Bronze Summer (40 page)

Qirum made straight for Noli and bowed deeply. ‘Annid! I was happy when the runner brought news of your coming. You honour me by accepting my invitation.’ He spoke in the Etxelur tongue, better than he had been able to manage last time Milaqa had seen him, though it was still heavily accented. He moved among the group. He nodded to Teel and Deri, stiffly. Deri just glared back. The Trojan clapped Erishum on the shoulder, a gesture of easy friendship.

Then he stood before Milaqa. ‘We meet again,’ he said in his own tongue.

‘The mothers draw us together.’

‘Who? Oh, those goddesses of yours? I think they have very little to do with any of
this
.’ He indicated the wide farmland. ‘You grow more beautiful.’

‘Liar.’

He laughed out loud. ‘You speak this way to a king? Well. You are evidently still a truth-teller, Milaqa. I remember that about you above all – that and the fact that you once saved my life. And what of me – am I unchanged?’

She considered him. He was dressed simply, at first glance, in a tunic and kilt of some white, woven cloth. His head was bare and he was clean-shaven, but his hair was worn longer than she remembered, and it was plaited, a little like a Hatti queue. But that tunic cloth looked very fine quality, with gold thread sewn into the hem. Over the tunic he wore a single piece of armour, his familiar chestplate of shining bronze, and in the hilt of the sword in its scabbard she saw a jewel gleam. She could smell the oils on his hair and skin.

‘Why,’ she said, ‘I think you’re wearing kohl around your eyes.’

He laughed again. ‘You have to put on a show. But it makes me value those who knew me before, Milaqa – like you. For who else would have the courage to tell me the truth? And I need that, you know. I always will. Come.’ He took her arm, and led her and the rest of the party back to the horses and the chariot. The chariot was a big machine with six-spoked wheels, a Hatti design. ‘Speak for me, Milaqa. Annid Noli, please ride with me. I will drive the chariot myself.’

‘Tell him I prefer to walk on the honest earth.’

Teel stepped up to Noli urgently. ‘He does you a great honour, to come out to meet you like this. Remember, in his eyes, he is a king. We are here to negotiate – to blend our spirits with his. We must respect his gesture. I urge you, Annid . . .’

As Noli hesitated, Milaqa said in the Trojan tongue, ‘The Annid is honoured and is delighted to accept.’

Qirum held out his hand to Noli, and the Annid had no choice. She stepped forward stiffly, and let Qirum help her up onto the platform of the chariot. Qirum winked broadly at Milaqa. Deri and Teel, looking even more uncomfortable, were loaded onto horses behind their Trojan riders’ backs.

The little party rattled off to the south, following a rutted track.

‘Look around.’ Qirum waved at the fields, the crops that grew around abandoned Northlander flood mounds. ‘Only months since we first set foot here. Already this empty, barren land is bearing fruit.’

‘Stop being so provocative,’ said Milaqa. ‘The land was neither empty nor barren before you came. And slow down. I think the Annid might throw up.’

Qirum laughed. But he dragged at the stallions’ harness until the chariot slowed a little. ‘But still, see how much we’ve done. We have brought wheat and barley, as well as sheep and goats and cattle. The crops are not native to this land, and the colder air, the heavier soils, inhibit their growth. But we have been joined by others from the Continent, from Gaira and beyond, who have brought the crops they grow there. Lentils. Peas. Beans. Flax. Poppies. Even the poorer soils can be made to bear a crop, millet or rye if you handle them right . . .’

‘Farmers from Gaira, here?’

‘Most of those you will see are booty people, brought over after we landed. I don’t know where half of them came from originally. Probably they don’t either by now! But as news of my new kingdom has spread through the Continent, people have flocked here of their own accord – strong, ambitious people eager to carve their names in the blank face of this empty country. You should thank me. These nestspills from the sunless summers might have come here anyway. At least by coming to me they have a choice other than raiding.

‘
And there are Northlanders here
, Milaqa. Your own people, able to see at last what madness it is to live the way you do. Look around; you will probably recognise some of our old drinking partners from those long nights in the Scambles taverns!’

For all his boasting, it did not take long before they approached the centre of his new realm. Another, stouter wall surrounded tightly packed fields, and a mound rose up over the flat horizon, an old flood mound now crested by a ring of stone wall. Milaqa recognised the plan of the place. The mound was now Qirum’s citadel, the heart of his new walled town, like the Pergamos at the heart of long-ruined Troy, like the citadel of the Hatti kings at Hattusa.

In the centre of Northland, this was a city. This was New Troy.

51

The outer wall was earth topped with heaped stones, fronted by a ditch with sharpened stakes stuck in the ground. The only crossings were wooden bridges over the ditch, leading to gates manned by more soldiers.

Once they were within the wall they passed people working the fields, while others looked on from houses, some substantial with turf walls and thatch roofs, others just lean-tos. They all looked exhausted. And all stepped aside when the King passed.

Qirum, evidently proud of his city, boasted of its features. ‘Now we are on my own estate. You see, within the ring of this outer wall, I am creating factories to make weapons to fight war, and precious goods to buy peace. The other estates are mostly given over to farming. Each of my
basileis
, my senior generals, Protis and the Spider, has been granted extensive estates, as have some of the senior men under them. I have borrowed many ideas from Protis, who is from Sparta. All the powerful Spartans own land, you know, and the people who work on it. But in return all male Spartans are expected to serve in the army. They have assemblies where the citizen-warriors can make their views known to the King. And the King organises the education of the boys centrally, so they are all raised as warriors, as citizens. It is a healthy and productive system.’

Milaqa said, ‘So you are surrounding yourself with other powerful men, many of whom are no doubt every bit as ambitious and energetic as you. Isn’t that dangerous?’

He winked at her again. ‘I make sure to keep a healthy rivalry bubbling. Let them simmer with resentment. Let them fight each other! That way no one of them can gather the strength to challenge me.’

They came to the inner stone wall around the citadel, where they clambered down from the chariot and the horses. More guards, heavily armoured and wearing plumed boar-tusk helmets, came out to meet Qirum.

Noli stepped up to the wall itself and stroked its surface. It was two or three times her height, and roughly finished. ‘This is facing stone from the Wall,’ she said. ‘
Our
Wall. There have been raids – I never understood why they needed such stone. Now I know. And for this folly they risk compromising the integrity of the Wall itself, which keeps the sea from overwhelming us all.’ She turned to Teel. ‘Are we among the mad, Annid?’

‘Have patience,’ Teel counselled.

The soldiers opened a tall wooden gate, and Qirum led the party into the citadel. Paved steps cut into the mound led up to the ornate door of the King’s house. This was a square construction with a flat roof, of the kind Milaqa recognised from her travels in the east, but it was much cruder than those ancient palaces, a wooden frame clad with stone, and roofed over by long timbers and a thatch of river reeds. Servants or slaves, many of them women younger than Milaqa, mostly barefoot, came running out. Bearing towels, jugs of hot water, trays of fruit, they fawned around Qirum and his guests. None of the servants would look Milaqa in the eye. She wondered how many of them were Northlanders.

Qirum led them into the single large room that dominated the house. There were rugs and mats thrown over the floor, and a clutter of couches, cushions and low tables. Guards stood in the corners with hands on scabbarded swords, watching the newcomers. Cut into one wall was a kind of shrine, shelves with little statuettes of gods; priests intoned steadily, their backs to the visitors. Qirum crossed the room to speak to the priests.

The Northlanders stood together in the middle of the room, uncertain, ill at ease.

Milaqa wandered over to the single south-facing window that looked out over the rest of the citadel. Standing by the window, breathing air laden with smoke and the stink of cattle dung, she saw this place through the eyes of Qirum, saw it as it might become. This prospect would one day look out on a palace complex of workshops, kitchens and granaries, and beyond a crowded city bustling with people. But for now the new fields and farms were no more than a scratch on the ancient ground of Northland, and in the undeveloped lands beyond she saw water spreading from clogged weirs, a field flooded by a collapsed dyke.

Qirum returned to the Northlanders. ‘I apologise for keeping you. I have always believed in keeping the gods happy first and foremost.’

Noli asked, ‘To whom do your priests pray?’

‘To the Storm God who sends us to war – he is represented by the bull. And to the god we Trojans know as Iyarri, and the Greeks call Apollo. In one of his aspects, Smintheus, he is the god of plagues, and of mice.’

‘You pray to be saved from plagues?’

‘We have had a number of problems during our first summer in this country. A number of deaths. But thankfully now—’

‘I can see why.’ Noli pointed grandly out of the window. ‘You let the weirs clog, the dykes crumble. Because of your brutish ignorance the land is returning to the marsh from which my ancestors saved it, and from such marshes rise the diseases that deservedly afflict you. You can tell that traitor Bren, if he is in this pile somewhere, that I hope the plagues carry him off too, if they haven’t already.’

‘I will take your views into consideration,’ he said with dry humour. ‘In the meantime you are my guests—’

‘I intend to spend as little time here as I can, Trojan,’ Noli snapped. ‘Here I am, here we are, as you requested. Let us hear whatever it is you have to say.’

Milaqa saw anger behind Qirum’s facade of good humour. Milaqa suspected he wanted to lavish hospitality on them, to put on a show – to demonstrate he was a king. Noli wasn’t playing the game. Qirum said carefully, ‘Despite your curtness, madam, I guarantee your safety here. And I promise you safe passage back to Etxelur, bearing news of this meeting. I hope you appreciate that much.’

‘We do,’ Deri said gruffly.

‘Then let’s get on, if you’re in such a rush.’ He turned to Erishum. ‘Bring the tablets.’

The man left the room, and in a moment returned with two clay tablets, each small enough to hold in the hand. Erishum handed them to Noli, who glanced over them and passed them in turn to Milaqa. ‘Can you read these?’

The tablets were marked with the angular writing used by the Hatti and their allies and satellites. ‘With time—’

‘Let me save you the effort, Milaqa,’ Qirum said evenly. ‘This is our custom. In times gone by a war could be settled by sending out a single champion from one side to challenge a man from the other. You would try to resolve it that way, you see, before committing men in their hundreds to die. Well – perhaps it will still come to that. But in these more civilised times we go one step further, and first send out words to be our champions.’

The talk of war chilled the room. But Noli kept her composure. ‘Words? These little blocks of clay?’

‘The block in your left hand, Milaqa, is a tablet of peace. The one in your right, a tablet of war.’

‘Peace? On what terms?’

‘There will be no more Northland,’ Qirum said simply. ‘Well, this is already true. All of Northland is now the Kingdom of New Troy – my kingdom. Mine to use as I please. In fact I have already parcelled up much of it; I will show you the maps, if you like. All that remains is to mark the boundaries. But you of Etxelur can live in peace. Your Annid of Annids will serve as one of my
basileis
if she likes, but I, and my heirs, will remain the overking. You can even keep your Wall; you can live as you like, in the strip of land bordering it. After all there are few enough of you. The tribute I will exact will be modest. Food, wealth, a levy of soldiers—’

‘A tribute that will pay for what, exactly?’

‘For protection,’ he said smoothly.

Noli smiled thinly. ‘Let me be clear. Perhaps you should translate for me, Milaqa, to be sure he understands. This is what you call a settlement. This is our reward for
peace
.’

‘It is.’

‘And you see it as just? Very well. And the terms of your tablet of war—’

‘When your resistance is crushed, you, your children, and your grandchildren unto eternity, will work on the farms of my estate. The Spartans have this system. They call the owned ones helots.’ He said this as if imparting an interesting fact, rather than making brutal threats. Not for the first time Milaqa wondered how much she really understood this man.

Noli was expressionless. ‘And what of the canals, the dykes – what of the Wall? What will become of the works of Northland?’