Iron Winter

‘Yes.’ Crimm looked up. There was an odd, translucent quality to the air, something silver about the light. ‘That’s a snow sky, I think. Early for snow. Not even a month after the equinox!’

Ayto shrugged. ‘Not unheard of. It’s been a funny year from start to finish, thanks to your uncle’s famous longwinter, no doubt.’

‘We’re not going out in that.’

Ayto nodded curtly. ‘Let’s make her secure and get into the warm. At least that’s what I’ll be doing. While you’ll be getting into your famous Annid of Annids.’

‘You’re just coarse. Jealous, and coarse.’

Ayto laughed.

So they called the crew together, those who had turned up, and they got to work on the boat, taking down the two big sails and the main mast, lashing her tight to her berth. They worked fast and efficiently, a competent team. Much of this drill was what they’d go through if a storm approached at sea.

And then, quite suddenly, the first snowflakes came billowing out of the northern sky, big, moist, sticky. The snow clung to the men’s furs and their beards, falling so thick and fast that it quickly started building up on the decking and the berth. The wind picked up, becoming colder, and ice coalesced on the rigging. Crimm worked on, the snow blasting in his face, hands rubbing raw as he hauled at the thick rope, debating whether to dig his heavy mittens out of his coat.

It was universally agreed that the single most spectacular location on the Iron Way east of Northland, if you discounted the run along the parapet of the Wall itself, was the viaduct that spanned the great estuary of the World River. On this viaduct now, heading back west towards Northland, Alxa could peer out of the thick glass windows of her cabin and look north over the ocean, or south over the mighty river itself, its broad body studded with shipping, its banks clustered with docks and towns, the country beyond incised with fields and drainage ditches. But this morning Alxa couldn’t appreciate the view at all.

For one thing the caravan had been stuck here for an hour, right in the middle of the viaduct. The officer who had come to check on her steam-fuelled heating box had told her that the engineers had decided to stop and fit snowblades. Snowblades, this early in the season! What a waste of time — so she’d thought. And yet she had to admit the engineers had been right, for even while the caravan had been waiting the clouds had bubbled up from the north, and the first big fat flakes had come swirling in to slap against the small panes of her windows.

On top of that, her head was still full of the arguments she’d had with her mother about Great-Uncle Pyxeas. As she’d grown to know the old man who had come back into her life at the midsummer Giving, she’d come to admire him hugely. Alxa was fifteen years old. She wasn’t sure what she wanted to do with her life, not yet, and as far as she could see, as the weather closed in on the world, her options were diminishing. But she had felt she wanted to help Pyxeas, if she could. She didn’t understand his developing theories, and she didn’t quite believe his doom-laden warnings of a frozen world — or maybe, a small voice nagged, she didn’t want to believe them. But at least this increasingly frail old man was trying to understand, as he had been for all his life, including the three years he had spent shivering his arse off in Coldland, trying to scry the mechanisms that drove the changing world, with his peculiar muddle of astronomical wobbles and a dance of sea and air.

Then, as a horrible summer ended and a worse winter started to close in, he had shot off to Cathay! She had wanted to go with him, to help him on his journey, but her mother wouldn’t allow it. That had caused a huge row, and in the compromise that emerged her mother had ended up disappearing to Hantilios with Pyxeas, while Alxa had been given the consolation prize of a trip to the World River, as part of an Annid mission that Rina had been supposed to support. It had been a marvellous journey, but it didn’t resolve anything.

And now, trying to get back, here she was, stuck, alone, far from home.

The wind picked up. A new volley of snow slammed against the north-facing side of her cabin, so solid and dense that from her windows she could see nothing but driving flakes coming at her from grey infinity, like one of Nelo’s look-deep drawings. The cabin shuddered and creaked, rocking slightly. She clutched the rim of the padded wooden bench on which she sat, and wondered when the engineers would get the caravan moving again.

When the snow started to come down Mago was taking a walk along the Wall Way, the broad track that followed the foot of the Wall. There was some flooding here — had been for days, it seemed, maybe the big mechanical pumps the Northlanders boasted about weren’t working so well — and you had to watch where you walked.

But the Wall itself loomed above him, busy as ever, crowded, complicated, a vertical city that stretched to left and right as far as he could see. Today was some kind of market day, and stalls had been set up before the row of shops, manufactories and warehouses along the Wall’s lowest run, just wooden posts fixed into slots in the growstone walls and then draped with big awnings of cloth or leather, a simple way to increase selling space. And now, even though the whole area was stuffed with nestspills — pathetic little groups of them, whole families sitting in the dirt, empty hands held out in the cold — the grand folk of Etxelur were out shopping for jewellery and shoes, and dishes and cutlery and pots and pans, and knick-knacks brought here by traders from across the known world.

Mago had been in Northland for four months now, and since his uncle Barmocar had taken so long to close his negotiations over supplies to Carthage of Etxelur’s disgusting salted fish, it looked as if the weather was going to close in and they would be stuck in this dismal lightless hellhole for the winter. Well, Mago wasn’t going to be intimidated by the mighty Wall, even though he knew intellectually that you could take all of Carthage and its environs, wad it up and stuff it inside the Wall’s great carcass, and it would be utterly lost. For, he had learned, the Wall wasn’t quite the symbol of smug unity some Northlanders would have you believe. The Wall was so vast that you had to think of it as being many communities, several cities with separate traditions, even separate customs and dialects, all joined in this one giant structure. And at least once, he had heard it murmured, there had been an intramural war when one of these culturally distinct blocks had defied the will of the rest — a War of the Districts — but you wouldn’t find any reference to that in Northland’s official histories.

The snow fell suddenly, just dropping as if somebody had emptied a tremendous bucket over his head.

Shielding his eyes and looking up, he saw that it was coming from the north, the ocean side, big fat flakes swirling over the Wall’s parapet and billowing down in sheets to the ground below. Already it was gathering on the ledges and protrusions and buttresses of the Wall’s upper surfaces, and on the roofs of the structures below. And Mago had come out without a hat.

He ducked into the nearest shelter, a wide, heavy awning over one of the market stalls. It was no warmer, but it was a relief to have the snow stop falling on his head and trickling down his neck. The awning was wide enough to shelter quite a number of people, and the traders under here were selling some kind of art, he saw, paintings set on stands. He recognised one of them, the kid Nelo, gawky brother of a cuter sister who had, briefly, been assigned to provide Mago with some company during the summer.

Mago wasn’t alone in seeking shelter. Some of those hapless nestspills were filtering in now, old and young, a skinny mother carrying a scrawny baby, people with faces and clothes the colour of the dirt they had been sitting in. One trader, a fat Northlander in a rich fur cloak, tried to block their way. Nelo, the kid, stepped forward, had a quiet word and the man stood aside. A couple of the traders pulled a sheet across the open stall front to keep out the snow. Somebody lit a lamp. The nestspills started to settle to the muddy ground, squatting in little groups. They seemed to be used to squatting, waiting on events, on somebody noticing them and helping them.

The awning above all their heads bulged and creaked softly. A mass of snow was evidently gathering there already.

Mago walked up to Nelo. ‘Please don’t turn me out in the snow,’ he said in a mock whine, using his limited Northlander.

Nelo looked at him, and walked back to his paintings. ‘You’re funny,’ he said in toneless Greek.

‘I’m just teasing you. You did a good turn back there. Of course if that sister of yours — Alxa? — ever fancies doing a Carthaginian a good turn-’

‘Shut up.’

‘All right, all right.’ Mago, trying not to shiver despite the cold that probed at his bare arms and scalp, inspected the paintings. They were just a jumble to him, figures and shapes of all sizes and positions. He squinted at the nearest canvas. ‘Ouch.’

‘What?’