Nelo and Mago approached Ywa. They were both panting, soaked from melted snow, their tunics stained with blood. Nelo asked, ‘What can we do to help, Annid?’

She smiled at them. ‘It looks to me as if you’ve been helping already.’ She pointed to Ontin. ‘Do whatever he tells you.’

Nelo nodded. But Mago looked up at the glass roof, uneasily, distracted.

Ontin had been thinking. ‘We need to set up a system. Sort the injured into categories, those who need urgent care, those who can wait, those who don’t need help at all and those we can’t help. You boys can do something straight away for those who’ve been caught by the deep cold, like her.’ He pointed to one young girl, limp on a pallet, pale as the snow itself. Her parents were hovering over her, gently shaking her, trying to get her to wake. ‘Get her parents to cuddle her – body warmth, that’s the thing, until we can get more organised. Run around and do that wherever you see somebody in that condition.’

The young men hurried away. But Ywa heard the Carthaginian muttering, ‘Look up, my friend. That ceiling.’

‘A lot of snow.’

‘Yes.’

‘Never seen it like that before. Covered over. We don’t normally get much snow in Etxelur.’

‘Hmm. Have you ever had the feeling that you’ve lived the same experience twice?’

Ywa said to Ontin, ‘Whatever you need, tell me, and I’ll find it for you.’

‘Thank you. Do you think it’s getting cold in here?’ He walked over to a wall hot-water tap, opened the valve, let it run, and dipped his fingers into the flow. It was obvious it was running cold.

It felt as if the steam caravan had been stuck here for hours. Since the crew had fixed the snowblades, the cabin had lurched forward for a while, and, under way once more, Alxa had started to relax. Then the caravan stopped again, for no apparent reason, and she had nothing to do but sit in the gathering dark. And then off again, and another stop, and off again, and a lurched halt that felt somehow final. Not knowing was the worst part, in a way, that and having no control over her own fate.

It had been a long time since the heating pipes had gone cold. In the end she had swallowed her pride and opened her luggage; she pulled on dirty clothes for extra layers to keep warm, piled a spare coat over her legs, and jammed two hats on her head, a Frankish woollen cap under a big fur bonnet. But still her breath steamed in the air.

And now it was growing darker and darker, and a more intense cold was closing in. She felt as if she was being swallowed. She had a box of small candles in her luggage, and a flint. She set one candle up in a bowl on the seat beside her. The little circle of light showed the heavy flakes that still fell beyond the window, and her own pale face reflected in the small panes of glass. Perhaps the caravan would never move again, she thought. Perhaps the snow would simply bury the rail line, and the caravan, and her, and when the thaw came in the summer the engineers would find her frozen corpse . . .