‘Yes! And, warmed by all that fixed air, the world did not cool as it should have done. It could not.

‘Now, some two thousand years ago there was a turning point. It came with the failed Trojan Invasion of Northland, which was the high-water mark of the farmers’ expansion across the Continent. In the centuries that followed our cultural influence expanded. In northern Gaira the farms were abandoned, slowly, and the forests regrew. From Albia, where the forests had never died and the old faiths survived, missionaries were sent out to preach the ancient ways of life, all across the north of the Continent.’

Avatak nodded. ‘And again the forests grew. Devouring all the fixed air. And then—’

‘And then the world resumed its descent into the cold – delayed by some centuries, but otherwise just as every long-winter in the past. There you have it – a simple model – the proof is detailed in the papers in the trunk and elsewhere – a simple truth, yet a staggering one: people have held a longwinter at bay, all unknowing, for millennia.’

Nelo seemed unable to believe this. ‘People did this? People shaped the world? We are not gods, Uncle, not ice giants or little mothers.’

‘No. But what each man and woman does, bit by bit, each small intervention, each tree cut down or field ploughed, over enough time, adds up to the sweeping gesture of a god. Do you see?’

Avatak asked mildly, ‘Why did you not tell me this before?’

Pyxeas reached out a hand and grasped Avatak’s wrist. ‘You said it yourself. I heard you, you know. You stopped listening. You came to see my intellectual abstraction as a kind of madness. And in a world like this, perhaps you’re right!

‘And I, I did not mean to disrespect you, dear boy. It is that I respected you too much. For I came to see that you know far more than I ever will about what is important in this world. You are loyal, constant, strong where I am weak. I became embarrassed about my own petty wisdom, my arrogant attempts to “educate” you, to transform you into something else, something like me. What a fool I was! What a wise man you are. And your sort of wisdom will be increasingly relevant in the future, while mine will matter less and less. I hope you can forgive me—’

Again he succumbed to a fit of coughing. Nelo held him until he settled, and slipped into an uneasy sleep.

When he was asleep the three of them looked at each other.

Avatak shrugged. ‘See what I mean? Here we are stuck in a tent on the ice, with nobody within a day’s travel of us, probably. What difference will any of that lot make?’

Nelo smiled. ‘None. Though if he really did see all this coming no wonder he was sad. Anyone fancy a game of knuckle bones before we sleep?’

75