Iron Winter (Northland 3) (16 page)

‘Thank you, sir—’

‘Shut up.’

TWO

The Second Year of the Longwinter: Spring Equinox

All across the northern lands people watched for the end of a terrible winter. The scholars examined their almanacs, the farmers eked out the last of their stores, the
hunters prepared for the migration of the animals they preyed on, and the warriors sharpened their blades in advance of the new campaign season
.

But this year was to be like none that had gone before, not for ten thousand years. This year the growing masses of ice on land and sea, cloaked with cold air, would significantly divert the
currents of air and moisture that flowed over them. This year the spring winds would not come from the balmy south-west, but from the chill north. There was a spring equinox. The planet’s
orbital geometry mandated it. But there was no spring
.

As the cold endured, all across the northern hemisphere, people began to look to the warm, to the south. Only to find, usually, that there was already somebody there
.

The river rose, and rose. Walks In Mist, standing by the warehouse, drenched by the rain that had lashed down for days, watched in astonishment as the cargo ship lifted on
the rising water until it stood high over its jetty.

This was the busiest inland port on the greatest river in the continent of the Sky Wolf. She had goods on that boat, cotton, a load of copper brought up from the south. She was supposed to be
signing for them. The unloading hadn’t even begun. And still the ship rose up, as the river swelled with run-off. People stood around laughing at the sight. Even on the ship itself the crew
were laughing, standing by the rail, watching the world descend beneath them. One man mockingly clambered on the rail, arms spread wide in the rain. Every one of them was soaked to the skin, dark
hair plastered flat, clothing heavy with the wet; she couldn’t hear their voices over the hiss of the rain in the standing water.

Walks In Mist had never seen such a sight. She had an odd, sharp memory, of sitting in a bar in the Northland Wall with her friends, with Xipuhl and Sabela, both of them far away now. A
midsummer evening when the wind had turned chill, and people had laughed at that too.

Now, with a great creak of strained wood, the ship
tipped
. The laughter grew uncertain.

The man who had been clowning on the rail fell. Tumbled in the air, arms waving as if he was trying to swim. Hit the jetty with a sound like a sack of meat dropped onto growstone. Didn’t
move.

For a heartbeat people stood there, shocked to silence. Then some of the bystanders ran forward.

And behind them the ship tilted further, rolling out of its basin towards the dock. The strain on the hull was increasing: wood groaned, and ropes parted with a crack. The people who had gone to
help the fallen man moved back, uncertain. A main mast snapped like a toothpick.

Walks In Mist saw what was to come, with terrible clarity.

She ran from the river, through the rain. She jumped back on her cart and ordered the driver to take her home, fast. The llamas trotted away, bleating in complaint at the rain that lashed into
their eyes.

Behind her, wood cracked noisily, and there was a groan like a falling giant, and screams. Walks In Mist did not look back.

Her family home was just outside the great wall that contained the heart of the River City, a ceremonial district studded with holy mounds. The house was small and neat with a
steep, thatched roof, and plastered walls painted red and white. Walks In Mist had always liked its modesty; it was far more expensive, far more well built than its deceptively simple design would
suggest. But this spring the small fenced garden was coated with the dust that had blown in during the long summers of drought. The solitary chestnut tree was withered. The plasterwork was faded by
the relentless sun of the drought years, and stained by windblown dust.

And now, the rain had come. Walks In Mist had lived in this place all her life. She knew the weather. Every summer it rained; every summer the rivers rose – every normal summer anyhow. But
the summers had been dry for years. Now, at last, the rain came, but this was spring, not summer, and never had she known such rain.

The River City was close to the confluence of several great rivers, including the mighty Trunk that ran all the way to the ocean in the south. The city’s wealth came from the rivers and
the trade goods they brought through this place, copper and mother of pearl from the south, buffalo and elk hide from the north, more exotic goods from over the oceans. But anybody who had grown up
here knew that the rivers were also a danger, when the rain came heavily. And the rain had never been as heavy as this.

She approached the house at last. Through a curtain of rain she could see the Mountain of the Gods looming beyond – not a mountain at all, of course, but man-made, the greatest of more
than a hundred mounds in the ceremonial district, an artificial mountain built on a flood plain to celebrate the divine generosity that had produced such a rich country as this. The view of the
Mountain of the Gods inside its walled compound was one of the house’s best features. But today water was pouring down the mound’s stepped slopes, and as she watched a chunk of one face
broke away, disintegrating. Flood-plain clay was not an ideal material for building mounds, she had once learned from a visiting Northlander engineer; now he was proven right.

The cart pulled up by the house. She told the driver to wait, and ran to the door. Her children were both inside, she found to her relief, Bear Claw and Yellow Moon, fifteen and ten. They were
playing chess on the cotton carpet, with the expensive set she had brought back from Northland last year. The rain hammered on the thatch roof.

‘Where’s your father?’

Yellow Moon glanced up, her pretty face pulled into its usual pout. They had named the child for the colour of the moon in the dry, dust-storm spring in which she had been born.
‘Out,’ the girl said. ‘Mother, you’re dripping on the carpet.’

‘Where did he go? Did he say?’

‘He might have gone to the fields.’ The family owned stretches of the maize fields around the central city.

She heard a noise now, beyond the hiss of the rain. A dull roar, like the breaking of a wave on an ocean shore. It was a sound she had grown used to in Northland, but in River City, in the heart
of the continent the Northlanders called the Land of the Sky Wolf, she could not be further from the ocean.

‘Up,’ she snapped. ‘On your feet.’

‘What?’

‘We’re leaving, now.’

‘After the game,’ said Yellow Moon.

‘Now!’ Walks In Mist grabbed her hand and hauled her to her feet. ‘For once will you do as you’re told?’

The girl started to cry.

Bear Claw got to his feet, eyes wide. He was tall for his age, with a fine black stripe painted down the centre of his face. ‘You’re frightening her.’

‘Good. Come on.’

Bear Claw followed slowly. ‘What about our stuff? I’ll get our cloaks—’

‘No!’ And she took his hand too, and dragged them both out through the door.

Outside the rain still fell hard and vertical, and that roaring noise was louder, coming from the north. People were emerging from their houses to see, curious, some in hooded cloaks, most with
bare heads, all peering to the north, shouting questions to each other.

Walks In Mist thanked the gods of sky and earth that the cart was still there, that the miserable-looking driver hadn’t driven away, or run off. She shoved her children aboard, and
clambered up herself. ‘Go,’ she snapped at the driver.

‘Where to?’

‘That way!’ She pointed. ‘South! Just drive south, as fast as you can.’

The cart rolled off, the wheels sticking in the muddy ground. They made faster progress once they were on the hardtop main track. They hurried south, heading for the open fields away from the
ceremonial district, clattering past more neat houses, mounds bearing shrines and gifts for the deities. People were leaving now, grabbing bundles of possessions, dragging children, pulling cloaks
over their shoulders, loading carts. Soon, Walks In Mist feared, all fifteen thousand people in the town, said to be the largest city in the Continent, would be fleeing, or trying to. Probably most
would leave it too late. She wished she knew where her husband was.

And now Bear Claw pointed back, the rain running down his face. ‘Look!’

Water was breaking over the city’s northern wall. It spilled across the flat countryside, pink and muddy, washing around the holy mounds. Walks In Mist saw people fleeing, crying out,
falling before its advance. Swarming like ants, before the water that rushed over them.

Walks In Mist clung to her daughter, who had been crying since being taken away from her chess game. ‘Go,’ she yelled at the driver. ‘Go, go!’

It was still snowing on the morning of Rina’s appointment with the Carthaginian noble Barmocar, in his apartment in Old Etxelur. She walked alone to the old town, with a
hood over her head. She’d tried to keep this assignation secret. She was, after all, intending to betray her fellow Annids, cousin Ywa, and most of her family.

As she walked the snow fell steadily, as it had for days, not like the Autumn Blizzard and the storms that had followed, but a slow, unending, dispiriting fall that gathered relentlessly on the
ground. Her cloak wrapped close, she passed workers laboriously clearing away yet another night’s fall from the paths. You could see where the new snow was piled up on top of the old, some of
which, dirty and layered with muck, hadn’t melted since the early autumn.

When she reached Old Etxelur she looked back at the Wall, where people were working steadily to repair the damage the winter had done. The Hall of Annids was a huge wreck on its rows of
supporting pillars, open to the air. All across the Wall, vast sections had been abandoned as people retreated to core areas and revived older, more robust systems, digging out chimneys, repairing
ancient rainfall-trap water supply systems. This was spring! They had all waited for the equinox, and marked the end of winter with lavish celebrations – well, as lavish as possible. And all
it had brought was yet more snow, yet more cold, as if the world itself had lost its way.

She turned, pulled her cloak tighter, and walked on.

In the anteroom to his lavish rented apartment in Old Etxelur, Barmocar received her graciously enough. His wife Anterastilis was at his side, the two of them resplendent in
purple cloaks. The household was in turmoil, however, as the merchant prince’s servants packed everything up in preparation for the long trip back to Carthage, postponed for half a year since
Barmocar had been caught by the early snow, like so many others.

He was clearly surprised when she asked him to dismiss his servants, and more surprised when she made her blunt request.

He actually laughed. ‘You’re serious. You want me to take you to Carthage. You, and who else?’

‘Just my children – the twins, Nelo and Alxa, you know them.’ This of course meant the abandonment of the rest of her extended family. Ywa herself was a distant cousin. But to
take more would have been like pulling a thread; the whole tapestry would unravel. No, just herself and her children, for now. Not even Thaxa, her husband, would come, not this time; he would
follow later, they had agreed. And if things changed – well, the future would have to take care of itself.

‘And when we get to Carthage, we will take you into our home.’ Anterastilis was a heavy, expensively coiffed woman. Her Northlander was stilted, but her tone was sharp as an icicle.
‘Is that what you’re saying?’

Rina squirmed; the woman was clearly enjoying this, and was going to make her suffer. ‘Perhaps initially. Give us somewhere we can live, at least at first. A start in your society. Work
for my children, a place for me.’

Anterastilis actually laughed at her now. ‘“A place.” You could join the Tribunal of One Hundred and Four, perhaps!’

‘I can pay my way—’

‘Perhaps you can. Perhaps not.’ Barmocar turned to his wife. ‘My dear, you made a note of what this lady of Northland said to me at the Giving last year. Would you mind reading
it back? You know the part I mean.’

Anterastilis took a piece of paper from a desk and unrolled it carefully. ‘“Good Prince Barmocar, I am confused. This tale of woe you recite – are you here to beg for bounty?
Begging like these others, the Franks and Germans and the rest, these ‘poor rudimentary farmers’, as I have heard you describe them? And a bounty from us, whom I have heard you describe
as ‘a thin godless smear of ignorance and incompetence on an undeveloped landscape’?’”

‘I recall what was said,’ Rina said precisely.

‘Then you recall mocking me. In front of the Giving gathering – in front of the whole world.’ He did not sound angry, merely analytical.

She didn’t bother to deny it.

‘And now you sit before me, begging me for shelter.’

‘I do not beg. I can pay you for your trouble. It will be worth your while.’

‘Are we to haggle, as if over a box of your disgusting salted fish? Tell me, then. Tell me what you have that I could possibly covet.’

‘My family owns extensive lands in Northland. Also properties in New Etxelur, and in the Wall. Many of these are in my own name. I could transfer—’

Again he laughed, cutting her off. ‘Madam, I am not the fool you take me for. You are abandoning Northland yourself! What value do you imagine your property has?’

‘Other forms of wealth, then. Gold. Silver.’ In fact she hadn’t expected him to take property, and had already been converting some of her holdings into portable wealth –
at ruinous prices, for she wasn’t the only one with the same idea.