Bronze Summer Read Free

forced a smile, but her eyes were like a hunted animal’s.
    He’d seen that look before in his women; they wanted his money, but feared the strength of his lust. This girl hadn’t satisfied him but he supposed it wasn’t her fault. He needed an athlete, to match him. A Spartan maid! Rummaging in the heap of stuff he found a tiny goblet, a miniature as you might make for a baby prince. It had lost its base and was badly dented, but it was silver, and it would keep this girl fed for a week or more – and her family, her babies, whoever controlled her, whatever shadowy figures lay behind the child-woman he had taken a fancy to in the street last night. ‘No. I won’t want you again. Here.’ He threw the cup over to her.
    She grabbed it, sniffed it, tucked it under the blanket out of his sight, gone in a flash. She smiled again. ‘You were strong. Like bull of legend—’
    He swept the back of his hand towards her, and she flinched. ‘You won’t get any more out of me. Out. Now. Oh, and empty the night soil bowls on your way.’ He turned his back and pulled on loincloth, tunic, boots. He heard her move around, finding her clothes. Then she was gone, and he knew he would never think of her again.
    He stood, fully dressed. The sudden movement brought a sharp pain to the base of his skull, a relic of the lousy wine which was all you could find in this town these days. He stretched and bent, tensing his muscles. He felt familiar twinges, the scar tissue on his back, the broken cheekbone that had never quite healed right, the burned patch on his arm – each a souvenir of a fight fought, and won. He found his bronze sword and swung it a couple of times, and he let out a roar. Blood pumping, lungs drawing in the foul air, he could feel the day’s recovery starting. It never took long. He was no bull, no war god, he wasn’t prone to flattery of that sort. But he thought of himself as a healthy animal in his prime, and if the Storm God favoured him he would stay that way until a decent death spared him the humiliation of illness and age. Refreshed, he slipped his sword into its scabbard and picked up the rest of his gear, his bronze dagger, his leather belt with its pouches.
    Still Praxo’s snore rattled the walls, despite the gathering din of the approaching caravan. ‘Praxo!’ Qirum raised a boot and started to slam his heel into the wall. It smashed in a shower of lathes, dried mud, wicker and plaster, and there was a faint smell of soot and smoke. Before the fire this had probably been quite a grand house, even though it was a long way out from the Pergamos. Now it was a crumbling wreck. He kept kicking the wall until he had made a hole big enough to step through.
    He loomed over Praxo, who lay on his belly under a scrunched-up blanket that barely covered his hairy backside, his head tipped sideways, his mouth open, his big fleshy nose squashed, his snoring like an earthquake. Qirum’s closest companion was only a couple of years older than Qirum himself, only twenty-five, but the jowls and folds of his fleshy face made him look a good deal older than that. Praxo’s own whores – he preferred two at a time if he could afford them – had long gone, though at first glance it didn’t look as if they had had the nerve to rob the sleeping sailor.
    Qirum picked up a slat from the walls, and laid about Praxo’s back and arse with vigorous blows. ‘Up! Up, you beached whale. The day’s half gone, and there’s booty coming to town.’
    Praxo stirred, snorted, coughed, and rolled onto his back, leaving a puddle of snot where his nose had been. He had a monstrous waking erection that stuck up like a ship’s mast. He opened one eye. ‘Clear off, I need a piss.’ But then the martial trumpets sounded again, and a broad grin spread over Praxo’s grimy face.
    ‘Do what you have to do, my friend, but get on with it.’ Qirum pushed through the remains of a doorway and emerged onto the mud track outside. Once this had