The familiar beauty of it all caught Avatak’s breath. This might no longer feel like home to Pyxeas and Nelo, but it was home to him.

They followed Crimm’s lead and began the climb down the seaward face. They quickly descended past odd cuttings in the growstone, heavily crusted with ice, that turned out to be docks cut into the face, now stranded in mid-air. This face of the Wall, once immersed in the sea, was rougher, just coarsely finished growstone with a heavy coating of now-dead barnacles, and you had to be careful not to scrape your hands as you worked your way down the ladder. Looking down, Avatak saw that at its base the Wall’s vertical face bellied outwards into the sea, making a rough shelf of growstone that extended under the shallow water. People were moving and working down there, on the growstone shore. There were fires built on hearths, racks of meat or fish, boats hauled up, blood splashed on the growstone ground. People looked up, wary. One little boy, a bundle in his furs, clung to his mother, one finger jammed up his left nostril.

Crimm jumped down the last few rungs and went forward into the little village on the growstone. ‘We have visitors! It is Pyxeas the scholar, you remember him, and Nelo, Rina’s son, and their companion Avatak from Coldland.’ The mood of wary suspicion faded, Avatak thought. Or at least he could see no weapons. ‘They have come far to see us – and they have extraordinary tales to tell. And they have dogs! Think what we’ll be able to do if we can breed dogs, Ferri, Yospex . . . Muka! Heat some soup and boil up some tea; we will take lunch, I think.’

Avatak reached the base of the ladder and, with some help from Nelo, set Pyxeas down. Avatak saw now that there were caves in the growstone masses, either worn by the sea or deliberately hollowed out, with entrances covered by skin sheets. It was in these caves, evidently, that the people lived.

Crimm led them to one cave, where the covering sheet was drawn back to expose a deep interior, lit by small lamps of what smelled like seal blubber in bowls hacked from ancient growstone. This was Crimm’s home, and the woman who smiled at them as she built up the fire in her hearth was Muka, the wife Crimm had taken since the group had come here to the ocean. But she looked ill to Avatak, her movements listless, her face pale, the signs of a nosebleed on her upper lip, and when she smiled she showed gaps in her teeth.