Iron Winter (Northland 3) (37 page)

‘Many people come here for refuge.’ It had been a one-way flow from the lower lands for years. ‘We have no room.’

‘Deraj. He say.’

Sabela said coolly, ‘We never spoke of it.’

‘Deraj say.’

Sabela studied the woman. Her features were nondescript, the tone of her skin hidden by dust and the stains of sweat. ‘Where are you from? Were your family alpaca herders?’

‘No. Fisher folk.’

‘From the river valleys?’

‘Ocean.’

Sabela was shocked. If that was true, it was no surprise the little girl was having trouble breathing; not everybody born by the sea adapted well to the thin air up here. ‘You lost your
living there.’

‘Fish died. Years ago. Only one baby then. We moved, and grew beans.’

That would have been in the river valleys, above the coast, marginally richer land where folk grew beans and squash and cotton, in farms irrigated by summer meltwater from the mountain glaciers.
‘And then?’

‘No water. No rain. No rivers in summer.’ Because the summers had got so cold the glaciers stayed frozen, and there was no meltwater. ‘Then more babies. We grew
potatoes.’ In the mountain foothills, probably. ‘Not bad.’ She grinned, almost wistfully. ‘Grew fat, one summer. But then, no water. Then came here.’

‘Where’s your husband?’

‘Died. Fighting in war.’

Sabela had no idea which war she might be talking about; the whole region, the mountain country, the coastal strip, even the borders with the forest nations to the east, had been convulsed
by raids and petty wars for years. So, after fleeing step by step from her home by the ocean, climbing gradually into the highlands, the woman had ended up here, at the summit of the world, the
home of the gods, like so many others.

‘C’merr – I’m sorry for your troubles. But Deraj never said anything to me about you.’

‘Met him in . . .’A name Sabela couldn’t make out, so thick was her accent. ‘He came to trade, wool for potatoes. Deraj say,’ said the woman stubbornly. The boy
nudged her, whispered something. The woman dug into her grimy coat and pulled out another scrap of paper, handed it to Sabela.

Sabela took it reluctantly; the woman wore skin gloves from which blackened fingernails protruded. When she opened the paper she saw it was a note in Deraj’s handwriting. ‘Why
didn’t you give me this straight away?’ C’merr had no reply. Perhaps she was not used to written notes, Sabela thought. It hadn’t occurred to her.

The note was scribbled on a bit of reed parchment that was stained in one corner by what looked like spilled wine. Sabela’s heart sank. Her husband got drunk a lot these days. Much of his
export business was with the Sky Wolf nations, to the north, and times were hard there – tremendous forest fires, drought, whole cities buried by dust storms, so the travellers said. And he
had a way of making deals when drunk that he later regretted. But the note was in Deraj’s hand, undoubtedly. And it promised C’merr and her family refuge in Tiwanaku as long as they
needed it.

She studied the woman, the grimy, tired face, the fixed eyes. Why would he do this? How could a woman like C’merr have possibly bought refuge from a man like Deraj?

‘You’d better come with me,’ she said. ‘We’ll find Deraj and sort this out.’

The nestspills goggled as they walked through Tiwanaku.

Today the city was as busy as ever, with crowds of reed boats working the lake waters beyond the jetties, the streets jammed with street-sweepers and porters, bearers leading llamas laden with
goods or drawing carts. A temple was being torn down, one of the grandest in the city. There was always building going on somewhere in Tiwanaku, a cycle of demolition and construction as the city
endlessly renewed itself to attract the next season’s pilgrims, who came to worship the God of Light in his citadel in the sky. If anything the pace of life here had got more frantic in the
last few years – and of course the place was ever more crowded with nestspills. Sabela sometimes thought it was like the frenzied last dances at the parties she used to go to when she was
young, everybody working harder to squeeze out the last bit of enjoyment before the cold light of morning.

For every year the winter was harsher, the summer shorter. Today, this spring day, sheet ice still lay on the lake waters, and frost blighted the maize fields. And while the likes of
C’merr and her family came washing up from the lowlands like a rising tide, so the ice on those beautiful mountains on the horizon was creeping down to the plain. It was as if Tiwanaku was
being crushed between two great fists, from above and below. No wonder people danced.

So why, in such circumstances, would Deraj have promised a nestspill family refuge in their home?

The answer, when she got home, was immediately obvious.

The girl might have been fifteen, no more. She lay naked on the thick llama-wool carpet in the middle of the room, pale body limp, legs folded to one side, arms lying loose. She looked barely
awake; perhaps she was drunk, or drugged. She was none too clean, but she had good breasts, wide hips, a full mouth. The type Deraj had always liked. She even looked a little like Sabela, at that
age.

And here came her husband, naked too, his penis limp and glistening, a skin of wine in his hand. He started when he saw Sabela standing there, and the nestspill woman behind her –
obviously C’merr was the girl’s mother. But he was too drunk to be guilty. ‘Shut the door, by the god’s shade, you’re letting all the heat out.’

Sabela pushed past the nestspill woman and stormed out.

Deraj came to the door, naked, the wine in his hand, and called after her. ‘Sabela, wait! Where are you going?’

To the twins, she thought, at her mother’s home. That was where she was going. And then away from this place. Where, though?

Far from here. To the friends she had made that had nothing to do with Deraj. To the River City to see Walks In Mist, or the Altar of the Jaguar where she would find Xipuhl. She would go all the
way to Northland, perhaps. She would wait for the ships with her friends as they had promised, and go back to that little growstone bar in the Wall, at the heart of the greatest civilisation in the
world, where she had drunk potato spirit from Asia. Where she had been happy. Where she would be safe again.

Deraj continued to call after her. Neighbours were laughing at his nudity and drunkenness. She broke into a run, to get away.

On the battlefield south of Carthage, Nelo was in the reserve. He and the rest of his unit were kept back while the main phalanxes stood firm against the last ragged charge of
the Libyan rebels, and then when the Carthaginian cavalry was unleashed at the enemy.

It was the afternoon of what now passed for a spring day in North Africa, dry, dusty, cool. The battlefield had once been an extensive farm by the look of it, but after years of drought it was
abandoned, the olive trees withered, the stubble of the last grain crops dry in the fields, the fences of the stockades robbed for their wood. It had taken the Carthaginian force half the day to
ride out here. The scruffy Libyan rebels, numerous but disorganised, had showed rudimentary military thinking by clinging to a scrap of high ground in the hope of gaining some advantage. General
Fabius had ignored this, had drawn up his army in the ruins of this farm, and had simply waited.

And as the Carthaginian command had evidently expected, the Libyans lost their nerve and attacked.

‘You see?’ Gisco had said, Nelo’s sergeant, always ready to draw a lesson to deliver to his ragtag troops of conscripts, levies and volunteers. ‘What have I told you? It
is sometimes harder not to fight than to fight. Braver to wait than to charge in. You must pick your moment. Watch and learn, if you ever want to be a general like Fabius.’

Now it was only a question of time, as the Carthaginians steadily pressed. Nelo stood at the centre of his phalanx, with his sword and spear and the hand-me-down helmet that pinched his brow,
hoping to be spared his first real action for one more day. Dreaming of the sketches he might make of the scenes before him if he got the chance.

At last the Libyan formation broke and the survivors started to run. The Carthaginians cheered. Fabius raised his sword, horns blasted, and a ripple of commands spread out through the
Carthaginian army.

Sergeant Gisco grinned and raised his thrusting spear. ‘Our turn, lads! After them and finish them off!’ The men of Nelo’s phalanx surged forward after the fleeing Libyan
survivors, running across a field already strewn with corpses.

But Nelo didn’t have a chance to move before a hefty shove in the back pitched him onto his face. Suniatus, of course. The big man peered down at him. ‘Too slow, aurochs!’ And
he gave him a kick in the head for good measure, and ran on.

Naturally, in the midst of the advance, Gisco saw this and pointed his sword tip at Nelo. ‘Northlander! You’re on a charge! Get to your feet!’

Nelo struggled up, shook his head, hefted his sword and stabbing spear, and ran with the rest.

As Gisco never failed to remind them, the men of this unit were the dregs of the conscripts and levies the suffetes, the executive officers of the city, had raised to swell out the Carthaginian
army, as rumours swirled of the advance of the Hatti horde by land and sea. Even Suniatus was a poor soldier for all his bullying: strong, fearless, but evidently too stupid to obey the simplest
order. But the men around Nelo seemed keen enough as they charged – keen to get among the killing at last, especially if it could be against an opponent already beaten and demoralised, and
keener, perhaps, to get their hands on some booty.

Already they closed on the Libyans.

The Carthaginians descended with a roar. Sergeant Gisco himself went in with sword swinging, cutting down rebels like a sickle in a field of wheat. Suniatus threw himself on the back of a
fleeing Libyan, forcing the man to the ground and stabbing him brutally in the side of the face with his sword, over and over as the man writhed and blood spilled. Nelo had got used to the noise of
battle, or so he thought, but he had always been out of it before, held back from the fray. Now he was in the midst of it, and the noise of men screaming in anger or pain all around him was
astonishing. It was like an abattoir.

Suddenly there was a hiss, a blur, and something shot past his ear. A javelin!

Shocked, heart hammering, he turned to see an enemy warrior, wounded, blood streaming from his leg, but with a round wooden shield in one arm, sword in wooden scabbard. He wore a crude leather
tunic as a herdsman might wear, but he had no protection at all for his bare arms or legs or face, and if he’d ever had a helmet it was long lost. He hardly looked like a soldier at all. But
he had some kind of loop of leather around his fingers, which he was fitting into a notch on another javelin. He was fumbling, pale from loss of blood.

Gisco knocked the man’s javelin aside, and he stumbled back onto one knee.

‘He could have killed you!’ the sergeant screamed in Nelo’s ear. ‘That javelin missed your stupid melon of a head by a thumb’s width. If not, you’d be lying
in the dirt already, Northlander. Dead! Everything that you are, have ever been, or ever might have been, spilled out into the Dark Earth for all eternity, for that’s where bad soldiers end
up, believe you me, never mind what the Jesus botherers will tell you. All because of him! That man in the dirt, who never saw you before today! And now he’s trying again. Are you going to
stand there and let him? Are you, aurochs? Are you?’

It was Gisco’s screaming that drove him forward as much as the shock.

Still the fallen warrior fumbled with his gear. This time Nelo knocked the javelin aside with the shaft of his own spear. The man fell back on the ground and raised his sword, but Nelo,
remembering his training at last, fell on him, straddling his torso and pinning the man’s sword arm with his own gloved fist. For one heartbeat his eyes met his enemy’s. The man was
dark, even darker than most Libyans. Nelo smelled blood, and dust, and sweat, a richer stink of horses and cattle and hay. He looked older than Nelo. His face was lined and heavily weathered, as if
he’d spent much of his life out of doors. He was
strong
, Nelo could feel it in the way the man struggled in his grip, but he was too exhausted to break free. All this in a
heartbeat.

Nelo swept his sword across the man’s throat. Skin and cartilage resisted, but he dragged the blade through. Blood spurted, shockingly bright, and the man choked and spewed blood from his
mouth. Still he stared at Nelo.

‘Again!’ yelled Gisco. ‘Again and finish it!’

Nelo swung his sword once again, this time a chop as if he was severing an ash branch, and he felt the sword cut into the bone of the neck. The man shuddered once, and his eyes rolled, and he
lay still. Nelo’s sword was stuck in the bone. He had to drag at it to release it.

Then, suddenly filled with revulsion for the bloody corpse under him, he scrambled to his feet.

‘There.’ Gisco clapped Nelo on the back. ‘You did it, aurochs! You took a life. No worse than sticking a pig in training, was it? And now you’ve done it once you can do
it again, you’ll see, it gets easier every time. And look at this.’ He leaned over and with a brisk chop of his own sword he severed the man’s right hand. Gisco lifted the hand by
its little finger, almost delicately, as its stump dripped blood. There was a fine leather strap around the first two fingers. ‘See those loops? To help him throw his javelins. Libyans
don’t do that. This isn’t a Libyan bastard, he’s an Iberan bastard. This is what Iberans are good for.’ He threw down the severed hand. ‘
All
they’re good
for. Now, we use Iberan mercenaries for they’re useful in specific situations, but we don’t expect the ungrateful bastards to start chucking javelins at us, do we?’

‘No, sir.’

‘But here he is.’

‘I suppose they are hungry in Ibera as well, sir.’

‘I suppose you’re right. The whole world’s hungry, and they’ve all come here to pinch our grub, the Iberan bastards from across the strait, and the Libyan bastards who
live around the corner, and the Hatti bastards who are on their way across the Middle Sea. But they aren’t going to succeed because we’re going to fight them and stop them and kill
them, aren’t we, aurochs?’