Above them, a sky the colour of gun-metal shook free the first few tiny flakes of snow.

Elson Roa watched from the top of a bluff through a pair of high-power binoculars. He saw the leading figure of the group on the far side of the fjord take an object from a satchel and stop briefly while they examined it. Then they replaced the object in the bag.

Roa switched the field-glasses’ stabilisers off and listened to their slowly dying whine as the air above the waters of the fjord began to fill with snow, wiping the view out in a swirling grey turmoil of silence. The sniper at his side checked the range read-out on her rifle again and shook her head, tutting.

Roa looked behind him to where his comrades stood, healthy and alert and waiting. A little snow drifted out of the dull expanse of cloud hanging between the mountains and settled gently on their dirtied but still gaudy uniforms.

They moved through a limited world; the falling snow obliterated everything save for a circle perhaps ten metres in diameter consisting of forest-edge, rocky shore and flat water. The patch of the fjord’s black surface they could see specked continually with white flakes that vanished the instant they touched that darkness. No waves beat. Where the snow-flakes touched the ground, they sat amongst the rocks and pebbles for a brief moment, then melted. The sky was gone, brought down to an indeterminate low ceiling where the mass of grey-white flakes became a single cloud of chaotic, cluttering movement.

Feril followed Zefla Franck, putting its feet where hers had gone. Sharrow was a slight burden in its arms; her extra weight meant that it had to lean back a little as it walked to keep its centre of balance vertical, but it could continue like this indefinitely if it had to. It kept looking around even though there was little enough to see. It maintained its audio sweep, listening for anything unusual.

They had pulled the hood of Sharrow’s jacket up over her face when they’d set off; when Feril looked down at one point it saw that the hood had fallen back, and flakes of snow were falling onto her sleeping face. The soft white scraps touched her cheeks and became tiny patches of moistness. Where they fell on her eyelashes, they lasted long enough for the android to be able to see the shape of the individual crystals, before each unique shape was dissolved by the heat of her body and flowed into the skin around her eyes like tears.

Feril watched for a moment and then pulled the hood back up, sheltering her.

Zefla Franck was leaving footprints now; the snow swarming from the closed and heavy sky was beginning to lie, collecting flake by tiny flake on the rocks and pebbles and the rough-surfaced trunks of the trees at the forest’s hem and building small bridges of softness over crevices and rivulets, which had begun to freeze.

The shore became too steep and the snow too heavy; they returned to the forest, walking among the trees in a scarcened filter of flakes, enlivened every now and again as a clump of snow fell suddenly from the canopy above through the branches to the forest floor.

Zefla cut through the tangles and fallen branches they encoun-tered with her laser, leaving the charred smell of burned wood curling behind on a cloud of smoke and steam.

Sharrow made occasional small, whimpering noises and moved in Feril’s arms.

They walked on until it became too dark to see, then stopped to rest. Sharrow slept on, Zefla sat still, Miz complained about his feet and Dloan offered to take Sharrow. Feril said there was no need. Then they walked on, all but Dloan equipped with nightsights. He followed just behind Miz. The falling snow thinned, then thickened again.

Feril could see Zefla Franck’s previously well-balanced gait becoming ragged and clumsy, and hear Miz Gattse Kuma’s wheezing, laboured breathing behind. Dloan slipped and fell twice. They were only about nine kilometres from the head of the fjord, but the ground ahead was rough and much of it was uphill. It suggested they stopped and made camp.

They sat, exhausted, on a fallen trunk. Sharrow lay across their laps, her head cradled in Zefla’s arms. Feril found wood and used a laser to light the fire. It erected the tent for them, too. They put Sharrow inside; Zefla wrapped her in the blanket. Miz and Dloan sat at the fire.

“I could go on the last nine thousand metres with Lady Sharrow,” it told them, once they had gathered round the fire. “Even if she does not wake up, her palm, applied to one of the tower’s stone square’s posts, might well open the tower up.”

None of them seemed to have the strength to reply; they just stared at the flames of the fire. Snow-flakes fell towards it, then were caught in the updraft and whirled away. The snow seemed to be thinning again.

“Alternatively,” Feril told them, “I could return to the coast and signal the submarine. Though I’d have to leave now.”

“Or you could stay here on guard,” Zefla said from the tent, putting Sharrow’s satchel under her head as a pillow.

“Or he could head for the tower again,” Dloan said. “With a gun, he might be able to hold off the Solipsists for a while.”

“I still think we should get word to outside,” Miz said. “Get the sub to call up some air support. Hell, the Security Franchise people didn’t bother about Roa’s fucking great flying boat, and one lousy fighter-bomber would be all we’d need.”

“Nobody sane would take it on,” Zefla said, after satisfying herself that Sharrow was comfortable. She hunkered down on the other side of the fire, her voice sounding faraway, distorted by the column of heated air rising between them. “So, we need to get word to outside, we need a guard tonight, and we need to guard the tower, too, to prevent Roa getting to it first.”

“All these things are possible,” Feril said. “What would you like me to do?”

They all looked at each other; and they each glanced at Sharrow, a bundled shape in the tent.

“Vote,” Zefla said. “I say… oh, guard the tower.”

Dloan nodded. “Me too.”

Miz made a tutting noise and looked away.

“Feril?” Zefla said.

“Yes?” It looked at her.

“What about you?”

“What-? Oh, I abstain.”

Zefla glanced back at the tent. “Guard the tower it is.”

They gave the android a laser pistol; the snow had stopped and the sky was clearing.

The fjord was pure black. A clear blue light came down from Maidservant, gibbous in the sky above; it coated the mountains and the dozens of small, snow-covered islands with a ghostly silver. Junklight sparkled in the northern skies, towards the equator. There were no fires on the far side of the water.

The android flitted away into the trees, silent and quick.

22 The Silent Tower

Zefla awoke in the middle of the night, her bladder full. She had tried to stave off the hunger pangs by drinking quantities of water made from snow they’d melted. Miz had talked about doing some night-fishing through a hole in a frozen stream, but then fallen asleep.

Snuggled down between the warmth of Dloan and Sharrow, she didn’t want to get out of the tent but knew she’d have to. She checked on Sharrow, who seemed to be breathing peacefully, then got up as carefully as she could, extricating herself from the others and wriggling her way out through the tent door. Somebody-probably Miz-lying cradling the machine gun murmured behind her, and she whispered, “Sorry!”

The fire was still glowing. It was light enough for her to see without a nightsight. She walked downhill through the quiet carpet of snow and squatted amongst the trees near the shore. The night was still and cold and clear. She heard a couple of muffled crumping noises in the distance, and guessed it was snow falling off trees.

She got up, fastening her fatigues. Steam filmed up from beneath her, just visible in the moonlight. Maidservant stood big and silver above the mountains on the other side of the fjord; it would be disappearing soon. She looked at it all for a few moments, thinking how beautiful this place was, and wishing the ache in her muscles and the hunger and the steady gnawing fear in her guts would vanish and let her enjoy it.