Iron Winter

76

It was further than it looked to the Wall. Avatak realised that the hunters had spotted them from a distance and had come out to stop them. Once Etxelur had been the kernel of the oldest and greatest civilisation in the world. Now, after a handful of cold summers, strangers were met with suspicion and raised spears. Pyxeas’ dream of finding scholarship surviving here looked foolish indeed.

At last they came to the foot of the Wall. The wreckage of ruined superstructures stood in snow-covered heaps, reminding Avatak of the tide-cracked ice at the shore of a winter-frozen sea. A rope ladder led up to a shallow ledge in the exposed growstone face of the Wall, and then another ladder rose up past that, and then another, until you could make your way to the roof.

‘It’s ladders up and then ladders down the other side, I’m afraid,’ said Crimm. ‘Most of us live on the far side of the Wall now, facing the sea. We only come over this side to hunt.’

Pyxeas asked, ‘What of the interior?’

Crimm shrugged. ‘Abandoned. Oh, there may be a few souls left in there feeding off the old stores. We’ve blocked off a lot of the corridors and passageways.’

Ayto said, ‘To stop raids from those bastards in the Manufactory. Among other bastards.’

‘Even I did not think it could be as bad as this,’ Pyxeas said mournfully.

Crimm eyed Pyxeas, the sled. ‘This is going to take some time. We’ll have to get your goods over in relays. We can hide the sled somewhere — figure out what to do about your dogs.’

Ayto said, ‘Need to be kept on this side, dogs, where they’re useful. We ought to set up a base over here.’

Crimm nodded. ‘For now, suppose you stay with the sled — Himil, was it? Aranx, you two others, stay with him and start preparing the stuff to haul over. And keep an eye out. In the meantime, the rest of you, come on over. Urnrn, Uncle Pyxeas, it’s quite a climb-’

‘And quite beyond me, I’m sure.’ He turned to Avatak.

With practised ease, Avatak bent, took Pyxeas at the waist, and straightened up with the scholar limp over his shoulder. Nelo helped, throwing a blanket over Pyxeas.

Crimm grinned. ‘I can help you.’

‘I’ll be fine,’ Avatak said. And so he would be; he and the old man in his charge had been through worse than this together.

Crimm went up first. He wore heavy mittens and carried a small axe that he used to knock ice off the ladder rungs. When it was his turn, Avatak took care to get a firm grip with hands and feet at each step. He worked his way up, breathing steadily, letting his muscles warm. He had ridden the sled too long, he hadn’t had enough to eat for many days, and he was not in the best condition, but he could do this. Transferring from one ladder to the next was more tricky, trying to support himself on ice-coated, guano-stained ledges, holding the old man securely with one hand while reaching for the next ladder with the other. But he made no slips.

Pyxeas hung limp, passive, utterly trusting. Perhaps he was asleep.

They took a break on top of the Wall. Crimm had sacks of fresh water that he passed around. Pyxeas was set down on a blanket; he seemed more exhausted than Avatak.

The huge sculptures arrayed along the Wall roof, the old monoliths, the tremendous heads of long-dead Annids, the slim spires erected by more modern generations, had mostly survived, though their features were masked by snow. And from here a view of the Northern Ocean opened up. The level of the sea had evidently fallen, but it was still higher than the land, you could see at a glance; the Wall was still serving its most ancient and basic purpose of saving the land from the sea. On the sea itself, a strip of deep-blue water close to the Wall face gave way to thin ice floating in great patches. People were working on the ice, Avatak saw, looking down. One man sat by a mound on the ice that must be a seal’s breathing hole. Further out there was a boat, silhouetted against the brilliance of the white ice behind. These were Northlanders learning to live like Coldlanders, he supposed. Further out still, icebergs, silent and stately as Cathay treasure ships, were trapped in thickening sea ice.

The familiar beauty of it all caught Avatak’s breath. This might no longer feel like home to Pyxeas and Nelo, but it was home to him.

They followed Crimm’s lead and began the climb down the seaward face. They quickly descended past odd cuttings in the growstone, heavily crusted with ice, that turned out to be docks cut into the face, now stranded in mid-air. This face of the Wall, once immersed in the sea, was rougher, just coarsely finished growstone with a heavy coating of now-dead barnacles, and you had to be careful not to scrape your hands as you worked your way down the ladder. Looking down, Avatak saw that at its base the Wall’s vertical face bellied outwards into the sea, making a rough shelf of growstone that extended under the shallow water. People were moving and working down there, on the growstone shore. There were fires built on hearths, racks of meat or fish, boats hauled up, blood splashed on the growstone ground. People looked up, wary. One little boy, a bundle in his furs, clung to his mother, one finger jammed up his left nostril.

Crimm jumped down the last few rungs and went forward into the little village on the growstone. ‘We have visitors! It is Pyxeas the scholar, you remember him, and Nelo, Rina’s son, and their companion Avatak from Coldland.’ The mood of wary suspicion faded, Avatak thought. Or at least he could see no weapons. ‘They have come far to see us — and they have extraordinary tales to tell. And they have dogs! Think what we’ll be able to do if we can breed dogs, Ferri, Yospex. . Muka! Heat some soup and boil up some tea; we will take lunch, I think.’

Avatak reached the base of the ladder and, with some help from Nelo, set Pyxeas down. Avatak saw now that there were caves in the growstone masses, either worn by the sea or deliberately hollowed out, with entrances covered by skin sheets. It was in these caves, evidently, that the people lived.

Crimm led them to one cave, where the covering sheet was drawn back to expose a deep interior, lit by small lamps of what smelled like seal blubber in bowls hacked from ancient growstone. This was Crimm’s home, and the woman who smiled at them as she built up the fire in her hearth was Muka, the wife Crimm had taken since the group had come here to the ocean. But she looked ill to Avatak, her movements listless, her face pale, the signs of a nosebleed on her upper lip, and when she smiled she showed gaps in her teeth.

They set Pyxeas down in the mouth of the cave so he could see the village, the sea, and laid blankets over his shoulders. Soon he had a cup of nettle tea in his hands, and Avatak could smell a rich fish soup warming up. ‘So this is the new Etxelur,’ the scholar murmured. ‘If it wasn’t for bad engineering in the past I suppose it couldn’t exist at all.’

‘Bad engineering, scholar?’

He picked at the coarse growstone surface under the blanket. ‘Look at this stuff. We could never properly maintain the Wall’s seaward face, you know. Oh, we would try, we would lower caissons to work at the face, but only for the shallowest sections. For the rest we would just dump growstone in great sacks down the face and let it harden. And in turn, of course, the sea steadily wore away at the face, exposing the interior. Strange to think this growstone might be a thousand years old — and hidden from the light until quite recently.

‘But if not for that shoddy work, all that growstone thrown down the Wall’s face, more in hope than judgement, this rough shore would not even exist. And these survivors would not be living on the ruins of the past. Ah! My dear.’ Muka brought him a bowl of hot fish soup. ‘A feast fit for the Great Khan himself. But, are you well? I think your nose is bleeding. .’

Crimm tapped Avatak on the shoulder and beckoned. ‘Coldlander. Come. Walk with me, please. Come see how we live. Bring your soup.’

He led Avatak down towards the sea. The growstone and the sea ice were bloodstained, and haunches of seal meat lay around, frosted with ice. Wooden frames stood in rows; fish were drying on the racks, and one big seal carcass. People stared as they went by, especially the children in their furs, who followed Avatak.

‘Don’t mind them,’ Crimm said. ‘We aren’t used to strangers any more. Odd to think that Etxelur was the navel of the world, just a few years ago. We held a Giving this year, of sorts, for old times’ sake. Nobody came save a few of those bastards from the Manufactory, but we drove them off with stones.’

In the blue sky the moon hung over the sea, almost full, startlingly bright. Avatak noticed that nobody was looking at the moon; they turned their heads, cupped hands over their eyes.

Crimm saw he observed this. ‘The moon is our goddess of death. She is bright in the sky, these days and nights.’

‘Pyxeas would say, because she shines in the reflected light of the ice lying on the earth.’

Crimm shrugged. ‘Perhaps. She exults even so. Avatak, I remembered you were travelling with uncle Pyxeas, and I always hoped you would return. All the Coldlanders who were here fled years ago, before we started starving. I’m sure they’re prospering. .’

Avatak had heard nothing of his people since leaving Coldland with Pyxeas, nothing of uncle Suko and his sister Nona, and Uuna his betrothed who, he was sure, was still waiting for him. Yes, they would be prospering, even if they had had to abandon their old grounds and followed the edge of the spreading ice to the sea.

Crimm said now, ‘There is so much we can learn from you. We have done our best, to build a way of living in the unending winter — but you, you have your ancestors’ knowledge, their old wisdom.’

Avatak remembered Pyxeas predicting that it would be his wisdom, of the ice and sea, that would be in demand in the future, not the scholar’s learning. He felt embarrassed. ‘I was pretty young when Pyxeas took me away from home, and I have been travelling since. I have probably forgotten much of what I know.’

‘I think you’re too modest. Well, I hope you are. Take a look at this, for instance.’

Crimm led him to a scaffold on which hung the flensed body of a seal, dripping blood onto the frozen ground. The eyeballs drooped, ugly and exposed. The black flippers, the only bit of skin left on the body, looked oddly like gloves. At the base of the scaffold was the evidence of a previous kill, a heap of purplish guts, tangled up.

Avatak asked, ‘Where do you get the wood for the scaffold?’

‘Some driftwood, at first. A lot of it scorched from big fires burning somewhere, overseas. Not so much this year; I guess the gathering ice is seeing to that. But there’s always the Wall, like a great mine, crammed with stuff. All you have to do is haul it out. We know how to salt fish; we’ve done that for generations. What do you think of how we’ve handled the seal?’

‘You can use more of it.’ Avatak picked up a length of gut, and ran his fingers along the ropy stuff. ‘Squeeze out the blood like this, and boil it up. The liver is considered a treat, by the way, for the hunter who brings the animal in. There are ways to treat the hide so it’s easy to wear — you dry it, rub it to keep it supple. I will show you. Oh, and the eyes. .’ He plucked an eye from its nerve stalk, popped it into his mouth, and chewed hard; it burst with a crackle, and cold fluid filled his mouth. ‘Mm,’ he said around the mouthful. ‘Delicious. A treat for the kids.’

Crimm stared. ‘Ha! Well, I must try it myself. Look, Avatak — would you help with something else? We have sickness here.’

‘I saw your wife.’

‘We all suffer to some extent. But especially my wife’s little niece. Please.’

He led Avatak back up the beach to the cave, outside which Pyxeas sat, cradling an empty soup bowl, and Avatak was impressed that he had managed to finish a meal for once. Pyxeas had Muka help him up, and with the others followed Crimm into the dimly lit rear of the cave.

But Pyxeas paused by the fire where there was a heap of paper, evidently used as kindling. He ruffled through this, appalled. ‘By the mothers’ mercy — did this come from the Archive? I know this work — on the philosophy of the motion of the planets — centuries old! And it’s been used to light a fire for a bunch of-’

‘Not now, master,’ Avatak murmured firmly.

Pyxeas fell silent, visibly angry.

They walked deeper into the cave. At the back a little girl, not more than five years old, lay on a heap of skins. A woman, perhaps her mother, stood back as they approached, hope and fear obvious in her face. Avatak became aware that they were all watching him, all the Northlanders, and he felt a stab of self-doubt.

‘Just do your best,’ murmured Pyxeas, leaning on Muka.

Tentatively Avatak bent over the little girl. Listless, lethargic, she did not resist. He saw she had spots on her skin, on her face and arms and, he saw when he lifted a blanket, on her legs. She had evidently been suffering from nosebleeds, and when he gently opened her mouth he saw teeth missing from bleeding gums.

‘She’s been so down,’ said the mother. ‘So miserable for so long.’

‘Many of us have the same symptoms,’ Crimm said. ‘To one degree or another.’

‘And you know what she asks for, all the time? Cabbage! Who would have thought it? But you can’t grow cabbage in all this snow and ice.’

Pyxeas grunted. ‘I bet that’s the answer. You people seem to have plenty of fish and meat to eat, but not a scrap of green.’

Avatak felt faintly irritated, for Pyxeas was right. ‘We call it the bleeding fever. Yes, it comes about if you don’t eat all you need.’

‘I need cabbage,’ whispered the little girl, and her mother stroked her head.

Pyxeas said, ‘So what’s the answer, boy? Should we boil up some seaweed?’

‘No. Not that. We call it mattak. You can chop it into small pieces and eat it raw, or you can fry it and boil it to make it easier for the children. That will stop this sickness.’

Crimm frowned. ‘Mattak? What is that?’

‘The skin of a whale.’

There was a long silence.

Crimm said, ‘And to get hold of that. .’

‘First you have to catch a whale.’ Avatak grinned. ‘It’s not hard. I will show you.’

Crimm clapped him on the back. ‘You see? I knew you could help us! Why, with your help we’ll be able to prosper — to do more than survive — we can live in this place as long as we want-’

‘No,’ Pyxeas said. Suddenly he groaned, and leaned more heavily on Muka. Avatak rushed to his side, and helped lower him to the ground.

Crimm said, ‘No? What do you mean, Uncle?’

Pyxeas looked up. ‘Oh, you have done well — despite your barbaric consumption of books to light your fires. Yes, you are prospering. Yes, Avatak, if you can, show them how to catch whales, and all the other skills you have brought with you from the Coldland — skills you have used to keep me alive for so long.

‘But, Crimm, Muka, the rest of you — you cannot stay here. For the ice will not let you. And before you leave here you have a great assignment.’

Avatak said gently, ‘There is no scholarship here. You can see that.’

‘Yes. Yes, I see it. I was a fool to hope for more. Yet there is a duty to be fulfilled even so. Come, boy, help me back out into the light, may as well enjoy the daylight while we have it. .’