Bronze Summer

56

‘We must be patient, King.’

‘Patient? Patient, you say, man? Patient! Pah!’

Qirum raged around the principal room of his palace. He snatched another cup of wine from a terrified serving girl, who quailed and ran off barefoot. He stalked past the table full of the gold drinking cups his generals had learned to bring him as gifts, past the rich tapestries hanging on the walls. He drew his sword from its jewelled scabbard and held it up before a tapestry. He could have slashed it to ribbons in a heartbeat. Yet he stayed his hand.

The Spider stood, silently watching him, hands behind his back. Hadhe sat on a low couch with her baby, just two months old. The child was having trouble feeding, and whimpered, not loudly, just enough to be distracting. The only other people in the room were the four guards standing like statues in the corners, and another serving girl who stood by the door. All of them waiting on Qirum’s next word, his next reaction — all of them save the Northlander baby, who was obsessed with his own empty stomach.

Qirum threw his sword to the carpet. ‘Pah! I can’t even trouble to destroy this garbage, this offal, this shit. Why are we here, Telipinu? Why do we waste our spirits and our soldiers’ lives on this soggy plain of a country?’ He picked up a golden cup, crusted with gems. ‘It doesn’t even have treasures worth looting. Even this trinket came from Gaira, didn’t it?’ Qirum threw the cup against the wall; it collided softly with a tapestry and fell to the floor, undamaged. ‘These Northlanders treasure duck eggs and hazelnuts more than gold!’

Hadhe smiled. ‘Well, you can’t eat gold.’ Her Trojan had become passable in the months she had lived in this citadel. She was not outwardly defiant, but she never used the proper honorifics, not even for the King himself.

The Spider ignored her. ‘You know why we’re here, King. It is your own strategy, your grand plan. You are building a kingdom here — a country, with farmers and warriors, a new city, a temple fit for the Storm God one day — all from nothing. It takes time.’

Qirum nodded. ‘Time, good Telipinu. But how much time? How many more days in this soggy marsh? And on the Wall, those smug Northlanders are pissing all over the ruins of my engine — laughing at it, laughing at me! And Kilushepa, come to that, if the spies are right that she has returned to Northland. Why shouldn’t they laugh? The engine was another abject failure.’

The Spider shook his head. ‘No. Not a failure. Another lesson learned. We tried a ram; this growstone of theirs is too thick, too resistant. We tried ladders, dirt ramps; the Wall is too high, too easily defended. We tried burrowing, only to find the Wall’s roots are too deep-’

‘I was convinced my engine was the answer.’ It had been born from Qirum’s own sketches, his own imagination.

‘And it so nearly did succeed!’

‘It fell over, man.’

‘So we build another, better. We make it like those great tombs of the Egyptians. Broader at the base, narrower above, with longer platforms for the warriors. Impossible to topple.’

Qirum eyed him. ‘You’ve been thinking about this.’

‘And some of my men. Such a device would need a lot of wood to build. Well, the lands of Albia and Gaira are full of wood… Lord, no man has ever laid siege to such a mighty wall as this, in all history. And when you bring it down your name will be celebrated from Gaira to Egypt and beyond. But we must learn how to do it.’ Hadhe’s baby whimpered more loudly. The Spider glared at her.

Qirum protested, ‘But all this will take another season, at least.’

‘This is a siege, Lord. Sieges last years, not months.’

‘A lot of years if those Northlanders on the Wall continue to grow fat on fish from the northern sea, which we cannot reach.’

Still the baby cried, wailing in discomfort.

‘But you know we have sent ships north, which — oh, will you stop that foul racket!’ The Spider strode over to Hadhe, reaching to grab the baby. She quailed back.

Qirum stepped between the Spider and Hadhe. ‘Leave them, Telipinu.’

Just for a heartbeat the Spider did not back down. Qirum was aware of the four guards tensing, quietly reaching for their weapons. Then the Spider stepped back deliberately. ‘Lord, your weakness for this bed-warming whore and her bastard brat is…’

Qirum put his arm around Hadhe. ‘All part of my complicated charm, Telipinu. Which is why I am king and you are not.’

Hadhe murmured, ‘And I know you will always treat the child well, King. Despite what I do now.’

He stared at her. ‘What’s that? What do you mean?’

There was an odd moment of stillness. The Spider had turned away, disgusted. The guards had melted back into their corners, putting away their weapons. There were no eyes on Qirum and Hadhe. She whispered in his ear, ‘It was my fault. That My Sun fell, that my children were lost. Perhaps this makes up for that terrible failure.’

And he saw the knife flash in her hand. He flinched back, but the blade dug through his tunic and scraped his belly, and he felt warm blood flow. She drew back her arm, but before she could strike again he grabbed her wrist and forced it back. Her eyes met his; her face was expressionless.

Immediately the Spider was at her back. He slit her throat with a single swipe of his own blade; the blood, bright and gushing, flowed down her white tunic. She had been holding the child; he rolled to the floor, screaming, as she fell back.

The guards ran to Qirum’s side, their own blades drawn. He could smell their fear at this failure to protect him.

The Spider stood before the King. ‘Fetch the surgeon,’ he snapped, and a guard ran.

Qirum lifted his tunic and inspected his belly. ‘She only scraped me… Not much in exchange for her life. Well, she was no soldier.’

The Spider looked down on Hadhe’s corpse. ‘Why did she do it? You were good to her. You protected her from me only a heartbeat ago.’

Qirum breathed hard, his heart pumping, his body belatedly reacting to the sudden threat. ‘But she lost one child and saw the banishment of others, and the death of her husband, and the rape, murder or enslavement of everybody she knew. She did have a grudge to bear, I suppose. Though it was not me who wielded the sword.’ He looked down on the knife, which was on the floor. ‘That looks like an Etxelur blade. I wonder if it was smuggled in by Milaqa and that uncle of hers. Or maybe Hadhe just swiped it.’

The surgeon came bustling in, looking anxious, as well he might, for if he failed to treat the King properly the cost would likely be his own life.

The Spider pointed his dagger at the child on the floor. ‘Shall I finish off that thing?’

‘What? No, no. Surgeon, find it a wet nurse when you’re done here.’ He considered. ‘Ensure that it grows up never knowing who it is, where it is from, who its mother was. That’s sufficient punishment for the mother’s shade to bear in the underworld, I think. But don’t harm the child.’

The surgeon nodded, gingerly cutting away the King’s bloody tunic.

‘All the time she’s held that knife, over months and months, waiting for the one moment when the guards were distracted enough to give her a chance. And I thought she was growing fond of me. People always surprise you, don’t they, Telipinu? Oww, man, be careful with that salve! Now, where were we?’

The Spider grinned, and knelt down to wipe the blood off his knife on Hadhe’s tunic. ‘Talking about siege tactics.’