Finally the snow relented, the fall dwindling to a few scattered flakes, that odd silvery glow fading from the sky. Thaxa dragged on his boots, checked the bone toggles on his coat, pulled up his hood, stuffed his hands in his mittens, and opened the door. The new fall, about as deep as his kneecaps, came spilling into the house. He kept a snow shovel behind the door, an expensive tool made from the scapula of a deer and an ash pole. He got to work shifting the snow from the doorway, lifting rough blocks of snow on the blade and dumping them to either side. It wasn’t so difficult this time; this particular deposit of snow was powdery, and it was easy to slide in the blade. They were all getting used to the different kinds of snow that could fall depending on minute differences in temperature and the dampness of the air. The worst kind was the slushy wet stuff that clung to your blade; that could be like shifting wet sand. But however it fell, if you didn’t clear it, it would consolidate, setting at last to a layer of white ice over the hard ground, lumpy, hummocky stuff treacherously slick underfoot and hard as rock if you tried to break it up.

As he worked, falling into a now-familiar routine of scoop and throw, scoop and throw, being careful to favour his back, he warmed up quickly, and he loosened the toggles of his coat. Of course many of his neighbours left this sort of thing to the staff, but Thaxa liked to pitch in. For one thing he only had old Moerx as a permanent servant. And besides, this was Etxelur, not a land of princes and rulers like Carthage or Hatti – a land of equals, in theory at least. But he tired quickly, he always did; there was never enough to eat, not even for the husband of an Annid, never enough coal in the engine.

He didn’t have far to dig, however. There were already parties out clearing the Wall Way, the main road that ran along the foot of the Wall, men and women with shovels like his, their voices oddly deadened by the blanket of snow. A team of bony horses, a rare sight in Northland, dragged a heavy blade that cleared great swathes of snow, dumping it in dirty banks by the road, just as it was heaped up alongside all the main drags in Northland. All these people were out working for the state, back-breaking labour in return for a dole of salted fish and perhaps a little frozen peat for the family fire.