Bronze Summer n-2

by Stephen Baxter

  ‘There’s a bay,’ Qirum said, panting as he worked his oar. ‘A headland… Once we round the headland and get into the bay we’ll be out of this current, sheltered from the wind, and life will get a lot easier. Not long now, I promise-’

  ‘ Weapons! ’ Kilushepa’s command was a harsh snap.

  Milaqa looked up, confused. The men were already shipping their oars and scrambling for their spears and shields under their benches. Qirum looked over his shoulder, past Milaqa, and he swore, using his filthiest defamation of his Storm God.

  And Milaqa looked back, along the length of the boat to the sea. There it was: a black scrap on the horizon that grew as she watched, a square of dark sail above a slim hull.

  Qirum began barking instructions. ‘Get ready. Use any weapons you have to hand. You too, ladies! I feared they would strike here, where every boat must round the headland to the bay. And see how they come upon us, riding down the summer winds as we labour against them, they have all the advantages. Of course anticipating trouble doesn’t necessarily mean you can avoid it. They’ll come alongside us, grapple us with hooks and ropes, maybe throw a net. Cut their ropes, slash their net. Don’t let them board! Or you will be rowing another boat across a river of blood before the day is done.’

  They quickly got organised, the men with their weapons and shields ready to defend either side of the boat, depending on how the pirates came down on them. Milaqa had no weapons of her own save her bronze dagger. She picked up her oar, and held it before her like a club. Teel looked terrified, Deri and Riban grim. Tibo had an expression of relish. The black ship closed on them silent as smoke over the water. Milaqa could see detail now, rents in that big sail, a glint of metal — bronze swords and spear points.

  None of this seemed real. The scene was almost peaceful, as they waited; the sea lapped, the wind sighed in their faces.

  ‘They’re closing fast,’ Deri said grimly. ‘They’ll pass by fast too. If they judge it wrong they’ll miss us altogether.’

  Qirum said, ‘They’re good seamen. Must be, or they wouldn’t have survived. They might foul up. We won’t gamble our lives on it. She’s a big one. A fifty-seater. If she’s fully manned we’re outnumbered many times over.’

  ‘This is not how it ends for you, Trojan,’ Kilushepa said calmly. ‘You, killed by a stranger for the scrap of food in your pack, the bit of gold in your pocket? You, who is destined to rule the world? You will survive this. So it’s a fifty-seater. What’s your plan?’

  He stared at her. Then he laughed out loud. ‘Gods, I am surrounded by monstrous women! But you are right, of course. We must not allow them close enough to use their advantage of numbers.’ He rummaged under his bench for his bow and a leather quiver of arrows. ‘Milaqa. Get me the lantern from Kilushepa at the stern.’ Feverishly he used his knife to saw a bit of cloth from his tunic, and tied it around an arrowhead. ‘Move, girl!’

  She worked her away along the boat, between the watchful men, and fetched the lantern. She had to shield it from the wind with her body as Qirum struck a flint to light it. ‘Feed it,’ he snapped at the man behind Milaqa’s bench, the Greek. The man ripped bits of cloth off his own tunic to fuel the flames.

  The pirate ship was closing now. Some of its crew dug oars in the water to slow the ship as it bore down. Milaqa thought she heard them chant, a rapid, ugly noise; they were pumped up to fight.

  ‘Milaqa.’ Qirum dipped one arrowhead, wrapped in cloth, into the flame; it came up burning. ‘Help me. I’ll fire the arrows. And when they close, throw the lamp. Try to hit the sail. Do you understand? You’ll only get one chance.’

  She picked up the lamp; it was a clay jug heavy with oil. ‘I’m ready.’

  ‘Good, because-’

  Because they were here.

  The pirate was another Greek boat, Milaqa saw, a sleek black hull with savage painted eyes. The hull itself was battered and showed signs of patching, a hardened fighting ship. And as Qirum had predicted it was about twice the length of theirs, and seemed to swarm with men.

  The ropes started flying over, weighted with stones, with hooks of sharpened bone. Qirum’s crew hacked at the ropes with their axes and blades. The pirates hauled with relish, laughing. Milaqa saw they were preparing to throw a weighted net over the boat, which would trap them all. One man looked directly at her. He wore a skull plate nailed to his shaven head, and his face was crowded with tattoos. He opened his mouth to reveal sharpened teeth, and a tongue that had been cleft like a snake’s. He barely looked human at all. She clenched her oar, recoiling, shocked, suddenly flooded with fear. She was nothing to this man, she saw, her own self worthless. To him she was a scrap of flesh to be robbed, used and discarded — and then forgotten, no doubt, before the night fell. What god would make a universe where such a horror could be inflicted on her?

  But he hadn’t got her yet.

  Qirum fired off a flaming arrow — but it missed, and sailed harmlessly into the sea, where its flame died. He fired another and hit a man in the chest; he screamed and fell backward into the sea. A third thunked into the pirate’s hull. And now, as the enemy ship closed, Qirum cried, ‘Milaqa!’

  For an instant she could not move. She couldn’t take her eyes off the tattooed man, who grinned, and beckoned to her, an obscene gesture. Qirum called again.

  With all her strength Milaqa hurled her lantern.

  It smashed against the base of the pirate’s mast, and flame blossomed. The men scrambled away from the sudden fire, trying to douse it using seawater scooped up with bilge buckets. The rowers managed to cut the last of the ropes, and the pirate ship drifted away, and Qirum loosed off more arrows, picking off the men. Tibo whooped, and hurled his spear uselessly after the pirate vessel.

  ‘Now row!’ Qirum shouted. ‘Let’s put some distance between us! Take your oars!’

  The oarsmen, including Milaqa and Qirum, quickly settled. Soon they were in the familiar rhythm, chanting together now, a triumphant, ‘One — pull! One — pull!’ Milaqa, looking out over the stern as she rowed, saw the blazing pirate ship recede into the distance. The crew, abandoning their attempt to save the ship, leapt into the water.

  ‘The gods spared us,’ muttered Qirum as he rowed. ‘If you had failed with your throw, Milaqa, even by a hand’s breadth — and there’s a great deal of luck involved in lobbing from one moving ship into another — we would all be dying, spilling our blood into the water by now. They toy with us, the gods, our little lives and deaths amuse them…’

  Kilushepa put away her own knife. Throughout the incident she had not moved from her bench at the stern, as expressionless as if nothing important had happened at all.

  But Milaqa gave way to a deep shuddering. She couldn’t get the image of the tattooed face out of her mind, that cleft tongue. He had come so close. She longed to be somewhere safe, to have the stout bulk of the Wall around her.

  The kindly Greek behind her put his hand on her shoulder, squeezed.

  32

  They made landfall in Troy’s harbour later the same day.

  They left the boat with Qirum’s Greek recruits, and made the short walk along a rutted road towards the city itself. They were all heavily laden with packs, save for Kilushepa and Noli, and they walked slowly, getting used to being on the land again, and in silence — exhausted, shocked, Milaqa thought. Teel had barely spoken since the pirate attack. Even Deri was subdued. Only Tibo, marching just behind Qirum, looked bright, curious.

  Milaqa had had an air of unreality since the attack, as if the pirates had killed her, as if she was a ghost walking. She tried to concentrate on the landscape around her. What could she make of it? Well, this road from the harbour had once been paved. Now the stones were broken and scattered, the road long unrepaired. The land itself had been heavily farmed, as you could tell from the tight pattern of boundary walls — you could even see the scraped lines where the ground had been painfully prepared to take the seed. But on this summer day, when the fields should have been plu
mp with green, only weeds grew, and ravens pecked at the hard, dry soil. In one field she saw a big skeleton, maybe a horse, picked clean, the eyes in its long skull gaping.

  Qirum marched through this fallen landscape without comment.

  The walls of Troy loomed before them, a band across the countryside. A pall of orange smoke rose up from a hundred fires, and within the walls the buildings were a jumble of scorched stone. It was like a vast tomb, Milaqa thought, like the mound-tombs built by the silent priests of Gaira, stone boxes where dusty men would rummage through the heaped-up bones of their ancestors. Troy would be the first large city Milaqa had actually entered. At Mycenae and other way stations, Qirum had always urged the party to stay hidden in the country outside. The cities now, he always said, swarming with the starving and desperate, were more dangerous than the lands beyond their walls. But they were going into Troy.

  When the breeze shifted, subtly, Milaqa smelled death, the harsh, sour stink of it. She covered her mouth with the collar of her tunic.

  As they neared the city the tracks branched out, heading for different gates. Qirum chose a track, and they came to a ditch that Qirum said was designed to keep out bandits on chariots. As they crossed by a light wooden bridge, Milaqa saw the ditch was full of corpses — many of them children — a rotting, angular mass. Here was the source of that stench, then. They hurried over the bridge, for they all knew that the gods of disease lingered around fresh corpses. Qirum clapped his hands, and carrion birds rose up in a squawking cloud.

  ‘There has been a great massacre,’ Tibo said.

  ‘No, my would-be warrior,’ Qirum said. ‘Nothing so dramatic. The only battle being waged here is against hunger and thirst and disease, and these are the fallen foot soldiers of that battle. This is where they bring out the corpses each morning — the bodies of those who succumbed during the night.’ He wrinkled his nose at the stink. ‘They used to burn them. Looks like even that discipline has been abandoned.’

  From close to, the wooden palisade around the city wasn’t as formidable a barrier as it had seemed from further out. Its face was patched, the breaches jammed with rough agglomerations of timber and rubble, and it was scorched by fire. It had evidently suffered many attacks. Still, the wall clearly served to keep undesirables out. When they got to the gate they found people gathered around — crowds of them, sitting in an eerie silence. There were even crude lean-tos, huddled up against the ramparts.

  These people watched as Qirum’s party passed. Their skin, their clothes, were the colour of the dust they sat in. Children, wide-eyed, listless and with swollen bellies, came forward to the travellers, hands out. Many of these wretches bore terrible wounds, Milaqa saw, hideous scars crossing little faces, severed limbs ending in fly-swarming stumps. Wounds that were memories in flesh of flashing bronze swords wielded by mighty heroes.

  The gate itself was just another breach in the wall, through which ran a rutted track. Men lounged here, in armour of leather and with shields of wood, their kit poorer than Qirum’s bronze breastplate, though their swords gleamed from polishing. The largest of them stood in front of Qirum as he tried to pass. ‘No entry,’ he said in rough Trojan. ‘King’s orders.’

  ‘And who is king now? Never mind.’

  The warrior looked briefly impressed by his accent. But he said, ‘I’d walk on if I were you, brother. Troy’s full. And no food to be had anyhow.’

  ‘You look well fed enough,’ snapped Kilushepa in her own tongue. ‘But then palace guards always are, aren’t they? Always the most privileged, until at last they betray their masters.’

  Qirum raised his eyes to the heavens. ‘Please — stay silent.’

  The warrior looked at the Tawananna suspiciously. ‘What did she say? Who is she?’

  ‘Never mind,’ Qirum said. ‘Look…’ He dug into a pouch at his belt, and produced a fleck of gold. ‘Imagine how many whores you can buy with this. I am sure there are plenty of those still in Troy.’

  But the man seemed doubtful about accepting the gold. ‘You’ve been away a long time, brother. Things are bad in here. I’m telling you honestly, you seem a decent sort. Whatever you’re seeking here has probably long gone.’

  Qirum forced a grin. ‘How bad can it be?’ He produced another flake. ‘This bad?’

  The warrior hesitated. ‘Make it two for me and each of my buddies here,’ there were four in all, ‘and you can go in and see for yourself.’

  Milaqa saw Qirum’s jaw work. This was obviously far more than he had expected to pay. But unless they got into Troy they couldn’t achieve anything else. ‘Very well.’ He dug out more flakes.

  The warrior counted them out, and handed their share to his companions. ‘On you go, brother. I hope you find what you’re looking for.’

  So they approached the gate. At Qirum’s brisk orders the men formed a loose ring around the women, weapons to hand.

  And Milaqa entered Troy.

  She easily spotted the palace mound. It was just as Qirum had described it, a hill at the northern end of the city surrounded by its own stout stone walls. But many of the buildings even within the citadel walls were burned out, their stones tumbled. Outside the central citadel Troy was a ruin — evidently destroyed long ago, for weeds had grown over broken walls and fallen roofs. People crowded in here even so, hollow adults, children peering apathetically from lean-tos. Smoke rose from dozens of fires, contributing to the brown fug above. More mutilated children crowded around the travellers, hands held out in supplication. Qirum touched his sword and snarled to keep them at bay. Milaqa remembered how she had once dreamed of the glories of the cities of the east, over cups of ale in the Scambles.

  ‘There are no dogs here,’ Noli said. ‘Did you notice that? All long gone into the pot, I suppose.’

  Qirum brought them along a path that ran beside a length of smashed-down wall. ‘This was one of the city granaries, a big one. Never rebuilt since the Greek firestorm. There’s no point coming here, to the city, yet the people come even so. For this is where the priests are, and the King, who promised to protect them and feed them.

  ‘Well. To get to Hattusa we’ll need transport, protection. We can find both here. I’ll try to get us into the palace mound. We’ll be as safe there as anywhere, and that’s where the food will be, believe me, and the clean water. In the morning I’ll start looking for carts, and horses to pull them if they still exist, or slaves if not.’

  ‘Northlanders don’t use slaves,’ snapped Riban, the priest.

  Qirum stared at him for a long moment. ‘Then you can pull the cart yourself — ’

  Screams pierced the air. Milaqa whirled around.

  There was a crash of splintering wood, and a clang, strangely, of bells. From over the outer wall sparks arced in the air, torches or burning arrows, falling towards houses of wood and mud and straw.

  A whole section of the wooden palisade came crashing down, and horses burst through the wall, rearing and neighing, pairs of them drawing chariots, from whose platforms huge men in armour roared and slashed with swords and axes. The chariots were jet-black, as were the men’s garments. That strange, alarming sound of chiming came from bells tied around the horses’ necks. It was chaos, suddenly spreading inwards from the wall.

  People ran, screaming. Some got away, but mothers slowed to pick up their children, and many folk were so weakened by hunger or illness they could barely run at all, and the charioteers soon caught up with them. And where the flaming arrows fell houses were starting to burn.

  Qirum glared. ‘Raiders! Once the King’s forces would have driven off such a mob long before they got to the city-’

  ‘Never mind that,’ snapped Kilushepa. ‘What do we do, Trojan?’

  ‘The citadel. They won’t harm us if we can get there. Come.’

  Kilushepa ran, dragging Noli by the hand. The rest of the party followed. Qirum, Deri, Riban, Tibo, even Teel, all drew swords and backed up, protecting the rest. Milaqa drew her own dagger.

  F
or the raiders it was becoming a kind of sport. The charioteers ran down the people, the swordsmen hacking at the fleeing crowd as you would cut your way through dense undergrowth. And now Trojans were being grabbed and thrown back to be taken by the following foot troops — women and girls mostly, a few young men. This attack was for captives then, slaves and whores. Maybe the charioteers would ignore the Northlanders, Milaqa thought, if they were satisfied with the easier meat of the unarmed city dwellers, but she was ashamed of the thought even as it formed.

  And suddenly, without warning, Tibo ran forward, sword raised, screaming, heading straight for the charging charioteers. Qirum tried to grab him, but Tibo was too fast. He was the only warrior running towards the invaders, Milaqa saw. He closed on the chariots and swung his sword, apparently aiming for a horse’s neck. A charioteer easily parried it — the sword went flying out of the boy’s hands — and with a single fist, a savage yank, the man hauled Tibo over the chariot, and he was lost.

  ‘No!’ Milaqa tried to run after him.

  But she was held around the waist. It was Deri, Tibo’s father. ‘Not now,’ he said, desperate, dragging her back towards the citadel. ‘We’ll get him back. But not now.’

  More chariots came, a swarm of them pouring in a flood through the breached wall, and the death and the burning spread out across the city, to the screams of the people and the chiming of the horses’ bells.

  The Northlanders fled to the citadel.

  33

  Troy was a broken city. Even when the raiders had gone there was no sense of order, no authority beyond the petty gang lords who strutted through the rubble-strewn streets like emperors.