Stephen Baxter - Bronze Summer

The kindly Greek behind her put his hand on her shoulder, squeezed.

They made landfall in Troy’s harbour later the same day.

They left the boat with Qirum’s Greek recruits, and made the short walk along a rutted road towards the city itself. They were all heavily laden with packs, save for Kilushepa and Noli, and they walked slowly, getting used to being on the land again, and in silence — exhausted, shocked, Milaqa thought. Teel had barely spoken since the pirate attack. Even Deri was subdued. Only Tibo, marching just behind Qirum, looked bright, curious.

Milaqa had had an air of unreality since the attack, as if the pirates had killed her, as if she was a ghost walking. She tried to concentrate on the landscape around her. What could she make of it? Well, this road from the harbour had once been paved. Now the stones were broken and scattered, the road long unrepaired. The land itself had been heavily farmed, as you could tell from the tight pattern of boundary walls — you could even see the scraped lines where the ground had been painfully prepared to take the seed. But on this summer day, when the fields should have been plump with green, only weeds grew, and ravens pecked at the hard, dry soil. In one field she saw a big skeleton, maybe a horse, picked clean, the eyes in its long skull gaping.

Qirum marched through this fallen landscape without comment.

The walls of Troy loomed before them, a band across the countryside. A pall of orange smoke rose up from a hundred fires, and within the walls the buildings were a jumble of scorched stone. It was like a vast tomb, Milaqa thought, like the mound-tombs built by the silent priests of Gaira, stone boxes where dusty men would rummage through the heaped-up bones of their ancestors. Troy would be the first large city Milaqa had actually entered. At Mycenae and other way stations, Qirum had always urged the party to stay hidden in the country outside. The cities now, he always said, swarming with the starving and desperate, were more dangerous than the lands beyond their walls. But they were going into Troy.

When the breeze shifted, subtly, Milaqa smelled death, the harsh, sour stink of it. She covered her mouth with the collar of her tunic.

As they neared the city the tracks branched out, heading for different gates. Qirum chose a track, and they came to a ditch that Qirum said was designed to keep out bandits on chariots. As they crossed by a light wooden bridge, Milaqa saw the ditch was full of corpses — many of them children — a rotting, angular mass. Here was the source of that stench, then. They hurried over the bridge, for they all knew that the gods of disease lingered around fresh corpses. Qirum clapped his hands, and carrion birds rose up in a squawking cloud.

‘There has been a great massacre,’ Tibo said.

‘No, my would-be warrior,’ Qirum said. ‘Nothing so dramatic. The only battle being waged here is against hunger and thirst and disease, and these are the fallen foot soldiers of that battle. This is where they bring out the corpses each morning — the bodies of those who succumbed during the night.’ He wrinkled his nose at the stink. ‘They used to burn them. Looks like even that discipline has been abandoned.’

From close to, the wooden palisade around the city wasn’t as formidable a barrier as it had seemed from further out. Its face was patched, the breaches jammed with rough agglomerations of timber and rubble, and it was scorched by fire. It had evidently suffered many attacks. Still, the wall clearly served to keep undesirables out. When they got to the gate they found people gathered around — crowds of them, sitting in an eerie silence. There were even crude lean-tos, huddled up against the ramparts.

These people watched as Qirum’s party passed. Their skin, their clothes, were the colour of the dust they sat in. Children, wide-eyed, listless and with swollen bellies, came forward to the travellers, hands out. Many of these wretches bore terrible wounds, Milaqa saw, hideous scars crossing little faces, severed limbs ending in fly-swarming stumps. Wounds that were memories in flesh of flashing bronze swords wielded by mighty heroes.

The gate itself was just another breach in the wall, through which ran a rutted track. Men lounged here, in armour of leather and with shields of wood, their kit poorer than Qirum’s bronze breastplate, though their swords gleamed from polishing. The largest of them stood in front of Qirum as he tried to pass. ‘No entry,’ he said in rough Trojan. ‘King’s orders.’

‘And who is king now? Never mind.’

The warrior looked briefly impressed by his accent. But he said, ‘I’d walk on if I were you, brother. Troy’s full. And no food to be had anyhow.’

‘You look well fed enough,’ snapped Kilushepa in her own tongue. ‘But then palace guards always are, aren’t they? Always the most privileged, until at last they betray their masters.’

Qirum raised his eyes to the heavens. ‘Please — stay silent.’

The warrior looked at the Tawananna suspiciously. ‘What did she say? Who is she?’

‘Never mind,’ Qirum said. ‘Look…’ He dug into a pouch at his belt, and produced a fleck of gold. ‘Imagine how many whores you can buy with this. I am sure there are plenty of those still in Troy.’

But the man seemed doubtful about accepting the gold. ‘You’ve been away a long time, brother. Things are bad in here. I’m telling you honestly, you seem a decent sort. Whatever you’re seeking here has probably long gone.’

Qirum forced a grin. ‘How bad can it be?’ He produced another flake. ‘This bad?’

The warrior hesitated. ‘Make it two for me and each of my buddies here,’ there were four in all, ‘and you can go in and see for yourself.’

Milaqa saw Qirum’s jaw work. This was obviously far more than he had expected to pay. But unless they got into Troy they couldn’t achieve anything else. ‘Very well.’ He dug out more flakes.

The warrior counted them out, and handed their share to his companions. ‘On you go, brother. I hope you find what you’re looking for.’

So they approached the gate. At Qirum’s brisk orders the men formed a loose ring around the women, weapons to hand.

And Milaqa entered Troy.

She easily spotted the palace mound. It was just as Qirum had described it, a hill at the northern end of the city surrounded by its own stout stone walls. But many of the buildings even within the citadel walls were burned out, their stones tumbled. Outside the central citadel Troy was a ruin — evidently destroyed long ago, for weeds had grown over broken walls and fallen roofs. People crowded in here even so, hollow adults, children peering apathetically from lean-tos. Smoke rose from dozens of fires, contributing to the brown fug above. More mutilated children crowded around the travellers, hands held out in supplication. Qirum touched his sword and snarled to keep them at bay. Milaqa remembered how she had once dreamed of the glories of the cities of the east, over cups of ale in the Scambles.

‘There are no dogs here,’ Noli said. ‘Did you notice that? All long gone into the pot, I suppose.’

Qirum brought them along a path that ran beside a length of smashed-down wall. ‘This was one of the city granaries, a big one. Never rebuilt since the Greek firestorm. There’s no point coming here, to the city, yet the people come even so. For this is where the priests are, and the King, who promised to protect them and feed them.

‘Well. To get to Hattusa we’ll need transport, protection. We can find both here. I’ll try to get us into the palace mound. We’ll be as safe there as anywhere, and that’s where the food will be, believe me, and the clean water. In the morning I’ll start looking for carts, and horses to pull them if they still exist, or slaves if not.’