Stephen Baxter - Bronze Summer

The arrows and heavy stones clanged against the bronze face of Qirum’s shield, making him stagger. But he kept advancing. And javelins were thrown from the ranks behind him; they fell on Northlander flesh, and there were screams and cries.

Now there was a roar ahead. The Northlanders outside the rampart were coming forward. Evidently they meant to meet the Trojans as they reached the bottleneck of the engineers’ bridge. Better not to have let the bridge be built in the first place, Qirum thought; it showed the typical indecisiveness of the untrained, the inexperienced. No matter.

Suddenly the Northlanders were only paces away. Qirum saw their strange red hair, their faces pale with anger or fear.

The two sides closed in a hail of slingshot and arrows. At first it was just the three of them, Qirum, Protis and the Spider, side by side on the bridge’s rough panels. The first man Qirum faced was tall, young, healthy-looking, with an odd little beard around his mouth. He looked astonished when Qirum thrust the tip of his own sword into his throat, almost delicately, as a surgeon would lance a wound. Here was the benefit of training, which beat the hesitancy out of a man; it was easier to die than to kill for the first time, as the man was no doubt already explaining to the little mothers, his feeble goddesses. Qirum got his boot on the man’s chest and shoved him back, thus retrieving his sword, and he surged forward once more, laying into the next man, and the next. Beside him, Protis swung his sword and the Spider stabbed with his spear, flesh was broken and blood spurted. Protis especially was extraordinary in such a situation, a whirl of slashing blades.

Surrounded by roars, in a mist of blood, the three companions slew and maimed, driving on as the defenders fell back before them. Soon the three of them, just three against fifty or so, had driven a deep hole into the ranks of the defenders. Behind them, Erishum led more men over the bridge to pour into the attack, hacking, screaming, driving the foe back.

A cry went up from the defenders, in their own strange tongue. Fall back! At the rear, men streamed back through the rampart gate. Those at the front had to scramble backwards, fighting as they went. Erishum and the other sergeants yelled encouragement at the Trojan forces, to keep pushing, keep killing.

It didn’t take long for the Trojan surge to reach the gate. There was a final brave stand by a handful of Northlanders, who held the Trojans back long enough for the gate to be slammed shut, before they died in their turn. The commanders would not allow any pause, any falling back, any break in the assault now it had begun. Protis called, ‘Shields up! Bring the ladders! Come on, you lazy slugs, do I have to do it myself?’

Handfuls of men carried the stubby siege ladders forward from the little army’s short train, protected from the arrows by the raised shields of others who ran alongside. Good training paying off again, Qirum thought, watching from under his shield.

The Spider turned his own shield over and pulled out an arrow with some difficulty. It had penetrated bronze plate. ‘Iron,’ he said, turning the arrow’s head before his king’s eyes. ‘Good stuff too.’

‘Well, we knew they had it,’ Qirum said. ‘From what they stole in Hattusa.’

The Spider glanced at the rough rampart. ‘It will make no difference. Iron or not, these savages don’t know how civilised men fight.’

‘Well, they know now.’

Soon the first ladder, rough steps hacked into a halved tree trunk, was up against the wall. This time Protis was the first to charge. ‘Let’s get this over.’ He took the ladder at a run, not using his hands, sword in one hand and shield strap in the other, relying on sheer momentum to keep from falling as he climbed. He slammed the shield into the face of a defender at the top, who fell back screaming, his face a bloody mass. Then Protis was up and over the rampart, sword swinging, and he dropped out of sight on the far side. His men followed in his wake.

All along the wall more ladders had been propped up, more Trojans were pouring over. The defenders were already falling back.

Qirum roared, ‘Let me at them!’ But he had to push his way through the men to get to the ladder, and clamber his way to the top.

Standing near the central hearth — there were still piles of acorns beside a half-filled pit, from the work abandoned yesterday — Vala saw the Trojans break over the rampart, and the men of My Sun falling back, only to be cut down as they fled. One man — she knew him well, a fatherly fellow of about forty called Maos — slithered screaming down a rampart wall that was already slick with bright blood. At the bottom of the wall he rolled over, and from a great gaping slash in his belly snake-like entrails spilled and dragged on the ground.

It seemed only heartbeats since the assault had started. It was not yet fully dawn. But already everything was lost.

‘Mother!’

Vala whirled around. Liff, her twelve-year-old warrior, came staggering towards her, trailing his sword on the ground, his tunic front soaked with blood. Yet his sword seemed unbloodied; he probably hadn’t inflicted a single wound.

The first Trojans had dropped down into the hearthplace and were running forward, yelling, swords in hand. Huge men with weapons running at her, only paces away, and nobody left to stop them.

She shoved Liff so he fell backwards into the acorn pit. He looked up, shocked. She screamed, ‘Cover yourself!’

The blade, coming from over her shoulder, slashed down the right side of her face.

There was an instant of shock; she staggered. Then blood spurted, filling her right eye. On the ground she saw a lank of her hair, bloody flesh that might have been her cheek — her ear, on the ground. And then the pain hit her, as if a fire mountain was bursting inside her head. Bright with agony, she tried to run, staggered.

A heavy mass slammed into her legs, and she was driven face down into the dust. Her cut-open head scraped over the ground, and more pain came, brilliant, blinding. A hand grabbed her shoulder and she was rolled onto her back, in the grip of overwhelming strength. She could see the man over her, though blood was pooling in both her eyes now. She tried to scream, and a fist drove into her mouth, hard and filthy. She felt teeth crack, she tasted blood and dirt, and there was more agony, shocking, sudden. A rough hand dragged up her tunic, and her legs were pulled apart, other hands, other men. And then the man over her thrust and he was inside her, tearing at her dryness. She tried to call for her husband, for Medoc, but he was long dead, and her throat was full of blood.

Hiding in the communal house on the flood mound, the women and children could hear the fighting outside, the screams of the men, their husbands and brothers and sons in the battle, brief as it was. And the worse screams when the fighting was done, punctuated with laughter, as the injured were put to death.

Then the Trojans came pushing into the house. Blinking in the dark, they laughed when they discovered the women here. One girl, too young, too pretty, was immediately raped by a brute of a Trojan, there in the middle of the floor, before being returned weeping to her mother and her little brother. The rest cheered the man on. Then they searched the house for food and water, shoving cowering children aside to find it. The women were ordered to strip and their clothes were taken away. The men worked through the crowd, groping and punching, but there were no more rapes, for now.

All this before dawn had fully broken.

The day wore on, horribly slowly. More women were shoved in by the Trojans. All these were injured, all had been raped. Vala had to be carried in, swung by her hands and feet between two men. Her head was a mass of blood, the skin sheared off, her ear gone, the flesh scraped and full of grit where it looked as if she had been dragged across the ground. Part of Hadhe’s extended family, Hadhe thought of Vala as an aunt. Now, her body used and broken, Hadhe could only cradle her. She did not even have water to wash away the grit.