Iron Winter

blankets and furs by the big hearth in the main room. He particularly didn’t want to wake her this morning, for today was the day he had asked to see Himuili, his commanding officer, in New Hattusa, for advice on the legal aspects of his divorce.

But of course she woke when he did. Maybe it was the soft rattle of his armour as he buckled it on.

She came storming out of the bedroom. ‘Ha! Off to see the boss, are you? Off to ask him how to fix your marriage?’

He kept silent as he shook out his heavy cloak and pulled it around his shoulders. It was no use being dragged into an argument. She always won arguments. She always had been cleverer than he was, he admitted that — even though, he felt, he had a better sense of what was right, of what was true.

But Henti was not herself this morning. Her hair was tangled, she was wearing a robe she hadn’t changed for too long, her fingernails were still caked with mud from yesterday’s work with the animals. She was distressed and frightened, he thought, behind the blustering anger. As well she might be, for under Hatti law a possible penalty for her adultery was death, for her and her priest.

He couldn’t help responding. ‘Yes, I’m seeing Himuili, if you want to know. He agreed to meet me at the Lion Gate. I’m going to ask him to sponsor me if I decide to go to the courts.’

‘This is you all over. Always asking somebody smarter than you to tell you what to do. Palla is twice the man you are, in every way.’

Kassu sighed. ‘Maybe he is. But he’s not your man. I’m yours.’

‘But I don’t want you.’ She looked at him for a heartbeat, trembling. ‘Not any more. Why did you ever take up the offer to be a Man of the Weapons? My father was a church scribe! I never wanted to be a farmer’s wife. I don’t want this, a farm that’s dust in the summer and frozen in the winter, and we have to give half whatever we do grow in taxes, and I spend my life queuing at the city granaries for the bread dole, and the cattle are scrawny and they kick and try to chew your clothes when you squeeze a drop of milk out of them. .’

‘Nobody wants the drought,’ he said more gently. ‘Nobody wants the winter. At least we’re playing our part. I fight for the King, for New Hattusa, and we produce more food than we eat, and there’s not many can say that these days.’

‘Oh, how noble you are,’ she said blackly. ‘Playing our part. You are a lump of the dirt you love so much.’

‘The whole world is suffering. The story isn’t all about you.’

She lifted her head, her cheeks stained by tears. ‘Oh, of course it is. Of course it’s about me, and you, and him. What else is it about? You useless lump. You understand nothing. Palla understands. . Go.’ She picked up bits of his clothing, scattered on the floor where he’d been sleeping, and started throwing them at him, breeches, socks, tunics, woollen caps. ‘Go! Go to your precious general!’

He left with as much dignity as he could muster. Burning with humiliation. Burning with thwarted passion, for he still loved her.

The morning was still early. No fresh snow had fallen overnight but nor had yesterday’s fall melted, and it lay in the furrows and ridges of the churned-up mud. Everybody was getting used to the snow now, but Kassu remembered childhood winters when snow in New Hattusa had been a rare event.

But he forgot about the snow when he met Himuili at the gate in the city’s Old Wall. For, beneath the gaping mouths of weathered stone lions, Palla, the adulterous priest, was here too.

The gate itself was firmly locked, a great barrier of wood and bronze. These were times of insecurity, and had been even before thousands of Rus and Scand had shown up in the autumn to make camp on the far bank of the Simoeis river. But Himuili’s party, plus Kassu, was evidently going out into the country, not into the city. It was an impressive force. Kassu counted fifty men, all heavily armed — plus himself, though he hadn’t known about the nature of the assignment before now. He thought he recognised a couple of them, Men of the Golden Spear probably, an elite unit close to the King and second only to the Bodyguard. There were no mercenaries among their number, as far as he could tell from their armour and equipment, which was unusual for a Hatti force.

These formidable-looking men stood by a dozen carts, which were covered with leather sheets and harnessed to depressed-looking donkeys, with shivering boys standing by with switches. Kassu wasn’t so surprised by the strength of the force when he glimpsed what the carts were carrying, as one of the wagon covers was shifted to make it more secure. Bread! Loaves, hard-baked, heaped up. They were still warm from the oven and Kassu, never far from hunger himself, could smell their delicious crisp heat. There was no greater treasure in all of New Hattusa just now, he knew that. Kassu had no idea where these supplies were to be taken — some suffering town deeper in the Troad, perhaps.

As for Himuili himself, he knew that Kassu wanted to speak to him, but not for now. Himuili was in deep conversation with his senior officers, a huddle of men in heavy cloaks and expensive plumed helmets. General Himuili looked as if he had been made for days like this, Kassu thought, days of bleak and cold and tough duty; he was a pillar of a man, and his battered face, scarred and asymmetrical, was a mask of defiant strength.

But here was Palla, the priest, wrapped in a military cloak, even wearing a steel helmet. Standing with Himuili himself in the huddle! When he saw Kassu the recognition jolted Palla, there was no mistaking that. Evidently he’d not expected his lover’s husband to show up, not today. Palla was a slim, tall man, a few years younger than Kassu — closer to Henti in age, in fact, and that was probably part of the problem. His hair was dark, but his eyes were a pale blue, blue as a Scand’s. He wasn’t particularly handsome, Kassu thought. But his face bore no scars, his nose hadn’t been broken even once — his face was that of a soft city dweller’s, and so what Henti was used to, that and his evident learning. When Kassu looked at him now there seemed no harm in him. He was not the kind Kassu would ever seek out as a friend, but he was the kind Kassu had sworn to Jesus Sharruma to protect, the kind that made New Hattusa what it was: literate, intellectual, civilised. He seemed likeable. But Kassu had seen this likeable young man kiss his wife.

Inwardly he cursed his fate. Why must life be so complicated? Why couldn’t whatever malicious angel was toying with him have sent him a rival he could cheerfully hate? Because, he realised, thinking about it, such a man would never have been good enough for Henti, as, perhaps, he had never been good enough. And that was a true measure of the angels’ spite. All they had to do was to turn your own weaknesses against you, and your heart was smashed.

The priest looked away and visibly tried to concentrate on the conversation around Himuili. But then the group broke up, for a newcomer approached, walking around the curve of the city walls, and Kassu immediately understood who this shipment of bread was for, why it needed to be so closely guarded.

The newcomer was a Rus.

With his aides, Himuili walked forward to meet him. All the Hatti save Himuili himself had their cloaks pulled back so their weapons were free, though for now their swords stayed in their scabbards. The Rus was, after all, a representative of a force that had sent assassins into the heart of the capital to murder the King.

The Rus, though, came alone. He was a big man, with the blue eyes and red hair every Hatti associated with his people. He wore a loose cloak over a long tunic and baggy trousers, and linen wraps around his legs over long leather boots. He wore a cap rather than a helmet, and had one weapon, a single-bladed axe a Scand might carry, slung over his shoulder by a leather strap. His hands were empty.

Himuili grunted to his men. ‘Ugly enough to be a Rus. That rust-coloured hair.’

To Kassu’s blank astonishment it was Palla who replied first. ‘Careful, lord — he may understand more Nesili than you think. See how carefully he has been selected.’

‘Selected?’

‘The red hair, the blue eyes — not all the Rus share that colouring. This man looks like a Rus, to us. Notice the brooch that clasps the cloak, quite expensive. A warrior and a prince of the Rus — that is who they have sent to accept our gift. This is a game of symbols, you see.’

Kassu had perceived none of this.

Himuili grunted. ‘You should know, priest, you’ve spent enough time among them. Well, I hope he can read the symbolism of the crowd of big murderous bastards I’ve brought out to meet him.’

‘I’m sure he can, sir.’

The Rus approached Himuili, recognising his authority, and began to speak in his own heavy tongue.

Palla translated smoothly. ‘His name is Jaroslav. .’

‘I come from Kiev originally. I moved south with my family and my men, for we were starving. After the famine there was little left of our country, and what was left was ravaged by the Pechenegs and other scum, and