Bronze Summer n-2

by Stephen Baxter

  ‘Speak to me,’ he said, in heavily accented Etxelur-speak. ‘You hear me? I know Milaqa.’

  ‘She…’ Hadhe hadn’t said a word since the morning, and her throat was dry as dust. She tried again. ‘She is my cousin.’

  ‘You want water?’ He threw over a sack.

  She grabbed it and gulped it down.

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Hadhe.’

  ‘ Haa-thee. I saw your face before.’

  ‘I’m Milaqa’s cousin,’ she repeated.

  That word baffled him, but he seemed to get the idea. ‘The battle. What did you think?’ He sought for the words. ‘Frightening? Like wild animals, were we?’ He growled and made mock-claws with his fingers. ‘I want to make your Annids frightened. That way they won’t fight. That way people won’t have to die. They have to learn. I offered peace; they rejected it. This is what happens when you reject peace.’

  ‘I have children,’ she blurted.

  He pointed at her belly. ‘In there? I don’t care.’

  ‘No…’ She saw no point in telling him other than the truth. ‘Three. Three other children. Two have been taken away to the Wall.. The third. A boy. He fought.’

  He shrugged. ‘If he lives, he is with the slaves. You will never see him again.’

  ‘Only yesterday I did not believe you would come. Not like this.’

  ‘You were wrong.’

  ‘I even argued against preparing, defending ourselves.’

  ‘Wrong.’

  ‘What will happen to us?’

  He shrugged. ‘The men will be slaves. But we are a long way from those who buy slaves. We may have no use for them. The women will be sold as slaves too. Or, if you are not sold, you will cook, clean, spin, draw water for my soldiers. Or’ — he patted the couch — ‘you may keep my bed warm.’

  Anger flared. She took a step forward, almost stumbled. ‘You slaughter our children. Murder our husbands. And you expect us to sleep with their killers? What horror is this?’

  He laughed at her. ‘It is our way. All across Greece, Anatolia, Egypt, the whole of the east. Women are booty.’ His face hardened. ‘If you don’t stay with me, I will give you to the Spider. You’ll be dead by morning. With me, maybe you’ll live. Your baby inside you will live.’

  ‘Why? Why do you want me?’

  ‘For your cousin. For Milaqa.’ He lifted his tunic, revealing an erection. ‘I’m being kind to you.’

  She hesitated. Then she knelt beside the couch.

  In the morning, it did not take long to organise the march back to New Troy. A few carts were laden with what loot there was to be had. The booty people, all naked, those who could walk, were roped together and hobbled, and shoved into rough columns. Those who could not make the march, including most of those used as the night’s camp whores, were swiftly dispatched, and added to the pile of corpses. The pyre was then set alight and burned with a greasy stink.

  Torches were applied to the surviving houses, and dirt was kicked on the big central hearth. Then the column formed up, and Protis led the march south, out of the smashed community.

  But Qirum lingered, along with the Spider, and a handful of picked men. The Spider, in his days before joining Qirum, had developed a particular trick in these situations that Qirum never tired of watching.

  The men stayed just out of sight of the ruined village, as the sounds of the marching column slowly receded, and waited. The sunless sky brightened slowly. From the forest, a wild pig came rooting in the ruined hearthspace, looking for scraps. Qirum noticed a strange sign in the Etxelur script, loops and lines, cut into the hillside. Idly, he considered sending a man up there to break it up. Something to be done later. He began to feel sleepy, after the hard work of yesterday.

  And then the Spider grinned and pointed at the acorn pit, beside the ruined fire. Qirum saw one hand emerge, then a blond head, and a slim body. Soon a boy climbed out of the pit, bloodstained, bewildered.

  For a while the watching men allowed the boy to wander around the ruined village. Nobody else came out. Then the Spider unsheathed his sword. This was his speciality — to return to devastated farms and villages and cities, to wait until those who had hidden away came stumbling out into the ruins, and then to slaughter them in turn. It was the exquisite shock on the victims’ faces that seemed to thrill the Spider, the sudden horror of one who had thought he was saved.

  But not today, Qirum suddenly decided.

  ‘No.’ He held back the Spider’s arm. ‘Sorry to disappoint you, man. I have a better idea. The rest of you stay back. You!’ he called in Etxelur-speak.

  The boy turned. He actually had a sword in a scabbard at his side. His hand went to the hilt.

  ‘Don’t dare!’ Qirum roared, striding across the churned-up ground. ‘And don’t run!’

  The boy stood stock-still, snared by the command. He took his hand from the sword.

  Qirum stood over him. The boy’s tunic was encrusted with blood. Piss trickled down one leg. Comically, he had crushed acorns stuck in his hair. He was no older than twelve, thirteen. Yet he looked back at a warrior-king with a trace of defiance. On impulse Qirum reached out and ruffled his hair. ‘Name?’

  ‘I am Liff. Liff, son of Medoc, son of — ’

  ‘I don’t care whose spawn you are. Do you want to live, warrior Liff?’

  ‘All men die.’

  ‘True. But not today.’ Qirum pointed. ‘You go that way, north. You find the Wall. The Annids. You understand? You tell them what you saw. You tell what King Qirum did here. Yes?’

  The boy just looked at him, baffled.

  ‘Go.’ He shoved the boy’s shoulders with his fingertips. The boy stumbled. ‘Go, go!’

  The boy couldn’t seem to turn his back. But at last the spell broke, and he turned and ran, heading for the great Northland track that headed north.

  Qirum turned away and walked back to his men.

  54

  The Third Year After the Fire Mountain: Early Spring

  Four months after the attack on My Sun, after a desolating winter of hunger and want, of raid and counter-raid, of a slow bleed of deaths on either side, a woman came to the Wall.

  She had escaped from New Troy. Once she had been a young mother of My Sun, the first community to be attacked. She had seen her children killed, and for months had been used as a warrior’s servant and whore. She had bided her time, killed a man, got away. She brought news that there was growing discontent in the Trojan camp, because the easy victories had stopped coming. The Northlanders had learned how to resist; every flood mound south of Etxelur had been turned into a citadel, a tough nut to crack.

  And the woman said that Hadhe was still alive, and living in New Troy with Qirum.

  Raka, acting quickly, summoned Noli, Deri, Teel, Milaqa, the party who had gone to New Troy before. Perhaps this was a chance to get through to Qirum, by sending Milaqa and others of Hadhe’s family. And maybe the Trojan would be in a mood to listen this time, if his campaign of brutality wasn’t working.

  Milaqa sensed the tensions that lay behind this decision. Not everybody had Raka’s flexibility of thought. To talk again, talk to the pack of rapists and murderers Qirum’s men had proven themselves to be? But the longing for the killing to end drove the Annids to contemplate this course.

  And, she wondered, maybe Qirum had taken Hadhe as a lure for just this kind of approach. Was Qirum wily enough to think that way?

  But this time only Deri and Milaqa would go, Raka quickly decided. Deri the warrior who had already faced the Trojans, Milaqa his drinking companion from the old days, figures Qirum knew and could understand. Their job was to get through to the Trojan before more people died — and before Kilushepa in far Hattusa, alarmed by the news of the Trojan’s long-term plans against her, fulfilled her own threats to bring a stronger Hatti force to Northland and nip his ambitions in the bud. Nobody in Etxelur wanted to see more Hatti troops in Northland.

  The travellers packed their kit.
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  Once more they began the journey of a few days to New Troy, walking steadily south down the Etxelur Way, Deri and Milaqa side by side. It was early spring, but the day was dismal and would be short, the air damp and cold. The year was still too young to show if the fire mountain’s shadow would be cast over the world for a third year, but the sun was ominously invisible today.

  Away from the Wall the way soon deteriorated, overgrown with weeds. Deri stumbled on an ash sapling growing out of the road surface, his heavy winter cloak flapping. Milaqa suppressed a laugh. Deri snapped, ‘May the mothers curse those Trojans! Once this road was as clean and unspoiled as a baby’s skin. And why? Because we spent our time fixing it, pulling up the weeds, rather than building walls to keep out Trojans.’ They came to a flood, a swamp, thick with rotting matter, which the road, half submerged, crossed like a causeway. Milaqa pressed a cloth to her face. ‘And this,’ Deri said. ‘ I did this. I led a party to block the main dyke that once drained this swamp, a straight cut down to the valley of the Brother. What heartbreaking work that was! To ruin the labour of centuries. And all to make a bog to trap the boot of a Trojan.’

  Maybe it was a symptom of Milaqa’s own detachment from the disaster unfolding over Northland, but she didn’t feel like shedding tears over a bit of muddy ground. ‘It’s not ruined. It can be fixed, when we get the time. It will dry out again. In the meantime, no chariot could ever pass through here. Isn’t that the idea? This is the grand strategy. Flood the land. Let the Trojans sink in the mud if they try to march, and in the meantime let the diseases that rise from the swamps pick them off one by one.’

  ‘But this is a perversion of what Northland is, Milaqa. It’s a place where people preserve life — not create death, like this. Ask a priest if you don’t believe me. I’m with Noli; I’m worried that if this goes too far we won’t be able to put it back together again. And it’s not just the land. You know, back at the Wall I met a little boy, one of a family of nestspills, who got caught up in a raid. He said he found an arrow, and stuck it in the eye of the man who was raping his mother. An arrow in the eye! Even if every Trojan in Northland left tomorrow, that incident will have left a scar in the heart of that boy that will last a lifetime. That’s the legacy of Qirum, the monster you have a ‘‘special bond’’ with, as Teel always says.’

  She scowled. ‘That bond is what we’re relying on to keep us alive.’

  ‘Let’s hope that Qirum remembers that. And let’s hope all his half-tamed killers remember it too.’

  Thus, bickering, stumbling, avoiding flooded ground and traps, they continued their way south.

  They stopped a night in a little community called Mother’s Fingernail, after a distinctively shaped arc of sandstone that dominated its hearthspace. Deri had a friend here called Boucca, widow of an old companion from the fishing boats. The place was not far from My Sun, and had suffered from Trojan raids. Now the people lived in shacks amid the ruins of their houses, rings of burned-out stumps in the ground. But it was surviving, and the travellers were shown hospitality. That night Deri and Milaqa huddled under borrowed blankets in Boucca’s lean-to, windproof and warm.

  As they walked on, the next day they began to spot traces of Trojans: the prints of heavy boots pressed into mud on the track surface, the occasional turd deposited at the side of the road, the skin and gnawed bones of a hare discarded by a hasty fire whose embers were still warm.

  They spent one more night on the road, huddled together in a lean-to of branches and brush. They had brought fire-making gear, kindling, dried meat, and there was a stream nearby for water. Milaqa slept well, despite the situation. She felt safe to be with her uncle, as she had when she was a little girl.

  The next day, before noon, they saw the fires of New Troy rising from the plain ahead, gathering in a pall on a windless day.

  Deri said they needed to be ready to meet scouts or foraging parties. So they walked with their cloaks thrown back, their weapons visible, their hands open. Milaqa began to call out in the Trojan tongue, and in Greek and Hatti: ‘We mean no harm. We come from the Wall. We were sent by the Annid of Annids. We are here to talk to your king. I am Milaqa daughter of Kuma, and your King Qirum has promised me his protection. We are from the Wall, from Etxelur. We come here in peace…’

  A boy emerged from a copse, walking out of the trees right into their path. The three of them stood stock-still, Milaqa, Deri, the boy. He was no more than twelve. He carried a basket of mushrooms. He was skinny, his face grimy, he went barefoot, and his ragged cloak did not look sufficient to keep him warm.

  Milaqa smiled and stepped forward.

  Deri touched her arm. ‘Careful.’

  ‘The Trojans brought no boys here. He has red hair. This is one of ours, even if he is working for the Trojans now.’ She spoke clearly in her own tongue. ‘Where are you from? Was it My Sun?’

  The boy dropped the basket and ran, straight down the track towards the smoke of New Troy.

  Milaqa cupped her hands around her mouth. ‘Tell them Milaqa has come. Milaqa, daughter of Kuma. I have come for my cousin Hadhe, who lives in the King’s house. Tell King Qirum that Milaqa has come to see him!’

  Deri shrugged, and they walked on.

  A little later a party approached, soldiers on horseback, and a cart pulled by oxen led by another Northlander boy. The party was commanded by a stocky man in the garb of a Hatti officer: Erishum, Milaqa recognised with relief, Qirum’s sergeant. Her chances of living through the day had increased markedly.

  Erishum got down from his horse and peered at her. ‘Just as the boy said. You are Milaqa.’

  ‘I know,’ she replied in his tongue.

  ‘Mouthy little whore, aren’t you? I’ll take you to the King. But I warn you, he is in a foul mood today. As most days. Whatever you have to say, say it well. Get in the cart.’

  It was a farm vehicle, or it had been, smelling of earth and dung. Two more soldiers climbed up beside them, their hands on their swords. Erishum kicked his horse’s flanks, the cart jolted away, and the party followed the road to New Troy.

  They were taken briskly through the outer rampart. Within, Qirum’s estate seemed much changed to Milaqa since she had last seen it in the autumn. Of course the cold hand of winter lay on it now, but even so many of the newly walled-off fields looked abandoned. She saw few people — scarcely a wisp of smoke rose from the crude houses — and fewer animals, dogs, goats picking at the boggy ground. In one place she saw a gang of children, ill-clad, shivering, digging holes in the earth. They were watched over by a bored-looking Trojan who idly studied the bobbing rumps of the little girls.

  As they neared the stone walls of Qirum’s citadel they climbed off the cart. The town was much changed too, shabbier, meaner, but much more crowded than in the autumn, though the country outside the walls was empty. Milaqa remarked on this to Deri. He murmured, ‘Perhaps they have all come here for food.’ As they followed Erishum through the town Milaqa saw children peering from the doors of the rough houses, while scared-looking women cowered indoors, and babies cried. These were not homes, not families, Milaqa thought; they were parodies of families, Qirum’s warriors with the bed-warmers they had taken from raids in Northland, or booty women driven in from the Continent. Some of these women must have been allowed to keep their kids, and others had babies inflicted on them by the endless rapes of their new ‘husbands’.

  Once inside the citadel they were taken straight to Qirum in his house with the big central room. A big fire blazed in a hearth, and a linen screen covered the window, obscuring the view over the town. The priests were here, murmuring prayers to Apollo god of fevers and disease. Qirum himself lounged on his couch, a flagon of ale on the floor beside him. He wore a loose robe of some fine fabric, not a warrior’s garment, more like something you would wear to sleep. There was a sharp stink in the room, a cess-pit stench. There was no sign of Hadhe.

  When he saw Milaqa and Deri, Qirum lurched to his feet. ‘Milaqa! So here we are agai
n, two rejects from humanity reunited.’

  Milaqa began to murmur a translation for Deri.

  But Qirum waved that way. ‘Oh, get him out of here,’ he snapped at Erishum. ‘Feed him, bathe him, give him a whore, whatever he wants. Oh, no, better not, after all his mother’s probably one of the whores. Ha! Don’t harm him though. Just get him out of my sight.’

  Deri glanced at Milaqa.

  ‘Go,’ she said, in her own tongue. ‘I’m more at risk with you standing here silently provoking him. This is why we came, uncle.’

  Reluctantly Deri nodded. He bowed sharply to Qirum, then let Erishum lead him out.

  ‘So we’re alone,’ Qirum said. ‘Beer?’

  ‘Why not?’

  He snapped a finger. In a heartbeat a barefoot serving girl came running with a brimming pot. Milaqa drank it gratefully. Qirum sat on his couch and patted it. She sat beside him, though at the couch’s far end.

  ‘Just like old times in the Scambles,’ Qirum said. ‘Save for a few gibbering priests and the guards in the corners.’

  She wrinkled her nose. ‘And what smells like a bucket of shit.’

  ‘It is a bucket of shit. Taken from a dead man, his last gift to this world. Ha!’ He drank his beer. ‘It’s all because of some poison or other your uncle and his irritating friends like to smear on their arrows. My physician is trying to work out what it is from a dead man’s turds. Listen. What causes sneezing and blisters, and then vomiting and shitting, and then muscle cramps, convulsions, choking, a heart attack?’

  ‘I’m no priest. Our priests give out the poisons.’

  ‘My surgeon thinks it might be hellebore. Some of the symptoms are similar. They use hellebore in Gaira, I know that. Is it hellebore?’

  ‘I really don’t know.’

  ‘Well, if it is, our antidotes don’t work, or so my useless clown of a head physician tells me.’

  She grinned. ‘Things aren’t going as you expected, are they, King Qirum?’