Stephen Baxter: Iron Winter

Ayto said, ‘Need to be kept on this side, dogs, where they’re useful. We ought to set up a base over here.’

Crimm nodded. ‘For now, suppose you stay with the sled — Himil, was it? Aranx, you two others, stay with him and start preparing the stuff to haul over. And keep an eye out. In the meantime, the rest of you, come on over. Urnrn, Uncle Pyxeas, it’s quite a climb-’

‘And quite beyond me, I’m sure.’ He turned to Avatak.

With practised ease, Avatak bent, took Pyxeas at the waist, and straightened up with the scholar limp over his shoulder. Nelo helped, throwing a blanket over Pyxeas.

Crimm grinned. ‘I can help you.’

‘I’ll be fine,’ Avatak said. And so he would be; he and the old man in his charge had been through worse than this together.

Crimm went up first. He wore heavy mittens and carried a small axe that he used to knock ice off the ladder rungs. When it was his turn, Avatak took care to get a firm grip with hands and feet at each step. He worked his way up, breathing steadily, letting his muscles warm. He had ridden the sled too long, he hadn’t had enough to eat for many days, and he was not in the best condition, but he could do this. Transferring from one ladder to the next was more tricky, trying to support himself on ice-coated, guano-stained ledges, holding the old man securely with one hand while reaching for the next ladder with the other. But he made no slips.

Pyxeas hung limp, passive, utterly trusting. Perhaps he was asleep.

They took a break on top of the Wall. Crimm had sacks of fresh water that he passed around. Pyxeas was set down on a blanket; he seemed more exhausted than Avatak.

The huge sculptures arrayed along the Wall roof, the old monoliths, the tremendous heads of long-dead Annids, the slim spires erected by more modern generations, had mostly survived, though their features were masked by snow. And from here a view of the Northern Ocean opened up. The level of the sea had evidently fallen, but it was still higher than the land, you could see at a glance; the Wall was still serving its most ancient and basic purpose of saving the land from the sea. On the sea itself, a strip of deep-blue water close to the Wall face gave way to thin ice floating in great patches. People were working on the ice, Avatak saw, looking down. One man sat by a mound on the ice that must be a seal’s breathing hole. Further out there was a boat, silhouetted against the brilliance of the white ice behind. These were Northlanders learning to live like Coldlanders, he supposed. Further out still, icebergs, silent and stately as Cathay treasure ships, were trapped in thickening sea ice.

The familiar beauty of it all caught Avatak’s breath. This might no longer feel like home to Pyxeas and Nelo, but it was home to him.

They followed Crimm’s lead and began the climb down the seaward face. They quickly descended past odd cuttings in the growstone, heavily crusted with ice, that turned out to be docks cut into the face, now stranded in mid-air. This face of the Wall, once immersed in the sea, was rougher, just coarsely finished growstone with a heavy coating of now-dead barnacles, and you had to be careful not to scrape your hands as you worked your way down the ladder. Looking down, Avatak saw that at its base the Wall’s vertical face bellied outwards into the sea, making a rough shelf of growstone that extended under the shallow water. People were moving and working down there, on the growstone shore. There were fires built on hearths, racks of meat or fish, boats hauled up, blood splashed on the growstone ground. People looked up, wary. One little boy, a bundle in his furs, clung to his mother, one finger jammed up his left nostril.

Crimm jumped down the last few rungs and went forward into the little village on the growstone. ‘We have visitors! It is Pyxeas the scholar, you remember him, and Nelo, Rina’s son, and their companion Avatak from Coldland.’ The mood of wary suspicion faded, Avatak thought. Or at least he could see no weapons. ‘They have come far to see us — and they have extraordinary tales to tell. And they have dogs! Think what we’ll be able to do if we can breed dogs, Ferri, Yospex. . Muka! Heat some soup and boil up some tea; we will take lunch, I think.’

Avatak reached the base of the ladder and, with some help from Nelo, set Pyxeas down. Avatak saw now that there were caves in the growstone masses, either worn by the sea or deliberately hollowed out, with entrances covered by skin sheets. It was in these caves, evidently, that the people lived.

Crimm led them to one cave, where the covering sheet was drawn back to expose a deep interior, lit by small lamps of what smelled like seal blubber in bowls hacked from ancient growstone. This was Crimm’s home, and the woman who smiled at them as she built up the fire in her hearth was Muka, the wife Crimm had taken since the group had come here to the ocean. But she looked ill to Avatak, her movements listless, her face pale, the signs of a nosebleed on her upper lip, and when she smiled she showed gaps in her teeth.

They set Pyxeas down in the mouth of the cave so he could see the village, the sea, and laid blankets over his shoulders. Soon he had a cup of nettle tea in his hands, and Avatak could smell a rich fish soup warming up. ‘So this is the new Etxelur,’ the scholar murmured. ‘If it wasn’t for bad engineering in the past I suppose it couldn’t exist at all.’

‘Bad engineering, scholar?’

He picked at the coarse growstone surface under the blanket. ‘Look at this stuff. We could never properly maintain the Wall’s seaward face, you know. Oh, we would try, we would lower caissons to work at the face, but only for the shallowest sections. For the rest we would just dump growstone in great sacks down the face and let it harden. And in turn, of course, the sea steadily wore away at the face, exposing the interior. Strange to think this growstone might be a thousand years old — and hidden from the light until quite recently.

‘But if not for that shoddy work, all that growstone thrown down the Wall’s face, more in hope than judgement, this rough shore would not even exist. And these survivors would not be living on the ruins of the past. Ah! My dear.’ Muka brought him a bowl of hot fish soup. ‘A feast fit for the Great Khan himself. But, are you well? I think your nose is bleeding. .’

Crimm tapped Avatak on the shoulder and beckoned. ‘Coldlander. Come. Walk with me, please. Come see how we live. Bring your soup.’

He led Avatak down towards the sea. The growstone and the sea ice were bloodstained, and haunches of seal meat lay around, frosted with ice. Wooden frames stood in rows; fish were drying on the racks, and one big seal carcass. People stared as they went by, especially the children in their furs, who followed Avatak.

‘Don’t mind them,’ Crimm said. ‘We aren’t used to strangers any more. Odd to think that Etxelur was the navel of the world, just a few years ago. We held a Giving this year, of sorts, for old times’ sake. Nobody came save a few of those bastards from the Manufactory, but we drove them off with stones.’

In the blue sky the moon hung over the sea, almost full, startlingly bright. Avatak noticed that nobody was looking at the moon; they turned their heads, cupped hands over their eyes.

Crimm saw he observed this. ‘The moon is our goddess of death. She is bright in the sky, these days and nights.’

‘Pyxeas would say, because she shines in the reflected light of the ice lying on the earth.’

Crimm shrugged. ‘Perhaps. She exults even so. Avatak, I remembered you were travelling with uncle Pyxeas, and I always hoped you would return. All the Coldlanders who were here fled years ago, before we started starving. I’m sure they’re prospering. .’