Iron Winter

68

The Third Year of the Longwinter: Midwinter Solstice

On the night that word came down that the Carthaginians were ready to give battle at last, Kassu and Zida hurried to their homes in the Hatti’s temporary city.

Zida was exuberant. ‘They say Carthage’s priests chose tomorrow for its auguries. A near-midwinter night, and the moon has just waned past its half, and for days to come the sky will be dominated by the crescent moon, the sign of Baal Hammon — or some crud like that. Ha! They can have the moon; we have Jesus Sharruma who will crush their puny testicles in His holy fist.’

Kassu grunted. ‘Don’t get your hopes up. Years of drought, months of siege, the plague. . we’re all worn out.’

‘I’ll take my chances.’ They reached Zida’s shack, a kind of cone of turf heaped up on poles. ‘Anything’s better than this shit.’ He aimed a mighty kick at the wall, and a chunk fell in with a dry rustle.

There was a high-pitched squawk, and out came the burly Libyan woman Zida had taken as his slave, mistress or third wife, depending on how drunk he was when he was telling you. She had bits of straw in her crisp dark hair, and dried mud in the bowl she was holding. ‘Look what you did to supper, idiot!’

‘We’re fighting in the morning, Roofa, my love. Fighting those Carthaginian pustules at last! Won’t you Libyans be glad to see the back of them?’

‘Never mind Carthaginian pustules. Look what you did!’ Still holding the pot, she stalked around the house, and pulled at the wrecked wall. ‘Now what’s going to keep the rats out?’

He laughed. ‘The rats are more at home in there than we are. Oh, I’m a fired-up warrior tonight and you’d better be ready for the passion that’s coming your way, woman!’

‘And you be ready for the pots and pans I’m throwing at your empty head. Get in this house. Get in!’ And she shoved him with the flat of her hand towards the crude gash of the door.

‘See you in an hour,’ Zida said to Kassu.

‘An hour.’

Roofa delivered one final mighty shove to the small of Zida’s back, and he fell into the house, weapons clattering, mail coat rustling.

Kassu walked on, grinning. But, as usual, he had lost his good humour by the time he had got home.

His own house was a marginally tidier, marginally better-built box of sod, in a rough street of similar properties. He stood before the house, looking at the old worn-out blankets that hung over the door, the patch of ground where they had tried to grow peas and beans but the plants had been devoured by rats and rabbits before they had a chance. It was hard to imagine a more depressing prospect, even if you hadn’t known what the atmosphere was like inside. Angrily he pushed indoors.

In the single room within, one lamp burned. Oil was expensive; all you could get was thick, gloopy stuff that was said to come from some animal of the sea. Henti was sitting cross-legged under the lamp, stitching an expensive-looking officer’s cloak, dyed deep purple. The cloak wasn’t Kassu’s, but that wasn’t unusual. The whole Hatti nation had pitched up on the plain before Carthage for this end-of-the-world war, and the whole nation was contributing to the effort. Kassu knew women who worked in the manufactories, even in the forges.

In the corner, meanwhile, Pimpira was grinding grain. He kept his head bowed, his eyes averted, subservient. He lived with Kassu and Henti as a slave once more, though he slept with his parents in a big barracks during the night, both of them having survived the March. The only sound in the room was the soft, repetitive, scratching rasp of Pimpira’s grindstone — and under that, a soft, breathy singing. Henti, murmuring an old Kaskan lullaby. Kassu had heard it before, it had been taught her by her grandmother on her mother’s side, who had come from that region. She probably didn’t even know she was singing it.

Kassu leaned over his wife. Her head was bowed, and he saw the neat parting in her long dark hair, the tight bun at her neck. ‘You’ve been with him,’ he said softly.

She didn’t look up. ‘Have I?’

‘I know. I always know. I can see him on you. Smell him. Hear him in the songs you sing.’

‘Why don’t you stop us, if you still care? Oh, I forgot. You had your chance, and you weren’t man enough to take it.’

‘We fight in the morning.’

Now she looked up at him. ‘What?’

‘The Carthaginians are coming out. Our scouts have sent word.’

Uncertain, she bent her head and kept sewing. ‘I thought that general of theirs who has taken over the city, the Roman, has been refusing to give battle.’

‘Evidently he changed his mind. That’s Romans for you — probably why they always lose. Indecisive. So you see, my dear wife, this might be the last time we will be together this side of the grave.’

She looked up again. ‘Do you want-’

He laughed and pulled back. ‘I only have an hour. We’re to muster and advance on the city, to be ready before dawn. I’m to report to Himuili himself. So unless you can do something quick — has Palla taught you any more whore’s tricks?’

She put aside the cloak she had been mending. ‘I’ll help you prepare. Pimpira, food for the master, now.’

Kassu was deflated at her calm. She always had been the stronger one.

He began to pull together his kit.

So, before the dawn had fully broken, the Hatti army drew up on the desiccated plain, west of Carthage. Kassu reported to Himuili, his general.

And he was handed a horse. The beast was a nag, bony and limping slightly, but it was, undoubtedly, a horse. Somewhat to his surprise he found himself riding with Himuili and other senior commanders, even including Prince Arnuwanda himself, as they inspected their forces. In the often chaotic months since the siege had been laid Kassu had enjoyed a kind of promotion that wasn’t necessarily reflected in his rank. He seemed to be recognised as one of Himuili’s more literate and numerate junior officers, and was therefore useful in great feats of organisation, such as the running of the Hatti’s military camp-city, and now in drawing up the army in good order, ready for this climactic battle. So here was Kassu in the dawn light, passing before tens of thousands of men ready for battle, on a horse.

Himuili watched him, amused. ‘Comfortable, soldier?’

‘Yes, sir. Well, I can feel this nag’s bones through the saddle. I thought I’d come no closer to a horse again than a hoof boiling in a stock pot.’

Himuili barked a laugh. ‘Well, it’s your lucky day. We’ve been keeping back the surviving beasts for today, for the battle that we knew would come — keeping them out of the sight of hungry scumbags like you, Kassu. You can guess how many men have gone to their graves because we kept a horse alive instead, but that’s something we will have to sort out in the afterlife.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Shut up. Look along the line.’ He pointed.

Kassu looked north. On the Hatti army’s left flank he made out cavalry units: men and horses, some mounted, some leading their horses.

‘So what do you see?’

‘Our own cavalry.’ The men were each equipped with lance and sword, and a small round shield. ‘And light archers. Mongols?’

‘Good, yes.’

‘Others equipped with Frankish bows.’ These were gadgets of wood and iron; you turned handles to wind a thick cord back across a frame. They were awkward to handle but the bolts they delivered could pierce thick armour. ‘What about the Almughavars?’

‘On the right wing.’

Kassu turned to see. These riders of the steppe were lancers; they carried four or five iron-tipped javelins that they would hurl one by one, and then they would drive forward at an infantry unit with a long spear. Once they closed they would snap the spear to use it as a shorter thrusting weapon.

‘All these lads of the steppe have worked out their own way of fighting,’ Himuili murmured. ‘Godless wretches who drink their horses’ blood by day and hump them by night, but formidable fighters if you use them right. If we get one good charge out of them I’ll be happy. Well, it might be enough, for the Carthaginians are probably in a worse state than we are.’

He turned his horse’s head to the east, towards Carthage, and led Kassu a little further away from the line. The plain before Carthage was turning yellow-brown, like the desert, from all the sandstorms, but you could still see the hummocks and ridges that had once marked out farms and orchards, and the ruins of broken-down buildings stuck out of the dirt like broken limbs. And beyond all that, on the horizon, Kassu could see the walls of the city itself, a line of dirty white, studded with towers.

Himuili grunted. ‘A formidable sight.’

‘Yes, sir. But even from here you can see how the walls have been blackened by our fires. Anyhow, Carthage itself isn’t the prize. Carthage is just an obstacle on the road to Egypt, and all its lovely grain.’

Himuili grinned, leaned over and slapped his back. ‘Good response. You should talk to Palla about putting some of this stuff in his sermons to the troops, which for me are a bit heavy on the suffering and submission of Jesus. Ah, but you and Palla have history, don’t you? Well, forget I mentioned him.’

He turned his horse again so they looked back at the army of the Hatti, drawn up for battle, blocks of men, their armour and polished weapons glittering in the light of the rising sun. Kassu could see the restless rustle of the cavalry units on the left and right wings. Arnuwanda with his party was galloping before the line, under a great banner of Jesus Sharruma, a colourful little knot of motion. Jesus Himself had been brought out of His temple and positioned on a cart just behind the central phalanx, a towering statue encrusted with precious metals and jewels, shining in the low sunlight.

‘So you see the formation,’ Himuili said. ‘Our best troops in the centre, the Bodyguards and the Golden Spearmen, before Jesus, to be led by Arnuwanda himself. The other central units have been handed to the Chief of Bodyguards, the Chief of the Wine Cellar, the prince’s brothers and cousins. .’

In the Hatti system the King was always the commander in chief — but as the Hatti nation had no king just now, with Uhhaziti’s coronation postponed until after the fall of Carthage, Prince Arnuwanda took that formal command, while relatives, more men of the royal blood, filled the other senior posts. Kassu suspected that Arnuwanda would be allowed to lead the initial advance, but would be whisked to the back of the lines by his own guards before the real action started. ‘Who have they given you, sir?’

Himuili pointed to his right, and spat between his helmet’s cheek flaps. ‘That bunch of bears.’ They were a unit of Scand and Rus. Bristling with fur and in their horned helmets, from this distance they did look like animals. ‘I’ve learned enough of their language to order them about. Mostly obscenities. You should see them in their quarters, Kassu. Hairy as my left bollock, every last one of them, but when they strip naked to scrape off the filth, you see that their entire skin is coated in tattoos. If I were a Carthaginian I’d take care where I pierce such a fellow when I kill him, for his flayed hide would make a good souvenir to hang on the wall. But they’re ferocious, I’ll say that.

‘Well. There you see it, soldier. What do you think of our chances today?’

Kassu thought carefully before answering. Himuili was quick to anger, but he knew the general wanted the truth. ‘There’s a lot of us, sir. But a lot more have died since we got here. And we look. .’

‘Say it, man.’

‘Weakened. Even before the fighting starts. By the hunger, the thirst. Many of us have had a brush with one sickness or another even if we haven’t succumbed to the plague, and every dose of the shits weakens you a bit more.’

‘You’re not wrong about that. Ten days back you’d have observed me attempting to spew up my own arsehole. Look how scrawny they are — even those cursed Rus, for all their bluster. Look how slowly they move. I think we’ve prepared as well as we can today. But even so, here we are, Kassu, the last army of the Hatti, and it’s an army of skeletons, of wraiths.’

‘Perhaps. But it’s the Carthaginians’ last chance too. .’

Now there was a trumpet blast, cries of warning, fingers pointing east. Turning their horses, they saw that the great gates of Carthage had opened.

Himuili grinned. ‘The game’s on. Good! Come on, soldier, let’s get back to our line before it blows away in the desert wind.’ And he flicked his horse’s reins and galloped away.