Iron Winter

Much of the property was shut up now, for the difficulty of heating it. But a light gleamed in the window of the largest parlour, and Thaxa led Ontin that way.

The parlour was deliciously warm, thanks to a roaring fire in the hearth. Thaxa and Ontin stripped off their heavy outdoor clothing in a small anteroom. They were later than Thaxa had planned. The fishermen were already here, some of the crew of the lost Sabet, Rina’s cousin Crimm, his partner Ayto — and Aranx, who was nursing a badly damaged hand. Ywa was here too, Annid of Annids, sitting close to the fire with Xree, another cousin of Rina and another Annid. Moerx was serving drinks, a hot nettle tea, a speciality of Thaxa’s — hot to banish the cold, and made of nettles as a kind of expression of sympathy for all the ordinary Northlanders who had nothing but nettles to keep them alive. Thaxa smiled easily at his guests. This was what he had always been best at: hospitality, a kind of talent for making people welcome, letting them relax.

Ontin went straight to the fishermen, who sat around a table looking slightly out of place. Aranx held out his hand, wrapped clumsily in a strip of cloth. ‘Got it wet, didn’t I? Another lad fell in a lead, through a crack in the ice. Didn’t notice it was wrong, it got so cold I couldn’t feel it anyhow.’

Ontin carefully peeled back the bandage, to reveal swollen, broken flesh. A stink of corruption filled the room.

‘Sorry, doctor.’

‘Don’t apologise. It sounds as if you were a brave man.’ Ontin took a scalpel from a deep pocket, and began to probe at the damaged flesh.

‘Don’t know about brave. We got old Tabilox out of the water all right, but he didn’t make it back.’

Ayto said evenly, ‘The bravest thing you did, mate, was to go tell his widow when you got back. And his kids.’

‘We miss our boats, that’s the truth. We’re rubbish out on the ice, cutting holes and that. We’ll never be Coldlanders.’

Ywa said, ‘All of Northland appreciates what you are trying to do for us. And you’ve managed to bring home more than a bit of fish.’

Xree smiled. ‘We were talking about you earlier. Of your marvellous return from the dead, so to speak, a couple of months back, when the Sabet went down. I was actually there on the Wall when you showed up. Walking out of the cold, dragging that improvised sled with your injured crewmate and the carcass of that seal, and your families waiting for you at the dock. Remarkable.’

Crimm sounded embarrassed. ‘We didn’t do anything but live through it.’

‘Oh, believe me,’ Ywa said, ‘you did more than that. You brought back a bit of good news, for once, and you’ve no idea how rare that has been over the last year.’

‘But I didn’t bring back my ship,’ he said heavily. ‘Or one of my crew. Or any of the catch, save the little bit we’d been eating ourselves. What kind of achievement is that?’

Thaxa saw Ywa flinch. Crimm backed off, reddening. There was an awkward silence.

And for the first time Thaxa saw there was some kind of connection between the two of them, the Annid of Annids and the weather-beaten fisherman. Well, whatever it was they were entitled to it, and he suppressed his curiosity.

Crimm said gruffly, ‘Anyhow, you’re here to talk about the future, not the past.’

Xree sighed. ‘True enough. The problem’s simple to state. We have to get through the winter.’

‘The issue being-’

‘The issue being too many people, and too little food. .’

As they spoke Thaxa discreetly refilled their teacups. At least you couldn’t accuse his family of consuming more than their fair share. One reason he hosted these meetings was as a kind of polite, unspoken penance for the absence of Rina and the children. Everybody knew they had gone off down south, and had sneaked away in secret. You could see it as a betrayal, or as an example of devotion to a wider cause, to leave your home and risk the unknown to reduce the pressure on the Wall’s resources, depending on how generous you felt. But as Rina wasn’t the only one to have fled, the social disgrace he had feared had never materialised, not quite. And people had more to worry about than that.

‘In fact,’ Xree was saying, ‘there are more people showing up all the time, from Northland and beyond, even Gairans, even Albians.’

‘Turn them away,’ Ayto snapped. That won him a few glances of distaste.

‘We try,’ Ywa said. ‘But there are always more. And some have a claim to be let in — some of them have relatives in the Wall. Those we do turn away may simply become bandits and even more of a problem than if we had fed them in the first place.

‘Then there’s the issue of the food itself. There’s more of your salted fish, Crimm, and other comestibles in the storehouses than you might think,’ she said softly. ‘But even so, not enough.’

‘How much “not enough”?’

Xree said, ‘Unless we cut the ration again we’ll run out before the midwinter solstice.’

Crimm nodded. ‘Then you must cut the ration.’

Ywa said, ‘I’ve asked Ontin and the other doctors to come up with recommendations on the absolute minimum people can survive on. We must get as many through the winter as possible, and hope that the spring is kinder.’

Ayto said, ‘And if it isn’t? No, forget that. If we don’t survive the winter it won’t matter. You may have to go further.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘If there’s not enough to go round, stop the ration altogether for some. The very sick, the already dying.’

There was a shocked silence, at another blunt remark from the fisherman.

‘People won’t stand for it,’ Thaxa said instinctively.

‘They may have to.’

‘We have considered such options,’ Ywa said grimly. ‘Believe me. But even if we could make it acceptable — how do you choose, fisherman? Do you cut out everybody over fifty, say? Or the very young, on the argument that their mothers can always have more babies?’

Xree said smoothly, ‘In any event, food is only one problem. There’s also the question of heating. .’

It had been a month since the last of the Wall’s great engines had seized up, of a lack of fuel, of lubricating oil, of damage caused to the piping by the cold. Thaxa knew the first such engines had been developed by the school of engineer-philosophers founded by emigre Greeks. Those primitive mechanical beasts had solved Northland’s perennial problem of a shortage of manpower; Northlanders’ numbers were comparatively few, for they did not farm, and they did not keep slaves. But the Wall had become dependent on its engines, and now they had failed. If the heating couldn’t be restored the Wall might not remain habitable. And in the longer term too, there would be problems out in the country; the whole of Northland was an artificially managed landscape, dependent on labour: human, animal and mechanical.

Xree and Ywa spoke of efforts to find fuel sources in the Wall itself and its environs. Even the wooden frames of buildings like this house of Thaxa’s might be sacrificed, the inhabitants taken into the growstone womb of the Wall. The Wall would have to consume itself to stay alive, thought Thaxa.

‘Then there’s the problem of the Archive,’ Xree said.

Ayto looked puzzled. ‘The Archive?’

‘It is rather exposed,’ Ywa said. ‘It is housed in chambers built into the forward face of the Wall. It was done that way, by our predecessors two centuries ago, to provide a light and airy environment for the scholars to work in. Now we’re working through a programme of moving the Archive back into older housing deeper within the Wall, the growstone core.’

Xree said brightly, ‘And we’re taking the opportunity to convert some of the more fragile records to permanent forms. On baked clay for instance.’

Ayto leaned forward in his chair. ‘I can’t believe I’m hearing this.’

Crimm said warningly, ‘Ayto-’

‘People are starving, freezing to death, dying out on the sea, all over. And you’re worried that your famous Archive might get a bit of damp?’

Xree bristled. ‘The Archive is at the centre of our cultural identity.’