Stephen Baxter - Bronze Summer

‘Oh, straighten up,’ the Spartan snapped. ‘I prefer to look at a man’s face, not his shoulder blades. I know nothing of this Qirum. I had heard nothing of him before rumours of the force he was gathering — and his invitation to me to fight alongside him. A nobody from Troy, who dared summon a prince of Sparta!’ He won a rumbling laugh from his men.

‘An invitation, Lord,’ Urhi stammered, ‘not a summons-’

Protis said softly, ‘Tell him that if he keeps his promises, all will be well. By which I mean, he will continue to live. If not…’ From a fold in his cloak he produced a dagger of bronze, and in a single fluid movement had the point at Erishum’s throat.

Erishum did not so much as flinch. He spread his empty hands, a wordless command to his men not to react.

Urhi bowed again. ‘I will take the lord Qirum your message at once.’

The Spartan laughed. Then he removed the blade and walked away.

Erishum touched Urhi’s arm. ‘Straighten up and walk. Better he gets this posturing out of his system before he meets Qirum himself. Walk, scribe! The blade was at my throat, not yours.’

Urhi forced himself to walk away, to take one step after another back to his horse, surrounded by the grins of Protis’s huge warriors.

Qirum clambered down from his high throne and hauled back the layers of rugs that covered the bare earth floor of his house, sending servants and slaves hurrying out of his way. Then he took a dagger and began to scratch a map in the dirt with the blade’s tip.

Protis and Telipinu, the Spider, watched from their couches of stuffed sheep hide, while they consumed the feast Qirum had prepared for them, of honey and lamb, kid and boar. Protis looked faintly amused at Qirum’s antics. The Spider just looked on, cold, scarred, as ever emotionless. Urhi wondered if Qirum would have been better advised to have somebody else shift his rugs for him. The Hatti kings were remote figures, whom only the most senior ever even saw, let alone touched. Even a king’s shoes would be made only from the hide of cattle slaughtered in the palace precinct. Qirum, in his ignorance, had none of that aloofness, and in the eyes of the Hatti at least was much less impressive for it.

Qirum pointed at his scrawled map. ‘Here, you see. The Middle Sea, that stretches from Gaira in the west to Greece and Anatolia in the east.’ He stabbed the dirt with his blade. ‘We are here. Far to the west, on the southern coast of Gaira. My plan is that we will strike north-west over this great neck of land. I have made this journey myself before. You see there are two rivers here, whose courses all but meet at their headwaters, here.’ Another stab. ‘On the other side of the watershed we’ll need to find ships. We will sail down the course of this great river, which the people call the God’s Dream. We will reach this tremendous estuary, called the Cut, and travel north and east to its far shore, which is the southern coast of Northland itself.’

The house, a tent of canvas draped on poles, was crowded, right to the billowing walls. Behind the three principals gathered advisers, guards and warriors, including Urhi and Erishum for Qirum, men sitting or standing, watching each other with a hostility barely sublimated into rivalry. There was a stink from these men of sweat, of blood, of stale wine, of horses. And they were all men, though in a Hatti gathering, even a Trojan one, a few women would likely have been present: royalty like the Tawananna, a few priestesses. Since his catastrophic clash with Kilushepa, Qirum would allow no woman near him, save for whores ordered not to speak when he tupped them, on pain of death.

A disparate bunch they might be, but they seemed eager enough to follow Qirum’s plan, Urhi thought. The Hatti and other Anatolians were comfortable with the overland sections of the journey. And the Greeks, used to their own island-strewn seas, would not baulk at journeys by ocean or river. If these warriors could work together Qirum would find himself at the head of a formidable force indeed.

‘We will land with much of the campaigning season left.’ Qirum swept his knife again, sketching arrows and advances. ‘The country is big, perhaps fifty days’ march north to south from the Northern Ocean to the Cut, and as much east to west, from the estuary country here to the forested peninsula of Albia here. But the people are few…’

Protis leaned forward. ‘And what of this Northland? What treasures are there? Are there great cities? Masses of people to slaughter and enslave?’

‘No,’ Qirum said bluntly. ‘Northland is not like any land you’ve seen before, Prince. Not a land of farms and cities, not like Greece or Anatolia or Egypt. There are great works there, canals and dykes and tremendous walls that span the horizon. But not cities. The people are wily, but there are not great swarms of them. They do not farm. They have a patina of civilisation, but in truth they are like the savages of the northern forests, or even the beasts that prey on them, for they live solely by what they can gather and hunt. And they are not experienced fighters, for they do not engage in war, as we do.’

The Spider nodded. When he spoke his speech was slurred from the heroic quantity he had already drunk. ‘I have heard your arguments before, Trojan. Yet I am still not sure I understand. If there are no slaves to take, no cities to sack-’

‘Not even goats to screw,’ a man called coarsely, and there was laughter.

‘Then what am I fighting for?’

‘For a kingdom,’ Qirum said, and he fixed his gaze on Protis and the Spider and the senior men, his expression intent. ‘A new kingdom. The land is the thing. The people are worthless. But we can bring in our own slaves, like your booty people, Protis, gathered from the collapsing polities of the east. The Hatti have always done this. With our slaves we will farm the rich land until we are fat on wheat and grain, and our cattle run as numberless as raindrops. And we will build our own cities, where none have sprouted before. Northland is an empty space, a hole in the world. We will fill it with a new realm not seen in the world before.’

The Spider grinned, showing his sharpened teeth. ‘New cities! I like that. Let mine be called Telipinu City.’

‘Yes!’ Qirum stood and paced. ‘You!’ He pointed at Urhi, who scrambled for a slate and stylus. ‘Write this down. Telipinu City. Protis City. Qirum City! New Troy, New Mycenae, New Hattusa! Write it down lest we forget.’

Protis watched Urhi, amused. ‘You are not yet a king, but you have a king’s scribe.’

‘I found him in Abydos, a city in the Troad, near Troy itself, which I besieged with the Spider at my side. I say I found Urhi. We burned his city, and he watched his family die, and as he was marched away with chains around his neck with a thousand others he loudly begged to be allowed to use his skills. My soft heart let him live a while longer. But he knows that I could cast him down once more in a moment, don’t you, good Urhi? Make sure you write that down too. Go on! Write it down!’

Urhi forced himself to smile as, with laughter raining around him, he worked his clay slate, his stylus pecking like a bird’s beak as he made the wedge-shaped characters.

Protis laughed. ‘A new kingdom, then. With you installed as king, and us as your companions, I suppose.’

He used a Greek word, basileis, which Urhi understood as meaning more than companions — it meant lords, with power and holdings of their own. And Protis and the Spider exchanged a glance which every man in the room could read, a glance that said that in the end these two would not be content to remain basileis of any man.

But Qirum said only, ‘You know my circumstances, Prince. I have lifted myself up from the ruin of my home city as a heavy stone is lifted from a pool of water, and now I address you as an equal.’ Qirum waved a hand. ‘Look at us, all survivors of the great smash-up of the states to the east — you Greeks, you Anatolians. You men of the Troad, my own country, from Troy and Abydos and Zeleia, and from the wider Anatolia, from Phrygia to Lycia. Even you Hatti, like the Spider here, who knew when to run from a burning house!’