Bronze Summer (25 page)

‘This is all I could find. Times are hard. And nobody wants to sail to Troy across a pirate-ridden sea, it seems. So – no more passengers.
You
will each be taking an oar.’ He pointed one by one to the men of the Northland party: Teel, Deri and his son Tibo, the young priest Riban, and Qirum himself. ‘And you, Queen,’ the Trojan said, ‘will work the steering oar.’

‘So it’s come to this,’ Kilushepa said with a sneer.

‘Do you want to get to Hattusa or not?’

Deri shrugged, spat on his hands and rubbed his palms together. ‘Let’s get on with it.’

Tibo was the first to board the boat, intent, focused, eager, as he had been all summer. If Qirum told him he’d have to swim to Troy, Milaqa thought he’d try it. Riban looked wary, but he had toughened up on the journey, and he followed Tibo on board.

Teel, however, raised his eyebrows. ‘I swear this Trojan is out to torture me. Do I
look
as if I was born to row a war-boat?’

Milaqa snorted. ‘For a Crow you lack a sense of adventure, uncle.’

‘And you do not, I suppose.’

‘No, I don’t,’ she snapped back. ‘Qirum! Get rid of one of these men. This one with the leg. He’ll cause us more trouble than he’s worth.’

‘Not as much trouble as being one man short—’

‘One
rower
short. I’ve watched you all summer. I can row as well as any of you.’

He laughed out loud. ‘Typical of you, Milaqa. All right. But when you’re hunched broken over your oar, remember this moment and don’t blame me.’ He walked up to the man she had chosen and told him in coarse Greek that he was not to be used. The man scowled at Milaqa, evidently sensing she had something to do with it, but he limped away.

Milaqa clambered aboard the boat and chose a bench on the right-hand side; Riban was opposite her, so close they were almost touching within the sleek hull. There was room under her bench to stow her gear. The bench itself was worn smooth with use, and its coating of black pitch was stained with rusty splashes – blood, probably.

Qirum briskly helped Noli to a seat in the stern, near the platform where Kilushepa would work as pilot. Here bread was stored in leather bags, and water and wine in clay jars. With an efficiency born of the long practice of the journey, Noli stowed away her own precious baggage, the little sacks of potatoes and maize seed. Kilushepa was helped aboard and stood at the stern, taking the steering oar in her right hand.

Qirum himself took the bench ahead of Milaqa, so Milaqa was looking at his broad back. As soon as he had stowed his sword, spear, bow and arrows under his bench he barked an order, and the rowers each took an oar. Milaqa fumbled with the rowlock, but she got her oar fitted.

They used their oars to push away from the jetty, and then it was time to row. Milaqa found a shelf on the floor against which she could brace her feet. She dipped her oar experimentally into the water, and pulled it back. It was heavy, and she could feel how the water dragged at the blade. But she had made her first stroke.

The man behind her tapped her on the shoulder. She looked back; it was one of the locals. ‘Like this,’ he said in strongly accented Greek. He held up his hands; he had wrapped the palms in thick leather bandages. ‘Grip. No blisters.’

‘Thank you.’ She reached for her leather cloak, bundled up in a pack, and hastily cut strips from it with her bronze knife.

Qirum, settled over his own oar, waited with reasonable patience until his fledgling crew got settled. ‘Ready, are we? On my count. One – pull! One – pull!’

At first it was a shambles. The boat wallowed, the oars clattered against each other with heavy wooden knocks, and bodies bumped as the rowers tried to find a rhythm. Qirum yelled obscenities in Greek, Trojan, Hatti and Northlander. Deri laughed out loud.

But gradually they settled down, the oars biting into the water more or less together, and the boat slid away into deeper water. Kilushepa hauled on her steering oar, and there was hard work to be done as the boat swung around. At last the prow was pointing out to the open ocean, and the shallow hull skimmed over the water. Qirum even stopped swearing.

Milaqa felt a deep exhilaration as she hauled on her oar. She could feel the way the big muscles of her back and legs made the boat pivot on her blade. The boat itself was an extraordinary craft, quite unlike the oak-frame-and-hide boats of the Northlanders, which were designed for the rigours of the outer oceans.
This
was a black shadow on the water, sleek and menacing and startlingly fast when the rowers worked their oars properly. She had thrilled at her first sight of it, at the river mouth in southern Gaira. This boat was itself an instrument of war, as much a weapon as the bronze sword Qirum so cherished. And here she was, Milaqa of Etxelur, at its oar!

But as the day wore on, without a glimmer of sunlight, the rowing went on and on too, with only brief breaks for drinks and food and for pissing over the side. The energy in her muscles drained away to be replaced by a dull fatigue, and the joints in her back and neck ached. And still it went on, and she had to make another stroke, and another, and another.

Qirum glanced around, stripped to the waist, his brow beaded with sweat, his slab-like body tensed. ‘Told you so!’ he said. ‘You could be up there peeling apples for the Tawananna. But no, you knew best, and here you are, with your feet in the bilge and your muscles on fire. Told you so!’

She forced a grin. ‘Shame we aren’t in separate boats so I could race you, Trojan.’

He laughed, shaking his head. But then he turned away, and she had still another stroke to pull, and another.

They made one overnight stop, on a small island that Qirum said had always been uninhabited. By the light of whale-oil lanterns – no moon was visible – they hauled the boat up on a beach of gritty sand, and made a camp in the lee of a bluff of rocks. Further inland the island was thick with trees and bushes, their leaves pallid, oddly tired-looking. Qirum detailed some of his crew to go off into the interior to hunt for game, while others walked the strand looking for shellfish.

Released from the punishment of her oar, Milaqa wanted nothing but to curl up on the sand and sleep. But the kindly local man advised Milaqa to take care of her body first, or she would be as stiff as a plank by the morning. So she ducked around a rocky outcrop to a more secluded part of the beach, stripped down to her loincloth and plunged into the water. It seemed saltier than she remembered of Northland’s seas, and more buoyant, and it was cold, but she swam back and forth, letting the sea replenish her drained body, and feeling her muscles recover as they stretched against the water’s gentle resistance.

That night she slept a dreamless sleep. But the morning found her back at her oar, and the grim slog of completing the journey resumed.

31

The next day they got their first glimpse of the Anatolian shore. It was a thin brown stripe on the horizon, with low, worn hills, and long empty beaches against which waves broke in a skim of white, and not a splash of green anywhere. This was home for Qirum. He showed no pleasure in returning.

They turned, heading north, so they tracked the coast to their east, Milaqa’s left. The rowing got harder. There was a current against them, and a wind blew steadily from the north. Milaqa and the rest laboured, but the landmarks on the shore seemed to crawl by. At last, on the northern horizon, Kilushepa pointed out a smudge of brown hanging over the land: smoke from the fires of Troy itself.

‘There’s a bay,’ Qirum said, panting as he worked his oar. ‘A headland . . . Once we round the headland and get into the bay we’ll be out of this current, sheltered from the wind, and life will get a lot easier. Not long now, I promise—’

‘
Weapons!
’ Kilushepa’s command was a harsh snap.

Milaqa looked up, confused. The men were already shipping their oars and scrambling for their spears and shields under their benches. Qirum looked over his shoulder, past Milaqa, and he swore, using his filthiest defamation of his Storm God.

And Milaqa looked back, along the length of the boat to the sea. There it was: a black scrap on the horizon that grew as she watched, a square of dark sail above a slim hull.

Qirum began barking instructions. ‘Get ready. Use any weapons you have to hand. You too, ladies! I feared they would strike here, where every boat must round the headland to the bay. And see how they come upon us, riding down the summer winds as we labour against them, they have all the advantages. Of course anticipating trouble doesn’t necessarily mean you can avoid it. They’ll come alongside us, grapple us with hooks and ropes, maybe throw a net. Cut their ropes, slash their net. Don’t let them board! Or you will be rowing another boat across a river of blood before the day is done.’

They quickly got organised, the men with their weapons and shields ready to defend either side of the boat, depending on how the pirates came down on them. Milaqa had no weapons of her own save her bronze dagger. She picked up her oar, and held it before her like a club. Teel looked terrified, Deri and Riban grim. Tibo had an expression of relish. The black ship closed on them silent as smoke over the water. Milaqa could see detail now, rents in that big sail, a glint of metal – bronze swords and spear points.

None of this seemed real. The scene was almost peaceful, as they waited; the sea lapped, the wind sighed in their faces.

‘They’re closing fast,’ Deri said grimly. ‘They’ll pass by fast too. If they judge it wrong they’ll miss us altogether.’

Qirum said, ‘They’re good seamen. Must be, or they wouldn’t have survived. They
might
foul up. We won’t gamble our lives on it. She’s a big one. A fifty-seater. If she’s fully manned we’re outnumbered many times over.’

‘This is not how it ends for you, Trojan,’ Kilushepa said calmly. ‘You, killed by a stranger for the scrap of food in your pack, the bit of gold in your pocket? You, who is destined to rule the world? You will survive this. So it’s a fifty-seater. What’s your plan?’

He stared at her. Then he laughed out loud. ‘Gods, I am surrounded by monstrous women! But you are right, of course. We must not allow them close enough to use their advantage of numbers.’ He rummaged under his bench for his bow and a leather quiver of arrows. ‘Milaqa. Get me the lantern from Kilushepa at the stern.’ Feverishly he used his knife to saw a bit of cloth from his tunic, and tied it around an arrowhead. ‘Move, girl!’

She worked her away along the boat, between the watchful men, and fetched the lantern. She had to shield it from the wind with her body as Qirum struck a flint to light it. ‘Feed it,’ he snapped at the man behind Milaqa’s bench, the Greek. The man ripped bits of cloth off his own tunic to fuel the flames.

The pirate ship was closing now. Some of its crew dug oars in the water to slow the ship as it bore down. Milaqa thought she heard them chant, a rapid, ugly noise; they were pumped up to fight.

‘Milaqa.’ Qirum dipped one arrowhead, wrapped in cloth, into the flame; it came up burning. ‘Help me. I’ll fire the arrows. And when they close,
throw the lamp
. Try to hit the sail. Do you understand? You’ll only get one chance.’

She picked up the lamp; it was a clay jug heavy with oil. ‘I’m ready.’

‘Good, because—’

Because they were here.

The ropes started flying over, weighted with stones, with hooks of sharpened bone. Qirum’s crew hacked at the ropes with their axes and blades. The pirates hauled with relish, laughing. Milaqa saw they were preparing to throw a weighted net over the boat, which would trap them all. One man looked directly at her. He wore a skull plate nailed to his shaven head, and his face was crowded with tattoos. He opened his mouth to reveal sharpened teeth, and a tongue that had been cleft like a snake’s. He barely looked human at all. She clenched her oar, recoiling, shocked, suddenly flooded with fear. She was nothing to this man, she saw, her own self worthless. To him she was a scrap of flesh to be robbed, used and discarded – and then forgotten, no doubt, before the night fell. What god would make a universe where such a horror could be inflicted on
her
?

But he hadn’t got her yet.

Qirum fired off a flaming arrow – but it missed, and sailed harmlessly into the sea, where its flame died. He fired another and hit a man in the chest; he screamed and fell backward into the sea. A third thunked into the pirate’s hull. And now, as the enemy ship closed, Qirum cried, ‘Milaqa!’

For an instant she could not move. She couldn’t take her eyes off the tattooed man, who grinned, and beckoned to her, an obscene gesture. Qirum called again.