Zida watched the snow fall suspiciously. ‘Let’s hope it doesn’t lie. Don’t want to leave tracks. They say Old Hattusa is cut off already. Snow in the passes.’

Kassu shrugged. ‘It always snows on Old Hattusa, up on that plateau. No wonder the kings moved out.’

‘You’ll be warm enough with that plump wife of yours.’

‘Not if you keep dragging me out of bed in the middle of the night.’

Zida laughed. ‘Who’s Palla, by the way?’

‘How do you know about Palla?’

‘You asked me if I was Palla before I had your dagger at your throat.’

‘A priest. Cousin of Henti. Quite high up; he works in the Church of Our Lady Mary of Arinna. Knows Angulli, I think, the Father of the Churches.’

‘So why’s he sleeping in your hovel?’

‘He’s close to Henti. Has been since they were kids. He came out a while back to bless the potato fields, when we heard the blight was in the neighbourhood. He’s come out to stay a few times since.’

Zida looked at Kassu. ‘That’s good of him,’ he said neutrally. ‘Can’t be much of a priest, though. Didn’t save your potatoes, did he?’

Kassu shrugged. As Zida seemed to be guessing in his own crudely insightful way, Palla had actually caused a lot of arguments between Kassu and his wife. Kassu resented the priest’s frequent visits, resented having to feed the man. ‘The will of Teshub Yahweh is not ours to question.’

Zida laughed again. ‘That’s for sure.’ But he spoke softly, for they were heading into empty country now, away from the city. He put his right hand on the hilt of his scabbarded sword, and Kassu found that he’d unconsciously done the same thing.

They moved without a light, but by now their eyes were fully open to the dark. The land, much of it disused farmland, was mostly empty. Once they saw an animal, like a big dog. It could have been a wolf; animals like deer and wolves had been spotted much closer to the city than they used to come. The abandoned countryside was reverting to the wild, some said, even so close to New Hattusa.

Kassu pictured the landscape. New Hattusa sat by the shore of a bay that opened up to the north; to the west a spit of land separated the bay from the Middle Sea. The city was protected by layers of defences, some inherited from the deeper past, some planned by the Hatti kings when they first moved the capital of their empire here. There were rivers to north and south, and to the east a tremendous New Wall, a mass of Northlander growstone and hard facing stone, that ran from the valley of the Scaramander in the south all the way to the Simoeis in the north. To the west, along the coast, there were sea walls and heavily defended harbours. The bay itself, where dredgers worked constantly to clear away the silt of the rivers, could be closed by the raising of a great chain across its mouth. And at the heart of all these defensive layers sat New Hattusa, Troy, within the ancient walls that had once famously failed to expel the Greeks, but had long since been rebuilt and had not been breached for a thousand years. But there were always threats, especially in these times of hunger and rootlessness. And given the way they were heading, Kassu guessed that this night the threat was approaching from the north, from the line of the Simoeis.