The leaders of the Houses wore their ceremonial robes, and fur, feathers, polished leather gleamed. They looked like a flock of birds, Milaqa thought idly. Big fat exotic birds. As one of a loose band of advisers and supporters, she sat on the grassy sward with Teel and Riban and others outside the central circle. She had been here for three days already, the proceedings had gone on all day, it was mid-afternoon, and it was insufferably tedious.
At least the setting was magnificent. The sun, still high in a clear southern sky, bathed the face of the Wall with light, the sweeping surface with its galleries and ledges, the climbing nets and ladders dangling from the roof, the huge scaffolding structures of the Beavers. It looked like something natural, she thought idly, like a great hive, rather than something made by people.
But the talking went on and on. The core of the confrontation seemed to be between Bren, leader of the Jackdaw traders, and a group of Annids. His principal opponent was a severe older Annid, a woman called Noli. Bren was pushing his own candidate for the office of Annid of Annids, a young, slightly confused-looking woman called Raka. The debate was passionately argued, but it was all very formal. The participants always spoke to each other via a neutral speaker, one of the priests, they used an archaic form of the Northland tongue, and every word they spoke was transcribed on a linen roll by a Wolf scribe. In his late thirties, Jackdaw Bren’s face was handsome, but it was oddly too symmetrical — too perfect — and it was severe, Milaqa thought, with deep-grooved lines around his mouth and on his forehead. He was the sort of man it was impossible to believe had ever been a child. Somehow it didn’t surprise Milaqa to find out that Raka, his candidate, was actually Bren’s niece.
Milaqa glanced at the sky, where gulls wheeled so high they were almost out of sight, and she smelled the sea on a soft breeze from the north. She imagined she wasn’t stuck in this dull session of talk, talk, talk but swimming in the cold sea, or flying up in the air as free as the gulls…
An elbow poked her ribs. She jolted upright.
The elbow had been Riban’s. Her cousin, a young acolyte in the House of the Wolves, was grinning at her. He was taller than she was, even sitting cross-legged on the grass; he had a dark, open face whose good humour was not ruined by his mouthful of wooden teeth. ‘You were snoring.’
‘I wasn’t.’
‘You were about to. Mind you, you wouldn’t be the only one. Half these fat old fools have spent the whole day dozing away, dreaming of their evening feast.’
Milaqa snorted a laugh.
There was a rustle around her, of swallow feathers and stitched vole hide, as the elders reacted.
‘Hush, you two. You’re showing the family up.’ Teel sat with them on the grass, but bolt upright, almost like a hare, Milaqa thought, a bald fat hare, totally intent on what the elders were saying.
At long last the day’s sessions ended. Bren and his opponent bowed to each other, and to the Wolf speaker. The scribe scattered sand over her parchments to dry them, and stowed away her ink and her bone pens. Servants emerged from the lodges bearing plates of snacks, eel and oyster and clam and snail, and flagons of water, juice and tea, no doubt some of it laced with the mead that was so popular throughout Northland, even if it did come from the despised farmers. The elders, gobbling food and drink, loosened heavy robes that must have been ferociously hot at the peak of the day, and they stretched and walked.
Milaqa and Riban stood easily, but they had to help Teel up. ‘My leg is fast asleep,’ he complained. He walked in a little circle, pressing his foot to the ground.
‘Your leg is as bored as I am,’ said Milaqa, and Riban guffawed.
‘Oh, how can you be bored? By the mothers’ tears, the tension out there is agonising. Can’t you feel it? Bren is taking on the Annids — he’s trying to force his own candidate on them as next Annid of Annids, even though she’s from outside the House of the Owl, which is rare enough but not unprecedented. He’s locked horns with Noli for nearly a whole day now. Like two rutting stags! And you have to remember this isn’t just a domestic battle being played out, for many of the great Houses have allies in the world beyond. If it’s drama you want, never mind the hunt, never mind the spear-chucking at the Giving — this is where the excitement is, with the whole future of Northland itself at stake.’
But Milaqa could only yawn. ‘I suppose it’s a matter of taste.’
He glared at her. ‘You do disappoint me sometimes, Milaqa. You should listen. Think. Make connections…’
A serving girl came by, no more than twelve years old, barefoot but wearing a tunic adorned with jackdaw feathers. She bore a tray of treats, and Riban picked off goodies. ‘Look, why don’t you just leave me the tray?’ He smiled, showing his wooden priest’s teeth. The girl blushed, gave him the tray, and hurried off.
Teel disdained the treats. Milaqa, though, pecked like a bird. ‘Mmm, burned sheep.’
‘Lamb, actually.’ Riban chewed a mouthful of meat. ‘Flash-roasted and flavoured with something — pepper certainly — and another spice?’
Milaqa picked up a slab of bread, thinly cut, lightly toasted, and smeared with a bit of honeycomb. When she bit into it the honey dribbled down her chin. ‘I didn’t know I was so hungry.’
‘You’re not,’ Teel said sourly. ‘You shouldn’t be eating that rubbish. It’s unnatural. And all part of the wily traders’ long-term game to seduce us into the farming business. No!’ He strode over to another servant, and grabbed a handful of raw eel flesh. ‘This is good enough for me. Good old-fashioned Northland catch.’ He crammed it in his mouth and began chewing assiduously.
Still eating, they walked to the mound’s south-facing crest. The great grassed ridges of the Mothers’ Door swept around this central mound, their surfaces carefully restored, and water glimmered in the channels between the ridges, shadowed by the afternoon sun. Further out Northland itself stretched away, a blanket of land and water overlaid by misty air, with the smoke of early fires rising from the green domes of houses. The world hummed with the sounds of springtime, even from this elevated remove, the buzzing of bees, the singing of birds, the laughter of children.
Riban, staring down into the shadowed trench below, stopped chewing and pointed. ‘Look down there.’
A party of men walked the track around one of the Door’s circular channels, looking around curiously, at the earthworks, up at the Wall. One man seemed to be staring straight up at Milaqa. She thought she saw the dull glow of bronze: armour or weapons.
‘Greeks,’ Riban said simply.
‘What Greeks?’ Milaqa asked. ‘There are lots of kinds of Greeks, with different tongues. I’ve met some of them.’
‘The Mycenaeans are the toughest, but they are just the strongest dogs of a squabbling pack.’
Teel said, ‘Maybe you haven’t heard. Mycenae has collapsed. The oldest and grandest of those warrior-kingdoms — gone, like a bad dream.’
‘Hmm,’ Riban said. ‘Well, they’re all hungry dogs, in this time of drought and famine on the Continent.’
Milaqa looked at Riban, interested. She’d grown up alongside him, another of her gang of distant cousins. A couple of years older than her, he’d always seemed curious about everything, and obsessed by gossip and intrigue; even as a boy he would hang around with priests or Annids rather than play. ‘You’re going to make a funny sort of priest, Riban. You’re much too interested in this world rather than any other. And the way you flashed those teeth of yours at the girl to get her tray off her-’
‘Well, there are lots of rooms in our holy House,’ Riban said easily. ‘One sect studies the teachings of Jurgi, who is supposed to have been priest at the time of Ana — or possibly he was her father, her lover or her son; the legends vary. He said you find the gods through other people, rather than in smoke-filled dreamers’ huts. That’s the side of the work I’m interested in.’
‘But you’re still to be a genuine priest?’
He grinned. ‘Oh, yes. I had to let them pull out my te
eth to get this far.’
Teel said now, ‘You’re right to speak of hungry dogs. That’s why this particular convocation is so important. We’ve always had trouble with the farmers. The problem is there are so many of them, in their dense little communities, all the way across the Continent. We’ve found ways to keep them at bay. They’ve always needed the tin we mine in Albia, for their bronze. And as they’ve grown hungry with the famine we’ve started to buy them off with potatoes and maize, or their products. We encourage the farmers in Albia and Gaira to grow this stuff, and then sell it on to the empires further east. Yes, it’s hypocritical — we turn one lot of farmers against another — but it works. But now, as the famine in the east worsens, this delicate web of trade and intrigue and manipulation is coming under pressure again. There are strong disagreements about how best to deal with all this. Between the Houses, and I dare say within them. Bren believes we should take a much more aggressive stance towards the farmers — make closely binding deals with them.’
Milaqa was shocked. ‘My mother would never have agreed to that.’
But Teel just looked at her. You should listen. Think. Make connections…
What connections? Well, her mother was no longer here. Was the opposition she would have raised to Bren’s schemes the reason why she was not here? And now here was Bren forcing his own candidate on the Annids. Webs of suspicion formed in her mind. She plucked at Teel’s sleeve and drew him away from Riban, who strolled off with his plate of treats. She whispered, ‘ Was it Bren? ’
‘Hush.’
‘No, listen — that Jackdaw, Bren. It all fits. As a trader he had access to the Hatti and their special iron. If he wanted to push through this treaty with the Hatti he had a motive to remove my mother, to force this convocation — to create a gap to have his own niece installed as Annid of Annids. He killed my mother-’
‘Or some puppet did, more like,’ Teel murmured sadly. ‘I’ve come to suspect this myself as the convocation has unfolded, and Bren has made his intentions clear. I wanted you to work it out for yourself. It’s why I’ve been trying to get you to pay attention to the discussions, child! But it’s one thing to suspect, another thing to prove it.
‘I’ll tell you what we do know. That Bren’s certainly got his iron from the Hatti, for only they make the stuff strong enough for it to be used in weaponry — and some of them have long wanted a closer relationship with us, so maybe they have some hand in this. Milaqa, listen to me. There’s a party of senior Hatti traders and diplomats, coming from the east for the Giving. Isn’t Voro supposed to be going with the party to meet them?’
‘So what?’
‘You must go with that party of Jackdaws. Meet the Hatti. We talked about that before. You must follow the thread. Voro is your way to do that.’
‘They won’t say anything in front of me.’
‘You can translate. Offer your services. Interpreters are invisible; they’ll speak as if you aren’t there, you’ll be surprised. Look — this is your chance.’
It made sense. Yet she hesitated, as she had since her mother’s interment, to become entangled in her uncle’s webs of deceit and intrigue.
The sun was dipping, the mist thickening over the great damp quilt of Northland. On the mound behind them a din of raucous laughter rose up as the assembled leaders of Northland started on the evening’s mead.
16
The Trojan party, travelling ever deeper into the great country of Gaira, followed the valley until the river dissolved into its feeder tributaries. Then they climbed a long rise and emerged from the forest, to find themselves on an island of higher ground in a landscape coated by thick oak woodland. They had come several days’ walk from the beach where they had landed. Smoke rose here and there, but otherwise there was no sign of people.
Praxo approached Qirum and Kilushepa. ‘Vertix says we’re near the watershed. There’s a community of farmers a bit further on. We can trade for food and shelter. They know folk who will guide us to the big river that will lead us north and west to the land of the Bardi. And then — well, then we can start looking for a sea-going ship.’
Qirum nodded. He would not meet Praxo’s eyes. He had found it impossible to speak to the man since his conversation with Kilushepa some days earlier.
Praxo waited for a response. When none came, he just laughed and walked away.
Vertix led them down to lower land and back into dense forest, where they followed a track so narrow and winding it might have been made by deer. The men pushed along, grumbling.
As the day approached its end, at last they broke through into a clearing. Perhaps a hundred paces across, it was walled off by tall oaks with knots of hazel at their feet, and the open ground was studded by saplings. A handful of houses sat here, Qirum counted four, five, six, with frames of oak trunks covered by a thatch of leaves and reeds. Half the clearing seemed to be given over to a crop, wheat growing sparsely. In a pen of woven wicker a few scrawny sheep grazed apathetically. The rest of the clearing looked to Qirum like a hunters’ camp, with joints of a recently killed deer hanging dripping from a frame, a skin stretched out to dry, and heaps of spears, arrows, bows, amid the usual middens. A big open-air hearth crackled, smoke rising, with a huge pot suspended over it on a trestle. In one doorway a woman sat with her child on her lap, watching, uninterested.
A man came out of one of the huts, bare-chested, hobbling, leaning on a stick. He must have been well over forty. Vertix went to greet him, and they spoke.
Praxo, standing with Qirum, listened in. ‘He’s saying the men are away hunting, with most of the older kids. Just a few mothers here, with infants. There’s a big man who will talk with us when we get back
… This old one will bring us water. Not very quickly, probably.’
Kilushepa was peering around at the camp with contempt. ‘What a shabby place. Do these people think they are farmers? This isn’t a farm! This is a scrape. At Hattusa we have farms that stretch to the horizon. And in Egypt, along their great river — you could lose all of this in a single one of their fields.’ She walked to a house and kicked its support. ‘Call this a house? I have seen bigger hearths.’
And Qirum saw the compact little farm as she saw it, with eyes accustomed to the glories of cities like Hattusa, immense monuments of stone.
Now there was a commotion: a growl, a slap, a baby’s wail. A couple of the men, growing bored, had gone over to the woman nursing the baby. Now she was standing, her baby crying against her chest, and one man held a hand before a bloody mouth. ‘I only wanted to play with her spare titty! What’s wrong with that?’ The old man emerged from his hut again, shouting and waving his stick. Vertix hurried over, calling for calm.
Praxo growled, ‘I’d better go sort it out.’
‘No,’ Kilushepa said simply.
‘No?’ Praxo turned to her, huge, a dangerous expression on his face. ‘No, you say?’
‘Why deal with these people? Take the food you want. Have that woman. Have the old man if you want. Are you afraid of women and old men?’
Praxo glowered. ‘It’s not a question of fear. We’re here to trade with the Northlanders. That was my understanding. Not to burn our way through the forests of Gaira.’ Behind him a shoving match was developing between the old man and the rowers, while the baby screamed. ‘Tell her, Qirum.’
‘Praxo, you don’t tell me what to do,’ Qirum said, his anger seething, inchoate, directionless.
‘Evidently he does,’ Kilushepa murmured softly. ‘Or he thinks he does. Why do you think he speaks to you this way, Qirum? I wonder how he sees you — as the beaten boy on his knees before him?’
‘Enough,’ he snarled.
‘If you won’t start it, I will.’ She strode to the big hearth, picked a brand out of the fire, and prepared to hurl it at one of the houses.
‘No!’ Praxo strode across and grabbed her arm. ‘You do as I say, woman.’
‘And you will not defy me!’ Qirum’s words were a bark that sou
nded in his own head as if they had come from somebody else’s mouth, from the muzzle of a dog. He ran forward, and his right arm reached for the sword in its leather scabbard on his back, as if of its own accord.
It was over before he understood what he had done. His sword protruded from Praxo’s back, its tip thrusting from his front, ripping his tunic.
Praxo dropped to his knees and looked back at Qirum, astonished. He tried to breathe, and a pink froth bubbled from the wounds on his back and chest, and then a darker fluid gushed, almost black. He fell forward.
Qirum looked around. Everybody in the clearing was staring at him, the men from the boat, Vertix, the old man, the woman. ‘I-’ I did not do it. It was not me. Yet it was my hands, my arms, my sword.
Kilushepa, breathing hard, still held the burning brand. ‘That’s the end of that complication. Now let’s get on with things.’ She dropped the brand into the dirt, where it burned out harmlessly.
17
So Milaqa, submitting to Teel’s urging, attached herself to the party of traders led by Jackdaw Bren to meet the Hatti embassy. The meeting point was in a country called Kanti, in the south of Albia. They had to travel the length of Northland over the higher ground of the First Mother’s Ribs, by canal, horse carriage and on foot, until they reached the south-east corner of Albia, where the peninsula met Gaira and the Continent. Kanti was not like the open plains of Northland. Here the hills and valleys came in waves, small and closed in. After days of following river valleys and tracks through this shut-in landscape — and with the oppressive company of the traders, five of them including Bren and Voro — Milaqa longed for a glimpse of horizon.
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