Stephen Baxter - Bronze Summer

And they came on another group of people, sitting by the way, huddled under an ox-hide.

‘I recognise that hide,’ Tibo said, wondering. ‘It is aunt Okea’s.’

Medoc forced himself forward, bellowing, ‘Okea! Vala! Is that you?’

Tibo saw faces peering from under the ox-hide: Vala, Okea, Mi, Liff, even little Puli strapped to his mother’s chest. All of them. They all tried to huddle under the ox-hide. Medoc hugged Vala. Tibo grabbed Mi and Liff, and old Okea. Even Caxa joined in, submitting to hugs from the children.

‘You haven’t got very far,’ Medoc admonished. ‘Look at this!’ He extended his wounded, blood-soaked leg. ‘I climbed down off a mountain with this and I still caught you up.’

Vala shook her head, angry despite her tension, her fear. ‘Even now you criticise me, husband. Even now! Will I ever do anything right?’

Okea held a bony finger to her lips. ‘Enough. You can only move as fast as the slowest person in the group, and that’s me.’ She laid her hand on Liff’s head. ‘Vala, you go ahead. And you young ones. Take the Jaguar girl. Get to the coast and find Deri, if he’s there — get off the island. We will follow-’

‘No,’ Liff protested. ‘We won’t leave you.’

‘You aren’t leaving us. You’re just going on ahead, to make things ready. Isn’t that sensible?’ And she looked them in the eye, Vala, twelve-year-old Mi, fifteen-year-old Tibo.

Tibo looked at his grandfather, and again he saw the pain of choosing in his face. He said briskly, ‘If I know my father he’ll be fretting like an oystercatcher over its nest. The sooner we get to the shore and let him get back to fishing the better.’

Medoc put his heavy hand on Tibo’s shoulder and squeezed.

They began to stand. Okea stepped out from under the ox-hide, and winced as the rock pebbles battered her scalp. Medoc hobbled to join her. Okea waved her arms, as if chasing away ducks. ‘Go, go!’

So they set off, gathered around Vala under the ox-hide. Without old Medoc and his wounded leg, without the hobbling Okea, they were able to move quickly, wading through the ash and rock. Tibo glanced back once. He saw Medoc and Okea together, clutching each other’s arms, Medoc leaning to favour his bad leg, both bowed under the rock fall. Then, a few paces further on, they were lost in the gloom of ash and smoke.

The oars scraped over the crust of rock on the ocean. Still the rock fell around them, a thinning hail laced with burning cinders. The journey was a fight, an endless one. All the way in, a hot wind off the land had been blowing at their backs pushing them away. And now the sea itself was surging, huge waves pulsing away from the shore. Deri imagined the land itself trembling as the mountain shuddered and roared, rocky spasms that must be disturbing the vast weight of the ocean.

Deri wondered what time it was. Evening, maybe. It was a long time since he had seen the sun. And Deri thought he wasn’t hearing right, after that last vast bang.

Nago grunted and fell forward over his oar. ‘Oh, by the ice giants’ bones, I am exhausted.’ He picked up a water flask, drained a last trickle into his mouth, and threw it over the side.

Deri gave up rowing in sympathy, though it didn’t seem long since the last break, and he was desperate to get to the shore. But his body ached, his back and legs and shoulders, drained by the effort of fighting the elements for so long.

Nago twisted on his bench and looked back beyond Deri’s shoulder. ‘Take a look at that.’

Deri swivelled to see, and the wind off the shore hit him full in the face, hot, dry, laden with ash and smoke and stinking of sulphur. He narrowed his eyes, held a corner of his tunic over his mouth, and looked back at the island.

The mountain’s ridged summit was now alight from end to end. It seemed to be spitting fire in great gobbets, balls white-hot that shot upwards into the great flat black cloud over the island, a chain of fire connecting the sky to the ground like the bucket chains they used in Northland to drain floods. And all along the length of the ridge he saw a heavier glow leaking out and flowing down to the lower land. Over the rest of the island he saw the more diffuse glare of fires burning — trees, probably, whole forests flaring and dying.

Somewhere in all that was his father, his son.

‘I’ll say this once,’ Nago shouted back. ‘Because one of us has got to.’

‘Go on.’

‘We’re safer out here. We could row back out, beyond the falling rock and the smoke and the rest of it. Sleep it off, out on the open sea, where it’s safe. And then come back in when the mountain’s finished its tantrum.’

Deri nodded. ‘You’re right. One of us did have to say it. Not a family type, are you?’

‘My mother died giving birth to me. My father, your uncle, cleared off quick. I don’t have a family. I don’t have a wife. But there are women I look after.’

Nago had told Deri more about himself in a few breaths than in all the years they’d worked together. ‘How many women?’

‘Two. The third died.’

‘And kids?’

‘Some. Of course they support themselves. But they like the fish I bring, and other stuff.’

‘You don’t want to stay out here any more than I do, do you?’

‘No.’ Nago hawked, spat out dusty phlegm, rubbed his hands and grabbed his oars. ‘Let’s get on with it. One thing. If I don’t make it through this — ’

‘Don’t talk like that.’

‘If not now, when? I want you to find them. Just ask around, it won’t be hard. Tell them about me. The kids, you know?’

‘Yes. Of course. And you-’

‘I’ll do the same. Goes without saying.’ He leaned over his oar. ‘On my stroke. One, two-’

And on the word ‘two’ there was another fantastic bang. Another one. The sound was a physical thing, like a pulse of wind that hammered at Deri’s chest as well as his ears.

Nago was shouting something. Deri could hear nothing but a kind of whining tone in his ears, and a dull roar from the island. He twisted again to look back.

The fire rising from the mountain ridge was a solid wall now, burning white. And a band of light, glowing red-white, had formed all along the mountain’s face, below the summit ridge. It was descending, sweeping down the mountain’s flank as Deri watched, much faster than before. As it progressed there were brilliant splashes of light, more forests flashing to flame. It was a wall of fire, sweeping down towards the lowlands.

Now Nago was pointing again, shouting something Deri couldn’t hear. Deri turned. A wave was coming at them from the land, a big one, a muscular rise that lifted up the floating islands of rock scum.

Frantically they worked their oars, trying to turn the boat so its prow faced the wave.

The latest blast was another shove in the back for Tibo, a hot wind stinking of ash and sulphur that sucked the air out of his chest. He struggled to stand, to get a breath.

With Vala and Caxa and the rest, he was still huddled under the ox-hide. They were on a broad track now, crowded with people who forced their way through the rock drifts. This was a confluence of survivors from settlements all over the mountain’s slopes, now funnelling down this main route to the harbour, miserable people shuffling along, laden with children and possessions, invalids being carried, old people leaning on sticks. Everybody was walking; it was impossible to get a cart through the knee-deep rock.

He turned to look back, ducking his head under the hide. The latest convulsion seemed to have cleared the air of smoke and rock, and he could see the mountain rising above the plain. And he saw a band of fire, glowing red-white and billowing, rolling down the slope. It looked almost beautiful, almost graceful. Then he remembered how far he had come that day, how far away the peak must be — and he realised how fast that wall of fire must be descending.