Bronze Summer (22 page)

‘And if all the words you spouted were flakes of gold, Trojan,’ said Kilushepa, walking stiffly towards them now, ‘you would be rich indeed.’

Qirum laughed, admiring. ‘There, Milaqa, what was I saying? As I believe I am better than your twig-cutting uncles over there, so this one believes she is better than me. Even though, strictly speaking, I
own
her.’ He rubbed his mittened hands together. ‘So – are we to make this walk?’

Kilushepa wore a hat of white winter-fox fur on her head, and was shrouded in a thick cloak of black-dyed fur, given her by Raka, the new Annid of Annids, in whose house she was staying. But she shivered, a long, drawn-out shudder that afflicted her whole body. ‘By the Storm God’s mercy, your land is cold, Milaqa. And to think I used to complain about draughty palaces in Hattusa!’

It was only a few days since she had given birth, after a short, difficult pregnancy. Under her naturally dark skin Milaqa thought she sawa bloodless pallor. Milaqa plucked up the courage to speak. ‘Tawananna – you don’t look strong.’

Kilushepa looked down at her, surprised, perhaps amused. ‘Oh, you are an expert in medicine, are you, little girl?’

‘No. But I’ve been there when my mother gave birth. And my cousins. I’ve seen how hard it is—’

‘Lead us to the Wall, child, and hold your tongue,’ Kilushepa said without emotion. She stalked away, heading north towards the looming face of the Wall.

Qirum’s grin widened as he fell into step beside Milaqa. ‘You got that about as wrong as you could.’

‘I was speaking as one human being to another—’

‘Kilushepa isn’t a human being! Haven’t you listened to anything I have said to you? Oh, she does have her frailties. Since the birth of the child she’s been obsessively cleaning herself. Did you know that? Bathing and scrubbing, and douches and enemas. The Hatti are a funny lot who believe that any form of sexual contact leaves you unclean, and unfit to be in the presence of the gods. So you can imagine how it was for her to fall into the hands of the soldiers who used her – and into my hands, come to that. Now that the baby’s out of her she’s washing and washing and washing, trying to make herself pure again . . . But none of that matters. She’s not weak, Milaqa. She’s a queen! She’s the Tawananna! Mark my words – we’ll be the ones who will have to hurry to keep up.’

Kilushepa and Qirum followed her up the stair. Kilushepa, lifting her robe to reveal booted feet, concentrated on each step. Qirum had been this way many times, but he looked around with interest as he always did, at the detail of the staircases, the growstone surface, the small doorways that led off to chambers cut deeper into the Wall’s fabric. Milaqa wondered what a warrior made of Northland and its Wall.

They climbed up a final set of shallow steps and emerged onto the Wall’s roof: grey ocean to the left, the black-and-white snow-covered landscape of Northland to their right, the Wall itself arrowing to infinity ahead and behind. The Northern Ocean was flecked with ice floes, and the dark shadows of boats, all the way to the horizon. In this winter of privation the Northlanders had fallen back on the generosity of the little mother of the sea, but fishing in deep midwinter was always a hazard.

Milaqa stepped forward cautiously. The surface was swept clear of snow daily, and the central track was ridged, for better footing. She led them along the Wall, heading east. The air was mercifully still, but bitterly cold, and they all pulled their cloaks tighter.

Qirum studied the ridges as he walked, his eye caught by that small detail. ‘It must have been the labour of years to carve all these fine lines in the stone, along the mighty length of this Wall.’

‘Oh, no. You do it when the growstone is wet. You can just comb it in – literally, like combing your hair. When it’s wet you can shape growstone with your bare hands. And the furrows stay when the growstone hardens.’

‘Remarkable,’ the Trojan said. He knelt, took off his mittens, and rapped the surface with his knuckles. ‘A rock you can mould like clay!’

Soon they were over Old Etxelur itself. The circular ridges of the Mothers’ Door, the grand old earthwork, were coated by snow, the profile of Flint Mountain and the densely populated Bay Land gleamed with frost, and the great watercourses were frozen solid. In the misty distance she saw huge herds move across the land, like the shadows of clouds. Deer, perhaps, maybe even aurochs, the wild cattle that the farmer folk found so fascinating.

Kilushepa looked down on the Door, contemptuous. ‘How ugly. It reminds me of the palace of the Goddess of Death in the netherworld, which is surrounded by rings of walls in a desolate plain, just like this.’

‘This is the very heart of Northland,’ Milaqa said. ‘Old Etxelur itself, where the Wall, or the first part of it, was built to expel the sea.’

‘And all of this was sea bed, you claim,’ Kilushepa murmured. ‘I believe that’s a stand of oak down there. Everybody knows oak takes centuries to grow.’

‘But the Wall is more than centuries old, queen,’ said Qirum gently. ‘Older even than the most ancient cities of the east, older than Ur and Uruk.
This
was around when they were nothing but collections of shepherds’ huts. You know the saying. ‘‘Everything comes from the west.’’ And this is the heart of that west, Kilushepa.’

They moved on, walking past monoliths and monumental stone heads set up in their lines along the Wall roof. Milaqa tried to tell them something of the stories of the Annids commemorated here, but they weren’t interested in Northland history, and she gave up. She said, ‘We will walk until the middle of the afternoon, perhaps. We will arrive at a dock where my uncle Deri will meet us in his boat; we will be rowed back. We have food in the packs, and there are sheltered places. Or we can always duck down into the Wall; there are many places to eat.’

‘And drink,’ Qirum said loudly. ‘We’re walking due east. Aren’t we heading towards the Scambles?’ Kilushepa looked quizzical. ‘A District within the Wall, Tawananna. It’s rather interesting. You’d think the Wall is one great uniform mass. But it isn’t. The character changes, quite markedly. I’ll tell you one pattern I’ve observed. These Districts, their miniature towns-in-a-town – the centres tend to be a half-day’s walk apart, or a little more. Just too far to walk there and back in day, you see. So a natural separation grows up.’

Milaqa, faintly disturbed, realised that she’d never seen that pattern for herself.

‘As for the Scambles – well, it’s quite unlike Etxelur, though often you’ll find the grand folk in the taverns and music houses and brothels—’

‘We won’t be going there,’ Milaqa said hastily.

‘Then I hope you’re carrying beer on that back of yours, girl!’

They came to a place where a tremendous scaffolding of long Albian oak trunks and cut planks had been built up against the landward face of the Wall. On its platforms stood huge wooden vats full of ground-up rock, dust, and frozen-over water. Up here on the roof, wooden panels had been set up to shelter those who supervised the work on the scaffolding below. Nobody was working today, though one man sat bundled up in furs, watchful, to ensure there were no accidental fires.

They paused in the lee of the supervisors’ shelter. Milaqa opened her packs and passed around dried meat and fish with hazelnut paste, and water and beer.

Qirum was fascinated by the scaffolding. ‘It is like a tremendous siege engine.’

‘They are working on the Wall,’ Milaqa replied. ‘The Beavers and their assistants. They make growstone from crushed limestone, fire-mountain ash and other ingredients in those great vats. But you can see the water is frozen, and the growstone itself would be too cold to mix properly. So the work is abandoned for now. They work on a given section for years at a time. People come for the work, and others to support those who work. They live here. The site becomes a community, a village. Children may be born and grow up on the scaffolding, before the time comes to move on to another section of Wall.’

‘Rather magnificent,’ Qirum murmured to Kilushepa.

‘The magnificence of the insane,’ she said, chewing delicately on a piece of pickled cod. ‘The same pointless task repeated over and over. The Wall is a monument of idiots.’

Qirum shrugged. ‘I suppose I wouldn’t want my children to be growing up on a bit of scaffolding. Where is your daughter today, by the way? Little Puduhepa.’

‘With her carer. A woman called . . .’ She frowned, and glanced at Milaqa.

‘The wet nurse is called Bela,’ Milaqa said. ‘You know her, Qirum. A friend of my cousin Hadhe.’

Kilushepa said, ‘The woman is to be more than a wet nurse. I have given the baby over. And I have given instructions that a new name be found for the child. A Northlander name. I thoughtlessly gave the brat a Hatti name – a royal name, in fact. I was in pain, barely conscious, addled by the potions your priest doctors gave me, Milaqa. There is no purpose in the Hatti name, for she will be raised as a Northlander.’

‘But she is your child!’ Qirum said, aghast. ‘How can you give her up? Is this because of your Hatti obsession with cleanliness, woman? Is the child just some impurity that has now been flushed out of you?’

‘The child hardly matters. She is the product of a rape.’

‘As I was!’

‘And now she is abandoned. As you were.’ She seemed amused by the observation.

Qirum stood stock-still. Milaqa could see the muscles clenched in his neck. For a heartbeat Milaqa thought he might strike Kilushepa. Then he pushed out of the shelter and strode back the way they had come, and ducked down a staircase, perhaps looking for a Scambles tavern.

Kilushepa had finished her fish. She wiped her fingers and mouth delicately on a small cloth. ‘Well. That seems to be the end of the walk.’ She stood and staggered.

Milaqa held her arm. ‘Let me help you.’

The Tawananna snatched back her arm. ‘Do not touch me.’

When they emerged from the shelter snow was falling. Her hood up, her head down, Milaqa led Kilushepa east along the Wall, towards the dock where Deri waited. They did not speak again.

27

The First Year After the Fire Mountain: Spring

Bren staggered up the beach to an outcrop of rock, and sat down. With his delicate-looking fingers the Jackdaw picked at his leather leggings, stained with salt and piss and puke, and pulled his cloak tighter around his body. He’d been ill throughout the journey and had been all but useless in the boat, and he seemed dizzy and disoriented now he was back on the land. He didn’t even look around at their destination, after so many days on the breast of the sea.

Vala shivered in a breeze coming off a land choked by ice and snow. Home again, she thought. At first glance this bay, the Ice Giant’s Cupped Palm, seemed unchanged from when she had last seen it – at least as it had been in the days before the Hood. There was the broad sweep of the water, there the ice-tipped mountains on the horizon. She made out houses at the head of the beach, beyond the waterline. Smoke rose up, so at least there were people here – people
alive
, when there were some in Northland who had doubted there would be a living soul left on Kirike’s Land after the events of last summer.

But there were still scummy rafts of pale rock floating on the bay water, and washed up on the strand. On the land itself, which should have been turning green at this time of year, the ice still held sway. She thought she smelled ash in the cold air. And the world was much too quiet. She listened for the braying of seals, the cries of the birds who should be nesting by now. There was only the lap of the sea, and the gruff voices of the men as they wearily hauled their gear from the boat.

And towering over it all was a pillar of grey-white smoke, still rising from whatever was left of the Hood, pluming high in the sky. It was hard to believe that she had lived only a day’s walk from that monstrous mound, that she’d had a home almost on its slopes. Now, she supposed, there must be not a trace left of The Black.

A woman came out of one of the houses further up the beach. She waved warily, and Vala waved back. The woman ducked back into the house, emerged pulling a cloak around her shoulders, and walked down the beach towards the boat.

Bren sat listlessly.

Vala thumped his shoulder. ‘On your feet.’

He looked up at her, his once handsome face weather-beaten under a ragged beard. ‘Must I? I think I’ll fall over if—’

‘Somebody’s coming. Look strong. We’re here to help them, remember, not the other way around.’

He looked away, sullen. Vala got her hand under Bren’s armpit and hauled him to his feet. He staggered, but stood.

She had no sympathy for him. She’d left her own children behind in Etxelur to make this journey, to see what had become of her home. After all they’d gone through it had been a huge wrench for her to let the kids out of her sight. But she had come, for she thought it was the right thing to do. And Bren had been ordered to come here by the Annids, after his disgrace when his part in Kuma’s murder had been revealed, and his own House of Jackdaws had disowned him. If he could do some good here perhaps he could begin to redeem himself – that, anyhow, was how Raka had argued. But Bren had only complained about what he saw as a betrayal by his own niece, his protégé. He was nothing but a burden, Vala thought.