Bronze Summer n-2

by Stephen Baxter

  And it occurred to Milaqa that since returning to Hattusa, amid all the machinations and politics, she had not tried to find out about her own son — not even if he were alive or dead.

  Qirum stretched, yawned, and blew out through pursed lips. ‘Well, that’s the day’s business done. What now? Shall we go and see what Hattusa has to offer? They’re not all stuffy and rule-bound here.’ He dug Teel in the ribs; the Crow recoiled. ‘Oh, I forgot. No whorehouse is any use to you. Although I could always find you a job. There’s a certain kind of man who likes them plump and ball-less.’ He turned on Tibo. ‘What about you, brother? An older woman might be right for you — nice fat thighs, you can bury yourself up to the hip. You can pretend it’s your mother if you like. Or we could find you a boy, I suppose. You could take a little revenge.’

  Tibo was shut in on himself. He started rocking on his haunches.

  Deri glared. ‘Leave my son alone. Just be on your way, Trojan.’

  Qirum shrugged, stood and gathered up his cloak. ‘Suit yourself.’

  When he had gone, Kurunta turned and reached out with a stump of an arm towards Milaqa. He whispered, ‘I brought you to the Spider. There’s nothing more I can do for you. Please. I’d like to go home.’

  37

  Milaqa took Kurunta’s arm, and led him out to the crowded street. He claimed to be able to find the way, and he blundered through the high-walled alleys, dragging Milaqa behind him.

  It turned out not to be far to the man’s home — or what had been his home, one of another row of cramped houses. But there was nobody here who recognised Kurunta, and one woman threatened to stone them if this ‘criminal’ did not go away, and criminal he must be or else he would not have suffered such a terrible punishment.

  ‘It’s all different,’ Kurunta wailed.

  Milaqa said, ‘You’ve been away a long time. I’ve seen it myself. You had children, yes?’

  ‘Yes, two youngsters and an older boy who was almost grown-’

  ‘Perhaps your wife moved away. Perhaps she went to live with family.’ What she wasn’t saying out loud was, perhaps she found another man. ‘We can ask. Find out where she has gone.’

  ‘No, no-’

  ‘Or is there somebody else you can go to? A brother or sister — your parents, even-’

  ‘Take me to the archive.’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘Where I worked. Please. Take me there.’

  The archive was not far, and Kurunta was able to find his way from his home quite efficiently.

  Under a small surface building, the bulk of the archive was kept underground, in a kind of cellar entered by a series of steps. The store itself was an expansive room lit by smoky oil lamps and divided into three parallel corridors by wooden shelves supported by stone pillars. On the shelves were clay tablets heaped in stacks, or leaning against each other like drunks in a Scambles tavern. The air was dry and smelled of the dusty clay, and the tang of burning oil.

  Kurunta walked in confidently. He seemed to know his way around with precision. He made straight for a shelf, but his mutilated arms made it impossible for him to handle a tablet. Milaqa picked out a tablet at random, and let him trap it between his forearms. He held it up before his face. It was roughly square, small enough to hold in one hand, and covered with angular pocks and scrapes. Kurunta breathed in deeply. ‘Ah! The scent of dry clay. Now I’m home.’

  Milaqa glanced around. ‘There must be thousands of tablets here — the place is huge.’

  ‘But this little archive would be lost in the great palace chambers. Five vast libraries — tens of thousands of tablets — all of them devoted to recording the feats of our great kings. A wonderful place. Can you read this, child?’

  She took the tablet from him. She recognised the writing style, the speech of the Hatti rendered in the symbols of the old civilisations of the east. ‘I’m afraid not-’

  ‘Father?’

  Milaqa turned. A young man in a plain tunic was coming down the stair.

  Kurunta twisted his head blindly. ‘ Attalli? My son? Is that you? What are you doing here?’

  The boy, no older than sixteen, looked bewildered. ‘Well, I work here now… I thought you were dead. We all did.’

  ‘Not dead, not at all. And where else would I be but with my beloved tablets? Oh, come to me, boy, come to your father.’ He held out his mutilated arms, and turned his eyeless face to the boy.

  For a heartbeat it seemed Attalli, horrified at the sight, could not move. Then he rushed forward and embraced his father.

  Kurunta turned, seeking Milaqa. ‘Do you still have that tablet? Read to me, boy. Oh, please, just a little. Just to prove the Spider was wrong…’

  The boy took the tablet from Milaqa, and began to read, hesitantly. ‘ ‘‘This is to record my great victory, my promotion to chief archivist.’’ ’

  ‘Ha! Somebody is a boaster.’

  ‘ ‘‘I achieved this with the support of the gods Ashur, Enlil, and Shamash, and the Goddess Ishtar. With their divine aid I smashed my enemies as did the Great King Tudhaliya…’’ ’

  38

  Voro was astonished when the Annid of Annids herself came to the village.

  In this little place called Sunflower, by the bow of the Brother River, it was already dark, the late summer evening closing in. The sky, as ever this year, was moonless, starless. But the big public hearth was piled high with burning peat blocks, lamplight shone from the open doors of the houses, and food smells wafted across the open space. The adults worked at the day’s catch or cooked. Children ran, playing, burning off the last of their energy, dogs yapping at their heels. Voro himself was gutting an eel with a flint blade, one of many useful skills he had learned in his time here with Caxa.

  And on the slopes of the foothills of the First Mother’s Ribs, which loomed to the north, you could see people working at the figure on the hillside, the lights of their torches flickering, and children’s laughter carried on the breeze.

  Now the Annid of Annids walked into the hearthspace. Her party broke up, dropping their packs. Raka herself doffed her cloak to reveal her bronze breastplate, shining in the firelight. She walked over to Voro. ‘Jackdaw.’

  Voro wiped his hands on an apron smeared with blood and eel guts. ‘Raka — Annid — I wasn’t expecting you.’

  She raised her eyebrows. ‘Really? But you asked me to come. You even asked me to arrive when it was dark, and so I have. I trusted you, but I admit I was puzzled. And I’m even more puzzled to see a bit of happiness in this dismal year. The laughter of children has been a rare sound.’

  ‘It’s best you see it all at once.’

  ‘See what? Never mind. Something to do with Caxa, I presume? I was comforted to know she was found. Though Xivu would have been much happier to have her back in Etxelur, and safely in his care.’

  ‘She’s safer here,’ Novo said defensively.

  ‘I know, I know.’

  She looked so like her uncle Bren, he thought, and she seemed to have grown much older in the months since she had taken on her heavy responsibilities. But she had nothing of the man’s arrogance, his contempt for those around him, his mockery. And she had shown mercy to Caxa, responding to the girl’s human plight, regardless of the demands of states and gods. It was a strange trick of the gods to have delivered such a great Annid of Annids into the role through Bren’s machinations. He smiled at her. ‘It will all wait until morning, Annid. And in the meantime, you’re a guest here. Have some eel.’

  She laughed. ‘You’re kind. Yes, I’m sure we’ll have a good night.’ And she walked away, back to her party, loosing the ties of her armour plate.

  In the morning the children, too excited to sleep, got started early, and their laughter as they ran around the hearthspace woke everybody else.

  Voro emerged from Hadhe’s house, where his cousin had been putting him up since he had arrived here with Caxa. He wore his cloak, for frost lay thick on the ground. Raka, the Annid, stood with her
party in the middle of the hearthspace, all wrapped in cloaks. And they were looking up at the hillside, where the dawn light illuminated the heather-covered slope, and the figure cut into the hill was already visible.

  Voro padded over to the Annid. ‘What do you think?’

  She turned to him, her eyes wide with wonder in the gathering light.

  For days the people had been trampling the heather on the hill, under Caxa’s direction, until they had turned the slope into a tremendous panel of writing. Now, on the hillside, the carefully laid out pattern of concentric circles, swirls and loops was vivid in the daylight, the brown of the cleared ground a sharp contrast with the fading purple of the heather. And its message was clear.

  ‘ ‘‘My Sun,’’ ’ breathed Raka. ‘ ‘‘My Sun.’’ That’s what the Hatti kings call themselves.’

  ‘It was all Caxa’s idea. She created a design up there, a hideous god, that scared the people to death. When they took her in she got rid of it, and came up with the idea of creating something much bigger — an appeal for the sun to return, big enough to be seen by the gods. She got the young folk to work on it with her, help her work out how it would be laid out on the hill. And, you can see, she recruited them to make it with her.

  ‘Once they knew what they wanted to say, it only took them a few days to make the sign. The villagers here say they will maintain it for ever as a sign of thanks, once the sun comes back. This is what Caxa does, Annid. Works of art on a huge scale. It’s in her blood. Something new in our world.’

  ‘Good work, Jackdaw. Good work indeed. You make sure she doesn’t worry about Xivu. Leave him to me; as soon as the spring comes we’ll ship him off home — and let the next generation deal with the Jaguar folk.’

  The young folk were still up on the hillside. Their younger siblings went running up to meet them, while the adults returned to their houses to begin the day’s chores.

  39

  When they did it for the third time that night, Kilushepa rode Qirum. It was just as well she did, for he had no energy left after the hasty passion of their first two couplings. And now this, the third time, her lithe body writhing over him like a whip, her skin shining from the unguents her ladies had applied — he had thought he had nothing left to give, and yet he felt the familiar pressure gathering in his loins. And at the peak of it she withdrew, and swivelled over him, and took him in her mouth.

  When he was done, he flopped back, panting, sweating.

  She sat easily on the bed, cross-legged. The serving girl, herself naked, who had stood by the door through the whole performance, came forward with scented cloths for Kilushepa to wipe her mouth and crotch. She had a glass of wine too for Qirum, the good stuff from the King’s own cellars, for that was what the girl had found the Trojan liked after he had performed, that and maybe a quick tit-grab.

  ‘You exhaust me,’ he said to Kilushepa now. ‘You draw me up like water from a well. You mine me-’

  She held up her hand. ‘You have many gifts, Trojan, but poetry isn’t one of them.’

  ‘Well, and you are a gift of the gods, to me… Who is your own god, Kilushepa? The Storm God, who rules the heavens?’

  She smiled. ‘I pray to his spouse, the Sun Goddess of Arinna. The protector of the state, of kings and queens.’

  ‘You are my Ishtar, I think. Goddess of sex and war. What a combination! That’s you, Kilushepa. Fire through and through. And yet

  …’ He touched her thighs. There were scars there, inflicted by some soldier’s raking nails, that ran up into her pubic hair. ‘Given what you have been through — how you were used, and then you gave birth, by the gods’ mercy — it’s a miracle your body works so well.’

  She grunted. ‘ ‘‘Works so well.’’ Like a well-oiled chariot wheel, perhaps? That’s a soldier’s poetry. But it’s no miracle, Qirum. Remember, I kept a king for many years against the competition of the junior wives, some of the most beautiful, and generally younger, women in Hattusa, who all eyed my position. I learned to use my body and to maintain it. There are arts the ladies have here, ideas and techniques brought in from the Egyptians and from the people beyond the Indus. Even in my captivity I was able to use some of this to mitigate the worst of the damage that was being done to my body. But you were used too, as a child.’

  It was as if a shadow passed over him. He glanced at the serving girl, oddly embarrassed; he didn’t want even this trivial girl to know of his past. ‘I don’t think about that.’

  ‘But you must think of it. As I think of my own trials. How can you not? I sometimes imagine the anger that must rage in you. Like a fire mountain. An anger that longs for expression.’

  ‘It is gone, it is done, look at me now!’

  ‘Yet you bear the scars, inside and out. As I do. I know I will never be as I was.’ She grinned, slyly. ‘You should have known me at sixteen, seventeen, eighteen-’

  ‘I’d have been left an empty bag, like my ball sack feels now.’ He massaged his cock, which ached pleasantly. ‘Do you remember the first time? After I saved you from the booty people — we were in that ruined house in Troy-’

  ‘I’ll not forget it.’

  ‘This is something of a contrast, isn’t it? It’s good to see you in your natural home. Like a bird back in its silver cage.’

  ‘Oh, this is nothing. We’re in the palace precinct, the King could hardly keep me out given the support Nuwanza has mobilised for me — and given that my son still lives, and embodies a strand of inheritance. But all this is far from the true luxury that the Hatti court is capable of.’

  He surprised himself by taking her hand. He knew that his privileged cock was doing the thinking for him, but he found he felt surprisingly tender towards her. ‘We have been cold to one another. We have let events drive us apart. Other people.’

  ‘Yes.’ Her delicate fingers squeezed his palm, rough with the calluses of sword fighting. ‘And, let’s be honest, we both enjoy the sparring, for that’s the sort we are. But there has always been something between us, Trojan. Something more than self-interest. As to the future, I intend to win.’ She said this firmly, flatly. ‘But regarding my position in the new court — well, there are many possibilities. It may be I will be able to resume my position as Tawananna, with Hattusili still on the throne.’

  He grunted. ‘The existing Tawananna may have something to say about that.’

  She waved a hand, dismissive. ‘The King’s mother-in-law is a greedy crone. She will be no obstacle. The King himself is more of a challenge. A cunning man, and a circumspect one, or he wouldn’t have survived the complicated family politics of our court to get to where he is now, and he wouldn’t have lasted once he got there. But still, he can be removed, or controlled.’ She eyed him. ‘I may have to marry him.’

  He laughed. ‘But you’re his aunt!’

  ‘ That’s no obstacle, not here. We are all one vast family, centuries old; every marriage you make is to a cousin of some kind, unless you’re farmed out to a pharaoh or an Assyrian king. My ultimate goal is the next generation — to get my own son installed as tukhanti, the crown prince, heir to the throne. There are always plenty of princes and princesses running around the city, and out in the country there are whole mobs of disinherited descendants. I told you we are a very old family. One must fight for one’s position.

  ‘What I’m telling you is that I must either be a royal widow, or a royal wife. I cannot be with you. Not openly. You can’t be my husband. Yet I want you at my side. My partner. My ally.’ She took his hand again. ‘For you will help me make all this come to pass.’

  Absurdly, he felt his eyes prickle. ‘Of course. Anything.’ His life had been turned on its head since he had met her. He had never known such heights of passion, or such depths of rage, when she had casually insulted him before others. For all his ambition and his dreams, he knew he could never have risen to this without her. In his heart there had always been a grain of doubt, the derisive voice of Praxo at the back of his head, perhaps, rem
inding him that she was driven by self-interest, that she was using him. But seeing her now, his vision of her face softened by his tears, that last grain of doubt washed away, and he saw nothing but glory for himself in the future: a king in all but name, here in the capital of the Hatti, the power and wealth of an empire his to command, and a queen to warm his bed — and, perhaps, his heart too.

  She pressed gently, ‘You will do anything that is needed, to make this come about?’

  ‘Anything,’ he said gruffly.

  She touched his cheek. ‘Now go. Get cleaned up. I would dine; the gods know I need to keep up my strength.’

  He rolled off the bed, landed on his feet with a jump, and took a robe from the serving girl. ‘Good idea. Though you’ve so used up my cock I probably won’t be able to piss straight!’

  When Qirum had gone, Muwa Chief of Bodyguards emerged from his hiding place, behind billows of soft fabric in a corner of the room.

  Kilushepa was fixing her hair, using a mirror of polished bronze the girl was holding. She turned. ‘You heard it all.’

  ‘Yes.’ He glanced over his shoulder; the spy-hole in the wall was well concealed.

  ‘What a coarse man he is. All that bragging. He turns my stomach. Well, I led him to confess his intentions. It wasn’t hard. I, of course, am entirely loyal, while wishing to offer my service in this year of famine. He would murder the King, if that’s what it would take to further his own ambition.’

  ‘It was clear from what he said.’

  ‘And his rage — his desire for revenge against the world, for the abuse that was inflicted on him as a child — that was there for all to see. He is like a bull, loose in the palace. Who knows what the man is capable of?’

  ‘I have a feeling we are soon going to find out, Tawananna.’

  ‘Oh, do hold the mirror properly, you idiot child…’