Bronze Summer

by Stephen Baxter

  ‘Only one thing,’ Kilushepa said smoothly. ‘I want the secret of the foods you give us. Potatoes. Maize. No more of your mash. Give us seeds. Let us grow these crops ourselves; let us feed ourselves, rather than rely on your hand-outs.’

  There were shouts of outrage.

  Noli protested, ‘This was Bren’s plan! This was what he had Kuma murdered for! Must we even discuss this grotesque entanglement?’

  Raka, sitting quietly, held up her hand until there was calm. ‘Tawananna, you will understand that we will have to consult. Such a grave step cannot be taken lightly.’

  Kilushepa nodded gracefully, sat, and the group broke up into knots of discussion.

  Teel tugged Milaqa’s elbow. ‘That’s nice work by Raka. I mean, Kilushepa has taken her chance, but the Annid really isn’t giving away much. The secret of our magic foods would be lost eventually anyhow through some spy or other, or another crooked trader like Bren – we’ve been lucky to keep it so long. Of course the Annids will take some convincing. But I think we can do a better deal than for some vague promise of friendship from Hattusa.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Watch and learn, young Crow. Do you have the arrowhead?’

  She slipped the thong over her head and handed the piece to him. ‘What do you want with it this time?’

  ‘To change the world. Translate for Kilushepa.’ He stood easily, and spoke over the gathering conversations. ‘Annid of Annids – forgive me. I have another concern to raise.’ He held up the arrowhead, dangling from its thong. Everybody present knew its significance. ‘This killed Kuma. Even though she was wearing this.’ Again he bent and rapped his knuckles on Qirum’s breastplate. This time the Trojan laughed out loud. Teel turned to Kilushepa. ‘And the only place in the world where such iron is made, madam, iron hard enough to use as a decent weapon, is Hattusa.’

  Kilushepa smiled.

  Teel said, ‘Iron ore can be found anywhere. It’s not like the copper or tin you need to find for bronze. We could arm ourselves quickly, with weapons that could fend off any warrior armed with bronze – if we could only make the iron to the right standard.

  ‘I’m no Jackdaw but I think the terms of the bargaining are obvious. Tawananna, we have a secret you want – potatoes and maize. With that you could feed your people. You have a secret we need – your hardened iron. With that we could defend ourselves, even against hordes of farmer-warriors. Annids, Tawananna, I think you have some negotiating to do.’

  There were murmurs of surprise, shock, anticipation. Kilushepa stayed silent, apparently considering.

  Qirum bent over and whispered to Milaqa in his own tongue, ‘Your man Teel – what a deal-maker. I’m a good one too, so I know. Trading potatoes for iron! Just as in his youth he traded his balls for power. I wonder what history will make of this! But of course, if you want Hatti iron you’re going to have to travel to Anatolia to get it. And I do mean you, Milaqa, you with your gift of tongues.’

  29

  The First Year After the Fire Mountain: Midsummer

  ‘We think Caxa has run off to hide in the First Mother’s Ribs,’ Vala said to Voro.

  Xivu, the Jaguar man, sat glaring at Voro from the shadows of Vala’s house. ‘Which, as I understand it, is your own strange name for the range of hills to the south of here.’ His Etxelur-speak was uncertain, his tone dismissive. He had a warm blanket thrown over his shoulders as he sat close to the fire on this cold summer’s day. With his very un-Northland dark eyes and strong nose and deep black hair, he looked out of place, Vala thought, sitting here in this wooden house loaned to her and her family of nestspills by a cousin, surrounded by cooking pots, racks of fish and scraps of meat, heaps of clothes for mending, and the children, Mi and Puli playing a complicated game of counters on a wooden board, while little Liff sat on Mi’s lap, half asleep. Out of place and profoundly unhappy. And he looked on Voro with unconcealed contempt.

  But Xivu was here because he needed Vala and Voro’s help. Caxa was lost, Xivu’s sculptor, his treasure. When he had begged the Annid of Annids for help, Raka had sent him to Vala to sort it out. In this sunless summer Raka had a lot more important issues to handle than the fate of a girl sculptor from across the ocean. After all, if Kuma’s monumental image was not set on the Wall this year, it would be done next year, or the next, when they all had more time and energy; Raka was sure the little mothers would forgive them for the delay.

  And Vala in turn had called in Voro.

  ‘Why me?’ Voro had asked. ‘I’m a Jackdaw. A trader. Maybe you should send a priest.’

  ‘The priests are too busy trying to persuade the little mothers to warm us all up. And besides – you’re not doing much trading, are you?’

  He looked away.

  It was true. Everybody knew why. Voro was still being eaten up inside by a corrosive guilt from his association with the death of Milaqa’s mother Kuma. Vala had said, ‘You must put aside this shame.’

  ‘Must I? How? It’s like the clouds in the sky that won’t go away.’

  Vala touched his hand. ‘Forget about Milaqa for now. Think about Caxa.’ This was her bright idea, to solve two problems at once. ‘Maybe you can help her. You’re young, and so is she. You’ve both been through trials. You’ve got a lot in common.’

  ‘Even though we were born an ocean apart.’

  ‘Even so, yes. Go and find her. And if you do, maybe it will help you too. People will see you in a different light. You’ll break up that cloud over you once and for all – even though, Voro, it looks a lot blacker to you than to the rest of us.’

  He had agreed, and he had gone looking for Caxa, but he had returned – without her.

  So here they all were. And Vala, sitting by the hearth, grinding herbs with mortar and pestle, was not impressed by Xivu’s arrogance.

  ‘Of course,’ Xivu said now, ‘this isn’t the first time the sculptor has been endangered among you people. She nearly got broiled alive on Kirike’s Land.’

  ‘I know,’ snapped Vala. ‘I was there, remember?’

  Voro studied Xivu. ‘Why don’t you go after her yourself?’

  Vala laughed. ‘Oh, she runs away from him. He’s the main reason she’s run off, I reckon.’

  ‘Enough,’ Xivu snapped. ‘I told your Annid that this is not the way to handle the problem. In my country we would send a squad of soldiers to flush her out of the hills, like a hunted bird.’

  ‘But this is not your country,’ Vala said sternly.

  ‘No, it isn’t. This is Northland. Where this boy was manipulated into complicity in murder. Now you manipulate his guilt to make him do this task for you. And he will manipulate Caxa to bring her home. It is just as you build your country. You dig a ditch here, a dam there, manipulate a great river to run this way instead of that. We would cut through it. We would build a city of stone and make the river serve us!’

  Vala ignored him. ‘So, Voro, before you go out again, what would you like to eat?’

  30

  The First Year After the Fire Mountain: Late Summer

  The long journey from Etxelur to Anatolia took all summer.

  The party travelled the length of Northland, which was pretty much as far as Milaqa had ever journeyed before. Then they made an epic overland crossing south through Gaira, coming to the shore of the Middle Sea. And then they took to the sea, in Qirum’s boat that had been waiting for him for a year, and they travelled east, the length of this calm ocean. For Milaqa it was numbing, a journey without end, and Qirum’s bragging leadership had grown annoying; he of course had come this way before, as he constantly reminded the party. But in the end her mind opened up to the sheer scale and diversity of the world beyond Northland through which she travelled – and the effects of the long drought and of the fire mountain, which could be seen everywhere they stopped.

  The last seagoing leg of the journey was to be a crossing from Greece to Troy. After this, Milaqa understood, they would travel by land eastward across Anatolia
to Hattusa, capital of the Hatti empire – ‘if the empire still exists,’ Kilushepa said gloomily, ‘if Hattusa itself stands.’ And there Kilushepa would attempt the miracle of diplomacy and statecraft that would restore her to her throne.

  But they had to get through Troy first.

  Waiting for Qirum, the seven-strong party from Northland stood on a wooden jetty, their packs at their feet, wearing heavy tunics as protection against the unseasonal cold. The port was just another huddle of a dozen houses overlooking a small harbour, like so many on this Greek mainland, a place whose name Milaqa had forgotten as soon as she was told it, just another stopping point on this endless journey. There was some trade going on this cold morning, with seagoing ships and smaller coast-hoppers jostling for space in the harbour, and caravans forming up on land. Yet there was room for much more, Milaqa thought; you could see at a glance how trade had shrivelled with the long drought, and now this summerless year.

  But Qirum’s own ship stood proud in the water, its long, sleek hull black as night, waiting to serve them as it had all the way along the coastline of this Middle Ocean from the south Gaira coast. The carved bird’s head peered from the stern, and the eyes painted on the hull glared, vivid. It was a formidable sight, even under a dismal grey sky.

  Qirum walked up, leading three locals. ‘So here’s our latest crew,’ he announced. The ill-smelling Greeks stood together by the jetty, their own packs on their backs, eyeing up the women. They looked hungry. Well, everybody was hungry. One of them seemed to have a bad leg, judging by the way he was standing.

  And there were only three of them.

  ‘A boat like this needs eight rowers and a pilot,’ Kilushepa said. She stood with Noli, the Annid companion appointed by Raka for this mission of diplomacy. ‘What are you playing at, Trojan?’ She now spoke a heavily accented Northlander, practised with difficulty during the long journey, though she would lapse into her own tongue.

  ‘This is all I could find. Times are hard. And nobody wants to sail to Troy across a pirate-ridden sea, it seems. So – no more passengers. You will each be taking an oar.’ He pointed one by one to the men of the Northland party: Teel, Deri and his son Tibo, the young priest Riban, and Qirum himself. ‘And you, Queen,’ the Trojan said, ‘will work the steering oar.’

  ‘So it’s come to this,’ Kilushepa said with a sneer.

  ‘Do you want to get to Hattusa or not?’

  Deri shrugged, spat on his hands and rubbed his palms together. ‘Let’s get on with it.’

  Tibo was the first to board the boat, intent, focused, eager, as he had been all summer. If Qirum told him he’d have to swim to Troy, Milaqa thought he’d try it. Riban looked wary, but he had toughened up on the journey, and he followed Tibo on board.

  Teel, however, raised his eyebrows. ‘I swear this Trojan is out to torture me. Do I look as if I was born to row a war-boat?’

  Milaqa snorted. ‘For a Crow you lack a sense of adventure, uncle.’

  ‘And you do not, I suppose.’

  ‘No, I don’t,’ she snapped back. ‘Qirum! Get rid of one of these men. This one with the leg. He’ll cause us more trouble than he’s worth.’

  ‘Not as much trouble as being one man short—’

  ‘One rower short. I’ve watched you all summer. I can row as well as any of you.’

  He laughed out loud. ‘Typical of you, Milaqa. All right. But when you’re hunched broken over your oar, remember this moment and don’t blame me.’ He walked up to the man she had chosen and told him in coarse Greek that he was not to be used. The man scowled at Milaqa, evidently sensing she had something to do with it, but he limped away.

  Milaqa clambered aboard the boat and chose a bench on the right-hand side; Riban was opposite her, so close they were almost touching within the sleek hull. There was room under her bench to stow her gear. The bench itself was worn smooth with use, and its coating of black pitch was stained with rusty splashes – blood, probably.

  Qirum briskly helped Noli to a seat in the stern, near the platform where Kilushepa would work as pilot. Here bread was stored in leather bags, and water and wine in clay jars. With an efficiency born of the long practice of the journey, Noli stowed away her own precious baggage, the little sacks of potatoes and maize seed. Kilushepa was helped aboard and stood at the stern, taking the steering oar in her right hand.

  Qirum himself took the bench ahead of Milaqa, so Milaqa was looking at his broad back. As soon as he had stowed his sword, spear, bow and arrows under his bench he barked an order, and the rowers each took an oar. Milaqa fumbled with the rowlock, but she got her oar fitted.

  They used their oars to push away from the jetty, and then it was time to row. Milaqa found a shelf on the floor against which she could brace her feet. She dipped her oar experimentally into the water, and pulled it back. It was heavy, and she could feel how the water dragged at the blade. But she had made her first stroke.

  The man behind her tapped her on the shoulder. She looked back; it was one of the locals. ‘Like this,’ he said in strongly accented Greek. He held up his hands; he had wrapped the palms in thick leather bandages. ‘Grip. No blisters.’

  ‘Thank you.’ She reached for her leather cloak, bundled up in a pack, and hastily cut strips from it with her bronze knife.

  Qirum, settled over his own oar, waited with reasonable patience until his fledgling crew got settled. ‘Ready, are we? On my count. One – pull! One – pull!’

  At first it was a shambles. The boat wallowed, the oars clattered against each other with heavy wooden knocks, and bodies bumped as the rowers tried to find a rhythm. Qirum yelled obscenities in Greek, Trojan, Hatti and Northlander. Deri laughed out loud.

  But gradually they settled down, the oars biting into the water more or less together, and the boat slid away into deeper water. Kilushepa hauled on her steering oar, and there was hard work to be done as the boat swung around. At last the prow was pointing out to the open ocean, and the shallow hull skimmed over the water. Qirum even stopped swearing.

  Milaqa felt a deep exhilaration as she hauled on her oar. She could feel the way the big muscles of her back and legs made the boat pivot on her blade. The boat itself was an extraordinary craft, quite unlike the oak-frame-and-hide boats of the Northlanders, which were designed for the rigours of the outer oceans. This was a black shadow on the water, sleek and menacing and startlingly fast when the rowers worked their oars properly. She had thrilled at her first sight of it, at the river mouth in southern Gaira. This boat was itself an instrument of war, as much a weapon as the bronze sword Qirum so cherished. And here she was, Milaqa of Etxelur, at its oar!

  But as the day wore on, without a glimmer of sunlight, the rowing went on and on too, with only brief breaks for drinks and food and for pissing over the side. The energy in her muscles drained away to be replaced by a dull fatigue, and the joints in her back and neck ached. And still it went on, and she had to make another stroke, and another, and another.

  Qirum glanced around, stripped to the waist, his brow beaded with sweat, his slab-like body tensed. ‘Told you so!’ he said. ‘You could be up there peeling apples for the Tawananna. But no, you knew best, and here you are, with your feet in the bilge and your muscles on fire. Told you so!’

  She forced a grin. ‘Shame we aren’t in separate boats so I could race you, Trojan.’

  He laughed, shaking his head. But then he turned away, and she had still another stroke to pull, and another.

  Heading roughly north and east, they crossed a sea quite unlike Northland’s great oceans. This sea was a puddle, so crowded with small islands they were never out of sight of land. Smoke rose up from some of the islands, not from others. Following Qirum’s curt commands, Kilushepa kept them clear of all the islands. Occasionally they would see ships, looming on the horizon. Kilushepa steered well clear of these too, hiding the boat behind the curve of the world.

  They made one overnight stop, on a small island that Qirum said had always been uninhabite
d. By the light of whale-oil lanterns – no moon was visible – they hauled the boat up on a beach of gritty sand, and made a camp in the lee of a bluff of rocks. Further inland the island was thick with trees and bushes, their leaves pallid, oddly tired-looking. Qirum detailed some of his crew to go off into the interior to hunt for game, while others walked the strand looking for shellfish.

  Released from the punishment of her oar, Milaqa wanted nothing but to curl up on the sand and sleep. But the kindly local man advised Milaqa to take care of her body first, or she would be as stiff as a plank by the morning. So she ducked around a rocky outcrop to a more secluded part of the beach, stripped down to her loincloth and plunged into the water. It seemed saltier than she remembered of Northland’s seas, and more buoyant, and it was cold, but she swam back and forth, letting the sea replenish her drained body, and feeling her muscles recover as they stretched against the water’s gentle resistance.

  That night she slept a dreamless sleep. But the morning found her back at her oar, and the grim slog of completing the journey resumed.

  31

  The next day they got their first glimpse of the Anatolian shore. It was a thin brown stripe on the horizon, with low, worn hills, and long empty beaches against which waves broke in a skim of white, and not a splash of green anywhere. This was home for Qirum. He showed no pleasure in returning.

  They turned, heading north, so they tracked the coast to their east, Milaqa’s left. The rowing got harder. There was a current against them, and a wind blew steadily from the north. Milaqa and the rest laboured, but the landmarks on the shore seemed to crawl by. At last, on the northern horizon, Kilushepa pointed out a smudge of brown hanging over the land: smoke from the fires of Troy itself.

  ‘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.