Still eating, they walked to the mound’s south-facing crest. The great grassed ridges of the Mothers’ Door swept around this central mound, their surfaces carefully restored, and water glimmered in the channels between the ridges, shadowed by the afternoon sun. Further out Northland itself stretched away, a blanket of land and water overlaid by misty air, with the smoke of early fires rising from the green domes of houses. The world hummed with the sounds of springtime, even from this elevated remove, the buzzing of bees, the singing of birds, the laughter of children.
Riban, staring down into the shadowed trench below, stopped chewing and pointed. ‘Look down there.’
A party of men walked the track around one of the Door’s circular channels, looking around curiously, at the earthworks, up at the Wall. One man seemed to be staring straight up at Milaqa. She thought she saw the dull glow of bronze: armour or weapons.
‘Greeks,’ Riban said simply.
‘What Greeks?’ Milaqa asked. ‘There are lots of kinds of Greeks, with different tongues. I’ve met some of them.’
‘The Mycenaeans are the toughest, but they are just the strongest dogs of a squabbling pack.’
Teel said, ‘Maybe you haven’t heard. Mycenae has collapsed. The oldest and grandest of those warrior-kingdoms — gone, like a bad dream.’
‘Hmm,’ Riban said. ‘Well, they’re all hungry dogs, in this time of drought and famine on the Continent.’
Milaqa looked at Riban, interested. She’d grown up alongside him, another of her gang of distant cousins. A couple of years older than her, he’d always seemed curious about everything, and obsessed by gossip and intrigue; even as a boy he would hang around with priests or Annids rather than play. ‘You’re going to make a funny sort of priest, Riban. You’re much too interested in this world rather than any other. And the way you flashed those teeth of yours at the girl to get her tray off her-’
‘Well, there are lots of rooms in our holy House,’ Riban said easily. ‘One sect studies the teachings of Jurgi, who is supposed to have been priest at the time of Ana — or possibly he was her father, her lover or her son; the legends vary. He said you find the gods through other people, rather than in smoke-filled dreamers’ huts. That’s the side of the work I’m interested in.’
‘But you’re still to be a genuine priest?’
He grinned. ‘Oh, yes. I had to let them pull out my teeth to get this far.’
Teel said now, ‘You’re right to speak of hungry dogs. That’s why this particular convocation is so important. We’ve always had trouble with the farmers. The problem is there are so many of them, in their dense little communities, all the way across the Continent. We’ve found ways to keep them at bay. They’ve always needed the tin we mine in Albia, for their bronze. And as they’ve grown hungry with the famine we’ve started to buy them off with potatoes and maize, or their products. We encourage the farmers in Albia and Gaira to grow this stuff, and then sell it on to the empires further east. Yes, it’s hypocritical — we turn one lot of farmers against another — but it works. But now, as the famine in the east worsens, this delicate web of trade and intrigue and manipulation is coming under pressure again. There are strong disagreements about how best to deal with all this. Between the Houses, and I dare say within them. Bren believes we should take a much more aggressive stance towards the farmers — make closely binding deals with them.’
Milaqa was shocked. ‘My mother would never have agreed to that.’
But Teel just looked at her. You should listen. Think. Make connections…
What connections? Well, her mother was no longer here. Was the opposition she would have raised to Bren’s schemes the reason why she was not here? And now here was Bren forcing his own candidate on the Annids. Webs of suspicion formed in her mind. She plucked at Teel’s sleeve and drew him away from Riban, who strolled off with his plate of treats. She whispered, ‘ Was it Bren? ’
‘Hush.’
‘No, listen — that Jackdaw, Bren. It all fits. As a trader he had access to the Hatti and their special iron. If he wanted to push through this treaty with the Hatti he had a motive to remove my mother, to force this convocation — to create a gap to have his own niece installed as Annid of Annids. He killed my mother-’
‘Or some puppet did, more like,’ Teel murmured sadly. ‘I’ve come to suspect this myself as the convocation has unfolded, and Bren has made his intentions clear. I wanted you to work it out for yourself. It’s why I’ve been trying to get you to pay attention to the discussions, child! But it’s one thing to suspect, another thing to prove it.
‘I’ll tell you what we do know. That Bren’s certainly got his iron from the Hatti, for only they make the stuff strong enough for it to be used in weaponry — and some of them have long wanted a closer relationship with us, so maybe they have some hand in this. Milaqa, listen to me. There’s a party of senior Hatti traders and diplomats, coming from the east for the Giving. Isn’t Voro supposed to be going with the party to meet them?’
‘So what?’
‘You must go with that party of Jackdaws. Meet the Hatti. We talked about that before. You must follow the thread. Voro is your way to do that.’
‘They won’t say anything in front of me.’
‘You can translate. Offer your services. Interpreters are invisible; they’ll speak as if you aren’t there, you’ll be surprised. Look — this is your chance.’
It made sense. Yet she hesitated, as she had since her mother’s interment, to become entangled in her uncle’s webs of deceit and intrigue.
The sun was dipping, the mist thickening over the great damp quilt of Northland. On the mound behind them a din of raucous laughter rose up as the assembled leaders of Northland started on the evening’s mead.
16
The Trojan party, travelling ever deeper into the great country of Gaira, followed the valley until the river dissolved into its feeder tributaries. Then they climbed a long rise and emerged from the forest, to find themselves on an island of higher ground in a landscape coated by thick oak woodland. They had come several days’ walk from the beach where they had landed. Smoke rose here and there, but otherwise there was no sign of people.
Praxo approached Qirum and Kilushepa. ‘Vertix says we’re near the watershed. There’s a community of farmers a bit further on. We can trade for food and shelter. They know folk who will guide us to the big river that will lead us north and west to the land of the Bardi. And then — well, then we can start looking for a sea-going ship.’
Qirum nodded. He would not meet Praxo’s eyes. He had found it impossible to speak to the man since his conversation with Kilushepa some days earlier.
Praxo waited for a response. When none came, he just laughed and walked away.
Vertix led them down to lower land and back into dense forest, where they followed a track so narrow and winding it might have been made by deer. The men pushed along, grumbling.
As the day approached its end, at last they broke through into a clearing. Perhaps a hundred paces across, it was walled off by tall oaks with knots of hazel at their feet, and the open ground was studded by saplings. A handful of houses sat here, Qirum counted four, five, six, with frames of oak trunks covered by a thatch of leaves and reeds. Half the clearing seemed to be given over to a crop, wheat growing sparsely. In a pen of woven wicker a few scrawny sheep grazed apathetically. The rest of the clearing looked to Qirum like a hunters’ camp, with joints of a recently killed deer hanging dripping from a frame, a skin stretched out to dry, and heaps of spears, arrows, bows, amid the usual middens. A big open-air hearth crackled, smoke rising, with a huge pot suspended over it on a trestle. In one doorway a woman sat with her child on her lap, watching, uninterested.