Stephen Baxter - Bronze Summer

She took the tablet from him. She recognised the writing style, the speech of the Hatti rendered in the symbols of the old civilisations of the east. ‘I’m afraid not-’

‘Father?’

Milaqa turned. A young man in a plain tunic was coming down the stair.

Kurunta twisted his head blindly. ‘ Attalli? My son? Is that you? What are you doing here?’

The boy, no older than sixteen, looked bewildered. ‘Well, I work here now… I thought you were dead. We all did.’

‘Not dead, not at all. And where else would I be but with my beloved tablets? Oh, come to me, boy, come to your father.’ He held out his mutilated arms, and turned his eyeless face to the boy.

For a heartbeat it seemed Attalli, horrified at the sight, could not move. Then he rushed forward and embraced his father.

Kurunta turned, seeking Milaqa. ‘Do you still have that tablet? Read to me, boy. Oh, please, just a little. Just to prove the Spider was wrong…’

The boy took the tablet from Milaqa, and began to read, hesitantly. ‘ ‘‘This is to record my great victory, my promotion to chief archivist.’’ ’

‘Ha! Somebody is a boaster.’

‘ ‘‘I achieved this with the support of the gods Ashur, Enlil, and Shamash, and the Goddess Ishtar. With their divine aid I smashed my enemies as did the Great King Tudhaliya…’’ ’

Voro was astonished when the Annid of Annids herself came to the village.

In this little place called Sunflower, by the bow of the Brother River, it was already dark, the late summer evening closing in. The sky, as ever this year, was moonless, starless. But the big public hearth was piled high with burning peat blocks, lamplight shone from the open doors of the houses, and food smells wafted across the open space. The adults worked at the day’s catch or cooked. Children ran, playing, burning off the last of their energy, dogs yapping at their heels. Voro himself was gutting an eel with a flint blade, one of many useful skills he had learned in his time here with Caxa.

And on the slopes of the foothills of the First Mother’s Ribs, which loomed to the north, you could see people working at the figure on the hillside, the lights of their torches flickering, and children’s laughter carried on the breeze.

Now the Annid of Annids walked into the hearthspace. Her party broke up, dropping their packs. Raka herself doffed her cloak to reveal her bronze breastplate, shining in the firelight. She walked over to Voro. ‘Jackdaw.’

Voro wiped his hands on an apron smeared with blood and eel guts. ‘Raka — Annid — I wasn’t expecting you.’

She raised her eyebrows. ‘Really? But you asked me to come. You even asked me to arrive when it was dark, and so I have. I trusted you, but I admit I was puzzled. And I’m even more puzzled to see a bit of happiness in this dismal year. The laughter of children has been a rare sound.’

‘It’s best you see it all at once.’

‘See what? Never mind. Something to do with Caxa, I presume? I was comforted to know she was found. Though Xivu would have been much happier to have her back in Etxelur, and safely in his care.’

‘She’s safer here,’ Novo said defensively.

‘I know, I know.’

She looked so like her uncle Bren, he thought, and she seemed to have grown much older in the months since she had taken on her heavy responsibilities. But she had nothing of the man’s arrogance, his contempt for those around him, his mockery. And she had shown mercy to Caxa, responding to the girl’s human plight, regardless of the demands of states and gods. It was a strange trick of the gods to have delivered such a great Annid of Annids into the role through Bren’s machinations. He smiled at her. ‘It will all wait until morning, Annid. And in the meantime, you’re a guest here. Have some eel.’

She laughed. ‘You’re kind. Yes, I’m sure we’ll have a good night.’ And she walked away, back to her party, loosing the ties of her armour plate.

In the morning the children, too excited to sleep, got started early, and their laughter as they ran around the hearthspace woke everybody else.

Voro emerged from Hadhe’s house, where his cousin had been putting him up since he had arrived here with Caxa. He wore his cloak, for frost lay thick on the ground. Raka, the Annid, stood with her party in the middle of the hearthspace, all wrapped in cloaks. And they were looking up at the hillside, where the dawn light illuminated the heather-covered slope, and the figure cut into the hill was already visible.

Voro padded over to the Annid. ‘What do you think?’

She turned to him, her eyes wide with wonder in the gathering light.

For days the people had been trampling the heather on the hill, under Caxa’s direction, until they had turned the slope into a tremendous panel of writing. Now, on the hillside, the carefully laid out pattern of concentric circles, swirls and loops was vivid in the daylight, the brown of the cleared ground a sharp contrast with the fading purple of the heather. And its message was clear.

‘ ‘‘My Sun,’’ ’ breathed Raka. ‘ ‘‘My Sun.’’ That’s what the Hatti kings call themselves.’

‘It was all Caxa’s idea. She created a design up there, a hideous god, that scared the people to death. When they took her in she got rid of it, and came up with the idea of creating something much bigger — an appeal for the sun to return, big enough to be seen by the gods. She got the young folk to work on it with her, help her work out how it would be laid out on the hill. And, you can see, she recruited them to make it with her.

‘Once they knew what they wanted to say, it only took them a few days to make the sign. The villagers here say they will maintain it for ever as a sign of thanks, once the sun comes back. This is what Caxa does, Annid. Works of art on a huge scale. It’s in her blood. Something new in our world.’

‘Good work, Jackdaw. Good work indeed. You make sure she doesn’t worry about Xivu. Leave him to me; as soon as the spring comes we’ll ship him off home — and let the next generation deal with the Jaguar folk.’

The young folk were still up on the hillside. Their younger siblings went running up to meet them, while the adults returned to their houses to begin the day’s chores.

When they did it for the third time that night, Kilushepa rode Qirum. It was just as well she did, for he had no energy left after the hasty passion of their first two couplings. And now this, the third time, her lithe body writhing over him like a whip, her skin shining from the unguents her ladies had applied — he had thought he had nothing left to give, and yet he felt the familiar pressure gathering in his loins. And at the peak of it she withdrew, and swivelled over him, and took him in her mouth.

When he was done, he flopped back, panting, sweating.

She sat easily on the bed, cross-legged. The serving girl, herself naked, who had stood by the door through the whole performance, came forward with scented cloths for Kilushepa to wipe her mouth and crotch. She had a glass of wine too for Qirum, the good stuff from the King’s own cellars, for that was what the girl had found the Trojan liked after he had performed, that and maybe a quick tit-grab.

‘You exhaust me,’ he said to Kilushepa now. ‘You draw me up like water from a well. You mine me-’

She held up her hand. ‘You have many gifts, Trojan, but poetry isn’t one of them.’

‘Well, and you are a gift of the gods, to me… Who is your own god, Kilushepa? The Storm God, who rules the heavens?’

She smiled. ‘I pray to his spouse, the Sun Goddess of Arinna. The protector of the state, of kings and queens.’