Bronze Summer (23 page)

The woman came up. She had a shock of white hair loosely tied at the back of her head, and the dirt grimed in the lines on her face made her look old. She was thin, too, her cheeks sunken. Her tunic, under the cloak, was shabby, threadbare.

Vala knew her. ‘Pithi?’

‘Vala? I thought you were dead!’

Once this woman had been Vala’s neighbour, in The Black. She was not yet thirty; she looked ten years older. When they embraced, Vala smelled ash on Pithi’s hair.

Pithi said, ‘You stayed in your house when we left.’

‘In the end I ran to the sea, with my family. We got to a boat before the burning smoke came down.’

‘We didn’t reach the beach. We sheltered in a cave until it passed. The heat – we couldn’t breathe. I lost one child. You remember little Gili? And my mother, her lungs weren’t strong enough. And you? The boys, Mi?’

‘They all made it. We were lucky. But Okea and Medoc . . .’

Pithi just nodded. Evidently news of death was commonplace. ‘And now we live by the beach, for Stapi and Mura spend all day at sea.’ Pithi’s husband and older son. ‘There’s nothing left on the land. Even before the snow came, the ash covered everything, and the cattle got sick. We butchered them, but the meat is long gone . . .’ She seemed to notice Bren for the first time. ‘I know you. I was in Northland once. You were a Jackdaw. You traded us bronze knives for our seal furs. You were called Bren.’

He summoned a smile, ghastly in his snow-white face. ‘Well, I still am called Bren, though I’m no longer a trader.’

‘Why are you here?’

Bren glanced at Vala. ‘To help you. The Annid of Annids herself ordered me to come here. To see what you need, what we in Northland can do to help you.’

‘Kuma sent you?’

‘Not Kuma,’ Vala said gently. ‘We have a new Annid of Annids now.’

Pithi stared at Bren, as if not really believing he was there. Then she turned and led them up the beach. ‘You must come to the houses. There are quite a few of us, from all over. This bay is the best harbour on the island, and a natural place to gather.’

‘How many?’

‘Less than before the winter. But we are alive. Vala, there are people here who survived extraordinary things. In one place a glacier on the side of the fire mountain melted, all at once. A woman with her baby had to run from a torrent, she looked back and saw people drown – drown, on the side of a burning mountain! We found one village untouched by the fire save for the ash, but everybody lay as if asleep in their beds – all dead. Some say there is bad air that comes out of the ground. And one man, an old fellow with one leg called Balc – he tried to escape to the sea as you did, was missed by the boats, and lived by grabbing onto the corpse of a cow, which bloated with gas and floated to the surface. He lived for three days on that cow, drinking its blood, until a fishing boat spotted him . . . Is Bren all right?’

Bren was bent over, retching dry, his stomach long empty of food.

Vala rubbed his back. ‘He’ll be fine.’

Without straightening up he murmured to her, ‘We can do nothing for these people. This blighted island. We can bring no food – we can’t dispel the ice or the poisonous ash—’

‘We can do small things. We can tell them of relatives and friends who live. We can take some of the sick, the very young children perhaps, away to Northland. We can give them hope. That’s why we came. Now smile and do your job.’

He managed to stand straight, and with the help of the two women made it up the beach to the shabby houses.

28

Qirum came to the house as Milaqa was getting ready for the Annids’ walk to the south. He just walked in, as he usually did.

Milaqa was alone in the house. Luckily she was dressed already, her tunic and leather belt over her loincloth and leather leggings, with her cloak set to one side. She wore her iron arrowhead on its thong around her neck, tucked into her tunic.

‘You’re late,’ he said in his liquid Anatolian tongue.

‘I’m always late.’ She eyed him. ‘Even when I’m not kept up until dawn in some dingy tavern in the Scambles, I’m late.’

He laughed, and belched heroically; she could smell the stale beer on his breath. ‘There are no taverns where we’re going, you told me. Best to get the blood running with the good stuff first.’ As she packed up her kit, Qirum stalked around the house. He was always curious, always exploring. He tested the supporting structure of big old oak beams, poked a finger into the walls’ weave of twigs coated with mud and plaster, sniffed the central hearth, brushed his hand over the children’s pallets with their litter of toys, dolls, wooden swords. With his own sword in its scabbard on his back and his bronze breastplate on his chest, he looked as out of place in this domestic litter as if a wild aurochs had walked in. He watched her as she packed up her final bits: her bag, her tool belt with her sewing kit of bone needles and thread, her best bronze knife, dried meat, net for trapping birds, fire-making gear – flint, dried lichen and grass. He picked up a pad of sphagnum moss from the kit. ‘For treating cuts?’

‘Or wiping my backside.’

Scraps of fungus. ‘And these?’

‘From birch bark. For dressing wounds.’ She took the stuff from him, packed it into her belt and picked up her cloak.

‘You’ll rattle as you walk,’ he said.

‘Sooner that than go short,’ she snapped back. ‘Whereas you don’t need to carry anything but your sword, I suppose.’

‘That and my air of command.’ He laughed at his own joke, and pushed his way out into the light.

This was Raka’s big idea for the spring, that as many of the senior folk as possible from Etxelur should go see for themselves what was becoming of the country, in what the priests were already calling ‘the year betrayed by summer’. The sight of the Annids might reassure people, and would help inform the decision-making that had to follow. So, in this party, as well as other Annids there were senior members of most of the great Houses of Northland, the priests, the builders, the water workers. Many of the senior folk looked unhappy to be up and out on such a morning. It was near the equinox, but the sky was like a murky bowl, and there had been a sharp frost. Indeed, winter snow still lingered at the foot of the Wall, mounds of it hard as rock and covered with grime. Spring, but it felt like winter. Still, here they were, and even the highest of the high in Northland liked to keep her family close, and so the core of senior folk was surrounded by a gaggle of children, bundled up in their furs, who ran and played and chased yapping dogs, excited by the prospect of the walk ahead. Their noise lightened the mood.

Kilushepa was here, standing with the party around Raka. The regime of walks and other exercises she had undergone since the end of her pregnancy seemed to have done her good; she would always be tall, thin as a willow sapling, but she looked strong, determined. As Milaqa approached with Qirum, Trojan princeling and Hatti queen exchanged glances. Qirum and Kilushepa had barely spoken since that cold day with Milaqa on the Wall, they were evidently not lovers at present, but they remained bound by common interests.

Voro was here too. He was gaining seniority among the Jackdaws now that Bren was gone. But he wouldn’t meet Milaqa’s eye. Ever since Bren’s part in Kuma’s death had been revealed Voro had seemed consumed by guilt, even though it had not been him who had drawn the bow, even though he had nothing to do with Bren’s scheming. Milaqa treated this with contempt. Frosty relationships everywhere, she thought, on a frosty day.

A priest sounded a bronze trumpet.

Raka herself strode out along the track, and the rest followed, the seniors of the Houses murmuring gravely to each other, then a looser gang of family members, children and dogs. Their first destination would be a village by a marsh called the Houses of the Pine Martens.

In the lingering wintry weather, the world was struggling to come alive. There had been no swallows yet, and over the grasslands the male lapwings were still swooping and diving, desperately seeking the attention of mates. When the track cut through a patch of dense oak woodland Milaqa spotted the mouths of badger setts, littered with fresh spoil, as the animals cleaned out their underground homes and brought in fresh bedding in readiness for this year’s cubs. And in the lee of a fallen trunk a carpet of bluebells was growing, glowing with a strange underwater light. Milaqa was entranced. She had no idea how the flowers had managed to blossom in the sunless cold.

Teel came to walk beside her. ‘Quite a turn-out. All the great Houses represented.’

‘Including us Crows,’ she murmured.

He smiled. ‘Don’t try to fly out of the nest just yet, fledgling. It’s a big day for Raka. This expedition was her idea. She’s growing into the role. In the end the big loser of all Bren’s manipulations was Bren himself. Banished to Kirike’s Land . . . How he would long to be here!’

Growing into the role
. Milaqa looked over at the new Annid of Annids. Bren’s niece seemed very young, only a few years older than Milaqa herself. After the outrage about Bren, nobody had seemed to know quite what to do about Raka, his protégé. While the Annids dithered Raka had quietly started getting on with the job. And today, here were all the senior folk of Etxelur following Raka’s lead. Milaqa felt oddly jealous. She seemed to be surrounded by people of her age doing far better in their chosen roles than she was – Raka, Voro, Riban – even Hadhe, she’d heard it said, was being groomed for a role as an Annid. Suppose she had been dropped into such a position. Would she have been able to handle it as well as Raka? Or would she have cracked on her first day, and gone running to a Scambles tavern?

The track emerged from the forest. Now they were approaching the marsh where the folk of the Pine Martens’ Houses made their living. The oak and ash gave way to more water-tolerant trees like alders and willows, all bare in the grey sunless light, before they came to the grey gleam of open water.

Milaqa stopped at the water’s edge. At this time of year the new growths of rushes, herbs and sedge should be showing, and in the deeper water white water lilies and bulrushes, all emerging to greet the coming summer. But today there was only detritus on the water, the litter of last year’s life. Some of the children came to the edge of the water, searching fruitlessly for frog spawn or even tadpoles. Milaqa did see the round face and brown back of a water vole, peering from a clump of reeds. She thought it looked ragged, hungry.

She heard a grim muttering, and turned to see. The Annids and the other seniors were heading across the marsh along a raised walkway, to the scrap of higher land where the village itself stood. Milaqa hurried to follow.

And, from the causeway, she saw that the community’s houses had been burned and smashed to the ground. Even the drying racks for fish and eel lay broken. There was nobody in sight.

The Northlanders stood on the edge of the hearthspace, shocked. But Qirum strode boldly forward. He used the tip of his sword to lift fallen thatch, splintered timbers. He exposed a small storage chamber dug into the floor of one house; even that had been broken open, the shellfish and snails stolen.

And he found a severed human head, a child’s, apparently staring up at the sky, the skin of the face burned and blackened and shrunken.

During what remained of the day, Raka showed quick and decisive leadership. She organised the men to construct lean-tos from the debris. The women and older children were set to gathering food from the marshland and the forest. The younger children were distracted by play.

Meanwhile the Annids and priests poked around the charred ruins of the settlement. The priests carefully gathered what human remains they could find; back at the Wall, they would be interred with the bones of their ancestors. Kilushepa and Qirum walked together, inspecting the grisly remains, talking quietly now in their own tongue, their enmity forgotten in the face of a worse disaster. Milaqa worked with the men, throwing herself into the heavy work, until she was hot and coated with ash. Confronted by such horror, she felt ashamed of her own earlier self-obsession.

The women returned with eel and shellfish. A fire was quickly built, and stones laid over it to heat; the gutted eel and shelled oysters would be fried on the hot rocks. In the lean-tos, some of the younger children were already being laid down for sleep.

While the meal was being prepared, and as the day’s light began to fade, Raka gathered her advisers around her. They sat in a circle by the warmth of the fire and pulled their cloaks around them, like lumps of rock in the firelight. Milaqa sat near Kilushepa and Qirum so she could translate for them. After months in Northland the queen was deigning to learn a few words of her hosts’ and prospective allies’ language, but her grasp was weak.

Raka said now, ‘We will speak low enough that the children are not alarmed.’ There was a rumble of agreement. ‘I wanted us to come into the country to see for ourselves how the long winter is affecting our people. I did not expect so stark a lesson as this. These people were robbed for their food – as simple as that. Evidently the disaster was so complete there was nobody left to bring the news to the Wall.’