China Miéville: Iron Council

For all their help with this book, I owe my deepest gratitude to Emma Bircham, Mark Bould, Andrew Butler, Mic Cheetham, Deanna Hoak, Simon Kavanagh, Peter Lavery, Claudia Lightfoot, Farah Mendelsohn, Jemima Miéville, Gillian Redfearn, Max Schaefer, Chris Schluep, and Jesse Soodalter. Huge thanks also to Nick Mamatas and Mehitobel Wilson, and to everyone at Macmillan and Del Rey for all their work.

Though as always I am indebted to countless writers, for this book I must especially thank William Durbin, John Ehle, Jane Gaskell, Zane Grey, Sembène Ousmane, Tim Powers, T. F. Powys, and Frank Spearman.

In years gone, women and men are cutting a line across the dirtland and dragging history with them. They are still, with fight-shouts setting their mouths. They are in rough and trenches of rock, in forests, in scrub, brick shadows. They are always coming.

And in years long gone someone stands on a knuckle of granite, a clenched-up mountain fist. Trees cover the peak as if a spume of forest has settled. He is above a green world while feathered and tough-skinned fauna speck the air below him and pay no mind.

Up past pillars of batholith is the path he has made, and abutting it tarpaulin bivouacs. There are men and fire, little neutered cousin to the conflagrations that fertilize woodlands.

The man apart is in wind that frosts this old moment in place forever while breath cold-congeals on his beard. He consults mercury sluggish in its glass, a barometer and inch-marked cord. He locates himself and the men with him above the belly of the world and in a mountain autumn.

They have ascended. Columns of men have faltered against gravity, tight-knotted dangling in the lee of silicate walls and corners. Servants of their equipment, they have carried the brass, wood and glass oddments like dumb nabobs across the world.

The man apart breathes in the moment long gone, listens to the coughs of mountain animals, the beat of jostling trees. Where ravines are he has plumbed lines to bring them to order and know them, has marked them and annotated his drawings, and learning the parameters of the peneplain or open-sided corries, the tributary canyons, creeks, rivers and fern-scruffed pampas, he has made them beautiful. Where pines or ash are tethered and he notes the radius of a curve, the land humbles him.

Cold takes six of his men and leaves them white and hard in make-do graves. Githwings rinse the party with blood, and bears and tenebrae leave them depleted and men broken and crying unfound in darkness and mules fall and excavations fail and there are drownings and indigens who trustlessly murder but those are all other moments. In this long-gone time there is only a man above the trees. West, mountains block his way, but in this moment they are miles yet.

Only wind speaks to him, but he knows his name is raised in abuse and respect. His wake is disputation. In the built hilltops of his city his endeavours split families. Some say they speak for gods and that he is proud. He is an insult on the world’s face and his plans and route are an abomination.

The man watches night colonise. ( It is a long time since this moment. ) He watches the spits of shadows, and before he hears the tin clatter of his men at supper or smells the cooked rock vermin he will eat with them, there is only he and the mountain and the night and his books with renderings of everything he has seen and measurements of these disinterested heights and his want.

He smiles not cunning nor sated nor secure, but in joy because he knows his plans are holy.

A man runs. Pushes through thin bark-and-leaf walls, through the purposeless rooms of Rudewood. The trees crowd him.

This far in the forest there are aboriginal noises. The canopy rocks. The man is heavy-burdened, and sweated by the unseen sun. He is trying to follow a trail.

Just before dark he found his place. Dim hotchi paths led him to a basin ringed by roots and stone-packed soil. Trees gave out. The earth was tramped down and stained with scorching and blood. The man spread out his pack and blanket, a few books and clothes. He laid down something well-wrapped and heavy among loam and centipedes.

Rudewood was cold. The man built a fire, and with it so close the darkness shut him quite out, but he stared into it as if he might see something emergent. Things came close. There were constant bits of sound like the bronchial call of a nightbird or the breath and shucking of some unseen predator. The man was wary. He had pistol and rifle, and one at least was always in his hand.

By flamelight he saw hours pass. Sleep took him and led him away again in little gusts. Each time he woke he breathed as if coming out of water. He was stricken. Sadness and anger went across his face.

“I’ll come find you,” he said.

He did not notice the moment of dawn, only that time skidded again and he could see the edges of the clearing. He moved like he was made of twigs, as if he had stored up the night’s damp cold. Chewing on dry meat, he listened to the forest’s shuffling and paced the dirt depression.

When finally he heard voices he flattened against the bank and looked out between the trunks. Three people approached on the paths of leaf-mould and forest debris. The man watched them, his rifle steadied. When they trudged into thicker shanks of light, he saw them clearly and let his rifle fall.

“Here,” he shouted. They dropped foolishly and looked for him. He raised his hand above the earth rise.

They were a woman and two men, dressed in clothes more ill-suited to Rudewood than his own. They stood before him in the arena and smiled. “Cutter.” They gripped arms and slapped his back.

“I heard you for yards. What if you was followed? Who else is coming?”

They did not know. “We got your message,” the smaller man said. He spoke fast and looked about him. “I went and seen. We were arguing. The others were saying, you know, we should stay. You know what they said.”

“Yeah, Drey. Said I’m mad.”

“Not you. ”

They did not look at him. The woman sat, her skirt filling with air. She was breathing fast with anxiety. She bit her nails.

“Thank you. For coming.” They nodded or shook Cutter’s gratitude off: it sounded strange to him, and he was sure to them too. He tried not to make it sound like his sardonic norm. “It means a lot.”

They waited in the sunken ground, scratched motifs in the earth or carved figures from dead wood. There was too much to say.

“So they told you not to come?”

The woman, Elsie, told him no, not so much, not in those words, but the Caucus had been dismissive of Cutter’s call. She looked up at him and down quickly as she spoke. He nodded, and did not criticise.

“Are you sure about this?” he said, and would not accept their desultory nods. “Godsdammit are you sure? Turn your back on the Caucus? You ready to do that? For him? It’s a long way we’ve got to go.”

“We already come miles in Rudewood,” said Pomeroy.

“There’s hundreds more. Hundreds. It’ll be bastard hard. A long time. I can’t swear we’ll come back.”