The Hatti’s new city had no name. This, it seemed, was deliberate, a signal of its impermanence; it was an undertaking the size of New Hattusa itself, but it was only a way station on the road that led to Carthage. The core of it, however, was a military camp, and Arnuwanda led Fabius’ party through the wider suburbs to that austere heart. They had to leave the bulk of the Carthaginian force outside, including Mago, who fumed as Nelo walked on at Fabius’ side, with the Carthaginian dignitaries and under the great banner of the joined gods.
The camp itself was surrounded by fortifications, ditches and berms. Perhaps, Nelo thought, the Hatti rulers feared their own restless people as much as they feared a Carthaginian attack — after all, there was an awful lot of them. Within the fortification, tents and sod huts housed the soldiers. In some ways it was typical of any military camp, with many of the troops at ease this morning, or in training. Wagons trundled, laden with loaves of tough- looking bread; unlike the Carthaginians, Hatti troops did not routinely bake their own bread. In one open area horseback archers were training, and the party stopped to watch the spectacular sight. The men, fully armoured, would run their steeds at a target and fling off their arrows without stopping.
Arnuwanda grinned. ‘I’ve had a go at that myself, in my time. The rewards are graded. You get a cup of wine if you hit the god’s eye in the centre, a cup of horse’s piss if you miss altogether.’
‘And which vintage did you sample, my lord?’ asked Fabius.
Arnuwanda laughed.
They walked on to an area where more archers were working on their equipment. Evidently these men made their own arrows and bows. They stared at the Carthaginians.
‘This is a fine art that I find fascinating,’ the prince said. ‘Making the bowstave itself, for instance. You must use the right kind of wood, of course, and not just that, wood from the right part of the tree for each component. Heartwood for the belly of the bow and sapwood for the spine, so it flexes, you see. A delicate business. And here they are making arrows. .’
The men worked with chisels, adzes and knives, fine tools of iron, bronze, even flint. They fixed arrowheads of various kinds to shafts with silk thread and glue, and tied on feathers as flights.
‘The arrowheads have different shapes for different purposes,’ Arnuwanda said. ‘I know that much. One kind is designed to pierce armour. Another sort — like that fellow’s, with the deep flanges — will knock down a deer.’
‘Or a war horse.’
‘Quite so.’
In another open area carpenters and teams of soldiers and slaves laboured over large wooden structures that Nelo could not recognise.
‘Siege engines,’ Fabius murmured to Nelo. ‘Or bits of them. I wonder where they got the wood? Maybe they took some of their ships apart. Rather an ominous sight — and one I’m sure we’re meant to witness. Make sure you draw this well, boy; the information may be valuable, in advance of the day we see these beasts trundling up to Carthage’s walls.’
Nelo sketched busily.
As they walked on he was always aware of the wider city beyond the core of this military camp. In blocks defined by gullies for drainage or sewage, buildings were being put up, sod huts, occasional structures of stone perhaps robbed from abandoned Utica. The place was unfinished but had already taken on a kind of human life, with people coming and going, slave-women with baskets of washing going down to the river, old folk sitting on porches, children running and laughing. There were even marketplaces with a few dusty heaps of shoes, tunics, potatoes, cabbages for sale. He had seen the straight-line layout of the place from the rise. Evidently the new city had been planned and laid out before the first inhabitant had moved in, and set out like a sketch on the countryside. Now that outline was being coloured in by this muddy mass of people. But in this first rushed impression, Nelo thought there were few babies or old folk, few very young or very old, who must have been winnowed out by the March. He wondered how to capture all this on paper.
Then he saw two laughing boys, no older than five or six, mock-fighting with wooden swords, copying the soldiers. It had taken the Hatti a year to complete their March from New Hattusa to this place, and a year was a long time in the lives of these boys. Perhaps they barely remembered the great city they had left behind. And they were what Nelo chose to sketch, with the strange temporary city in the background, capturing their moment of innocent play for ever.
A group of soldiers sat beside a fire, with a pail of water before them. They set pebbles and olive pits on hot rocks by the fire, every so often prodding them to see how warm they were. They glanced up at the Carthaginian party with blank hostility.
Fabius said, ‘Tell me what these men are doing, sir.’
Arnuwanda said, ‘Just a little ritual our soldiers go through to boost their spirits. These men are scouts; they have seen Carthage, and your ferocious soldiers and your towering defences. These men must see the enemy truthfully, and report on his strength, truthfully. But truth crushes the spirit, do you see? And so we give them this. The enemy’s strength is like the heat of that olive stone. It spits and roars as the stones will when they are put in the water. But it will subside quickly, as will your resistance when the war comes.’
‘Our soldiers have rituals. Different, but the same idea.’ Fabius glanced around, squinting. ‘Sometimes I think that if you could put every soldier in the world in a tremendous camp like this one, and if you kept them all fed, and provided a little wine, a few whores, and let them burn up their energy in a few wrestling contests and such, there need never be war again.’
‘You have a sentimental streak, Roman. I don’t agree. War is in our hearts. We Hatti know that; my dynasty has survived millennia by waging constant war against our enemies. War is what we are
‘How many people have you brought over?’
‘Now we are settled we are trying to count them. My guess — perhaps as many as a million.’
Fabius had to check he understood the Nesili word. ‘A
‘We did drain all the Land of the Hatti, Fabius. And there are more on the way; you saw the ships.’
‘And, whoever wins or loses this war — how many must die, on either side?’
‘That is in the hands of the gods.’
‘Literally so, perhaps,’ Fabius said. ‘The Trojans used to see war as a kind of trial. Before the fight you would argue your case before the gods, your own and your enemy’s. And then the war itself was a resolution of that trial.’
‘You know your history.’
‘In such an age as this, I find it helps.’
The soldiers scooped up the hot pebbles with their bare hands and chucked them into the water, where they created a hissing of bubbles, an evanescent rage, before quickly subsiding. Fabius watched this little ritual, and grinned, showing his teeth. Nelo sketched the soldiers and the water and the pebbles, and Fabius’ grinning face.
58
The smoke from the burning suburbs of Quinsai billowed across the water as the small boat bearing Avatak and Pyxeas pulled away from the jetty, rowed by a scrawny young Mongol. The harbour was crowded with rowboats and tenders, all trying to leave the city. Small sounds carried over the water, the calling of the crews, the lapping waves, the splash of oars and the snap of sails — and graver sounds from the land, the crump of a collapsing building, throatier roars that might be the firing of eruptors.
Further out, outside the harbour, the great ships floated on the still ocean water. Some were magnificent, serene, their decks crowded with masts like spindly forests — serene at least compared to the frantic scenes in the city. Avatak wondered which of them was waiting for him and Pyxeas.
Pyxeas himself was huddled over, wrapped in a coarse blanket against the unseasonal chill of this early summer day, and with one liver-spotted hand resting on the small trunk that contained his treasure, the records of his study with Bolghai in Daidu. He muttered to himself, barely audible. He seemed to take no notice of the scene
