Stephen Baxter - Bronze Summer

‘Kilushepa isn’t a human being! Haven’t you listened to anything I have said to you? Oh, she does have her frailties. Since the birth of the child she’s been obsessively cleaning herself. Did you know that? Bathing and scrubbing, and douches and enemas. The Hatti are a funny lot who believe that any form of sexual contact leaves you unclean, and unfit to be in the presence of the gods. So you can imagine how it was for her to fall into the hands of the soldiers who used her — and into my hands, come to that. Now that the baby’s out of her she’s washing and washing and washing, trying to make herself pure again.. But none of that matters. She’s not weak, Milaqa. She’s a queen! She’s the Tawananna! Mark my words — we’ll be the ones who will have to hurry to keep up.’

Milaqa led her party to one of the Wall’s grander staircases. This was a sweeping flight cut into the growstone face, with broad treads and a facing wall inscribed with the names of Annids going back many generations.

Kilushepa and Qirum followed her up the stair. Kilushepa, lifting her robe to reveal booted feet, concentrated on each step. Qirum had been this way many times, but he looked around with interest as he always did, at the detail of the staircases, the growstone surface, the small doorways that led off to chambers cut deeper into the Wall’s fabric. Milaqa wondered what a warrior made of Northland and its Wall.

They climbed up a final set of shallow steps and emerged onto the Wall’s roof: grey ocean to the left, the black-and-white snow-covered landscape of Northland to their right, the Wall itself arrowing to infinity ahead and behind. The Northern Ocean was flecked with ice floes, and the dark shadows of boats, all the way to the horizon. In this winter of privation the Northlanders had fallen back on the generosity of the little mother of the sea, but fishing in deep midwinter was always a hazard.

Milaqa stepped forward cautiously. The surface was swept clear of snow daily, and the central track was ridged, for better footing. She led them along the Wall, heading east. The air was mercifully still, but bitterly cold, and they all pulled their cloaks tighter.

Qirum studied the ridges as he walked, his eye caught by that small detail. ‘It must have been the labour of years to carve all these fine lines in the stone, along the mighty length of this Wall.’

‘Oh, no. You do it when the growstone is wet. You can just comb it in — literally, like combing your hair. When it’s wet you can shape growstone with your bare hands. And the furrows stay when the growstone hardens.’

‘Remarkable,’ the Trojan said. He knelt, took off his mittens, and rapped the surface with his knuckles. ‘A rock you can mould like clay!’

Soon they were over Old Etxelur itself. The circular ridges of the Mothers’ Door, the grand old earthwork, were coated by snow, the profile of Flint Mountain and the densely populated Bay Land gleamed with frost, and the great watercourses were frozen solid. In the misty distance she saw huge herds move across the land, like the shadows of clouds. Deer, perhaps, maybe even aurochs, the wild cattle that the farmer folk found so fascinating.

Kilushepa looked down on the Door, contemptuous. ‘How ugly. It reminds me of the palace of the Goddess of Death in the netherworld, which is surrounded by rings of walls in a desolate plain, just like this.’

‘This is the very heart of Northland,’ Milaqa said. ‘Old Etxelur itself, where the Wall, or the first part of it, was built to expel the sea.’

‘And all of this was sea bed, you claim,’ Kilushepa murmured. ‘I believe that’s a stand of oak down there. Everybody knows oak takes centuries to grow.’

‘But the Wall is more than centuries old, queen,’ said Qirum gently. ‘Older even than the most ancient cities of the east, older than Ur and Uruk. This was around when they were nothing but collections of shepherds’ huts. You know the saying. ‘‘Everything comes from the west.’’ And this is the heart of that west, Kilushepa.’

They moved on, walking past monoliths and monumental stone heads set up in their lines along the Wall roof. Milaqa tried to tell them something of the stories of the Annids commemorated here, but they weren’t interested in Northland history, and she gave up. She said, ‘We will walk until the middle of the afternoon, perhaps. We will arrive at a dock where my uncle Deri will meet us in his boat; we will be rowed back. We have food in the packs, and there are sheltered places. Or we can always duck down into the Wall; there are many places to eat.’

‘And drink,’ Qirum said loudly. ‘We’re walking due east. Aren’t we heading towards the Scambles?’ Kilushepa looked quizzical. ‘A District within the Wall, Tawananna. It’s rather interesting. You’d think the Wall is one great uniform mass. But it isn’t. The character changes, quite markedly. I’ll tell you one pattern I’ve observed. These Districts, their miniature towns-in-a-town — the centres tend to be a half-day’s walk apart, or a little more. Just too far to walk there and back in day, you see. So a natural separation grows up.’

Milaqa, faintly disturbed, realised that she’d never seen that pattern for herself.

‘As for the Scambles — well, it’s quite unlike Etxelur, though often you’ll find the grand folk in the taverns and music houses and brothels-’

‘We won’t be going there,’ Milaqa said hastily.

‘Then I hope you’re carrying beer on that back of yours, girl!’

They came to a place where a tremendous scaffolding of long Albian oak trunks and cut planks had been built up against the landward face of the Wall. On its platforms stood huge wooden vats full of ground-up rock, dust, and frozen-over water. Up here on the roof, wooden panels had been set up to shelter those who supervised the work on the scaffolding below. Nobody was working today, though one man sat bundled up in furs, watchful, to ensure there were no accidental fires.

They paused in the lee of the supervisors’ shelter. Milaqa opened her packs and passed around dried meat and fish with hazelnut paste, and water and beer.

Qirum was fascinated by the scaffolding. ‘It is like a tremendous siege engine.’

‘They are working on the Wall,’ Milaqa replied. ‘The Beavers and their assistants. They make growstone from crushed limestone, fire-mountain ash and other ingredients in those great vats. But you can see the water is frozen, and the growstone itself would be too cold to mix properly. So the work is abandoned for now. They work on a given section for years at a time. People come for the work, and others to support those who work. They live here. The site becomes a community, a village. Children may be born and grow up on the scaffolding, before the time comes to move on to another section of Wall.’

‘Rather magnificent,’ Qirum murmured to Kilushepa.

‘The magnificence of the insane,’ she said, chewing delicately on a piece of pickled cod. ‘The same pointless task repeated over and over. The Wall is a monument of idiots.’

Qirum shrugged. ‘I suppose I wouldn’t want my children to be growing up on a bit of scaffolding. Where is your daughter today, by the way? Little Puduhepa.’

‘With her carer. A woman called…’ She frowned, and glanced at Milaqa.

‘The wet nurse is called Bela,’ Milaqa said. ‘You know her, Qirum. A friend of my cousin Hadhe.’

Kilushepa said, ‘The woman is to be more than a wet nurse. I have given the baby over. And I have given instructions that a new name be found for the child. A Northlander name. I thoughtlessly gave the brat a Hatti name — a royal name, in fact. I was in pain, barely conscious, addled by the potions your priest doctors gave me, Milaqa. There is no purpose in the Hatti name, for she will be raised as a Northlander.’