She would not pull back from the beach until all her arrows were gone.
49
The Second Year After the Fire Mountain: Autumn
After the landing that became known as Midsummer Invasion, Qirum quickly broke through the crust of defences on the south coast. Hopes that the invaders would be hampered by the marshy country and the relative scarcity of food stores proved unfounded; scouts and nestspills fleeing his advance reported that he marched north with shocking speed. The Trojan knew Northland, and was well prepared.
And soon Qirum was building what was rumoured to be a city in the very heart of Northland: ‘New Troy’, only days to the south of the Wall itself.
All this came in the course of another difficult summer without sunlight, another summer of hard scavenging on land and sea — a summer soon terminated by early frosts. The Trojan was feared by all, understood by nobody. Many believed he was the embodiment of the little mothers’ abandonment of the world. Nobody but a few hotheads wanted to fight him.
Then Qirum offered to talk.
The emissary from New Troy was a tough-looking Hatti soldier called Erishum. In a smoky chamber deep within the Wall, he and his two companions addressed the Annids in their conclave. Milaqa was summoned to attend, with Deri and Teel.
Milaqa thought the three men from New Troy looked utterly out of place here. Fully armoured, bristling with weapons, heavily muscled, they were like lions among young deer. Yet Raka faced the men bravely, though she was dwarfed by them, and spoke well and clearly.
Teel murmured, ‘An embassy from a king! The newest king in the whole world, I imagine.’
Deri was disgusted. ‘Just another brute from a pack of brutes — but a tough one.’
‘Yet he appears to have come here offering peace between us.’
‘Peace, brother! There can no more be peace between us and the cattle-folk than between fire and water.’
‘But he is not talking of peace,’ Milaqa murmured. ‘Maybe my Trojan is better than yours, uncle…’ The priest who was translating Erishum’s Trojan and Raka’s Etxelur tongue spoke clearly enough for all to hear. ‘I think the word the priest gave as “peace” was not quite that. Not “treaty” either.’
Teel eyed her. ‘You spent more time than any of us with Qirum; you should know what he means to say if anybody does. Then what is the man offering?’
‘The word is more like “challenge”.’
The Annids who surrounded Raka didn’t really know what the warriors wanted. None of them understood a warrior-prince like Qirum, Milaqa realised. But any opportunity to avoid further bloodshed should be taken.
An agreement was reached. A party would be sent to New Troy to hear Qirum out. And as Raka pondered who would travel, Teel wormed his way forward and whispered urgently in her ear, pointing back at Deri and Milaqa.
It was quickly decided that the elder Annid Noli, representing Raka, would lead just three people back to New Troy, with Qirum’s warriors, drawn from the group who had earlier travelled to Hattusa: Teel himself, Deri who since his defiant fighting on the day of the Midsummer Invasion had proven himself a symbol of Northland’s robust defiance — and Milaqa. Milaqa who had been able to translate Erishum’s phrasing more accurately than Raka’s own translator. Milaqa who, as everybody seemed to have heard by now, knew Qirum himself more closely than anyone in Northland. She wasn’t given the chance to refuse.
As the meeting broke up Milaqa felt a swirl of emotions. She was still just eighteen years old. Here she was about to walk into the very heart of an epochal conflict. And once again she would be dealing with Qirum, the most exciting, terrifying, disturbing element in her life.
Mostly she was resentful. ‘You’re using me,’ she accused Teel. ‘Again. Because you think I have a connection to Qirum.’
‘Well, you do.’ He grinned at her anger. ‘You always did. And you helped him escape in Hattusa. I could say this is all your fault.’
She flared. ‘I’ll never apologise for saving a life. Kilushepa plotted to have him killed — his reputation destroyed — it was all lies, and you know it.’
‘Fine. But what did you think would follow?’ He laid a hand on her shoulder. ‘Oh, it’s not your fault, little Crow. You’re right, an impulse to save a friend can never be wrong, whatever that friend chooses to do with the life you give him back. And, yes, I’m using you. I have no choice. In such times one must use every available resource. But I haven’t forgotten I’m your uncle. I know I’m supposed to protect you, not lead you into danger. Forgive me.’
‘Forgive you for what?’
‘For the next time I do it. You should get ready; Erishum wants to leave tomorrow.’
Milaqa went straight to the Scambles and got comprehensively drunk.
50
The party would walk to New Troy, Noli ordained. Traditionally Northland folk did not ride — horses were beasts of the cattle-folk — though many had started to learn since acquiring horses from New Troy, or the Hatti. So it would be now.
As the four of them gathered before the Wall, Noli, Teel, Deri, Milaqa, in stout walking boots with light packs on their backs, Erishum laughed at their stubbornness. But he sent his two warriors ahead on horseback, taking his own mount with them, while he walked with the Northlanders. He would be one man, alone among four. Milaqa imagined the minds of both Deri and Erishum turning back to the bloody day of the Midsummer Invasion. But with Noli sternly watching both men as if they were wilful children, no words were spoken, and their swords stayed sheathed.
New Troy was two days’ ride south of the Wall. The journey on foot, down the ancient Etxelur Way, would probably take four or five days. Erishum claimed that Qirum, King of New Troy, had purposely planted his city no closer to the Wall as evidence of good intentions, Erishum said, a peaceful gesture. If he was ever minded to do it, it would take more than a day for him to march on Etxelur, by which time the Wall folk would have plenty of warning. He had deliberately left a thick barrier of space and time between them, hoping for peace, said Erishum.
Noli merely grunted. ‘If he were so eager for peace, the Trojan would not have come to our country at all.’
To begin with the walk south was easy, even pleasant, if Milaqa didn’t pay too much attention to the company she was keeping. It was close to the autumn equinox now, and though there had been precocious frosts the weather was fine, a watery sun for once showing through the usual high cloud. For all she liked to bury herself in smoky Scambles taverns deep within the carcass of the Wall, Milaqa was enough of a Northlander to feel her spirit expanding as they crossed the tremendous flat expanse of the country, the green land crossed by the dead-straight lines of tracks and dykes, the communities like knots in a weave. But the poor summer had left its mark in marshland choked with dead reeds, trees already shedding stunted leaves, a land that was strangely quiet in the absence of many familiar birds. The fungi were flourishing this cold autumn, especially colonising the dead tree trunks, from little bright white dots to huge powdery puffballs, and the most common sort, bright red caps flecked with white. Deri, only half-joking, urged Erishum to sample these Northland fruits. The Hatti was wary enough to refuse the poisonous gifts.
Erishum, in fact, barely noticed the country at all. Milaqa knew that to the Hatti and the Trojans and Greeks this landscape was unbuilt, unmade, unfarmed, an un-world. To them, Northland was worse than incomprehensible. It was invisible.
They spoke little during the walk. And Milaqa had too much time to think about the Trojan.
Qirum! He had long been the most vivid character in Milaqa’s own life. Now, three months after his Midsummer Invasion and his planting of a city in the very heart of Northland, he was by far the most vivid personality in the country, perhaps the whole world. But to Milaqa he was not Qirum the warrior, Qirum the ruler — he was not King Qirum. To her he was Qirum the man, savage, magnificent, murderous, laughing, and when she thought of him she felt hot inside, as if her heart was melting like a bit of Zidanza’s iron in the forge, ready to be hammered into some new shape.