Ayto glared up at Crimm. ‘You famous idiot. What did you do that for?’

Crimm pointed south. ‘Somebody coming.’

Ayto looked that way, but of course his view was obscured by the earthwork. ‘Who? How many?’

‘Not many. Looks like one cart. A sled, I suppose.’

Aranx, beside him, called up, ‘It’s probably those bastards from the Manufactory.’

‘Maybe,’ Crimm said. But the Manufactory, with its ferocious, jealous hunters and their spears tipped with iron shapes torn from now-useless engines, was east of here, another District in the Wall, not south.

Ayto called, ‘You said a sled. Pulled by men?’

‘I don’t think so. Some kind of animal. Dogs, I think.’

‘Dogs? If it’s dogs, it’s probably not those bastards from the Manufactory.’

‘True enough.’

‘Different bastards, then.’

‘That makes sense.’

‘What do you think we should do?’

They were all looking up at Crimm. He sighed. He had no desire to be the leader of this little community of hunters. He didn’t want to be king, the way the idiotic leader of those bastards from the Manufactory had declared himself King of his District, and Emperor of All the Wall. He had always thought Ayto was smarter than he was. It was Ayto who had found his way out through the Wall to the sea, in the first terrible season. Ayto who had figured out how to trap reindeer. Ayto who had grown into this new world of ice, as if drawing on memories from a very deep past. But just as when they had been nothing but fishermen, Ayto liked to stay in the background, leaving all the decisions, and the mistakes, to Crimm. Well, there was nothing for it.

‘I think we should go greet them. They must have come a long way, after all.’

‘And maybe we can get their dogs,’ said Aranx.

Ayto called, ‘And if they’re not friendly?’

Crimm shrugged. ‘Then it’s the end of their journey.’

‘And we will definitely get their dogs,’ said Aranx.

The Wall had changed utterly since Avatak had last seen it, three years back, when he and Pyxeas had departed for Cathay. The great barrier, streaked with ice and heaped with snow, was not beautiful now, just an ugly growstone core pocked with holes. But it still blocked the horizon, and it was still, undeniably, the Wall, and perhaps the one human monument north of Parisa that would survive the longwinter itself.

Nelo, almost absently sketching the latest panorama, said, ‘There’s somebody watching us. On the ice. See? Three, four, five of them. And they look armed.’

Avatak reined in the team. The dogs, panting hard, jostled and growled, competing for their places in the pack.

Pyxeas pulled his thick fur coat around his skinny body. ‘To be expected,’ he muttered. ‘Diminishing resources, a collapse of population, an uncertain rediscovery of long-lost skills. The community will fragment into tribalism. Of course one must anticipate hostility to strangers.’