Bronze Summer (37 page)

‘Everything’s odd,’ she said to Teel.

‘Is it?’

‘This is always such a special day. I’ll swear I remember Givings when I was only four or three or two. And yet even today we are all preoccupied.’

‘I don’t think the Trojan will be taking a day off.’

‘Oh, do you have to be so morbid? He’s still in Gaira, according to the spies and the spotters on the south coast. And it’s midsummer! Can’t we forget about Qirum just for one day?’

He glanced at her. ‘Because, you think, even if he does come, it would never be today? But it might be on just such a day as this that Qirum
would
choose to move. Think about it. Every culture knows the solstice; every culture marks it in some way, just as we do. And Qirum has a coalition of warlords to pull together, from a dozen shattered nations. Today would be an easy rallying point in time, if he needed one . . . It’s my job, and yours, to think of the worst possibility, while others hope for the best. Or maybe it’s just my personality. But I agree. It does no good to frighten the children.’

They walked on past the families, like dark clouds crossing. Teel was grim, morbid, obsessive, all the cares of Northland weighing him down. But he was also the uncle who had played elaborate games with Milaqa on other Giving days, long ago. She slipped her hand into his.

The Water Council was already in session by the time Teel and Milaqa arrived. Despite its archaic title, the Council was a general-purpose quarterly convocation of Annids and other senior folk. The meeting was taking place in a dedicated chamber deep within the body of the Wall, lit by oil lamps. The Annids were sitting or standing in little groups, arguing and complaining, as servants hurried between them bearing trays of food and drink. The air was thick with greasy smoke and laden with heat, and Milaqa felt as if she was being buried alive. But the Annids never went short of their treats, she noted sourly, whatever the weather.

Riban came to meet them, bearing drinks: beer for Milaqa, clear water for Teel. After having travelled across the Continent with them the young priest knew their taste. He led them to a small group centred on Raka, the still-new Annid of Annids. She had got herself stuck in a raging argument with Noli, the stern old Annid who had so opposed her own original appointment.

‘We must deal with the Trojans, one way or another,’ Raka insisted. ‘As well as the other powers. It is pointless and distracting to pretend that the great tide of warriors which is likely to break over us is not real!’

Noli said, ‘But it is not a tide that faces us, not a mindless thing, a force driven by the will of the gods. Not a Great Sea. It is an army, a mob of humanity.
They need not be here
; there were other choices that could have been made.’

Teel put in, ‘You went to Hattusa, Annid.’

She turned on him. ‘Where I stood helpless as you made your deals. It is you and your kind, Teel, who have brought disaster down upon us in your endless game-playing.’

‘Not game-playing,’ Teel said sternly. ‘Politics.’ He used a Greek word:
politikos
.

‘Even the word for what you do is foreign to us!’ she snapped at him. ‘To manipulate farmer-kings, to play off one against another. And now you plan to head off one lot of cattle-folk by planting another lot in the heart of Northland. How can you be sure we can rely on these Hatti?’

‘I think we can trust Kilushepa,’ Teel said. ‘She has as much reason to deal with the Trojan as we have. More, perhaps. If anybody is to blame for creating the monster it is Kilushepa. Without her he would still be a petty bandit screwing teenage whores in the wreck of his home city. She never imagined, I think, that after she cast him down he would rise up as he has.’

‘But Kilushepa herself is not secure in Hattusa,’ Raka said anxiously.

‘As long as she lasts she will support us. After all, she has sent a close ally in Muwa to serve as the general of her force here.’

‘What “force”?’ Noli sneered. ‘A thousand men? The rumours are that the Trojan has many times that number. The farmers will always outnumber us.’

Teel would have spoken again, but Raka raised a hand to silence him. ‘We can come through this trial. We
will
come through it. And we will do it with the blessing of the little mothers, without losing the essence of what we are, of what our country is, even though we are so few compared to the farmers. This is what we must tell the people.’ She was deeply impressive, and her words stirred Milaqa’s heart.

But then a cry went up, echoing through the galleries of the Wall. ‘The beacons! They are lit! Oh, they are lit!’

And all across the tremendous plain of Northland, on earthen mounds raised ages ago against the threat of flood, the beacon fires burned, pinpoints of brilliance. Teel touched Milaqa’s arm and pointed. She turned to see the fires coming alight all along the Wall’s upper parapet too.

‘I hate to say it,’ Teel said. ‘I was right, wasn’t I? About Qirum, and the midsummer day.’

The beacons were a wave of prearranged signals that had washed across Northland all the way from its southern coast. Now that wave of light had broken against the Wall itself, bringing with it a simple message. The Trojan was coming.

47

Qirum’s fleet had hauled anchor before dawn.

As the long midsummer day wore on the ships pushed steadily west, tracking the shore of the great estuary the natives of this place called the Cut, following the southern coast of Northland. It was high tide, and the dark waters washed over stony beaches.

Qirum himself was at the steering oar at the stern of his own ship, a big bristling pentecoster that would have dwarfed his old eight-man scow. His Greek pilot had given it a name, the
Lion
, after the Greek custom. Erishum, Qirum’s trusted sergeant, stood at the prow, weapons to hand. This ship was the lead in a motley fleet of over a hundred vessels scattered across the swelling water, ships stolen from kings and pirates, some even rightfully purchased, many of them heroically sailed out of the strait and north along Gaira’s coast with the Western Ocean. Ships that bore an army, its warriors and followers and their horses, even chariots and siege engines packed into their hulls.

It was good to be back at sea. Qirum could hear men calling across the water, pilots passing bits of information, the crews mocking each other as fighting men always would. He could hear the horses too, their frightened whinnies carrying over the water. He relished the smell of pitch and resin, of the men’s wine and salted meat, even their earthy stink of piss and vomit, and above all the sharp salt scent of the air that lay over the ocean. Even to bring his army so far, to assemble such a fleet, was a huge achievement. And at this key moment, with the first landing on Northland soil imminent, it was Qirum’s ship that led, Qirum himself who guided it, he who would be the first to spring onto Northland soil, the first to fight, the first to kill.

But that landing had yet to be made, that moment of glory yet to come. For now Qirum and his force were still at the mercy of the sea. Huge oceanic waves forced their way into this great throat of an estuary, and the boat creaked as it rose and fell. The men, most of them warriors from the eastern countries, looked uneasy, queasy, and more than one had emptied his guts over the side. At least the wind was strong enough for them to use their sails, but it blew too hard, driving the ships too fast for the comfort of the pilots, and it brought a bite of cold too on this unseasonably chill midsummer day.

It was just as well, Qirum thought, that few of the men knew of the invisible traps that the Northlanders had planted all along the shore.

Now the traitor came back the length of the ship to speak to him. He had to step carefully past the twin ranks of rowers, twenty-five men in each, their gear stowed beneath their benches, their weapons to hand, their oars shipped. The man, arrogantly dressed in the Jackdaw-feather cloak of his ceremonial office in Northland society, himself looked unsteady; he was no sailor. But he smiled at the Trojan’s discomfort. ‘You’re doing well, Qirum. Just hold your course.’

Qirum snarled, ‘I don’t need pats on the head from the likes of you, Bren.’

‘Of course you don’t. But nevertheless—’ He glanced up at a sunless sky. ‘A midsummer day, a clear still morning. The weather is kind, believe it or not. You should see the storms that ram their way up this estuary in the winter.’

Qirum glanced to the shore to the north. It was a strand of empty shingle beach, with a blur of forest in the distance. To the south, nothing could be seen but water. This estuary was so wide that you could not see one bank from the other. ‘I see no walls. Where are the mighty Northland walls, as I saw in the north?’

‘There are some on the south coast, but nothing to match the structures in the north, like the great Wall that shelters Etxelur itself. Here the issue is the management of the great rivers, and the tidal washes, whose flow is diverted and channelled to keep them from tearing at the land. Look over there.’ He pointed to a section of coast that looked as if it had been undercut and slumped into the water. The exposed landscape, under a sward of green, was chalk, white as bone. ‘Without conscious management this very land would be cut away by the sea, as you see over there. You must understand that Northland is not just a question of walls. It is a system of water engineering that spans a whole country, a system designed and evolved to—’

‘So this precious land has been saved from the sea. I’ve heard all this before. To what end?’ He peered at the empty shoreline. ‘I see no people here.’

‘But there are signs of them. See the ruined boat?’ An oval shape on the strand. ‘And there is a fish rack, abandoned. And there, that black scar is an old hearth. They know you’re coming, Trojan. And they have laid their traps.’

Bren had revealed the Northlanders’ hidden defences to their enemy, underwater, concealed in the sand and shingle, and had no doubt already saved the fleet from disaster. The problem was Qirum could see none of it, and nor could his men. Qirum was a fighter by nature, not a thinker. He longed to be on those beaches, splashing through the last of the surf, wielding his sword against the foe – but there was no foe to be seen here, nothing but empty beaches, and air.

Best not to think about the enemy and his cunning. Best not to let his mind get addled by twisted words from manipulative scum like Bren. Best to think of his own strengths, and purposes. He was already thinking ahead, as a great king should. When he had built his kingdom in Northland, when the time came to strike at the Hatti and their lizard-queen in high Hattusa, it would be an overland expedition, by river valley and mountain pass, the like of which the world had never seen . . .

There was a cry of alarm, floating over the water. The crew craned to see, and Qirum turned, holding the steering oar steady. One of the ships, a big pentecoster laden with horses, had broken from the loose column and was driving for the shore, its sail flapping. Qirum bellowed for the pilot to right his course, but he was surely too far away to be heard.

Beside him, Bren plucked his sleeve. ‘That’s the
Gryphon
.’

‘I can see that.’

‘There’s no point shouting. The man hasn’t forgotten the course he’s supposed to keep. He’s lost control of the craft altogether. Look at him.’

And indeed, Qirum could see the pilot of the rogue ship hauling at his steering oar to no effect. As the ship listed horses bucked and neighed pitifully. The men scrambled to bring down their sail and tried to ship their oars, but their movements were an uncoordinated tangle in the heaving bilge and they got in each other’s way. Still, for a moment hope flickered in Qirum’s heart. The beach here was shallow, and Greek ships were designed to be driven far up the shore. If the
Gryphon
encountered no obstruction perhaps most of the crew could survive the landing – and the horses, which were more valuable than the men.

But long before the ship reached the shore something seemed to reach up out of the water, a blackened claw that pierced the hull and dragged at the vessel as it passed. The
Gryphon
tipped over onto its right-hand side, its mast dipping to the water almost elegantly. Men and horses tumbled into the water screaming, their oars and weapons and bales of clothing and food falling with them.

And then a swarm of arrows flew into the air from the shore, like bees. They seemed to come out of nowhere. They fell on the men and animals struggling in the water, and the screaming intensified. There were shouts of anger from the other ships. Shields were raised, and a few arrows were loosed in return, to fall uselessly in the water.

‘So there are defenders,’ Qirum snarled.

‘A tree stump,’ Bren murmured.

‘What?’

‘A tree stump. That’s all it was – all that was needed. Upended, stuck in the beach, the roots sharpened. Covered over by the sea at high tide, they knew we would have to come in on the high tide, and it would rip open the hull of any ship trying to land. Simple but effective. And then the defenders on the land just pick off any survivors. I told you it would be like this. All the way along the coast.’

Qirum snarled, ‘Except for the one weak point you will guide us to.’

‘Not far now.’ Bren smiled, utterly confident.