Bronze Summer : The Northland Trilogy (9781101615416)

by Baxter, Stephen

  “No, thanks.” She walked away.

  His laughter pursued her. “I’ll see you later, little girl, daughter of an Annid. See you later!”

  That evening the farmers built a tremendous bonfire at the heart of their village. Sheep were slaughtered for the roast, as was a boar trapped that day in the forest, and there were mounds of the coarse bread the farmers made from their grain. In return the visitors handed over gifts: bronze and amber from the Northlanders, and from Kilushepa’s party exotic artifacts of glass, copper, tin, even a creamy white substance that turned out to be from the tooth of some tremendous animal whose description Milaqa didn’t quite believe, and iron, ornaments and tools made of the precious stuff.

  It was a clear starry night. After the feasting, while Bren engaged Kilushepa in deep conversation, the Kanti farmers began a ritual of their own. They tracked around their circle of stones, trampling flat a kind of walkway as they did so. Every so often the elders lay on the ground and took sightings of stars along lines of the stones, sometimes right across the village space, while the children danced and sang.

  When she got the chance, Milaqa pulled Voro aside.

  “Bren speaks with Kilushepa of alliances between the Hatti and Northland. But he is not the Annid of Annids. He is not even of the House of the Owl. He does not speak for Northland!”

  “Yet his favored candidate is now installed as Annid,” Voro murmured back.

  “And I heard the other Hatti talking. If what they’re saying is true it’s an astonishing story. They are the embassy from Hattusa—not her! She found them, and just—well, she took over.”

  Voro smiled. “This is how the world works, I think. An ambitious Jackdaw, a disempowered queen, with knowledge and ability and cunning, in the right place and the right time—such people can change everything.”

  As long as obstacles like Milaqa’s mother were removed. “It’s not right. If my mother were alive—”

  “But she is not,” Voro said firmly. “Anyhow I thought you were the famous rebel, Milaqa. It’s hard to believe you’re demanding that things be done by the rules now!” He was grinning at her. Mocking her. Voro, the puppy dog!

  Furious at him, at Bren and Kilushepa—furious at her mother for being dead—she stalked away and found a place to sit alone at the edge of the clearing, beside the tipped-up root of a great fallen tree.

  Of course it was the Trojan who found her first.

  “Go away.”

  “Oh, come on.” He settled easily to the ground behind her. His lips shone with the grease of the meat he had eaten, and he carried a skin flask. “I brought you some of my ale. You want to try some?”

  “No.” But now she felt graceless. She lifted a flask of her own. “I have this. Fruit, honey and water.”

  “Suit yourself.” He took a draft of his ale, and let out a satisfied belch. “We didn’t get off to the best of starts, did we? My fault, I admit it.”

  She fingered the iron arrowhead at her neck—a nervous gesture; she dropped her hand. “And this is your way of having another try at me, is it?”

  He laughed. “I’m not that subtle. Believe me—I’m really not. We’re going to be stuck with each other all the way across Northland. And besides, you’ve a choice of talking to me or that streak of gristle over there.” He meant Voro, who was hovering by the fire, trying not to be seen to be watching them. “He’s no doubt a decent fellow. If you want me to clear off so you can call him over—”

  “No,” she said impulsively.

  He laughed again and drank more ale. “Or of course you could talk to some of these farmers, if you know the tongue.”

  “They aren’t the savages Kilushepa believes them to be.”

  “Of course they’re not. Do you know what they call themselves? The People of Venus. The wandering star is their principal goddess. And the way these stones are lined up is something to do with how Venus drifts around the sky. Don’t ask me to explain. All this is locked up in the memories of their elders. They’re a deep people—as all people are.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  “Because I keep my ears open, and my eyes. Because I too am deeper than you might think. Certainly than Kilushepa suspects, and that suits me fine. Mind you, I wouldn’t go into that big central hall if I were you.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because among these people, when grandmother dies they cut out her guts and her brains and hang her up to dry out in the rafters, over the fire. It’s nothing but corpses in there, dangling. Their feet knock your hat off.”

  She snorted laughter.

  “Here’s what I think, daughter of the Annid. I think you and I have a lot in common.”

  She remembered Voro saying something similar. Somehow she believed it of Qirum. “How can that be? I never met anybody like you before.”

  “Like me?”

  She looked at him, his slab of a body, his scars, his arrogant bearing. “A fighter.”

  “So nobody fights in Northland?”

  “Not the way you people do.”

  He grinned. “That fascinates you, doesn’t it? And that’s why we fight, you know. Deep down, underneath it all. The glamour. The thrill of hard muscle, the stink of blood. The finest sport anybody ever invented—war! You Northlanders don’t know what you’re missing.”

  “Then why do you say we have something in common?”

  “Because we’re both outsiders. We’re neither of us here for our own reasons, are we? I’m here because of what the Tawananna wants to achieve, which is to rebuild the Hatti’s relationship with Northland, use that to win back her own position at home, and skewer her enemies. And you are here because—well, I’m not sure. You’re no trader, are you? Must be something to do with your famous mother. And that nice Hatti arrowhead you wear around your pretty neck.”

  She frowned. “You don’t know anything about me … How do you know it’s Hatti?”

  He reached out and cupped the arrow point in his fingers. The back of his hand brushed her bare flesh, as he surely intended, and she tried not to show how it thrilled her. “Only they can manufacture iron hard enough to use as a weapon.” He glanced across the village space. “So here we are in the presence of an exiled Hatti queen, and a Northland trader who seems hungry for a little power himself, and a bit of weapon-quality iron. How does it all fit together, do you think?” He pulled back. “Listen, daughter of an Annid—let’s you and me stick together. We each need an ally.”

  She said grudgingly, “As long as it’s convenient.”

  He laughed. “I wouldn’t expect anything else. Well, I’d better go have a nap before it’s time to service the Tawananna again. Goodnight, Annid’s daughter.” He leaned over and kissed her cheek, quite gently. Then he got to his feet in a single bound, and walked off to the house he shared with Kilushepa.

  She wiped away the meat grease he had left on her cheek. And then she touched the place he had kissed her, again.

  19

  The Year of the Fire Mountain:

  Midsummer Solstice

  The visitors from the Land of the Jaguar were staying at Medoc’s home, a place called The Black, a few houses, sheep and cattle pens and potato fields tucked into the lee of the Hood. This place had taken its name from the layered black rock that protruded from the ground hereabouts. Deri liked to go whale hunting from the little natural harbor on the coast below.

  On midsummer morn itself, and despite the rolled eyes of his wife Vala, Medoc decided it would be a good idea to take Tibo and Caxa for a walk up to the summit of the Hood. A unique chance to see a fire mountain in its pomp!

  It was almost noon by the time Tibo met Medoc with the Jaguar girl, at the head of the track leading out of the little settlement. Already The Black was alive with its own celebration of midsummer, the day of Northland’s Giving. A party of boys, both Northlanders and Ice Folk, went from house to house, handing over gifts of food, leather, carved stone, fine bone fishhooks, and receiving gifts in return. They we
re followed by a procession led by the village’s chief priest, singing songs of earth and sky in a mixture of tongues. It was noisy, pleasant chaos. And nobody seemed bothered by the tremendous column of smoke that loomed into the sky from the mountain just to the north, or by the steady drizzle of ash that turned everything and everybody a faint gray, coming down in the brilliant sunshine of the year’s longest day.

  As Tibo arrived, Medoc was loading a pack on his back the size of a mountain itself, stuffed with water and food. Caxa stood beside Medoc, with sturdy boots on her feet and a leather cap on her head to keep the drifting ash out of her hair. She looked bewildered, as she had so often since she’d arrived on this island. But today she had particular cause, Tibo thought. Medoc was explaining to her what was going on. “See, we’re a mix of Northland folk and Ice Folk, each with their own traditions. But we merge them happily together. To us, the whole world is a gift of the little mothers, and today we give back in return. And where the Ice Folk come from there’s nothing to eat but animals and fish and the beasts of the sea, and they know that an animal will only give you the gift of its flesh if it is willing. So today everybody gives back, you see, in thanks for the gifts of others. And at the end of the day there’ll be the Burial of the Bladders. The hunters keep the bladders of every single sea animal they kill during the year, all the way since last midsummer, and tonight they’ll climb this slope to bury them. It’s quite a sight, I can tell you, and quite a stink too …”

  Caxa just listened to all this, expressionless. There was a rumble, like distant thunder, and Tibo thought the drizzle of ash fell a bit more heavily.

  Medoc hitched his own pack on his broad shoulders, turned, and began the walk up the steep path out of the village. “Keep up, you youngsters. You’ll soon warm up.”

  Tibo followed, grumbling, with Caxa at his side. “We’re hardly cold, grandfather. And we’re walking up a fire mountain …”

  That column of smoke towered before them, black at the base and feathering in the air. Birds swooped around the column, distant specks of darkness themselves.

  “Ravens,” Medoc said. “The Ice Folk believe they are the souls of the dead, guarding an entrance to the underworld. Whatever you do don’t kill one, or you’ll spend the rest of your life apologizing to the gods for it. Step out, you two!” He strode boldly on.

  They breasted a shallow rise, and the Hood was revealed before them. It was a bleak, ridged formation that loomed above the greener lowlands, streaked with flows of black rock—a lifeless thing, Tibo thought, like a skull emerging from the living earth. And after a few more paces, it seemed to Tibo that the ground was growing warm beneath his feet.

  Milaqa’s party of Northlanders, Hatti and one Trojan reached Etxelur and the Wall in the early morning of the midsummer solstice itself. Their journey had been long and arduous, and to make it here for the special day they had had to finish the journey overnight, hurrying along the last few tracks in the eerie light of a night that was never quite dark.

  Bren brought them to his own home, one of the famous Seven Houses of Etxelur, an ancient neighborhood of properties demolished and rebuilt many times, that overlooked the Bay Land itself. Inside they dumped their packs, drank nettle tea, and hastily smartened up for the day. Bren and Voro donned their ceremonial cloaks of jackdaw feathers, cheerfully complaining about how heavy and hot they would be to wear. Qirum polished his bronze armor clean of dust with a corner of his tunic.

  Kilushepa meanwhile borrowed some garments and a bolt of cloth from Bren’s wife and used Qirum’s knife to make some brisk modifications. The result, when she emerged into the light of day, startled Milaqa. The Tawananna wore a sweeping gown that left her arms bare but covered her legs to the floor. Her growing hair was brushed back into a tight bun, and she wore a necklace of iron pieces borrowed from the traders. Picking at a stray thread, she noticed Milaqa watching her. “How do I look?” she asked in her own tongue.

  “Like a queen of Hattusa,” Milaqa replied honestly.

  Kilushepa snorted. “Well, since you’ve never been near Hattusa I won’t take that remark too seriously. But your words are meant kindly, so I thank you.”

  Now Qirum emerged from the house, alongside Bren. Strutting, Qirum had his armor on and his horned helmet jammed on his head. As usual he looked as if he was spoiling for a fight. He saw Milaqa and winked at her. Then he sniffed the air. “Can I smell something? Like smoke, ash?”

  “Some of the Swallows, the travelers, say there’s a mountain spewing fire on Kirike’s Land.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “Across the Western Ocean—a long way from here. But it’s not unknown for ash and dust to be carried far across the sea. Anyhow I think it’s more likely you’re smelling meat cooking up on the Wall.” She gestured. “Take a look.”

  The party turned, and Qirum and Kilushepa looked upon the Wall, at close hand and in full daylight, for the first time.

  They were only a few hundred paces from its base, where its tremendous growstone flank met the Wall Way, the rough roadway that ran along its length from east to west. Towering over the houses that clustered at its feet, the exposed face shone brilliantly in the sun, but today great cloth panels hung over wide sections of the face, alive with color, many of them adorned with the concentric-circle design that was the root of the symbolism of Northland. The huge scaffolding structures for the endless repair work were abandoned today; nobody worked at midsummer. But the staircases and galleries chipped into the sheer face swarmed with people walking and eating, leaning on balconies to look out over the country, and children ran along the corridors. For the Giving, people traveled from across Northland—from across the world, indeed—and on first arriving almost all of them made straight for Great Etxelur, the ancient heart of the Wall. If you listened closely you could hear a merged rumble of voices, the calls and shouts and laughter of the tremendous vertical crowd.

  Qirum took off his helmet and scratched his scalp. “It just deepens the mystery for me. Why, if you people can conceive of a tremendous monument like this, you would choose to live in wooden barns, like animals.”

  Bren said portentously, “We are all, perhaps, a mystery to each other. It will soon be midday, and before then we must find our way to the Chamber of the Solstice Noon. I am not as agile a climber of the staircases as I once was …”

  As they formed up into a little procession behind the trader, Qirum looked blank. “What chamber is that?”

  Milaqa murmured, “There will be beer.”

  He grinned. “Whatever tongue you use, Milaqa, you always speak my language, and for that I’m grateful!”

  Medoc had led them high up the flank of the mountain, high above the last of the green, and Tibo walked on a carpet of ash like fallen snow, studded with the stumps of burned-down trees. The ground was hot enough now to feel uncomfortable through the thick soles of his boots, and they passed pools of mud that bubbled and steamed, the stink of sulfur strong. Nothing lived as far as he could see, no creatures walked here save Medoc, Tibo and Caxa—even the belching mud pools lacked the green mosses that usually grew there, even the ravens wheeling overhead did not land. It was a dead country, a place of rock and fire and ash, a place for the little mother of the earth, perhaps, and her alone. It was too hot, the air was thick and increasingly hard to breathe, and there was a continuous rushing roar, like falling water.

  And now, it seemed to Tibo, the land actually bulged under their feet.

  They passed a dead goat, on its back, its limbs sticking up into the air.

  “This isn’t a place for us,” Tibo muttered.

  “What?” Medoc did not break his stride. “What did you say, boy? Keep up, keep up.”

  “I said,” he called, shouting over the noise, “we shouldn’t be up here. It’s too dangerous.”

  “Nonsense. Though I can’t remember the mountain being quite as restive as this before. Maybe nobody in the world has seen what we’re seeing! We are explorers, like Kirike, th
e ancient who found this island, and then crossed the ocean to be the first to the Land of the Sky Wolf.”

  “We’re not explorers.”

  “Nonsense! Anyhow it’s just a little further to the summit. We can’t turn back now …”

  Tibo slowed, and walked alongside Caxa. “Are you all right?”

  The Jaguar girl walked on doggedly, keeping up the pace, coated with ash, gray as a corpse. “My people too live in the shadow of fire mountains. We run from the heat, not toward it.”

  “So do we—most of us—most of the time …” He saw that she was staring at flickers of flame that emerged from the rocks. “What are you thinking?”

  “About fire. Keeps you warm. But too close, you burn. Yes? And even as it warms, cold on your back. The unending cold, just beyond.” She shivered.

  “You are …” He had no idea how to say what he wanted to say, in words she might understand. “You have many layers.”

  “Layers?”

  “I see a fire. You see life and death. All in the same thing. Maybe that’s why you’re a sculptor. You think strange thoughts, with layers.”

  She grabbed his arm. Her grip, through his sleeve, was surprisingly strong, the grip of a sculptor, belying the slenderness of her body, her thin face. “Let me stay.”

  “What?”

  “Not go with Xivu. Not back to land of Jaguar.”

  He was bewildered, a rush of emotions flooding him—fear of the consequences of this, a kind of tenderness that this girl should ask him for help. “They need you there, don’t they? Who else can carve the King’s face? And before that you have to go to Northland, for the Annid.”

  Caxa said softly, “Sculpture finished, Caxa finished, I die.” She shivered, despite the heat of the fire mountain.

  He didn’t know what to say. He had no idea how he could help her.