‘Not in my village.’
‘Well, that’s that. You mustn’t blame old Pyxeas. It’s just that in you he’s only looking for one thing, a certain kind of intelligence, or an openness to new ideas, new experiences — no, not even that. My Northlander is still poor; I don’t have the words to express it. A capacity for wonder, perhaps. That’s what he sees in you. Although he was unable to see the young betrothed man, with a life and responsibilities of his own. Well — what’s done is done, and here we are leaving it all behind, for better or worse.’ She took his hand as they walked; her skin was warm, leathery, a worker’s hand. ‘You may see her again, if we come this way when we return.’
‘Is that likely?’
She sighed. ‘The future is even more unknowable than usual these days. I do know how you feel.’
‘How can you?’
‘I am in the same position.’
He thought that over. ‘You have a lover in Akka?’
‘And others elsewhere. My life consists of long stays in places separated by tremendous journeys, and I seem to give away my heart at each stop. Each of my loves knows about the rest.’
‘And in Akka — who is he?’
‘She,’ Uzzia said with a smile. ‘In my case, it’s a she. But that’s our secret. Ah, we arrive, and there is Pyxeas looking irritable, and Jamil looking greedy, and his horses looking like lazy overpriced nags. Thus it always was. Jamil!’ She strode forward boldly towards the men. ‘Years of famine and you’re still as plump as ever. .’
Avatak watched her, bewildered, comforted.
Jamil wasn’t all that plump, Avatak thought, although he had the slack face of a man who had once been plumper. He was perhaps forty, about Uzzia’s age, and he wore a loose white jacket, trousers whose legs billowed as he walked, and a small round hat. He had bright merry eyes, as if he was used to laughing at the world.
He was arguing with Pyxeas about the luggage. As Uzzia approached he held his hands out, comically imploring. ‘You explain it to the wise gentleman, please, fair Hatti princess. How these great boxes and bundles will break my beasts’ poor backs!’ He spoke passable Northlander.
Pyxeas stood by a cart laden with his goods, with a protective hand on the heaviest trunk. ‘And you can tell this fellow that I won’t leave a shred behind, not a page, not a bottle of ink. I spent months in Etxelur rendering this down, the wisdom of centuries crammed into a box. If I’m forced to leave any of it behind then you may as well leave me too, leave me to desiccate in the desert like a dead mouse!’
Uzzia sighed. ‘Gentlemen, gentlemen. Can’t we come to some compromise?’ She spoke softly, in Greek to Pyxeas, and Arabic to Jamil. It did not take long for her to bring about peace. Avatak marvelled at her skill.
Meanwhile Avatak cautiously approached the beasts. The Arab had four horses, two of which were being harnessed to his cart and two were loose, and a single mule, already laden with a towering load wrapped in bundles of cloth.
His dispute settled, Jamil walked up, gaze lively, curious. ‘You’re the ice boy, yes? I heard about you.’
‘Yes. I’m from-’
‘If you’re not busy give me a hand with this trunk. It needs to go in the cart.’
They soon formed up for the journey. Pyxeas was to ride on the cart, which was driven by Jamil. For now Uzzia would walk, leading the spare horses.
‘And me? What must I do?’
Jamil grinned. ‘You, boy, can bring the mule.’ And he cracked a short whip and drove the cart away.
The mule, though small in stature, was a slab of muscle, with a sour smell and a blank, contemptuous stare. Dwarfed by its load it simply looked back at Avatak when he tried to coax it forward, and was immovable as a rock when he tried to drag it. It was only when the cart and horses were almost out of sight that the animal deigned to follow, and even then at its own pace, stopping where it would, to piss or shit or nibble the sparse grass.
In the days that followed Jamil and Uzzia took turns with the mule. Uzzia bribed it with bits of fruit, while Jamil noisily beat it with his crop. Avatak was the worst at getting anything out of the beast, and they laughed at his efforts. But he developed a grudging respect for the mule’s unshakeable sense of independence, even as it plodded along under its unreasonable load. Maybe in this company, he and the mule had a lot in common.
And he buried his resentment of their laughter. After all, he came from a country where only dogs obeyed man, where every other beast of air, sea or land was utterly beyond human control, and was maybe the better for it. He dreamed of being able to handle a dog team on the ice, at some point in this expedition. Then they would see what the mastery of an animal, a unity of human will with beast strength, really meant.
26
From Akka they turned away from the coast and headed roughly east, crossing higher ground.
At first the country was quite arid, and they followed dusty trails between water courses. They rarely saw other people, once they’d left the city and the crowded coastal strip. They did come across a few abandoned settlements, collapsed houses of mudbrick and straw, the boundaries of fields given up to the dust. The days were hot, the sun high. Uzzia gave Avatak a thick oil to rub into his skin to protect it from the sun’s heat.
When they stopped they made camp in a kind of yurt carried folded up on the back of the mule. The yurt was cramped, uncomfortable. Some nights they preferred to sleep outdoors by the fire, all save Pyxeas. Jamil and Uzzia complained of the cold at night, and woke up in wonder staring at the heavy dew or even ground frost. They had never known such cold, they said, not here. Avatak, though, slept deeply and well, enjoying the kiss of ice on his cheek.
After some days they descended to lower ground, and the nature of the country changed, becoming moister, grassier. This was a country that had evidently been spared the worst of the drought, and they followed trails and a few better-maintained roads through small communities of wary but more or less friendly farmer folk, who grew fruit trees and raised herds of sheep and cattle. At this time of year new lambs clustered around their mothers, cautious of the visitors. Avatak watched them curiously. There were no sheep at all in Northland, and the cattle here were fat, sullen beasts with snow-white hides, nothing like the tall, splendid aurochs, the wild cattle of Northland.
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.