Stephen Baxter - Bronze Summer

‘We can do small things. We can tell them of relatives and friends who live. We can take some of the sick, the very young children perhaps, away to Northland. We can give them hope. That’s why we came. Now smile and do your job.’

He managed to stand straight, and with the help of the two women made it up the beach to the shabby houses.

Qirum came to the house as Milaqa was getting ready for the Annids’ walk to the south. He just walked in, as he usually did.

Milaqa was alone in the house. Luckily she was dressed already, her tunic and leather belt over her loincloth and leather leggings, with her cloak set to one side. She wore her iron arrowhead on its thong around her neck, tucked into her tunic.

‘You’re late,’ he said in his liquid Anatolian tongue.

‘I’m always late.’ She eyed him. ‘Even when I’m not kept up until dawn in some dingy tavern in the Scambles, I’m late.’

He laughed, and belched heroically; she could smell the stale beer on his breath. ‘There are no taverns where we’re going, you told me. Best to get the blood running with the good stuff first.’ As she packed up her kit, Qirum stalked around the house. He was always curious, always exploring. He tested the supporting structure of big old oak beams, poked a finger into the walls’ weave of twigs coated with mud and plaster, sniffed the central hearth, brushed his hand over the children’s pallets with their litter of toys, dolls, wooden swords. With his own sword in its scabbard on his back and his bronze breastplate on his chest, he looked as out of place in this domestic litter as if a wild aurochs had walked in. He watched her as she packed up her final bits: her bag, her tool belt with her sewing kit of bone needles and thread, her best bronze knife, dried meat, net for trapping birds, fire-making gear — flint, dried lichen and grass. He picked up a pad of sphagnum moss from the kit. ‘For treating cuts?’

‘Or wiping my backside.’

Scraps of fungus. ‘And these?’

‘From birch bark. For dressing wounds.’ She took the stuff from him, packed it into her belt and picked up her cloak.

‘You’ll rattle as you walk,’ he said.

‘Sooner that than go short,’ she snapped back. ‘Whereas you don’t need to carry anything but your sword, I suppose.’

‘That and my air of command.’ He laughed at his own joke, and pushed his way out into the light.

Raka gathered her party beneath the Wall, at the head of the great axial track called the Etxelur Way that ran dead south past Flint Island.

This was Raka’s big idea for the spring, that as many of the senior folk as possible from Etxelur should go see for themselves what was becoming of the country, in what the priests were already calling ‘the year betrayed by summer’. The sight of the Annids might reassure people, and would help inform the decision-making that had to follow. So, in this party, as well as other Annids there were senior members of most of the great Houses of Northland, the priests, the builders, the water workers. Many of the senior folk looked unhappy to be up and out on such a morning. It was near the equinox, but the sky was like a murky bowl, and there had been a sharp frost. Indeed, winter snow still lingered at the foot of the Wall, mounds of it hard as rock and covered with grime. Spring, but it felt like winter. Still, here they were, and even the highest of the high in Northland liked to keep her family close, and so the core of senior folk was surrounded by a gaggle of children, bundled up in their furs, who ran and played and chased yapping dogs, excited by the prospect of the walk ahead. Their noise lightened the mood.

Kilushepa was here, standing with the party around Raka. The regime of walks and other exercises she had undergone since the end of her pregnancy seemed to have done her good; she would always be tall, thin as a willow sapling, but she looked strong, determined. As Milaqa approached with Qirum, Trojan princeling and Hatti queen exchanged glances. Qirum and Kilushepa had barely spoken since that cold day with Milaqa on the Wall, they were evidently not lovers at present, but they remained bound by common interests.

Voro was here too. He was gaining seniority among the Jackdaws now that Bren was gone. But he wouldn’t meet Milaqa’s eye. Ever since Bren’s part in Kuma’s death had been revealed Voro had seemed consumed by guilt, even though it had not been him who had drawn the bow, even though he had nothing to do with Bren’s scheming. Milaqa treated this with contempt. Frosty relationships everywhere, she thought, on a frosty day.

A priest sounded a bronze trumpet.

Raka herself strode out along the track, and the rest followed, the seniors of the Houses murmuring gravely to each other, then a looser gang of family members, children and dogs. Their first destination would be a village by a marsh called the Houses of the Pine Martens.

In the lingering wintry weather, the world was struggling to come alive. There had been no swallows yet, and over the grasslands the male lapwings were still swooping and diving, desperately seeking the attention of mates. When the track cut through a patch of dense oak woodland Milaqa spotted the mouths of badger setts, littered with fresh spoil, as the animals cleaned out their underground homes and brought in fresh bedding in readiness for this year’s cubs. And in the lee of a fallen trunk a carpet of bluebells was growing, glowing with a strange underwater light. Milaqa was entranced. She had no idea how the flowers had managed to blossom in the sunless cold.

Teel came to walk beside her. ‘Quite a turn-out. All the great Houses represented.’

‘Including us Crows,’ she murmured.

He smiled. ‘Don’t try to fly out of the nest just yet, fledgling. It’s a big day for Raka. This expedition was her idea. She’s growing into the role. In the end the big loser of all Bren’s manipulations was Bren himself. Banished to Kirike’s Land… How he would long to be here!’

Growing into the role. Milaqa looked over at the new Annid of Annids. Bren’s niece seemed very young, only a few years older than Milaqa herself. After the outrage about Bren, nobody had seemed to know quite what to do about Raka, his protege. While the Annids dithered Raka had quietly started getting on with the job. And today, here were all the senior folk of Etxelur following Raka’s lead. Milaqa felt oddly jealous. She seemed to be surrounded by people of her age doing far better in their chosen roles than she was — Raka, Voro, Riban — even Hadhe, she’d heard it said, was being groomed for a role as an Annid. Suppose she had been dropped into such a position. Would she have been able to handle it as well as Raka? Or would she have cracked on her first day, and gone running to a Scambles tavern?

The track emerged from the forest. Now they were approaching the marsh where the folk of the Pine Martens’ Houses made their living. The oak and ash gave way to more water-tolerant trees like alders and willows, all bare in the grey sunless light, before they came to the grey gleam of open water.

Milaqa stopped at the water’s edge. At this time of year the new growths of rushes, herbs and sedge should be showing, and in the deeper water white water lilies and bulrushes, all emerging to greet the coming summer. But today there was only detritus on the water, the litter of last year’s life. Some of the children came to the edge of the water, searching fruitlessly for frog spawn or even tadpoles. Milaqa did see the round face and brown back of a water vole, peering from a clump of reeds. She thought it looked ragged, hungry.

She heard a grim muttering, and turned to see. The Annids and the other seniors were heading across the marsh along a raised walkway, to the scrap of higher land where the village itself stood. Milaqa hurried to follow.