Iron Winter (Northland 3) Read Free

children into the subtle arts of compromise, negotiation and flattery. Besides, fifteen was seen as a pretty mature age in most
parts of the world; if she were Frankish or German Alxa would probably already be married off, already worn down by childbirth and never-ending work in the fields. The twins could look after
themselves – at least, Rina thought, they could in normal times. But at the back of her mind there was a niggling awareness that there was little normal about this particular solstice.
    This was Northland’s midsummer Giving, the heart of the year at the heart of the world, and a ceremony of great age – older than the pyramids of Egypt, far older than the upstart
empires of Carthage and New Hattusa. In the great library of the Wall Archive, documentation existed to prove that antiquity. The world flocked here at midsummer as seabirds flocked to their
nesting cliffs in the spring; it always had and always would, for this was Great Etxelur, Navel of the World, and the central and oldest of the Wall’s many evenly spaced Districts.
    And, in the midsummer light, the Wall itself swept from east to west, horizon to horizon, separating land from sea, order from chaos, as it had done for more centuries than anyone save the most
learned scholars could count. It was a thing of layers, built on an ancient core of rubble and mortar and ultimately, it was said, compacted seashells. In this age the landward face had been built
up into an elaborate vertical city, with walls of thin-cut stone and tremendous stained-glass windows, all supported by sturdy flying buttresses. Looking along the roof of the Wall now, Rina could
see how the character subtly changed from District to District: to the east the Springs with its taverns and inns, then the Market and the Manufactories, and to the west the more formal Holies and
Embassies and Archive, the whole carefully laid out according to harmonic principles set out by the great sage Pythagoras. The upper roof itself was marked by ancient, heavily eroded blocks that
were said to represent the visages of Annids and hero-gods of Northland’s past. Standing over these sculptures were modern light towers, ornately carved spires where lanterns burned to guide
approaching shipping to the ports cut into the seaward face. And along the spine of the roof ran a new miracle, the Iron Way, a ribbon of rail, coal dumps and way stations that united all the
Wall’s far-flung Districts. This great structure loomed over Old Etxelur and its hinterland to the south, while to the north the sea growled, grey and flat to the horizon, excluded by the
Wall as it had been since the day of Ana, the woman become little mother who had first built the Wall.
    And today the Wall’s roof was crowded with foreign dignitaries, here to welcome the party from Cathay, empire of the east. Aside from the women from the Western Continents, here were
Hatti priest-warriors, their armour emblazoned with the crossed-palm-leaves motif of their god Jesus Sharruma whose bones were interred deep within the Wall. And Islamic princes, Egyptians perhaps,
laden with gold, legs bare despite the chill breeze of this cold northern midsummer. And Carthaginian merchants, a splash of purple in their long robes. The Albians from their forested land stood
apart from the rest, their heavy furs and carefully unwashed hair tokens of their adherence to the oldest gods of all. Everything about this moment was stage-managed – even the ranks in which
the guests stood, so that no one had mortal enemies on both sides at once. These powerful men and women were dwarfed by the sheer scale of the landscape in which they stood, their talk
diminished by the steady churning of the great pumps buried inside the Wall’s fabric. That, of course, was the whole point of bringing the dignitaries up here: to impress them with
Northland’s power.
    But the mood was difficult this summer. After yet another year of drought and famine across the