Stephen Baxter - Iron Winter

‘Yes, sir.’ Kassu scrambled to his feet.

Himuili was half a head taller than Kassu, maybe forty years old, with a face like a clenched fist. ‘Kassu, is it?’

‘Yes, sir. Of the Fourth Infantry-’

‘Shut up.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘I told that idiot Zida to take somebody and go scout out whatever’s going on at the Simoeis. He said he’d take you, Kassu. He said you’re an idiot.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘But he didn’t say you’re an idiot that deserves to get his head stuck on a pike for failing to prostate himself before My Sun,’ and they both nodded their heads at the King’s title. ‘A dozen lashes. Report to the wall barracks later.’

‘Thank you, sir.’

‘Shut up.’ Himuili beckoned, and led Kassu back to the group of high-ups.

Father of the Churches Angulli regarded Kassu with curiosity, Prince Arnuwanda with a kind of grim readiness despite his youth, and the Hazannu stared with contempt. They were all tall, well-fed men, like great trees standing around Kassu, and he prayed that his tongue wouldn’t tie itself up.

‘Well?’ Himuili snapped. ‘Good news from the Simoeis, or not?’

Kassu briskly described what he had seen on the far bank of the river, the fires he had counted, his own rough estimate of the force that was approaching the city.

Arnuwanda spoke now. ‘The question is who they are. The Franks rarely come so close to the city and we can usually buy them off anyhow. .’ The prince was no more than twenty years old. He wore his hair long but loose, his upper lip was clean-shaven, his beard carefully shaped, and his young skin shone with expensive oils. He had a new tattoo on his cheek, a circles-and-bar design that looked like a souvenir of his long summer visit to Northland. His accent was smooth, Kassu thought, but oddly spiced, probably thanks to the Greek and Northlander tutors who had been imported to educate him. But he held himself like a warrior, having been educated in those arts by men like Himuili, and having ridden out in battle at the age of fifteen, or, some said, even younger. The Hatti had always needed their princes to be generals. ‘If it’s nomads,’ the prince went on, ‘we might have more trouble. Difficult wretches who don’t know when they’re defeated. They just scatter on their ponies hoping to lure you into traps-’

‘If they haven’t eaten their ponies already,’ Angulli said, and he giggled. This was the Father of the Churches, Brother of Jesus; he sounded slightly drunk to Kassu.

Himuili rolled his eyes. ‘We’ve ways of dealing with nomads, sir. The Turks are more persistent nuisances, especially now they’ve captured so much territory in eastern Anatolia. Gives them a base to fight from, you see.’

Arnuwanda nodded. ‘But at least, again, we know what we’re dealing with. The problem will be, as always, raising the manpower. And feeding the men.’ Another swirl of snow came down, thicker than before. Arnuwanda pulled his expensive-looking purple cloak tight around him.

‘Not the Turks,’ came a booming voice, immediately recognised by Kassu. ‘And not the Franks either.’

There was a commotion among the outer layers of the guard. Zida, for it was he, strode boldly towards the group of dignitaries. He had taken off his cloak and had wrapped it around some kind of trophy that dripped deep-red blood as he walked.

‘Let him through,’ Himuili snapped. ‘Let him through, I say!’

Zida, standing before his general, panted hard. Even the King, Kassu noticed, peered out of his linen tent to see what the fuss was about.

‘You’ve been running,’ Kassu murmured.

‘Faster than you, farm boy.’

‘A dozen lashes for your failure to prostrate,’ Himuili snapped.

‘Of course, sir.’

‘Tell me what you have.’

‘The identity of our attackers.’ Zida held up his bloody bundle and pulled away the cloak — to reveal a human head, roughly severed at a neck from which blood still dripped, a face pale with a heavy moustache. Zida held it up by a hank of red hair. There was a collective gasp, a wave of shock that spread out through the crowd of onlookers. Even the hooded supplicants were distracted, even the King. Reflexively the guards clustered closer around their master.

Kassu spotted his wife Henti, on the edge of the crowd, dressed in her nuntarriyashas finery, the robe shabby, faded, old, as everything was in New Hattusa these days, but still she looked radiant in his eyes. But she had come with her cousin Palla, the priest, who probably had business with Angulli. Side by side the cousins looked very alike. Kassu saw that Henti held the priest’s arm firmly as she stared at the head.

Himuili stepped forward. With his thumb, he opened one of the relic’s closed eyelids, to reveal an eye as blue as the sea in summer. ‘Rus, ’ he growled.

‘In fact he found me before I found him,’ Zida admitted. ‘He crept up behind me. Lucky I got him first. Otherwise-’

‘Otherwise you would have died uselessly,’ Himuili murmured, gazing at the head. ‘And all that expensive training wasted. Careless, that. Make that two dozen lashes.’

‘Thank you, sir.’

‘But he is Rus. You established that?’

‘Yes, sir. He lived long enough to convince me. But they aren’t just Rus out there.’

‘Who, then?’

‘Scand.’

Another gasp of dismay.

‘While he was begging for his life, he said it wasn’t his fault.’

‘What isn’t?’ Himuili snapped.

‘Their emigration.’

‘You mean their invasion. The assault they’re mounting.’

‘No, sir. Emigration is the word he used. His Hatti was quite good. Well, it’s no surprise. He said he’s served in the armies of My Sun, a mercenary regiment. He said, emigration, ’ Zida repeated. ‘And he said they’ve been driven to it by the drought and now the ice in their own lands, and by the wave of Scand that came down from their distant lands further north yet. The Scand sacked Kiev, it seems, before they all came to an arrangement.’

Himuili grunted. ‘That’s nice. An arrangement to attack us.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Arnuwanda paced, fists clenched, the muscles in his bare arms bulging. ‘The Rus! Do you know any history, good Himuili?’

‘Not as much as I should, sir,’ the general said drily.

‘Throughout its existence the empire of the Hatti has been besieged by enemies, within and without. Well, we fought off the Kaskans and the Arzawans, and the Greeks and the Persians and the Carthaginians and the Arabs and the Mongols, and we’re holding off the Turks — but now this! The Rus have been our allies. We gave them our god, they rejected Thor and Odin for Jesus! And now they turn on us.’

Zida, eyes cast down respectfully, said, ‘But they’re starving, sir. And freezing. This fellow told me about his own family, before he died.’

Angulli laughed. ‘He must have taken a long time dying, soldier!’ said the Brother of Jesus.

‘That he did, sir. This isn’t an army; it’s a people on the move. They have made up their minds to come south — to come here, for there’s nowhere else for them to go. So they came down their rivers where their traders have sailed for centuries, and crossed the Asian Sea to our shores. Their Khagan is with them, and just now he is preparing to lay siege to our port of Byzantos.’

Arnuwanda grunted. ‘Which will cut our trade routes to the Asian Sea and the continent beyond, not that they aren’t withered already.’

‘Sir, I think-’

And at that moment the assassins struck.

Two ordinary-looking supplicants broke from the head of the line, pushed past guards who had been watching Zida rather than attending their duty, threw back their hoods to reveal shocks of red hair, and opened their cloaks to reveal single-bladed battleaxes. And they fell on the King.