Stephen Baxter - Bronze Summer

They walked on past the families, like dark clouds crossing. Teel was grim, morbid, obsessive, all the cares of Northland weighing him down. But he was also the uncle who had played elaborate games with Milaqa on other Giving days, long ago. She slipped her hand into his.

The Water Council was already in session by the time Teel and Milaqa arrived. Despite its archaic title, the Council was a general-purpose quarterly convocation of Annids and other senior folk. The meeting was taking place in a dedicated chamber deep within the body of the Wall, lit by oil lamps. The Annids were sitting or standing in little groups, arguing and complaining, as servants hurried between them bearing trays of food and drink. The air was thick with greasy smoke and laden with heat, and Milaqa felt as if she was being buried alive. But the Annids never went short of their treats, she noted sourly, whatever the weather.

Riban came to meet them, bearing drinks: beer for Milaqa, clear water for Teel. After having travelled across the Continent with them the young priest knew their taste. He led them to a small group centred on Raka, the still-new Annid of Annids. She had got herself stuck in a raging argument with Noli, the stern old Annid who had so opposed her own original appointment.

‘We must deal with the Trojans, one way or another,’ Raka insisted. ‘As well as the other powers. It is pointless and distracting to pretend that the great tide of warriors which is likely to break over us is not real!’

Noli said, ‘But it is not a tide that faces us, not a mindless thing, a force driven by the will of the gods. Not a Great Sea. It is an army, a mob of humanity. They need not be here; there were other choices that could have been made.’

Teel put in, ‘You went to Hattusa, Annid.’

She turned on him. ‘Where I stood helpless as you made your deals. It is you and your kind, Teel, who have brought disaster down upon us in your endless game-playing.’

‘Not game-playing,’ Teel said sternly. ‘Politics.’ He used a Greek word: politikos.

‘Even the word for what you do is foreign to us!’ she snapped at him. ‘To manipulate farmer-kings, to play off one against another. And now you plan to head off one lot of cattle-folk by planting another lot in the heart of Northland. How can you be sure we can rely on these Hatti?’

‘I think we can trust Kilushepa,’ Teel said. ‘She has as much reason to deal with the Trojan as we have. More, perhaps. If anybody is to blame for creating the monster it is Kilushepa. Without her he would still be a petty bandit screwing teenage whores in the wreck of his home city. She never imagined, I think, that after she cast him down he would rise up as he has.’

‘But Kilushepa herself is not secure in Hattusa,’ Raka said anxiously.

‘As long as she lasts she will support us. After all, she has sent a close ally in Muwa to serve as the general of her force here.’

‘What “force”?’ Noli sneered. ‘A thousand men? The rumours are that the Trojan has many times that number. The farmers will always outnumber us.’

Teel would have spoken again, but Raka raised a hand to silence him. ‘We can come through this trial. We will come through it. And we will do it with the blessing of the little mothers, without losing the essence of what we are, of what our country is, even though we are so few compared to the farmers. This is what we must tell the people.’ She was deeply impressive, and her words stirred Milaqa’s heart.

But then a cry went up, echoing through the galleries of the Wall. ‘The beacons! They are lit! Oh, they are lit!’

The Annid of Annids led the way, hurrying to the Wall roof. Noon was approaching, and the sky was brighter.

And all across the tremendous plain of Northland, on earthen mounds raised ages ago against the threat of flood, the beacon fires burned, pinpoints of brilliance. Teel touched Milaqa’s arm and pointed. She turned to see the fires coming alight all along the Wall’s upper parapet too.

‘I hate to say it,’ Teel said. ‘I was right, wasn’t I? About Qirum, and the midsummer day.’

The beacons were a wave of prearranged signals that had washed across Northland all the way from its southern coast. Now that wave of light had broken against the Wall itself, bringing with it a simple message. The Trojan was coming.

Qirum’s fleet had hauled anchor before dawn.

As the long midsummer day wore on the ships pushed steadily west, tracking the shore of the great estuary the natives of this place called the Cut, following the southern coast of Northland. It was high tide, and the dark waters washed over stony beaches.

Qirum himself was at the steering oar at the stern of his own ship, a big bristling pentecoster that would have dwarfed his old eight-man scow. His Greek pilot had given it a name, the Lion, after the Greek custom. Erishum, Qirum’s trusted sergeant, stood at the prow, weapons to hand. This ship was the lead in a motley fleet of over a hundred vessels scattered across the swelling water, ships stolen from kings and pirates, some even rightfully purchased, many of them heroically sailed out of the strait and north along Gaira’s coast with the Western Ocean. Ships that bore an army, its warriors and followers and their horses, even chariots and siege engines packed into their hulls.

It was good to be back at sea. Qirum could hear men calling across the water, pilots passing bits of information, the crews mocking each other as fighting men always would. He could hear the horses too, their frightened whinnies carrying over the water. He relished the smell of pitch and resin, of the men’s wine and salted meat, even their earthy stink of piss and vomit, and above all the sharp salt scent of the air that lay over the ocean. Even to bring his army so far, to assemble such a fleet, was a huge achievement. And at this key moment, with the first landing on Northland soil imminent, it was Qirum’s ship that led, Qirum himself who guided it, he who would be the first to spring onto Northland soil, the first to fight, the first to kill.

But that landing had yet to be made, that moment of glory yet to come. For now Qirum and his force were still at the mercy of the sea. Huge oceanic waves forced their way into this great throat of an estuary, and the boat creaked as it rose and fell. The men, most of them warriors from the eastern countries, looked uneasy, queasy, and more than one had emptied his guts over the side. At least the wind was strong enough for them to use their sails, but it blew too hard, driving the ships too fast for the comfort of the pilots, and it brought a bite of cold too on this unseasonably chill midsummer day.

It was just as well, Qirum thought, that few of the men knew of the invisible traps that the Northlanders had planted all along the shore.

Now the traitor came back the length of the ship to speak to him. He had to step carefully past the twin ranks of rowers, twenty-five men in each, their gear stowed beneath their benches, their weapons to hand, their oars shipped. The man, arrogantly dressed in the Jackdaw-feather cloak of his ceremonial office in Northland society, himself looked unsteady; he was no sailor. But he smiled at the Trojan’s discomfort. ‘You’re doing well, Qirum. Just hold your course.’

Qirum snarled, ‘I don’t need pats on the head from the likes of you, Bren.’

‘Of course you don’t. But nevertheless-’ He glanced up at a sunless sky. ‘A midsummer day, a clear still morning. The weather is kind, believe it or not. You should see the storms that ram their way up this estuary in the winter.’

Qirum glanced to the shore to the north. It was a strand of empty shingle beach, with a blur of forest in the distance. To the south, nothing could be seen but water. This estuary was so wide that you could not see one bank from the other. ‘I see no walls. Where are the mighty Northland walls, as I saw in the north?’