Bronze Summer

by Stephen Baxter

  Milaqa thought the three men from New Troy looked utterly out of place here. Fully armoured, bristling with weapons, heavily muscled, they were like lions among young deer. Yet Raka faced the men bravely, though she was dwarfed by them, and spoke well and clearly.

  Teel murmured, ‘An embassy from a king! The newest king in the whole world, I imagine.’

  Deri was disgusted. ‘Just another brute from a pack of brutes – but a tough one.’

  ‘Yet he appears to have come here offering peace between us.’

  ‘Peace, brother! There can no more be peace between us and the cattle-folk than between fire and water.’

  ‘But he is not talking of peace,’ Milaqa murmured. ‘Maybe my Trojan is better than yours, uncle …’ The priest who was translating Erishum’s Trojan and Raka’s Etxelur tongue spoke clearly enough for all to hear. ‘I think the word the priest gave as “peace” was not quite that. Not “treaty” either.’

  Teel eyed her. ‘You spent more time than any of us with Qirum; you should know what he means to say if anybody does. Then what is the man offering?’

  ‘The word is more like “challenge”.’

  The Annids who surrounded Raka didn’t really know what the warriors wanted. None of them understood a warrior-prince like Qirum, Milaqa realised. But any opportunity to avoid further bloodshed should be taken.

  An agreement was reached. A party would be sent to New Troy to hear Qirum out. And as Raka pondered who would travel, Teel wormed his way forward and whispered urgently in her ear, pointing back at Deri and Milaqa.

  It was quickly decided that the elder Annid Noli, representing Raka, would lead just three people back to New Troy, with Qirum’s warriors, drawn from the group who had earlier travelled to Hattusa: Teel himself, Deri who since his defiant fighting on the day of the Midsummer Invasion had proven himself a symbol of Northland’s robust defiance – and Milaqa. Milaqa who had been able to translate Erishum’s phrasing more accurately than Raka’s own translator. Milaqa who, as everybody seemed to have heard by now, knew Qirum himself more closely than anyone in Northland. She wasn’t given the chance to refuse.

  As the meeting broke up Milaqa felt a swirl of emotions. She was still just eighteen years old. Here she was about to walk into the very heart of an epochal conflict. And once again she would be dealing with Qirum, the most exciting, terrifying, disturbing element in her life.

  Mostly she was resentful. ‘You’re using me,’ she accused Teel. ‘Again. Because you think I have a connection to Qirum.’

  ‘Well, you do.’ He grinned at her anger. ‘You always did. And you helped him escape in Hattusa. I could say this is all your fault.’

  She flared. ‘I’ll never apologise for saving a life. Kilushepa plotted to have him killed – his reputation destroyed – it was all lies, and you know it.’

  ‘Fine. But what did you think would follow?’ He laid a hand on her shoulder. ‘Oh, it’s not your fault, little Crow. You’re right, an impulse to save a friend can never be wrong, whatever that friend chooses to do with the life you give him back. And, yes, I’m using you. I have no choice. In such times one must use every available resource. But I haven’t forgotten I’m your uncle. I know I’m supposed to protect you, not lead you into danger. Forgive me.’

  ‘Forgive you for what?’

  ‘For the next time I do it. You should get ready; Erishum wants to leave tomorrow.’

  Milaqa went straight to the Scambles and got comprehensively drunk.

  50

  The party would walk to New Troy, Noli ordained. Traditionally Northland folk did not ride – horses were beasts of the cattle-folk – though many had started to learn since acquiring horses from New Troy, or the Hatti. So it would be now.

  As the four of them gathered before the Wall, Noli, Teel, Deri, Milaqa, in stout walking boots with light packs on their backs, Erishum laughed at their stubbornness. But he sent his two warriors ahead on horseback, taking his own mount with them, while he walked with the Northlanders. He would be one man, alone among four. Milaqa imagined the minds of both Deri and Erishum turning back to the bloody day of the Midsummer Invasion. But with Noli sternly watching both men as if they were wilful children, no words were spoken, and their swords stayed sheathed.

  New Troy was two days’ ride south of the Wall. The journey on foot, down the ancient Etxelur Way, would probably take four or five days. Erishum claimed that Qirum, King of New Troy, had purposely planted his city no closer to the Wall as evidence of good intentions, Erishum said, a peaceful gesture. If he was ever minded to do it, it would take more than a day for him to march on Etxelur, by which time the Wall folk would have plenty of warning. He had deliberately left a thick barrier of space and time between them, hoping for peace, said Erishum.

  Noli merely grunted. ‘If he were so eager for peace, the Trojan would not have come to our country at all.’

  To begin with the walk south was easy, even pleasant, if Milaqa didn’t pay too much attention to the company she was keeping. It was close to the autumn equinox now, and though there had been precocious frosts the weather was fine, a watery sun for once showing through the usual high cloud. For all she liked to bury herself in smoky Scambles taverns deep within the carcass of the Wall, Milaqa was enough of a Northlander to feel her spirit expanding as they crossed the tremendous flat expanse of the country, the green land crossed by the dead-straight lines of tracks and dykes, the communities like knots in a weave. But the poor summer had left its mark in marshland choked with dead reeds, trees already shedding stunted leaves, a land that was strangely quiet in the absence of many familiar birds. The fungi were flourishing this cold autumn, especially colonising the dead tree trunks, from little bright white dots to huge powdery puffballs, and the most common sort, bright red caps flecked with white. Deri, only half-joking, urged Erishum to sample these Northland fruits. The Hatti was wary enough to refuse the poisonous gifts.

  Erishum, in fact, barely noticed the country at all. Milaqa knew that to the Hatti and the Trojans and Greeks this landscape was unbuilt, unmade, unfarmed, an un-world. To them, Northland was worse than incomprehensible. It was invisible.

  They spoke little during the walk. And Milaqa had too much time to think about the Trojan.

  Qirum! He had long been the most vivid character in Milaqa’s own life. Now, three months after his Midsummer Invasion and his planting of a city in the very heart of Northland, he was by far the most vivid personality in the country, perhaps the whole world. But to Milaqa he was not Qirum the warrior, Qirum the ruler – he was not King Qirum. To her he was Qirum the man, savage, magnificent, murderous, laughing, and when she thought of him she felt hot inside, as if her heart was melting like a bit of Zidanza’s iron in the forge, ready to be hammered into some new shape.

  Did she love him? Did she lust for him? She could not tell. You might as well lust after the sun. She had always sensed that if she got too close to him she would be burned up. Yet he shone so much more brightly than other men! Maybe that was why, at the comparatively elderly age of eighteen, though she was no virgin and had had a string of brief, furtive relationships, most of them forged and finished in the Scambles, she was still effectively alone, still had no children – unlike cousin Hadhe, say, with her new husband and growing children, and pregnant again too. Qirum was distorting Milaqa’s life with his powerful enigmatic fascination, just as he was distorting everything about the way life was lived in Northland. But his actions had already caused people to die – including a member of her own family, Nago. And now Milaqa had to deal with him again.

  After a couple of days they started to see evidence of Qirum’s presence. The country looked abandoned. The ancient track ran through empty settlements, past broken houses and cold hearths, empty fish racks, eel traps left unset. The managed country itself showed signs of a lack of maintenance, reeds clogging weirs, dykes choked by weeds. In one settlement they disturbed deer grazing on wild flowers that carpeted a hearthspace evidently untrodden
by human feet for months.

  ‘This can’t go on,’ Noli muttered. ‘Leave it too long and things will start to break down, and once that starts it will be difficult to recover. Northland needs constant tending.’

  A half-day further on they came to a wall. It was just a low rampart crudely dug out of the ground, backed up by the ditch from which the dirt had been taken. But it cut right across the venerable Northland track.

  Noli paced before the barrier, fuming at this latest insult to her land’s tradition. Speaking through Milaqa she challenged Erishum. ‘I suppose this land is now “owned” by Qirum.’

  Erishum grinned easily. ‘Oh, no. This is one of the estates the King has granted to the Lord Protis. We’ve yet to come to the King’s own lands.’

  He led them west, following a rough track along the line of the rampart. Beyond the rampart, looking south, Milaqa glimpsed horses, cattle, sheep: farmers’ livestock brought to Northland. They soon came to a gate, and a track that led south into the estate, running off to the flat horizon. Like the rampart itself, the track had nothing to do with the older layout of Northland. Two warriors waited by the gate, huddled in cloaks against the cold, a small fire burning before a crude shelter of poles and deerskin. They were wary as the party approached, but relaxed when they recognised Erishum. The Hatti spoke to them softly in an Anatolian language Milaqa did not recognise. In response, one of them took to his horse and galloped off south.

  ‘We can wait here in the warm,’ Erishum said, indicating the shelter, the fire. ‘Qirum will send a chariot—’

  ‘We will walk,’ Noli said through Milaqa.

  Erishum shrugged. He said something in his own tongue to the remaining soldier, who looked Noli up and down and laughed.

  The party walked on through the scruffy gate, and Milaqa felt an odd shiver that she had suddenly walked into a land where, perhaps, the will of the little mothers of sky, sea and land no longer held sway. They came to more ramparts and low walls, some little more than scratches in the ground. These were not defensive but markers, field boundaries. People were working with spades and picks, and oxen dragged ards to turn the soil. In some places, crops were already growing.

  ‘Farmers in Northland,’ Teel said. ‘We’re seeing history, Milaqa. And all because of Qirum, the waif from the ruins of Troy – a king!’

  ‘A king,’ Deri said drily, ‘who approaches even as you speak, brother.’

  Milaqa turned to see, her heart pounding. Noli stood firm and tall, an Annid of Etxelur, her travelling cloak drawn around her, her face expressionless.

  The party came along the rough track through the farmland, a handful of men riding horses, an empty chariot, a few troopers jogging alongside. Qirum jumped extravagantly from his horse before it had even pulled up. His warriors, in the garb of Hatti soldiers, watched the Northlanders more warily.

  Qirum made straight for Noli and bowed deeply. ‘Annid! I was happy when the runner brought news of your coming. You honour me by accepting my invitation.’ He spoke in the Etxelur tongue, better than he had been able to manage last time Milaqa had seen him, though it was still heavily accented. He moved among the group. He nodded to Teel and Deri, stiffly. Deri just glared back. The Trojan clapped Erishum on the shoulder, a gesture of easy friendship.

  Then he stood before Milaqa. ‘We meet again,’ he said in his own tongue.

  ‘The mothers draw us together.’

  ‘Who? Oh, those goddesses of yours? I think they have very little to do with any of this.’ He indicated the wide farmland. ‘You grow more beautiful.’

  ‘Liar.’

  He laughed out loud. ‘You speak this way to a king? Well. You are evidently still a truth-teller, Milaqa. I remember that about you above all – that and the fact that you once saved my life. And what of me – am I unchanged?’

  She considered him. He was dressed simply, at first glance, in a tunic and kilt of some white, woven cloth. His head was bare and he was clean-shaven, but his hair was worn longer than she remembered, and it was plaited, a little like a Hatti queue. But that tunic cloth looked very fine quality, with gold thread sewn into the hem. Over the tunic he wore a single piece of armour, his familiar chestplate of shining bronze, and in the hilt of the sword in its scabbard she saw a jewel gleam. She could smell the oils on his hair and skin.

  ‘Why,’ she said, ‘I think you’re wearing kohl around your eyes.’

  He laughed again. ‘You have to put on a show. But it makes me value those who knew me before, Milaqa – like you. For who else would have the courage to tell me the truth? And I need that, you know. I always will. Come.’ He took her arm, and led her and the rest of the party back to the horses and the chariot. The chariot was a big machine with six-spoked wheels, a Hatti design. ‘Speak for me, Milaqa. Annid Noli, please ride with me. I will drive the chariot myself.’

  ‘Tell him I prefer to walk on the honest earth.’

  Teel stepped up to Noli urgently. ‘He does you a great honour, to come out to meet you like this. Remember, in his eyes, he is a king. We are here to negotiate – to blend our spirits with his. We must respect his gesture. I urge you, Annid …’

  As Noli hesitated, Milaqa said in the Trojan tongue, ‘The Annid is honoured and is delighted to accept.’

  Qirum held out his hand to Noli, and the Annid had no choice. She stepped forward stiffly, and let Qirum help her up onto the platform of the chariot. Qirum winked broadly at Milaqa. Deri and Teel, looking even more uncomfortable, were loaded onto horses behind their Trojan riders’ backs.

  The little party rattled off to the south, following a rutted track.

  ‘Look around.’ Qirum waved at the fields, the crops that grew around abandoned Northlander flood mounds. ‘Only months since we first set foot here. Already this empty, barren land is bearing fruit.’

  ‘Stop being so provocative,’ said Milaqa. ‘The land was neither empty nor barren before you came. And slow down. I think the Annid might throw up.’

  Qirum laughed. But he dragged at the stallions’ harness until the chariot slowed a little. ‘But still, see how much we’ve done. We have brought wheat and barley, as well as sheep and goats and cattle. The crops are not native to this land, and the colder air, the heavier soils, inhibit their growth. But we have been joined by others from the Continent, from Gaira and beyond, who have brought the crops they grow there. Lentils. Peas. Beans. Flax. Poppies. Even the poorer soils can be made to bear a crop, millet or rye if you handle them right …’

  ‘Farmers from Gaira, here?’

  ‘Most of those you will see are booty people, brought over after we landed. I don’t know where half of them came from originally. Probably they don’t either by now! But as news of my new kingdom has spread through the Continent, people have flocked here of their own accord – strong, ambitious people eager to carve their names in the blank face of this empty country. You should thank me. These nestspills from the sunless summers might have come here anyway. At least by coming to me they have a choice other than raiding.

  ‘And there are Northlanders here, Milaqa. Your own people, able to see at last what madness it is to live the way you do. Look around; you will probably recognise some of our old drinking partners from those long nights in the Scambles taverns!’

  For all his boasting, it did not take long before they approached the centre of his new realm. Another, stouter wall surrounded tightly packed fields, and a mound rose up over the flat horizon, an old flood mound now crested by a ring of stone wall. Milaqa recognised the plan of the place. The mound was now Qirum’s citadel, the heart of his new walled town, like the Pergamos at the heart of long-ruined Troy, like the citadel of the Hatti kings at Hattusa.

  In the centre of Northland, this was a city. This was New Troy.

  51

  The outer wall was earth topped with heaped stones, fronted by a ditch with sharpened stakes stuck in the ground. The only crossings were wooden bridges over the ditch, leading to gates manned by more soldiers.

/>   Once they were within the wall they passed people working the fields, while others looked on from houses, some substantial with turf walls and thatch roofs, others just lean-tos. They all looked exhausted. And all stepped aside when the King passed.

  Qirum, evidently proud of his city, boasted of its features. ‘Now we are on my own estate. You see, within the ring of this outer wall, I am creating factories to make weapons to fight war, and precious goods to buy peace. The other estates are mostly given over to farming. Each of my basileis, my senior generals, Protis and the Spider, has been granted extensive estates, as have some of the senior men under them. I have borrowed many ideas from Protis, who is from Sparta. All the powerful Spartans own land, you know, and the people who work on it. But in return all male Spartans are expected to serve in the army. They have assemblies where the citizen-warriors can make their views known to the King. And the King organises the education of the boys centrally, so they are all raised as warriors, as citizens. It is a healthy and productive system.’

  Milaqa said, ‘So you are surrounding yourself with other powerful men, many of whom are no doubt every bit as ambitious and energetic as you. Isn’t that dangerous?’

  He winked at her again. ‘I make sure to keep a healthy rivalry bubbling. Let them simmer with resentment. Let them fight each other! That way no one of them can gather the strength to challenge me.’

  They came to the inner stone wall around the citadel, where they clambered down from the chariot and the horses. More guards, heavily armoured and wearing plumed boar-tusk helmets, came out to meet Qirum.

  Noli stepped up to the wall itself and stroked its surface. It was two or three times her height, and roughly finished. ‘This is facing stone from the Wall,’ she said. ‘Our Wall. There have been raids – I never understood why they needed such stone. Now I know. And for this folly they risk compromising the integrity of the Wall itself, which keeps the sea from overwhelming us all.’ She turned to Teel. ‘Are we among the mad, Annid?’