‘Yes. The hobbles slow them down.’
Urhi had once been lost in such a crowd. He suppressed a shudder.
Erishum said, ‘Come then, scribe, let’s face the Spartan, and hope we survive the encounter.’
Erishum ordered one of his men to dismount and run back to the camp to rouse Qirum. He held onto the mane of the man’s abandoned horse, and looked meaningfully at Urhi. The scribe sighed. You had to ride to meet a warlord, of course. Of all the symbols of status and power a horse was the ultimate; you were half a man without one. So he found a boulder to stand on and briskly mounted the nag. Luckily for him it seemed docile enough, and responded to his nervous prompting.
The party rode down a shallow bank towards the Spartans.
They soon encountered scouts. Erishum and his men kept their swords in their scabbards. Erishum murmured greetings in Greek, Trojan and Hatti; there was a good chance in these fragmented times, with ancient states collapsing like puffball mushrooms, that this so-called Spartan army, led by a Spartan prince, would be a coalition every bit as polyglot as the ragtag force Qirum had assembled around the Spider’s original pack of murderers, thieves and rapists.
The scouts let them pass, and Erishum led the way boldly towards the elite cohorts at the head of the army. It wasn’t hard to distinguish the best soldiers. They were taller than the mass of men following them, thanks to a decent diet, and they wore good-quality armour and weaponry. They were clean too, or comparatively, and their skin glowed with oils. Their hair was prepared in a variety of styles, some long and loose like a Greek’s, some even plaited at their necks like a Hatti’s. As they marched they were trailed by a gaggle of servants and by lavish-looking carriages, from some of which the nervous, painted faces of women and boys looked out. Some of Erishum’s men bristled at the glares they got from these hard men, their wordless challenges. But Erishum was calm, even smiling.
Urhi kept his head down and avoided looking any of the Spartans in the eye. Urhi had met their sort before, too many times. These heroes from the citadel-nations of the east had been born into wealth and power, bred with war in their hearts, trained for it from boyhood. They were men who knew how to fight, how to storm cities and raid beaches — how to kill men like Urhi with bare hands, snuffing out a man’s life and mind and essence for the sake of a momentary advantage, or a bit of treasure.
At length they were brought before Protis himself. They dismounted, wordless.
Protis walked among the visitors, peering closely into their faces. He was a prince of Sparta, driven off when that city was sacked and burned by raiders, and now seeking fresh opportunities. He wore a linen tunic, fringed kilt and boots with turned-up toes in the Anatolian style, and a cloak of wool pinned by silver brooches the size of Urhi’s fists. His black hair was cut short at his forehead but was long at the back, and his upper lip was clean shaven, but he wore a neatly cut beard. He was not as bulky as some of those who surrounded him, though Urhi had a sense of a kind of lean strength, like a whip. He looked young, surprisingly so, perhaps even as young as twenty, his features soft and symmetrical — almost like a woman’s, Urhi thought, fascinated. He had none of the battle scars that so disfigured men like the one-eyed Spider. He was almost pretty. Yet this man was reputed to be one of the most savage killers roaming this fallen world.
When it was Urhi’s turn, the scribe forced himself not to flinch from his gaze. The man’s eyes were a pale, washed-out blue, as beautiful as the rest of his face. There was a scent of perfumed water and oils. And as the Spartan leaned close to him Urhi saw those fine nostrils flare. The man was smelling him.
The Spartan stepped back. Urhi bent forward, his arms spread, all but prostrating himself, and spoke in clear Greek. ‘Lord Protis, your fame echoes around the known world. My name is Urhi. I am a clerk, a scribe. I serve the great Qirum. I am unimportant, only a mouthpiece. My lord Qirum awaits eagerly in his tent. He has gifts, and has prepared a feast which-’
‘Oh, straighten up,’ the Spartan snapped. ‘I prefer to look at a man’s face, not his shoulder blades. I know nothing of this Qirum. I had heard nothing of him before rumours of the force he was gathering — and his invitation to me to fight alongside him. A nobody from Troy, who dared summon a prince of Sparta!’ He won a rumbling laugh from his men.
‘An invitation, Lord,’ Urhi stammered, ‘not a summons-’
Protis said softly, ‘Tell him that if he keeps his promises, all will be well. By which I mean, he will continue to live. If not…’ From a fold in his cloak he produced a dagger of bronze, and in a single fluid movement had the point at Erishum’s throat.
Erishum did not so much as flinch. He spread his empty hands, a wordless command to his men not to react.
Urhi bowed again. ‘I will take the lord Qirum your message at once.’
The Spartan laughed. Then he removed the blade and walked away.
Erishum touched Urhi’s arm. ‘Straighten up and walk. Better he gets this posturing out of his system before he meets Qirum himself. Walk, scribe! The blade was at my throat, not yours.’
Urhi forced himself to walk away, to take one step after another back to his horse, surrounded by the grins of Protis’s huge warriors.
45
Qirum clambered down from his high throne and hauled back the layers of rugs that covered the bare earth floor of his house, sending servants and slaves hurrying out of his way. Then he took a dagger and began to scratch a map in the dirt with the blade’s tip.
Protis and Telipinu, the Spider, watched from their couches of stuffed sheep hide, while they consumed the feast Qirum had prepared for them, of honey and lamb, kid and boar. Protis looked faintly amused at Qirum’s antics. The Spider just looked on, cold, scarred, as ever emotionless. Urhi wondered if Qirum would have been better advised to have somebody else shift his rugs for him. The Hatti kings were remote figures, whom only the most senior ever even saw, let alone touched. Even a king’s shoes would be made only from the hide of cattle slaughtered in the palace precinct. Qirum, in his ignorance, had none of that aloofness, and in the eyes of the Hatti at least was much less impressive for it.
Qirum pointed at his scrawled map. ‘Here, you see. The Middle Sea, that stretches from Gaira in the west to Greece and Anatolia in the east.’ He stabbed the dirt with his blade. ‘We are here. Far to the west, on the southern coast of Gaira. My plan is that we will strike north-west over this great neck of land. I have made this journey myself before. You see there are two rivers here, whose courses all but meet at their headwaters, here.’ Another stab. ‘On the other side of the watershed we’ll need to find ships. We will sail down the course of this great river, which the people call the God’s Dream. We will reach this tremendous estuary, called the Cut, and travel north and east to its far shore, which is the southern coast of Northland itself.’
The house, a tent of canvas draped on poles, was crowded, right to the billowing walls. Behind the three principals gathered advisers, guards and warriors, including Urhi and Erishum for Qirum, men sitting or standing, watching each other with a hostility barely sublimated into rivalry. There was a stink from these men of sweat, of blood, of stale wine, of horses. And they were all men, though in a Hatti gathering, even a Trojan one, a few women would likely have been present: royalty like the Tawananna, a few priestesses. Since his catastrophic clash with Kilushepa, Qirum would allow no woman near him, save for whores ordered not to speak when he tupped them, on pain of death.
A disparate bunch they might be, but they seemed eager enough to follow Qirum’s plan, Urhi thought. The Hatti and other Anatolians were comfortable with the overland sections of the journey. And the Greeks, used to their own island-strewn seas, would not baulk at journeys by ocean or river. If these warriors could work together Qirum would find himself at the head of a formidable force indeed.
‘We will land with much of the campaigning season left.’ Qirum swept his knife again, sketching arrows and advances. ‘The country is big, perhaps fifty days’ march north to south from the Northern Ocean to the Cut, and as much east to west, from the estuary country here to the forested peninsula of Albia here. But the people are few…’
Protis leaned forward. ‘And what of this Northland? What treasures are there? Are there great cities? Masses of people to slaughter and enslave?’
