Iron Winter (Northland 3) (18 page)

Pyxeas spoke vaguely of great civilisations which had been nurtured in this clement country, watered by tremendous rivers flowing from the north-east. In an arid valley he pointed to the tumbled
ruins of what must once have been a mighty stone city, and pale scratches in the dirt that might have been irrigation channels, now dry and dust-choked. The state of the roads showed that
civilisation still prospered here, Pyxeas said, the roads were for tax collectors and armies, but nowadays the great centres were far from here. Avatak thought that these old eastern cultures could
never have matched the grandeur and antiquity of Northland.

Every few nights Pyxeas had Avatak help him maintain his records. They had a journal where Avatak kept a basic record of the date, the nature of the country, the number of days travelled, and
the distance, which Pyxeas estimated, remarkably, by counting the steps of the horses’ hooves. With sun sightings Pyxeas kept track of their direction of travel too.

And whenever they took a rest day Pyxeas brought out his ‘world position oracle’. This was a gadget of bronze and steel the size and weight of a hefty brick, that he kept wrapped in
soft leather when they travelled. The front and back were covered with dials, little windows that opened and closed, and images of the sun and moon made of gold and ivory. There were wheels to
turn, levers to pull and switches to throw that would make the sun and moon dance against a brass sky. Avatak had seen this thing opened up. Inside was a bewildering mass of brass gears on
spindles. Pyxeas expected Avatak to keep it cleaned and lubricated, though effecting any repairs would be far beyond either of them. To use this device Pyxeas took careful sightings of the
elevation of the pole star at night, and if possible of the noon sun, made by tracking the shadow of a vertical stick. And wherever they travelled he had Avatak measure the hours of daylight, from
sunrise to sunset, using an hourglass filled with fine sand; he wrote down the result every day alongside similar numbers from the oracle.

Jamil and Uzzia were fascinated by the oracle. Avatak could see how they longed to turn the little ribbed wheels and make the little sun and moon rise and fall, to play with it just like every
child who’d ever seen the thing.

On the third rest day, Jamil broke. ‘All right, I give in. What is that gadget, sage? What are you doing with it? And how much do you want for it?’

Pyxeas, irritated at being interrupted as ever, glanced up. ‘You could not afford the fees charged by the Wall
mechanikoi
.’

‘The who? That’s a Greek word.’

“True. And their workshop District is often called “the Greek quarter”. But few
mechanikoi
these days have more than a trace of Greek blood in them! The word is a
reference to the deeper history of philosophy in Etxelur, for it was there that the sage Pythagoras fled with his followers some two thousand years ago, fleeing the reign of a tyrant in his native
Samos. Pythagoras’ essential legacy, you see, is his insight that the universe is based on order; that the cosmic order can be expressed in numbers; and that those numbers can be grasped by
the human mind. It all follows, it is said, from Pythagoras’ observations of the notes of a plucked lute string.’

Avatak was used to discursions like this, and had learned not to listen until the scholar got to the important stuff.

Uzzia, however, boldly laid a hand on the old man’s arm. ‘Pyxeas. We get the point. It took hundreds of generations of string-plucking before some bald-pated genius was able to make
this thing. But
what does it do
?’

‘Why, it enables me to calculate where I am, as I cross the turning globe of the earth. And, in a sense,
when
I am.’ He eyed her, and Jamil. ‘You understand that the
world is a sphere.’

‘Actually a somewhat flattened sphere, according to Hatti astronomers,’ Uzzia snapped back. ‘Who in turn have built on studies by the Babylonians and others going back
millennia. Please don’t condescend, old man.’

‘Very well. Then you’ll understand that as we travel north and south, the apparent position of the pole star in the sky will change. It would be directly overhead if we were at the
north pole, whereas if we travel south—’

‘Yes, yes.’

‘So if I measure the star’s position—’

‘Or you get me to do it,’ murmured Avatak.

‘What’s that? Then I can determine the north-south arc of my position on the world’s spherical surface. Now, knowing the date and that
single number
, the northern arc, I
can use my oracle to predict for me’ – he spun wheels and pressed levers, making the face of the oracle sparkle and shift – ‘the length of the day at this place, and the
greatest height achieved by the sun in the sky. I have the boy check these independently with his sightings and his hourglass. The numbers are never identical, but the differences teach us about
flaws in our methodology, and indeed the small digressions of the earth from its spherical state, to which you have alluded.’

Jamil studied the oracle longingly. ‘Must be useful at sea, that. And in some deserts I’ve crossed. So you have your position north to south. But what about east-west?’

‘Ah,’ Pyxeas said, enthused. ‘Excellent question, considering it’s you asking it. The oracle also contains, encoded into its dials and gears, a knowledge of eclipses of
the sun and moon, both past and future.’ He tapped the face. ‘The little ivory moon slides across the golden sun . . . It’s really quite pretty to watch. And by matching the
prediction with the reality of an eclipse, I can determine my distance from Northland, west to east. The procedure is a little tricky.’

Uzzia said, ‘Just tell me this one thing. You dream of saving the world. Is it through such means as this, the numbers of the sky?’

‘Yes! Yes, precisely. You see—’

But she held her forefinger to his lips. ‘Another time,’ she said gently. ‘For now, I understand enough. It is late. You two must finish your work, and come closer to the fire,
and we will eat and sleep.’

Pyxeas seemed oddly charmed by her motherliness. ‘Another time, then,’ he agreed.

Heading ever east, following the vagaries of roads and passes, they moved out of the fertile plain into a land that was higher, dryer, much more forbidding. Avatak glimpsed
mountains, streaked with ice.

They came to a small town fortified by a stout wall of mud-brick. Beyond, the land was more arid still: the town marked the edge of desert. To enter the town the travellers had to pass through a
wide gate, horses, cart and all – even the mule. There was stabling for the animals inside, and Jamil immediately did some business, selling off his horses in order to buy – what?
Avatak glimpsed a new sort of beast in the shadows of the stables, taller than a horse, stately, foul-smelling. Jamil did keep the mule. Avatak wasn’t sure if he was pleased or
disappointed.

They spent a few nights here. The city was full of people of diverse hues, costumes and tongues. Jamil said this was a major meeting point for traders, who routinely travelled half the world for
the sake of the profit to be made through the trade between Cathay and other eastern empires and the Continent and Northland to the west. Jamil said he’d half-expected the town to be quieter
than usual, because of flood, drought, plague, banditry and the coldness of the year; such things were bad for trade. On the other hand there were more migrants than usual on the trail, coming both
ways – people coming from the west in the hope of finding a better life in the east, only to meet people from the east heading west with much the same ambition. These were times of
turbulence. Ominously, Pyxeas pointed to heavy shipments of weapons and armour.

Jamil was waiting on a number of other traders to get ready to leave. They would travel together as a
caravan
– not steam-driven, but a train of beasts and people laden with goods.
Avatak had never known that the word for the Northlanders’ dazzling transport system was borrowed from a much older meaning.

The morning came when Jamil’s caravan was ready – and Avatak was introduced to his camel. The beast was extraordinary. It had two fleshy humps on a back covered with dirty brown
hair, and a small head mounted on a long neck, and massive teeth, and an oddly disdainful expression. When it walked on its long legs it seemed to stagger, and at first, after climbing clumsily on
its back, it was all Avatak could do to hang on. More laughter from his companions.

But after a few days he saw the beast’s advantages. It had broad hoofs that would not sink into the softest sand, and could travel for
days
without water. And all this with the
weight of a man on its back. The stink, though – the stink was high! There were times when Avatak looked back at his mule, plodding through the sand, with almost nostalgic affection.

The caravan worked its way steadily west, a party of thirty people and twice as many camels, a few horses, one mule. The desert was flat, arid, featureless, but on the horizon mountains loomed,
capped with ice, a grand setting.

Some days later they came upon their first desert town, at what Jamil called an oasis, a place entirely sustained by a single water spring. There were even trees here, their leaves bright and
green against the background of the desert. Jamil had boasted of the melon you could buy that was a speciality of the region, which was sold dried out and cut into strips. But the weather was
playing havoc here too; it had been a bad spring so far, too
wet
remarkably, and the melon crop was poor.

After a two-day stop and a change of animals, Jamil’s caravan moved on.

The deeper they got into the desert the clearer the air seemed, and the dryer, so that it sucked any moisture straight out of Avatak’s skin. But the nights, though: the nights were
spectacular, with a dome of star-filled sky framed by the shadows of the mountains on the horizon.

‘Oh,’ said Pyxeas one night, wrapped in his sleeping roll beside the fire, ‘I would give a great deal to have the eyes of my younger self back again, just for one night. A sky
like that is the little mothers’ jewel box!’

Uzzia grunted. ‘Your understanding – all that business of the arc of the world, and the numbers, and your little bronze box – does that not diminish your sense of wonder, old
man?’

‘Not at all. The deeper the understanding the more the universe
connects
with one’s deeper self, the more one is enriched. That was the essence of the teaching of Pythagoras,
I think. And our destiny is written in the stars, to those who have eyes to read it.’

‘You’re talking about saving the world again.’

‘I’m talking about numbers.’

Jamil shook his head, a shadow against the starlit dark. ‘All this sophistry and philosophising. No man can know the past, scholar. Let alone the future.’

‘Can I not?’ Pyxeas replied sharply. ‘The numbers know the future, and they speak to me – or they will, when I have completed my studies.’

Jamil grunted. ‘Any god would punish such arrogance.’ He walked off to see to the animals.

Uzzia turned away and rolled herself up in her blanket.

Avatak lay silently, with the old man and the stars.

Pyxeas coughed painfully. ‘Oh, this dust.’

The next day, not long after they had set off, a sandstorm hit them. It battered their faces and scraped their eyes, and made seeing and hearing impossible. They had to stop
and make a rough camp. They were unable to move further for two days, until the storm blew itself out, by which time they were starting to worry about running out of water.

The camels, however, seemed unperturbed. And the mule expressed no opinion.

The first Pimpira knew about the March of the Hatti was when the escaped slave came running out of New Hattusa. But then Pimpira himself was a slave, born of slaves. Slaves
were never told anything.

Even of the day they were to die.

It was a spring morning, though it was so cold you’d have thought it was winter. Old snow still lay on the silent fields, and on the ramparts of New Hattusa on the
horizon, and in ugly soot-stained heaps in the yard of the master, Kassu the soldier, where it had been scraped up by the slaves. But the problem in the last few days had been not the snow, but the
rain. By night Pimpira and his family had been forced to huddle in corners to avoid the freezing-cold water leaking into their shabby hut, and outside the rain pooled on ground that was still
frozen just under the surface if you pushed your finger into it, and froze hard in great sheets. Pimpira’s father said it was an extraordinary sight, something he’d never seen in all
his years. Every year, every month, every day, brought a new sight, something that nobody had ever experienced before in the history of the world, he said. Pimpira’s father was thirty-one
years old.

Despite the freeze, this morning, as every other morning at this time of year, the slaves were sent out into the fields for another day of struggling to plough the hard earth,
goading the surviving oxen. As the morning wore on they would be joined by more workers, paid free folk coming out from the city, desperate for work and food. Pimpira, fourteen years old, knew
little about crops, about wheat and rye and barley – with his deformed foot he was rarely sent out into the fields – but he couldn’t see how the seeds were going to take in ground
frozen hard as rock. But they all went through the routines of the season anyhow, and the master seemed to see that they didn’t need whipping to do it. For what choice was there, if they were
to have any chance of food later in the year?

As usual, Pimpira was sent away from the rest. The boss told him to dig out an old storage pit under the floor of a demolished barn. It was the kind of job that suited him; he was strong in his
upper body, but he wasn’t too mobile because of his foot. It was tough labour, smashing the frozen earth into chunks that he could pitch out of the hole, but as he hacked away with his rusted
iron shovel, he soon started to warm up.