savage did to you, you’ve got a lot to be afraid of, haven’t you, pretty boy?’
Tibo roared and lashed out, a bunched fist at the end of a massive arm swinging towards Hunda’s head. But Hunda ducked underneath the swing and jabbed with a hand held flat like a blade, hitting Tibo just under his ribcage. Tibo folded, the air gushing out of him in a great sigh. Hunda slammed his fist into the boy’s temple, and Tibo was sent sprawling in the dirt.
Around them the watching men laughed.
‘We should leave,’ Voro said. ‘I can’t watch this.’
‘Well, you can’t leave,’ Milaqa said. ‘You’ve got to talk to Muwa about the warning beacons.’
‘The Hatti won’t listen. You know what they’re like. They treat us with contempt.’
She looked at him, exasperated. ‘What will your pricked pride matter when the Trojans come? You’re a Jackdaw. A trader. You’re supposed to make deals with strangers. If you can’t talk to some Hatti sergeant about a set of beacons that might save all our lives, then what’s the point of you?’
‘Look, Milaqa-’
‘Oh, just sort it out, Voro.’ She turned away from him.
Tibo’s trial was not yet over. Hunda walked casually around the fallen Northlander, who lay on his belly, down on the dusty ground. ‘You’re a strong boy,’ Hunda said. ‘Nobody would deny that. That’s good. You want to fight. That’s good too. But you are a blunt blade. You hesitate. Maybe you feel how it would be to receive the punch you deliver. That slows you down, just for a fraction of a breath. But that’s enough to get you killed, because I can guarantee you that the animals Qirum has been recruiting from the ruins of the palace kingdoms are not going to be stopped by fretting how much they’re going to hurt you.’ On impulse he gestured to the soldier with the piglet. ‘Give me that.’
The man brought the animal over. Hunda snapped a finger and beckoned to another of his men, who tossed over a bronze dagger, which Hunda stabbed down through the rope and into the earth, tethering the pig. The piglet walked around, snuffling at the ground around the dagger. It did not seem to be frightened; like most young animals it was too busy being curious about the newness of the world.
The boy struggled to his feet.
‘Kill it,’ Hunda said.
‘What?’ Tibo looked at the piglet, his own empty hands.
‘Kill it. Right now. Prove to me that you can. Or you’ll drink nothing for the next day but your own piss. Now!’
Tibo gathered both fists into a club. Staggering slightly, he stood over the pig, legs splayed, and flexed his body, preparing to use all his core strength, Milaqa saw. The piglet looked up, still apparently unafraid. Tibo hesitated, for one more heartbeat.
Then he swung his fists down, smashing the animal’s skull with a crunch like a walnut under a heel. The men whooped and applauded, catcalling in a dozen tongues. Tibo struck again. There was a stickier impact as his fists drove into the grey mass within the skull, and blood fountained and splashed. The piglet’s body twitched, its legs scrabbling as if it was trying to run. Tibo brought down his fists over and over, reducing the animal’s head to a bloody pulp of flesh and splintered bone.
Voro looked as if he might vomit. Hunda grinned, arms folded.
44
The war trumpets pierced the Gairan night air. Urhi knew what that meant. At last, the Spartans were coming, to join Qirum’s ragged army.
Urhi couldn’t sleep after that.
The snores of his whore irritated him. He was a scribe, and scribes got whores who snored. He slapped her rump until she stopped. But still sleep didn’t return. Spartans! The very name terrified him. Urhi rolled off his bed, pulled on his clothes and boots, shook out a cloak.
He emerged from his house into pre-dawn gloom. This was late spring, but this far west, much closer to the Western Ocean than the dry Anatolian plain where Urhi had been born, there was damp in the gusty wind, and you could feel the chill even on a good spring day, even at noon. Everyone feared a second year without a summer, and it was looking as if it would turn out that way.
The men on guard were dozing, sitting cross-legged by the big common fire, huddled in their cloaks. But Urhi was not surprised to see Erishum awake, squatting on his haunches, idly polishing the blade of a spear. The sergeant looked east, where the Spartans were coming from. He glanced at Urhi. ‘You heard the trumpets too.’
‘I did.’
‘Are you up for a little expedition, scribe? I would prefer to meet the Spartans before they come to us.’ Erishum stood and brushed back loose hair with his hands. He wore his hair in the Hatti style, thick at the back of his neck, and as he tied it up he murmured commands to his men in the Trojan that was the common language of Qirum’s camp. One man brought him cloak, boots, conical felt helmet, and others prepared to form up a party to travel.
Erishum had once been part of the palace guard in Hattusa. He had been among a handful of Hatti soldiers who had no liking for Kilushepa for one reason or another, and had thrown in their lot with the Trojan. He had quickly grown to be one of Qirum’s most trusted men. Urhi despised Erishum as a traitor to his king, while Erishum despised Urhi as a weak-wristed scratcher of clay. But they each recognised a certain strength in the other, Urhi thought. Or a sanity, perhaps. They were uncertain allies in the dangerous instability of Qirum’s household.
A groom brought them horses. The animals stamped and snuffled in the dark, confused to be awake and moving so early. Urhi refused a mount; he hated horses, and they hated him. But soldiers rode whenever they could.
Erishum mounted, wrapped his fist around his horse’s mane, kicked its sides gently, and led the way. Urhi walked after the party, which maintained a slow and steady pace. By the light of torches, they followed a trail through scrubby dune grass beaten flat by the passage of Qirum’s army. They passed a couple of sentries, and Erishum exchanged murmured words.
They came to higher ground, a bluff. From here the ocean opened up to the south, and Urhi heard waves softly breaking. This was the southern coast of Gaira, and the Middle Sea stretched to the horizon. But Urhi knew that not very far west of here the land closed in from north and south to form the strait beyond which extended the Western Ocean, which, it was said, could swallow up the whole of this inner sea like a raindrop in a wine cup. Even so, for Urhi who had been born and raised in the heart of the Anatolian plain, to be so close to this huge, restless body of water was deeply disturbing. But Qirum was making plans on a scale that matched the grandeur of this panorama. Through the winter he had brought this force — his army now, not the Spider’s, though that was the core on which he had built — all the way from Anatolia, the length of the Middle Sea, to this western country. And he intended to go much further. With this army he intended to mount the Trojan invasion of Northland.
Urhi heard that trumpet call again, and a wider noise, a murmur like the growl of the sea itself, ragged, chaotic. He had been around armies long enough now to recognise the sound. It was the merged din of thousands of voices, of boots tramping the earth, of the rattle of wheels, of the crying of women and the laughing of men: the sound of an army on the march. Urhi walked further up the bluff, pulling his cloak around him. Erishum walked beside him, silent, strong. And in the pre-dawn light they saw the torches of the approaching army, sparkling in a line along the coast, the men marching, the wagons, a few horses being ridden alongside the column.
Erishum pointed. ‘The elite warriors in front, the officers and the fore-fighters. Then the specialists, the archers and the charioteers and the slingers, and the common men — barefoot half of them, probably, judging by the volume of their complaints. Then at the rear there is the train, with an escort to fend off raids. Scouts riding out around the column — see them? Competently commanded, and a formidable force.’ Erishum’s eyes were sharper than Urhi’s; he was more than a decade younger than the scribe, a mere twenty-five, though battle had left him looking older.
Urhi said, ‘And there. Between the common soldiers and the train, that mass of people shuffling along — booty people?’
