Iron Winter

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!’