Bronze Summer (2 page)

‘Don’t give me advice about my feelings, you ball-less old man.’

He laughed, unperturbed. ‘Ball-less, yes, I grant you. But not that old, surely.’

‘Let’s get this over.’ She walked deliberately to the sky burial platform. A couple of gulls had landed again; they fled into the air. Milaqa lifted her cloak so it covered her mouth. Teel had a linen scarf, grimy from use, that he pulled over his mouth and nose. And Milaqa looked closely at her mother’s body for the first time.

It had only been a month since Kuma had been brought home from the Albian forest where she had met her death. A fall from her horse had killed her, her companions had told the family, an aurochs chase that went wrong, the back of her skull smashed on a rock – an accident, it happened all the time, there would be no point hunting the great cattle in their tall forests if it wasn’t dangerous. Only a month. Yet Kuma’s head had already been emptied of its eyes, her gaping mouth cleansed of tongue and palate. Scraps of flesh and wisps of hair still clung, but enough bone had been exposed for Milaqa to be able to see the crater-like indentation in the back of the skull, the result of that fatal fall.
This is my mother
. Milaqa probed for feeling, deep in her heart. She had not cried when she had heard her mother was dead. Now all she seemed to feel was a deep and savage relief that it wasn’t her lying on this platform, her flesh rotting from her broken frame. Did everybody feel this way?

‘It works so quickly,’ Teel said, marvelling. ‘The processes of death. Look, of the body’s soft parts there’s not much left save the big core muscles.’ He pointed to masses of dull red meat beneath Kuma’s ribs. ‘The birds and the insects and the rats, all those little mouths pecking and chewing—’

‘Is this some kind of test? I know what you’re like. I grew up with you setting me tricky challenges, uncle.’

‘All for your own good. I wanted to show you something.’ He pointed to the flaw in the bronze breastplate. ‘Look at that.’

The breastplate, supposedly a gift from the tin miners of Albia to some Annid many generations back, was finely worked, incised with the rings and cup marks of the old Etxelur script. The damage was obvious close to. She inspected the rough slit, the flanges of metal folded back to either side. ‘What of it? When the next Annid takes the plate, this will be easily fixed.’

‘Perhaps so. But how do you imagine it got there?’

Milaqa shrugged. ‘During the accident. She fell from her horse, when it bucked before the charging aurochs.’

He nodded, and mimed a fall, tipping forward. ‘So she landed hard, and – what? A bit of rock punctured her breastplate?’

‘It’s possible.’ But she doubted it even as she spoke.

‘
But she fell backward
. That’s what we were told – that’s how she got her skull stove in. You can see the wound, at the back of the head. So how, then, was the plate on her
chest
punctured?’

‘Come on, uncle. You never ask a question if you don’t already know the answer.’

He lifted his cloak back over his shoulder, revealing a mittened hand holding a bronze knife, and he began sawing at the net strands over Kuma’s torso. ‘Actually I don’t know the answer – not for sure. But I have a theory.’

He quickly cut enough strands to be able to peel back the netting, itself sticky, from Kuma’s chest. Then he reached under the breastplate to cut into its leather ties. Carefully, respectfully, he lifted the plate off Kuma’s body. It came away with a sucking sound, to reveal a grimy linen tunic. He slit through the rotting cloth and peeled that back to reveal Kuma’s chest, scraps of flesh and fat and muscle over ribs that gleamed white. Flies buzzed into the air, and there was a fresh stench, sharp and rotten.

Teel pulled off his deerskin mittens and handed them to Milaqa. ‘Hold these for me. This is going to be messy.’

And he dug his fingers into Kuma’s chest, in the gap between the racks of her ribs. Bone cracked. He pushed and probed, spreading his fingers into the soft mass beneath. He was looking for something. His expression was grim; Milaqa knew he had his squeamish side. Then his hand closed. He looked at Milaqa. He withdrew his hand, and held out his fist; black fluid and bits of flesh clung to his skin. He opened his hand to reveal a small object, flat, three-sided, evidently heavy and sharp, coated in ichor. He rubbed it on his cloak, and held the object up to his eye.

‘It’s an arrowhead,’ Milaqa said slowly.

He nodded. ‘
Somebody shot your mother
– right in the heart. That’s how she died. The head injury surely happened as she fell from her horse, or was maybe faked later.’

‘But it must have gone right through her armour, her breastplate.’ Milaqa seemed to be thinking slowly, plodding from one conclusion to the next. ‘What arrowhead can pierce bronze?’

‘One like this,’ he said, holding out the point to her. ‘Iron.’

3

Far to the east, a generation-long drought gripped the land. People abandoned their failing farms and wandered in search of succour, or turned to raiding the rich trade caravans and ships. But the collapse of trade only worsened the crisis, when there were no more caravans to rob.

Eventually whole populations were on the move, by land and sea. And ancient empires crumbled.

And when booty flowed through Troy, and booty people, there was opportunity for a man like Qirum.

Qirum guessed it was close to noon. The room was windowless, and stank of farts, stale wine, piss and sex, but the walls of packed mud were cracked, nobody had bothered to repair them since the great fire set by the Greeks, and they admitted slabs of bright daylight. He sat up, pushing the thin linen blanket off his torso. The whore lay sleeping beside him, or feigning sleep at least. He found a pouch of wine, and one of water; he took draughts from one and then the other, and poked at the whore’s backside with his foot. ‘Get up and get out.’

She stirred reluctantly and sat up, rubbing her eyes. ‘I need sleep.’ She was dark, with tousled black hair and brown eyes. She was only about fourteen; though her body was full, her face was small, round, like a child’s, and her mouth, bruised around the lips, had an habitual pout.

He thought she was a Kaskan, from the north. He didn’t know her name, or care. ‘You’ve been asleep since dawn.’ The last time he’d managed it. ‘Now it’s noon. Up and out with you. Praxo! Wake up, you fat slug.’ He rummaged for his clothes on the floor, amid the stale, half-eaten loaves, a spilled cup of wine.

The girl pulled the blanket over her small breasts. ‘You want me tonight?’ She forced a smile, but her eyes were like a hunted animal’s.

He’d seen that look before in his women; they wanted his money, but feared the strength of his lust. This girl hadn’t satisfied him but he supposed it wasn’t her fault. He needed an athlete, to match him. A Spartan maid! Rummaging in the heap of stuff he found a tiny goblet, a miniature as you might make for a baby prince. It had lost its base and was badly dented, but it was silver, and it would keep this girl fed for a week or more – and her family, her babies, whoever controlled her, whatever shadowy figures lay behind the child-woman he had taken a fancy to in the street last night. ‘No. I won’t want you again. Here.’ He threw the cup over to her.

She grabbed it, sniffed it, tucked it under the blanket out of his sight, gone in a flash. She smiled again. ‘You were strong. Like bull of legend—’

He swept the back of his hand towards her, and she flinched. ‘You won’t get any more out of me. Out. Now. Oh, and empty the night soil bowls on your way.’ He turned his back and pulled on loincloth, tunic, boots. He heard her move around, finding her clothes. Then she was gone, and he knew he would never think of her again.

He stood, fully dressed. The sudden movement brought a sharp pain to the base of his skull, a relic of the lousy wine which was all you could find in this town these days. He stretched and bent, tensing his muscles. He felt familiar twinges, the scar tissue on his back, the broken cheekbone that had never quite healed right, the burned patch on his arm – each a souvenir of a fight fought, and won. He found his bronze sword and swung it a couple of times, and he let out a roar. Blood pumping, lungs drawing in the foul air, he could feel the day’s recovery starting. It never took long. He was no bull, no war god, he wasn’t prone to flattery of that sort. But he thought of himself as a healthy animal in his prime, and if the Storm God favoured him he would stay that way until a decent death spared him the humiliation of illness and age. Refreshed, he slipped his sword into its scabbard and picked up the rest of his gear, his bronze dagger, his leather belt with its pouches.

Still Praxo’s snore rattled the walls, despite the gathering din of the approaching caravan. ‘Praxo!’ Qirum raised a boot and started to slam his heel into the wall. It smashed in a shower of lathes, dried mud, wicker and plaster, and there was a faint smell of soot and smoke. Before the fire this had probably been quite a grand house, even though it was a long way out from the Pergamos. Now it was a crumbling wreck. He kept kicking the wall until he had made a hole big enough to step through.

He loomed over Praxo, who lay on his belly under a scrunched-up blanket that barely covered his hairy backside, his head tipped sideways, his mouth open, his big fleshy nose squashed, his snoring like an earthquake. Qirum’s closest companion was only a couple of years older than Qirum himself, only twenty-five, but the jowls and folds of his fleshy face made him look a good deal older than that. Praxo’s own whores – he preferred two at a time if he could afford them – had long gone, though at first glance it didn’t look as if they had had the nerve to rob the sleeping sailor.

Qirum picked up a slat from the walls, and laid about Praxo’s back and arse with vigorous blows. ‘Up! Up, you beached whale. The day’s half gone, and there’s booty coming to town.’

Praxo stirred, snorted, coughed, and rolled onto his back, leaving a puddle of snot where his nose had been. He had a monstrous waking erection that stuck up like a ship’s mast. He opened one eye. ‘Clear off, I need a piss.’ But then the martial trumpets sounded again, and a broad grin spread over Praxo’s grimy face.

‘Do what you have to do, my friend, but get on with it.’ Qirum pushed through the remains of a doorway and emerged onto the mud track outside. Once this had been a fair-sized street. But now it was greened over by weeds, and cluttered by huts, shacks and lean-tos, smoke trailing through their roofs. If you stood still for too long the kids came swarming out with their little hands out towards you, chattering, begging for food. Living like rats on a midden.

Behind him he heard Praxo swear and strain at his stool.

Qirum walked away up a low rise. From here he looked out over the ruined lower town towards the Pergamos, the citadel, with its ring of cracked walls, the palace with its fallen towers and smashed-in roof. Once this view would have been cluttered by crowding buildings, winding alleyways; now it was all but clear. This was Troy. Qirum had been born here – he had been conceived during the disastrous night of the fire that had ended the Greek siege – this was his home city, and always would be. But he had travelled widely; he had seen Mycenae and Hattusa and Ashur, he had seen what a city should be. Maybe Troy would recover some day, maybe it would get back to the greatness it had enjoyed. But not while drought and famine stalked the land, and populations fled and princes toppled everywhere. And he, Qirum, was meant for better than this. He dug a leather pouch from his belt, and absently sprinkled himself with scent, of lilies, roses, saffron crocuses. In a stinking world, a stinking city, smelling good was a sign of wealth, of posterity. Troy was the past, the place he had begun his journey in life, not the place he would end it.

Praxo emerged at last, dressed in a tunic that looked more stain than cloth, with his weapons on his back, his battleaxe and heavy sword. He carried a sack with the bits of booty they carried to pay their way around the city. ‘That last stool was a beauty. I feel like I gave birth to a tree.’

‘Of all your revolting habits, your boasting about your bowel movements is the worst.’

‘I try to please.’

The trumpets pealed again. Looking east over the outer city’s walls Qirum glimpsed movement, a river of people, the glitter of bronze, banners fluttering in the languid air. Hatti! He felt as if he could smell the gold. ‘Come on.’

Praxo said, ‘You have an admirer.’

Qirum glanced down. A boy, skinny, naked, no older than eight, turned and bent, showing his bare arse. Qirum turned away, disgusted.

But Praxo lingered. ‘Oh, aren’t you going to give this little one a ride? Just for old times’ sake. After all he’s got to start somewhere in the world. Selling the only thing he’s got, just like you did. Come on, be a sport!’

Qirum stalked away from the boy, from Praxo, emptied his head of the goading, and focused his gaze on the glitter of Hatti bronze.