Iron Winter

covered the pallets and operating tables and heaps of blankets and medicine chests. It even washed into the fires in the old hearths, dousing them immediately, Nelo saw.

It was over in a moment. Then came the first groans, the first cries for help. Nelo hurled himself into the drift, digging with his bare hands.

Fresh snow fell, the flakes gliding down from the sky and through the smashed roof, visible in the dim light of the surviving lanterns, fresh snow still falling thick after all these hours and settling on the heaped masses on the floor.

Too fast, Alxa thought. After half the night not moving at all, now we’re going too fast.

Anxious, bundled up, she peered out of the window of her cabin. She could see nothing but flakes of snow, still falling, in the light of her candle. The door was admitting a chill draught, even though she’d tried to stop up the cracks with bits of her own clothing. She had no idea where they were. On the Wall, of course, but the Wall spanned the whole northern coast of Northland. She had no idea how close to Etxelur itself she was, how close to home.

But she did feel that the caravan was rattling along too fast — too fast! After all the trouble the crew had had, all the stops, the times they had to stop to knock ice off the snowblade or to dig out drifts, you would think they would have had more sense than to go plummeting into the dark now. But then, she supposed, the crew themselves were exhausted. They too must be longing to get this nightmare journey over with.

The caravan leaned sideways, to her right, as if taking a bend in the track. For a horrible moment it hovered, as if it might tip over. Then the cabin settled back on its rail with a jolt.

She breathed again. The caravan rattled on.

But the cabin tipped again, once more to the right. This time it was a sickening lean that went on and on, with a squeal of metal on metal. Still holding the candle she hung on to her seat, or she would have fallen against the wall. This is it. . this is it. The cabin was tipping over the seaward face of the Wall. She wondered what would kill her first — the crash itself, the fall into the water, or the ocean’s chill? And what had the final accident been — a frozen point, a rail bent from contracting in the cold? She supposed she would never know-

A fresh jolt knocked her out of her seat, spilling her to the tilted floor. She lost her candle at last, which flickered out. The ride became much rougher, the squeal of metal deafening. Had the cabin jumped the track?

She had to get out.

She scrambled up the sloping roof to the door, and grabbed for its handle. The door, damaged by the officer, fell inwards easily, and the bits of clothing she’d used to stop the gaps fell around her. She grabbed the door frame. One big effort, Alxa. One heave. Don’t think about it. .

She pulled her head and upper body out into the lashing snow. The night was wild, the wind blasting, the noise of the caravan on the track insanely loud. By the few working carriage lights she could see the caravan ahead, scraping along the track with a spark of metal on metal. And the cabins were peeling off the track, one by one, falling into the ocean almost gracefully. Soon it would be her cabin’s turn.

Don’t think about it.

She jumped into the dark.

Fell through the air.

Landed in snow, a deep, soft drift, powdery and uncompacted, but still she hit hard, and the cold stuff filled her mouth and eyes and ears with a rush.

But she was not yet dead.

18

The storm blew itself out overnight.

The next morning the Annids’ priority was to organise teams to dig their way out of the Wall, through snow that lay thick on the roof and was heaped up in deep drifts on the landward side. It took until midday to secure safe access to the roof.

In the early afternoon Ywa and Rina, dressed for the sake of morale in their formal Annid robes, walked up to the parapet. They used a staircase, for the elevators were still out, and would be, along with the heating and running water and other systems, until the mechanikoi could make their repairs to the engines. They emerged into brilliant sunshine, under a clear blue sky. Just here, over Etxelur, the Wall roof had been scraped clean of snow from one face to the other. Further out, Rina could see, only the central track of the Iron Way had so far been cleared; the snow lay heaped up in great banks to either side of the rail. There were no caravans running this morning. Rina saw people plodding through the cleared spaces, dark, slumped shapes in the brilliant light.

‘That sun is actually warm,’ she said now, and she lifted her face to its light. ‘But then it is only early autumn. That will cheer everybody up.’

‘Not the dead or the grieving, it won’t,’ Ywa said tightly. She was drawn, tense, her eyes hollow with exhaustion, and she had a smear of blood on her cheek.

Rina had spent the night huddled in her own apartment in the Wall, simply enduring. Ywa had been out working, trying to stabilise an ever-changing situation, and to save lives. Rina, faintly guilty, realised she had got off lightly But Alxa had not yet come home, and a worm of worry burrowed in her stomach.

They walked to the rim of the parapet and looked out over Etxelur, and Northland. The snow blanketed the land, smoothing out some details but oddly enhancing others, Rina noticed, walls and ridges and gullies picked out by sharp blue shadows. The great waterways, the canals, were plated with ice, shining silver in the sunlight. All over the landscape people were moving, dark huddles trying to force their way through the snow. The snow had drifted in great mounds against the face of the Wall itself, and lay thick on its ledges and walkways and buttresses. From up here the dreadful collapse of the Hall of Annids was clearly visible. People still worked down there, still dug into the bloodied snow.

Ywa said now, ‘What are we to do, Rina? How are we to cope?’

‘We will recover,’ Rina said firmly. ‘The mechanikoi will get the engines started again. We will rebuild. The Coldlanders ought to be a model for us. If they can survive their harsh winters, so can we.’

‘Come, Rina, don’t try to fill me with false hope, that’s not what I need you for. We are not like Coldlanders. We depend on a network of systems, of flows of goods and people. Now all that is disrupted, from the food supply to the drains. Even before the blizzard we were already stretched to the limit. And winter has barely begun, Rina. What if uncle Pyxeas is right that next winter is going to be just as bad, and the next after that?’

Rina said nothing. But now she recalled the advice Pyxeas had given his family. That they must go, flee to the south before the crowd, before it was too late to travel at all. She pushed that thought firmly to the back of her mind, but she knew it would not be forgotten.

‘Mother?’

It was Alxa’s voice, cutting through her thoughts like a knife through soft fat. Rina whirled. A group of battered people, swathed in soaked, filthy clothing, some of them blood-smeared, came limping along the Iron Way track from the east. One separated from the rest and hurried forward, trembling and wide-eyed with exhaustion.

Rina ran to her daughter, who fell into her arms.

19

The First Year of the Longwinter: Midwinter Solstice

Kassu tried to get out of the farmhouse without waking his wife.

It should have been possible. They no longer slept together. Henti had the marital bed, and Kassu a heap of