‘What do you mean?’
‘Watch and learn, young Crow. Do you have the arrowhead?’
She slipped the thong over her head and handed the piece to him. ‘What do you want with it this time?’
‘To change the world. Translate for Kilushepa.’ He stood easily, and spoke over the gathering conversations. ‘Annid of Annids — forgive me. I have another concern to raise.’ He held up the arrowhead, dangling from its thong. Everybody present knew its significance. ‘ This killed Kuma. Even though she was wearing this.’ Again he bent and rapped his knuckles on Qirum’s breastplate. This time the Trojan laughed out loud. Teel turned to Kilushepa. ‘And the only place in the world where such iron is made, madam, iron hard enough to use as a decent weapon, is Hattusa.’
Kilushepa smiled.
Teel said, ‘Iron ore can be found anywhere. It’s not like the copper or tin you need to find for bronze. We could arm ourselves quickly, with weapons that could fend off any warrior armed with bronze — if we could only make the iron to the right standard.
‘I’m no Jackdaw but I think the terms of the bargaining are obvious. Tawananna, we have a secret you want — potatoes and maize. With that you could feed your people. You have a secret we need — your hardened iron. With that we could defend ourselves, even against hordes of farmer-warriors. Annids, Tawananna, I think you have some negotiating to do.’
There were murmurs of surprise, shock, anticipation. Kilushepa stayed silent, apparently considering.
Qirum bent over and whispered to Milaqa in his own tongue, ‘Your man Teel — what a deal-maker. I’m a good one too, so I know. Trading potatoes for iron! Just as in his youth he traded his balls for power. I wonder what history will make of this! But of course, if you want Hatti iron you’re going to have to travel to Anatolia to get it. And I do mean you, Milaqa, you with your gift of tongues.’
29
The First Year After the Fire Mountain: Midsummer
‘We think Caxa has run off to hide in the First Mother’s Ribs,’ Vala said to Voro.
Xivu, the Jaguar man, sat glaring at Voro from the shadows of Vala’s house. ‘Which, as I understand it, is your own strange name for the range of hills to the south of here.’ His Etxelur-speak was uncertain, his tone dismissive. He had a warm blanket thrown over his shoulders as he sat close to the fire on this cold summer’s day. With his very un-Northland dark eyes and strong nose and deep black hair, he looked out of place, Vala thought, sitting here in this wooden house loaned to her and her family of nestspills by a cousin, surrounded by cooking pots, racks of fish and scraps of meat, heaps of clothes for mending, and the children, Mi and Puli playing a complicated game of counters on a wooden board, while little Liff sat on Mi’s lap, half asleep. Out of place and profoundly unhappy. And he looked on Voro with unconcealed contempt.
But Xivu was here because he needed Vala and Voro’s help. Caxa was lost, Xivu’s sculptor, his treasure. When he had begged the Annid of Annids for help, Raka had sent him to Vala to sort it out. In this sunless summer Raka had a lot more important issues to handle than the fate of a girl sculptor from across the ocean. After all, if Kuma’s monumental image was not set on the Wall this year, it would be done next year, or the next, when they all had more time and energy; Raka was sure the little mothers would forgive them for the delay.
And Vala in turn had called in Voro.
‘Why me?’ Voro had asked. ‘I’m a Jackdaw. A trader. Maybe you should send a priest.’
‘The priests are too busy trying to persuade the little mothers to warm us all up. And besides — you’re not doing much trading, are you?’
He looked away.
It was true. Everybody knew why. Voro was still being eaten up inside by a corrosive guilt from his association with the death of Milaqa’s mother Kuma. Vala had said, ‘You must put aside this shame.’
‘Must I? How? It’s like the clouds in the sky that won’t go away.’
Vala touched his hand. ‘Forget about Milaqa for now. Think about Caxa.’ This was her bright idea, to solve two problems at once. ‘Maybe you can help her. You’re young, and so is she. You’ve both been through trials. You’ve got a lot in common.’
‘Even though we were born an ocean apart.’
‘Even so, yes. Go and find her. And if you do, maybe it will help you too. People will see you in a different light. You’ll break up that cloud over you once and for all — even though, Voro, it looks a lot blacker to you than to the rest of us.’
He had agreed, and he had gone looking for Caxa, but he had returned — without her.
So here they all were. And Vala, sitting by the hearth, grinding herbs with mortar and pestle, was not impressed by Xivu’s arrogance.
‘Of course,’ Xivu said now, ‘this isn’t the first time the sculptor has been endangered among you people. She nearly got broiled alive on Kirike’s Land.’
‘I know,’ snapped Vala. ‘I was there, remember?’
Voro studied Xivu. ‘Why don’t you go after her yourself?’
Vala laughed. ‘Oh, she runs away from him. He’s the main reason she’s run off, I reckon.’
‘Enough,’ Xivu snapped. ‘I told your Annid that this is not the way to handle the problem. In my country we would send a squad of soldiers to flush her out of the hills, like a hunted bird.’
‘But this is not your country,’ Vala said sternly.
‘No, it isn’t. This is Northland. Where this boy was manipulated into complicity in murder. Now you manipulate his guilt to make him do this task for you. And he will manipulate Caxa to bring her home. It is just as you build your country. You dig a ditch here, a dam there, manipulate a great river to run this way instead of that. We would cut through it. We would build a city of stone and make the river serve us!’
Vala ignored him. ‘So, Voro, before you go out again, what would you like to eat?’
30
The First Year After the Fire Mountain: Late Summer
The long journey from Etxelur to Anatolia took all summer.
The party travelled the length of Northland, which was pretty much as far as Milaqa had ever journeyed before. Then they made an epic overland crossing south through Gaira, coming to the shore of the Middle Sea. And then they took to the sea, in Qirum’s boat that had been waiting for him for a year, and they travelled east, the length of this calm ocean. For Milaqa it was numbing, a journey without end, and Qirum’s bragging leadership had grown annoying; he of course had come this way before, as he constantly reminded the party. But in the end her mind opened up to the sheer scale and diversity of the world beyond Northland through which she travelled — and the effects of the long drought and of the fire mountain, which could be seen everywhere they stopped.
The last seagoing leg of the journey was to be a crossing from Greece to Troy. After this, Milaqa understood, they would travel by land eastward across Anatolia to Hattusa, capital of the Hatti empire — ‘if the empire still exists,’ Kilushepa said gloomily, ‘if Hattusa itself stands.’ And there Kilushepa would attempt the miracle of diplomacy and statecraft that would restore her to her throne.
But they had to get through Troy first.
Waiting for Qirum, the seven-strong party from Northland stood on a wooden jetty, their packs at their feet, wearing heavy tunics as protection against the unseasonal cold. The port was just another huddle of a dozen houses overlooking a small harbour, like so many on this Greek mainland, a place whose name Milaqa had forgotten as soon as she was told it, just another stopping point on this endless journey. There was some trade going on this cold morning, with seagoing ships and smaller coast-hoppers jostling for space in the harbour, and caravans forming up on land. Yet there was room for much more, Milaqa thought; you could see at a glance how trade had shrivelled with the long drought, and now this summerless year.