Bronze Summer n-2

by Stephen Baxter

  Still, Qirum seemed to find it easy to do his deals in the aftermath of the raid. He quickly secured the services of a handful of warriors, all former Hatti soldiers, or so they claimed. These men looked tough to Milaqa, but uncomfortably hungry, and she had no idea how to judge their loyalty. And Qirum turned up a couple of carts, hard to find in a city where even timber for the fires was growing scarce. He failed to locate any horses, but he did manage to get the Northlanders some food, fish and dried meat. He promised that none of it was rat flesh, or worse.

  Hattusa was far to the east of here, many more days’ travel, in the Land of the Hatti. But for now it was not Hattusa they sought but a boy from Northland.

  ‘We will find him,’ Qirum assured Deri. ‘Find him and save him. Stick with me. You will see.’ Tibo had made himself close to Qirum, Milaqa realised. Maybe Qirum had adopted him as a kind of pet, a half-tamed wolf cub. Just as he had adopted Milaqa, maybe, another impulsive affection that made no particular sense. Whatever the reason, Qirum seemed determined to see through his pledge.

  His men meanwhile had been quietly extracting information from the survivors of the raid. The leader of the black charioteers was a man who called himself the Spider. It was said that he had been a military commander under the Hatti regime, before going rogue. Now he was one of the most feared of the bandit warlords who had sprouted like weeds in an increasingly lawless country. He was believed to have a base to the east. With that knowledge Kilushepa was prepared to allow a diversion to pursue Tibo.

  ‘We are heading east anyhow,’ Qirum told her.

  ‘As long as the time we lose is not excessive.’

  Teel growled, ‘And as long as we don’t get ourselves killed confronting this Spider.’

  Milaqa hissed, ‘Shame on you, uncle. Don’t let Deri hear you say that. Tibo is your blood, as he is mine.’

  Teel, as he often did, looked shifty, uncomfortable, priorities conflicting in his head. ‘We didn’t come here for this, for a rescue mission. He’s probably dead already — you understand that, don’t you? We’re trying to save empires here. We can’t save everybody, Milaqa.’

  ‘But we can try,’ she snapped back fiercely.

  After three uncomfortable, uneasy nights in Troy, they left the city and set out east. They were the survivors of Qirum’s party of Northlanders, and the dozen Trojan warriors he had hired. The Trojans took turns hauling the two carts on which Kilushepa and Noli rode, along with their baggage. The warriors grumbled or bragged every step of the way.

  The road to the east was decaying, rutted. This was a country that Qirum called Wilusa — a shattered, starving place, and unseasonably cold when the wind picked up under the sunless sky. The fields were dry and unworked, the houses and barns looted and collapsed. Irrigation channels scored the land, but they were dry too, dust-filled and weed-choked. Teel pointed out the remains of stands of forest, long since cut to the ground for firewood.

  From the beginning Qirum imposed a careful rationing system. It was just as well, Milaqa thought, for otherwise his hungry warriors would have finished the food they had brought from Troy in days, and then probably started in on the precious seed potatoes. And he allowed his warriors to hunt. Once they saw a herd of goats, running wild, and the men chased them, but the animals, hardy survivors themselves, were too quick.

  They passed a stone watchtower. There was no sign of the soldiers who must once have manned it.

  Kilushepa seemed dismayed by this abandonment. ‘By such means as this tower we Hatti maintained security for generations,’ she said to Noli and Milaqa. ‘We were a great nation. Once we destroyed Babylon. Once we defeated the Egyptians, at Kadesh, in the greatest battle the world has ever known. But our empire was always under threat. The Hatti kingdom itself is a patchwork of many peoples, surrounded by a buffer of restless vassals and dependencies. So we built an empire like a fortress, with fortified towns connected by roads for the troops, marked out by watchtowers like this. Or at least that was how it used to be…’

  They came to a river that flowed roughly south to north, towards the great northern sea that lay beyond the strait where Troy was situated. It was low and silty, the banks choked with reeds, but the water flowed and was fresh, and they refilled their skins and jugs.

  They turned and headed south, working upstream. Kilushepa said they would find fords and bridges. Here, by the water, there were more houses, just shacks of reeds and bits of timber, hearths that looked recently used. But they never saw any signs of the people who must live here. The soldiers routinely robbed what they could find, pulling apart the little houses, emptying the traps and lines of any catches.

  ‘They must see us coming,’ Milaqa said. ‘They run and hide.’

  ‘Wouldn’t you?’ Teel murmured. ‘We must look like bandits to them. Which of course we are, to all intents and purposes.’

  Another day on from the watchtower they came to a small town, sprawling by a river bank studded with jetties. The party approached cautiously. The town was laid out a little like Troy, Milaqa could see, though on a much smaller scale, with a ditch and palisade surrounding an inhabited area within which a stone-walled citadel rose proud on a hillock. And just as at Troy shanties and lean-tos were pressed up against the outer rampart, a wrack of people washed up by a tide of hunger.

  The road led them across the defensive ditch to an open gateway. There was a crowd gathered by the gate, pushing and shoving. Milaqa heard raised voices, shouting, and a man’s agonised cry. Qirum’s party slowed. The warriors touched the hilts of their swords.

  Teel said nervously, ‘We don’t need any more trouble.’

  Deri growled, ‘We’re not leaving until we’re sure Tibo is not here.’

  ‘If the Spider’s black chariots are at work here,’ Kilushepa said, ‘I think we’d know it by the screams.’

  ‘Perhaps they’ve been here,’ Qirum said. He stepped forward, hands on hips, peering; the light under the unending cloud was uncertain. ‘For I think that’s one of the Spider’s men who’s doing the screaming.’

  The mob surrounded a man dressed entirely in black, Milaqa saw now. They had him by the arms, and were dragging him under the gateway in the wall.

  Qirum said, ‘Left behind, I imagine. And now taking punishment on behalf of them all.’

  Deri said urgently, ‘He might know where Tibo has been taken.’

  ‘Yes. Come with me — you, Deri, and Milaqa. You others wait, and keep your weapons hidden.’ He set off immediately, with Deri and Milaqa hurrying behind.

  And Kilushepa followed, striding boldly. Qirum just looked at her, and hurried on.

  When they got to the gateway Milaqa saw immediately what the inflamed people were trying to do. The gate was a rough arch of stout wooden timbers. Ropes had been thrown over the arch, and were tied to the charioteer’s chest, wrists and feet. Men started to haul at the ropes, and a baying cry went up. The captive was clearly to be dragged into the air by the big band around his chest. He was struggling, squirming. His face was a mask of blood, his eyes were pits of darkness, and his long black tunic was stained rust-brown. He was a big man physically, Milaqa saw, but there was no sense of violence about him.

  Milaqa said to Qirum, ‘They will haul him over the arch.’

  ‘Yes. And bend him backwards until he snaps like a twig. A crude but effective punishment, I suppose… Kilushepa! Wait!’

  But the queen, with an impressive burst of speed, was already striding towards the mob. ‘Stop this!’ Her voice, imperious, carried over the yelling of the mob. Even the captive was silenced.

  Qirum hurried to her side and walked with her. ‘Is this wise?’

  ‘These are my people. I am still their Tawananna. Stop this, I say — stop it now!’

  A woman approached her, ragged, limping. She led a little girl by the hand. ‘Who are you to tell us what to do?’

  ‘I am queen. I am Kilushepa. I am Tawananna.’

  ‘Kilushepa’s dead. That’s what I heard.’ />
  ‘Then you heard wrong. Here she is, here I am, in the flesh. Here I am, returning to Hattusa to take up the reins of power — and to ensure that people like you are protected once more.’

  Milaqa was lost in admiration for this woman, who faced a murderous mob and held them spellbound with a few words, even if she must know she was making promises she could not keep.

  And the captive, bound, blinded and bloodied, twisted and turned his head. ‘Tawananna? Is it you? I heard you speak, just once. I would never forget that voice.’ He spoke clear Nesili, his accent like Kilushepa’s.

  She walked up to him. The mob melted back, to Milaqa’s continuing astonishment. ‘What is your name, man?’

  ‘I am Kurunta. You would not know me. There is no reason why… I was a scribe in the palace precinct. In great Hattusa! An archivist. I wrote, I read-’

  The woman with the little girl pushed forward again. ‘This man ran with the Spider. His men raped me. They killed my husband, and my son. And my little girl — look, Tawananna!’ She pulled the girl forward and exposed her face, and another ghastly injury inflicted by a hero’s sword. Milaqa turned away.

  But Kurunta twisted free of the grasping hands. ‘Tawananna! Save me! I was a scribe before the world ended, and the Spider took me, and I woke in this nightmare of killing. Look what these people did to me!’ He held up his arms. Milaqa saw that his hands had been cut off, his eyes put out. ‘Look what they did!’

  Kilushepa said to Qirum, ‘We need this man. Pay off these people. Then let us leave this place.’

  And she walked away, back towards the carts, leaving Qirum facing a surging, yelling mob.

  34

  After leaving the town the party continued to track the river, heading upstream, roughly south. This was the way to the Spider’s main camp, according to Kurunta.

  Kurunta rode with Kilushepa. Noli allowed the young priest Riban to tend to Kurunta’s wounds, his ruined eyes, the crudely cauterised stumps of his arms, and to give him infusions of herbs to dull the pain. The drugs made Kurunta light-headed, and he talked and talked, like a lost child. Milaqa, curious, walked alongside the cart, following his stilted Hatti tongue as best she could.

  ‘My father was a court scribe, and his father before him. We lived in a fine house within the walls of Hattusa. Once my father met the King himself, and took down his personal account of a battle. He was served food… little birds stuffed with olives… he said he never tasted the like. I married, I had a family. Two boys. Oh, we knew about the famine, the drought. How could you not, with the records we clerks kept and copied? But it always seemed remote. Not for us in Hattusa, fed on grain from Egypt.

  ‘But then I was sent to the north coast, to a city called Lazawa.’ A place Milaqa had never heard of. ‘There had been a rebellion, raids by the Kaskans — a mess. I was one of a party sent to gather facts on how the country was recovering now that the rebellion was put down, or so the governor had told the King. This report would be brought back to the court.

  ‘So we went out into the country. We had a corps of the Standing Army of the Left to accompany us, under an overseer who reported to the King’s own brother. I felt safe.

  ‘We had a great deal of trouble on the way, but we reached Lazawa. And there we found that everything we had been told about the outcome of the rebellion was an utter lie. The town was a smoking ruin, the grain stores looted, the people driven off or enslaved by the Kaskans. There was not even food for us. Not even for our horses!

  ‘And it was as we considered what we should do that the Spider fell on us…’

  The Spider had been a regional governor, a ‘Lord of the Watchtower’ as the Hatti called it. As the years of drought wore on, the commands from the centre had grown sporadic and contradictory, and the cycle of supply and troop replenishment slowly broke down. Then the fire-mountain clouds closed in, and people started to starve, and the man had gone rogue altogether.

  ‘I do not know his name,’ Kurunta whispered. ‘He wears the uniform of the army, the chariots are as the army ride, but he has painted or dyed everything black, so that all will know it is he who descends, his sword that flashes — his laugh you hear when you die…’

  ‘And he descended on you,’ Kilushepa prompted.

  ‘Yes. Our troops fell, or fled, or defected on the spot. We scribes and our servants were playthings for the Spider and his soldiers. You can imagine what happened to the women, and the younger boys. Not one of them survived the first night. The rest of us were used for — amusement. One man was let loose, naked, and hunted like an animal. Practice for the archers, the charioteers. I knew him. He told good jokes. Another, who fought back, was tied to a post. They rode at him on their horses taking swipes with their swords, until nothing was left of him. And so on. I had never fought, but you can see I am a bulky man, Tawananna. They put me in a kind of arena of spears and ropes, with two others, and made us fight. Only one of the three would live to leave that ring. I had not struck another human being since I was a child.’

  ‘Yet you survived,’ Kilushepa murmured.

  ‘I survived. The Spider told me that if I fought with him, with his troops, he would let me live. And I did,’ he whispered. ‘I did, Queen! And I have committed terrible crimes, or watched them. All to save my own skin.’

  ‘It is nothing to be ashamed of. You see how it is,’ she said to the others. ‘The times we live in. And all this has come to pass under the nominal protection of the Hatti, still the greatest empire in the world. This is why we must work together, Annid. Lest the darkness fall over the whole world, for good.’

  ‘I was educated,’ said Kurunta. ‘I was a scribe. The Spider has told me that that time has gone. That nobody will ever write or read again, as long as the world lasts, and that soon people will even forget that such a thing was possible. Even my sons, who I have not seen since I left Hattusa. Is it true, Tawananna? Is this the end of it all? Is it true?’

  She took the bloody stumps of his arms in her hands. ‘Not if I can help it.’

  He subsided, muttering, turning his eyeless head as if looking for the light.

  They came upon the camp of the Spider late the following day. It was visible from far off as a smudge of smoke on the southern horizon. It looked to Milaqa like the most substantial settlement they had seen since Troy itself.

  Yet when they approached, it was not a town at all.

  The centrepiece was another watchtower, guarding another road. On the plain around this tower bonfires burned, sending columns of smoke up to the sky, and there were tents and shacks of timber and reeds. Male laughter carried on the breeze, and a clang of metal, sword on sword.

  ‘This is the place,’ Kilushepa murmured, as she clambered down from her cart. Kurunta was sleeping now. ‘Just as our mutilated clerk described it.’

  ‘I will go in alone,’ said Qirum. ‘We mustn’t challenge them.’

  ‘That’s foolish,’ Deri snapped, in the broken Hatti he had learned. ‘Let me go with you, at least. Tibo is my son.’

  ‘No.’ Qirum dug into the heap of stuff on the cart, found his bronze breastplate, and with quick fingers tied it in place. ‘I know these people, remember — men like the Spider.’

  ‘Because you are one yourself,’ said Kilushepa with a faint sneer.

  Qirum grinned coldly and said nothing. He set his ox-horn helmet on his head, fixed his sword in its scabbard on his back, and strode out towards the camp, heading straight for the watchtower at its heart.

  Those left behind started to make a camp of their own. The men built a fire. Deri paced, as tense as a clenched fist. Kilushepa waited, silent and still. Milaqa thought it was quite likely the Spider already knew all about this petty force of Qirum’s. She imagined some armed man’s calculating gaze on her even now, and she tried not to shudder.

  The light was fading by the time Qirum returned. He sat by the fire, and took a cup of wine from one of his warriors.

  ‘He will talk to us,’ he said. ‘The Spider
. I was only able to negotiate with him through his generals, his closest circle. The Spider is sharper than I imagined. I had to give away a lot.’

  Deri frowned. ‘A lot of what? Gold?’

  ‘Information. I was getting nowhere. He was intrigued when I told him the Tawananna was here.’ He smiled spitefully at Kilushepa. ‘Although he asked, which Tawananna.’

  ‘And the boy — what of him?’

  ‘The Spider himself may not know. I got the impression he takes many prisoners, for many purposes. He will speak to us, however.’

  Deri said, ‘Us?’

  ‘The Tawananna,’ said Qirum. ‘He was a governor, remember. I think it flatters his vanity to have one of the court come to his camp. And he will speak to a relative of the boy.’

  ‘I will go,’ said Deri.

  ‘No,’ Qirum said. ‘No men. A woman. It must be a woman.’ And he looked at Milaqa.

  Deri shook his head. ‘It isn’t safe.’

  ‘He’s right,’ Teel said. Suddenly he and Deri were Milaqa’s uncles, looking out for the safety of their niece.

  But she said, ‘I will go.’

  Qirum nodded. ‘He will not harm you. Well, I don’t believe so. If he intended to, he could have set his warriors on us already. He is more curious than aggressive. I think he seeks — amusement.’

  Kilushepa stood. ‘More practically, this Spider is the only authority in the area just now, isn’t he?’

  Teel frowned. ‘What exactly are you planning, Tawananna?’

  She would not reply.

  Qirum swilled another mouthful of wine, hurried behind a rocky outcrop to take a quick piss, and then returned, rubbing his hands. ‘Are you ready?’

  Qirum led them back the way he had come.

  As the Trojan walked boldly through the camp, the Spider’s warriors watched them pass. They were Hatti warriors, Milaqa saw, or a semblance of them. They were relaxing, and many had their boots off, their black-dyed tunics loosened, their long hair worn loose rather than plaited. They sat around the fires, worked at their weapons with sharpening stones, rubbed their feet with bits of rough rock. There were neat heaps of spears, leather helmets, shields of leather and wood. Subdued-looking women, many very young, prepared food and brought the men drink. Milaqa was selfishly glad they were here. She would not have liked to have been the only woman in the camp.