But before that battle was joined there was another tremendous wooden groan, like a huge cry of pain. Mi saw that the engine was leaning. Its front left corner was tipping into a hole that had opened up in the ground beneath its wheels. Faces everywhere turned to the siege engine, the defenders on the Wall, the warriors on the ground, the engineers at their work breaching the ramparts.
‘Ha!’ a man called, leaning over the balcony. ‘I did that! I helped dig that trap! Just brush and a dusting of earth over a hole in the ground. One of Raka’s bright ideas, meant to trap a chariot, but if it catches that monster it will do for me!’
The engine tipped further still. Mi was surprised by how easily it was going over. For all its bulk it had to be tall to reach the Wall’s galleries, and so it must be top-heavy, and once it started to fall it was doomed. The drivers beat the broad backs of their oxen, but the panicking animals could do nothing now. Indeed, Mi saw, some of the bellowing oxen were being dragged backwards as the tower tilted. When their traces broke the animals stampeded, causing more panic among the increasingly disorganised Trojans. Men trapped in the tower itself ran, yelling. Some of them jumped to the ground, arms flailing. The commanders’ chariots turned away sharply, fleeing the disaster.
The end was near. As the engine tipped further and further panels fell away from the tower’s sides, falling to the ground in a hail of wood shards, and Mi heard the pop and crack of big structural beams breaking, like bones snapping. At last the tower’s huge flank hit the ground, and the engine collapsed into the dirt, whole tree trunks wheeling out of a cloud of wood shards that flew into the air.
Mi heard whoops of triumph all around her. It looked as if the whole population of the Wall, swollen with nestspills, had come out onto the galleries to see.
And from below there came the raucous shouting of fighting men. The Northland defenders were closing now, encouraged by the catastrophe of the tower to finish off the raiders. The surviving Trojans got themselves organised, but they faced a fighting retreat along the road to the south.
Mi yelled encouragement, releasing the grief and anger that always lingered inside.
56
‘We must be patient, King.’
‘Patient? Patient, you say, man? Patient! Pah!’
Qirum raged around the principal room of his palace. He snatched another cup of wine from a terrified serving girl, who quailed and ran off barefoot. He stalked past the table full of the gold drinking cups his generals had learned to bring him as gifts, past the rich tapestries hanging on the walls. He drew his sword from its jewelled scabbard and held it up before a tapestry. He could have slashed it to ribbons in a heartbeat. Yet he stayed his hand.
The Spider stood, silently watching him, hands behind his back. Hadhe sat on a low couch with her baby, just two months old. The child was having trouble feeding, and whimpered, not loudly, just enough to be distracting. The only other people in the room were the four guards standing like statues in the corners, and another serving girl who stood by the door. All of them waiting on Qirum’s next word, his next reaction — all of them save the Northlander baby, who was obsessed with his own empty stomach.
Qirum threw his sword to the carpet. ‘Pah! I can’t even trouble to destroy this garbage, this offal, this shit. Why are we here, Telipinu? Why do we waste our spirits and our soldiers’ lives on this soggy plain of a country?’ He picked up a golden cup, crusted with gems. ‘It doesn’t even have treasures worth looting. Even this trinket came from Gaira, didn’t it?’ Qirum threw the cup against the wall; it collided softly with a tapestry and fell to the floor, undamaged. ‘These Northlanders treasure duck eggs and hazelnuts more than gold!’
Hadhe smiled. ‘Well, you can’t eat gold.’ Her Trojan had become passable in the months she had lived in this citadel. She was not outwardly defiant, but she never used the proper honorifics, not even for the King himself.
The Spider ignored her. ‘You know why we’re here, King. It is your own strategy, your grand plan. You are building a kingdom here — a country, with farmers and warriors, a new city, a temple fit for the Storm God one day — all from nothing. It takes time.’
Qirum nodded. ‘Time, good Telipinu. But how much time? How many more days in this soggy marsh? And on the Wall, those smug Northlanders are pissing all over the ruins of my engine — laughing at it, laughing at me! And Kilushepa, come to that, if the spies are right that she has returned to Northland. Why shouldn’t they laugh? The engine was another abject failure.’
The Spider shook his head. ‘No. Not a failure. Another lesson learned. We tried a ram; this growstone of theirs is too thick, too resistant. We tried ladders, dirt ramps; the Wall is too high, too easily defended. We tried burrowing, only to find the Wall’s roots are too deep-’
‘I was convinced my engine was the answer.’ It had been born from Qirum’s own sketches, his own imagination.
‘And it so nearly did succeed!’
‘It fell over, man.’
‘So we build another, better. We make it like those great tombs of the Egyptians. Broader at the base, narrower above, with longer platforms for the warriors. Impossible to topple.’
Qirum eyed him. ‘You’ve been thinking about this.’
‘And some of my men. Such a device would need a lot of wood to build. Well, the lands of Albia and Gaira are full of wood… Lord, no man has ever laid siege to such a mighty wall as this, in all history. And when you bring it down your name will be celebrated from Gaira to Egypt and beyond. But we must learn how to do it.’ Hadhe’s baby whimpered more loudly. The Spider glared at her.
Qirum protested, ‘But all this will take another season, at least.’
‘This is a siege, Lord. Sieges last years, not months.’
‘A lot of years if those Northlanders on the Wall continue to grow fat on fish from the northern sea, which we cannot reach.’
Still the baby cried, wailing in discomfort.
‘But you know we have sent ships north, which — oh, will you stop that foul racket!’ The Spider strode over to Hadhe, reaching to grab the baby. She quailed back.
Qirum stepped between the Spider and Hadhe. ‘Leave them, Telipinu.’
Just for a heartbeat the Spider did not back down. Qirum was aware of the four guards tensing, quietly reaching for their weapons. Then the Spider stepped back deliberately. ‘Lord, your weakness for this bed-warming whore and her bastard brat is…’
Qirum put his arm around Hadhe. ‘All part of my complicated charm, Telipinu. Which is why I am king and you are not.’
Hadhe murmured, ‘And I know you will always treat the child well, King. Despite what I do now.’
He stared at her. ‘What’s that? What do you mean?’
There was an odd moment of stillness. The Spider had turned away, disgusted. The guards had melted back into their corners, putting away their weapons. There were no eyes on Qirum and Hadhe. She whispered in his ear, ‘It was my fault. That My Sun fell, that my children were lost. Perhaps this makes up for that terrible failure.’
And he saw the knife flash in her hand. He flinched back, but the blade dug through his tunic and scraped his belly, and he felt warm blood flow. She drew back her arm, but before she could strike again he grabbed her wrist and forced it back. Her eyes met his; her face was expressionless.
Immediately the Spider was at her back. He slit her throat with a single swipe of his own blade; the blood, bright and gushing, flowed down her white tunic. She had been holding the child; he rolled to the floor, screaming, as she fell back.