Stephen Baxter - Bronze Summer

Deri clapped Mi on the back. The girl still had her bow on the grass beside her. ‘Good shooting, kid.’

‘I’m not a kid, uncle.’ Mi spoke with a thick Kirike’s Land accent. She was fourteen years old now, but looked younger.

‘Well, whatever you are, you did your job well. I’ve never seen an arrow fly so far!’

‘Medoc taught me.’

Deri nodded. ‘My father was a good man, and I could use him at my side right now. If we’d had any luck we’d have sunk that ship and taken out fifty men, Qirum himself, and that worm Bren in the process.’

‘It was him, wasn’t it?’ Nago asked.

‘You could hardly mistake that Jackdaw cloak. The arrogance of the man in wearing it is beyond belief. Yet he thought he was safe, out on the water, I suppose.’

‘So he told them about our beach defences,’ Nago said ruefully. ‘They knew to avoid the shore. We only got the one ship. All that work wasted. And all because of one man, because of Bren.’

Deri rubbed his face. ‘He hasn’t won yet. Nor has Qirum.’

‘But he must have told them about-’

‘About Shark Bay. I know. The one place the Trojans can land.’ Deri was determined not to look downcast; he forced a grin. ‘But every setback brings an opportunity. At least we know where they will land. And we can be ready to face them.

‘There’s nothing more we can do here.’ He stood and turned to the wider party, and snapped out orders in their own tongue to the Hatti scouts; the men ran to their horses and galloped off. ‘The tracks are good along this coast. If we make good time we can be ready to give these Trojans a warm welcome. And don’t forget your bow, Mi. I have a feeling you will be very useful in what’s to come.’

The inlet Bren called Shark Bay was the outflow of a minor river. A narrow valley with walls of eroded chalk led inland from the beach.

As the ship turned to face the shore, as the landing at last approached, Qirum gave up his place at the steering oar to his pilot, grabbed his weapons and armour, and made for the prow, Erishum at his side. The two boats following were commanded by Protis and the Spider, his two basileis, and were filled with their best fighters. These three boats, the hardened spear-point of the entire force, would make the first landings, and the heroes they carried were ready to win the day for the Trojan force.

Bren pointed out the features of the shore. ‘The Annids decided that the whole coast could not be rendered impassable. We Northlanders do rely on trade. This place was chosen as a safe landing. It was thought well enough defended naturally, by its sandbanks. Can you see?’ The sandbanks were visible as a maze of pale brown shadows under the water. ‘If you don’t know this coast, any experienced sailor would avoid this inlet.’

‘But if you do know it, there is a way through.’

‘Yes, as I told your pilot-’

‘Then get back to the stern and tell him anew. I don’t want any mistakes now we’re so close.’

The traitor hurried back.

The rowers worked more gingerly now as the pilots carefully guided the ships through the banks. As they passed the men threw out markers, pigs’ bladders weighted with rocks, to guide the ships following.

Erishum pointed to the shore. ‘They’re ready for us.’

Qirum peered that way, and saw the glint of metal, a fence of spears, just inland from the water’s edge. The enemy at last, silently waiting. He grinned. ‘Good. We need a fight to sharpen our wits. It’s too many days since I killed a man-’

An arrow hissed through the air; it fell short of the ship, but not by much.

‘Shields!’ Qirum snapped.

Behind him the rowers, without missing a beat, manhandled their shields over their heads. The first arrows clattered down into the boat.

‘Somebody has a good arm,’ Erishum said.

‘Maybe the same freak of nature who set fire to our sail. He will pay for that, in time.’ More arrows fell now as they came within range of the shore, and Qirum and Erishum raised their own shields. But Qirum stood proud in the prow of his ship, defying the Northlanders’ lethal hail.

The landing itself was only moments away. Qirum felt his heart race, his blood surge. Of the whole operation the landing required the most skill. If you got your run at the shore just right, if you timed the very strokes, then you could drive your ship half a length up the shore before it came to rest, and that alone could punch a hole in any defence. But the rowers had to work precisely to the rhythm of the drummers, even though they kept having to duck behind their shields, for all the time the enemy bombardment continued, the fall of arrows thickening. Mostly the arrows clattered harmlessly against shields or armour, or hit the wooden deck, but some, as always, found a way through to flesh, and a man would scream, and the ship juddered as a rower was lost.

And now the first answering wave of arrows from the ships behind the lead flew over Qirum’s head, falling on the shore, and the first Northlanders, surely, began to die. Encouraged, the men rowed faster, their discipline growing tighter. Qirum felt the salt wind in his face as the boat leapt forward, and the hail of arrows from both sides thickened in the air.

The hull struck the sea bottom with a shuddering crunch, and slid over the shingle, and the last of the water surged around the prow. Qirum raised his sword with a roar. Even before the boat came to rest he leapt out into the surf.

Nago, with Deri at his side, stood firm at the centre of the Northlander line. They both wore armour borrowed from the Hatti. The plan was to strike at the Trojans just as they landed, when they were most vulnerable, with the bulk of their force still trapped at sea. Nobody expected this small force defending the beach to hold for long, but the more damage it could do the better.

But here came the ships! Somehow, whenever he had imagined this moment, Nago had never thought of the ships themselves. Now here they were, three of them rearing up out of the beach, sliding on their wooden bellies over the rough stones of the beach, with painted eyes glowering as if they meant to devour the defending warriors themselves. They were monsters, an aquatic nightmare. It was hard not to flee in superstitious terror.

And the first man was already out of the still-moving lead boat, short, stocky, his face livid with a kind of rage. Nago knew this man. It was Qirum himself, first to set foot in the country he meant to make his own. The Northlanders held their line — all save one man who broke and ran forward, yelling, waving a sword. Qirum ducked inside the man’s clumsy slice and slashed his own short, heavy sword across the man’s midriff, cutting through cloth and flesh and stomach wall. The man fell forward into the seawater, and blood spilled red. Qirum laughed, exultant.

A Hatti officer roared, ‘Scrape these bastards off the beach!’

The defenders charged, bellowing, in their line, and Nago and Deri ran with them. Nago pumped air into his lungs and clenched his muscles, a fisherman trying to become a fighter, trying to remember the training the Hatti corporals had given him.

And he saw the first Trojan he was going to close with, a huge fellow from the lead boat. He carried a sword in his scabbard and a spear in his hands, but he had no shield. Rather he was kitted out with full armour, bronze sheets on his breast and over his thighs, jointed extensions to protect his neck and shoulders, and his face was shielded by a grill of bronze under a boar-tusk helmet. It chilled Nago that he could not see the man’s face, this stranger determined to kill him. The man came at Nago with a muscular roar.

Don’t hesitate: that was the one message the Hatti corporals had rammed into the heads and hearts of the Northlander fishermen and canal-dredgers. Don’t hesitate to strike, to kill, or you will be killed.