Bronze Summer : The Northland Trilogy (9781101615416)

by Baxter, Stephen

  The village was scarcely recognizable. The thick rock fall and the gray ash had changed everything—the colors, the very shape of the land. The houses looked as if they had been stamped on by some tremendous booted heel, the thatch roofs imploded, the big support beams sticking up into the air like snapped bones through flesh. They found the wreck of Okea’s house, smashed and flattened like the rest. Of the people there was not a sign.

  They huddled together, like three ghosts, Tibo thought, gray from the ash, even their ears, their noses, even their lips around pink mouths.

  “They aren’t here,” Medoc shouted over the clatter of the falling rock.

  Caxa pointed to the ruined house. “We could search it.”

  “No,” Medoc gasped. “There’s nothing for us here. Come, come.” He grabbed their shoulders, urging the two of them on.

  They had no choice but to go on, stumbling through the heavy fallen rock along the trail that led from the village down to the sea. But Tibo saw Medoc’s face, ash covered, twisted with pain, and he saw how hard this choice had been for him. Surely his instinct had been to fall on the ruin of the house and dig, dig until he was sure that nobody lived. Medoc was saving them, Caxa and Tibo, or trying to. Was this how it was to be an adult?

  They didn’t try to speak. Tibo could see little in darkness broken only by a faint glow from the horizon, the occasional glow of fire or a burning rock. As they struggled on he utterly lost track of time, of where he was.

  And then they came upon the bodies.

  The three of them stood together, wheezing for breath. At first Tibo thought they were just lumps on the path, shapeless mounds of ash or rock. Then he saw a hand, small and open, sticking up into the air, with a bracelet of broken shell around the wrist.

  “Look,” Caxa said, pointing. “Two adults. Children beneath. Cradled. Your family?”

  “No,” Medoc said, grim. “I recognize the little girl’s bracelet. Okea made it for her. These are some of Adhao’s family. People from the village. Come on.” The three of them stumbled on into the burning dark, heading downhill.

  And they came on another group of people, sitting by the way, huddled under an ox hide.

  “I recognize that hide,” Tibo said, wondering. “It is aunt Okea’s.”

  Medoc forced himself forward, bellowing, “Okea! Vala! Is that you?”

  Tibo saw faces peering from under the ox hide: Vala, Okea, Mi, Liff even little Puli strapped to his mother’s chest. All of them. They all tried to huddle under the ox hide. Medoc hugged Vala. Tibo grabbed Mi and Liff and old Okea. Even Caxa joined in, submitting to hugs from the children.

  “You haven’t got very far,” Medoc admonished. “Look at this!” He extended his wounded, blood-soaked leg. “I climbed down off a mountain with this and I still caught you up.”

  Vala shook her head, angry despite her tension, her fear. “Even now you criticize me, husband. Even now! Will I ever do anything right?”

  Okea held a bony finger to her lips. “Enough. You can only move as fast as the slowest person in the group, and that’s me.” She laid her hand on Liff’s head. “Vala, you go ahead. And you young ones. Take the Jaguar girl. Get to the coast and find Deri, if he’s there—get off the island. We will follow—”

  “No,” Liff protested. “We won’t leave you.”

  “You aren’t leaving us. You’re just going on ahead, to make things ready. Isn’t that sensible?” And she looked them in the eye, Vala, twelve-year-old Mi, fifteen-year-old Tibo.

  Tibo looked at his grandfather, and again he saw the pain of choosing in his face. He said briskly, “If I know my father he’ll be fretting like an oystercatcher over its nest. The sooner we get to the shore and let him get back to fishing the better.”

  Medoc put his heavy hand on Tibo’s shoulder and squeezed.

  They began to stand. Okea stepped out from under the ox hide, and winced as the rock pebbles battered her scalp. Medoc hobbled to join her. Okea waved her arms, as if chasing away ducks. “Go, go!”

  So they set off, gathered around Vala under the ox hide. Without old Medoc and his wounded leg, without the hobbling Okea, they were able to move quickly, wading through the ash and rock. Tibo glanced back once. He saw Medoc and Okea together, clutching each other’s arms, Medoc leaning to favor his bad leg, both bowed under the rock fall. Then, a few paces further on, they were lost in the gloom of ash and smoke.

  The oars scraped over the crust of rock on the ocean. Still the rock fell around them, a thinning hail laced with burning cinders. The journey was a fight, an endless one. All the way in, a hot wind off the land had been blowing at their backs pushing them away. And now the sea itself was surging, huge waves pulsing away from the shore. Deri imagined the land itself trembling as the mountain shuddered and roared, rocky spasms that must be disturbing the vast weight of the ocean.

  Deri wondered what time it was. Evening, maybe. It was a long time since he had seen the sun. And Deri thought he wasn’t hearing right, after that last vast bang.

  Nago grunted and fell forward over his oar. “Oh, by the ice giants’ bones, I am exhausted.” He picked up a water flask, drained a last trickle into his mouth, and threw it over the side.

  Deri gave up rowing in sympathy, though it didn’t seem long since the last break, and he was desperate to get to the shore. But his body ached, his back and legs and shoulders, drained by the effort of fighting the elements for so long.

  Nago twisted on his bench and looked back beyond Deri’s shoulder. “Take a look at that.”

  Deri swiveled to see, and the wind off the shore hit him full in the face, hot, dry, laden with ash and smoke and stinking of sulfur. He narrowed his eyes, held a corner of his tunic over his mouth, and looked back at the island.

  The mountain’s ridged summit was now alight from end to end. It seemed to be spitting fire in great gobbets, balls white-hot that shot upward into the great flat black cloud over the island, a chain of fire connecting the sky to the ground like the bucket chains they used in Northland to drain floods. And all along the length of the ridge he saw a heavier glow leaking out and flowing down to the lower land. Over the rest of the island he saw the more diffuse glare of fires burning—trees, probably, whole forests flaring and dying.

  Somewhere in all that was his father, his son.

  “I’ll say this once,” Nago shouted back. “Because one of us has got to.”

  “Go on.”

  “We’re safer out here. We could row back out, beyond the falling rock and the smoke and the rest of it. Sleep it off, out on the open sea, where it’s safe. And then come back in when the mountain’s finished its tantrum.”

  Deri nodded. “You’re right. One of us did have to say it. Not a family type, are you?”

  “My mother died giving birth to me. My father, your uncle, cleared off quick. I don’t have a family. I don’t have a wife. But there are women I look after.”

  Nago had told Deri more about himself in a few breaths than in all the years they’d worked together. “How many women?”

  “Two. The third died.”

  “And kids?”

  “Some. Of course they support themselves. But they like the fish I bring, and other stuff.”

  “You don’t want to stay out here any more than I do, do you?”

  “No.” Nago hawked, spat out dusty phlegm, rubbed his hands and grabbed his oars. “Let’s get on with it. One thing. If I don’t make it through this—”

  “Don’t talk like that.”

  “If not now, when? I want you to find them. Just ask around, it won’t be hard. Tell them about me. The kids, you know?”

  “Yes. Of course. And you—”

  “I’ll do the same. Goes without saying.” He leaned over his oar. “On my stroke. One, two—”

  And on the word “two” there was another fantastic bang. Another one. The sound was a physical thing, like a pulse of wind that hammered at Deri’s chest as well as his ears.

  Nago was shouting someth
ing. Deri could hear nothing but a kind of whining tone in his ears, and a dull roar from the island. He twisted again to look back.

  The fire rising from the mountain ridge was a solid wall now, burning white. And a band of light, glowing red-white, had formed all along the mountain’s face, below the summit ridge. It was descending, sweeping down the mountain’s flank as Deri watched, much faster than before. As it progressed there were brilliant splashes of light, more forests flashing to flame. It was a wall of fire, sweeping down toward the lowlands.

  Now Nago was pointing again, shouting something Deri couldn’t hear. Deri turned. A wave was coming at them from the land, a big one, a muscular rise that lifted up the floating islands of rock scum.

  Frantically they worked their oars, trying to turn the boat so its prow faced the wave.

  The latest blast was another shove in the back for Tibo, a hot wind stinking of ash and sulfur that sucked the air out of his chest. He struggled to stand, to get a breath.

  With Vala and Caxa and the rest, he was still huddled under the ox hide. They were on a broad track now, crowded with people who forced their way through the rock drifts. This was a confluence of survivors from settlements all over the mountain’s slopes, now funneling down this main route to the harbor, miserable people shuffling along, laden with children and possessions, invalids being carried, old people leaning on sticks. Everybody was walking; it was impossible to get a cart through the knee-deep rock.

  He turned to look back, ducking his head under the hide. The latest convulsion seemed to have cleared the air of smoke and rock, and he could see the mountain rising above the plain. And he saw a band of fire, glowing red-white and billowing, rolling down the slope. It looked almost beautiful, almost graceful. Then he remembered how far he had come that day, how far away the peak must be—and he realized how fast that wall of fire must be descending.

  “Run!” he shouted.

  Nobody moved.

  He looked around at them, Vala’s pinched, anxious face, Liff’s wide eyes rimmed with dust. He realized that none of them could hear a word he said. He grabbed Vala’s arms, shook her, pointed at the mountain. “Fire. That cloud. We have to get to the beach, the sea. It’s our only chance. We have to run!”

  “Run.” He could see her mouth the word. She looked at the mountain dully. Suddenly she understood. “Run!”

  Tibo pulled the ox hide away and dumped it on the rock drifts. They would have to live with the rock fall; the hide would slow them too much. He grabbed Caxa’s hand and dragged her. Vala pushed Liff ahead, and wrapped an arm around Caxa and Mi, and pulled them forward.

  They were among the first in the crowd to understand, to start running. At first they had to push past people still shuffling slowly toward the sea. But a few looked back at the descending cloud, and saw it as Tibo did. They started to run too, dumping bags and scooping up children, running along the track.

  And then it was like a stampede, a great flow toward the water, people no longer helping each other but jostling and pushing and pressing. As he fought to keep his feet, his head aching, every muscle drained, his lungs dragging at the dense, smoky, sulfurous air, Tibo dared not look back.

  Medoc knew the game was over when he saw the glowing cloud.

  As it swept down the slope the band of light was resolving into a wall of gray smoke and ash. It was like a tremendous tide, Medoc thought. He saw it roll over a scrap of forest—it loomed high over the trees, you could see how tall it was—and the trees flashed and were gone, just like that.

  Okea sensed it too. Or maybe she just felt like giving up. They held each other’s arms, propping each other up, breathing hard, their faces grimed with ash and blood. Okea shouted, “We can’t outrun that.”

  “No, Okea, my dear. Not even if we were sixteen years old.”

  “The mountain has shouted many times before. In my lifetime, and yours. And my mother and grandmothers told me of other incidents. There are records too. A priest showed me once. But I never heard of anything like that.”

  “Tibo and Mi and the others can warn their grandchildren, if they survive.”

  “Oh, they will,” Okea said. “They are strong and brave. Vala is resourceful. You made a good choice there.”

  He looked at her. The ash had worked deep into the crevices of her face, making her look even older. “That’s the first thing you ever said about Vala that wasn’t an insult.”

  “Bel was my sister.”

  “Her dying wasn’t Vala’s fault. Or mine, come to that.”

  A roaring noise swelled, like a gathering storm. A young deer ran out of nowhere at them, skidded to avoid them, and ran on downhill, eyes wide with fear.

  “He might be lucky,” Okea said.

  He felt her tremble. Tenderly, he wrapped his arms around her. “Don’t be afraid.”

  She snorted. “You’re pissing your pants yourself.”

  He laughed. “I always liked you, Okea, you old stick, underneath it all.”

  “Well, I never liked you.”

  “Fair enough.” The roaring was so loud he doubted if she could hear him. “I think—”

  It was here, looming high over him, a mass of whirling dust and smoke and whole chunks of red-hot rock, a wall taller than the one that kept out the sea from Northland, a wall rushing down on him at impossible speed, faster than any horse or deer had ever run. When it hit, Okea was dragged from his arms. He was swept up. He was flying, in the light.

  An instant of searing pain.

  The little harbor was just a cleft in the rocky coast, a stretch of black sand. But it was the only half-decent landing spot across much of the south shore of Kirike’s Land. And now it crawled with people, as if it were the greatest harbor in the world.

  But no boats were leaving. The strand was littered with vessels crushed by rockfalls, or buried by the ash, or overturned and smashed, as if driven ashore by great waves. Nothing seaworthy.

  Tibo left the group and headed for the water, shoving his way through the throng on the beach, young and old, healthy and injured, all of them coated with ash and sweat and blood, white eyes glimpsed in chaotic semidarkness. Their shouts were like the cries of gulls, against the background roar of the mountain, all jumbled up and muffled in his damaged hearing. At his feet the rock was piled up in drifts. You couldn’t even see where the waterline was, so densely was the ground carpeted by the rock fall.

  At last he found his ankles bathed in water, the rock scraping his shins. He took one stride, two, out into the water. Its cool was a huge relief for his scorched flesh.

  There were boats on the water, he saw now, and people from the shore trying to get to the boats. But whoever sat in those boats wasn’t necessarily welcoming, and Tibo saw oars and even knives wielded to keep people off. Any one of those boats could be his father’s—or Deri could be far out to sea. He called, his hands cupped. “Father! Deri! It’s me! Father!” He could barely hear his own voice. He kept shouting.

  Strong hands took his shoulders and he was whirled around. It was Deri, coated in ash, his tunic wrapped around his head. Tibo threw himself into his father’s arms. Then they broke. They shouted into each other’s faces, barely able to make out the words.

  Deri pointed out to sea. “The boat’s out there. Nago. We must wade …”

  “I have them. Vala and the kids. The Jaguar girl.”

  They both hurried back to the family from The Black, who had come struggling down the beach after Tibo.

  “Come, quickly,” Deri said. He took Puli from Vala, the little boy was an ash-coated bundle, and grabbed Vala’s hand and pulled her down the beach. Tibo took Liff’s hand and followed. Mi and Caxa came after, helping each other, holding onto each other’s arms. After all this, Mi still had her precious bow over her shoulder.

  Deri shouted at Vala, “Okea? My father?”

  Vala just shook her head, her lips tight. Deri turned away, and kept driving to the sea, through the crowd.

  Soon they were in the water. I
t deepened quickly, and Tibo had to help Liff half wade, half swim. When they reached the boat it was surrounded by a loose crowd of people, a dozen or more, struggling to stand in the turbulent water. Nago, kneeling up in the boat, was wielding his oar, keeping them at bay. When he saw Deri and the others he leaned over and started hauling them out and into the boat, one by one. Vala flopped into the bilge like a landed cod, and she took her soaked child from Deri’s arms.

  Deri grabbed Tibo’s shoulder, and hauled him in so he landed facedown. “Oars,” Deri said, taking his own place. “Go, Nago! You, Tibo—Caxa, Mi—you too, Liff, if you can handle an oar—take one, they’re in the bottom of the boat.”

  Tibo quickly found a place between Vala and Mi. Nago, paddling furiously, had already got the boat turned so it faced away from the land. Tibo got his oar into the rowlock, and started pulling, with muscles already spent by the day’s exertions. At first their rowing was uncoordinated and they splashed more than they pulled, but to frantic commands from Deri and Nago they soon worked into a rhythm, and the boat pushed through a surface skim of rock, out toward the open sea.

  Tibo, rowing hard, looked back at the land. That glowing cloud, now a wall of churning red-hot dust and rubble that spanned the world, was scouring down the hillside to the beach. People ran, making for the sea in a final panic, but the cloud swallowed them. Erased them. And soon it was rolling over the water.

  He rowed and rowed and rowed.

  24

  It did not grow dark that midsummer night in Northland, though the light sank to a deep gray-blue. A phenomenon of this strange northern place, Qirum supposed. Yet to the west there was a deeper darkness, a smear of black as if a pot of pitch had been spilled. Qirum fancied he could see a spark of fire at the heart of it, right on the horizon, or beyond it.

  He saw all this from the Wall, its roof, a walkway studded with huge stone slabs and the tremendous carved heads of dead Annids. Tonight beacons burned bright, all along the Wall’s length to left and right as far as he could see. Senior members of all Northland’s great Houses were up here, from the Annids to the lowly Beetles, still in their Giving finery. All of them anxiously looked west, watching the sea. And on the breast of that ocean were more lights, sparks on blue-black infinity. Boats with lanterns and beacons of their own.