Bronze Summer

by Stephen Baxter

  ‘They won’t leave their mothers.’

  Hadhe squeezed her arm. ‘That’s why it must be you. Tell them it’s a treat, a hunt for eels or grass snakes. They’ll believe you. Go.’ She pushed her away, gently. ‘Take blankets, water flasks, fire-making gear, mashed food for the little ones. Oh, and take Caxa. I think the Annids would want her to be kept safe. She can help with the children. And, Mi. This is most important.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘When you get to the Wall, tell them what’s happening here. Tell them we need help.’

  Vala hugged Mi. ‘Maybe you’ll be back here in a few days and the sun will be shining and everybody will be fine, and nothing will have happened.’

  ‘I’ll have been wrong,’ Mi pointed out. ‘But I could live with that.’

  ‘Good girl,’ Vala said. ‘Go now. Go!’ She turned away quickly, and Hadhe saw how she was fighting back a sudden tear.

  As Mi ran off to find the children, the adults huddled, talking urgently. Through his wooden teeth the priest began muttering prayers to the little mothers, while checking that his bronze knife was in its sheath at his waist.

  The Trojans had marched through the night, behind their king.

  The hundred or so warriors were mostly Anatolian, equipped in the Hatti fashion, and some even sported thick Hatti queues. But in the months since the landing Protis the Spartan had trained them up as infantry in the disciplined Greek style. So they marched as quietly as a hundred such men could be expected to, though there were always muffled coughs, muttering voices, the creak of leather shields and the clank of bronze weapons and armour. Further back came the chariots, and the neighing of horses carried in the moist night air. The soldiers had grumbled about being woken for the march, but soldiers always grumbled, and the promise of the first real action since the landing was enough to stir most of them. And there would be women, and boys for those who preferred that kind of thing. The women of Northland had proven to be big healthy animals, a much better ride than the dead-eyed forced whores of the booty people brought over from the Continent, or the dusty, worn-out, slack-uddered farmers’ wives you would find on a raid in Anatolia or Greece. They were ready. Qirum was sure of it.

  And at last, only a little before the dawn, Qirum stood before a Northland community, a king with his army at his back, and Protis and the Spider at his side, his basileis. They were here in force, for Qirum was determined to make this first serious assault a statement of intent.

  Not that the prize they had come so far to take looked like much in the blue-grey dawn light. Just a rough earth rampart and ditch around a huddle of houses, with that one big dwelling up on its mound. But you could only fight what the enemy put in front of you; you could only take what he had to lose.

  First they had to cross that ditch. Qirum turned and murmured a command to Erishum. The sergeant gathered half a dozen engineers. They moved forward, dragging logs and sections of a wooden platform.

  In response a gate in the rampart opened, and men came filing out. It was too dark to see clearly, but Qirum thought there could be no more than fifty of them. All seemed armed, though, and some were armoured, in leather or bronze. They lined up on the far side of the ditch, and shouted threats and launched the odd arrow at the engineers. But the Trojans were already in the ditch; they raised their shields and kept working. Soon the bridge would be ready.

  ‘So here we are,’ murmured Protis, standing by Qirum. He had learned to speak a coarsely accented Trojan, as an honour to his new king. But his voice was as expressionless as his eyes, even as they were about to give battle. The man made Qirum shudder. ‘We have no element of surprise. We came walking in by the most obvious route, straight up the road from the south that runs through the heart of this country. We could split our forces and come in from the back, the sides …’

  ‘Or the chariots,’ murmured the Spider. ‘Get them across that ditch and let them run at the defences.’

  Qirum snorted. ‘You Hatti love your chariots. Look at this place. We don’t need chariots, or subtlety of tactics. Do you really think we need more than a frontal assault to finish off this lot?’

  Erishum hurried back and reported that the engineers had completed their work.

  ‘No more talk.’ Qirum pulled his sword from its scabbard with a ringing sound, and he raised his voice so the men could hear. ‘Let’s get this done. Are you ready to live like men, or die like heroes?’ In response Erishum slammed the shaft of his spear against his leather shield, over and over. Soon all the men were banging their shields, stamping their feet, yelling. Qirum raised his sword. ‘Onwards!’ And he marched forward, closely flanked by the Spider and Protis, with the best of their men following. The heroes always led the charge.

  Immediately there was a whoosh and clatter, and the blue-grey sky above the settlement darkened. Arrows and stones, hurled from within the settlement. The defenders weren’t entirely unprepared, then. Good – it would make for a better fight, and the men needed it.

  Protis roared, ‘Shields!’ He raised his own shield, as did Qirum, as they marched. The order was repeated up and down the line, but Protis’s bellow had been so loud there was scarcely a need; like most successful commanders he had lungs like an iron smelter’s leather bellows.

  The arrows and heavy stones clanged against the bronze face of Qirum’s shield, making him stagger. But he kept advancing. And javelins were thrown from the ranks behind him; they fell on Northlander flesh, and there were screams and cries.

  Now there was a roar ahead. The Northlanders outside the rampart were coming forward. Evidently they meant to meet the Trojans as they reached the bottleneck of the engineers’ bridge. Better not to have let the bridge be built in the first place, Qirum thought; it showed the typical indecisiveness of the untrained, the inexperienced. No matter.

  Suddenly the Northlanders were only paces away. Qirum saw their strange red hair, their faces pale with anger or fear.

  The two sides closed in a hail of slingshot and arrows. At first it was just the three of them, Qirum, Protis and the Spider, side by side on the bridge’s rough panels. The first man Qirum faced was tall, young, healthy-looking, with an odd little beard around his mouth. He looked astonished when Qirum thrust the tip of his own sword into his throat, almost delicately, as a surgeon would lance a wound. Here was the benefit of training, which beat the hesitancy out of a man; it was easier to die than to kill for the first time, as the man was no doubt already explaining to the little mothers, his feeble goddesses. Qirum got his boot on the man’s chest and shoved him back, thus retrieving his sword, and he surged forward once more, laying into the next man, and the next. Beside him, Protis swung his sword and the Spider stabbed with his spear, flesh was broken and blood spurted. Protis especially was extraordinary in such a situation, a whirl of slashing blades.

  Surrounded by roars, in a mist of blood, the three companions slew and maimed, driving on as the defenders fell back before them. Soon the three of them, just three against fifty or so, had driven a deep hole into the ranks of the defenders. Behind them, Erishum led more men over the bridge to pour into the attack, hacking, screaming, driving the foe back.

  A cry went up from the defenders, in their own strange tongue. Fall back! At the rear, men streamed back through the rampart gate. Those at the front had to scramble backwards, fighting as they went. Erishum and the other sergeants yelled encouragement at the Trojan forces, to keep pushing, keep killing.

  It didn’t take long for the Trojan surge to reach the gate. There was a final brave stand by a handful of Northlanders, who held the Trojans back long enough for the gate to be slammed shut, before they died in their turn. The commanders would not allow any pause, any falling back, any break in the assault now it had begun. Protis called, ‘Shields up! Bring the ladders! Come on, you lazy slugs, do I have to do it myself?’

  Handfuls of men carried the stubby siege ladders forward from the little army’s short train, protected from the arrows by the raised shield
s of others who ran alongside. Good training paying off again, Qirum thought, watching from under his shield.

  The Spider turned his own shield over and pulled out an arrow with some difficulty. It had penetrated bronze plate. ‘Iron,’ he said, turning the arrow’s head before his king’s eyes. ‘Good stuff too.’

  ‘Well, we knew they had it,’ Qirum said. ‘From what they stole in Hattusa.’

  The Spider glanced at the rough rampart. ‘It will make no difference. Iron or not, these savages don’t know how civilised men fight.’

  ‘Well, they know now.’

  Soon the first ladder, rough steps hacked into a halved tree trunk, was up against the wall. This time Protis was the first to charge. ‘Let’s get this over.’ He took the ladder at a run, not using his hands, sword in one hand and shield strap in the other, relying on sheer momentum to keep from falling as he climbed. He slammed the shield into the face of a defender at the top, who fell back screaming, his face a bloody mass. Then Protis was up and over the rampart, sword swinging, and he dropped out of sight on the far side. His men followed in his wake.

  All along the wall more ladders had been propped up, more Trojans were pouring over. The defenders were already falling back.

  Qirum roared, ‘Let me at them!’ But he had to push his way through the men to get to the ladder, and clamber his way to the top.

  Standing near the central hearth – there were still piles of acorns beside a half-filled pit, from the work abandoned yesterday – Vala saw the Trojans break over the rampart, and the men of My Sun falling back, only to be cut down as they fled. One man – she knew him well, a fatherly fellow of about forty called Maos – slithered screaming down a rampart wall that was already slick with bright blood. At the bottom of the wall he rolled over, and from a great gaping slash in his belly snake-like entrails spilled and dragged on the ground.

  It seemed only heartbeats since the assault had started. It was not yet fully dawn. But already everything was lost.

  ‘Mother!’

  Vala whirled around. Liff, her twelve-year-old warrior, came staggering towards her, trailing his sword on the ground, his tunic front soaked with blood. Yet his sword seemed unbloodied; he probably hadn’t inflicted a single wound.

  The first Trojans had dropped down into the hearthplace and were running forward, yelling, swords in hand. Huge men with weapons running at her, only paces away, and nobody left to stop them.

  She shoved Liff so he fell backwards into the acorn pit. He looked up, shocked. She screamed, ‘Cover yourself!’

  The blade, coming from over her shoulder, slashed down the right side of her face.

  There was an instant of shock; she staggered. Then blood spurted, filling her right eye. On the ground she saw a lank of her hair, bloody flesh that might have been her cheek – her ear, on the ground. And then the pain hit her, as if a fire mountain was bursting inside her head. Bright with agony, she tried to run, staggered.

  A heavy mass slammed into her legs, and she was driven face down into the dust. Her cut-open head scraped over the ground, and more pain came, brilliant, blinding. A hand grabbed her shoulder and she was rolled onto her back, in the grip of overwhelming strength. She could see the man over her, though blood was pooling in both her eyes now. She tried to scream, and a fist drove into her mouth, hard and filthy. She felt teeth crack, she tasted blood and dirt, and there was more agony, shocking, sudden. A rough hand dragged up her tunic, and her legs were pulled apart, other hands, other men. And then the man over her thrust and he was inside her, tearing at her dryness. She tried to call for her husband, for Medoc, but he was long dead, and her throat was full of blood.

  53

  Hiding in the communal house on the flood mound, the women and children could hear the fighting outside, the screams of the men, their husbands and brothers and sons in the battle, brief as it was. And the worse screams when the fighting was done, punctuated with laughter, as the injured were put to death.

  Then the Trojans came pushing into the house. Blinking in the dark, they laughed when they discovered the women here. One girl, too young, too pretty, was immediately raped by a brute of a Trojan, there in the middle of the floor, before being returned weeping to her mother and her little brother. The rest cheered the man on. Then they searched the house for food and water, shoving cowering children aside to find it. The women were ordered to strip and their clothes were taken away. The men worked through the crowd, groping and punching, but there were no more rapes, for now.

  All this before dawn had fully broken.

  The day wore on, horribly slowly. More women were shoved in by the Trojans. All these were injured, all had been raped. Vala had to be carried in, swung by her hands and feet between two men. Her head was a mass of blood, the skin sheared off, her ear gone, the flesh scraped and full of grit where it looked as if she had been dragged across the ground. Part of Hadhe’s extended family, Hadhe thought of Vala as an aunt. Now, her body used and broken, Hadhe could only cradle her. She did not even have water to wash away the grit.

  The women and children huddled, shivering from the cold, naked, bloodied, hungry, thirsty. Nobody spoke. Hadhe longed to know what had become of her own children. She wondered if she would ever find out.

  Later in the day, as the evening drew in, Hadhe heard gruff voices, a clink of metal, leather sliding, sighs of relief, and she smelled meat cooking. She imagined men loosening their armour, taking their boots off after the day’s work of killing – just another day for them, the end of a unique existence for each of their victims.

  The light was dying when men came to the house again. Two of them this time, more grandly dressed, heavy in bronze armour and with elaborate conical helmets. One carried a sword in his hand. Hadhe thought the other might have been Qirum himself, but his face was obscured by his armour.

  The man with the sword walked among the women, inspecting them. The women, naked, their legs up to their chests, quailed back against the wooden walls. He handled them roughly, lifting faces, pulling back hair, pinching breasts. At length he selected one, a young mother called Sila, and another, Sila’s younger cousin Leb – and, at last, Hadhe. He chose these three by tapping their shoulders, and beckoned them to stand. The others looked away.

  Hadhe felt numb. This was unreal. Why me? Why not her, or her? She stood tall, hoping her pregnant belly would show, and put them off. But then Qirum looked at her more closely – yes, it was him – and yes, he recognised her. He said a couple of words to the other man, who shrugged, and drove Sila and Leb out of the house. Qirum himself grabbed Hadhe by her wrist.

  Once outside, Hadhe wrapped her free arm around her body in the chill as Qirum dragged her down the mound. My Sun was all but unrecognisable from the home it had been just that morning. Only three houses still stood; the rest had been burned, the storage pits broken open and robbed. Even the rampart had been smashed down in a dozen places. In one corner men and boys huddled, Hadhe saw, naked too, roped together at hands and feet. And a stack of corpses had been heaped up, all stripped.

  The soldiers in the hearthspace seemed oblivious to all this. They tended their feet and inspected damage to shields and armour. The ground was scuffed and littered with their armour and boots, with their turds and pools of their piss, with splashes of drying blood. Some men were wounded, with cuts and burns salved with potions, honey, grease, mashed-up roots. A surgeon with a kit of bronze tools – forceps, chisels, a saw – prepared to set a broken arm. The man was held down by his companions, a bit of wood between his teeth.

  There were some Trojan dead. They had been set out respectfully near the gate through the rampart, and covered with blankets stolen from the houses. Hadhe found no joy in seeing that some Trojans, at least, had fallen today.

  Sila was dragged off to one of the surviving houses, and Leb to the next, and Qirum took Hadhe to the third. A skein of geese crossed the sky. Greylags, perhaps.

  Qirum pushed her inside the house. The floor was littered with f
urs, there was a heavy wooden couch, and a serving girl, barefoot, stood by a low table laden with food, water and wine. As it happened this had been the house of Sila’s family. Qirum clapped his hands to send the girl away. He kicked off his boots, threw himself back on the couch, and considered Hadhe.

  Hadhe stood in the middle of the floor. She was tempted to cover her body with her arms, but she stood tall, still hoping she might be spared because of her pregnancy.

  ‘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?’