Stephen Baxter - Bronze Summer

Behind these principals came other senior figures, Northlanders walking side by side with Hatti. There were many other embassies: wolf-like Albians, priest-like Gairans, warrior-like Greeks, exotic Egyptians with painted faces and towering crowns — even a party from across the Western Ocean, from the Land of the Sky Wolf, proud warriors with tremendous feathered headdresses and snake tattoos.

There were more Northlanders than usual too, hailing from Wall Districts from the Albian terminus to the World River estuary. The great and ancient community of the Wall itself had almost crumbled under the pressure from the Trojan, and there were apologies to be made, relationships to be rebuilt. But in the end those who had fought in the war had come from end to end of the Wall for the common cause, and that was the foundation for the future.

And towards the rear of the column walked the likes of Milaqa, Voro, Mi and others, too junior for their order of precedence to matter.

They emerged into the air on the parapet of the Wall, before the gleaming new sculpted heads. Out to the north a bank of thick black cloud loomed over a steel-grey ocean, threatening bad weather later.

A breeze blew up, sharp, surprisingly cold for midsummer.

Nuwanza shivered visibly and drew his thick woollen cloak tighter around him. This frail elderly Hatti was the second cousin of Kilushepa who had done so much to secure the Tawananna’s successful rehabilitation in the court of the Hatti king. He had rarely travelled outside Hattusa itself before, and had now made a gruelling trek across the Continent all the way to Northland and the Wall. And now this fragile old fellow was to be the husband of Mi, a seventeen-year-old warrior.

‘So,’ Voro said to Mi, ‘how’s the boyfriend?’

Mi walked between Voro and Milaqa now, her cheeks painted bright red, her muscular archer’s arms folded over her bare breasts. ‘Shut up.’

Milaqa tried not to laugh. ‘You’re a woman who wrestles three-man war chariots. Look at him! You’ll probably break him on your first night.’

Mi scowled, pursing brightly painted lips. ‘Everybody says it’s my duty to marry him.’

Voro nodded. ‘It is. Sealing alliances with marriages. It’s what they do, out east; it’s what they understand.’

‘Yes, but why me? I’m no more a princess than she was,’ she said, glaring at Milaqa.

Milaqa sighed. ‘Maybe not. But I admit you look better in the costume than I ever did. Look, Mi — you’ll survive out there. You’re tough. Everybody saw that in the war. It’s the reason you were chosen, I think. And the old man won’t last for ever.’ She grinned. ‘Not in your bed!’

Mi scowled again. ‘Well, I’m taking my bow, and my iron-tipped arrows. Nuwanza has said I could help train their army’s archery corps. I think he said that. My Hatti still isn’t good.’

‘There you go,’ Voro said. ‘Women have a strong role in Hattusa. The Hatti aren’t like the Greeks. Kilushepa herself is proof of that. You’ll find a place.’

‘And it’s warmer in Hattusa,’ Milaqa said. ‘Besides, you won’t have to walk around like that all the time.’

‘Good.’ Mi looked down at her bare chest. ‘I prefer to be strapped down, frankly. Helps with the bow action. I hope it’s all worth it,’ she said, more uncertain, suddenly seeming much younger. ‘Worth me giving up my whole life like this. I hope this alliance of Hatti and Northlanders will work, though I can’t imagine how.’

‘I think it has a chance,’ Voro said. ‘I was involved in some of the negotiations, with the other Jackdaws. Under Kilushepa and King Hattusili the Hatti empire seems to be stabilising. They are establishing treaties of trade and mutual aid with us. They have done this kind of thing before, as their records show — treaties with Egypt, for instance, sealed by royal marriages. Now they’re also talking to the new rulers in Egypt, and in Assyria. And they are sending military missions west into Greece.’

‘ “Military missions,” ’ Milaqa said sourly. ‘That’s one translation. “Invasion” is another.’

Voro shrugged. ‘But the Greek kingdoms have all but collapsed. There are already children whose parents were clerks and scribes, growing up in the forests like bandits. Order needs to be imposed from somewhere. We have agreed that we will each have our own domains of influence on the Continent. We will have Albia and Gaira, for instance, and also the Land of the Jaguars and the other countries across the Western Ocean.’

‘That’s nice of them,’ Milaqa said, ‘since the Hatti have no ships that can reach those places anyhow.’

‘But the Greeks had never sailed into our Northern Ocean either, before they blockaded us. Who knows what the future holds? Milaqa, this is a moment of flux, of change — a pivot of history. Oh, the Hatti are not perfect, but Kilushepa herself remembers how it is to be a booty person. Maybe we can come out of this with a better world, a better way of living.’

‘If only we all believe it can be so,’ she said cynically.

‘Yes,’ he said firmly. ‘If only we believe.’ And he looked directly at her, as if trying to reach her.

From the boy so mortified at being unable to have prevented her mother’s death, Voro had grown. He was stockier, graver than he had once been. And he seemed stronger too — or maybe it was just that so much of her own strength had been dissipated by her brush with the plague. He had always cared for her; she had always known that, under her dismissal and contempt. Was she ready now to accept Voro’s calm, loyal patience?

But what did she have to offer him? She was a burned-out shell. Kilushepa’s surgeons had warned her gravely that survivors of the coughing plague often had difficulty carrying children. And she could never tell him her secret. Never tell him of the black crime.

She was distracted by clouds thickening the sun, a fresh bite in the freshening wind.

‘I need time,’ she blurted, then instantly regretted it.

Once that would have driven him away. Now he just held her hands. ‘I know.’

Beside them, Mi smiled.

Together they turned to face the Wall’s new stone heads.

Riban climbed a platform and, arms outstretched, his face distorted, began gabbling words from a language more ancient, it was said, than the age of Ana herself, who had founded the Wall and saved Northland. But everyone knew what Riban was saying. He celebrated the visages of Raka and Kuma, who had joined the row of those who glared at the ocean that the Wall had defied for hundreds of generations already, and would defy for much longer yet.

Through the long winter Milaqa had watched Caxa and her assistants labour at the heads. They were made not of the local sandstone but of a harder rock, said to originate from dead fire mountains in the north of Albia. Caxa had insisted on using only the techniques traditional among her people; she had roughed out the faces from the ferociously resistant rock with stone hammers, and then had used drills and abrasives, polishing and scraping with ever finer materials, to complete the details. There were markings in the Etxelur script, rings and tails, with the names of the Annids and a brief declaration of their achievement. There was a time stamp too, a string of numbers, a mark of when they had lived and died, recorded in the long calendar of Etxelur. The resulting heads were huge, each as tall as a human being. The faces were stylised in the way of the Jaguar folk, with flattened noses, broad lips, large eyes — yet they were recognisably Kuma and Raka.

And beneath Kuma’s head lay a single iron arrowhead, placed there by Milaqa — the thing that had killed her mother, buried for ever beneath this symbol of her eternal triumph.