Iron Winter

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. They 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.