Iron Winter

32

Day by day Pyxeas’ party climbed. The air grew clearer and colder, the sky more blue. The sun felt stronger than ever to Avatak, and he kept his exposed skin covered with Uzzia’s greasy unguents. The ground was bare and hard and rocky, and ice-bound mountains stood around, gleaming a brilliant white in the clear sunlight. In places they followed ridges from which they looked down upon ice-coated slopes, and they could see glaciers pouring into valleys below, every detail clear, the merging ice flows and meltwater streams like models made by some sculptor of plaster and paint.

There were no people up here, no more caravanserai. Yet there was life. Sometimes Avatak glimpsed wild sheep, their coats grey-white, clambering up impossible-looking slopes to get at the sparse tufts of bright green grass. Jamil said there were wolves up here too, feeding on the sheep. And there were rumours of humans, ragged hunters in skins who preyed on the flocks with small bows, but who were timid and secretive and rarely seen. Those locals who had come this way before had their own names for this place. Jamil called it ‘the roof of the world’.

And still they climbed, and climbed. Avatak found his lungs dragging at the thinning air, and the horses laboured. When they stopped, the fires they built seemed to burn only fitfully, and Jamil grumbled that when water boiled it was no more than lukewarm, and spoiled his evening tea. Some of the locals, especially the hard-working bearers, were afflicted with headaches, nausea, giddiness, episodes of passing out.

Uzzia tended to these victims. ‘I’ve seen such symptoms before. Mountain sickness. If you’re used to the high ground it’s not so bad, and best of all is to have been born up here. But if you’re born a lowlander you can suffer. Some of these fellows have probably never come up here before, never dreamed they’d have to, before the advance of one of your master’s glaciers forced them out of their farms, to come labour for us like your mule.’

‘He’s not my mule. He’s his own, I think.’

She laughed. ‘And if he’s a lowlander he’s not showing it.’

Pyxeas had an explanation for everything. He said the sickness was caused by the thinness of the air at altitude, and a lack of a particular part of the air he called ‘the vital air’, necessary for life, and indeed for the sustenance of fires, as experiments had shown. As for Pyxeas himself, he actually seemed to thrive in the thin air. He even took to walking a spell each day, rather than riding. ‘Do you know,’ he said, as he trotted alongside his companions one morning, ‘the worst blight of old age is the constant pain. In your head, in your back, your joints, your bowels — somewhere. Constant, nagging, continual pain. Nobody talks about it, or if they do nobody younger ever listens, but it’s there all the same. Up here, though, my own various aches, my faithful companions for years, are lessened — some of them gone altogether. Make a note, Avatak.’

‘Yes, scholar.’

Still they climbed.

It grew colder. They woke to morning ground frost, and patches of old ice in the shadows of rocks and ridges. Pyxeas was fascinated by this, but fretted. ‘When we try to return, in a year, two years, we might not be able to come this way again.’

Uzzia growled, ‘If we make it to Cathay, we’ll find another way back. But in the meantime, sage — watch your step!’

And there was the silence. Avatak was increasingly aware of it, behind the small noises of the people, their morning coughs, their soft voices, the clink of pots hanging from the mule’s back — a huge silence that stretched to the mountains all around them. It wasn’t just the absence of people. It was the absence of any sound at all. Not even the sound of birds, he realised, not even their caws and cries and songs. Maybe the birds could not fly in this thin air. Pyxeas might be interested in the observation, but he would only make Avatak dig out his journal and write it down, so he kept the thought to himself.

Then they came to a meadow in the sky. It was a high, broad plain, suspended between two looming mountains. A meadow, complete with thick grass and dancing wild flowers. There were sheep up here, fat-looking beasts who fled at the party’s approach. All of this lay under a brilliant blue sky, the green of the grass and the sheep’s pale wool vivid. It was like a dream, Avatak thought; it seemed impossible this could be real, could be here. The horses tore eagerly at the rich grass. Even the mule could barely conceal its pleasure at the lush pasture.

Jamil and Uzzia both knew this place. ‘Here we will stop,’ Jamil said firmly. ‘For two nights, three, while the horses feed, and we rest.’

Avatak could see the wisdom of it. By now the party was much reduced: just the four travellers of Pyxeas’ party, and two other traders, Arabs who had kept to themselves from the beginning of the trek, and six local bearers and guides. They were all exhausted; they all needed time to get used to the air.

Still, Avatak was surprised that Pyxeas agreed to the stop readily. ‘But the timing is good,’ the scholar said. ‘Tonight the eclipse is due. Make sure you have the oracle ready, boy.’

Uzzia, unpacking her own bundles, glanced over. ‘What eclipse?’

Jamil grunted. ‘What is an “eclipse”?’

‘An eclipse is a shadow play. When the world falls into the shadow of the moon, and the sun’s light is blocked out. . or, as tonight, when the moon enters the shadow of the earth, and turns the colour of blood.’ Pyxeas had been in good spirits for days, buoyed up by the thin air. Now it was almost as if he was drunk. ‘A world of shadow, a moon of blood!’ He repeated the words in other, fragmentary languages: Uzzia’s Hatti, Jamil’s Arabic, even in broken phrases in the harsh local argot.

The men working at the horses glanced across at him, and then up at the sunlit sky, uneasy. Jamil, watching, shook his head, muttering about folk who had so much cleverness it drove the wisdom out of their heads, and went back to unpacking his own tent.

The sun set and the moon rose, full and handsome. Sitting cross-legged with a blanket over his shoulders Pyxeas set the oracle on the ground before him, working its dials, muttering to himself. Meanwhile he had Avatak set up the hourglass and record the hours since sunset.

The party had broken into groups: Pyxeas’ party, the two Arab travellers, and the local men who seemed particularly furtive tonight to Avatak, suspicious, watchful of the others. One of them giggled frequently, a man who had never got over the effects of the high land. Uzzia, too, seemed more reserved than usual, watchful. As did Jamil, his eyes glittering as he glanced at the others. Only the horses seemed unperturbed — and the mule, who cropped at the lush grass with an air of bored indifference.

Pyxeas, typically, showed no awareness of any of this tension. ‘Oh, I wish I had more light!’ he said, squinting at the oracle’s dials in the firelight. ‘But that of course would ruin the seeing. Still, not long to go now, before the moon is snuffed out!’

Jamil glanced at the locals. ‘Play with that toy if you must. But keep it down, will you?’

‘Toy?’

Uzzia touched Pyxeas’ arm. ‘Hush, those men are alarmed about something, and we don’t want to scare them any further.’

‘Let them wallow in their superstitious fear. They are nothing. The eclipse is too significant, and I, Pyxeas, will capture it, and use it to determine my position on the curving belly of the earth.’

Avatak could see that Uzzia was intrigued despite herself. ‘What are you talking about, scholar?’

‘Know that eclipses occur on particular days at precise hours, which can be calculated in advance — years in advance, at that. And that knowledge is encoded into the gears of my oracle. You see? So I know an eclipse is due tonight — I know the exact time it will occur, by Northland’s clocks. Now, to determine my east-west position, all I have had to do is observe the eclipse.

‘Here I have Avatak measuring the local time — the hour at this precise point. Suppose I see, from Avatak’s glass, that the eclipse happens at midnight for me, I mean some particular aspect of it, the moon’s first entry into shadow, or the last exit. But the oracle tells me that the eclipse is scheduled for sunset at Etxelur, for example. Knowing the difference between those two times, I can calculate my arc east-west around the world — do you see? As if I am using the world itself as a gigantic common clock.’

Jamil thought that over, frowned, and spat. ‘Lot of fuss to work out one tiny number.’

The scholar, predictably, grew angry. ‘But with such “tiny numbers” I, Pyxeas, map the heavens! Thus I know that eclipses happen, at full moon or new moon, just as the moon crosses the sun’s path in the sky-’

‘Enough!’ Jamil clamped his hands to his ears. ‘You make my brain boil, old man.’

Uzzia glanced across at the bearers. ‘Our companions are looking fretful again. I think it is the scholar’s claim that he can predict the eclipse. As if he controls the moment the moon is to be devoured by the wolf god, according to the local beliefs.’

‘But it is only a question of simple numbers-’

‘These men know nothing of your numbers, scholar. All they know is that their gods are angry with them. They must be, or else why would they send down drought and floods and rock falls and tongues of ice? Now, perhaps they believe you are challenging the gods, angering them further. I think it would be better if you kept silent.’

‘Ah, but I’m not one for silence,’ the scholar said. He lifted his gaze from the oracle dials to the sky. ‘And as for the prediction-’ He pointed dramatically to the sky. ‘There! It begins!’

Looking up, Avatak saw that a sliver had been cut out of the moon’s round dish, just a fingernail, sharp and distinct in the clear sky of this place. Avatak had been drilled for this moment. He grabbed a stylus and began making a precise measurement of the time as recorded in the hourglass.

Pyxeas stood with a single lithe motion that belied his years, lifted his arms to the disappearing moon, laughed, and did a kind of jig of celebration — or desperation, Avatak thought, for even now he thought he could see the bleakness hidden inside the old man’s bluff character.

But his antics were disturbing the rest of the party.

‘Sit down, you fool,’ hissed Uzzia.

Jamil muttered, ‘This isn’t good, this isn’t good.’

The other men were moving around them, dimly seen in the moonlight. Avatak put down his journal and stood up-

There was a tremendous slam, and the world fell away.

He was awake.

He was alive.

He was lying on his back. He opened his eyes cautiously. He saw blue sky, the deep blue of morning. There was the moon, still full, still high though it was daylight. The eclipse must be over. He had missed the moment of last shadow. Pyxeas would be furious. He tried to rise — but pain burst in his head, and he cried out. He managed to reach a sitting position, though the world spun around him.

‘Take it easy.’ Somebody before him, a low, gentle voice. Uzzia. ‘Drink this.’

His vision seemed to pulse, as if his blood was pressing at his eyes. But he saw the mug before him, the glistening water. He took it, managed to lift it to his lips, drank. ‘What happened?’

‘Well, you missed all the fun. Some protector you are. You didn’t even see the rock that knocked you down, did you? Good shot, actually.’

‘One of the men?’

‘No. A trader. That fellow Ogul. Never did trust him. At the moment of eclipse the locals went crazy. Ogul and his buddy took the chance to get rid of us, I think, and get their hands on our stuff. Once you were down they rushed us, the traders and the bearers.’

He considered that. ‘Yet I’m alive.’

‘True enough.’

‘The scholar?’

‘Jamil saved him. Fought like a lion — Jamil, that is. Killed two of them before they overwhelmed him.’

Avatak had to work through this news step by step. ‘He’s dead. Jamil is dead.’

‘Yes. But he saved Pyxeas. Once Jamil was down they turned on me. I got rid of one — Ogul, actually, and good riddance — and I scared off the rest.’

‘How?’

‘I threw the oracle at them. It bounced off a fellow’s hard head and smashed to pieces.’

Avatak winced. ‘Pyxeas won’t like that.’

‘I’ll let you take the blame. The local men thought the god was broken, or something, and ran off for the horses. Pausing only to grab most of our goods.’

‘Are you all right?’

‘More or less.’

‘So we’ve lost Jamil. And the luggage?’

‘They took the blankets, clothing, trade goods, food, water, medicines. We still have the paper bundles, Pyxeas’ learning. So, we lost nothing important.’

Avatak actually laughed, but the pain in his head burst anew. ‘And no horses.’

‘No. But. .’

Avatak heard a soft ripping sound. He turned and saw the mule cropping patiently, as if unaware of the devastation of the night.

‘They tried to take that mule. Kicked one of them so hard I’ll swear I heard a bone snap.’

Avatak laughed again. ‘So what now?’

‘Now we fix you up. We’ll put poor Jamil under a cairn.’

‘It will have to be a big cairn.’

‘He would have smiled to hear you say that. Then we’ll gather up what we’ve got left.’

‘And then what?’

‘And then on to Cathay,’ Pyxeas said. The scholar was sitting up, rubbing his head. ‘After all, there’s still a world to save. Well, don’t just sit there, boy, help me up!’