Arnuwanda nodded. ‘But at least, again, we know what we’re dealing with. The problem will be, as always, raising the manpower. And feeding the men.’ Another swirl of snow came down, thicker than before. Arnuwanda pulled his expensive-looking purple cloak tight around him.

‘Not the Turks,’ came a booming voice, immediately recognised by Kassu. ‘And not the Franks either.’

There was a commotion among the outer layers of the guard. Zida, for it was he, strode boldly towards the group of dignitaries. He had taken off his cloak and had wrapped it around some kind of trophy that dripped deep-red blood as he walked.

‘Let him through,’ Himuili snapped. ‘Let him through, I say!’

Zida, standing before his general, panted hard. Even the King, Kassu noticed, peered out of his linen tent to see what the fuss was about.

‘You’ve been running,’ Kassu murmured.

‘Faster than you, farm boy.’

‘A dozen lashes for your failure to prostrate,’ Himuili snapped.

‘Of course, sir.’

‘Tell me what you have.’

‘The identity of our attackers.’ Zida held up his bloody bundle and pulled away the cloak – to reveal a human head, roughly severed at a neck from which blood still dripped, a face pale with a heavy moustache. Zida held it up by a hank of red hair. There was a collective gasp, a wave of shock that spread out through the crowd of onlookers. Even the hooded supplicants were distracted, even the King. Reflexively the guards clustered closer around their master.

Kassu spotted his wife Henti, on the edge of the crowd, dressed in her nuntarriyashas finery, the robe shabby, faded, old, as everything was in New Hattusa these days, but still she looked radiant in his eyes. But she had come with her cousin Palla, the priest, who probably had business with Angulli. Side by side the cousins looked very alike. Kassu saw that Henti held the priest’s arm firmly as she stared at the head.

Himuili stepped forward. With his thumb, he opened one of the relic’s closed eyelids, to reveal an eye as blue as the sea in summer. ‘Rus, ’he growled.

‘In fact he found me before I found him,’ Zida admitted. ‘He crept up behind me. Lucky I got him first. Otherwise—’

‘Otherwise you would have died uselessly,’ Himuili murmured, gazing at the head. ‘And all that expensive training wasted. Careless, that. Make that two dozen lashes.’

‘Thank you, sir.’

‘But he is Rus. You established that?’

‘Yes, sir. He lived long enough to convince me. But they aren’t just Rus out there.’

‘Who, then?’

‘Scand.’

Another gasp of dismay.

‘While he was begging for his life, he said it wasn’t his fault.’

‘What isn’t?’ Himuili snapped.

‘Their emigration.’

‘You mean their invasion. The assault they’re mounting.’

‘No, sir. Emigration is the word he used. His Hatti was quite good. Well, it’s no surprise. He said he’s served in the armies of My Sun, a mercenary regiment. He said, emigration,’ Zida repeated. ‘And he said they’ve been driven to it by the drought and now the ice in their own lands, and by the wave of Scand that came down from their distant lands further north yet. The Scand sacked Kiev, it seems, before they all came to an arrangement.’