two problems at once. ‘Maybe you can help her. You’re young, and so is she. You’ve both been through trials. You’ve got a lot in common.’
‘Even though we were born an ocean apart.’
‘Even so, yes. Go and find her. And if you do, maybe it will help you too. People will see you in a different light. You’ll break up that cloud over you once and for all — even though, Voro, it looks a lot blacker to you than to the rest of us.’
He had agreed, and he had gone looking for Caxa, but he had returned — without her.
So here they all were. And Vala, sitting by the hearth, grinding herbs with mortar and pestle, was not impressed by Xivu’s arrogance.
‘Of course,’ Xivu said now, ‘this isn’t the first time the sculptor has been endangered among you people. She nearly got broiled alive on Kirike’s Land.’
‘I know,’ snapped Vala. ‘I was there, remember?’
Voro studied Xivu. ‘Why don’t you go after her yourself?’
Vala laughed. ‘Oh, she runs away from him. He’s the main reason she’s run off, I reckon.’
‘Enough,’ Xivu snapped. ‘I told your Annid that this is not the way to handle the problem. In my country we would send a squad of soldiers to flush her out of the hills, like a hunted bird.’
‘But this is not your country,’ Vala said sternly.
‘No, it isn’t. This is Northland. Where this boy was manipulated into complicity in murder. Now you manipulate his guilt to make him do this task for you. And he will manipulate Caxa to bring her home. It is just as you build your country. You dig a ditch here, a dam there, manipulate a great river to run this way instead of that. We would cut through it. We would build a city of stone and make the river serve us!’
Vala ignored him. ‘So, Voro, before you go out again, what would you like to eat?’
30
The First Year After the Fire Mountain: Late Summer
The long journey from Etxelur to Anatolia took all summer.
The party travelled the length of Northland, which was pretty much as far as Milaqa had ever journeyed before. Then they made an epic overland crossing south through Gaira, coming to the shore of the Middle Sea. And then they took to the sea, in Qirum’s boat that had been waiting for him for a year, and they travelled east, the length of this calm ocean. For Milaqa it was numbing, a journey without end, and Qirum’s bragging leadership had grown annoying; he of course had come this way before, as he constantly reminded the party. But in the end her mind opened up to the sheer scale and diversity of the world beyond Northland through which she travelled — and the effects of the long drought and of the fire mountain, which could be seen everywhere they stopped.
The last seagoing leg of the journey was to be a crossing from Greece to Troy. After this, Milaqa understood, they would travel by land eastward across Anatolia to Hattusa, capital of the Hatti empire — ‘if the empire still exists,’ Kilushepa said gloomily, ‘if Hattusa itself stands.’ And there Kilushepa would attempt the miracle of diplomacy and statecraft that would restore her to her throne.
But they had to get through Troy first.
Waiting for Qirum, the seven-strong party from Northland stood on a wooden jetty, their packs at their feet, wearing heavy tunics as protection against the unseasonal cold. The port was just another huddle of a dozen houses overlooking a small harbour, like so many on this Greek mainland, a place whose name Milaqa had forgotten as soon as she was told it, just another stopping point on this endless journey. There was some trade going on this cold morning, with seagoing ships and smaller coast-hoppers jostling for space in the harbour, and caravans forming up on land. Yet there was room for much more, Milaqa thought; you could see at a glance how trade had shrivelled with the long drought, and now this summerless year.
But Qirum’s own ship stood proud in the water, its long, sleek hull black as night, waiting to serve them as it had all the way along the coastline of this Middle Ocean from the south Gaira coast. The carved bird’s head peered from the stern, and the eyes painted on the hull glared, vivid. It was a formidable sight, even under a dismal grey sky.
Qirum walked up, leading three locals. ‘So here’s our latest crew,’ he announced. The ill-smelling Greeks stood together by the jetty, their own packs on their backs, eyeing up the women. They looked hungry. Well, everybody was hungry. One of them seemed to have a bad leg, judging by the way he was standing.
And there were only three of them.
‘A boat like this needs eight rowers and a pilot,’ Kilushepa said. She stood with Noli, the Annid companion appointed by Raka for this mission of diplomacy. ‘What are you playing at, Trojan?’ She now spoke a heavily accented Northlander, practised with difficulty during the long journey, though she would lapse into her own tongue.
‘This is all I could find. Times are hard. And nobody wants to sail to Troy across a pirate-ridden sea, it seems. So — no more passengers. You will each be taking an oar.’ He pointed one by one to the men of the Northland party: Teel, Deri and his son Tibo, the young priest Riban, and Qirum himself. ‘And you, Queen,’ the Trojan said, ‘will work the steering oar.’
‘So it’s come to this,’ Kilushepa said with a sneer.
‘Do you want to get to Hattusa or not?’
Deri shrugged, spat on his hands and rubbed his palms together. ‘Let’s get on with it.’
Tibo was the first to board the boat, intent, focused, eager, as he had been all summer. If Qirum told him he’d have to swim to Troy, Milaqa thought he’d try it. Riban looked wary, but he had toughened up on the journey, and he followed Tibo on board.
Teel, however, raised his eyebrows. ‘I swear this Trojan is out to torture me. Do I look as if I was born to row a war-boat?’
Milaqa snorted. ‘For a Crow you lack a sense of adventure, uncle.’
‘And you do not, I suppose.’
‘No, I don’t,’ she snapped back. ‘Qirum! Get rid of one of these men. This one with the leg. He’ll cause us more trouble than he’s worth.’
‘Not as much trouble as being one man short-’
‘One rower short. I’ve watched you all summer. I can row as well as any of you.’
He laughed out loud. ‘Typical of you, Milaqa. All right. But when you’re hunched broken over your oar, remember this moment and don’t blame me.’ He walked up to the man she had chosen and told him in coarse Greek that he was not to be used. The man scowled at Milaqa, evidently sensing she had something to do with it, but he limped away.
Milaqa clambered aboard the boat and chose a bench on the right-hand side; Riban was opposite her, so close they were almost touching within the sleek hull. There was room under her bench to stow her gear. The bench itself was worn smooth with use, and its coating of black pitch was stained with rusty splashes — blood, probably.
Qirum briskly helped Noli to a seat in the stern, near the platform where Kilushepa would work as pilot. Here bread was stored in leather bags, and water and wine in clay jars. With an efficiency born of the long practice of the journey, Noli stowed away her own precious baggage, the little sacks of potatoes and maize seed. Kilushepa was helped aboard and stood at the stern, taking the steering oar in her right hand.
Qirum himself took the bench ahead of Milaqa, so Milaqa was looking at his broad back. As soon as he had stowed his sword, spear, bow and arrows under his bench he barked an order, and the rowers each took an oar. Milaqa fumbled with the rowlock, but she got her oar fitted.
They used their oars to push away from the jetty, and then it was time to row. Milaqa found a shelf on the floor against which she could brace her feet. She dipped her oar experimentally into the water, and pulled it back. It was heavy, and she could feel how the water dragged at the blade. But she had made her first stroke.
The man behind her tapped her on the shoulder. She looked back; it was one of the locals. ‘Like this,’ he said in strongly accented Greek. He held up his hands; he had wrapped the palms in thick leather bandages. ‘Grip. No blisters.’
