Iron Winter n-3

by Stephen Baxter

  ‘Which is the Rus name for New Hattusa, sir,’ Palla added. ‘ “The great city.” ’

  ‘And he’s still starving, is that the game? Well, tell him we’ve got a load of good Hatti bread to fend off the pangs for him and his whores and his squalling Rus brats, and we’ll transport it to the riverbank for him, and we’ll be back again with more, and come the spring we’ll see what’s what.’ He glanced at Palla. ‘You could probably leave out the bit about the whores.’

  ‘I’m very discreet, lord.’ He repeated the general’s message to the Rus, who chattered volubly in return.

  This response, that New Hattusa would feed the enemy horde, astounded Kassu. But the decision wasn’t his to make.

  Himuili’s officers quickly formed up their troops to escort the bread wagons to the river. There would be a tight escort walking with the wagons themselves, and scouts on horseback riding further out. Kassu himself took a place beside one of the wagons, but barely had the party started to trundle away from the city walls than Himuili beckoned to Kassu and brought him forward, to where the priest was walking with the Rus near the head of the little caravan.

  ‘You are Kassu.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘And this priest is the man you’re thinking of prosecuting, is it not?’

  ‘Yes, sir, I-’

  ‘Shut up. Walk with each other now. Talk. See if you can’t sort this out without bothering the courts. Or me.’ And he stalked off back to his position at the head of the caravan.

  So Kassu walked with Palla, resentfully. Palla’s nervousness had evidently returned, as well it might, being within striking distance of a heavily armed cuckold. But he had composure, Kassu saw, you had to give him that.

  They both walked behind the broad back of the Rus.

  ‘I can’t believe we’re dealing with these people,’ Kassu said. ‘Taking bread from the mouths of our own children and giving it to these northern brutes, who killed our King. And are we really going to keep feeding them until the spring?’

  Palla dared to smile. ‘That’s what the opponents of the policy ask, even in the presence of the Tawananna herself.’

  Kassu gaped. The Tawananna was Queen Hastayar, widow of the murdered Hattusili. It was the Hatti way that she retained power and influence after her husband’s death. ‘You’re saying this is her idea?’

  ‘Her and her advisers.’

  ‘But the Rus struck down her own husband!’

  ‘What choice is there? Look at the reality of it, Kassu. The Rus and their Scand allies are here. They aren’t going anywhere, certainly not until the spring. And even then they won’t be going back north. This party is just a vanguard. The whole of their people are on the move. Those trading cities they have on the rivers stretching back north are all abandoned now, everybody fleeing south, young and old, healthy or not. Because winter has got their northern lands in its grip and it doesn’t look like it’s going to let go.

  ‘So here they are on the northern bank of the Simoeis, less than a day’s march from New Hattusa. Yes, it feels unacceptable to deal with an enemy that has tried to decapitate us. But what if we didn’t feed them? Surely even you can imagine the consequences.’

  ‘Your condescension, priest, is going to get you killed.’

  ‘I apologise.’

  ‘How come you know so much anyway? Why was it you who talked to the Rus? How do you know his dog’s bark of a tongue?’

  ‘Well, it has been the priests who have always dealt with the Rus, ever since they first brought their dragon boats down the rivers to the Asian Sea, and began to plunder our coastal cities. My predecessors brought the word of Jesus Sharruma to them. We sought a syncretism between Teshub Yahweh and their own great god Odin.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘Never mind — a philosopher’s term. The point is that followers of Jesus are less likely to go to war with each other. We began to trade with them rather than fight. And we taught them to read and write. Did you know that? We actually devised a written language to represent their tongue and taught it to them. And all this against a drumbeat of war. That is how I know them, Kassu. Some would say that civilising the Rus is a great achievement of the Church.’

  ‘You brag a lot for a priest, don’t you? What would Jesus think of that?’

  Palla actually blushed. ‘I don’t mean to be immodest.’

  ‘And what would Jesus think of what you’ve done to my wife?’

  Now there was a dash of anger in Palla’s look as he turned on Kassu, though he kept his voice down. ‘I didn’t do anything to her. It was her choice too. We’d met when we were younger, at the Church of the Holy Wisdom, where she trained as a scribe like her father, before. .’

  Before she gave up the city to become the wife of a farmer-soldier, with Kassu.

  ‘Then I bumped into her again at a festival. We remembered each other. We talked — we’d always talked. She was full of questions about the court, the Church.’

  ‘Discussions she could never have with me.’

  ‘No,’ the priest said bluntly.

  ‘I was a good husband. I left the soldiering at the door, every night. I never bragged of the killing, as some men do. On campaign I never raped, or took whores-’

  ‘You never gave her a child.’

  ‘That was her choice! We discussed it. We’d lost one child already. We wanted to wait until the bad weather is over; this is no world to bring a child into.’

  Palla said, almost gently, ‘Look around you, soldier. How many others go childless? Even though we’re all in this world-winter. She was keeping you at a distance, Kassu. She knew she had made a mistake, with you. She loved you — the strong solid core of you. She still does, in a way, I think. She still speaks of you when-’

  ‘Don’t tell me.’

  ‘All right. But it wasn’t enough.’

  ‘And then you showed up.’

  Palla took a breath. ‘We love each other,’ he said defiantly. ‘Perhaps we always did when we were younger, and never knew it. We knew we could not have each other. But we could not stay apart, we are not strong enough for that. If you had not spotted us, if not for the extraordinary circumstances of the day the King died-’

  ‘You’d be carrying on now.’

  ‘Our lives are yours to dispose of,’ Palla said, calm now. ‘That is literally true. You must make your decision.’

  They said no more, walking on in silence into the deeper snow.

  Long before they reached the river and the Rus camp, a runner on a fast horse came dashing out from New Hattusa. Himuili was summoned back, urgently, to a council with the Tawananna. The mission to the Rus would have to be handled by his juniors.

  The general picked men to accompany him back, and he glanced at Palla and Kassu. ‘You two. With me. Let’s go. Now.’

  20

  Back at the city they were met by palace guards and court functionaries, hurried through gates and guard stations to the Pergamos, and, to Kassu’s blank astonishment, brought straight to the House of the Kings.

  This squat stone building was not the grandest of the great buildings here on old Troy’s famous peak, and it was exceptionally cold, even on a good day, for it rested permanently in the shadows of its greater cousins, the Church of the Holy Wisdom and the great modern palace. But the House of the Kings was the oldest, the very first of the keystone buildings to be erected here at the heart of Troy when Hattusili’s ancestors had moved their capital from Old Hattusa on its central Anatolian upland. Now more than a thousand years old, the House remained lodged in the heart of the dynasty and the minds of the people, for it was here that the bones of Hatti kings were interred, more than fifty of them so far.

  And here, in a chilly pavilion just before the main entrance to the House, Kassu found himself in a scene that astonished him even more. The great of New Hattusa had gathered under a single canvas awning, heavy with snow: he recognised Uhhaziti the crown prince, and Arnuwanda his cousin, the mayor Tiwatapara, the high pries
t Angulli, all sitting on wooden chairs in a shallow arc. At their centre, on an elevated platform and seated on a chair slightly grander than the rest, was Hastayar the Tawananna, widow of the King.

  This arc of seats faced another chair, solitary, heaped with burned bones. These, Kassu knew immediately, were the cremated remains of King Hattusili the Sixteenth. But according to Hatti belief the King, though dead, had not left the mortal world. On a small table before the King’s chair was set out his final meal, a selection of loaves, a cup of wine. Servants were discreetly circling with trays, bringing the King’s final guests food and drink at this, his last banquet.

  Behind the King two doors were open, leading into the recesses of the tomb. One way was lit, which led to the mausoleum of the kings, and here, soon, Hattusili would be laid to rest at last, with provisions for the journey, food and wine, and tools and a scrap of turf so that he could build himself a farm in the endless sun of the afterlife. The other way was dark, and Kassu knew it led to a symbolically empty tomb, the Tomb of Jesus and His Mother Mary — empty of their sacred bones, which had been purchased and taken away from Old Hattusa by unscrupulous, far-seeing Northlanders not long after the death of the carpenter-prophet. Some, however, remembered older gods than Jesus, and spoke of that gloomy way as a route to the Dark Earth, a bleaker afterlife than Jesus’, a plain of bones and rags and ash where you forgot who you were, forgot even the names of those who loved you.

  All this Kassu saw in an instant, before he threw himself to the ground before the King’s chair. Not fast enough for Himuili, who, on the ground already, murmured, ‘A dozen lashes.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  When they were ordered to rise, Hastayar faced Himuili. ‘Welcome, General. You may sit with us.’ She was a formidable woman, Kassu saw immediately, with a square face, flaring nostrils, and direct gaze — a soldier’s face, he would have said. She wore the grey clothes of mourning, with a cloak to match. So Himuili sat in the arc before the King, and accepted a cup of wine. Palla touched Kassu’s sleeve, and the two of them retreated to the back of the pavilion. Nobody served them food or wine.

  Hastayar began, ‘I apologise for summoning you with such little notice, Himuili. Call it an impulse. We face a grave decision — and I would rather make that decision in the presence of the King, before Jesus embraces him. Are you comfortable, General? This custom of ours, of sitting out with the King, evolved in the days when the summers were warmer and the winters milder than today. Yet custom must be respected, especially at such times as these. If you need a heavier cloak-’

  ‘I’m fine, madam, thank you,’ Himuili said. ‘For one thing I’m a lot warmer than those Rus were before they left home.’

  ‘Yes, the great winter that seems to threaten us all. My husband wasn’t terribly impressed by it, you know. The winter, I mean.’ She eyed the bones critically. ‘ “It will pass, my dear. Weather always does.” That’s what he said, even the day he died. But that’s not what the Rus think, is it? Otherwise they wouldn’t have worn themselves out coming here — and more on the way, I hear.’

  Angulli snorted and waved his cup for more of the King’s wine. ‘What do the Rus know?’

  Himuili glanced back at Palla, who stepped forward and spoke. ‘Sir, with respect — they know rather a lot about winter. There is their direct experience of course. And as the weather has changed they have consulted sages, from Northland and elsewhere.’

  Hastayar asked him, ‘And would they have agreed with my husband?’

  Palla could not contradict the King. Instead he cast down his eyes.

  Hastayar turned now to the Hazannu, the city mayor. ‘What of our city, Tiwatapara?’

  He shrugged. ‘Madam, you know it as well as I do. You’ve seen the figures on the bread ration — we’re only just at midwinter, and we’ll be lucky if we don’t have starvation before the spring. If it ever comes. That’s even before we started doling out to the Rus horde.’

  ‘And the population reduction measures? Are they working?’

  The man grimaced. ‘With difficulty. Of course we’re keeping refuge seekers out of the city; that’s not too hard, unless one of them has a relative inside. As for active reduction, we’re finding the most effective way is to target groups. Specific peoples. The Kaskans, for instance, and the Arzawans, and you’d be surprised how many there are here.’

  ‘Many of several generations’ descent,’ Arnuwanda put in now, anger in his voice. ‘I know some of them, or did. They think of themselves as Hatti, not Kaskans or whatever. They think of themselves as belonging to the city, and many of their families have been here since the time of their grandfathers’ grandfathers.’

  Kassu was shocked to hear this. He had witnessed the expulsion of Kaskans. He had even taken part in some of it. He had had no idea it had all been an officially sanctioned, officially planned exercise in population reduction.

  Arnuwanda went on, ‘I’ve fought alongside them, for the King. And now we’ve kicked them out.’

  The Tawananna eyed him. ‘Nephew, it is better to pick on a group the rest can identify and despise, rather than have us fight among ourselves.’

  ‘Though we’re doing that too,’ said the Hazannu reluctantly. ‘Well, people always do. There are religious tensions, followers of the older creeds and the banished gods — I mean the divine ancestors of Teshub Yahweh who have been declared apocryphal by the Church — their adherents are coming out and denouncing the Jesus followers, who in turn are calling for their opponents’ executions as heretics, and so on. And as soon as you get a rumour that somebody is hoarding so much as a crust of bread, a whole district collapses into a riot. Well, we just have to contain it all.’

  Angulli mused, ‘And what of liberty? What of rights under our law?’

  ‘Liberty is for the summer,’ Hastayar said bleakly. She turned to Himuili. ‘General, what of the grain supplies?’

  He nodded. ‘I have checked. Our only reliable source of grain the last few years has been Egypt, ever since the Turks occupied so much of Anatolia. But the route is precarious. If I had a map-’

  ‘Just tell us, man,’ Arnuwanda said.

  ‘Once the grain was brought across the sea to Ura, which is a port on the south coast of Anatolia, and then overland to New Hattusa and elsewhere. The pirates’ activities and the Turks’ raids made that too hazardous. Even the Carthaginians have been roaming our waters. So now it is brought overland to Ugarit, which is to the north of Judea, and then by sea the short crossing to Ura. It is a tenuous chain-’

  ‘And too easily broken,’ Hastayar said.

  ‘Yes, majesty. Also — the Carthaginians, again. They’re outbidding us for the Egyptian grain. Of course it’s safer for the Egyptian merchants to ship it overland through Africa to Carthage, than over the sea to us.’

  ‘The Carthaginians!’ Arnuwanda snapped. ‘To think it’s not long since we fought alongside those scum and the Muslims to keep the Mongols out of Egypt. Curse them to the Dark Earth!’

  Himuili said frankly, ‘My feeling is that they seek to use the opportunity of these bleak winters to bring us down.’

  ‘Starving us out!’ Arnuwanda made an involuntary crossed-wrists sign, the sign of Jesus’ palm leaves. ‘What a foul way to wage war.’

  The Tawananna said coldly, ‘The point is, gentlemen, we must look beyond these emergency measures and decide what to do next. By we I mean the Hatti as a people. And by next I mean in the coming year, or two years or five years. The Father of the Churches is begging Judas Telipinu to be more forgiving with the sun and the rain,’ and Angulli suppressed a belch in response, ‘but with all due respect we cannot rely on that happening. Must we sit here and freeze and starve, while fending off the Rus and the Scand and the Pechenegs and whoever next comes walking down from the north?’ She counted the points on her hand. ‘Rationing wasn’t enough. Kicking people out wasn’t enough. We can’t rely on the Egyptian grain, our last staple. What then?’

  Arnuwanda studied her wari
ly. ‘I know you, Aunt. When I was a boy you played tougher games with me than my father did, and he was a seasoned soldier. I still have the scars. . You have a plan, don’t you? Something bold, something outrageous-’

  ‘Something you would never have thought of, that’s for sure. Or my much-lamented husband. But it’s actually a plan brought to me by another. General?’

  Himuili looked embarrassed for once, as the eyes of the elevated company turned to him, and Kassu understood for the first time why he had been summoned back from the Simoeis. ‘It’s my plan, of sorts. It’s this. New Hattusa is becoming increasingly unviable.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Arnuwanda said. ‘So?’

  ‘So we move.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘All of us. Like the Rus. The whole population.’

  That made jaws drop, including Kassu’s.

  ‘I’m the city’s Hazannu,’ said Tiwatapara. ‘And I can tell you now that the population won’t stand for it. To wander around the countryside like booty people? No, sir — not Hatti!’

  But now Palla discreetly stepped forward. ‘If I may. .’

  ‘Go on, priest,’ Himuili said, before anybody could shut him up.

  ‘There may be a way to persuade them.’ He glanced at Angulli, his superior. ‘Of course, there is the historical precedent; the Hatti capital has moved before, a thousand years ago. And under the wise guidance of the Father of the Churches, I have been considering theological precursors also. Remember that Jesus Himself was once booty; He was transported across Anatolia to Old Hattusa, after the Judean uprising.’

  ‘Ah,’ Hastayar said. ‘And it did Him no harm in the end, did it? Now He can lead us all on a new journey, into the sunlight. The people may not follow me, but they will certainly follow Jesus.’ She nodded at Himuili. ‘You’ve found a smart young man in that one, General.’

  Arnuwanda demanded, ‘And, if we move — where, in the name of Teshub?’