Bronze Summer (48 page)

‘Enough speeches, I think.’

The Spider nodded. ‘Then if you will permit me to be your champion—’

Qirum clapped him on the shoulder. ‘Let’s see if you can finish this before it’s started.’

The Spider strapped on his helmet and strode forward across the plain between the armies. He began to bellow insults, in his own tongue and the locals’. ‘Northlanders! Savages! Women, dogs, children all! Is there a man among you, just one man, who will face me and settle this?’

Seeing him advance, the men roared.

Hunda came out of the block of Hatti at the centre of the Northlander line and walked before the men, lifting his arms. ‘Answer them!’ he yelled in his own tongue. ‘Are you going to let them make all the noise today? Show them how Hatti can sing!’ And in the Etxelur tongue, ‘Show them how Northlanders can yell!’

Soon the whole line was roaring back at the Trojans, the Hatti and the Northlanders at the centre, and the more exotic blocks of warriors from Albia and Gaira to right and left, the dark wolfmen of the forest, the white-robed priest-warriors from their country of skies and open spaces and stone circles.

Milaqa ran at Hunda’s side, without armour or weapons, shouting translations of his Hatti words. Her voice could not match Hunda’s battle-trained bellow, but her thin voice got the message across. Deri would have preferred her to be far from this field, but he had no control over his niece. He could only pray that her own sense would see her survive the day.

‘He comes to issue a challenge,’ Muwa said to Deri, raising his voice over the din. His Northlander tongue was clear if heavily accented. ‘The Trojan. You understand that if we send out a champion to meet him, the issue may be resolved without further loss of blood, whoever lives, whoever dies, if honour is served on both sides.’

Deri grunted. He began to tighten up his armour, borrowed from the Hatti. ‘I have learned more of your bloodstained customs than I ever wanted to know.’

‘I will go, if you wish.’

‘Thank you, my friend. But Northland’s champion must be a Northlander. And as you said, I don’t even have to win.’ He spoke evenly, and yet he felt fear and a kind of deep regret in his heart. He was not by nature a warrior; he was a fisherman, forced into this role by circumstance. He glimpsed a scrap of blue in the sky above, a rare sight these days. Was this to be the day he died?

And then a roar went up from the Northland lines. Startled, Deri looked round. A single man was already walking out to meet the Trojan challenger. Armoured, bristling with weapons, it was Tibo.

Deri ran after him.

Muwa followed. He warned Deri, ‘If you drag him back you will make a fool of him, and of yourself. This is all about honour, remember.’

‘But I cannot let him die.’

They caught up with Tibo. He marched forward, his pace steady, unrelenting. He said, ‘Leave me alone, father. I have no intention of dying.’

‘It is not your place to do this.’

‘You speak of honour. I know that man.
That is the Spider
. Who has been more dishonoured by this man than me?’

Despite Muwa’s urging, Deri grabbed his son’s arm and forced him to stop. ‘Please. I’m begging you. In your mother’s memory – let me take your place.’

Tibo, his face hidden by bronze armour plates, would not look at his father, and would not speak further. All the efforts by Riban and others to calm Tibo had come to nothing, Deri saw, gone now there was a scent of vengeance. There was little left of the son he had raised in that twisted face, only the rage that had always threatened to consume him. And Deri, who had failed to protect his son from the death of his mother, or from the fire mountain, or from the brutalising at the hands of the Spider, could now not save him from himself.

He let him go. The boy continued his steady march towards the Spider, who waited for him, hands on hips.

Muwa touched Deri’s shoulder. ‘We can accompany him. We can carry his weapons—’

‘And carry his broken body back from the field.’

‘If necessary. But you must not fight for him.’

Deri nodded curtly.

They stood a dozen paces apart on a patch of unremarkable green sward, in a flat, featureless landscape. Yet the world pivoted on the two of them.

The Spider grinned. He pushed his helmet off his head, and dropped it. ‘No armour. Come on, boy, I remember you, I know you picked up some Hatti-speak in the camp.’

‘No armour,’ said Tibo thickly, and he began to work at his own straps.

Soon heaps of discarded armour plate lay at the feet of the two men.

Muwa and Deri stood back, some paces behind Tibo. ‘This might help the boy,’ Muwa murmured. ‘He may be quicker than the older man, more agile.’

‘Only the mothers can help him now.’

‘Now the weapon,’ the Spider said. He hefted sword and long spear, one in each hand. ‘What’s your choice, little boy? The sword? No, not for you—’

Tibo hurled himself forward, spear held aloft. The Spider easily sidestepped, nimble in tunic and boots, his legs bare, and he swept the shaft of his own spear so it caught Tibo’s legs, tripping him, and he went sprawling in the grass. The Spider pivoted and prepared to lunge, but Tibo rolled and was on his feet in a heartbeat.

The Spider could have struck again, perhaps even ended it. But he backed away, applauding ironically.

Muwa had hold of Deri’s arm. ‘You must
not
intervene.’

Deri raged, ‘You call that honourable? To goad the boy? If the red mist closes in his head—’

‘It is his fight. He must learn to master himself, and his own flaws.’

But Deri feared his son had little time left in which to learn anything.

The Spider walked before Tibo and made a lascivious curled-tongue gesture. ‘As I was saying. The spear’s the weapon for you. Look at my spear, boy, the shaft of ash, the bronze head. Lovely piece of work. I remember those nights in the camp. Your warm little arse. It was the long spear for you then, wasn’t it?’

Tibo charged again.

Again the Spider sidestepped easily. This time he swung the blade of his spear across the back of Tibo’s legs as he stumbled by, and the boy went down screaming, blood pouring from a wound on the back of his right calf, shockingly bright. He tried to get to his feet, but his injured leg gave under him and he went down again.

‘Hamstrung,’ Muwa murmured.

The Spider stood before Tibo, his arms spread wide. ‘Come then. Finish me. Finish me as you longed to, all those nights when you warmed my bed, and the beds of my men.’

At last Tibo made it to his feet, using his spear as a crutch. Even now, thought Deri, even now the boy might have had a chance if he only thought clearly, if he used the Spider’s arrogance against him, if he looked for a gap in the man’s sloppy defence. Or he could throw down his weapon and admit he was beaten – he would be dishonoured, maimed, but he would live.

None of this came to pass. Tibo raised his spear, steadied himself on his one good leg, and hurled himself forward. It was less a run than a controlled lunge.

The Spider knelt, jammed the butt of his spear into the soft ground before Tibo, held it firm. Tibo could not stop, could not turn aside. He fell onto the spearhead. The watching Trojans roared. As the metal cut through cloth and flesh, sliding deep into the stomach cavity just below the ribs, Tibo made a gurgling, choking sound. Blood and darker fluids poured down the shaft and over the Spider’s hands as he held the spear firm. Then he twisted the shaft, Deri heard a ripping sound, and Tibo gave an animal cry.

Deri would have gone forward, but Muwa grabbed him, arms around his torso. ‘You must not,’ he murmured. ‘You must not.’

The Spider cautiously let go of the spear. It remained jammed in the ground, and propped up Tibo’s body, precariously balanced. Still the boy lived; his arms moved, his fingers twitching. The Spider, soaked by Tibo’s blood, walked around the pinned boy, like an artist before his creation. ‘What fond memories this brings back.’ He ran his finger delicately down Tibo’s back. Then he pulled up Tibo’s tunic, and ripped down his loincloth, exposing his buttocks. Deri could see the boy had soiled himself. The Spider pulled his face elaborately. ‘Oh, how unfortunate. But still – once more, shall I give you something to remember me by as you sink into the underworld?’ And he lifted his tunic up.

Deri raged against Muwa’s strong grip. ‘You will get your chance,’ Muwa murmured. ‘Another place, another day, the man will die at your hands. But not here—’

An arrow slammed into the Spider’s back, knocking him to the ground. He lay still, dead immediately. There was an angry roar from the Trojans.

Deri looked back at the Northlander forces. Mi had come out of the lines. She screamed abuse, brandishing her bow. Others from her unit of archers came to drag her back. Another damaged child, Deri thought.

To gruff shouts of anger, outrage, dishonour, Trojans started to advance, all along the line, spontaneously, raggedly. Their sergeants had to follow the events; they ran forward, bellowing to the rest to follow and form up.

And Tibo slumped and fell at last, the spear twisting out of the ground.

‘So,’ Muwa said. ‘Dishonour on both sides, and we must fight after all. But at least we got rid of the Spider.’

Deri spat, ‘And that’s worth the life of my son, is it? My own life ends with him, whatever happens today. Come – help me with him. I won’t leave him here.’

They hurried forward to the body before the Trojan line reached it.

59

The commanders stalked before the Northlander lines. ‘Hold your places! Let them come at you! Let the archers do their work!’ The words were repeated by bellowing translators in the tongues of the Northlanders, Albians and Gairans, and in the several dialects spoken by the Hatti warriors.

Milaqa was at the rear of the lines now, in the ruins of an abandoned, oft-raided settlement, standing on an old flood mound with Raka, Kilushepa and other leaders. From here they got a clear view of the field, of the units of the Northlanders and their allies, of the scuffed little arena in the middle of the field from which Deri and Muwa hurried back with the body of Tibo – and of the Trojan horde closing like an approaching storm.

It was happening, she realised. The battle that had been anticipated all summer, if not since the Midsummer Invasion last year. It was here, it was now. But the scale of the armies drawn up on the plain below the Wall, the thousands of men and their glittering weapons, the rigid discipline of their phalanx blocks, the sheer determination to kill they represented – nothing had prepared her for the reality of it. And already blood had been spilled, her own cousin’s.

But battle had yet to be joined. In this still, oddly luminous moment, Milaqa looked around, at Kilushepa surrounded by a handful of Hatti soldiers, the Tawananna sleek and determined in a grand, colourful, highly visible robe that swept to the ground. Raka, Noli and the other Annids also wore their robes of office, their faces pinched after the hunger of the blockaded summer. There was Teel, her uncle, standing in his owl cloak with the others, all his manipulations and stratagems now ending in this day of blood and bronze and iron. And the soldiers, yelling, waving their weapons, holding the line as the Trojans advanced, their commanders whipping up their lust for the fight. There were a few Hatti veterans among them, and foreign units from Gaira and Albia, but most were Northlanders, from across the Wall and the lowland, here to defend their homeland from the greatest threat it had faced since it had been saved from the sea itself.

But, Milaqa thought, looking across the battlefield, they must be outnumbered two to one by Qirum’s forces. Only their wits and their courage would enable them to see out the day.

The Trojans passed some predetermined mark, and the Northlanders’ planned response began. First, to shouted commands, the Northlander archers raised their bows and began their lethal work. Soon the single arrow fired by Mi with such devastating consequences was followed by a hundred others, a thousand, a flock that seemed to blacken the sky as they rose. The slingers too hurled their lumps of sandstone. As the volleys fell Milaqa heard distant cries, and gaps appeared briefly in the lines of the advancing Trojans. Yet the fall of arrows was not even. This was a stratagem of Kilushepa’s; she had suggested targeting the Trojans on Qirum’s left flank but sparing the Greeks at the centre, in the hope of causing rifts among the allies.

The advance was not stopped. Those who survived just stepped over the fallen, although Milaqa saw little knots of squabbling men form over the dead, like carrion birds, fighting for armour and weapons.

And now Milaqa saw arrows arcing up from the Trojan lines in a response. In half a dozen languages, there were cries of ‘Shields, shields!’ The men before her in their blocks and rows raised their shields, overlapping them with a clatter of wood on wood, and the Hatti troopers standing with Kilushepa on the exposed mound raised their own shields to make a kind of shell to protect their queen and the Annids. The first arrows fell, most clattering into leather shields, or falling away harmlessly, but some found a way through to soft flesh, and men fell screaming, some only paces from Milaqa, blood splashing bright. Yet still the lines held.