She studied the woman, the grimy, tired face, the fixed eyes. Why would he do this? How could a woman like C’merr have possibly bought refuge from a man like Deraj?
‘You’d better come with me,’ she said. ‘We’ll find Deraj and sort this out.’
The nestspills goggled as they walked through Tiwanaku.
Today the city was as busy as ever, with crowds of reed boats working the lake waters beyond the jetties, the streets jammed with street-sweepers and porters, bearers leading llamas laden with goods or drawing carts. A temple was being torn down, one of the grandest in the city. There was always building going on somewhere in Tiwanaku, a cycle of demolition and construction as the city endlessly renewed itself to attract the next season’s pilgrims, who came to worship the God of Light in his citadel in the sky. If anything the pace of life here had got more frantic in the last few years — and of course the place was ever more crowded with nestspills. Sabela sometimes thought it was like the frenzied last dances at the parties she used to go to when she was young, everybody working harder to squeeze out the last bit of enjoyment before the cold light of morning.
For every year the winter was harsher, the summer shorter. Today, this spring day, sheet ice still lay on the lake waters, and frost blighted the maize fields. And while the likes of C’merr and her family came washing up from the lowlands like a rising tide, so the ice on those beautiful mountains on the horizon was creeping down to the plain. It was as if Tiwanaku was being crushed between two great fists, from above and below. No wonder people danced.
So why, in such circumstances, would Deraj have promised a nestspill family refuge in their home?
The answer, when she got home, was immediately obvious.
The girl might have been fifteen, no more. She lay naked on the thick llama-wool carpet in the middle of the room, pale body limp, legs folded to one side, arms lying loose. She looked barely awake; perhaps she was drunk, or drugged. She was none too clean, but she had good breasts, wide hips, a full mouth. The type Deraj had always liked. She even looked a little like Sabela, at that age.
And here came her husband, naked too, his penis limp and glistening, a skin of wine in his hand. He started when he saw Sabela standing there, and the nestspill woman behind her — obviously C’merr was the girl’s mother. But he was too drunk to be guilty. ‘Shut the door, by the god’s shade, you’re letting all the heat out.’
Sabela pushed past the nestspill woman and stormed out.
Deraj came to the door, naked, the wine in his hand, and called after her. ‘Sabela, wait! Where are you going?’
To the twins, she thought, at her mother’s home. That was where she was going. And then away from this place. Where, though?
Far from here. To the friends she had made that had nothing to do with Deraj. To the River City to see Walks In Mist, or the Altar of the Jaguar where she would find Xipuhl. She would go all the way to Northland, perhaps. She would wait for the ships with her friends as they had promised, and go back to that little growstone bar in the Wall, at the heart of the greatest civilisation in the world, where she had drunk potato spirit from Asia. Where she had been happy. Where she would be safe again.
Deraj continued to call after her. Neighbours were laughing at his nudity and drunkenness. She broke into a run, to get away.
50
On the battlefield south of Carthage, Nelo was in the reserve. He and the rest of his unit were kept back while the main phalanxes stood firm against the last ragged charge of the Libyan rebels, and then when the Carthaginian cavalry was unleashed at the enemy.
It was the afternoon of what now passed for a spring day in North Africa, dry, dusty, cool. The battlefield had once been an extensive farm by the look of it, but after years of drought it was abandoned, the olive trees withered, the stubble of the last grain crops dry in the fields, the fences of the stockades robbed for their wood. It had taken the Carthaginian force half the day to ride out here. The scruffy Libyan rebels, numerous but disorganised, had showed rudimentary military thinking by clinging to a scrap of high ground in the hope of gaining some advantage. General Fabius had ignored this, had drawn up his army in the ruins of this farm, and had simply waited.
And as the Carthaginian command had evidently expected, the Libyans lost their nerve and attacked.
‘You see?’ Gisco had said, Nelo’s sergeant, always ready to draw a lesson to deliver to his ragtag troops of conscripts, levies and volunteers. ‘What have I told you? It is sometimes harder not to fight than to fight. Braver to wait than to charge in. You must pick your moment. Watch and learn, if you ever want to be a general like Fabius.’
Now it was only a question of time, as the Carthaginians steadily pressed. Nelo stood at the centre of his phalanx, with his sword and spear and the hand-me-down helmet that pinched his brow, hoping to be spared his first real action for one more day. Dreaming of the sketches he might make of the scenes before him if he got the chance.
At last the Libyan formation broke and the survivors started to run. The Carthaginians cheered. Fabius raised his sword, horns blasted, and a ripple of commands spread out through the Carthaginian army.
Sergeant Gisco grinned and raised his thrusting spear. ‘Our turn, lads! After them and finish them off!’ The men of Nelo’s phalanx surged forward after the fleeing Libyan survivors, running across a field already strewn with corpses.
But Nelo didn’t have a chance to move before a hefty shove in the back pitched him onto his face. Suniatus, of course. The big man peered down at him. ‘Too slow, aurochs!’ And he gave him a kick in the head for good measure, and ran on.
Naturally, in the midst of the advance, Gisco saw this and pointed his sword tip at Nelo. ‘Northlander! You’re on a charge! Get to your feet!’
Nelo struggled up, shook his head, hefted his sword and stabbing spear, and ran with the rest.
As Gisco never failed to remind them, the men of this unit were the dregs of the conscripts and levies the suffetes, the executive officers of the city, had raised to swell out the Carthaginian army, as rumours swirled of the advance of the Hatti horde by land and sea. Even Suniatus was a poor soldier for all his bullying: strong, fearless, but evidently too stupid to obey the simplest order. But the men around Nelo seemed keen enough as they charged — keen to get among the killing at last, especially if it could be against an opponent already beaten and demoralised, and keener, perhaps, to get their hands on some booty.
Already they closed on the Libyans.
The Carthaginians descended with a roar. Sergeant Gisco himself went in with sword swinging, cutting down rebels like a sickle in a field of wheat. Suniatus threw himself on the back of a fleeing Libyan, forcing the man to the ground and stabbing him brutally in the side of the face with his sword, over and over as the man writhed and blood spilled. Nelo had got used to the noise of battle, or so he thought, but he had always been out of it before, held back from the fray. Now he was in the midst of it, and the noise of men screaming in anger or pain all around him was astonishing. It was like an abattoir.
Suddenly there was a hiss, a blur, and something shot past his ear. A javelin!
Shocked, heart hammering, he turned to see an enemy warrior, wounded, blood streaming from his leg, but with a round wooden shield in one arm, sword in wooden scabbard. He wore a crude leather tunic as a herdsman might wear, but he had no protection at all for his bare arms or legs or face, and if he’d ever had a helmet it was long lost. He hardly looked like a soldier at all. But he had some kind of loop of leather around his fingers, which he was fitting into a notch on another javelin. He was fumbling, pale from loss of blood.