One day new kinds of terrain would coalesce south of the ice sheets, belts of sparse tundra, grassy steppe, barren desert, stretching all around a colder, dryer planet. The chill oceans would be fecund too. New ways of life, in the future.
One day. For now, there was only the death of the old.
Still this was only the beginning.
71
The Hatti negotiating party was to be met by Barmocar at the Byrsa gate.
Pyxeas and Rina had been invited to join the official Carthaginian response as representatives of Northland in exile, and as embodiments of the knowledge and power that had crushed the morale of the Hatti siege forces. Rina insisted that Nelo should attend too, to see the end of the story that had had such an impact on his own young life.
So Nelo met his mother and great-uncle at the gate. Waiting for the Hatti, they were all wrapped in their winter cloaks for, despite the arrival of another spring, it was a cold, blustery morning, with flakes of snow driven on a swirling wind. This was a part of Carthage Nelo rarely visited, much too grand for Northlander exiles, even now.
And Fabius still dangled from his cross high above the gate, bones and flesh and cartilage, wrapped in his cloak of Roman purple.
Carthalo of the suffetes was here too, waiting with Rina. He regarded Nelo blankly. ‘You are the soldier boy who scribbled at the whim of the Roman.’
Pyxeas flared. He was an old man, bent, weary from the long journey from which he would likely never recover, yet he straightened with dignity to face Carthalo. ‘A boy who was ready and willing to fight in the army that defended this city. Perhaps he deserves a little respect, sir.’ He glanced up at Fabius. ‘And perhaps the Roman does too. I’m sorry if it troubles you, Nelo, to see him abused like this.’
Nelo shrugged. ‘I’ve seen worse on the battlefield. Fabius is gone. His people believe that when you die you cross a dark river to the next world.’ But you needed coins to pay the ferryman, and Nelo knew that some of Fabius’ soldiers had sworn that when the body was finally cut down they would bury it with Roman honours, with coins on his eyeless sockets. ‘That’s not Fabius up there.’
‘No,’ came a wheezing voice. ‘Not Fabius, but a symbol of him. And that’s what counts, isn’t it?’
They turned, and saw that the party of Hatti dignitaries was approaching, processing up a cobbled street towards the gate. The party was small, just a handful of Hatti nobles in their brightly coloured court robes, with one senior military officer, flanked by an escort of wary Hatti and Carthaginian soldiers. The street had been cleared for the day, to be sure that nobody got a chance to have a swipe at the Hatti in revenge for the long siege.
The man who had spoken was old, stooped; he wore a long robe decorated with the crossed palm-leaves symbol of the Hatti god Jesus, and boots with toes upturned in the Hatti style. Everybody was looking at him, and he smiled. ‘I seem to have spoken out of turn, before the introductions were done. Well, I don’t imagine we need rely on protocol overmuch today, do we? My name is Angulli. I am a priest; my title is Father of the Churches.’ He gestured to the woman he accompanied. ‘And this is My Sun Hastayar the Tawananna.’
Carthalo stepped forward and gravely welcomed the queen. She looked magnificent, Nelo thought, her hair lustrous, her face painted white with vivid red spots on cheeks and forehead. Gold thread shone bright in her robe of rich crimson, despite the clouded sky.
The senior Hatti officer, a general, stepped up to Nelo. ‘I know you.’
This was Himuili, who had commanded the Hatti forces in the field, under the prince, Arnuwanda. ‘Yes, sir, I-’
‘Shut up. You’re the Northlander who Fabius insisted on bringing to his parlays.’ He glanced up at the crucified Roman. ‘Much good it did him, eh? Standing here today you’d never believe that he won and I lost. This is how Carthage treats its victorious generals, is it?’
‘Carthage is always suspicious of its generals, successful or not. And Fabius did take over the government.’
Himuili grunted. ‘Smartest thing he ever did. And so there he dangles with his guts hanging out. As a symbol, of course. The question is, a symbol meant for who? Other uppity Carthaginian officers? Or us, the Hatti? “Look how strong we are, we Carthaginians. We can defeat you and afford to string up our winning general.” By Jesus’ armpit, I hate diplomacy.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Shut up.’
Now the party were led through the gate into the Byrsa district. This was the first formal visit of the Hatti leaders to Carthage since the day of the aborted battle nearly half a year earlier. As Angulli had suggested it didn’t seem to be a day for excessive formality, but a certain precedence emerged anyhow. The Tawananna walked flanked by the city’s two suffetes, while Pyxeas and Nelo’s mother escorted Angulli the priest, and Himuili walked with senior Carthaginian officers. Nelo and the rest of the party followed on behind, with soldiers of both nations flanking them. Interpreters hovered, murmuring into their masters’ ears like bees seeking pollen.
The Hatti were to be taken up to the formal buildings at the Byrsa’s summit where treaties between the nations would be outlined, to be formally written up by scribes on both sides and sealed at a later date. Those Hatti who had not visited this place before visibly tried not to stare at the striking layout of the citadel, the radial avenues leading up to a summit crowned by monumental buildings, and Hannibal’s column at the very apex.
Once there had been shops, offices, fine expensive residences, many buildings rising two, three, four storeys over the streets. Now the shops were closed, the offices empty. But several buildings had been knocked through to make room for new functions. They were manufactories, here in the most secure quarter of the city. As they neared, Nelo could hear the shouts of the workmen, and a hammering noise, metal struck by metal. The suffetes and their aides had been determined that the Hatti should see these workshops. And now through the open doors of one great building they glimpsed the components of more fire-drug weapons being cast. There was a fully functioning forge where workers hammered at lumps of iron, and a carpentry shop where giant wooden formers were constructed, and then a series of great benches where cast-iron strips, white-hot, were hammered flat to be fitted around the formers. Nelo could see the way the manufacture of the weapons went, from one step to the next. And at the finish stood a complete eruptor, the bulbous belly with the stubby nozzle, just as had been unveiled on the plain of battle. The men who laboured in the forge heat were stripped to their loincloths, but they wore gloves that stretched up to cover their forearms, saving their skin from red-hot splashes.
‘More symbols for us to gawp at,’ growled Himuili.
Hastayar gently chided him. ‘Now, General, we’re here on a mission of friendship, and we must be polite. But he’s right, of course,’ she said to Carthalo. ‘You clearly intend to impress on us your capability to churn out these fire pots of yours. You drive home your dominance, like a booted heel driven into the back of a fallen soldier.’
Carthalo smiled. ‘A little crudely put, madam.’
‘But I am right.’
She was, but since the day of the battle Nelo had learned more of the truth. The eruptor that had fired its fatal shot at the Hatti ranks that day was only the fifth to be successfully constructed by Pyxeas’ conspiracy of Northlander engineers here in Carthage — and only the third to have been fired without blowing itself up, turning its firing crew to an expanding cloud of blood mist and bone shards in the process. Although Nelo supposed that in itself would have been a spectacular demonstration. Most of the eruptors that had been pushed to the crest of the walls of Carthage had been harmless dummies. Some weren’t even cast iron.