The deeper they walked into Cathay the more densely it was farmed. But workers thin as shadows toiled at dried-up fields, there was only a scattering of green even though the harvest must soon be due, and the bare ground was turning to dust that blew over the roads.
And, in the middle of the farming country, they came upon Mongol camps. These were not princes of Daidu and Karakorum, or traders, or border guards; these were common folk, herders like their ancestors, with their horses and a few cows and fat-tailed sheep. They lived in yurts, battered houses with their door flaps all set to face the sun at midday, like rows of shabby flowers.
The travellers stopped one night, close to an extensive camp. The nomads showed respect for the paiza of the Khan, and the travellers were invited to stay in a yurt, but they declined, wary of imposing on what might be a fragile hospitality. They sat by their own small fire, eating a bit of mutton and sheep’s tail they had been given by the Mongols, and watched the conquerors of the world at play. The adults wore colourful clothes, trousers, tunics and hats. Their children ran around and shouted and fought as children always did. They seemed to have slaves, plenty of them, skinny-looking folk of Cathay who went barefoot. Mostly the slaves cooked and cleaned, but Avatak glimpsed one girl writing something down, as dictated by her owner. As the night drew in the adults gathered in a circle and danced, and sang, and passed around cups of drink and smoky pipes.
Pyxeas grunted. ‘This dancing, the pipes and the strong stuff they seem to be drinking — this is the old culture, when spirit men would talk to their sky god and the ninety-nine junior deities he controlled. The spirits of the deep steppe, coming back again. When times are hard, people go back to what they know best. The Mongols own half the world, but even they are in thrall to the weather.’
He was dismissive. But something in the way the Mongols celebrated their evening reminded Avatak of home, his own people, nomads too. He said nothing.
‘Once they would not have been here at all,’ Uzzia said. ‘They would have driven their herds to the summer pasture in the hills; it must be too cold up there this year. And they would not have camped in farmland at all; this is not the steppe. But the land is so dry — it is as if the steppe itself is shifting south, and driving the people with it. There will be conflict. Probably there is already. The farmers will lose, of course.’
‘And the city dwellers, in the short term,’ Pyxeas said. ‘But in the long term everybody will lose, when the Mongol empire turns on itself. Once, you know, a khan threatened to obliterate Cathay altogether, and use the land to pasture his herds. Perhaps in time to come — and not very far in the future — that promise will at last be fulfilled. But the irony is that nomadic herders will be far better suited to the conditions that will prevail than city folk, than civilisation.’
‘If war is coming to this place we must press on to Daidu.’
‘Mmm,’ said Pyxeas. ‘And will we find safety there?’
In the morning they moved on once more, working their way ever further east, passing towns and villages and more dried-out farmland. They had to use the scholar’s paiza to get past more layers of guards, more walls thrown across the roads, even this deep into the heart of the country.
Gradually the road grew busier, and Avatak noticed that much of the traffic was heading the same way they were, eastward — traders and merchants with wagons full of goods, but an increasing number of ordinary folk, adults with children, old folk riding carts, horses heaped with furniture on their backs, even rolls of carpet. Nestspills, folk from failed farms or imploded towns, all heading, Avatak supposed, in search of the succour of the emperor.
And at last, late one morning, they crested a rise and faced the formidable walls of Daidu.
Pyxeas leaned down from the mule’s back and murmured to Avatak, ‘Coldlander, to reach this place you and I have travelled almost a third of the world’s arc. And we got here before the equinox — just. Quite an achievement.’
Uzzia snorted. ‘Just remember this mule has come almost as far, and he’s not bragging about it. Come now, let’s see if your magic paiza will get us through this last set of gates.’ She gave the mule’s stirrup a tug, and let the animal lead the way towards the city.
39
The Second Year of the Longwinter: Autumn Equinox
At the Wall, more snow had fallen overnight, and indeed it was still falling as the morning broke.
Thaxa needed to see Ontin, to ask him to come treat some fishermen caught by the cold. The doctor’s lodge was only a short walk down the Etxelur Way from the Wall, but Thaxa wasn’t going to try it until the snow eased. So he made himself comfortable in the linen shop that fronted his Wall-front home. He told his servant, Moerx, to let the fire in the hearth die down a little. You were always aware of the need to save fuel, even kindling. The shop cooled quickly, and he wrapped himself up in layers, leggings and trousers and waterproofs, a couple of tunics and a heavy sealskin coat, three layers of socks over which he would later pull his hide boots. Then he sat in a window seat in his house’s south-facing wall, and looked out, watching the snow fall.
The house was in one of the most prized neighbourhoods in Greater Etxelur. A modern stone structure backing onto chambers cut into the face of the Wall itself, it directly faced the big, rich estates that in this age encrusted the old earthwork called the Door to the Mothers’ House — and of course, being south-facing, it was blessed with good light for much of the day. Rina had always loved this house. It was a legacy of a favourite uncle and a place she had often visited as a child. She had spent an inordinate amount of time and money on it to make it a home for their two children as they had grown, as well as an establishment suitable for one of the richest and most powerful couples in Etxelur. Yet it had been a lonely place for Thaxa this summer, since his family had gone south.
Well, that had been the deal they had struck back in the spring, he and Rina, during those difficult, sleepless, guilt-ridden nights. She would get the children to safety; he would stay behind and help prepare the Wall and Etxelur and all of Northland for the difficult days to come. That was the deal, a compromise between their primal need to protect their children and their wider duty. Rina was, after all, an Annid. And if the weather didn’t let up next year, if Rina couldn’t come home, then Thaxa would make his own way south to join her. But after the summer they’d had here, and now the horribly early winter, Thaxa was starting to wonder what would be left of the world by the spring, and whether he would ever be able to get as far as Carthage.
And still the snow fell, big fat flakes of it from an eerie sky, a sky that glowed with a kind of silver light. Perhaps it looked so odd because the autumn sunlight was strong; he was used to snow in the low light of midwinter, not at this time of year. He had loved snow as a boy, for it had been rare then. Close to the Wall snow would often not fall at all, for the great bulk of growstone blocked the northern winds, and its heat warmed the land at its foot. Experts like Pyxeas said the Wall created its own weather. Yes, once he had loved the snow, when it was a rare treat. Now he hated it, like the rest of Northland, he suspected. The only consolation was that the chill was never too deep while the snow was actually falling. It was in the clear nights between the snowfalls that the cold really bit deep, and walls could crack and windows frost up and the piss in your night pot would freeze over, and old people and little babies would die in their beds.