Iron Winter (Northland 3) (20 page)

‘Yes. Jerusalem and their other cities were emptied and burned, their temples smashed. The population of Judea was rounded up and marched to the Land of the Hatti, to be put to the usual
uses. Jesus Himself was recognised as innocent of trouble-making and would have been allowed to flee with others of the elite, but He insisted He stayed with the people. He was lost in the
march.’

Pimpira, in his hole, found himself getting lost in the story. He had always liked the priest’s stories.

‘A few years after that a scholar called Hapati-urmah, of a school that was developing an interest in Jesus’ teaching, heard a rumour He was still alive, and in Hattusa of all
places, I mean Old Hattusa. So he hunted around and there was Jesus, bent and old, working as an assistant in a carpenter’s shop. All around Him loved Him, it’s said. Well, the scholars
wanted to take Him up into the temple, but He refused to leave the shop, His life would end where it began, He said. So
they
came to
Him
, sitting in the sawdust as they listened to
His words. So you see, there is the example we wish to promulgate to the people: for Jesus Himself, a booty-people march ended in redemption.’

‘Hmm. Until His bones were pinched by the Northlanders.’

‘There is that, yes.’

‘I’ll tell you why the Hatti kings liked Jesus. Because the faith He preached was a submissive creed. A slave’s creed. Makes people easier to handle, see, if they think
you’re enslaving them for their own good.’

‘That’s a cynical point of view.’

‘All soldiers are cynics.’

‘Oh, no, they’re not, Zida, believe me. Your friend Kassu for one. Look, I’m getting cold, Henti. Shall we go to the house?’

‘All right.’

Zida called, ‘You two! Keep an eye out for stragglers. And you lot get on with the pyre . . .’

Footsteps.

And there was Pimpira, alone in the dark. Soon he could smell burning meat.

He waited and waited.

He was growing very cold, because he had been lying still so long. He tried not to think of what had happened above, where his mother and father might be now. What he might see when he came
out.

But when to come out? He had no way of telling the time; he couldn’t see any daylight. He waited a long time. It might have been hours. It might have been heartbeats! It
seemed
long.

When he tried to move he found he had stiffened up; he had been lying curled up, like a baby. He moved as slowly and deliberately as he could, pushing the chunks of frozen earth away as
noiselessly as possible. His father’s hasty shovelling had left the earth loosely packed, and it wasn’t difficult.

Soon he was standing, his head and shoulders thrust out of the pit. It was still daylight, but the light was fading under a grey lid of sky. The big house was dark. A fire burned in a corner of
the farmyard – he didn’t look at that too closely. There was no wind, and the smoke from the pyre rose straight up to a blank sky. He hoisted himself up, kicking away the last of the
debris, and stood, a bit shakily, on the lip of the pit.

‘Told you.’

A hand grabbed the ragged queue of hair at the back of his head. With a cry, he fell to his knees. He felt cold sharpness at his throat, a blade.

Two figures stepped into his sight. It was the priest Palla, his face expressionless, and a soldier, wearing mail and a heavy,dusty cloak. The soldier said, ‘Always a few stragglers. Wily
lot, these slaves. Well, let’s get this done.’

Pimpira felt the blade at his neck press harder. He stiffened, determined not to cry out, in case his father should ever hear how he died.

‘No, Zida.’ The priest stayed the man’s arm with his hand. ‘Not like this.’

‘Look at him, he’s lame. He can’t join the March. It’s the law. You know that, priest.’

‘Yes, but have some humanity, man. Look at his face! There was hope there, even if he knows he’s lost his family. Hope now replaced by a despair, so cruelly. What’s your name,
boy?’

‘Priest, this is not a good idea—’

‘Your name.’

‘Pimpira,’ the boy said, his voice a croak after so long in the earth. ‘My name is Pimpira.’

‘A Hatti name,’ said the soldier.

‘Given him by his parents’ owners on his birth, no doubt. And where do you come from?’

‘Wilusia district.’ Which was where the farm was, where they stood.

The soldier laughed out loud.

‘Well, if he was born here it’s a correct answer,’ the priest said. ‘I mean your people. Where did they come from, originally?’

Pimpira couldn’t remember the name, of a place neither he nor his parents had ever seen.

‘Which prophet comforts you? Jesus, Mohammed?’

‘The wise Zalmoxis.’

Zida asked, ‘Who?’

‘He’s a Dacian.’ It was the voice of the master. Kassu himself walked up to stand before Pimpira, in mail and cloak and dusty boots. Pimpira tried to drop his head in
submission, but the blade at his throat, the hand holding his hair, would not allow it. ‘His people are Dacian.’ Kassu glanced around, at the blood-splashed ground, the pyre of corpses.
He glared at Palla. ‘You did this while I was away. To my slaves, on my farm. Your idea, I suppose, priest. Must you meddle in every aspect of my life?’

Palla said firmly, ‘It was Henti. Your wife wanted to spare you the chore.’

‘As I did,’ Zida growled, still holding Pimpira tight. ‘We’re here to help you, Kassu. Anyway, you’re back early.’

‘We’ve been setting up the March. There’s a baggage caravan you wouldn’t believe . . . We’re being released in shifts so we can prepare our own families.’

‘Then go to Henti. I’ll finish up here.’ Again Zida tensed for the strike.

But Kassu grabbed the man’s arm, pushed him away. Pimpira, released, slumped to the ground. ‘No. Not this one.’

Palla said warningly, ‘Henti said you would be like this. Sentimental. Not able to do your duty by the Emergency Laws.’

‘Not this one.’

Zida said, ‘Look at his foot. He can’t walk, man. He can’t join the March.’

‘He’s with me. He’s – my nephew.’

Zida stared at him, then laughed. ‘You can’t be serious.’

‘My nephew, Zida. That’s what I’m telling you.’

Zida held up his hands. ‘Well, it’s up to you, priest! It’s your lot who announced the Emergency Laws. If you lie, if you help him hide a slave, it’s your
crime.’

Kassu faced Palla. ‘You owe me your life. Now you owe me this.’

‘Is it worth it, Kassu?’ Palla asked evenly. ‘For one lame slave boy?’

‘You tell me. You’re the priest.’

Palla stared at Pimpira, and shrugged. ‘Fine. It’s your crime. I will say nothing. Are we even now?’

‘Oh, no,’ Kassu snapped. ‘Never that.’

Palla turned and walked away towards the house.

Zida turned on Kassu. ‘You fool. You idiot. You walnut-brained sack of—’

‘Enough.’

Zida pointed after the priest. ‘That man is your worst enemy. He tried to take your wife. And you spared his life! Whoever forgave a man for doing
that
? And now you’ve given
him a weapon to hold over you. And for what?’ He swung a kick at Pimpira’s good leg, and the boy twisted on the cold ground. ‘A slave boy who’s neither use nor decoration.
What’s wrong with you, Kassu?’

Kassu had no more to say. He walked after the priest.

Zida stared at him, muttering under his breath. ‘And
you
.’ He turned on Pimpira, who cowered. ‘Get back in that pit,
nephew
, and stay there until I’m
gone.’

On hands and knees Pimpira scrambled over the broken earth.

The Second Year of the Longwinter: Midsummer Solstice

Barmocar insisted on leaving Etxelur before the midsummer Giving.

Rina knew the Carthaginian hadn’t done this just out of spite for her. He and his colleagues and agents had spent much of the winter planning the trek to Carthage; the earlier in the year
they started out on this long journey the better chance they had of completing it before the weather closed in again. In fact, Barmocar told Rina, he would have left even earlier if
Northland’s dismal non-spring had allowed it.

But the midsummer Giving was the high point of the year for all of Northland, when the people came together before the Wall, under the guidance of their Annids and the priest-philosophers of the
House of Wolves. It seemed a dreadful betrayal for Rina to prepare for such an event with the other Annids, while all the time she intended to abandon Northland herself – and while she
quietly planned to steal the bones of the Mother of Jesus from their thousand-year-old sarcophagus deep in the fabric of the Wall. She felt the pricking of what a priest of Jesus would, she knew,
call her conscience. But it had to be done.

No, Barmocar wouldn’t plan the timing of his journey just to spite her. She wasn’t important enough even for that, she suspected.

A day after Barmocar and his party had left Etxelur with great pomp, Rina made her own furtive departure.

She collected her bewildered children, took them to the Embassies District of the Wall, and told them she had booked passage on an early morning freight caravan running south from here to the
shore of the Moon Sea, where they would join Barmocar’s group. Thaxa was here too, to say his own tearful goodbyes. She’d given the twins no advance warning, so they had no chance of
breaking the secret – or of escaping her clutches on the day.

Naturally Alxa and Nelo didn’t want to go. Now sixteen, the twins had their own friends, their own ambitions, their own nascent place in Etxelur society. It had been Alxa who had pressed
her mother to take Pyxeas’ dire warnings seriously in the first place, but she was unhappy at abandoning her home, her family. As for Nelo, he had his art, his friends in the school of
look-deep experimental artists, the scraps of money he was making from selling his work in the markets. It took all that was left of Rina’s authority as a mother to force him to come away.
‘Carthage is one of the world’s greatest cities, though it may not be Etxelur. There will be lovers of art, there will be Carthaginians who will buy your work!’ Even then she had
to compromise by allowing him to bring a stack of his sketchbooks and canvases. The arguments were heated, distressing, predictable. But she would not give way, and Thaxa backed her up. At last she
got them both on the steam caravan, with a mound of luggage.

As the caravan made its cautious way south and west, locked together in a tiny passenger cabin, they took out their tensions and unhappiness on each other. The twins worked their way through
their resentment, and were soon nagged by guilt at abandoning their friends, the rest of their family – even Thaxa, their father. It didn’t get any better when the caravan wound its way
through the bank of low hills called the First Mother’s Ribs, and they lost sight at last of the tremendous world-spanning face of the Wall.

They were all in a poor state when they arrived at Alloc at the end of a long day’s travel, to be met by Barmocar and his party.

Alloc was a major port on the eastern shore of the Moon Sea. It was a hub for trading links with Albia; from here timber and furs brought down the peninsula’s great rivers were
transported across Northland by roads and canals, and on a shiny new steam-caravan link to the south. Rina had been here many times on Water Council business before. But it had never been so
cold, not at this time of year, so close to midsummer, with a nip in the air that felt like it promised a frost.

As hungry-looking porters unloaded their goods and heaped them up beside the track, Rina got her first look at the caravan Barmocar had spent the winter organising. It was a lot more impressive
than the caravan they’d taken from the Wall, with a string of expansive and luxurious passenger cabins, and goods wagons with fuel for the engine and provisions for the long journey. Rina
felt a stab of envy, remembering how she had crossed Northland on foot and horse-drawn carriages with Pyxeas last year – but that had been his choice.

As they gathered by the track Rina recognised some of Barmocar’s party from meetings and social gatherings at the Wall. There were more Carthaginians, nobles from the many small nations of
Gaira and Ibera, even a party of Muslim Arabs who must be intending to continue their journey onwards from Carthage across North Africa, or perhaps by boat the length of the Middle Sea. All these
dignitaries and their families and entourages had been trapped by the winter weather in Northland, like Barmocar himself. There was a group of soldiers too, tough-looking Carthaginian veterans in
their long cloaks and boots and with their weapons strapped to their backs, here for the protection of the travellers, Rina assumed. As soldiers always did, they eyed the women in the group with a
kind of lazy calculation.

Amid this churning polyglot crowd, with the caravan’s engine already venting steam, Rina and the twins stood uncertainly beside their heap of luggage. At last Barmocar himself approached
them, trailed by Mago, his slab-of-muscle nephew, who leered at Alxa.

Rina bowed her head formally. ‘It is a pleasure to see you again.’

Barmocar was wrapped in an expensive-looking cloak, confident, plump –
he
hadn’t gone hungry during Northland’s bleak winter – and he had an air of total command.
He barely glanced at Rina. ‘You’re late.’

‘We had no control over—’

‘We’d have left without you. Maybe we still will.’ He strode over to the heap of luggage. ‘Is
all
this yours?’

‘Only the essentials.’

Mago pushed into the heap. ‘Look, Uncle. There’s
furniture
in here!’ He shoved boxes off an exquisitely polished table. ‘Nice stuff.’

Rina winced. ‘That is an heirloom, in my family for generations.’

Now Mago found Nelo’s stack of artwork. He lifted a canvas, ripped off its packaging of thick paper, and theatrically flinched back. ‘Oh, good, Nelo brought his pictures!’

Nelo stepped forward, fists bunched. Alxa grabbed his arm.