Iron Winter (Northland 3) (5 page)

He paused, and considered. ‘Only that we have the answers already. The cause of the dismal seasons we are suffering, as attested across the Continent too. Our ancestors knew it all along
– or rather, they
remembered.

‘Avatak, give me that scroll – no, boy, that one.’ He took the yellowing scroll, rolled it out, and began to read. ‘In the beginning was the Gap. / The awful interval
between being and not being. / The tension of emptiness caused the creation of an egg, out of nothing. Its shell was ice and its contents were slush and mud and rock. / For an unmeasured time the
egg was alone, silent.’

His gravelly voice, the familiar text, fixed the attention of everyone in the room. Alxa knew these words, as surely did everybody else. This was the mythos of Northland, the oldest, deepest
part: the account of the earliest days, before history, before the Black Crime of Milaqa, before the heroism of Prokyid who defied the Second Great Sea, even before the exploits of Ana herself who
had founded the Wall.

‘Then the egg shattered. / The fragments of its shell became ice giants, who swarmed and fought and devoured each other as they grew.

‘Meanwhile from the slush and mud grew the first mother. She gave birth to the three little mothers, and to their brother the sun, and to the earth serpent and the sky thunderbird. The
first mother tended the ice giants as lovingly as her own cubs.

‘All time might have ended there, with the first mother and her family. / But for the restlessness and envy of the giants.

‘They fought each other for the attention of the mother, and drove off her true children. / At last, sadly but with love, she allowed the giants to destroy her in their wars.

‘Enraged and saddened, they threw the sun in the sky, and cast the little mothers into the dark. / Then they made the world from the mother’s body, the land from the bones of rock
and the mud, the sea from her slush blood. / Their sculpting was violent and rough, which is why the world is such a jumble now, with shaved-off hills and valleys too big for the rivers that
contain them . . .’ He skipped ahead. ‘The three little mothers and the sun had stood by dismayed while the giants fought. / Now the mothers spoke to the sun, and together they woke the
shell of ice, and asked her to lift the weight of death from the world. She did so, and the ice sailed into the sky to become the moon. / The three mothers touched the revealed world, and shaped
the wreckage the ice giants had left behind into a living world . . . I think that’s enough.’ He rolled up the scroll. ‘You see? You see?’ He slapped the scroll to emphasise
his point. ‘It’s all – in – here.’

Rina scowled. ‘What is? By the mothers’ bones, don’t give us children’s stories, man.’

‘Children’s stories? Have you heard of Euhemerus?’

‘Who?’

‘Greek philosopher. Or perhaps Hatti. Died a long time ago. Anyhow
he
believed that our myths are our oldest account of ourselves. They’re not just stories, you see, though
that’s what they teach you in school nowadays.
They describe events that really happened.
Important events, major, world-changing events. That’s why they were remembered, and
written down, and why they became the strange sort of mass memory we call a myth.

‘And any of you could have confirmed the truth of those myths for yourselves, had you gone out in the world and
looked
, as have I, Pyxeas.
If
you had learned to read the
great book of the world, as I and some others have learned. I have seen the shorelines of lakes long vanished. I have seen ridges of rubble strewn across the continents, left by the retreat of
great ice sheets. I have seen valleys gouged by long-melted glaciers. And indeed you could have found the truth in our own Archive. We have records going back millennia – not even the Hatti,
not even the Egyptians go back as far as we do—’

‘Oh, Uncle!’ Ywa cried. ‘Get to the point.
Why
did it start to rain five years ago, all across the Continent?’

‘Because the air got cooler. You must know that the air, invisible all around us, is a jumble of gases. It contains vital air which sustains a flame, and fixed air which is
produced
by a flame, and other inert components. And water! In the form of vapour.’ He glared at them. ‘Come on, come on! I taught too many of you these basic principles; have
you forgotten how to think while I’ve been away?’

Alxa said slowly, remembering her lessons as she spoke, ‘When the air cools, it must drop the moisture it holds.’

He pointed at her. ‘Yes! You have it. The abnormal rainstorms themselves were a sign of the cooling of the air. Then as the rain washed out, the currents of the air were deflected –
pushed away by the gathering cold in the north – and settled into a new pattern of persistent and dry winds from the west.’

‘Which,’ Ywa said, ‘eventually brought drought to the southern lands. Is that what you’re saying?’

‘Yes. But
why
is the air cooling, and indeed the world as a whole? The ultimate cause seems clear . . .’ He dug out a bit of Albian chalk, and rapidly began to sketch on the
plaster wall: a spinning sphere, its axis tilted, swooping on a curved path around a scribbled sun. ‘The earth! The world on which we stand, spinning and sailing through the void in a manner
long ago determined by the Greek scholars brought to Northland by Pythagoras, and measured in detail by generations of astronomers. It’s a very precise art, you see; you can measure a
star’s apparent position in the sky quite exactly . . .’

Crimm the fisherman was a tough-looking man in his thirties. He sat in loose shirt and trousers, arms folded, legs outstretched, and he watched Pyxeas’ performance with a grin. ‘I
got this stuff in my ear all the way back from Coldland. You wouldn’t believe he’s talking about sunshine, would you?’

Ywa seemed baffled. ‘Sunshine?’

‘Yes!’ Pyxeas cried. ‘The world’s spin is not unchanging, you see. The axis wobbles and nods, like a child’s top spinning on a table.
Why
the world behaves
this way is not clear. The Greeks were always divided. Some said the whole cosmic apparatus is like an imperfect machine – rattling like a badly tuned steam engine. Others believe that
consciousness suffuses the cosmos; perhaps the earth makes a deferential dance around the sun, nodding and bowing like a courtier of New Hattusa.

‘But the why is not important. The question is, what difference does this make to us? And yes, fisherman, the difference is the sunshine. No two years are identical. Because of these
features of the planet’s orbit and spin, in this epoch year by year the world is getting
less
sunshine – or to be precise, the strength of the sunshine falling on a given spot on
the world, say here at Etxelur, at a particular time, say yesterday, midsummer solstice—’

Ywa said, ‘So you claim the whole world is cooling.’

‘I could tell you that,’ Crimm said. ‘More bergs every year. And the ocean currents are changing too. Any fisherman will tell you. We have to go further and further south to
find the warm water that the cod like. And as for the catch itself—’ He went to his chair, pulled a canvas sack out from underneath it, and produced dried fish. He passed them around
the group. ‘This is all we’re bringing home.’

Alxa got hold of one, a fish as hard as a wood carving. Sometimes still called by its traditional name of Kirike-fish, this was the main produce of the Northland’s fishing fleets, cod
caught in masses and quickly salted and dried. It would keep for a year or more, and, easy to transport, was the staple of Northland’s provision of food to the rest of the Continent. But the
fish seemed small to Alxa, who had seen fishermen return immense specimens before, some as long as the fishers were tall; this was less than the length of her forearm.

Crimm said, ‘The point is, we’re having to sail twice as far to return half the yield. Before you Annids decide how much to dole out to our continental neighbours, you need to
remember that.’

Now the debate on the Giving Distribution started in earnest.

‘We must keep what we have for our own people,’ said one man. ‘If the trends Pyxeas describes continue, if our water courses freeze, if our trees fail to produce
fruit—’

Rina shook her head. ‘That’s short-sighted. There are always more farmers than us – and some of them are already here. Nestspills from their failed farmlands in Gaira and the
Continent, even from the fringes of Albia. Our guard and the mercenaries might keep some of them out. Far better to buy them off with a little cod than have them come here and consume
everything.’

There were many objections to that, and the discussion grew heated.

Pyxeas was growing agitated. ‘You’re not thinking it through. Any of you.
You’re not thinking it through
.’ But for now, in a swirl of argument, nobody was
listening.

The Coldlander boy was with him, silent and stolid. Pyxeas rested his hand on the boy’s arm. The stranger seemed to sympathise with the scholar, over dilemmas he could surely barely
understand, and the little scene surprised and touched Alxa. Alxa suddenly felt very sorry for this ancient great-uncle, tortured by the knowledge that was evidently eating away inside him,
knowledge he seemed so poor at sharing. She got up and went to him.

Pyxeas looked at her warily, squinting. ‘The light is so poor in here. You’re not Rina, are you?’

‘No. I am Alxa. Rina’s daughter.’ She took his arm and made him sit down, and knelt beside him, holding his hand. ‘Just tell me, Uncle. What is it that we don’t
understand?’

He looked at her with a kind of bleak gratitude. ‘That this isn’t some anomaly. Some variation from the norm. These recent seasons of cold and rain and drought. The astronomical
calculations prove it . . .
This is the future.
It will get colder and colder. This is inevitable. Maybe you can buy off some of the farmers this season. But next summer, when they come
again – what then?’

Still nobody else was listening.

Ywa clapped her hands to call for order. ‘Pyxeas, your contribution has been – umm, invaluable. Crimm, perhaps we can discuss the question of the fish stocks before we must face
our guests again, and decide on the bounty we can afford . . .’

They began to file out of the room.

Pyxeas, abandoned, collected together the scrolls and slates littering the floor with the Coldlander boy.

But Alxa stayed beside him. ‘Uncle,’ she said cautiously. ‘Are you saying you
understand
? You understand why, how, the world is cooling down?’

‘Yes. No! Not quite,’ Pyxeas admitted miserably. ‘There was a divergence.’

‘A divergence?’

‘According to the historical record there was a
warming
, when the world should have been cooling. Lasted up to about two millennia ago. An anomaly. I don’t know what caused it
– don’t know why it ended – I don’t have the numbers to match the anecdotal evidence. Still less do I understand what caused it. And until I know all that, I can’t see
the future with any definitiveness. And that’s why I needed to speak to the scholars of Cathay.’

Much of this went over Alxa’s head. ‘But you quoted the lines about the ice giants. You’re not saying the ice giants were real? And that – what? That they’ll come
again?’

He looked at her, as if seeing her clearly for the first time with his rheumy eyes. ‘No, child. The ice giants weren’t real. People can only describe the things they see in terms
they understand. But the ice – that was real.’

Rina came to Pyxeas now, and stood over him, evidently disapproving. ‘Then what must we do, in your opinion, Uncle?’

‘Leave here,’ he said simply.

‘What?’

‘
Northland cannot be saved.
Leave here – now, if you can, next year, if you must. No later.’

For a heartbeat Rina seemed so shocked she could not speak. Then she asked, ‘Who?’

‘All of you! All the family! And take the treasures – the lore of the ancients, the information in the archives. For that is how we will rebuild in the future, by remembering the
past.’

‘Leave Etxelur? Leave the Wall? What are you saying? Where should we go?’

‘Anywhere that will take you – as far south as you can.’

‘Gaira?’

‘No – further, further!’

Rina seemed outraged. ‘Our ancient family should abandon Etxelur, after so long, all for a little cold weather?’

‘Not just weather. This is the longwinter, child. And it is returning—’

‘You quote myth at us, Uncle. Do you remember the words of the blessed Ana, when the sea first tried to take the land?
We will not run any more.
Single-handed she built a mound to
defy the sea.
We will not run. This is the future! This!
That is what she said, and she inspired those who followed her, and Northlanders have not run from that day to this.’

Alxa stared at Pyxeas and her mother, barely comprehending, struggling to believe any of it. ‘And you, Uncle Pyxeas? What will you do?’

‘That’s obvious, isn’t it? My understanding is still incomplete, my compilation of information imperfect. I have to get it all together while there is still time . .
.’

‘Where will you go?’

‘Cathay, child. Cathay. Oh, do be careful with that slate, Avatak, you clumsy oaf!’

The First Year of the Longwinter: Autumn Equinox

In the end it was a poor summer, and a short one, with the heavy frosts coming even before the autumn equinox.

It had been a summer dominated by the after-effects of the previous winters. Lingering ice masses in the northern lands and in the mountains, though still scattered and separate,
reflected away the sun’s heat. Meanwhile more ice tumbled into the northern ocean from growing, unstable glaciers, and bergs marched steadily south. The sudden injection of so much cold,
fresh water disrupted the great, warm ocean streams, cooling the land further. All this during the summer months, the warmest.

Now summer was over, for better or worse, and the world’s relentless orbital dance took the northern lands through the autumn equinox. Even as humans around the planet gathered to
celebrate this latest moment of astronomical symmetry, the cold closed its grip once more.