Bronze Summer

59

The commanders stalked before the Northlander lines. ‘Hold your places! Let them come at you! Let the archers do their work!’ The words were repeated by bellowing translators in the tongues of the Northlanders, Albians and Gairans, and in the several dialects spoken by the Hatti warriors.

Milaqa was at the rear of the lines now, in the ruins of an abandoned, oft-raided settlement, standing on an old flood mound with Raka, Kilushepa and other leaders. From here they got a clear view of the field, of the units of the Northlanders and their allies, of the scuffed little arena in the middle of the field from which Deri and Muwa hurried back with the body of Tibo — and of the Trojan horde closing like an approaching storm.

It was happening, she realised. The battle that had been anticipated all summer, if not since the Midsummer Invasion last year. It was here, it was now. But the scale of the armies drawn up on the plain below the Wall, the thousands of men and their glittering weapons, the rigid discipline of their phalanx blocks, the sheer determination to kill they represented — nothing had prepared her for the reality of it. And already blood had been spilled, her own cousin’s.

But battle had yet to be joined. In this still, oddly luminous moment, Milaqa looked around, at Kilushepa surrounded by a handful of Hatti soldiers, the Tawananna sleek and determined in a grand, colourful, highly visible robe that swept to the ground. Raka, Noli and the other Annids also wore their robes of office, their faces pinched after the hunger of the blockaded summer. There was Teel, her uncle, standing in his owl cloak with the others, all his manipulations and stratagems now ending in this day of blood and bronze and iron. And the soldiers, yelling, waving their weapons, holding the line as the Trojans advanced, their commanders whipping up their lust for the fight. There were a few Hatti veterans among them, and foreign units from Gaira and Albia, but most were Northlanders, from across the Wall and the lowland, here to defend their homeland from the greatest threat it had faced since it had been saved from the sea itself.

But, Milaqa thought, looking across the battlefield, they must be outnumbered two to one by Qirum’s forces. Only their wits and their courage would enable them to see out the day.

The Trojans passed some predetermined mark, and the Northlanders’ planned response began. First, to shouted commands, the Northlander archers raised their bows and began their lethal work. Soon the single arrow fired by Mi with such devastating consequences was followed by a hundred others, a thousand, a flock that seemed to blacken the sky as they rose. The slingers too hurled their lumps of sandstone. As the volleys fell Milaqa heard distant cries, and gaps appeared briefly in the lines of the advancing Trojans. Yet the fall of arrows was not even. This was a stratagem of Kilushepa’s; she had suggested targeting the Trojans on Qirum’s left flank but sparing the Greeks at the centre, in the hope of causing rifts among the allies.

The advance was not stopped. Those who survived just stepped over the fallen, although Milaqa saw little knots of squabbling men form over the dead, like carrion birds, fighting for armour and weapons.

And now Milaqa saw arrows arcing up from the Trojan lines in a response. In half a dozen languages, there were cries of ‘Shields, shields!’ The men before her in their blocks and rows raised their shields, overlapping them with a clatter of wood on wood, and the Hatti troopers standing with Kilushepa on the exposed mound raised their own shields to make a kind of shell to protect their queen and the Annids. The first arrows fell, most clattering into leather shields, or falling away harmlessly, but some found a way through to soft flesh, and men fell screaming, some only paces from Milaqa, blood splashing bright. Yet still the lines held.

Next, to guttural commands, the units of Albians on the right of the Northland line formed up for their counter-charge. They were huge men, with good bronze weaponry but with shields only of wood, and no armour save for heavy skins of bear and wolf. These Pretani warriors, come to honour an ancient alliance between their country and Northland, were men of the thick forest that still coated the peninsula. Some said that as the farmers had advanced, clearing the forest that had once covered the Continent, the old gods had fled to Albia, and today they were ready to unleash their fury on the sons of the men who had burned them out. Whatever the truth of that, the Albians lacked the discipline of the others, despite months of training under Hatti officers, and it was thought they were best used as shock troops before the battle proper was joined.

Now, at their leaders’ barked commands, they roared, picked up the pace, and ran directly at the Trojan lines, apparently oblivious to arrow-fire. Milaqa saw how their bear-like aggression alarmed the Trojans, who closed up in their compact blocks.

Albians slammed into Trojans, and the fighting began at last, a collision of blades, blood and flesh.

And now, from the left of the Northland line, Milaqa saw the final surprise element planned by the military men: units of archers running right out onto the field, wielding their bows even as they ran into the closing gap between the armies.

Mi, beside commander Piseni himself, ran with the other archers through a narrowing corridor between the armies. She was dressed for speed, armed only with her bow and her quiver of special iron-tipped arrows, with no more protection than a light tunic and the boots on her feet. The Trojan infantry was close, only heartbeats from meeting the Northlander army.

Piseni, the Hatti who had trained the Northlanders’ archers, was a warrior of the bodyguard of the Hatti king in Hattusa. He was the best archer Mi had ever seen — better than her, better than Medoc, better by far than anybody she had practised with back on Kirike’s Land. And as they had trained through the summer he had picked out Mi and fifty others, the fastest runners, the best shots, for a special assignment. A task to be completed at a specific moment in the battle, he said — one moment that could determine the outcome of the war.

Now that moment had come, and here she was running between the closing lines. Nothing in her training had prepared her for this reality. The charging phalanxes didn’t seem human; they were like huge animals, bristling with armour and weapons, that would roll over her and obliterate her in an instant. The air was thick with arrows, slingshot and javelins, some of them lanced into the ground close to Mi, and the noise was tremendous, thousands of male voices yelling as one.

But she was here, with a chance to kill a few Trojans and avenge her adopted mother. What elsewas life for? She screamed with aggression and exhilaration.

Close to the centre of the facing lines, Piseni stopped dead. ‘Make ready!’ he yelled. He took his own bow, notched it with a grey-tipped arrow, and aimed it at a running Trojan. ‘Make your formation! Hold your fire!’

Mi stood beside him, readying her own shot. Others stood at her sides and behind her back as the formation gathered. There was a moment of stillness, of waiting.

She watched them coming, over the length of her arrow, the men leading the Trojan charge, and her archer’s eyes made out every detail. The fore-fighters, Piseni had called them, the elite warriors, those who would lead the charge for glory. They were bigger physically than the men who followed, and the best equipped. They wore armour of varying designs, bronze breastplates with extensions to cover the neck and shoulder and thighs, leather kilts, shin guards. Some wore conical helmets like the Hatti, some elaborate helmets with horsehair plumes or savage-looking boars’ tusks. They had shields of different types too, some shaped like towers, some with big indentations so they were like two shields in one. They all carried weapons, spears and swords in hand or in scabbards. Many had armour plates or masks or grills over their faces. Closer and closer they came, and still the archers held their positions.

Piseni called, ‘Hold your fire! Don’t waste a shot!’ — and an axe caught him in the chest, a lucky shot by some brute in the Trojan lines, and he was thrown back, landing with his chest cavity splayed open, splinters of broken bone sticking out of his frothy flesh.

Mi looked down with horror. She had never been so close to violent death before, even though she herself had killed. The rest of the archers stood in their rows as Piseni had taught them, their bows notched, as shocked as she was.

And still the Trojans advanced.

Mi screamed, ‘Fire!’ She released her own bow.

The arrows sang through the air, taking only a heartbeat to reach their targets. The hardened iron tips punched through softer bronze breastplates and faceplates. Fore-fighters went down, shocked and screaming, to be trampled by those who followed. Mi knelt, notching her bow again, as the row behind her fired in turn. And then she stood and fired again. You had to make every shot count, it had been impressed on her in training over and over. Though Zidanza and his apprentices had toiled at their foundries deep within the Wall all winter, there had been no time to make as much iron as they hoped, and not enough ore either, once the shipments arriving over the Northern Ocean had been stopped, and some of the arrowheads, hastily manufactured, would inevitably be brittle or otherwise flawed. You had to make every decent shot take a life. So she picked her targets, one after another, that man’s visored face, the next’s shining breastplate. She loosed each arrow without thinking, imagining its flight, where it would strike, and then immediately launching another, over and over.

But now the Trojan lines were nearly on her, and the Northland lines too were breaking, running forward to meet the Trojans. Both sides carried spears two, three, four paces long. Too late Mi tried to run.

The two lines came crashing together all around her, the long spears clattering and stabbing, and men cried out and blood spurted. A Trojan shield slammed into Mi, and she was on the ground. She had lost her bow, her quiver. She was surrounded by a forest of legs, of kilts and bronze armour plate, and over her head swords flashed and the long spears thrust, and the screaming intensified. A booted foot stamped on her back — no, she was being walked over. Then a hand grabbed the scruff of her tunic and hauled her back along the crowded ground, through the Northlander lines. It was Deri, she saw, yelling at her.

The hilt of a sword slammed into her temple and the world fell away.