Stephen Baxter - Bronze Summer

‘I did.’

‘Are you up for a little expedition, scribe? I would prefer to meet the Spartans before they come to us.’ Erishum stood and brushed back loose hair with his hands. He wore his hair in the Hatti style, thick at the back of his neck, and as he tied it up he murmured commands to his men in the Trojan that was the common language of Qirum’s camp. One man brought him cloak, boots, conical felt helmet, and others prepared to form up a party to travel.

Erishum had once been part of the palace guard in Hattusa. He had been among a handful of Hatti soldiers who had no liking for Kilushepa for one reason or another, and had thrown in their lot with the Trojan. He had quickly grown to be one of Qirum’s most trusted men. Urhi despised Erishum as a traitor to his king, while Erishum despised Urhi as a weak-wristed scratcher of clay. But they each recognised a certain strength in the other, Urhi thought. Or a sanity, perhaps. They were uncertain allies in the dangerous instability of Qirum’s household.

A groom brought them horses. The animals stamped and snuffled in the dark, confused to be awake and moving so early. Urhi refused a mount; he hated horses, and they hated him. But soldiers rode whenever they could.

Erishum mounted, wrapped his fist around his horse’s mane, kicked its sides gently, and led the way. Urhi walked after the party, which maintained a slow and steady pace. By the light of torches, they followed a trail through scrubby dune grass beaten flat by the passage of Qirum’s army. They passed a couple of sentries, and Erishum exchanged murmured words.

They came to higher ground, a bluff. From here the ocean opened up to the south, and Urhi heard waves softly breaking. This was the southern coast of Gaira, and the Middle Sea stretched to the horizon. But Urhi knew that not very far west of here the land closed in from north and south to form the strait beyond which extended the Western Ocean, which, it was said, could swallow up the whole of this inner sea like a raindrop in a wine cup. Even so, for Urhi who had been born and raised in the heart of the Anatolian plain, to be so close to this huge, restless body of water was deeply disturbing. But Qirum was making plans on a scale that matched the grandeur of this panorama. Through the winter he had brought this force — his army now, not the Spider’s, though that was the core on which he had built — all the way from Anatolia, the length of the Middle Sea, to this western country. And he intended to go much further. With this army he intended to mount the Trojan invasion of Northland.

Urhi heard that trumpet call again, and a wider noise, a murmur like the growl of the sea itself, ragged, chaotic. He had been around armies long enough now to recognise the sound. It was the merged din of thousands of voices, of boots tramping the earth, of the rattle of wheels, of the crying of women and the laughing of men: the sound of an army on the march. Urhi walked further up the bluff, pulling his cloak around him. Erishum walked beside him, silent, strong. And in the pre-dawn light they saw the torches of the approaching army, sparkling in a line along the coast, the men marching, the wagons, a few horses being ridden alongside the column.

Erishum pointed. ‘The elite warriors in front, the officers and the fore-fighters. Then the specialists, the archers and the charioteers and the slingers, and the common men — barefoot half of them, probably, judging by the volume of their complaints. Then at the rear there is the train, with an escort to fend off raids. Scouts riding out around the column — see them? Competently commanded, and a formidable force.’ Erishum’s eyes were sharper than Urhi’s; he was more than a decade younger than the scribe, a mere twenty-five, though battle had left him looking older.

Urhi said, ‘And there. Between the common soldiers and the train, that mass of people shuffling along — booty people?’

‘Yes. The hobbles slow them down.’

Urhi had once been lost in such a crowd. He suppressed a shudder.

Erishum said, ‘Come then, scribe, let’s face the Spartan, and hope we survive the encounter.’

Erishum ordered one of his men to dismount and run back to the camp to rouse Qirum. He held onto the mane of the man’s abandoned horse, and looked meaningfully at Urhi. The scribe sighed. You had to ride to meet a warlord, of course. Of all the symbols of status and power a horse was the ultimate; you were half a man without one. So he found a boulder to stand on and briskly mounted the nag. Luckily for him it seemed docile enough, and responded to his nervous prompting.

The party rode down a shallow bank towards the Spartans.

They soon encountered scouts. Erishum and his men kept their swords in their scabbards. Erishum murmured greetings in Greek, Trojan and Hatti; there was a good chance in these fragmented times, with ancient states collapsing like puffball mushrooms, that this so-called Spartan army, led by a Spartan prince, would be a coalition every bit as polyglot as the ragtag force Qirum had assembled around the Spider’s original pack of murderers, thieves and rapists.

The scouts let them pass, and Erishum led the way boldly towards the elite cohorts at the head of the army. It wasn’t hard to distinguish the best soldiers. They were taller than the mass of men following them, thanks to a decent diet, and they wore good-quality armour and weaponry. They were clean too, or comparatively, and their skin glowed with oils. Their hair was prepared in a variety of styles, some long and loose like a Greek’s, some even plaited at their necks like a Hatti’s. As they marched they were trailed by a gaggle of servants and by lavish-looking carriages, from some of which the nervous, painted faces of women and boys looked out. Some of Erishum’s men bristled at the glares they got from these hard men, their wordless challenges. But Erishum was calm, even smiling.

Urhi kept his head down and avoided looking any of the Spartans in the eye. Urhi had met their sort before, too many times. These heroes from the citadel-nations of the east had been born into wealth and power, bred with war in their hearts, trained for it from boyhood. They were men who knew how to fight, how to storm cities and raid beaches — how to kill men like Urhi with bare hands, snuffing out a man’s life and mind and essence for the sake of a momentary advantage, or a bit of treasure.

At length they were brought before Protis himself. They dismounted, wordless.

Protis walked among the visitors, peering closely into their faces. He was a prince of Sparta, driven off when that city was sacked and burned by raiders, and now seeking fresh opportunities. He wore a linen tunic, fringed kilt and boots with turned-up toes in the Anatolian style, and a cloak of wool pinned by silver brooches the size of Urhi’s fists. His black hair was cut short at his forehead but was long at the back, and his upper lip was clean shaven, but he wore a neatly cut beard. He was not as bulky as some of those who surrounded him, though Urhi had a sense of a kind of lean strength, like a whip. He looked young, surprisingly so, perhaps even as young as twenty, his features soft and symmetrical — almost like a woman’s, Urhi thought, fascinated. He had none of the battle scars that so disfigured men like the one-eyed Spider. He was almost pretty. Yet this man was reputed to be one of the most savage killers roaming this fallen world.

When it was Urhi’s turn, the scribe forced himself not to flinch from his gaze. The man’s eyes were a pale, washed-out blue, as beautiful as the rest of his face. There was a scent of perfumed water and oils. And as the Spartan leaned close to him Urhi saw those fine nostrils flare. The man was smelling him.

The Spartan stepped back. Urhi bent forward, his arms spread, all but prostrating himself, and spoke in clear Greek. ‘Lord Protis, your fame echoes around the known world. My name is Urhi. I am a clerk, a scribe. I serve the great Qirum. I am unimportant, only a mouthpiece. My lord Qirum awaits eagerly in his tent. He has gifts, and has prepared a feast which-’