Iron Winter

63

Nelo saw it all, that fateful day, the day that everything changed, for Fabius, for Carthage — for everybody Saw it all from beginning to end. Drew it all, and remembered.

It began before dawn, on another chill late summer’s day. Nelo, in his barrack, was woken by a shake from Gisco, unexpectedly gentle, not the usual boot in the back. ‘Out you get, aurochs,’ he murmured. ‘Got a special job for you. But keep quiet about it. No need to disturb the other cock-pullers in their slumbers. You too, Suniatus.’

‘Sergeant-’

‘What did I say?’ Gisco snapped, in a whisper. ‘Keep that mouth of yours shut.’

The barrack room was dark, with only a single sputtering lantern burning in one corner. After another night in here the air was thick with beery farts, the acid stink of rotting feet. Only Nelo and Suniatus were moving; the rest of the troop slumbered on.

Suniatus pulled on socks and boots. ‘Just us, Sergeant?’

‘Just you.’

‘Why? I mean, why me and that?’ He jerked a thumb at Nelo.

‘Because I can trust you two. Yes, you as well, Northlander, I know I can rely on you to follow an order while keeping your mouth shut, and you can do this little job for me and still be free to scribble your drawings for the rest of the day. This army of ours is full of useless Libyans, and useless sods, and useless Libyan sods, and two reliable men are hard to find.’

Suniatus grinned. ‘Hear that, aurochs? You’re reliable.’ He picked up his sword in its scabbard. ‘So what’s the job, Sergeant?’

‘To save Carthage.’

‘What, again?’

‘Just get on with it.’

Nelo grabbed his weapons and satchel and made for the door. Suniatus couldn’t resist clowning; he walked on exaggerated tiptoe and shoved Nelo in the back, trying to make him stumble. But they got out of the barracks without disturbing anybody else.

They emerged onto a silent street. The sand that had blown in from the desert scraped on the cobbles under Nelo’s boots. Gisco had left a lantern by the barracks door; he raised this now and scrutinised a bit of paper. Nelo saw it was a list of addresses, all in Megara. This barracks, by the city wall, was on the periphery of the suburb.

Suniatus glanced over the sergeant’s shoulder. ‘I know the first address, sir. That street anyhow. There’s a whorehouse where they have these Balearic women who-’

‘All right, Suni. Just lead the way.’

The soldier strode confidently through the darkened streets. With experience Suniatus was becoming a good soldier, Nelo realised, for all his bullying and bluster. The word in the barracks was that he would already have had a few promotions if not for his habit of punching out his comrades when drunk.

The sky was a lid of cloud, the city all but pitch-dark save for the occasional gleam of a lantern in the houses and shut-up shops and shrines. Nelo wasn’t sure what time it was, but these were the hours of the curfew the suffetes had imposed months before, and the streets were empty — silent save only for distant soft whistles, the signals of the patrolling guard. One of Fabius’ iron rules was that the streets had to be kept clear, there could be nobody sleeping out in the open, in alleyways or doorways, as had become common since the city had filled up with nestspills. The rule seemed to be working well. Occasionally you would hear a scurrying in the dark, a rustle, perhaps footsteps, a rat or wild dog, or maybe some human scavenger. But Nelo, eyes wide open, saw nothing.

Once they passed a cart hauled by a couple of beefy-looking Libyans, perhaps slaves, and led by a soldier in a dark cloak, his face hidden. The cart’s load was covered by a thick, bloodstained cloth, and Nelo did not need too much imagination to know what was under there. The deaths continued in a steady trickle, from hunger, from the blood plague and other diseases that swept like fires through the city’s crowded tenements. Nelo had found these deaths horrific when he had first come to live inside the city walls. But Fabius had once told him that cities were always like this, even in the good times, even with plentiful food and water. It made Nelo sharply homesick for the wide, empty, orderly landscape of Northland, where people did not die like this.

They came to a darkened property that had once, according to a faded sign over the door, been a manufactory of jewellery. Now the frontage was scarred by fire, and the door had been broken down.

Gisco checked his bit of paper. ‘This is the one.’ He gestured to Suniatus. ‘No need to knock.’

Suni grinned, drew his sword, kicked the door in, and led the way inside.

If this had been a manufactory it had long been stripped bare, the contents looted. Now in two, three, four ground-floor rooms people huddled, whole families crammed into one corner or another, mothers clutching infants, cowering back from Gisco’s light. There was a complicated stink of milk, piss, shit, sweat, and deep ingrained dirt. Gisco, without a word, stalked through the rooms, blade in hand, holding his lantern so he could see faces. Eyes gleamed bright from heaps of rags. He still hadn’t told Suni or Nelo what he was looking for.

‘Not here,’ he said once they had gone through all the rooms. He saw that Suniatus had grabbed a bit of bread from some wretch, and was biting into the hard crust. ‘Oh, give that back, Suni.’ Suniatus cast the fragment over his shoulder, and the huddled forms scrambled for it. Gisco looked around. There was an upper floor, but the ceilings of the rooms were flimsy and cracked, and the dawn sky showed through, a reluctant grey.

‘Nothing up there, Sergeant,’ Suniatus offered. ‘I saw from outside. Top floor pulled down, for the wood to burn, I guess.’

‘All right.’ Gisco stalked through the rooms again, ignoring the people who had to shrink back out of his way. At length he found a hatch in the floor. ‘Aha! A cellar.’ He gestured at Suni, who found an iron ring fixed to the hatch, and hauled it up. Gisco held up his lantern over the hole. Nelo glimpsed a wooden ladder, a floor of packed earth beneath.

Gisco nodded to Suniatus, his finger to his lips. ‘You first, Suni. Quiet, now.’

Suni grinned, settled into the hatch, and let himself down the ladder one-handed. Gisco passed the lantern. Suni looked around, then headed off determinedly to one corner, moving out of sight.

Nelo waited with Gisco. Somewhere an infant murmured, and was hushed. Nelo wondered what happened to these people when it rained, under that roof. But then it rarely rained in Carthage nowadays.

There was a brief sound of a struggle, a surprised grunt. Then Suni called up, ‘You can come down, sir.’

Nelo led the way down the ladder.

The cellar, whatever it had once stored, was stripped as bare as the rest of the house. In one corner a man lay face down on a pile of blankets, with Suni grasping one twisted arm and kneeling on his back. There was a heap of clothes, a discarded mail coat, and weapons — a battleaxe leaning against one wall. And there was a woman, Nelo saw, cowering in the corner, grasping a blanket to her chest.

Gisco took in the scene at a glance. ‘Good work, Suni.’ He strode across to the man, got a handful of hair and pulled his head back, making the man grunt. Nelo saw the hair was bright red, and that the man was bearded. Gisco dropped the man’s head casually, as if dropping a sack of potatoes. ‘This is the one. Who’s she?’

The woman sat up straighter. ‘Sir. My name is Satilis. My husband owns this shop. Owned — I have not seen him for some time.’

Gisco leaned down and peered at her in the lantern light. ‘She’s older than I thought.’

Suni grinned. ‘Maybe this fellow likes ‘em wrinkly.’

‘Sir — are you acting under the orders of the suffetes? Of the Popular Assembly?’

‘Aren’t we all?’

‘I demand my rights. We have always paid our taxes and tolls, officer. My husband’s father once served on the Tribunal of One Hundred and Four. It was bad enough that my shop, my home, was forced to open its doors to stinking farmers’ families from the country. Now this man has come, he just walked in here, he doesn’t even speak our tongue, but he had a letter demanding asylum, a letter from General Fabius, and, and-’

Suni guffawed. ‘General Fabius? Sure he did.’

Gisco stood straight. ‘Get out of here, madam.’

‘What?’

‘You won’t want to see what’s to come. Get out. Shoo, shoo.’ And he chased her as he would a reluctant dog.

The woman got up and scrambled for the ladder, which was hard to negotiate in her blanket. Both Gisco and Suniatus stared as she climbed, revealing thighs, buttocks, ample hips.

Gisco sighed. ‘That will keep me warm tonight.’

Suni laughed again. ‘Now what, sir? What do we do with this fellow? Haul him in?’

‘No time for that, Suni. He’s an obvious saboteur. Placed here to open the gates and let his brutish comrades into our city, along with their Hatti overlords. Finish him off.’

‘With pleasure. How?’

‘Behead him. Make it neat, would you?’

Suniatus lifted his blade, yanking the man’s head back; the man began to struggle, his teeth grating.

‘Oh, by the left bollock of mighty Teshub, kill the man first. Have some manners, Suniatus.’

‘Sorry, sir.’ Suniatus efficiently slit the man’s throat with a scrape of his blade, held him down while he bled out, and then sawed off the head, grunting and complaining as his blade got stuck in the vertebrae.

Meanwhile Gisco turned to Nelo. ‘You. Find a sack, a bag.’

‘Yes, sir. What for, sir?’

‘Our keepsake. This brute’s crimson head, boy. We’re on a mission to root out agents of the Hatti princes, like this one.’ He said this absently, while perusing his list by the light of the lantern. ‘You still here? Go, boy, go!’

So they proceeded through Megara. Nelo had to carry the sack, which dripped blood as they walked, and was surprisingly heavy. It got heavier yet as they visited a second house, and a third, each time finding a solitary Rus or Scand warrior living among fearful Carthaginians, each time coming upon him without warning, each time coming away with a head. The whole business, the stink of the heads, sickened Nelo.

Yet it puzzled him too. Even when the warriors saw them coming they made no attempt to resist, not until it was too late and they realised their fate at Suniatus’ hands. They did jabber out pleas in their own harsh tongues, but that was to be expected, and none of the killing party understood a word.

On the fourth killing Suniatus whistled as he sawed at the man’s neck. ‘This is the life for me, aurochs,’ he said to Nelo. ‘Killing these brutes is as easy as picking olives off a tree.’ He threw over the head for Nelo to catch.

They came upon the fifth man in an upper room of a small abandoned temple. By now the day was bright, the curfew lifted, and in the streets outside the wagons of the dead continued their mournful progress, amid the gathering noises of the city day. This time Suniatus struggled to get the Scand on his back before despatching him. Gisco was forced to help, sitting on the man’s legs while Suniatus pinned his chest.

And the man saw Nelo. His eyes widened. ‘Northlander.’

Nelo was startled. He had said the word in the tongue of Etxelur.

‘Northlander. You are a Northlander. I can tell, the hair, the eyes. I visit — I have visited-’ Suniatus punched him in the mouth, knocking his head to the side. But he stayed conscious, and spoke from a bloody mouth. ‘Please. Mistake. They make mistake. I am loyal, loyal to Fabius!’

Suniatus recognised the general’s name, and sat back, panting, pinning the man’s arms. ‘What did he say? Something about my general?’ And he slammed the back of his hand into the Scand’s face.

‘Get on with it, Suni,’ growled Gisco, pressing on the man’s legs.

‘Sir.’ Suniatus made a more determined effort to contain the man’s struggles.

But the Scand still tried to talk to Nelo. ‘Please! Fabius, his men take us, he speaks to us. Offers us gold and bread, more than the Hatti, if we fight for him. He will give us back to our families, when Hatti are gone. That’s what he said.’

‘Shut up!’ Another blow with the back of the hand.

‘That’s what he said! Gold and bread! Look, look-’ But, pinned, he could not reach whatever he was after. Some proof of a contract with Fabius? ‘That’s what he said-’

At last Suniatus drew his blade across the neck. The man died, choking on his own blood, gaze still fixed on Nelo.

As Suniatus removed the head, Nelo said, ‘Sir. He was speaking Northlander.’

‘What of it?’

‘He said the general recruited them. General Fabius, sir.’

‘No, he didn’t.’

‘He gave them gold and bread, and told them-’

Gisco stalked over to Nelo and loomed over him. ‘No, he didn’t, aurochs. You didn’t hear him say any such thing. Because if you did I’d have to cut off your precious artist’s hands, and then I’d let Suni finish you off like the rest of these treacherous scum, and maybe I’ll do that anyhow because you annoy me, Nelo, you’re a waste of good muscle. Now. Did this man say anything to you?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Good. Right. Where to next?’