Bronze Summer Read Free Page A

been a fair-sized street. But now it was greened over by weeds, and cluttered by huts, shacks and lean-tos, smoke trailing through their roofs. If you stood still for too long the kids came swarming out with their little hands out towards you, chattering, begging for food. Living like rats on a midden.
    Behind him he heard Praxo swear and strain at his stool.
    Qirum walked away up a low rise. From here he looked out over the ruined lower town towards the Pergamos, the citadel, with its ring of cracked walls, the palace with its fallen towers and smashed-in roof. Once this view would have been cluttered by crowding buildings, winding alleyways; now it was all but clear. This was Troy. Qirum had been born here – he had been conceived during the disastrous night of the fire that had ended the Greek siege – this was his home city, and always would be. But he had travelled widely; he had seen Mycenae and Hattusa and Ashur, he had seen what a city should be. Maybe Troy would recover some day, maybe it would get back to the greatness it had enjoyed. But not while drought and famine stalked the land, and populations fled and princes toppled everywhere. And he, Qirum, was meant for better than this. He dug a leather pouch from his belt, and absently sprinkled himself with scent, of lilies, roses, saffron crocuses. In a stinking world, a stinking city, smelling good was a sign of wealth, of posterity. Troy was the past, the place he had begun his journey in life, not the place he would end it.
    Praxo emerged at last, dressed in a tunic that looked more stain than cloth, with his weapons on his back, his battleaxe and heavy sword. He carried a sack with the bits of booty they carried to pay their way around the city. ‘That last stool was a beauty. I feel like I gave birth to a tree.’
    ‘Of all your revolting habits, your boasting about your bowel movements is the worst.’
    ‘I try to please.’
    The trumpets pealed again. Looking east over the outer city’s walls Qirum glimpsed movement, a river of people, the glitter of bronze, banners fluttering in the languid air. Hatti! He felt as if he could smell the gold. ‘Come on.’
    Praxo said, ‘You have an admirer.’
    Qirum glanced down. A boy, skinny, naked, no older than eight, turned and bent, showing his bare arse. Qirum turned away, disgusted.
    But Praxo lingered. ‘Oh, aren’t you going to give this little one a ride? Just for old times’ sake. After all he’s got to start somewhere in the world. Selling the only thing he’s got, just like you did. Come on, be a sport!’
    Qirum stalked away from the boy, from Praxo, emptied his head of the goading, and focused his gaze on the glitter of Hatti bronze.

 
    4
     
    On the day of her mother’s interment Milaqa woke early in her cell, deep in the belly of the Wall, in the District known as Great Etxelur. It had been an uneasy night, of dreams of dead iron punching through ribcages. It was a relief when the flickering torch glow around the door of her room was at last dimmed by the cold grey of dawn.
    She clambered off her bed, a pallet of soft deerskin on a growstone platform, heaped with blankets of aurochs wool and cloth. Moving quickly in the cold, she stripped off yesterday’s tunic and loincloth. She drank water from the bowl she had brought in last night, and emptied her bladder into a channel that led her urine away to the fullers’ tanks somewhere deep in the fabric of the Wall. She voided her bowels into her night bowl, cleaned herself with a handful of dried moss, and pulled on fresh clothes, leggings and boots. She took her cloak, picked up the night bowl, and pulled back the heavy linen door flap.
    And for a heartbeat she paused, and looked back at her room in the glow from the passage torches. This was a new apartment, freshly cut into impossibly ancient growstone. The bed, table, shelves were all made of the original growstone too, lumps of it left unremoved by the artisans who had carved out these