Rina said nothing. But now she recalled the advice Pyxeas had given his family. That they must go, flee to the south before the crowd, before it was too late to travel at all. She pushed that thought firmly to the back of her mind, but she knew it would not be forgotten.

‘Mother?’

It was Alxa’s voice, cutting through her thoughts like a knife through soft fat. Rina whirled. A group of battered people, swathed in soaked, filthy clothing, some of them blood-smeared, came limping along the Iron Way track from the east. One separated from the rest and hurried forward, trembling and wide-eyed with exhaustion.

Rina ran to her daughter, who fell into her arms.

19

The First Year of the Longwinter: Midwinter Solstice

Kassu tried to get out of the farmhouse without waking his wife.

It should have been possible. They no longer slept together. Henti had the marital bed, and Kassu a heap of blankets and furs by the big hearth in the main room. He particularly didn’t want to wake her this morning, for today was the day he had asked to see Himuili, his commanding officer, in New Hattusa, for advice on the legal aspects of his divorce.

But of course she woke when he did. Maybe it was the soft rattle of his armour as he buckled it on.

She came storming out of the bedroom. ‘Ha! Off to see the boss, are you? Off to ask him how to fix your marriage?’

He kept silent as he shook out his heavy cloak and pulled it around his shoulders. It was no use being dragged into an argument. She always won arguments. She always had been cleverer than he was, he admitted that – even though, he felt, he had a better sense of what was right, of what was true.

But Henti was not herself this morning. Her hair was tangled, she was wearing a robe she hadn’t changed for too long, her fingernails were still caked with mud from yesterday’s work with the animals. She was distressed and frightened, he thought, behind the blustering anger. As well she might be, for under Hatti law a possible penalty for her adultery was death, for her and her priest.

He couldn’t help responding. ‘Yes, I’m seeing Himuili, if you want to know. He agreed to meet me at the Lion Gate. I’m going to ask him to sponsor me if I decide to go to the courts.’

‘This is you all over. Always asking somebody smarter than you to tell you what to do. Palla is twice the man you are, in every way.’

Kassu sighed. ‘Maybe he is. But he’s not your man. I’m yours.’

‘But I don’t want you.’ She looked at him for a heartbeat, trembling. ‘Not any more. Why did you ever take up the offer to be a Man of the Weapons? My father was a church scribe! I never wanted to be a farmer’s wife. I don’t want this, a farm that’s dust in the summer and frozen in the winter, and we have to give half whatever we do grow in taxes, and I spend my life queuing at the city granaries for the bread dole, and the cattle are scrawny and they kick and try to chew your clothes when you squeeze a drop of milk out of them . . .’