Iron Winter n-3

by Stephen Baxter

  As Gisco never failed to remind them, the men of this unit were the dregs of the conscripts and levies the suffetes, the executive officers of the city, had raised to swell out the Carthaginian army, as rumours swirled of the advance of the Hatti horde by land and sea. Even Suniatus was a poor soldier for all his bullying: strong, fearless, but evidently too stupid to obey the simplest order. But the men around Nelo seemed keen enough as they charged — keen to get among the killing at last, especially if it could be against an opponent already beaten and demoralised, and keener, perhaps, to get their hands on some booty.

  Already they closed on the Libyans.

  The Carthaginians descended with a roar. Sergeant Gisco himself went in with sword swinging, cutting down rebels like a sickle in a field of wheat. Suniatus threw himself on the back of a fleeing Libyan, forcing the man to the ground and stabbing him brutally in the side of the face with his sword, over and over as the man writhed and blood spilled. Nelo had got used to the noise of battle, or so he thought, but he had always been out of it before, held back from the fray. Now he was in the midst of it, and the noise of men screaming in anger or pain all around him was astonishing. It was like an abattoir.

  Suddenly there was a hiss, a blur, and something shot past his ear. A javelin!

  Shocked, heart hammering, he turned to see an enemy warrior, wounded, blood streaming from his leg, but with a round wooden shield in one arm, sword in wooden scabbard. He wore a crude leather tunic as a herdsman might wear, but he had no protection at all for his bare arms or legs or face, and if he’d ever had a helmet it was long lost. He hardly looked like a soldier at all. But he had some kind of loop of leather around his fingers, which he was fitting into a notch on another javelin. He was fumbling, pale from loss of blood.

  Gisco knocked the man’s javelin aside, and he stumbled back onto one knee.

  ‘He could have killed you!’ the sergeant screamed in Nelo’s ear. ‘That javelin missed your stupid melon of a head by a thumb’s width. If not, you’d be lying in the dirt already, Northlander. Dead! Everything that you are, have ever been, or ever might have been, spilled out into the Dark Earth for all eternity, for that’s where bad soldiers end up, believe you me, never mind what the Jesus botherers will tell you. All because of him! That man in the dirt, who never saw you before today! And now he’s trying again. Are you going to stand there and let him? Are you, aurochs? Are you?’

  It was Gisco’s screaming that drove him forward as much as the shock.

  Still the fallen warrior fumbled with his gear. This time Nelo knocked the javelin aside with the shaft of his own spear. The man fell back on the ground and raised his sword, but Nelo, remembering his training at last, fell on him, straddling his torso and pinning the man’s sword arm with his own gloved fist. For one heartbeat his eyes met his enemy’s. The man was dark, even darker than most Libyans. Nelo smelled blood, and dust, and sweat, a richer stink of horses and cattle and hay. He looked older than Nelo. His face was lined and heavily weathered, as if he’d spent much of his life out of doors. He was strong, Nelo could feel it in the way the man struggled in his grip, but he was too exhausted to break free. All this in a heartbeat.

  Nelo swept his sword across the man’s throat. Skin and cartilage resisted, but he dragged the blade through. Blood spurted, shockingly bright, and the man choked and spewed blood from his mouth. Still he stared at Nelo.

  ‘Again!’ yelled Gisco. ‘Again and finish it!’

  Nelo swung his sword once again, this time a chop as if he was severing an ash branch, and he felt the sword cut into the bone of the neck. The man shuddered once, and his eyes rolled, and he lay still. Nelo’s sword was stuck in the bone. He had to drag at it to release it.

  Then, suddenly filled with revulsion for the bloody corpse under him, he scrambled to his feet.

  ‘There.’ Gisco clapped Nelo on the back. ‘You did it, aurochs! You took a life. No worse than sticking a pig in training, was it? And now you’ve done it once you can do it again, you’ll see, it gets easier every time. And look at this.’ He leaned over and with a brisk chop of his own sword he severed the man’s right hand. Gisco lifted the hand by its little finger, almost delicately, as its stump dripped blood. There was a fine leather strap around the first two fingers. ‘See those loops? To help him throw his javelins. Libyans don’t do that. This isn’t a Libyan bastard, he’s an Iberan bastard. This is what Iberans are good for.’ He threw down the severed hand. ‘All they’re good for. Now, we use Iberan mercenaries for they’re useful in specific situations, but we don’t expect the ungrateful bastards to start chucking javelins at us, do we?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘But here he is.’

  ‘I suppose they are hungry in Ibera as well, sir.’

  ‘I suppose you’re right. The whole world’s hungry, and they’ve all come here to pinch our grub, the Iberan bastards from across the strait, and the Libyan bastards who live around the corner, and the Hatti bastards who are on their way across the Middle Sea. But they aren’t going to succeed because we’re going to fight them and stop them and kill them, aren’t we, aurochs?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Right, there’s still a few Libyans left. Get stuck in. If you find a helmet that fits you take it; that acorn shell on your head looks ridiculous.’ For a moment he glanced down at the mutilated Iberan, at blood-splashed Nelo. ‘An Iberan and a Northlander, fighting to the death on a scrap of Carthaginian soil. I don’t suppose either of you wanted to be here, and we don’t want you here, but here you are, and this is the way it has to be.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘You’re still on a charge. Go, go!’

  Nelo ran off, after the fleeing Libyans and his own jubilant comrades. Already the crows were gathering overhead. Even the crows were hungry this spring.

  51

  Nelo’s force got back to camp at noon the next day.

  The army of Carthage, swollen by levies, conscripts and mercenaries, was gathered on the plain to the west of the city’s landward walls. The camp wasn’t much to look at, just tents, a few buildings of mudbrick or sod. The ground was scored by drains and pitted with latrines, a system Nelo had come to know very well, for digging out the latrines and emptying them was the kind of detail that devolved on units like his own.

  Still, Nelo had already been a Carthaginian soldier long enough to witness the changes that had come upon the camp since Fabius the Roman, the favoured general of the moment, had taken command. Once it had been a dusty shambles. You couldn’t even have told where it began and ended, and traders and whores had come and gone unchallenged, along with a few Libyan assassins. Now defensive ditches and barriers marked the camp’s boundaries, and Fabius had had stubby watchtowers built and manned, and sent patrols riding far out into the country beyond. In the camp, on a day like today after a bit of action, you could hear the blows of the smiths as they fixed battered armour and weapons in their workshops, and the cries of the wounded as the surgeons tended to their injuries, and the multilingual chatter of this force gathered from many nations: the mostly Carthaginian officers, tough black warriors from the southern empire of Mali, pale blond men from as far north as Scand, and men of the Middle Sea from Ibera and Gaira to the west, the Muslim kingdoms to the east. It was a mixed-up army in a mixed-up world, Gisco would say, shaking his head.

  Sergeants like Gisco applauded Fabius’ competence. The men grumbled at the extra work he created, and were annoyed when a change meant they suddenly found themselves downwind of the latrine trench rather than up. But then, Nelo was learning, soldiers always grumbled, if things stayed the same or if they changed, at the prospect of action or the lack of it. And the wise old heads predicted it could all change again when the suffetes or the Tribunal of One Hundred and Four decided that Fabius was nothing but an upstart Roman after all, and kicked him out in favour of some other strutting tin hat who would turn everything upside down once more.

  For Nelo the best part of each day was
the evening, when the soldiers gathered by their fires in the open air and prepared their bread for the evening. Following an ancient tradition Carthaginian armies on the march carried grain, not finished bread, and every unit had its own grinding stone. Fabius had insisted on the same discipline in camp, even though they were not far from the walls of the city itself. So you would grind out your barley by hand — and it was always barley these days, though this was looked down on by proper Carthaginians who preferred wheat — and you would knead up the meal in a scrap of leather with a little wine or oil if you had it, then flatten it into wafers. You roasted it quickly on the fire, and ate it quicker, for it was unleavened and would set hard as rock if you left it to cool. But the fresh, hot bread at the end of the day on an empty stomach, along with a little meat or cheese and wine if you were lucky, was always delicious, and the soldiers, gathered around their fires, kneading and roasting and eating their own bread, were at their most companionable. Even Suniatus tonight, who sported a ridiculous plumed helmet he had looted from the corpse of a Libyan officer, left Nelo alone for a while.

  After the meal, as the dusk drew in, Nelo took himself off to a corner by the wall of a barracks house, dug his paper and crayons out from his satchel, and started to sketch. Soon the face of the Iberan he had killed took shape on the paper. The grimacing mouth, the eyes oddly defiant though he must have known death was near. Nelo had long ago given up his formal experiments, though when he drew larger scale scenes he still tried out his look-deep techniques. Now he just tried to capture the immediacy of the moment. The extraordinary experience of risking one’s life, and taking another man’s.

  ‘Nelo.’

  The voice startled him, and he scrambled back into the shade, clutching his sketch to his chest. He had had enough of his work being trashed by Suniatus and his cronies. But the man who stood before him, silhouetted against a sterile, cloudy sky, was portly, swathed in a grimy tunic, stooped slightly. And the accent, when he had pronounced his name, had been Northlander. ‘What do you want?’ Nelo asked in his rough Carthaginian.

  ‘Don’t be alarmed.’ Northlander words. The man came forward and squatted in the dirt. His scalp was bare of hair, and he was old, Nelo saw, fifty or sixty at least. He had a leather pouch slung from his shoulder. His tunic and upper arms were splashed with blood, but his forearms and face were washed clean. ‘Do you remember me? My name is Ontin. I used to treat your family. Your mother knew me well. I’m a doctor, you see.’

  ‘I remember you, I think.’

  ‘I came down to Carthage after your mother pioneered the way. Left it a bit late — didn’t leave until the autumn, and we were lucky to get through — but it seemed the sensible thing to do. Imagined I would set up a practice like the one I had at home. Instead, I was drafted straight into the army. Strange, isn’t it? Here we are, Northlanders both, you serving in Carthage’s army, and me patching up its wounds, which is why I’m such a mess by the way. Trauma wounds are so much less civilised. Well. And how are your mother, your sister?’

  ‘I don’t know. I mean, we’re not allowed into the city. My mother writes. I don’t hear from my sister, and my mother doesn’t mention her.’ Which made Nelo fret that something bad had happened to his twin. It was strange to hear himself speak Northlander again; his own voice sounded odd in his hearing.

  Ontin nodded. ‘I’m not surprised they keep you out of the city. It’s overfull as it is, stuffed with famine and fear. The last thing the city needs is a bored army roaming the streets looking for trouble.’

  He spoke quickly, almost anxiously, as if he was relieved to have someone to talk to as an equal. Doctors weren’t much respected in the Carthaginian army; they could even be killed by the companions of a wounded man if they botched a job. But Nelo could think of nothing to say to the man, and the silence between them stretched.

  Ontin pointed. ‘Is that your art? I remember that about you, always scribbling as a child.’

  ‘What about it?’ he said defensively, clutching his drawings.

  ‘It’s not a secret, is it? I mean, your sergeant knows all about it. Can I see?’

  Nelo forced himself to calm down. This was just some old doctor his mother had known at the Wall. He opened his arms and handed over the sheaf of drawings.

  Ontin flicked through them. ‘Very vivid. Not that I know anything about art.’ He turned around one image of an amputation, the doctors and their slaves holding down a writhing man. ‘You’ve even got the details of the instruments right. You should be proud of this, not hiding it in the dark.’

  Nelo took his pictures back. ‘There are lads in my barracks who would wipe their arses with them. Or wipe my arse.’

  Ontin stared, and laughed. ‘Well. I suppose an army isn’t the place for a budding artist. You mustn’t let them grind you down, you know. Reduce you, as you crush your grain on the quern. Remember who you are, Nelo. You are a Northlander. And you always will be-’

  ‘What do you want?’

  Ontin was nonplussed. ‘Ah. So, to business.’ He looked oddly regretful. ‘I have something for you.’ He opened his leather pouch. ‘Do you know a man called Pyxeas?’

  The name came out of a mist of memory. ‘He’s my uncle. Or maybe he’s my mother’s uncle. He’s the one my mother took to Hantilios.’

  ‘One of our greatest minds, my boy. I mean Northland’s. In this or any age. He’s far from home too. Well, he, or rather one of his students, gave me letters to bring to your family, if and when I got to Carthage.’ He dug a packet of papers out of his pouch, and glanced around before handing them to Nelo. ‘Taken me a rather long time to deliver it, I admit, but it hasn’t been too easy to find you, boy — and I can’t track down your mother and sister at all. But I’ve had fair copies made, for your mother and sister when I find them, and other exiles from home. Best not to tell anybody about this, I mean nobody outside the family. Something of a Northland secret, or it has been so far.’

  Nelo opened the papers and scanned the neat writing. It was boldly addressed ‘To My Family’, and signed as ‘On Behalf Of Your Loving Pyxeas, May the Blessed Mothers Protect You In Your Exile.’ The rest of it was densely written in long convoluted sentences. There were no headings, no summaries — no pictures, which Nelo would have fallen on immediately. He was aware that Ontin was watching him. He picked out a few words: ‘ “Hazel or alder or willow. . sulphur from the volcanic pools of Kirikland. . scrapings from the urine-soaked floors of barns and latrines. .” Latrines?’

  ‘That’s where you collect the solve stone. And the wood types are the best kind for making the charcoal that’s needed.’

  ‘Needed for what?’

  ‘No, it’s not clear, is it? Ah, these academics. So poor at expressing themselves, for all their wisdom. Mind you, I suspect Pyxeas is too wily to say it straight out. I’m only guessing myself, Nelo. I was never in Pyxeas’ confidence after all. But I’ve had to read it through to have it copied, and I think I know what it’s about.

  ‘Look, boy — have you ever heard of the House of the Crow? One of our more secretive orders, who kept their knowledge hidden in chambers deep within the Wall. Knee-deep in espionage they were. And hidden programmes of study and scholarship, too, out of sight of the rest of the world — indeed the rest of Northland. I think this is one of their secrets.’

  Nelo found a more comprehensible passage, about making some kind of great barrel. ‘ “In the absence of cast iron, for none in the world between Etxelur and Cathay have that secret, have the craftsmen take iron rods and hammer them flat around a wooden former, and then bind them with white-hot iron bands which will contract when cooled, gripping tightly. Then remove the former. The barrel should be thick-walled at its base. .” ’ His imagination caught, he immediately began to sketch the iron device, as best he understood it. ‘What kind of secret?’

  ‘A devastating secret. A destructive secret. A secret that Northland has gathered to its growstone bosom for millennia, to be kept from the rest of the world
to avoid harm being done — and, frankly, when necessary, to be used to save us. So it was in the time of the Cursed Milaqa, it is said, and so, perhaps, it is now. Look, Nelo, even if I never find your mother, you must take this knowledge and use it. Talk to other Northlanders. Find an engineer — you know, someone who used to work on the Wall pumps or the Iron Way engines, who will understand all that about making the barrel. There must be some here. Start the work. In secret, of course, but there are plenty of Northlanders here and many of us have the resources to do it.’

  ‘I still don’t understand.’

  Ontin smiled. ‘We are far from home. Your great-uncle is even further away, by all accounts. None of us can go back, perhaps not ever. But, I think, even so, your uncle is trying to save us all. .’

  ‘The general!’ Nelo heard Gisco’s peremptory orders, and then the trumpet blast. ‘The general is coming! Out, out, on your feet, and you can put that away for a start, Suniatus. .’

  Ontin looked confused. ‘General Fabius?’

  ‘A snap inspection.’ Nelo scrambled to his feet, stuffed the letters and his sketches into his satchel, and without another word ran out to join his comrades, as they lined up before the barracks hut.

  52

  Fabius walked before his troops, this unit of scrubby reserves. Caught unawares, half of them were barefoot and none wore their helmets or armour. But they raised their spears and swords and yelled a welcome for their commander.

  Fabius wore an iron breastplate over a scarlet tunic, with a plumed helmet of bronze and a purple cloak thrown back over his shoulders — but it was the purple of the Roman kings, not the Carthaginian shade. He had a full beard and moustache cut in what was apparently the Roman style. His legs and arms were bare, despite the chill of the day. He was not tall, not handsome, but he was stocky, he looked strong as a bull, and his face bore one deep scar that told of his own experience in the field. Behind him walked his staff, his senior commanders in their own armour and cloaks, and a couple of civilian scribes. The other commanders, Carthaginians all, looked with disdain on the reservists before them. But Fabius grinned widely, and when his glance fell briefly on Nelo, even a Northlander conscript swelled with pride.