Stephen Baxter - Bronze Summer

‘Well, we’ve learned to fight back since then.’

He grunted. ‘If you can call it fighting. You flood the ground — you cut your own roads, to stop us advancing. Sometimes when I attack a settlement, which is all but lost in the green in the first place, I find it empty! Abandoned! It is like fighting fog — like fighting the diseases that strike down my warriors. You won’t stand and fight like men!’

Because we would lose if we did, Milaqa thought. That was the prevailing wisdom of the Annids and the Hatti who advised them. She leaned forward. ‘This is why I am here — Deri and I — as well as for Hadhe. To make you see sense, Qirum. Your great adventure has not worked. You cannot defeat Northland, it is too big and ancient for that. Even the Wall is too big for you. And besides, we are prepared now. But nor can we defeat you, for we are too few. So this stalemate goes on, with pointless cruelty and suffering on both sides. Let us end this now.’

He laughed hollowly. ‘And then what? Shall I withdraw from Northland? My basileis would butcher me if I tried.’

‘Let’s just stop the fighting. That’s all the Annids want, for now.’

‘Ah, but I can’t, you see. There is a question of honour. And surely you know, little Milaqa, that all of this is only a step on the road to a greater goal.’

‘The day when you mould an army out of Northland clay, and march on Hattusa? This is all so you can get your revenge on Kilushepa, isn’t it?’

He grinned, and drank more beer. ‘More or less. We are all driven by personal goals, Milaqa. What else is there in life? And my goal is to destroy that bitch, and the country that spawned her.’

Yet there was more he did not know. ‘Qirum. I probably shouldn’t tell you this. Your plans against Kilushepa. She knows.’

‘Of course she does. She probably has spies in this very room.’ He glanced at his priests, who seemed to shiver slightly, no doubt hearing every word. ‘What of it?’

‘She is no fool. We have had a new embassy from Hattusa. Her position there is strong once more. She does not intend to let you become a significant threat. Not significant enough to damage her, in any case.’

He sat up. ‘What does that mean? Is she coming herself?’

‘She is sending more troops. Soon there will be a Hatti force here strong enough to-’

‘ Is she coming herself? She is, isn’t she? Well, well. My showdown with the bitch queen might not be as remote as I have feared.’ His eyes were alight with passion; he no longer seemed drunk at all.

‘I shouldn’t have told you.’

‘Your Annids will say you shouldn’t. But you and I know you have done the right thing, Milaqa, don’t we? You came here to bring forward the ending of this war. Well, I believe you have. Just not the way those dried-up old sticks on the Wall intended you to. Ha!’

‘Milaqa?’

Hadhe stood in the doorway. Her hair was tied up, her skin looked oiled, and she wore an expensive-looking gown that did not conceal the swelling of her pregnancy, now eight months advanced.

Milaqa ran forward, and the cousins embraced. ‘Your children are fine,’ Milaqa said quickly. ‘Keli and Blane. After My Sun, they both reached the safety of the Wall, and they live there still, with the family.’

Hadhe was trembling. Milaqa imagined having to wait so many months for such brief, vital pieces of news. ‘Thank you. And Jaro-’

‘There was no sign of him. He may have died in the fighting. The bodies were burned, we could not tell. And Hesh — lost too.’

She nodded. ‘But Hesh lives on through his unborn child. I will mourn them later. Thank you, Milaqa.’

Qirum was pacing now. ‘How touching. Say what you have to say to each other and get out. I have much thinking to do. You, guard — send for the basileis.’

Hadhe murmured in the Etxelur tongue, ‘I haven’t seen him as animated as this since winter closed in.’

‘I gave him some news — I fear I have made a terrible mistake.’

Hadhe shook her head. ‘Nothing we do or say is right or wrong in the presence of such men as this; all we can do is survive.’ Under the expensive facial oils she looked old, Milaqa thought, old and worn out, and there was something elusive in her eyes. She was not yet eighteen years old. ‘Things could have been worse for me, in My Sun, on that terrible day. I was lucky, comparatively. Your poor aunt Vala-’

‘I know. They found her body in the ruins of the mound house.’

‘She survived the fire mountain, but she could not survive the Trojans. I survived. I did not deserve to, for I had argued against defending ourselves against the Trojans. I could not believe it was true, that it could ever happen. If I had not, perhaps we would have been better prepared.’

‘I have some sway over Qirum. In some ways he’s so like a child, you know. Maybe I can persuade him to let you go. Deri is here. We could get you home.’

Hadhe patted her bump. ‘No. I cannot travel — not now. As I said, I am surviving here. More than that. I am trying to be a wife to Qirum. A companion at least. I think he needs that.’

That baffled Milaqa. It didn’t sound like Hadhe at all. What was going on in her mind?

But there was no time to discuss it further, for the generals were arriving for their council, and Qirum was impatient for them to be gone. After a hasty goodbye to Hadhe, Milaqa was hurried out of the palace.

It was only later, when Erishum and his guards had escorted Deri and Milaqa far from New Troy and set them walking north again, that Milaqa discovered that the bronze dagger she kept at her waist had gone.

Qirum’s response to Milaqa’s mission came a month later. The Trojan army left their city and marched on the Wall.

The bulk of Qirum’s army followed the great central track of the Etxelur Way. As they advanced, Northlanders fled or hid.

Qirum established his main camp just off Etxelur Way on the south bank of the Milk River, an easy march from the Wall’s central District of Great Etxelur. Even as he dug in, he began a cycle of patrols and raids far along the face of the Wall to east and west, cutting tracks and smashing dykes and weirs, seeking to cut off Etxelur from the country that sustained it. For their part the Annids ordered the digging of great ramparts and ditches before the line of the Wall. As the weather eased the fishing fleets went out; the oceans would provision the Wall even if the country could not.

So the siege was set. Both sides dug in, and on both sides the dying continued.

The Third Year After the Fire Mountain: Late Spring.

After midnight the party came out to repair the Words on the Wall. It was pitch dark, under a sky choked with cloud.

Tibo stood with his father at the balcony, in a gentle, cold rain. They were high on the Wall here, high over Old Etxelur. The night was cold, and the day under a sunless sky hadn’t been much warmer. Looking down, Tibo saw that the latest bonfires the Trojans had built at the base of the Wall had died back, thanks to the heavy rain earlier in the day; only a sullen red glow came from the huge heapings of wood. Further out, nothing could be seen of the enemy save the diffuse lights of the Trojans’ fires. Some of the fires cast reflections in standing water. Northland under siege had become a soggy landscape, all the way to the face of the Wall itself.

And beyond that was only darkness. Any Northlanders between here and the horizon were in hiding. If the land was dark it was silent too — almost, anyhow. You rarely heard the sounds of the night any more, the cries of wolves, the calls of owls. Even the animals and birds fled from the Trojans.

But tonight Tibo thought he heard something coming out of the gloom, a murmur of voices, a deep creaking like the swaying of a gigantic tree. The Trojans often worked at night, launching their pinprick raids on the Wall under cover of the dark. Were they up to something this night?