happen. If I had not, perhaps we would have been better prepared.’
‘I have some sway over Qirum. In some ways he’s so like a child, you know. Maybe I can persuade him to let you go. Deri is here. We could get you home.’
Hadhe patted her bump. ‘No. I cannot travel — not now. As I said, I am surviving here. More than that. I am trying to be a wife to Qirum. A companion at least. I think he needs that.’
That baffled Milaqa. It didn’t sound like Hadhe at all. What was going on in her mind?
But there was no time to discuss it further, for the generals were arriving for their council, and Qirum was impatient for them to be gone. After a hasty goodbye to Hadhe, Milaqa was hurried out of the palace.
It was only later, when Erishum and his guards had escorted Deri and Milaqa far from New Troy and set them walking north again, that Milaqa discovered that the bronze dagger she kept at her waist had gone.
Qirum’s response to Milaqa’s mission came a month later. The Trojan army left their city and marched on the Wall.
The bulk of Qirum’s army followed the great central track of the Etxelur Way. As they advanced, Northlanders fled or hid.
Qirum established his main camp just off Etxelur Way on the south bank of the Milk River, an easy march from the Wall’s central District of Great Etxelur. Even as he dug in, he began a cycle of patrols and raids far along the face of the Wall to east and west, cutting tracks and smashing dykes and weirs, seeking to cut off Etxelur from the country that sustained it. For their part the Annids ordered the digging of great ramparts and ditches before the line of the Wall. As the weather eased the fishing fleets went out; the oceans would provision the Wall even if the country could not.
So the siege was set. Both sides dug in, and on both sides the dying continued.
55
The Third Year After the Fire Mountain: Late Spring.
After midnight the party came out to repair the Words on the Wall. It was pitch dark, under a sky choked with cloud.
Tibo stood with his father at the balcony, in a gentle, cold rain. They were high on the Wall here, high over Old Etxelur. The night was cold, and the day under a sunless sky hadn’t been much warmer. Looking down, Tibo saw that the latest bonfires the Trojans had built at the base of the Wall had died back, thanks to the heavy rain earlier in the day; only a sullen red glow came from the huge heapings of wood. Further out, nothing could be seen of the enemy save the diffuse lights of the Trojans’ fires. Some of the fires cast reflections in standing water. Northland under siege had become a soggy landscape, all the way to the face of the Wall itself.
And beyond that was only darkness. Any Northlanders between here and the horizon were in hiding. If the land was dark it was silent too — almost, anyhow. You rarely heard the sounds of the night any more, the cries of wolves, the calls of owls. Even the animals and birds fled from the Trojans.
But tonight Tibo thought he heard something coming out of the gloom, a murmur of voices, a deep creaking like the swaying of a gigantic tree. The Trojans often worked at night, launching their pinprick raids on the Wall under cover of the dark. Were they up to something this night?
The rain fell harder. Tibo lifted his face, letting the droplets prickle on his skin. It felt oddly soothing, cooling. Briefly he closed his eyes, and concentrated on the feeling of the moisture on his face. He had continued his military training, but his anger kept getting him into trouble, and he had been working with cousin Riban the priest on mastering his rage. Caxa had tried to help him too, as, she said, he had once helped her. But sometimes it felt as if his head was too full, of the hours on the fire mountain when he thought he would die, the days in the camp of the Spider when he wished he had. Now he faced these Trojans, who ripped up the very country his ancestors had made. In a world full of such huge destructive forces, he needed his strength, and he needed his anger to fuel that strength. But he had to learn to put aside that anger until he was in a position to unleash its lethal energies usefully. At least he had found a way to treasure moments of stillness, like this, whenever he could. He had even begun to sleep properly, some nights anyhow.
His father clapped his shoulder. ‘You all right? Here comes Mi with the lantern bearers. We’ll be moving soon.’
The bearers were coming forward now, carefully carrying a wide-mesh net to which small oil lamps were attached, already lit. The bearers stood at the balcony in a line, and let the net down the face of the Wall, gently, gently, making sure the lanterns were not spilled. The watching Trojans would see this, of course, and they would know what the Northlanders were up to, but there was nothing they could do about it. The bearers were mostly older folk and children, too old or young to fight. As Raka kept saying, in this war for survival every Northlander was a warrior, and could find some role to play.
Mi murmured quiet commands to make sure her team worked as one. Fifteen years old, focused, intense, Mi always seemed capable, always in control, despite her youth. Some people were flourishing in this protracted war, and Mi was one of them, people said, one of the brighter of the young generation. She was using the hideous death of her stepmother Vala to fuel her determination. She was coping. That was what people said. Nobody said such things of Tibo. He didn’t care, as long as he got the chance to kill a few more Trojans, before, inevitably, one of them killed him.
Again he heard that deep creaking from the landscape below, a crack like a root breaking. ‘Father, I think the Trojans are doing something out there.’
Deri grunted. ‘Whatever it is we’ll see it in the morning, and we’ll deal with it then. As we have everything else they’ve thrown at us.’ He stretched and yawned hugely, and Tibo smelled the fish on his breath. Everybody’s breath smelled of fish, as did their farts. There was plenty of fish to eat on the besieged Wall, delivered to the growstone harbours facing the Northern Ocean that the Trojan ships couldn’t reach, but little else.
At last Mi whispered to Deri, ‘Ready.’
Deri nodded, and beckoned to his team. The other sign-makers came forward now, all along the balcony, picking up their paint even as Mi’s team finished anchoring the net securely. Tibo lifted a jar of paint and fixed it to his leather belt with a bit of rope. The wooden jar was heavy, and would make climbing awkward. There were brushes too, simple tools of split willow; Tibo took a couple and stuck them in his belt. He also had his sword in its scabbard, strapped to his back, out of the way.
Deri led the way. He sat up on the low balcony parapet, swung his legs over, and then began to climb one- handed down the net.
Tibo followed his father. Soon he was clambering down the net, down the outer face of the Wall. The climb was easy save for the awkward bulk of the jar, and the scabbard digging into his back. But the Wall was covered by greasy rain-soaked soot from the Trojans’ fires, and soon his hands, his bare legs, the front of his tunic were all stained black. Of course the soot stains were the reason they were here.
To left and right, in the light of the lamps, the others climbed down in a rough line, all along this part of the Wall’s face. These workers were all fighters, men and women, all seasoned in combat. A couple of times the Trojans had hastily erected long ladders and come swarming up to the painters’ nets, trying to use them to gain access to the Wall galleries. If the Trojans tried that again it would be the job of Deri and Tibo and the others to hold them off. There was no sign of Trojan activity tonight, not here. But Tibo was wearing no armour, and he had his back to a plain occupied by the enemy, and the space between his shoulder blades itched as if inviting the kiss of an arrowhead.
Around halfway down the net he came to grooves cut into the growstone face, visible in the light of the torches, swooping circles and lines, with splashes of red and orange paint under the obscuring film of the soot. This was the Word he was to work on. He anchored himself, braced against the net with his booted feet on the face of the Wall, and tied a loop of rope from his belt to the net. Then he got out a brush, dipped the frayed end in the paint bucket, and started smearing the sticky stuff on the Wall. Soon the orange stain of the paint added to the black muck on his tunic. He just had to paint the grooves as far as he could reach, and then move on, down or sideways. After the first few trials nobody had bothered trying to clean off the Trojan soot; it was found that from a distance, across the landscape, the repainted Words stood out even more strongly against the soot’s dark background than the white face of the Wall itself. All the better if you could use the Trojans’ own efforts against them.
