Iron Winter

we suffered badly, and so we moved. But in the new place the Scand came, and we fought them, but soon we were all starving again, and we moved on. And so we have come here, to Miklagard.’

‘Which is the Rus name for New Hattusa, sir,’ Palla added. ‘ “The great city.” ’

‘And he’s still starving, is that the game? Well, tell him we’ve got a load of good Hatti bread to fend off the pangs for him and his whores and his squalling Rus brats, and we’ll transport it to the riverbank for him, and we’ll be back again with more, and come the spring we’ll see what’s what.’ He glanced at Palla. ‘You could probably leave out the bit about the whores.’

‘I’m very discreet, lord.’ He repeated the general’s message to the Rus, who chattered volubly in return.

This response, that New Hattusa would feed the enemy horde, astounded Kassu. But the decision wasn’t his to make.

Himuili’s officers quickly formed up their troops to escort the bread wagons to the river. There would be a tight escort walking with the wagons themselves, and scouts on horseback riding further out. Kassu himself took a place beside one of the wagons, but barely had the party started to trundle away from the city walls than Himuili beckoned to Kassu and brought him forward, to where the priest was walking with the Rus near the head of the little caravan.

‘You are Kassu.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And this priest is the man you’re thinking of prosecuting, is it not?’

‘Yes, sir, I-’

‘Shut up. Walk with each other now. Talk. See if you can’t sort this out without bothering the courts. Or me.’ And he stalked off back to his position at the head of the caravan.

So Kassu walked with Palla, resentfully. Palla’s nervousness had evidently returned, as well it might, being within striking distance of a heavily armed cuckold. But he had composure, Kassu saw, you had to give him that.

They both walked behind the broad back of the Rus.

‘I can’t believe we’re dealing with these people,’ Kassu said. ‘Taking bread from the mouths of our own children and giving it to these northern brutes, who killed our King. And are we really going to keep feeding them until the spring?’

Palla dared to smile. ‘That’s what the opponents of the policy ask, even in the presence of the Tawananna herself.’

Kassu gaped. The Tawananna was Queen Hastayar, widow of the murdered Hattusili. It was the Hatti way that she retained power and influence after her husband’s death. ‘You’re saying this is her idea?’

‘Her and her advisers.’

‘But the Rus struck down her own husband!’

‘What choice is there? Look at the reality of it, Kassu. The Rus and their Scand allies are here. They aren’t going anywhere, certainly not until the spring. And even then they won’t be going back north. This party is just a vanguard. The whole of their people are on the move. Those trading cities they have on the rivers stretching back north are all abandoned now, everybody fleeing south, young and old, healthy or not. Because winter has got their northern lands in its grip and it doesn’t look like it’s going to let go.

‘So here they are on the northern bank of the Simoeis, less than a day’s march from New Hattusa. Yes, it feels unacceptable to deal with an enemy that has tried to decapitate us. But what if we didn’t feed them? Surely even you can imagine the consequences.’

‘Your condescension, priest, is going to get you killed.’

‘I apologise.’

‘How come you know so much anyway? Why was it you who talked to the Rus? How do you know his dog’s bark of a tongue?’

‘Well, it has been the priests who have always dealt with the Rus, ever since they first brought their dragon boats down the rivers to the Asian Sea, and began to plunder our coastal cities. My predecessors brought the word of Jesus Sharruma to them. We sought a syncretism between Teshub Yahweh and their own great god Odin.’

‘A what?’

‘Never mind — a philosopher’s term. The point is that followers of Jesus are less likely to go to war with each other. We began to trade with them rather than fight. And we taught them to read and write. Did you know that? We actually devised a written language to represent their tongue and taught it to them. And all this against a drumbeat of war. That is how I know them, Kassu. Some would say that civilising the Rus is a great achievement of the Church.’

‘You brag a lot for a priest, don’t you? What would Jesus think of that?’

Palla actually blushed. ‘I don’t mean to be immodest.’

‘And what would Jesus think of what you’ve done to my wife?’

Now there was a dash of anger in Palla’s look as he turned on Kassu, though he kept his voice down. ‘I didn’t do anything to her. It was her choice too. We’d met when we were younger, at the Church of the Holy Wisdom, where she trained as a scribe like her father, before. .’

Before she gave up the city to become the wife of a farmer-soldier, with Kassu.

‘Then I bumped into her again at a festival. We remembered each other. We talked — we’d always talked. She was full of questions about the court, the Church.’

‘Discussions she could never have with me.’

‘No,’ the priest said bluntly.

‘I was a good husband. I left the soldiering at the door, every night. I never bragged of the killing, as some men do. On campaign I never raped, or took whores-’

‘You never gave her a child.’

‘That was her choice! We discussed it. We’d lost one child already. We wanted to wait until the bad weather is over; this is no world to bring a child into.’

Palla said, almost gently, ‘Look around you, soldier. How many others go childless? Even though we’re all in this world-winter. She was keeping you at a distance, Kassu. She knew she had made a mistake, with you. She loved you — the strong solid core of you. She still does, in a way, I think. She still speaks of you when-’

‘Don’t tell me.’

‘All right. But it wasn’t enough.’

‘And then you showed up.’

Palla took a breath. ‘We love each other,’ he said defiantly. ‘Perhaps we always did when we were younger, and never knew it. We knew we could not have each other. But we could not stay apart, we are not strong enough for that. If you had not spotted us, if not for the extraordinary circumstances of the day the King died-’

‘You’d be carrying on now.’

‘Our lives are yours to dispose of,’ Palla said, calm now. ‘That is literally true. You must make your decision.’

They said no more, walking on in silence into the deeper snow.

Long before they reached the river and the Rus camp, a runner on a fast horse came dashing out from New Hattusa. Himuili was summoned back, urgently, to a council with the Tawananna. The mission to the Rus would have to be handled by his juniors.

The general picked men to accompany him back, and he glanced at Palla and Kassu. ‘You two. With me. Let’s go. Now.’

20

Back at the city they were met by palace guards and court functionaries, hurried through gates and guard stations to the Pergamos, and, to Kassu’s blank astonishment, brought straight to the House of the Kings.

This squat stone building was not the grandest of the great buildings here on old Troy’s famous peak, and it was exceptionally cold, even on a good day, for it rested permanently in the shadows of its greater cousins, the