‘So your son and his party want to avoid all that mucking about. Go across country. That way they’ll only have to deal with a few starving farmers, and wild animals who are as confused as we are. Tell them Myrcan said so. Now, do you want some more of this reasonably priced nectar or shall I stopper it for you to take home?’
From such recommendations, and partly because of all of them it was only the Coldlander boy who seemed to have any idea of how this journey might actually be achieved, the decision was made: overland it would be, after a short sea crossing to the southern shore of Ibera.
The Carthaginian authorities were lavish in funding Pyxeas’ expedition, in a mood of nervous gratitude. Or perhaps the city just wanted rid of him, he joked. So the party gathered equipment and supplies, heavy jackets, breeches, hats and boots made from the fur of seals and bear, meat and fish dried and salted, pickled vegetables in clay pots — and a carriage.
Pyxeas took a great deal of interest in helping Avatak design this carriage. In its initial incarnation it would be a heavy horse-drawn cart with stout iron-rimmed wheels. It would bear a small canvas shelter at all times, so Pyxeas could stay in the warm and the dry while they travelled. Pyxeas even had a metal plate installed in the floor so they could build a fire in the back. But when they had to travel across snow and ice the carriage’s wheels and axles could be detached, and long polished runners exposed so the cart became a sled. Pyxeas had a lot of fun with this, devising little mechanisms whereby the axles could be detached by loosening a few bolts and pulling levers. Rina saw a side of him she had never known before. All her life he had essentially been an old man. This was how he must once have been as a child, a bright boy tinkering with gadgets, just as the scholar would one day try to take apart the mechanisms of the world itself.
Suddenly they were ready to go.
A good crowd assembled by the dock in the great Carthaginian harbour to see them off. Pyxeas’ fame as a scholar had been wide even before his monumental trip to Cathay. Avatak too, a sturdy, exotic-looking young man, was an object of curiosity, though he seemed completely unaware of it. As the small ship was loaded with their goods Nelo made a few last sketches of Carthage’s astonishing harbour, the low light catching the long stretches of docks, jetties and warehouses, the crowd of spectators, and the vendors who, as ever, turned up from nowhere to sell people stuff they didn’t know they needed.
Rina struggled with her feelings. She thought she had lost Nelo emotionally because of the blood sacrifice she had had to make of him, and then she feared she had lost him altogether to the war. Now she was going to lose him again, to the ice, to the longwinter, to Pyxeas’ strange ambitions. Even as she had worked on the preparations, her mother’s heart had been ripped apart shred by shred.
In the end she could not bear to wait for the final departure, the last embrace, the waving from the shore as the ship pulled away. She couldn’t help it, even if it was yet another betrayal. She fled to her office in the city and buried herself in work, until Nelo’s ship had sailed.
73
The ship out of Carthage took them west, through the strait into the Western Ocean, and then to a Carthaginian port in southern Ibera, at the mouth of a mighty river. The port was working, the harbour crowded with shipping, the town itself bustling. But Avatak, having seen a dozen ports on the way back home on the Arab trader, had learned how to read a town, a countryside. He quickly saw that the ships were bringing in food, armour, other supplies, and they were taking out people, more nestspills, all heading south. The country that had once sustained this port had become a threat to it; the landward city walls were heavily armed against rough camps of nestspills beyond. But that was the country across which they must travel.
They spent three days spending Carthaginian money on what they needed for the next stage. They hired a riverboat to take them deep into the interior of the country, and a troop of the port’s city guard for protection. Their elaborate carriage was loaded on board the boat.
They sailed out beyond the protection of the city walls by night, to minimise the threat from the great band of nestspills, bandits and warlords that surrounded the walls. The weather inland was cloudy, blustery, cold, and it frequently rained, the water pooling on the hard earth. The soldiers from the coast huddled under leathers and gambled over games played with broken bits of bone. Pyxeas spent much of his time working in the little shelter on the carriage, or dozing.
They passed by empty towns on the riverbank, and huge plantations where once olive trees had grown in great numbers.Now it was all gone, the weather too wet and cold for the olives, the people bankrupted, fled or starved. But the land was not barren, Avatak saw; in places swathes of grass glowed green in the rare sunlight. Nelo sketched all this compulsively, on Egyptian paper scraped so thin you could almost see through it.
Pyxeas, on one of his rare ventures out of his tent, nudged Avatak in the ribs. ‘Remember the steppe? One day soon, it may only be centuries, this place will be an ocean of grass too, just as we saw in the heart of Asia. The great-grandchildren of these boatmen and laughing soldiers will be horse-riding nomads, and herds of fleet beasts will cross these plains like the shadows of clouds. I, Pyxeas, predict this.’
Himil looked baffled. ‘I do not question your conclusions, scholar. But how can you know all this?’
The scholar smiled and tapped his temple. ‘From observations of the world — from patterns deduced, and stored in my memory — from understanding the superhuman rhythms of the ice.’
Himil just stared. Then, when the scholar had withdrawn, he turned to Avatak. ‘You must know what he’s talking about.’
Avatak shrugged.
But Nelo said, ‘I thought he was trying to teach you. I know he’s come up with some big idea about why the longwinter is happening.’
‘Yes. We were on a ship when he said he got it, the final solution. Pirates were smashing in our heads at the time.’
‘Didn’t he tell you?’
‘I stopped listening. It’s all-’ he searched for the word ‘-abstract.’ He found he’d used a Cathay word. He tried again. ‘Not real. Not here and now. Once his learning interested me. In Coldland, there’s nobody like him. But we barely survived that journey from Cathay, and now this. What does it matter what this country will be like in a thousand years from now? Somebody else might be trying to cross it then; it won’t be us.’
‘True enough, my friend,’ said Himil.
Nelo asked, ‘Then why did you stay with my uncle?’
Avatak looked at the old man. ‘For what’s inside him. Not his knowledge, all those numbers. Which is all he thinks there is to him.’
‘What then?’
‘His sadness. At what he saw before anybody else saw it, before a single flake of snow had fallen. Sadness for the world, and all of us who must live in it. Even the generations to come. That’s why I stay with him.’
Nelo considered this. ‘You’re a good man, my friend.’
Avatak shrugged.
They followed the river upstream, travelling roughly north-west for some days, until they came to another large city, far inland. They left the boat here; it returned to the coast, taking the soldiers with it, and they were on their own.
This city was a mere shadow of what it must once have been. It had extensive walls, breached, burned and roughly repaired. Inside the walls whole suburbs looked abandoned, burned out. The country beyond seemed empty, with only a tracery of the walls of abandoned farms to be seen. Avatak wondered, in fact, how the city kept functioning at all.
‘And no dogs,’ Himil said. ‘Have you noticed that? No barking. And no cats. Or cage birds singing.’
‘All long gone into the pot,’ Nelo said gloomily.
There may have been no dogs, but there were horses to be had, scrawny nags at a price that Himil the Carthaginian said was eye-watering. But Avatak knew their money did not matter; it would count for nothing once they got further north, and may as well be spent while there was some
thing useful to buy.
Leaving the city behind they worked their way north-west along the river valley, the companions taking turns to drive the carriage, ride the spare horses, or to walk alongside. After some days they came to another much reduced city straddling the river. From here they turned north, following a good Carthaginian road that crossed higher ground. Although this was early summer it felt markedly colder here than at the coast, and the land seemed even more barren, the towns and way stations burned out and abandoned. Avatak felt exposed without the guard, but there seemed to be no bandits on this empty tabletop of a country, and they made good progress.
They came to yet another city, another shrunken remnant. As they approached they came across a substantial procession forming up at the southern gates, men, women, children and old folk, most on foot, some dragging carts, evidently preparing to take the opportunity of the summer to head south. Avatak silently wished them luck.
At the gate Pyxeas’ party was challenged by a different kind of authority. This, it seemed, was the boundary between the Carthaginian empire and the realm of the Franks, whose power base was further north. Guards at the gates asked for hefty tolls to allow this Carthaginian party to pass. They had some Prankish money, but the Franks preferred Northlander scrip, which made Pyxeas laugh. ‘Just pay the man, Avatak, pay the man.’
North of the city they followed rougher tracks. The country was barren and bare, and grew steadily colder. In places they threaded through broad mountain passes; the mountains were all white-capped, and streaked with the grey tongues of glaciers. When they stopped on scraps of higher ground they would sometimes glimpse structures in the distance, not on peaks but on high plateaux, lines and rings of stone. These did not impress Avatak much until the road took them close to one of them, and the Coldlander was able to appreciate the sheer size of the stones, the vastness of the layout, and the careful precision with which it seemed to have been designed. But even these great sky temples were disused now, and the tracks that criss-crossed the complexes were covered with blown dust.
On they journeyed, descending at last from the higher ground towards the coast. Ibera was a great peninsula, Pyxeas said, with its neck crossed by a tremendous mountain chain — and now, from higher ground, Avatak could glimpse those mountains marching into the distance. They skirted that mountain chain, passing west by the coast of the Western Ocean, and they entered Gaira.
There were cities on the coast here, substantial ports that now brooded within the remains of walls. The travellers avoided these places. Instead they stayed a few nights in smaller villages, where the local people survived by fishing. They were welcomed, if warily; few travellers came this way any more, it seemed. Pyxeas said this was the pattern of the future in the coming longwinter, ‘when no man will venture more than a day or two’s travel beyond his home village, the rest of the world forgotten’.
In such places Avatak stared hungrily at the ocean. Somewhere beyond, far to the west, lay his own home. Though there was no sea ice, on clear days he saw splinters of white on the grey, surging water. Icebergs, drifting from the north.
On the travellers passed, moving inland. It was clear the country had changed greatly. This land had recently been forested, with tremendously tall and old oak trees. Now the remaining trunks stood barren. Though the spring was advancing they rarely saw a splash of green, a new leaf or a fresh shoot. And in places there was evidence of tremendous fires, whole landscapes reduced to ash and blackened stumps.
Pyxeas said the culprit was the climate, once again. ‘This is how forests die. Avatak, remember how we smelled the northern forests burning, all the way across Asia? And remember what we saw in Daidu? When you burn a tree it is like opening a tremendous bottle of fixed air, all at once! Imagine how much has been released in these vast conflagrations. .’
They saw few people — fewer, if anything, than in Ibera — and those they did spot, always on the move, stayed well away from what must have looked like a well-armed party. They passed through clearings in the forest, cut into the woodland and connected by broad tracks, a little like Northland’s communities. These settlements were abandoned, ransacked, burned out. In one place they found a gallows set up over the central hearth, with the remains of a human body suspended upside down over the ash. Nelo sketched the gruesome scene, and he cut down the corpse with a swipe of a sword, and buried the remains in the hearth.
Further north the country changed again, becoming more open. The air was much wetter now, colder, and rain was more frequent, even sleeting sometimes, though, as they kept reminding each other, this was summer. There was extensive flooding, much of what must have been farmland turning to marsh, the walls of long-abandoned farmhouses dissolving into the wet. There were none of the bright flowers Avatak remembered from similar seasons in Northland, but flocks of birds settled almost experimentally on the new wetlands. It grew steadily colder. Soon they found themselves pushing through flurries of fresh snow, the horses wheezed and dropped their heads as the wet stuff flecked their fur, and in the mornings they would wake to frost.
‘We’re walking into winter,’ Himil said, amazed.
They came at last to Parisa, the greatest city in Frankish Gaira, sprawling across its river. Avatak remembered it well. It was still a bustling place, still alive, as you could tell from the pall of smoke hung over it. But now snow rested on its rooftops and slim minarets, and there were ice floes on the river. And if you looked only a little further north you could see only white: not a scrap of earth brown or life’s green anywhere. Avatak felt a strange thrill, of recognition, and of fear. How was it possible for such a great country to have changed so quickly?
Nelo slapped him on the back. ‘Ice! We’re in your hands now, Coldlander.’
They spent a few nights in Parisa. The city had lost most of its population, and was slowly consuming itself for firewood. Every day hunting parties went out into the country, on foot and on horseback, seeking the deer and oxen and aurochs that were colonising the soggy, deep-frozen plains. Avatak was a brief sensation when he showed Nelo and Himil and a few local hunters the best way to trap a bird. You threw a net in the air to catch it in flight, and took it in your bare hands, then bent its wings back gently and pressed its chest over its heart, and it would die quietly.
But he spent most of those days in Parisa preparing for the journey ahead. A journey over the ice.
74
On the seventh day out of Parisa they ran into a blizzard. The northerly wind was flat, hurling hard, heavy flakes into their faces. Avatak felt the ice build up on his beard, his eyebrows, his skin. He made Nelo and Himil watch each other’s faces, the noses and the cheeks, for the pale white spots that were the first signs of ice blight. Pyxeas stayed tucked up in the tent on the back of the carriage.
A blizzard in summer!
They tried to keep moving. They had dogs now, a team assembled at Avatak’s insistence, to draw them over the ice. At last he had dogs, and could show what he could do! But these were dogs of Parisa, dogs of the city and the forest, not the tough animals of Coldland. They were doing their best, but the wind polished the surface of the ice smooth, the dogs could get no traction, and unless he whipped them they would stop and huddle together for warmth, a squirming mass of fur.
There came a point where the dogs could do no more, and Avatak called a halt. It was not yet noon.
There was no way they could put up their shelters in the blizzard. The three of them, Avatak, Nelo and Himil, had to crowd into the little tent on the back of the carriage with Pyxeas, who had barely been awake for days, lying under a heap of wool and fur blankets. They soon got the fire started on its metal hearth. The tent, securely strapped to the back of the carriage, was stable enough, though the carriage itself, resting on its runners, creaked in the wind. The tent was too small for the four of them, though; Avatak could feel the wet mass of its fabric wall on his back as he tried to pull off his fur boots.
Something disturbed the dogs, and they
howled.
Pyxeas stirred. ‘Avatak?’
‘I am here, scholar.’ Avatak took the chance to sit him up gently, and let him sip at hot nettle tea.
‘Umm. . I have been asleep.’
‘Yes. You aren’t well. We think you have had a fever.’
‘Ah. From those mother-forsaken marshes south of Parisa. I remember.’ He frowned, his bony fingers wrapped around his cup. ‘Can I hear dogs?’
‘Yes, scholar. You remember, I bought them in Parisa.’
Himil said, ‘And I said they were mangy curs that must have been weaned on liquid gold, they cost so much.’
‘We are on the ice,’ Pyxeas whispered.
‘For some days now. You have been sleeping.’
‘I slip in and out of the world, it seems. But tell me, the carriage: did the mechanism work well, as the wheels were replaced by runners?’
‘Perfectly,’ said Himil.
‘I would have liked to have seen that. So here we are on the ice, in a sled, with dogs! This is why I brought you, you know, Avatak. Brought you all those years ago from your home across the sea. Because I knew the ice was coming. I wanted a man beside me who could handle a team of dogs, on the ice, for I knew that one day I would need it. And to teach you, boy, to shape your mind, of course, don’t forget that. . Do you think we are in Northland yet?’
‘It is impossible to say. It is some days since I have been able to sight the stars, or the sun,’ said Avatak.
‘You have been keeping the journal, I trust.’
‘Of course. The weather holds us up.’
‘“The weather holds us up.” I could not have summed up the longwinter better myself.’ He laughed, and burst into a fit of coughing.
Nelo crawled around the little tent and held his great-uncle, cradling his head on his own lap, and the old man settled. ‘Ah, thank you, boy, that is warming, that is kind.’
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