Himuili glanced back at Palla, who stepped forward and spoke. ‘Sir, with respect – they know rather a lot about winter. There is their direct experience of course. And as the weather has changed they have consulted sages, from Northland and elsewhere.’

Hastayar asked him, ‘And would they have agreed with my husband?’

Palla could not contradict the King. Instead he cast down his eyes.

Hastayar turned now to the Hazannu, the city mayor. ‘What of our city, Tiwatapara?’

He shrugged. ‘Madam, you know it as well as I do. You’ve seen the figures on the bread ration – we’re only just at midwinter, and we’ll be lucky if we don’t have starvation before the spring. If it ever comes. That’s even before we started doling out to the Rus horde.’

‘And the population reduction measures? Are they working?’

The man grimaced. ‘With difficulty. Of course we’re keeping refuge seekers out of the city; that’s not too hard, unless one of them has a relative inside. As for active reduction, we’re finding the most effective way is to target groups. Specific peoples. The Kaskans, for instance, and the Arzawans, and you’d be surprised how many there are here.’

‘Many of several generations’ descent,’ Arnuwanda put in now, anger in his voice. ‘I know some of them, or did. They think of themselves as Hatti, not Kaskans or whatever. They think of themselves as belonging to the city, and many of their families have been here since the time of their grandfathers’ grandfathers.’

Kassu was shocked to hear this. He had witnessed the expulsion of Kaskans. He had even taken part in some of it. He had had no idea it had all been an officially sanctioned, officially planned exercise in population reduction.

Arnuwanda went on, ‘I’ve fought alongside them, for the King. And now we’ve kicked them out.’

The Tawananna eyed him. ‘Nephew, it is better to pick on a group the rest can identify and despise, rather than have us fight among ourselves.’

‘Though we’re doing that too,’ said the Hazannu reluctantly. ‘Well, people always do. There are religious tensions, followers of the older creeds and the banished gods – I mean the divine ancestors of Teshub Yahweh who have been declared apocryphal by the Church – their adherents are coming out and denouncing the Jesus followers, who in turn are calling for their opponents’ executions as heretics, and so on. And as soon as you get a rumour that somebody is hoarding so much as a crust of bread, a whole district collapses into a riot. Well, we just have to contain it all.’

Angulli mused, ‘And what of liberty? What of rights under our law?’

‘Liberty is for the summer,’ Hastayar said bleakly. She turned to Himuili. ‘General, what of the grain supplies?’