Iron Winter

56

A month after the first Hatti landings on the African shore, Fabius suggested to the councils of Carthage that the time was ripe for an attempt at negotiation. He kept Nelo at his side during his sessions with the councils, so the boy could sketch the scene, the general in his Roman-purple cloak standing before the Tribunal of One Hundred and Four in their chamber on the Byrsa, or in a private office in deep discussion with the two suffetes. Nelo’s crayon captured expressions and body postures in rapid, silent sweeps.

‘I will lead the party myself. Let us show these Hatti that we are strong and determined. Honour must be served. They tread on our sacred land-’

‘It’s not your land, Roman.’

‘My apologies. And already blood has been spilled.’

‘Yes, because you failed to drive them off.’

‘We could not defend the entire coast. And the Hatti are a mighty host.’

‘A host of locusts.’

‘If we must fight them to the finish there will be a great war — the kind of war which both sides lose, a veteran of too many wars might say. If we can turn them away with words we may be spared great destruction.’

‘He is a soldier who would sue for peace. And a Roman too!’

‘The Hatti want Carthage. We know that. They want to destroy us so they can gorge on Egyptian wheat. They won’t accept peace, they won’t accept anything short of our obliteration.’

‘But it’s worth a try, brother. Talking may buy us time for the siege that is sure to come.’

‘Well, you may be right. What have we to lose? We can spare a Roman and his Northlander runt. .’

The great men of Carthage, Nelo quickly learned, were very suspicious of their generals, even as they relied on them to fight and die on their behalf. It was the way the Carthaginian system worked, with a split of powers between the civilian and the military, neither one dominant. The Tribunal of One Hundred and Four particularly was charged with keeping the soldiers on a tight leash. In history, it seemed, it had not been unknown for generals to win famous battles, against the Romans or the Persians or the Muslims or the Mongols, only to return home to face trial for a lack of loyalty or other perceived crimes, with the penalty often being execution, which was traditionally by crucifixion. They were especially suspicious of Fabius, because he was brilliant, popular, and a Roman. But he was the best they had.

‘You may proceed, General. One of us will travel with you. But go with caution. And don’t make any promises.’

‘I understand. Come, gentlemen; come, Nelo.’

On a late spring morning the mission to the Hatti formed up outside the city gates: Fabius and his officers, one of the suffetes, a man called Carthalo, with his own advisers, and a small squad of soldiers as guard. They gathered under a banner especially made for the occasion, an ornate image of Jesus Sharruma, Son of Teshub Yahweh, the Storm God of the Hatti, with the crescent moon sigil of Baal Hammon over his head: a gesture of peace, the gods of Hattusa and Carthage intertwined. The details had been agreed by ambassadors exchanged between the two nations.

The party was slow in forming up, the horses being harnessed and saddled, a few wagons loaded with rations and water, the soldiers checking their boots. The day was fine, bright, and though the winter snow was long gone nothing but scrubby grass and weeds grew away from the roads. Another hungry summer was coming, Nelo thought gloomily.

Sergeant Gisco was here, to add to his burden. And then he learned that the escort as a whole was under the nominal command of a man Nelo knew: Mago, nephew of Barmocar, a scion of one of Carthage’s great families appointed to lend a bit more weight to the party.

Mago soon spotted Nelo. He was more grandly dressed even than Fabius himself, with a spectacular crimson plume on his helmet. ‘Ha! When I heard the general had adopted a Northlander runt who could scribble a bit, I thought it must be you.’

Nelo thought it was a long time since the two of them had worked together in the aftermath of the Autumn Blizzard in Etxelur. As soon as he was back home, the worst of Mago had come to the fore once more. ‘What do you want?’

‘What do you want, sir.’ Mago stalked around Nelo, inspecting his quilted tunic and light mail coat and cloak, his pouch with his paper and crayons for the sketching. ‘Treats you well, does he, the general? I don’t hold with the rumours that he’s bumming you, though Romans are notorious for it. Greek influence, you see. No, you’re not pretty enough. You’re his little pet, though, aren’t you? Feeds you on scraps from the table, does he? And how’s your mother? And that tasty sister of yours-’

Nelo faced him. ‘My sister’s dead.’

They faced each other, eyes locked.

Mago sneered, contemptuous, arrogant. ‘You’re no soldier.’

‘I agree.’

‘What?’

‘I agree. Sir. I never asked for it. I do my best.’

‘And it’s a poor best from what your sergeant’s told me.’

Something in Mago’s arrogance struck Nelo in that moment, his complacency, his absolute certainty about his place in the world. Nelo had been around Fabius long enough to see the Roman’s point of view, to believe it: whatever was to come this campaigning season, the world was changing, utterly and irrevocably. He had a sudden vision of Mago in two or three or four years, standing in the frozen ruins of Carthage. How arrogant would he be then? How complacent? He tried to think how he could capture this insight on paper.

Mago seemed to sense there was something going on inside Nelo’s head that he couldn’t reach, couldn’t touch. ‘Pah! You are a waste of grain, you Northlander cur. And if the protection of your precious general ever wavers, I will make sure you are cast down where you belong.’

‘Thank you, sir.’

Fabius said they would travel north along the coast roads. He wanted to see again where the Hatti had first landed, he said — and where they were landing still, according to his scouts — and then they would come upon the city the Hatti were building on African soil. And, he told Nelo, he wanted his artist to see it too, for even the landing was an exercise on a scale never before seen in the history of the world.

The march was easy. The weather was cold but calm, and the breeze fluctuated between a wash off the sea and a drier breath from the interior. The little traffic on the road cleared at the advance of Fabius’ party under its banner; there wasn’t much, a few mean carts pulled by skinny donkeys or bullocks. The road was lined by farms, but the ground was parched and lifeless. And as they passed the people would come out and run alongside, skinny wretches in rags, hands out, begging. Fabius allowed his troops to give them bits of silver, but none of the party’s own rations. This was the breadbasket of the city, Nelo reminded himself. These starving beggars were supposed to be supplying Carthage with its food, not the other way around.

Then the wind shifted again, coming from the south, whipping up grains of hard sand. The soldiers muttered complaints and covered their faces with their cloaks. Nelo had heard the soldiers talk of vast empty deserts to the south, nothing but bone-dry sand. If the country kept drying out, maybe the desert would wash up and cover Carthage itself.

The march was made in good order, the overnight camps efficiently set up and struck. And on the third day out of Carthage, they came upon the Hatti’s landing site.

Guided by scouts, Fabius took a small group forward to a headland, for a first view. Nelo went with them, his pouch at his side. From the headland the view to the north opened up, a vista of shore and sea. They were close to a river estuary, a sprawl of mudflats and braided waterways. A Carthaginian city called Utica lay a little way up the river; it had been abandoned and burned on the approach of the Hatti. Before the landing there had only been a scatter of fishing villages here, all now obliterated in the battle at the first landing site. Now the country had been transformed.

A tremendous arc of growstone dominated the estuary, an artificial harbour and groyne — an almost perfect circle. There were warehouses and other structures around this harbour, hasty constructions of turf and mud but huge even so. From the harbour, tracks trodden into the earth led inland. Looking that way, to the west, Nelo could see a new city being laid out around a low hill, for now not much more than a sketch of banks and tracks on a straight-line plan, but with the smoke of many fires feathering in the low breeze. Traffic moved on the tracks between city and harbour, carts, people on horseback and on foot. There was motion everywhere, and a distant clamour of voices — a sense of industry, of purpose about the scene.

The harbour itself was crowded with ships. And, looking north out over the sea, Nelo saw more ships, a scatter of them on the breast of the ocean as far as he could see — a snowstorm of Hatti ships, a countless number, descending on this shore.

‘Draw,’ Fabius muttered. ‘Draw, boy!’

Nelo fumbled for his paper.

Gisco said, ‘I’m surprised there wasn’t a Hatti scout up here. I’d have placed one.’

‘Oh, we’ve been seen.’ Fabius pointed. ‘Notice that party? Moving this way. That’s a Hatti war chariot. Not used in anger in a thousand years or more, and now the carriage of a prince.’

‘Look at all those ships,’ muttered Carthalo. He was a tall, angular man with a high forehead and a cool manner, evidently used to command, yet he seemed overwhelmed by the sight. ‘It’s as if the whole of the northern Continent is draining into Africa.’

‘Try not to be awed, sir,’ Fabius said sternly. ‘This is still your country, remember.’

‘True,’ Carthalo murmured. ‘And these Hatti are no more than a band of vagabonds and raiders, no matter how many there are.’

‘Quite right, sir.’

The Hatti party drew up below the headland. The single chariot was escorted by a hefty troop of soldiers dressed in the Hatti style, with their conical hats, and peculiar boots with the toes upturned.

Fabius muttered an order, and the Carthaginians began the gentle descent to meet the Hatti. Gisco made sure none of his troops raised a weapon. Still, Nelo could feel the tension rise as they approached the Hatti; a great deal of blood had already been spilled on this shore.

Nelo was surprised to find he recognised the man who led the Hatti party, dismounting now from the chariot. A young man with an air of command, with a queue of hair like a soldier’s, dressed not in armour but a rich embroidered ground-length robe, this was Arnuwanda, prince of New Hattusa, who had come to Northland two years ago, and had been stranded there when the first bad winter closed in.

Arnuwanda spoke in clear, stilted Hatti, and the man who had driven the chariot proclaimed a translation in Carthaginian. ‘You may bow in the presence of Arnuwanda, son of Arnuwanda who was nephew to My Sun the King Hattusili, the sixteenth of that name.’

Fabius bowed deeply but waved aside the translation, and replied in Hatti himself. Arnuwanda looked surprised, then grinned.

Aides muttered a hasty translation for the benefit of Carthalo and the rest. ‘The general says he knows Nesili and will address the prince in his own tongue.’

Fabius spoke again.

‘What did the Roman say?’ Carthalo snapped.

‘He asked, “How was your journey?” ’

The two parties merged, cautiously, and began to make their way down towards the Hatti port. Fabius and Arnuwanda continued to speak, translated for the benefit of the Carthaginians.

‘Roman, the journey was dramatic,’ Arnuwanda said. ‘First came the March of the Hatti, as history will know it, across Anatolia to the southern ports. That in itself was an epic adventure that will be remembered as long as mankind lives, in the blessing of Jesus Sharruma. You may know that our cities were always stocked with seal-houses of grain — granaries dedicated for the use of the King’s war-fighting. We planned the route to pass from one city to the rest, meaning to use the seal-houses. We found almost all of them looted, barren. And, rather than acquiring grain, we generally found ourselves acquiring more people, as each town emptied out and the people followed their Lord Jesus Sharruma. So we progressed across the country, stripping it of whatever food we could find — you can imagine how it was, the country was already starving. We left the country strewn with graves like poppy seeds. We did all this in the full gaze of Jesus Sharruma Our Lord, and built shrines, and kept a careful list of those who died, for they will be remembered when the Hatti return to take back the old lands.

‘It was a mighty throng that left New Hattusa; it was a much greater host by the time we reached the southern ports. There we began the process of transport across the sea. This was led by our allies of Hantilios, who as you know are expert seafarers.’

Fabius grunted. ‘I know my history, sir. That city was founded under the protection of the Hatti kings in the first place. It is no wonder its leaders serve you now.’

‘At a price, as you can imagine, good Fabius, I expect our grandsons still to be paying it off in instalments. But Hantilios served us well. Their shipwrights built special vessels for the first landing here on the African shore, which I myself led.’

‘Ah. The famous flat-bottomed boats that drive up the beaches.’

‘An ancient design, revived and reworked.’

‘My men resisted fiercely.’

‘Yes. As you know, even the first landing was a battle that would dwarf most in human history. Then it was a question of securing our position, of building the harbour to accommodate the hordes who followed us, and preparing for the greater war to come.’

‘Your harbour is impressive.’

‘We used Northlander engineers, and their expertise in growstone. We are involved in tremendous undertakings, General.’

‘Indeed. You spoke of the King. Uhhaziti is the crown prince, as the whole world knows. Since the death of My Sun the King Hattusili-’

‘There will be no coronation until this migration is done,’ Arnuwanda said. ‘Uhhaziti has insisted on it. He will be crowned in Carthage, on the Byrsa, and anointed by the Father of the Churches when your greatest temple has been rededicated to the worship of Jesus Sharruma. Not until then.’

Fabius nodded gravely. ‘And I, of course, will stop that from ever happening.’

‘We understand each other,’ Arnuwanda said. He glanced curiously at Nelo. ‘Do I recognise this boy?’

‘He serves me.’

Mago took the chance to push himself forward, and spoke in Carthaginian. ‘The boy answers to me; I am his commander. He is a Northlander. You may remember him from that chilly place. And me, perhaps, Prince?’

Arnuwanda stopped, and studied Mago, and replied in the same tongue. ‘I think I remember you. Your name, though. .’ He hesitated, an obvious bit of play-acting.

Mago, infuriated, snapped out his name. ‘My father is-’

‘Yes, yes. So we meet again. Fate draws us all together, it seems. Well-’ and he switched back to Nesili, ‘-let us walk on and talk some more, Fabius. It’s refreshing to hear a Latin accent, frankly. So much more melodious than the coarse Can’nai tongue of these fellows. .’