Iron Winter

71

The Hatti negotiating party was to be met by Barmocar at the Byrsa gate.

Pyxeas and Rina had been invited to join the official Carthaginian response as representatives of Northland in exile, and as embodiments of the knowledge and power that had crushed the morale of the Hatti siege forces. Rina insisted that Nelo should attend too, to see the end of the story that had had such an impact on his own young life.

So Nelo met his mother and great-uncle at the gate. Waiting for the Hatti, they were all wrapped in their winter cloaks for, despite the arrival of another spring, it was a cold, blustery morning, with flakes of snow driven on a swirling wind. This was a part of Carthage Nelo rarely visited, much too grand for Northlander exiles, even now.

And Fabius still dangled from his cross high above the gate, bones and flesh and cartilage, wrapped in his cloak of Roman purple.

Carthalo of the suffetes was here too, waiting with Rina. He regarded Nelo blankly. ‘You are the soldier boy who scribbled at the whim of the Roman.’

Pyxeas flared. He was an old man, bent, weary from the long journey from which he would likely never recover, yet he straightened with dignity to face Carthalo. ‘A boy who was ready and willing to fight in the army that defended this city. Perhaps he deserves a little respect, sir.’ He glanced up at Fabius. ‘And perhaps the Roman does too. I’m sorry if it troubles you, Nelo, to see him abused like this.’

Nelo shrugged. ‘I’ve seen worse on the battlefield. Fabius is gone. His people believe that when you die you cross a dark river to the next world.’ But you needed coins to pay the ferryman, and Nelo knew that some of Fabius’ soldiers had sworn that when the body was finally cut down they would bury it with Roman honours, with coins on his eyeless sockets. ‘That’s not Fabius up there.’

‘No,’ came a wheezing voice. ‘Not Fabius, but a symbol of him. And that’s what counts, isn’t it?’

They turned, and saw that the party of Hatti dignitaries was approaching, processing up a cobbled street towards the gate. The party was small, just a handful of Hatti nobles in their brightly coloured court robes, with one senior military officer, flanked by an escort of wary Hatti and Carthaginian soldiers. The street had been cleared for the day, to be sure that nobody got a chance to have a swipe at the Hatti in revenge for the long siege.

The man who had spoken was old, stooped; he wore a long robe decorated with the crossed palm-leaves symbol of the Hatti god Jesus, and boots with toes upturned in the Hatti style. Everybody was looking at him, and he smiled. ‘I seem to have spoken out of turn, before the introductions were done. Well, I don’t imagine we need rely on protocol overmuch today, do we? My name is Angulli. I am a priest; my title is Father of the Churches.’ He gestured to the woman he accompanied. ‘And this is My Sun Hastayar the Tawananna.’

Carthalo stepped forward and gravely welcomed the queen. She looked magnificent, Nelo thought, her hair lustrous, her face painted white with vivid red spots on cheeks and forehead. Gold thread shone bright in her robe of rich crimson, despite the clouded sky.

The senior Hatti officer, a general, stepped up to Nelo. ‘I know you.’

This was Himuili, who had commanded the Hatti forces in the field, under the prince, Arnuwanda. ‘Yes, sir, I-’

‘Shut up. You’re the Northlander who Fabius insisted on bringing to his parlays.’ He glanced up at the crucified Roman. ‘Much good it did him, eh? Standing here today you’d never believe that he won and I lost. This is how Carthage treats its victorious generals, is it?’

‘Carthage is always suspicious of its generals, successful or not. And Fabius did take over the government.’

Himuili grunted. ‘Smartest thing he ever did. And so there he dangles with his guts hanging out. As a symbol, of course. The question is, a symbol meant for who? Other uppity Carthaginian officers? Or us, the Hatti? “Look how strong we are, we Carthaginians. We can defeat you and afford to string up our winning general.” By Jesus’ armpit, I hate diplomacy.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Shut up.’

Now the party were led through the gate into the Byrsa district. This was the first formal visit of the Hatti leaders to Carthage since the day of the aborted battle nearly half a year earlier. As Angulli had suggested it didn’t seem to be a day for excessive formality, but a certain precedence emerged anyhow. The Tawananna walked flanked by the city’s two suffetes, while Pyxeas and Nelo’s mother escorted Angulli the priest, and Himuili walked with senior Carthaginian officers. Nelo and the rest of the party followed on behind, with soldiers of both nations flanking them. Interpreters hovered, murmuring into their masters’ ears like bees seeking pollen.

The Hatti were to be taken up to the formal buildings at the Byrsa’s summit where treaties between the nations would be outlined, to be formally written up by scribes on both sides and sealed at a later date. Those Hatti who had not visited this place before visibly tried not to stare at the striking layout of the citadel, the radial avenues leading up to a summit crowned by monumental buildings, and Hannibal’s column at the very apex.

Once there had been shops, offices, fine expensive residences, many buildings rising two, three, four storeys over the streets. Now the shops were closed, the offices empty. But several buildings had been knocked through to make room for new functions. They were manufactories, here in the most secure quarter of the city. As they neared, Nelo could hear the shouts of the workmen, and a hammering noise, metal struck by metal. The suffetes and their aides had been determined that the Hatti should see these workshops. And now through the open doors of one great building they glimpsed the components of more fire-drug weapons being cast. There was a fully functioning forge where workers hammered at lumps of iron, and a carpentry shop where giant wooden formers were constructed, and then a series of great benches where cast-iron strips, white-hot, were hammered flat to be fitted around the formers. Nelo could see the way the manufacture of the weapons went, from one step to the next. And at the finish stood a complete eruptor, the bulbous belly with the stubby nozzle, just as had been unveiled on the plain of battle. The men who laboured in the forge heat were stripped to their loincloths, but they wore gloves that stretched up to cover their forearms, saving their skin from red-hot splashes.

‘More symbols for us to gawp at,’ growled Himuili.

Hastayar gently chided him. ‘Now, General, we’re here on a mission of friendship, and we must be polite. But he’s right, of course,’ she said to Carthalo. ‘You clearly intend to impress on us your capability to churn out these fire pots of yours. You drive home your dominance, like a booted heel driven into the back of a fallen soldier.’

Carthalo smiled. ‘A little crudely put, madam.’

‘But I am right.’

She was, but since the day of the battle Nelo had learned more of the truth. The eruptor that had fired its fatal shot at the Hatti ranks that day was only the fifth to be successfully constructed by Pyxeas’ conspiracy of Northlander engineers here in Carthage — and only the third to have been fired without blowing itself up, turning its firing crew to an expanding cloud of blood mist and bone shards in the process. Although Nelo supposed that in itself would have been a spectacular demonstration. Most of the eruptors that had been pushed to the crest of the walls of Carthage had been harmless dummies. Some weren’t even cast iron.

Himuili grunted. ‘These big iron beasts are all very well, but I see no sign of their lethal breath. I mean this substance you call the fire drug.’

Pyxeas smiled. ‘That’s kept under lock and key elsewhere. I, Pyxeas, offer my apologies. It has been a state secret of the Northlanders for centuries, and now is a secret shared only with Carthage.’

‘I do know it came from Cathay originally,’ Himuili said, probing.

‘That’s true,’ Pyxeas said. ‘In fact Cathay scholars discovered it entirely accidentally. They were seeking an elixir of life, a drug to banish death for ever. Well, what they came up with is an elixir of death, I suppose. A quirky gift of their gods. And that is why it is known as a “drug” to this day.

‘General, I heard you talking of symbols to my great-nephew. Of course you’re right. Carthage seeks to impress you today. You are a military man. Think of the future, sir. Imagine a more powerful eruptor, capable of smashing down a city wall with a single stone. Imagine an eruptor that can fly through the air like a bird. Or imagine an eruptor small enough to hold in the hand of a single warrior. You think this is fanciful? Soon Carthage will have all this, as you never will.’

‘We know we are beaten, scholar,’ murmured the old priest. ‘Speak gently.’

Now, after the weapon manufactory, the party was led past another workshop where a much more positive symbol was under construction. In a lofty hall a dozen artisans worked on a tremendous statue of Jesus Sharruma, the Hatti god. For now it was a rough marble form, but Nelo knew the plan was to decorate the god as richly as had been the holy image brought from Hattusa. Old Angulli made the crossed-arms sign of the palm leaves, and bowed down, muttering a prayer.

Carthalo said smoothly, ‘You can see how we labour to heal the wound we inflicted. The new god will include the smashed fragments of the old.’

‘It’s true,’ Angulli said. ‘I supervised the collection myself, especially of the remains of the core wooden sculpture created by the hands of Him. The fragments are splashed with the blood of our soldiers — but that only sanctifies them further.’

‘We have invited your best sculptors and artists to work with our own — we have given you every facility. And when it is done, you understand, we will offer you the statue of your god — together with the bones of His Mother, which treasure has been saved from Northland and the ice.’

‘I have heard of this,’ Angulli said. ‘It is an extraordinary gesture. On behalf of my people, of my god, I thank you for this.’

‘When He is complete, Jesus Sharruma can lead you to your new home.’

Hastayar said restlessly, ‘It’s easy to say that. But where are we to go? We had no plans beyond the conquest of your city, I admit.’

Carthalo said, ‘We are not monsters. We will take your sick, your young, your old, all those who cannot walk, even though our own resources are strained. The rest of you must go.’

‘But, I say again, where? I don’t imagine you’d welcome it if we marched east into Egypt, your breadbasket.’

Carthalo glanced at Pyxeas, who stepped forward. ‘Not east,’ the scholar said. ‘West. Go west from here, along the coast-’

Himuili snapped, ‘Until we run out of land and find ourselves facing the ocean. Then what?’

‘Then go west again,’ Pyxeas said. ‘Take ships across the ocean.’

‘We will help you,’ Carthalo said.

Pyxeas smiled. ‘Though I’ve never made the journey myself, we Northlanders have been crossing the Western Ocean for millennia. We will guide you.’

Hastayar seemed baffled. ‘And when we have crossed the ocean — what then?’

‘There are new lands waiting for you,’ Carthalo said. ‘Whole continents, where you can build your next Hattusa.’

Himuili scowled. ‘Lands with people in them already, that’s what I’ve heard.’

‘But with room for more,’ Pyxeas insisted.

And Nelo, looking at him, wondered if that was the first time he had ever heard his great-uncle tell a flat lie.

At length the group walked on, heading for the great buildings at the summit of the Byrsa, and the formal sessions.

Nelo walked with Pyxeas. ‘You didn’t tell the truth,’ he said accusingly. ‘You told the Hatti that the western continents have room. No, they don’t. Especially now the winters are taking their grip, for they must be suffering over there as we are over here.’

‘Well, true, that was a lie I told the Hatti. But I balanced it by telling the Carthaginians a lie too.’

‘What lie?’

‘That the Hatti will never have the secrets of the fire drug. As soon as their great fleet of ships is ready to sail, I intend that they should be given the secrets of the drug. With that advantage none of the peoples of the western lands will be able to resist them.’

Nelo stared, shocked. ‘Why would you do such a thing?’

Pyxeas sighed. ‘It was a difficult decision to make. Of course it is difficult. The suffering that will follow from this act, the thousands that will die. I — we, for the other Northlander elders in exile concurred — we are playing games on a continental scale. But we have to be rid of the Hatti, you know. There isn’t room for them here, especially not if we are to build our own city, a New Etxelur. Sharing Africa with the Carthaginians will be bad enough. And then there is Mali, south of the desert, rich from its gold mines, which has been relatively spared by the longwinter so far. Now the mansa is making what some regard as aggressive noises towards its northern neighbours. We have enough to handle here. Let the People of the Jaguar deal with the Hatti.’

‘I can’t believe you will give away precious Northlander lore.’

‘But the Hatti would probably soon steal it anyway. And besides, the fire drug knowledge is nothing. A shiny bauble, a whiz-bang toy that distracts small minds, like those of princes and generals. Once, you know, the great treasure of Northland was flint, a particularly fine lode that was mined from Etxelur. That was what men crossed the world for! Now nobody cares for flint at all. But since the age of Ana our true treasure has been Northland’s deep and ancient collective memory, our profound understanding of the world and its cycles — even as those cycles scatter us across the globe. Which is why I must return to Northland, by the way.’

‘What?’ Nelo stopped and stared at him. ‘Uncle, are you mad? The weather was bad enough last year when I travelled down with my mother. It may not even be possible to make the return journey now. Your journey to Cathay nearly killed you!’

‘Ah, but I live on.’

‘Now you want to do it again?’

‘I must, Nephew. I brought back much lore from Cathay. I have since reached certain conclusions. . I must consult any scholarship that survives at Etxelur, and I must reach the Wall Archive before it is lost to the ice altogether. For we must build an Archive in New Etxelur, wherever it is founded, and we must stock it with the heritage of the past. To preserve the idea of Northland, and our learning and scholarship.’

Snow swirled down, thicker, heavy flakes that beat like chill butterflies against their faces. They walked on, side by side.

‘I will come with you,’ Nelo said impulsively.

Pyxeas studied him. ‘Are you sure? I have Avatak.’

‘He is a good man. He will be better with me at his side. There is nothing for me here.’

Pyxeas, limping as he climbed, clapped Nelo on the shoulder. ‘Very well. But make sure you secure your drawings first. They must be preserved too. That mad Roman was right, that they are a true first-hand record of the last war in history. .’

Talking, arguing, they climbed the hill, cloaks clutched tight around their bodies. The snow fell thicker, settling on the rooftops of Carthage.