Iron Winter

4

Alxa was faintly surprised to find that one of the Carthaginian merchant princes, called Mago — the man-boy who had been staring at her chest the whole afternoon — knew one of the younger Hatti delegates, called Arnuwanda, a prince it seemed, or some relative of the current King in New Hattusa. And now, while her mother Rina led the other foreigners back into the warmth of the Wall, these princes, restless, bored, wanted some sport. They wanted to wrestle. Apparently they had come up against each other at a royal wedding party in Greece, where such sports were common among the guests, and fancied another crack.

Alxa spoke about this to her father, Thaxa.

‘Go with them,’ he said. ‘Take your brother too. You can keep them out of trouble. And having Nelo around might keep that Carthaginian brute from giving you any trouble.’

‘I can handle the likes of him.’

‘I’m sure you can. But if you’re to be an Annid, child, you have to learn that the best way to deal with trouble is to avoid it in the first place. .’

So Alxa and her brother took the princelings down the growstone staircases to one of the better gymnasiums, an airy room cut into the growstone with neatly plastered walls and a large stained-glass window shedding splashes of colour across the wooden floor. Alxa and Nelo sat on a bench as the princes stripped off their finery, showered, and coated their skin with powder. The Carthaginian, Mago, made absolutely sure Alxa could see everything there was to see about his nude body.

The princes stalked to the middle of the floor. They were both around twenty years old. They faced each other, bowed — and launched themselves at each other. The Hatti got the first break; with his head down he got his shoulders under his foe’s belly and flipped him so he landed hard on his back. But in an instant Mago was up and at his opponent again.

Alxa murmured, ‘They look so alike, especially without their clothes. Warrior boys, bred for a life of fighting.’

‘They’re not quite mirror images,’ Nelo said. ‘Look, the Hatti has Jesus symbols tattooed on his back — the fish, the palm fronds. And the Carthaginian’s the one that’s been drooling over you.’

‘Hush. I think they’re talking about us.’

Between thrusts and throws the princes had started a conversation in Greek, evidently a common language, which they seemed to imagine the Northlanders would not understand. ‘So you like the little girl,’ said Arnuwanda, the Hatti.

‘Not so little,’ said Mago. ‘Did you notice the udders? She was looking at my tupping tool, that’s for sure.’

Arnuwanda snorted.

Mago rolled on top of his opponent and got his arm across his throat. ‘I suppose the boy is more your sort.’

‘Yes. Sure. And I’d do to him what a Roman legionary would have done to your Carthaginian grandmother if we Hatti hadn’t saved the day. .’ And he flexed, flipped, and managed to roll Mago over so he had him pinned face down, if briefly.

Alxa murmured to her brother, ‘Romans?’

‘Some trading post in Greater Greece, I think.’ Nelo shrugged. He produced a block of paper and began to sketch the wrestling princes, in brisk, confident strokes.

Mago pushed his opponent off, jumped to his feet, and the two closed again with a shuddering crash. ‘So,’ Mago grunted as he worked, ‘what do you think of these Northlanders?’

‘What am I supposed to think? They have mountains of dried fish, culled from that ocean of theirs. We have famine. So here we are.’

‘They also have the bones of your god Jesus stuffed in their Wall. And His Mother.’

‘True,’ Arnuwanda said. ‘They pretend to a moral authority which- Get your finger out of my ear, African!’ The Hatti forced Mago’s arm away from his head by brute force. ‘They pretend to impose peace between warring religions. In fact they draw pilgrims to the relics they have stolen, and milk them of their cash. They are hypocrites.’

‘I agree.’ Mago whirled, tried to get the Hatti in an armlock, but Arnuwanda spun away and Mago ended up face down on the floor again. Spitting out dust, Mago twisted his head to speak. ‘And they claim to despise farmers. We’re all “cattle-folk” to them. Yet they hire soldiers from the farming lands, the Franks and the Germans and the others, to keep out the rest of the rabble.’

‘Hmm. Well, that might not help them much longer.’ Arnuwanda got one arm free, pinned Mago with the weight of his body, and slammed his forearm down on the Carthaginian’s head. ‘Had enough?’

‘Bugger yourself. What do you mean, not much longer?’ Mago twisted with a mighty heave, throwing the Hatti off.

‘The Germans and Franks have been hit by the droughts too.’ They came together again — slam, heads down, arms and legs straining, hands slapping for a hold on flesh greasy with sweat. ‘And some of them are coming here. The farmers, I mean, abandoning their dustbowl lands and wandering into Northland. Well, you’ve seen it, there’s plenty of room.’

‘Yes.’ Mago snorted with laughter. ‘An empty country. A ghost of a place. The ghost that rules the Continent.’ He turned, dropped onto his back, flipped up his legs, locked them around the Hatti’s neck, and sent him flying.

‘Oof!’

Mago got to his feet, yelled, leapt cat-like into the air, and would have slammed down on the Hatti — had not Arnuwanda rolled out of the way at the crucial moment, so that Mago came down hard on the floor. ‘Oh, by the bones of Melqart. .’

‘Always a mistake to rely on mercenaries, I say,’ the Hatti said. He crawled over to the Carthaginian and drove his elbow into the small of Mago’s back. ‘Had enough now?’

A horn sounded, distant, carrying.

Alxa glanced at her brother. ‘The eruptors?’

‘Yes. That’s the first call.’ Nelo tucked away his sketches. ‘Come on. Let’s put these two back on their leashes.’

They walked towards the princes, who broke and stood, panting, sweating, wiping dust and powder from their skins. Mago grinned at Alxa. He said in his own clipped Carthaginian tongue, ‘I saw you watching.’

She replied in crisp Greek, ‘I saw you lose.’

Arnuwanda frowned. ‘You understand Greek? You should have had the manners to tell us so.’

Nelo said, ‘And you should have had the manners not to insult your hosts.’

Arnuwanda faced Nelo, glaring. He wasn’t as showy as the Carthaginian, Alxa saw, his musculature wasn’t as impressive, or, come to that, his manhood, but the Hatti had a composure, an inner strength, his opponent evidently lacked. And here he was facing down her brother.

Alxa stepped between the two of them. ‘Let’s be friends,’ she said calmly. It wasn’t good for a student diplomat to get into fist fights with foreign guests.

Nelo was angry too, but he nodded and stepped back. With a sneer, the Hatti took a towel from his opponent and turned away.

‘So you heard it all,’ said Mago. ‘Well, what of it? Anything ring uncomfortably true? The charges of hypocrisy, of greed-’

‘Insults cast by the ignorant,’ Alxa said. ‘One thing you were wrong about, though.’

‘What’s that?’

‘We don’t rely on mercenaries for our protection. Not entirely.’ That horn sounded again. ‘Get yourselves back up to the roof before the third sounding and you’ll see.’

She walked away, with Nelo, without looking back.