Stephen Baxter - Bronze Summer

She grinned. Her teeth were grooved, he saw, striped with some red-orange dye.

She didn’t offer any threat, Tibo told himself. He had just crossed an ocean to speak to these people. He smiled back. ‘Hello.’

But she flinched, spat something guttural, and from nowhere produced a stone knife that she held out, pointing its tip at him.

‘It’s all right.’ Deri stood beside him, as near-naked as Tibo was. ‘These people have their own ways of speaking. To her, you were being threatening, or rude. Or both.’

‘I didn’t mean to-’

‘Follow my lead.’ He smiled at the girl, covered his eyes with his fists, and bowed. Then he straightened up, opened his hands palms outward so that it was as if his hands were his eyes, Tibo saw. Then he carefully lowered his hands so his true eyes were revealed. ‘I saw her with my body, then my spirit. You aren’t real until you’re seen properly. To her, it was as if you were a corpse that just sat up and spoke.’

Tibo copied the hand-eye movements as best he could.

The girl seemed to relax. She tucked the knife into her leather belt, and made the eye gesture, first to Deri, then Tibo.

‘Try not to do anything else to alarm her. And put your cock away.’

Tibo hastily rearranged his loincloth.

The girl jabbered something in an alien tongue, full of clicks and stops.

Deri shook his head. ‘I don’t understand all that… Ki-xi wes-tar. Deri.’ He gestured. ‘Tibo. Ki-xotl t’xixi…’ The girl’s eyes widened, and she looked puzzled. Evidently the way he spoke wasn’t always clear, and he stumbled over the clicks with his tongue..

In the end she grinned again, showing those grooved teeth. ‘ K-xa!’ And she turned and ran off.

Tibo frowned. ‘Where has she gone? What did you say to her?’

‘The only thing I know how to say. That we’re from Northland, and the Annid is dead. If we’re lucky she’ll have gone off to tell somebody about it.’

‘And if we’re not lucky?’

He sighed. ‘I’ll just have to try again. Or you can try. I’ll teach you. All those tongue-clicks are hard work. Now come on, let’s get cleaned up here and get moving.’

With their packs on their backs, their swords in their hands, they pressed into the jungle, the way the girl had gone. Soon they came to a narrow track through the dense green, so faint and meandering it might have been made by animals rather than people. To his relief, Tibo saw that the jungle was clearing, the land rising, and the tree cover above began to break up to reveal a sky sparsely littered with clouds.

They came to a ridge of earth, grassed over but clear of trees that stretched away through the green to left and right, a dead straight line.

Deri snorted in triumph. ‘The work of the Jaguar folk!’ He strode forward boldly and clambered up onto the ridge.

Tibo followed, and found himself standing on the bank of a dyke, a tremendous drainage gully that cut through the forest. Paths were laid out on both banks, tracks of wood pressed into the earth.

Deri stepped out along the path.

‘This is big,’ Tibo said, hurrying after him. ‘Bigger than anything I’ve seen at home.’

‘The great works in Northland dwarf anything on Kirike’s Land, which is after all a small island. And they’d dwarf this too, but this is respectable. We’re approaching their heartland now…’

They reached the edge of the forest and broke out into the open air, still following the spine of the dyke. It wasn’t as hot here as at the coast; a wind blew from the north, chill and faintly damp. Tibo saw they were crossing the flood plain of a mighty river, sparsely scattered with stands of trees. In the far distance loomed mountains, the angular blue hills he had glimpsed from the sea. And at the feet of the mountains the land rose up into a plateau, edged by ridges and gullies, like a tremendous sculpture.

The whole of this landscape swarmed with people. Smoke rose everywhere, especially from that dominating plateau, and houses sat squat on the plain. Deri said the plateau was called the Altar of the Jaguar.

They came upon a party of people waiting for them, gathered around a kind of wheeled cart. Tibo recognised the girl from the river; she grinned, excited and happy, still holding the basket containing the little animal. Others stood with her, a handful of adults, dressed like her in practical-looking loincloths and with bright feathers in their hair. Her family, perhaps, her people. They smiled, evidently proud.

Two people stood on the cart’s platform. One man was tall, slim, bare to the waist, his lower legs wrapped in an intricately woven cloth. He wore a mirror of bronze from a strap around his neck, and Tibo was disconcerted to see his own face looking back at him. The other was a child, standing on a kind of box and holding leather straps — no, Tibo saw, looking closely, not a child, a man, a dwarf, with a wrinkled face and an oddly misshapen skull and a vestment as expensive-looking as the other man’s. The straps he held led to the heads of the two horses that drew the cart…

Not horses. Tibo stared, astonished. These were four-legged beasts with thick woollen coats, their legs were slim, and their necks were long, long and flexible and mounted by small heads. One turned to look at Tibo. It had large eyes, a kind of topknot of hair, and an oddly disapproving expression on its face.

The taller man stepped forward. He made the seeing-hand gesture to both the newcomers, and spoke in clear Etxelur-speak. ‘My name is Xivu.’ Shi-voo. ‘My rank is the Leftmost Claw on the Front Right Paw of the Jaguar King.’

Deri and Tibo hastily went through the ritual with their palms. Deri said clearly, ‘We are honoured you have come to meet us. We are honoured you speak our tongue.’

Xivu gestured. ‘This girl who found you ran like the wind to bring me your message… It is my honour to be the one to greet you. It was my predecessor who greeted the last party from Northland. I regret the death of your Annid of Annids. Kuma’s name and her heroic exploits rang across the ocean.’

Deri thanked him. ‘Then you know what we have come to ask of you.’

Xivu inclined his head. ‘Alas, it may be difficult to help you. But you are our guests.’ He produced a small bag and pressed it into the hands of the hunter girl. She opened it, and gasped at the sparkling stones that fell out into her palm. ‘Thus, her reward, and we need consider her no more. Please.’ He gestured at the cart.

Deri jumped up onto the cart. Tibo, bemused, followed.

‘Hold the rail,’ Xivu said gently. Then he spoke softly to the dwarf.

The dwarf snapped at the draught beasts, who raised their heads and ran at a clip, and the cart lurched forward. When Tibo glanced back, he saw the hunter girl and her family waving at them. He waved back.

The cart followed the dyke for some distance, then cut away onto a broad, straight, clean road paved with stone that led straight to the plateau that dominated the landscape.

The country was laid out in a neat grid. People toiled, labouring at fields thick with crops. Tibo saw more of the long-necked animals, some herded in pens, some drawing carts with expressions of aloof disdain. In other pens Tibo saw what looked like tremendous rats, or huge fat dogs. A few children looked up as they went past, skinny, dark, and they ran after the cart, waving. In one place a group of young men were playing a fast, complicated-looking game with a ball that bounced high when they threw it.

‘Farmers,’ muttered Deri. ‘Just like the farmers on our continent — except, of course, not. They grow dogs for food as our farmers raise cattle and pigs. And see how the plants in the fields are all mixed up? Our farmers grow one sort in each field, and pluck out the rest as weeds.’