Stephen Baxter - Bronze Summer

Tibo found these obscure words tremendously exciting. ‘What kind of opportunity?’

Qirum grinned easily. Then the sunset flared brighter, and he turned west to face it.

The sky had cleared a little, and was full of colours. Above a yellowish band around the position of the sun itself, a green curtain smeared high into the sky, fluted and textured, like a tremendous swathe of dyed cloth. The green faded eventually into red, which towered ever further into the sky as the sun descended, deepening to a bruised purple.

‘It changes as you watch it,’ Qirum said, the exotic light glaring from his polished breastplate. ‘Every night different. It’s why I come up here at this time. The gods are angry, my friend, but even their anger is beautiful. Do you know, the other night I saw a moon, glimpsed through the clouds, that was as blue as a midsummer sky? Think of that.’ He eyed Tibo. ‘Have you ever fought?’

‘Only with fists.’

‘Maybe it’s time you learned. Here.’ He tossed him his sword, making it spin in the air, coming at Tibo hilt first.

Tibo astonished himself by grabbing the handle without slicing his fingers off.

‘Come at me,’ Qirum said. Tibo saw he was armed only with a short stabbing dagger. ‘Come on. Don’t be afraid.’

‘I’ll cut your head off.’

Qirum grinned again. ‘I’ll take the risk. Come. And when I’ve got the blade off you I’ll teach you to wrestle. Always my favourite when I was your age, wrestling.’

Tibo considered, and raised the blade, and charged.

So it began.

The Year of the Fire Mountain: Midwinter

Everything had changed at Etxelur after the Hood’s eruption, both for the Northlanders and for the dignitaries who had come from across continents and oceans for the Giving. As the cold clamped down and harvests faltered in the farming countries, travel became problematic — it was never wise to cross countrysides full of hungry, desperate people. Kilushepa and Qirum were not the only Giving guests to linger at the Wall, some of them keeping in touch with their homes by courier messages, talking, negotiating, as the world struggled to recover from the great shock it had suffered.

In the end, as an early autumn turned into a harsh winter, travel became impossible altogether.

Milaqa knew that Qirum, ever energetic and restless, had walked far, exploring Northland and the Wall and its Districts, sometimes in Milaqa’s company and sometimes not. He showed no interest in the countryside below the Wall. But Kilushepa, during her pregnancy, was content to stay in the relative luxury of Great Etxelur. Here she had met and talked, hosted parties and attended them, endlessly weaving nets of contacts and alliances. But when her baby was delivered she changed. She seemed restless for escape, even though by now it was the heart of the winter.

Since midsummer Teel had told Milaqa to stay close to Kilushepa and Qirum, to find out what they were thinking, what they were up to. And that included volunteering as an escort when Kilushepa asked for a walk along the Wall.

So this cold morning Milaqa, bundled in her cloak, pushed her way out of Hadhe’s house at the foot of the Wall. The door blanket crackled with frost, and the deep night cold had frozen over yesterday’s snow so that her feet crunched through a fine crust and into the compressed dry, powdery stuff underneath. For once the sun was visible, low in the sky to the south-east, and she cast a shadow. In the pale sunlight the snow drew all the colour from the landscape save the occasional green splash of ivy, leaving only black and white and the blue of the long shadows, and it picked out details, crags on the hillsides and wrinkles and ridges on the uneven ground that were invisible in warmer times. By a watercourse she saw movement, fleet, furtive: an otter dragging the half-chewed carcass of a fish. The wintry land was beautiful, a consolation. But, only days away from the solstice itself, this was the coldest time of the hardest winter she could remember.

Cold or not the day’s work had to be done. A party of adults and older children was gathering, bundled up in fur cloaks and hats and boots, their breath steaming around their heads. They carried knives and rope, and would soon be setting off inland to harvest the willow stands by the waterways. But Milaqa wouldn’t be joining them. She hitched the pack on her back; laden with food and water for the Tawananna, it already felt heavy.

‘They look busy.’ Qirum came up to her. He was wrapped up in a heavy leather coat and leggings and bearskin hat, borrowed from Deri and cut and shaped to fit, and he slapped hands encased in huge mittens. He had his sword in its scabbard on his back.

‘Willow,’ she said.

‘What?’

‘They’re off to cut willow trees. The people over there. This is the best time to do it, midwinter, to get the fine shoots we use to make baskets and backpacks.’

He grunted and turned away, bored already.

That was the reaction she’d expected. He irritated her as much as he fascinated her. ‘At least they’re doing something useful.’

‘I thought you were the great rebel. The wild spirit who doesn’t fit into this stuffy place. Now you’re going on at me about useful work?’

‘You’ve got absolutely no interest in people, have you? Nobody except the big folk, the decision-makers. You care nothing for people who actually do things.’

He considered that. ‘Metal-workers, perhaps. I need to be able to rely on my sword. And bar-keeps, and brewers. And whores. Ha! And you are the same. Admit it, little Milaqa. You could go off and harvest willow twigs or whatever it is they are doing — but you do not choose that, do you? Instead you walk with me and the Queen of the Hatti. Of course you are blessed with freedom, here in Northland. In my country, no woman is free, no woman owns property, save for princesses. There are no princesses in this strange country, yet you are free to choose, aren’t you? And because of that, like me, you too believe you are special, better than the rest. Perhaps it is simply having the courage to believe so, to think this way, that elevates our kind.’

‘And if all the words you spouted were flakes of gold, Trojan,’ said Kilushepa, walking stiffly towards them now, ‘you would be rich indeed.’

Qirum laughed, admiring. ‘There, Milaqa, what was I saying? As I believe I am better than your twig-cutting uncles over there, so this one believes she is better than me. Even though, strictly speaking, I own her.’ He rubbed his mittened hands together. ‘So — are we to make this walk?’

Kilushepa wore a hat of white winter-fox fur on her head, and was shrouded in a thick cloak of black-dyed fur, given her by Raka, the new Annid of Annids, in whose house she was staying. But she shivered, a long, drawn-out shudder that afflicted her whole body. ‘By the Storm God’s mercy, your land is cold, Milaqa. And to think I used to complain about draughty palaces in Hattusa!’

It was only a few days since she had given birth, after a short, difficult pregnancy. Under her naturally dark skin Milaqa thought she sawa bloodless pallor. Milaqa plucked up the courage to speak. ‘Tawananna — you don’t look strong.’

Kilushepa looked down at her, surprised, perhaps amused. ‘Oh, you are an expert in medicine, are you, little girl?’

‘No. But I’ve been there when my mother gave birth. And my cousins. I’ve seen how hard it is-’

‘Lead us to the Wall, child, and hold your tongue,’ Kilushepa said without emotion. She stalked away, heading north towards the looming face of the Wall.

Qirum’s grin widened as he fell into step beside Milaqa. ‘You got that about as wrong as you could.’

‘I was speaking as one human being to another-’