Stephen Baxter - Iron Winter

Rails were missing; even some of the rows of wooden slats pressed into the ground to support the rails had been removed. The workers and engineers gossiped in a dozen tongues. Avatak learned that the theft of rails was becoming more common. These were turbulent times, the country full of raiders and nestspills. Though a rail took some organisation to lift and carry away, its iron could be sold on, or turned into weapons, or put to a hundred other uses. And as the weather turned colder the wood from the support beds was valued as fuel. Alternatively, sometimes bandits would lift a rail or two in order to stop a caravan and raid it.

But the problem could be fixed. Avatak was astonished to discover that one of the caravan’s massive freight wagons was loaded with spare rails, and another with wooden slats for the base. The engineers called for volunteers from the passengers to help with the reconstruction, and Avatak, feeling restless after his immobility in the yurt, stepped forward readily. The work, quickly organised, was heavy but easy: lug the rails and supports from the carriages, push the supports into the soft ground, lay the rails down with careful levelling by the engineers with their plumb lines and water gauges, and hammer home massive rivets. The guards kept up diligent patrols.

Soon the track was fixed, the caravan reloaded, and they were off again. They reached a broad, rich valley that they followed east. Pyxeas, earnestly sketching maps, told Avatak that this was the north of a large peninsula called Greater Greece. They reached another sea coast, and at last they were a mere few hours from their destination, where they would spend much of the winter.

Hantilios! The name seemed to be on everybody’s lips, up and down the caravan, and people poked their heads out of the felt-laden carriages to look around and swap bits of gossip. Even old Pyxeas stirred with interest, putting aside his obsessive note-taking. Avatak, who barely understood where he was, felt excitement build.

But Rina merely sighed. ‘Hantilios! I can smell it already.’ She retreated to the back of the yurt.

Hantilios was not like Northland, not like Parisa. It was something new again, to Avatak’s wide-open mind.

It was a city built on islands scattered over a lagoon, crowded, cramped, untidy and nowhere level. The only clear area in the whole city surrounded the palace of the Watchman, an ancient title for the city’s ruler. The islands were joined by bridges of wood and stone, some more sound than others. Alleyways ran between the houses and shops, connecting marketplace to temple to granary to dock, but only foot traffic and the occasional horse used the alleyways, for they were too narrow for anything else — and besides the true roads of Hantilios were the waterways, the natural streams between the islands supplemented by the bold straight lines of artificial canals. Just as the alleys were crowded day and night with people and goods, so the waterways were constantly packed with vessels, some no larger than the simple kayaks used by Avatak’s people, some elegant shallow-draught barges that were driven by poles pushed into the murky water, and a few larger ships that looked as if they could brave the open ocean, so close to each other in the lanes that their hulls rubbed.

Rina warned Avatak not to fall into the water, or to drink it unboiled, for the common belief in Northland was that the Hantilians used their waterways not just as roads but as sewers too, and the place was one big fetid swamp. Well, it wasn’t without its aromas, and the water didn’t look too clean, but it was not as bad as Rina seemed to believe, Avatak quickly learned. Hantilios had once been a Hatti city, endowed as a trading centre by the Hatti King who had allowed the city to be named after himself — ‘Watchman’ was a relic of a Hatti title for a local governor — and even now, though it was fiercely independent, the city had retained more than a trace of the Hatti’s famous obsession with cleanliness.

And in this age, clean or not, the city was busier than it had ever been. Hantilios was ‘the hub of the world’s trade’, as Pyxeas called it, connected to all points by good routes on the water and overland. Now the long drought and the cold winters were stirring people up all across the Continent and beyond, and they all seemed to be flowing through Hantilios. There were parties of Germans from the north seeking passage to Greater Greece or Africa, and Carthaginians from the west trying to secure grain imports from Islamic Egypt, and Hatti and Muslim traders from the east looking for new western trading links as those to the east were increasingly disrupted, and so on. The city was a mosaic of skin tones and costume styles and languages, and in the teeming markets Avatak glimpsed goods from all over the world: spices, drugs, fabrics, weapons, gems, minerals from iron to gold and silver, ivory and wool and ostrich feathers — and slaves, many, many slaves, desolate-looking folk, some whole families together, brought from who knew where.

In this swarming city Pyxeas was looking for one man, a Northlander merchant called Xavu who was to be the guide for the next stage of the journey. They had no address for Xavu; all they could do was put out contacts through traders and various officials and wait for the man to get in touch. As the waiting wore on, Rina grew increasingly impatient. The caravan back to Parisa wasn’t going to wait for long, and when it left Rina intended to be on it, Xavu or no Xavu.

On the third day a messenger, a barefoot boy, brought them a note, inviting them to a meeting. It was not from Xavu. It was from a Hatti, a woman called Uzzia.

Both Pyxeas and Rina were frustrated. But they could see no alternative but to go and meet the stranger, and Avatak accompanied them.

Uzzia’s home, on the outskirts of the city, turned out to be not large but quite grand, a walled compound with a spacious house and garden within. ‘In the Hatti style,’ Pyxeas mused, as a servant showed the three of them in. ‘Just like New Hattusa.’

‘Hmm,’ said Rina, but under her breath as their host entered. ‘And I suppose she is dressed in the Hatti style too, is she?’

‘Welcome!’ The word was in clipped Northlander. Uzzia was dressed like a man, Avatak thought at first, with a tunic belted at the waist, breeches, scuffed knee-high boots, hair tied back in a queue like a Hatti warrior. But this was a woman, aged perhaps forty, with a sturdy frame and a pleasant, weathered face. There was a whiff of the road about her, of dust, of horses. She glanced over her visitors. ‘You are the Northlanders. Welcome, Pyxeas, Rina, and. .’

‘Avatak. The boy’s name is Avatak.’

‘You were not mentioned in the note to Xavu. What are you — a Coldlander?’

‘Yes, lady.’

‘Well, you may be from a cold country but I hope you like hot mulled wine, for that’s what I’m drinking today. Please, please.’

She led them across a courtyard to the house, and into a lounge. The servant who had been at the door briskly brought them drinks, the mulled wine they had been promised, and water, fruit juice. Avatak took a cup of water and sat cautiously on a couch he shared with Pyxeas. Rina took her own chair opposite Uzzia, who sat relaxed on a three-legged stool. Avatak glanced cautiously around. This was a living room, it had a hearth, unlit today, and a rug of woven wool on the floor and a tapestry on the wall. But there was travelling gear heaped in one corner — a leather cloak, bridle gear, a whip — and a desk piled with scrolls and parchments. A working room, then. A quilted coat hung on the back of the door, heavy-looking, practical.

Rina got down to business. ‘We were expecting our countryman Xavu, who was to arrange passage for my uncle and his companion to Cathay.’