Northlanders, who held the Trojans back long enough for the gate to be slammed shut, before they died in their turn. The commanders would not allow any pause, any falling back, any break in the assault now it had begun. Protis called, ‘Shields up! Bring the ladders! Come on, you lazy slugs, do I have to do it myself?’
Handfuls of men carried the stubby siege ladders forward from the little army’s short train, protected from the arrows by the raised shields of others who ran alongside. Good training paying off again, Qirum thought, watching from under his shield.
The Spider turned his own shield over and pulled out an arrow with some difficulty. It had penetrated bronze plate. ‘Iron,’ he said, turning the arrow’s head before his king’s eyes. ‘Good stuff too.’
‘Well, we knew they had it,’ Qirum said. ‘From what they stole in Hattusa.’
The Spider glanced at the rough rampart. ‘It will make no difference. Iron or not, these savages don’t know how civilised men fight.’
‘Well, they know now.’
Soon the first ladder, rough steps hacked into a halved tree trunk, was up against the wall. This time Protis was the first to charge. ‘Let’s get this over.’ He took the ladder at a run, not using his hands, sword in one hand and shield strap in the other, relying on sheer momentum to keep from falling as he climbed. He slammed the shield into the face of a defender at the top, who fell back screaming, his face a bloody mass. Then Protis was up and over the rampart, sword swinging, and he dropped out of sight on the far side. His men followed in his wake.
All along the wall more ladders had been propped up, more Trojans were pouring over. The defenders were already falling back.
Qirum roared, ‘Let me at them!’ But he had to push his way through the men to get to the ladder, and clamber his way to the top.
Standing near the central hearth — there were still piles of acorns beside a half-filled pit, from the work abandoned yesterday — Vala saw the Trojans break over the rampart, and the men of My Sun falling back, only to be cut down as they fled. One man — she knew him well, a fatherly fellow of about forty called Maos — slithered screaming down a rampart wall that was already slick with bright blood. At the bottom of the wall he rolled over, and from a great gaping slash in his belly snake-like entrails spilled and dragged on the ground.
It seemed only heartbeats since the assault had started. It was not yet fully dawn. But already everything was lost.
‘Mother!’
Vala whirled around. Liff, her twelve-year-old warrior, came staggering towards her, trailing his sword on the ground, his tunic front soaked with blood. Yet his sword seemed unbloodied; he probably hadn’t inflicted a single wound.
The first Trojans had dropped down into the hearthplace and were running forward, yelling, swords in hand. Huge men with weapons running at her, only paces away, and nobody left to stop them.
She shoved Liff so he fell backwards into the acorn pit. He looked up, shocked. She screamed, ‘Cover yourself!’
The blade, coming from over her shoulder, slashed down the right side of her face.
There was an instant of shock; she staggered. Then blood spurted, filling her right eye. On the ground she saw a lank of her hair, bloody flesh that might have been her cheek — her ear, on the ground. And then the pain hit her, as if a fire mountain was bursting inside her head. Bright with agony, she tried to run, staggered.
A heavy mass slammed into her legs, and she was driven face down into the dust. Her cut-open head scraped over the ground, and more pain came, brilliant, blinding. A hand grabbed her shoulder and she was rolled onto her back, in the grip of overwhelming strength. She could see the man over her, though blood was pooling in both her eyes now. She tried to scream, and a fist drove into her mouth, hard and filthy. She felt teeth crack, she tasted blood and dirt, and there was more agony, shocking, sudden. A rough hand dragged up her tunic, and her legs were pulled apart, other hands, other men. And then the man over her thrust and he was inside her, tearing at her dryness. She tried to call for her husband, for Medoc, but he was long dead, and her throat was full of blood.
53
Hiding in the communal house on the flood mound, the women and children could hear the fighting outside, the screams of the men, their husbands and brothers and sons in the battle, brief as it was. And the worse screams when the fighting was done, punctuated with laughter, as the injured were put to death.
Then the Trojans came pushing into the house. Blinking in the dark, they laughed when they discovered the women here. One girl, too young, too pretty, was immediately raped by a brute of a Trojan, there in the middle of the floor, before being returned weeping to her mother and her little brother. The rest cheered the man on. Then they searched the house for food and water, shoving cowering children aside to find it. The women were ordered to strip and their clothes were taken away. The men worked through the crowd, groping and punching, but there were no more rapes, for now.
All this before dawn had fully broken.
The day wore on, horribly slowly. More women were shoved in by the Trojans. All these were injured, all had been raped. Vala had to be carried in, swung by her hands and feet between two men. Her head was a mass of blood, the skin sheared off, her ear gone, the flesh scraped and full of grit where it looked as if she had been dragged across the ground. Part of Hadhe’s extended family, Hadhe thought of Vala as an aunt. Now, her body used and broken, Hadhe could only cradle her. She did not even have water to wash away the grit.
The women and children huddled, shivering from the cold, naked, bloodied, hungry, thirsty. Nobody spoke. Hadhe longed to know what had become of her own children. She wondered if she would ever find out.
Later in the day, as the evening drew in, Hadhe heard gruff voices, a clink of metal, leather sliding, sighs of relief, and she smelled meat cooking. She imagined men loosening their armour, taking their boots off after the day’s work of killing — just another day for them, the end of a unique existence for each of their victims.
The light was dying when men came to the house again. Two of them this time, more grandly dressed, heavy in bronze armour and with elaborate conical helmets. One carried a sword in his hand. Hadhe thought the other might have been Qirum himself, but his face was obscured by his armour.
The man with the sword walked among the women, inspecting them. The women, naked, their legs up to their chests, quailed back against the wooden walls. He handled them roughly, lifting faces, pulling back hair, pinching breasts. At length he selected one, a young mother called Sila, and another, Sila’s younger cousin Leb — and, at last, Hadhe. He chose these three by tapping their shoulders, and beckoned them to stand. The others looked away.
Hadhe felt numb. This was unreal. Why me? Why not her, or her? She stood tall, hoping her pregnant belly would show, and put them off. But then Qirum looked at her more closely — yes, it was him — and yes, he recognised her. He said a couple of words to the other man, who shrugged, and drove Sila and Leb out of the house. Qirum himself grabbed Hadhe by her wrist.
Once outside, Hadhe wrapped her free arm around her body in the chill as Qirum dragged her down the mound. My Sun was all but unrecognisable from the home it had been just that morning. Only three houses still stood; the rest had been burned, the storage pits broken open and robbed. Even the rampart had been smashed down in a dozen places. In one corner men and boys huddled, Hadhe saw, naked too, roped together at hands and feet. And a stack of corpses had been heaped up, all stripped.
The soldiers in the hearthspace seemed oblivious to all this. They tended their feet and inspected damage to shields and armour. The ground was scuffed and littered with their armour and boots, with their turds and pools of their piss, with splashes of drying blood. Some men were wounded, with cuts and burns salved with potions, honey, grease, mashed-up roots. A surgeon with a kit of bronze tools — forceps, chisels, a saw — prepared to set a broken arm. The man was held down by his companions, a bit of wood between his teeth.
There were some Trojan dead. They had been set out respectfully near the gate through the rampart, and covered with blankets stolen from the houses. Hadhe found no joy in seeing that some Trojans, at least, had fallen today.
Sila was dragged off to one of the surviving houses, and Leb to the next, and Qirum took Hadhe to the third.
