece, his protege. He was nothing but a burden, Vala thought.

The woman came up. She had a shock of white hair loosely tied at the back of her head, and the dirt grimed in the lines on her face made her look old. She was thin, too, her cheeks sunken. Her tunic, under the cloak, was shabby, threadbare.

Vala knew her. ‘Pithi?’

‘Vala? I thought you were dead!’

Once this woman had been Vala’s neighbour, in The Black. She was not yet thirty; she looked ten years older. When they embraced, Vala smelled ash on Pithi’s hair.

Pithi said, ‘You stayed in your house when we left.’

‘In the end I ran to the sea, with my family. We got to a boat before the burning smoke came down.’

‘We didn’t reach the beach. We sheltered in a cave until it passed. The heat — we couldn’t breathe. I lost one child. You remember little Gili? And my mother, her lungs weren’t strong enough. And you? The boys, Mi?’

‘They all made it. We were lucky. But Okea and Medoc…’

Pithi just nodded. Evidently news of death was commonplace. ‘And now we live by the beach, for Stapi and Mura spend all day at sea.’ Pithi’s husband and older son. ‘There’s nothing left on the land. Even before the snow came, the ash covered everything, and the cattle got sick. We butchered them, but the meat is long gone…’ She seemed to notice Bren for the first time. ‘I know you. I was in Northland once. You were a Jackdaw. You traded us bronze knives for our seal furs. You were called Bren.’

He summoned a smile, ghastly in his snow-white face. ‘Well, I still am called Bren, though I’m no longer a trader.’

‘Why are you here?’

Bren glanced at Vala. ‘To help you. The Annid of Annids herself ordered me to come here. To see what you need, what we in Northland can do to help you.’

‘Kuma sent you?’

‘Not Kuma,’ Vala said gently. ‘We have a new Annid of Annids now.’

Pithi stared at Bren, as if not really believing he was there. Then she turned and led them up the beach. ‘You must come to the houses. There are quite a few of us, from all over. This bay is the best harbour on the island, and a natural place to gather.’

‘How many?’

‘Less than before the winter. But we are alive. Vala, there are people here who survived extraordinary things. In one place a glacier on the side of the fire mountain melted, all at once. A woman with her baby had to run from a torrent, she looked back and saw people drown — drown, on the side of a burning mountain! We found one village untouched by the fire save for the ash, but everybody lay as if asleep in their beds — all dead. Some say there is bad air that comes out of the ground. And one man, an old fellow with one leg called Balc — he tried to escape to the sea as you did, was missed by the boats, and lived by grabbing onto the corpse of a cow, which bloated with gas and floated to the surface. He lived for three days on that cow, drinking its blood, until a fishing boat spotted him… Is Bren all right?’

Bren was bent over, retching dry, his stomach long empty of food.

Vala rubbed his back. ‘He’ll be fine.’

Without straightening up he murmured to her, ‘We can do nothing for these people. This blighted island. We can bring no food — we can’t dispel the ice or the poisonous ash-’

‘We can do small things. We can tell them of relatives and friends who live. We can take some of the sick, the very young children perhaps, away to Northland. We can give them hope. That’s why we came. Now smile and do your job.’

He managed to stand straight, and with the help of the two women made it up the beach to the shabby houses.