Iron Winter

have built on studies by the Babylonians and others going back millennia. Please don’t condescend, old man.’

‘Very well. Then you’ll understand that as we travel north and south, the apparent position of the pole star in the sky will change. It would be directly overhead if we were at the north pole, whereas if we travel south-’

‘Yes, yes.’

‘So if I measure the star’s position-’

‘Or you get me to do it,’ murmured Avatak.

‘What’s that? Then I can determine the north-south arc of my position on the world’s spherical surface. Now, knowing the date and that single number, the northern arc, I can use my oracle to predict for me’ — he spun wheels and pressed levers, making the face of the oracle sparkle and shift — ‘the length of the day at this place, and the greatest height achieved by the sun in the sky. I have the boy check these independently with his sightings and his hourglass. The numbers are never identical, but the differences teach us about flaws in our methodology, and indeed the small digressions of the earth from its spherical state, to which you have alluded.’

Jamil studied the oracle longingly. ‘Must be useful at sea, that. And in some deserts I’ve crossed. So you have your position north to south. But what about east-west?’

‘Ah,’ Pyxeas said, enthused. ‘Excellent question, considering it’s you asking it. The oracle also contains, encoded into its dials and gears, a knowledge of eclipses of the sun and moon, both past and future.’ He tapped the face. ‘The little ivory moon slides across the golden sun. . It’s really quite pretty to watch. And by matching the prediction with the reality of an eclipse, I can determine my distance from Northland, west to east. The procedure is a little tricky.’

Uzzia said, ‘Just tell me this one thing. You dream of saving the world. Is it through such means as this, the numbers of the sky?’

‘Yes! Yes, precisely. You see-’

But she held her forefinger to his lips. ‘Another time,’ she said gently. ‘For now, I understand enough. It is late. You two must finish your work, and come closer to the fire, and we will eat and sleep.’

Pyxeas seemed oddly charmed by her motherliness. ‘Another time, then,’ he agreed.

Heading ever east, following the vagaries of roads and passes, they moved out of the fertile plain into a land that was higher, dryer, much more forbidding. Avatak glimpsed mountains, streaked with ice.

They came to a small town fortified by a stout wall of mud-brick. Beyond, the land was more arid still: the town marked the edge of desert. To enter the town the travellers had to pass through a wide gate, horses, cart and all — even the mule. There was stabling for the animals inside, and Jamil immediately did some business, selling off his horses in order to buy — what? Avatak glimpsed a new sort of beast in the shadows of the stables, taller than a horse, stately, foul-smelling. Jamil did keep the mule. Avatak wasn’t sure if he was pleased or disappointed.

They spent a few nights here. The city was full of people of diverse hues, costumes and tongues. Jamil said this was a major meeting point for traders, who routinely travelled half the world for the sake of the profit to be made through the trade between Cathay and other eastern empires and the Continent and Northland to the west. Jamil said he’d half-expected the town to be quieter than usual, because of flood, drought, plague, banditry and the coldness of the year; such things were bad for trade. On the other hand there were more migrants than usual on the trail, coming both ways — people coming from the west in the hope of finding a better life in the east, only to meet people from the east heading west with much the same ambition. These were times of turbulence. Ominously, Pyxeas pointed to heavy shipments of weapons and armour.

Jamil was waiting on a number of other traders to get ready to leave. They would travel together as a caravan — not steam-driven, but a train of beasts and people laden with goods. Avatak had never known that the word for the Northlanders’ dazzling transport system was borrowed from a much older meaning.

The morning came when Jamil’s caravan was ready — and Avatak was introduced to his camel. The beast was extraordinary. It had two fleshy humps on a back covered with dirty brown hair, and a small head mounted on a long neck, and massive teeth, and an oddly disdainful expression. When it walked on its long legs it seemed to stagger, and at first, after climbing clumsily on its back, it was all Avatak could do to hang on. More laughter from his companions.

But after a few days he saw the beast’s advantages. It had broad hoofs that would not sink into the softest sand, and could travel for days without water. And all this with the weight of a man on its back. The stink, though — the stink was high! There were times when Avatak looked back at his mule, plodding through the sand, with almost nostalgic affection.

The caravan worked its way steadily west, a party of thirty people and twice as many camels, a few horses, one mule. The desert was flat, arid, featureless, but on the horizon mountains loomed, capped with ice, a grand setting.

Some days later they came upon their first desert town, at what Jamil called an oasis, a place entirely sustained by a single water spring. There were even trees here, their leaves bright and green against the background of the desert. Jamil had boasted of the melon you could buy that was a speciality of the region, which was sold dried out and cut into strips. But the weather was playing havoc here too; it had been a bad spring so far, too wet remarkably, and the melon crop was poor.

After a two-day stop and a change of animals, Jamil’s caravan moved on.

The deeper they got into the desert the clearer the air seemed, and the dryer, so that it sucked any moisture straight out of Avatak’s skin. But the nights, though: the nights were spectacular, with a dome of star-filled sky framed by the shadows of the mountains on the horizon.

‘Oh,’ said Pyxeas one night, wrapped in his sleeping roll beside the fire, ‘I would give a great deal to have the eyes of my younger self back again, just for one night. A sky like that is the little mothers’ jewel box!’

Uzzia grunted. ‘Your understanding — all that business of the arc of the world, and the numbers, and your little bronze box — does that not diminish your sense of wonder, old man?’

‘Not at all. The deeper the understanding the more the universe connects with one’s deeper self, the more one is enriched. That was the essence of the teaching of Pythagoras, I think. And our destiny is written in the stars, to those who have eyes to read it.’

‘You’re talking about saving the world again.’

‘I’m talking about numbers.’

Jamil shook his head, a shadow against the starlit dark. ‘All this sophistry and philosophising. No man can know the past, scholar. Let alone the future.’

‘Can I not?’ Pyxeas replied sharply. ‘The numbers know the future, and they speak to me — or they will, when I have completed my studies.’

Jamil grunted. ‘Any god would punish such arrogance.’ He walked off to see to the animals.

Uzzia turned away and rolled herself up in her blanket.

Avatak lay silently, with the old man and the stars.

Pyxeas coughed painfully. ‘Oh, this dust.’

The next day, not long after they had set off, a sandstorm hit them. It battered their faces and scraped their eyes, and made seeing and hearing impossible. They had to stop and make a rough camp. They were unable to move further for two days, until the storm blew itself out, by which time they were starting to worry about running out of water.

The camels, however, seemed unperturbed. And the mule expressed no opinion.

27

The first Pimpira knew about the March of the Hatti was when the escaped slave came running out of New Hattusa. But then Pimpira himself was a slave, born of slaves. Slaves were never told anything.

Even of the day they were to die.

It was a spring morning, though it was so cold you’d have thought it was winter. Old snow still lay on the silent fields, and on the ramparts of New Hattusa on the horizon, and in ugly soot-stained heaps in the yard of the master, Kassu the soldier, where it had been scraped up by the slaves. But the problem in the last few days had