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.
Next, to guttural commands, the units of Albians on the right of the Northland line formed up for their counter-charge. They were huge men, with good bronze weaponry but with shields only of wood, and no armour save for heavy skins of bear and wolf. These Pretani warriors, come to honour an ancient alliance between their country and Northland, were men of the thick forest that still coated the peninsula. Some said that as the farmers had advanced, clearing the forest that had once covered the Continent, the old gods had fled to Albia, and today they were ready to unleash their fury on the sons of the men who had burned them out. Whatever the truth of that, the Albians lacked the discipline of the others, despite months of training under Hatti officers, and it was thought they were best used as shock troops before the battle proper was joined.
Now, at their leaders’ barked commands, they roared, picked up the pace, and ran directly at the Trojan lines, apparently oblivious to arrow-fire. Milaqa saw how their bear-like aggression alarmed the Trojans, who closed up in their compact blocks.