Stephen Baxter - Bronze Summer

‘I dug it out of her chest with my own hands when she was lying out on the roof. And her daughter Milaqa saw me do it.’

Faces turned to Milaqa. She was overwhelmed. She felt a hand on her shoulder: cousin Riban, the priest. She was glad of his silent support.

Teel shouted, ‘An arrowhead of iron, hardened as only one people can make it — yours, queen of Hattusa.’ Holding the arrow, he pointed at Kilushepa.

Bren was frantically murmuring in the ear of the Tawananna, and Milaqa wondered how faithful his translation was. Kilushepa calmly looked back at Teel. Qirum was grinning at the fuss.

‘Hatti iron,’ Teel said now, ‘but it was no Hatti who pulled the bowstring — there was no Hatti within a day’s ride when Kuma died. It was one of her own who did this — one of her own people, one of those close enough for her to trust them with her life, on the hunt. Which of you?’ He glared at them all. ‘Do you dare lie, here and now, at the moment of solstice in this holiest of places? Will you lie before the spirit of Ana herself? Which of you?’ Now he confronted Bren. ‘You, Jackdaw?’

Fear and shock were evident in Bren’s eyes. But he was always quick-thinking. He looked around at the faces of the people — the angry priests, Noli and the furious Annids, the bemused foreign guests. Then he stepped forward. ‘Yes. All right, Teel, you pompous old woman. I got the arrows from a Hatti contact who was glad to help. It was not I who pulled the bowstring. You will never know who it was,’ and he glanced at Milaqa with a kind of cold cruelty. ‘But, yes, I planned it.’

Riban gripped Milaqa’s shoulder hard, holding her back.

But Voro gasped, ‘no.’ He turned to Milaqa in horror. ‘I didn’t know. I was there — if I’d known, I would have stopped it — I didn’t know, I swear!’

At Voro’s evident distress Bren’s expression flickered, as if guilt stabbed briefly. But he snapped, ‘There was no choice, boy!’ He glared around at the rest. ‘No choice! Kuma was an obstacle to progress, in these times of universal change. As are you fusty Annids, all of you, as stuck in the dark as the owl you claim as your House’s Other. The world is changing, and Northland must change with it. If we do, if we work with allies like the Hatti rather than keep them at a distance, we may become the greatest power the world has seen. If we do not, we may be wiped from the face of the land. And if we do survive,’ he said, growing in confidence and raising his voice, ‘if we survive, I, Bren, will be remembered by history, rightly, as the greatest hero since Prokyid himself!’

Noli stepped up to him, her nose a fraction from his. ‘Not if I can help it.’ The Annid looked over to the priests. ‘Bind him.’

There was uproar. The Annids present began to jostle with the Jackdaws, who tried to surround Bren. The foreigners, awed or amused, began their own pushing and shoving.

Qirum laughed out loud. He said to Milaqa, ‘I’m sorry about your loss. Truly. But I had no idea your people are so divided…’

‘Quiet,’ said Teel. When the din did not cease, he went back to the plinth. ‘Quiet!’

At his commanding bellow, the commotion stilled. Noli and Bren, surrounded by their followers, turned to him uncertainly.

‘Listen,’ said Teel. ‘Just listen.’

And Milaqa heard a distant rumble, like thunder carrying across the sea, though the day had been still and cloudless — thunder audible even here, deep in the growstone heart of the Wall.

‘Tibo. Tibo!’

Hands at his shoulders, shaking him. The air hot. More heat coming from the hard ground under his back. A roaring sound like a wave on the shore. The ground shuddering. He tried to open his mouth. His lips were gummed up, dry, and when he tried to lick them his tongue rasped on a kind of grit, sharp-tasting. Ash.

‘Tibo!’

He opened his eyes. He was lying on his back, on a slope, his head lower than his feet. Shreds of white mist fled across the sky. He remembered the wall of ash and smoke coming at him, the hot air that had hurled him back with a casual flick.

Caxa’s face loomed over him, streaked with ash and dirt. Her right cheek was blistered, and a trickle of blood ran from her nose, dripping from the jade bead stuck in there. She pulled at his shoulder. ‘Hurt? You can walk?’

His spine had been bent backward over his pack. When he tried to rise his head pounded, with a sharp ache at the back of his skull from the blow from the rock or tree stump that had knocked him out. But he was able to sit up.

And he saw the ridge-summit of the Hood, only paces away. Steam and smoke thrust up into the air all along the ridge, studded with flecks glowing white-hot. That angry chuffing rock-breath noise had gone now, to be replaced by a continuing, deafening roar. He could feel the dry blistering heat on his face and hands, and when he took a breath it seared his throat. Ash washed down, falling like grey snowflakes. He watched, bemused, as the flakes drifted in the air, almost beautiful.

‘Tibo, come!’

‘Yes.’ He struggled to his feet and tried to think. Down, down — they had to get away from this summit — down was the way to go. Down to the sea. He imagined immersing himself in the sea’s cool, clear saltiness, washing away this searing dust. And his father would be there, waiting with his boat. He would take Caxa to the sea.

But there was something missing. A gap in his head. Somebody else. Medoc.

He looked around. Further down the slope old Medoc was lying on his front like a beached dolphin, groaning with pain. Tibo grabbed Caxa’s hand. ‘Come on.’

Medoc had fallen over a shattered tree stump, and an ash-coated splinter had neatly run through the fleshy part of his upper thigh. Tibo could see the point sticking out. Blood dripped onto the ash-covered ground, brilliant red against the grey.

Medoc waved them away, wincing with pain. ‘No! Get away. Leave me here. Look, you can see what I’ve done to my leg…’

Caxa knelt over him and inspected his injury. ‘Not bad,’ she said to Tibo.

‘You know how to treat injuries?’ he asked, surprised.

‘Sculptors — always big rocks falling over, sharp flakes flying — injuries all the time. Father helped me learn.’

‘So what do we do?’

Caxa slipped her hands under Medoc’s injured thigh, to either side of the tree splinter. ‘You get foot.’ Tibo moved around and cupped his hands under Medoc’s ankle. ‘We lift together.’

Tibo nodded.

Medoc raged, his face a mask of grey ash streaked with blood. ‘You don’t owe me anything — I’m the fool who brought you up here, all the way to the gates of the underworld, and now look what’s happening-’

‘On three. One, two — three!’

They both lifted, jerking the leg up and away from the splinter, with a rip of flesh as the leg caught on some barb, and Medoc screamed. But the leg was free, and he rolled on his back. Caxa took a stone blade from the belt at her waist, hacked a strip of ash-grimed linen from her tunic, and wrapped it around the wound. The cloth instantly stained dark crimson, but there was no life-threatening flow; this was not the wound that would kill Medoc. The bit of wood that had done so much damage stuck out of the ground, mute. As Tibo watched, swirling ash settled on it, covering it over, flake by grey flake, the ash sticking to the drying blood.

Somehow Caxa got Medoc up off the ground. He was leaning on her, his arm over her shoulders, his good leg planted firmly on the ground.

Tibo wrapped his arm around Medoc’s waist. ‘Down. We have to go down to the sea.’

Caxa grunted, nodded. Together they stumbled down the slope, helping Medoc.

The ash thickened, becoming a kind of blizzard of burning flakes. They wrapped their cloaks around their heads, leaving only slits for their eyes. Tibo’s lungs strained at air that was hot and smoky and stinking of sulphur. He could barely see his footing.