Iron Winter n-3

by Stephen Baxter

  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.

&nbs
p; 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. .’

  77

  They sat on the growstone beach. Pyxeas was given a heap of blankets, and Avatak and Nelo sat with him, Nelo sketching intently. The folk of the little village, what was left of Etxelur, gathered around them: Crimm and his wife, the other adults, and the children who stood and openly stared at the newcomers with their exotic looks, their strange clothes. It was afternoon now, and the sun, hanging in a clear sky, cast a light of a strange quality, a rich golden yellow, on the face of the Wall behind them.

  A small child, it might have been either a boy or girl in its bundle of furs, walked boldly forward, sat on Pyxeas’ lap, and started to pull at his wispy beard. It struck Avatak suddenly that there were no old people in this village — none at all, save Pyxeas.

  Crimm smiled at Pyxeas. ‘That’s your great-grand-nephew. He’s called Citeg. He’s evidently a philosopher, like his uncle.’

  Pyxeas, cradling the child, seemed to gather what was left of his strength. ‘Indeed. What a tableau we must make — draw us, Nelo! Draw us for history. Myself the elder, who remembers the world before the coming of the longwinter. You adults who are living through this age of transition. And now this little one on my lap, one of a new generation rising already, who knows nothing of the days before the longwinter, and who will grow up thinking all this is normal — to live on a growstone beach, to trap seals to survive. Thus we humans forget the pain of the past. I sometimes think this is the little mothers’ greatest gift, for otherwise each of us, even this little one, would carry inside his head the burden of ten thousand years.

  ‘But we must not forget. We as a people. Ana, who founded the Wall itself, knew this long ago; we could not forget the great floods of the past, for if we had we would have been doomed to suffer them again. And we did not forget. We wrote down our memories, and organised ourselves, and remembered.

  ‘Now we face the greatest calamity of all — this longwinter. A flood of cold that will last many thousands of years. Yet we understand why it has come about — I, Pyxeas, a handful of scholars in Carthage, and now these brave boys who brought me home. Knowing why it happens is a long way from being able to turn it back, from warming the world! Only the mothers can do that. But if we understand, if we anticipate, then we can plan. But we can only understand if we remember.

  ‘I came here hoping to find scholarship surviving. Even I, Pyxeas, I admit, underestimated the damage done by the long-winter in its first few seasons. But what I have found here is you, Crimm, and your people, and your admirable determination to survive. And so I have modified my goals.

  ‘I have written down my conclusions. I have already sent copies to scholars around the world, from Cathay to Egypt to Carthage. There will be a New Etxelur, built on the Carthaginian shore. That too has copies. But we know the world is in flux, and who knows what will survive of that?

  ‘But here we are, at the Wall, at Etxelur. And I want you to help me now. I have copies of my findings, stored in my trunk, my conclusions set out. I want more copies made, more sets compiled — more trunks filled. I know you can write, Crimm, you others — you haven’t forgotten yet. And I want these copies distributed in safe places the length of the Wall, as far as you can reach.’

  Crimm nodded. Though he must have known what a burden this would be for a folk already on the edge of starvation, Avatak thought, he seemed enthused. ‘We will do this, Uncle. We are Northlanders; this is Etxelur. This is what we are for. And then our children, and our children’s children, will stand guard on the Wall until the day the warmth returns to the world.’

  Pyxeas sighed. ‘Brave words, Crimm. But it’s impossible, I’m afraid. I told you — the ice will see to it.’

  And he spoke to them of what was to come.

  ‘The snow will continue to fall, and none of it will melt. It will gather deeper and deeper, the lower layers compressing to hard ice. At last, around centres to the north of Albia, in Scand, in Asia, in the Land of the Sky Wolf, huge sheets will accumulate. How do I know this? Because this is how it was before. I have seen the marks of it. And this ocean, this ancient land, even the Wall itself, will be entirely covered over, with a great thickness of ice — as thick as a day’s walk! And so you must leave here. Go south, to the edge of the ice. Find a new place to live. For this land is doomed.

  ‘But the Wall will survive. The growstone core is tough enough for that. Riding out the years, resisting the ice as it has already resisted the ocean for millennia. And in its growstone carcass, to be discovered anew by the children of a distant future, will be the secrets of the world. Those children will begin knowing as much as we know now. Who knows what they will go on to learn? And you will leave them your drawings too, Nelo. Let them look upon the faces of their ancestors.’

  This was met by silence, save from the gurgle of a baby somewhere.

  Crimm waved a hand at the growstone village, the sea. ‘You speak of generations yet unborn. We have survive
d. We are proud of what we have built here. Must we lose it all?’

  ‘It is already lost,’ Pyxeas said gently. ‘The land is only ever loaned from the ice; now the ice takes it back. But next time, next time. .’

  ‘Crimm! Aranx!’

  The call came from the west, along the growstone shore. People stood, peered into the sun, hands over their eyes. Crimm waved. ‘I’m here! Ayto, is that you?’

  ‘We found an animal,’ Ayto called, his cry distant, small. ‘A big one. A bear! White, or yellow.’

  Crimm was baffled. ‘A white bear?’

  Avatak was already on his feet. ‘Nanok. I knew he would come.’

  Crimm grinned, took a spear from a pile, threw it to Avatak. ‘After you.’

  A party of hunters quickly formed up. Wielding their spears, tightening their skin jackets around their bodies, they jogged across the growstone shore towards the west, where the bear padded cautiously over a bit of sea ice, silhouetted by the lowering sun.

  78

  The Fourth Year of the Longwinter: Autumn Equinox

  At last word came that ships had been seen, on the eastern horizon.

  The three women stood in the shade of Xipuhl’s house, here at the heart of the city called the Altar of the Jaguar. Xipuhl took Sabela’s hand, and Walks In Mist’s, and the three of them stood together as they had that night in the growstone bar in the Wall, three summers ago. Three women, two of them widows now, for Walks In Mist had lost her husband in the flood that had driven her and her children out of the River City, and Xipuhl’s husband had succumbed to the plague last year — and Sabela might as well have been a widow, for Deraj had been dead to her since his betrayal of her with the nestspill girl.