Stephen Baxter - Bronze Summer

‘Which is the best way?’

‘How should I know? Farming is nothing but a short road to a bad back, bad teeth, and an early grave.’

‘I don’t know how this dwarf driving the cart can see where he’s going.’

Deri eyed him. ‘Don’t let Xivu hear you say that. Dwarfs are holy people in this country. It may seem odd to you and me, but our stories of little mothers and ice giants may seem odd to them.’

‘There are lots of them, and they are very powerful. I can see that. What did they ever want from us?’

‘Bronze for a start. When the first of our ships came here these people had no metal-working at all, save for a few lumps of iron that fell from the sky. And writing. They use our script to keep control of their country and its people. And we brought these long-necked animals, which they call “Northland horses”. They are neither horses-’

‘Nor from Northland.’

‘No. They come from mountainous country to the south of here. We have reached it with our ships; these people are cut off by barriers of land and sea.’

‘And in return we have taken their sculptors.’

‘Well, we borrow them. And a few precious items — jade, for example. But we got potatoes and maize, long ago, and that’s much more important. Actually potatoes came from the southern highlands, where the Northland horses came from.

‘Look, son, be careful what you say. We’re just two rascals from Kirike’s Land, but they don’t know that. To them we are Northland, you and I. Luckily there are only a handful like Xivu who understand what we say. Always remember you are talking to a people who believe they are in our debt.’

Now they were approaching the plateau. The cart turned onto a road cut into the shoulder of the slope, rising steadily as it wound around ridges and gullies. Below them the plain opened out, a quilt of farmland stretching to the bank of the great river and the edge of the forest. Even the plateau slope turned out to be populated, with farms crowded onto neatly shaped terraces. When they heard the rattle of Xivu’s cart the people came running out of houses of mud and daub, and hastily made the palm-seeing gesture to Xivu as he rolled past. Xivu was evidently a man of some importance.

Finally the cart rolled up onto the plateau itself. On this broad, open expanse, tremendous buildings stood on platforms of earth. One massive structure had pillars of rock holding up a heavy roof, and walls of packed clay. Tibo thought he could never walk into such a thing without fearing he was about to be crushed. Standing on the open ground around the buildings were monuments — ornately carved blocks of stone, pillars, sculptures of humans and animals and birds and fish, the parts mixed up as if in a fever dream — and tremendous heads, faces nearly as tall as Tibo was, glowering sternly over the plain. It was as if the toys of a giant baby had been dumped on a vast tabletop. The few people out in the open here all appeared lavishly dressed, all with great bronze discs at their necks, and they walked in a stately fashion among the monuments.

The great stone faces, of course, were the reason the men from Northland had come so far.

‘I was here once before,’ Deri muttered as the cart rolled on. ‘Not much more than your age. Never felt so frightened in my life.’

The cart pulled up before a relatively modest house, of stone walls and wooden roof. A young man came hurrying out, hastily fixing a skirt in place around his bare waist. Xivu cuffed the man’s head hard enough to make him stagger, barked out orders, and the man hurried away into the larger structure.

‘Fool,’ said Xivu in the Etxelur tongue. ‘Lazy dolt! He was not expecting me back — he was sleeping, or fiddling with his genitalia as usual. There is no food prepared for you, no drink. No matter! I have sent him to fetch the girl for you. Then we will eat and drink, and if you need to sleep or bathe I have servants to assist you. This evening you will prostrate yourselves before the King’s youngest son. You are honoured visitors! Please, sit.’

He waved at a shady area under a broad veranda, littered with pallets of woven cloth. Tibo sat on one of these; it was stuffed with what felt like hair.

Deri asked, ‘ “Girl”? What girl do you mean?’

Xivu smiled, rueful. Now he was at rest, sitting in the shade, he didn’t look much older than Tibo was himself. ‘She is the one you have travelled so far to find — and she is the problem we must address between us… Ah, here she is!’

The girl, shadowed by Xivu’s cringing servant, stood before the veranda. She looked younger than Tibo — thirteen, fourteen. She was naked to the waist, her legs wrapped in an ornate skirt. On her breast she wore an immense mirror of some polished stone, not bronze like Xivu’s, and she had a bit of stone, like polished jade, pushed through the flesh between her nostrils. She just stood there. She seemed dull, incurious.

Deri asked, ‘And this is your sculptor?’

Xivu sighed. ‘Her name is Caxa.’ Ca-sha. ‘You can see the problem. She is young, so young! But this is our way. The master sculptors are a family line that goes back to the last creation, when the gods gave the sculptors their genius as a tool to separate the.. the categories of the world, of dead from living, human from animal. Each master sculptor selects from the next generation of his extended family the most gifted, the one through whom the gods speak most clearly. The priests have various tests to help establish this. The master must do this before completing the carving of a fallen king, of course.’

Tibo asked, ‘Why?’

Xivu looked at them blankly. ‘Forgive me. I forget how little you people can know. When the sculptor completes the head of the King, he is laid in a pit in the ground, and the monument is placed over the pit… It is obvious why this must be so. Hands that have carved the face of a king could never be used for other purposes. But it is clearly essential that the successor should be in place first. In this case, unfortunately, the orderly process was disrupted.’

‘Disrupted by what?’

‘Factions within the master’s family. Each pushing a favoured rival. Even poison was used, or so it was suggested. Murders!

‘Caxa was surely the most gifted of her generation. She has produced model heads, I have seen them, which… disturb. She was in fact the daughter of the master. But she was so young, and so difficult. However, by the time the infighting was done, none was left standing, or without blood on his hands. None save Caxa. Her mother had died some years before — she only had her father-’

‘Who she saw buried alive under a stone head,’ Deri said grimly. ‘A fate that will be hers, some day.’

‘After she returns from Northland, having performed her duty, and after she carves the face of the King. After a lifetime of duty and privilege. Let’s hope her children aren’t quite as cracked! You can see why we’re reluctant to let her travel to Northland.’

‘But she must come. It has been the custom for generations. Perhaps if her family came with her-’

‘She has no family left.’

‘Her guards then, her priests. You yourself, Leftmost!’

‘ Me? ’

While they argued, Tibo stepped forward, curious about this slim girl on whose shoulders rested the expectation of two cultures. She wasn’t pretty, her face was too narrow, too unhappy. She didn’t even seem to see him. Something fell to the ground, from her right wrist. A drop of liquid, bright red.

‘She’s bleeding.’ Without thinking Tibo grabbed her hand. There was a neat slash across the wrist. He searched the girl’s face. ‘Did you do this?’

She gave a small cry, pulled her hand away, and ran off.