Iron Winter

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 antiquity 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.’

‘The who? That’s a Greek word.’

“True. And their workshop District is often called “the Greek quarter”. But few mechanikoi these days have more than a trace of Greek blood in them! The word is a reference to the deeper history of philosophy in Etxelur, for it was there that the sage Pythagoras fled with his followers some two thousand years ago, fleeing the reign of a tyrant in his native Samos. Pythagoras’ essential legacy, you see, is his insight that the universe is based on order; that the cosmic order can be expressed in numbers; and that those numbers can be grasped by the human mind. It all follows, it is said, from Pythagoras’ observations of the notes of a plucked lute string.’

Avatak was used to discursions like this, and had learned not to listen until the scholar got to the important stuff.

Uzzia, however, boldly laid a hand on the old man’s arm. ‘Pyxeas. We get the point. It took hundreds of generations of string-plucking before some bald-pated genius was able to make this thing. But what does it do?’

‘Why, it enables me to calculate where I am, as I cross the turning globe of the earth. And, in a sense, when I am.’ He eyed her, and Jamil. ‘You understand that the world is a sphere.’

‘Actually a somewhat flattened sphere, according to Hatti astronomers,’ Uzzia snapped back. ‘Who in turn have built on studies by the Babylonians and others going back millennia. Please don’t condescend, old man.’

‘Very well. Then you’ll understand that as we travel north and south, the apparent position of the pole star in the sky will change. It would be directly overhead if we were at the north pole, whereas if we travel south-’

‘Yes, yes.’

‘So if I measure the star’s position-’

‘Or you get me to do it,’ murmured Avatak.

‘What’s that? Then I can determine the north-south arc of my position on the world’s spherical surface. Now, knowing the date and that single number, the northern arc, I can use my oracle to predict for me’ — he spun wheels and pressed levers, making the face of the oracle sparkle and shift — ‘the length of the day at this place, and the greatest height achieved by the sun in the sky. I have the boy check these independently with his sightings and his hourglass. The numbers are never identical, but the differences teach us about flaws in our methodology, and indeed the small digressions of the earth from its spherical state, to which you have alluded.’

Jamil studied the oracle longingly. ‘Must be useful at sea, that. And in some deserts I’ve crossed. So you have your position north to south. But what about east-west?’

‘Ah,’ Pyxeas said, enthused. ‘Excellent question, considering it’s you asking it. The oracle also contains, encoded into its dials and gears, a knowledge of eclipses of the sun and moon, both past and future.’ He tapped the face. ‘The little ivory moon slides across the golden sun. . It’s really quite pretty to watch. And by matching the prediction with the reality of an eclipse, I can determine my distance from Northland, west to east. The procedure is a little tricky.’

Uzzia said, ‘Just tell me this one thing. You dream of saving the world. Is it through such means as this, the numbers of the sky?’

‘Yes! Yes, precisely. You see-’

But she held her forefinger to his lips. ‘Another time,’ she said gently. ‘For now, I understand enough. It is late. You two must finish your work, and come closer to the fire, and we will eat and sleep.’

Pyxeas seemed oddly charmed by her motherliness. ‘Another time, then,’ he agreed.

Heading ever east, following the vagaries of roads and passes, they moved out of the fertile plain into a land that was higher, dryer, much more forbidding. Avatak glimpsed mountains, streaked with ice.

They came to a small town fortified by a stout wall of mud-brick. Beyond, the land was more arid still: the town marked the edge of desert. To enter the town the travellers had to pass through a wide gate, horses, cart and all — even the mule. There was stabling for the animals inside, and Jamil immediately did some business, selling off his horses in order to buy — what? Avatak glimpsed a new sort of beast in the shadows of the stables, taller than a horse, stately, foul-smelling. Jamil did keep the mule. Avatak wasn’t sure if he was pleased or disappointed.

They spent a few nights here. The city was full of people of diverse hues, costumes and tongues. Jamil said this was a major meeting point for traders, who routinely travelled half the world for the sake of the profit to be made through the trade between Cathay and other eastern empires and the Continent and Northland to the west. Jamil said he’d half-expected the town to be quieter than usual, because of flood, drought, plague, banditry and the coldness of the year; such things were bad for trade. On the other hand there were more migrants than usual on the trail, coming both ways — people coming from the west in the hope of finding a better life in the east, only to meet people from the east heading west with much the same ambition. These were times of turbulence. Ominously, Pyxeas pointed to heavy shipments of weapons and armour.

Jamil was waiting on a number of other traders to get ready to leave. They would travel together as a caravan — not steam-driven, but a train of beasts and people laden with goods. Avatak had never known that the word for the Northlanders’ dazzling transport system was borrowed from a much older meaning.

The morning came when Jamil’s caravan was ready — and Avatak was introduced to his camel. The beast was extraordinary. It had two fleshy humps on a back covered with dirty brown hair, and a small head mounted on a long neck, and massive teeth, and an oddly disdainful expression. When it walked on its long legs it seemed to stagger, and at first, after climbing clumsily on its back, it was all Avatak could do to hang on. More laughter from his companions.

But after a few days he saw the beast’s advantages. It had broad hoofs that would not sink into the softest sand, and could travel for days without water. And all this with the weight of a man on its back. The stink, though — the stink was high! There were times when Avatak looked back at his mule, plodding through the sand, with almost nostalgic affection.

The caravan worked its way steadily west, a party of thirty people and twice as many camels, a few horses, one mule. The desert was flat, arid, featureless, but on the horizon mountains loomed, capped with ice, a grand setting.

Some days later they came upon their first desert town, at what Jamil called an oasis, a place entirely sustained by a single water spring. There were even trees here, their leaves bright and green against the background of the desert. Jamil had boasted of the melon you could buy that was a speciality of the region, which was sold dried out and cut into strips. But the weather was playing havoc here too; it had been a bad spring so far, too wet remarkably, and the melon crop was poor.

After a two-day stop and a change of animals, Jamil’s caravan moved on.

The deeper they got into the desert the clearer the air seemed, and the dryer, so that it sucked any moisture straight out of Avatak’s skin. But the nights, though: the nights were spectacular, with a dome of star-filled sky framed by the shadows of the mountains on the horizon.

‘Oh,’ said Pyxeas one night, wrapped in his sleeping roll beside the fire, ‘I would give a great deal to have the eyes of my younger self back again, just for one night. A sky like that is the little mothers’ jewel box!’

Uzzia grunted. ‘Your understanding — all that business of the arc of the world, and the numbers, and your little bronze box — does that not diminish your sense of wonder, old man?’

‘Not at all. The deeper the understanding the more the universe connects with one’s deeper self, the more one is enriched. That was the essence of the teaching of Pythagoras, I think. And our destiny is written in the stars, to those who have eyes to read it.’

‘You’re talking about saving the world again.’

‘I’m talking about numbers.’

Jamil shook his head, a shadow against the starlit dark. ‘All this sophistry and philosophising. No man can know the past, scholar. Let alone the future.’

‘Can I not?’ Pyxeas replied sharply. ‘The numbers know the future, and they speak to me — or they will, when I have completed my studies.’

Jamil grunted. ‘Any god would punish such arrogance.’ He walked off to see to the animals.

Uzzia turned away and rolled herself up in her blanket.

Avatak lay silently, with the old man and the stars.

Pyxeas coughed painfully. ‘Oh, this dust.’

The next day, not long after they had set off, a sandstorm hit them. It battered their faces and scraped their eyes, and made seeing and hearing impossible. They had to stop and make a rough camp. They were unable to move further for two days, until the storm blew itself out, by which time they were starting to worry about running out of water.

The camels, however, seemed unperturbed. And the mule expressed no opinion.