Iron Winter

40

They made it back to the Wall, just, through the closing mouth of the latest blizzard.

Despite the storm, Thaxa couldn’t help but glance with pride at his shopfront as they struggled up to it. He was still well stocked with exotic linen and cloth, from Albian wild-cattle wool to Cathay silk and Carthaginian purple, even fine-spun wool from the llamas and alpacas of the lands across the Western Ocean — precious indeed, since trade across the ocean had been sundered by the icebergs. But nobody was shopping today, and the snow was heaped up in banks before the shopfront.

An archway on the left-hand side of the shop led to a courtyard laboriously swept clear of snow, surrounded by a cluster of buildings: a hall to the left, a pantry and kitchens to the right, and the main living quarters at the rear, with parlours, bedrooms, bathrooms, privies, and the household shrine to the little mothers. All this backed onto the Wall, which loomed over the shop. Thaxa’s property actually extended into the Wall itself. There were chambers cut into the growstone, much older, abandoned now, behind the elaborate structures that had been built onto the face — Thaxa himself wasn’t sure what there was back there.

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.’

‘Will you have folk eat words?’

Crimm sighed. ‘Take it easy, man.’

Ayto looked at him sternly. Then he said, ‘Can I have a word with you?’

Crimm hesitated. Then he stood, nodding apologies to the Annids, to Thaxa. The two fishermen left the room.

Xree and Ywa talked on about their Archive project. And Ontin, the doctor, spoke slowly and patiently to Aranx, who, realising he was going to lose a limb, was beginning to weep.

Ayto led Crimm through a smaller, windowless parlour that ran off from the back of the room they’d been in, took an oil lamp from the wall, and then went on through another dusty door, down a darkened passageway, and into another sitting room, or office. There was a desk piled with curling paper, a smell of must and dust, and an unlit hearth like a gaping black mouth.

‘I did some exploring back here earlier, before you showed up with Aranx.’

‘It’s not too cold in here,’ Crimm observed.

‘We’re already inside the Wall. Old Thaxa’s property goes on further into the growstone. I don’t think anybody knows how deep these old chambers go, or how much Thaxa actually owns. But according to Moerx, the servant, there should be another door at the back here. .’

The rear wall was covered by a tapestry bearing stylised Northland icons, concentric circles with stabbing radial lines. Ayto pulled the tapestry down to expose a heavy wooden door. This wasn’t locked, but was stuck in its frame, perhaps the wood had swollen, and it took the two of them to shift it.

Then another corridor. And another room and corridor, and another.

And they emerged into a much larger space. Ayto lifted the lamp high. The walls were just rough growstone, the floor bare and roughly laid, the roof so high it was almost out of sight, but Crimm saw that it was well constructed, of vaulted domes of growstone. He thought he saw a glimpse of daylight from the roof. He pointed. ‘An air vent?’

‘I think so. Moerx said there was a hearth — look, over there.’

Crimm walked a bit further, away from the circle of light cast by the lantern. The hearth looked very crude, just a heap of bricks in the corner, set up under the vent. There were shadowy heaps in the corners and by the walls: bits of canvas maybe, wooden pallets. And Crimm made out stains on the walls, greenish-grey, that ended in a band some distance above his head.

‘Must be an old warehouse,’ said Ayto. ‘Something like that.’

‘No, I don’t think so. Look at those stains. It looks as if water was kept here. It’s some kind of huge cistern. Or was. Maybe the system it was part of was abandoned. And then it’s been reused, by somebody camping here — whoever built that hearth.’

‘That might have been a long time ago. And then it was forgotten, and the Wall has sort of grown out around it. Moerx told me about it because I asked him how deep the house went into the wall. Just being nosy. He’s looked around before — well, you would, wouldn’t you? When he described this place it gave me an idea.’

‘Hmm. I don’t always like your ideas, Ayto.’

‘We could use this place.’

‘There’s certainly some firewood we could use-’

‘No.’ Ayto walked over to him, his footsteps echoing in the empty space. ‘You’re not thinking big enough, my friend. Listen to me. You heard the rubbish the Annids talked back there. Rations that are going to run out. How they can’t even keep out the Gairans and the Albians and other useless stomachs. How they’re wasting time copying old tide tables onto clay tablets.’

‘What’s your point?’

‘The famous Annids can’t cope. Like you, they aren’t thinking big enough. That’s obvious. This is Northland! That’s what they think. The whole world speaks our language, and accepts our scrip. We won’t be beaten by a few flakes of snow! But we will be beaten, my friend, when the cold closes in and the food runs out. The Annids can’t face it, the reality.’

‘And what’s that, according to you?’

‘When people get hungry enough they’ll rip each other apart, and the Wall.’ He shrugged. ‘You know it as well as I do. And after that there’ll be no food left for anybody, and we’ll all die.’

‘So. .’

‘We can’t save everybody. So we save ourselves.’

‘In here?’

Ayto glanced around, at the doors leading off from all the walls, the air vent. ‘Think of it as a fortress, like the Carthaginians would build. We bring them in here.’

‘Who?’

‘Our families. Friends, lovers. Whoever we want — up to a limit. We’d have to work out what that limit is. We bring in enough food to see us through the winter.’

‘You mean steal it.’

‘Just our share. Salted fish, dried vegetables, stuff that will keep. And water — we’d have to think about that. Storage tubs, or maybe there’s a working pipeline, if you’re right that this is an old cistern. Firewood. Everything we need to stay alive. And weapons. We establish some kind of perimeter, out from here, in all directions. Barricade it, defend it when they come.’

‘Who?’

‘The starving mob. We fight them off, until they die of cold or hunger.’

‘You’re talking about Northlanders.’

‘Northlanders can grow hungry. And when they do, they’ll behave like everybody else. It’s this or die,’ Ayto said.

Crimm, overwhelmed, felt as if he was having some waking dream, in this dry, echoing place, by the light of the single lamp, talking like this while just a short walk away the Annid of Annids, his lover, was drinking nettle tea and discussing the preservation of old books. But this was Ayto, who always had been a much tougher thinker than Crimm, always the first to call the warning about the coming storm, when the rest wanted to carry on for just a little more catch. Even so. .

‘It seems dishonourable.’

Ayto shrugged. ‘Thaxa’s wife has already cleared off to Carthage, without telling anybody. How honourable is that? And she’s not the only one, by the way. Look, we don’t have to do this yet. It’s a fallback, that’s all. Every smart man has a fallback. Are you in, or not?’

Crimm wondered if he could betray Ywa. She was Annid of Annids; he could not discuss this with her. ‘I need to think.’

‘Don’t take too long.’

‘Or what?’

‘Or you might find yourself on the other side of the barricade, my friend.’ And Ayto began to prowl around the old cistern, sniffing, scattering dust, peering up at the walls.