Son of Ishtar

by Gordon Doherty

  ‘Gods!’ Kurunta cried, lumbering over to the edge of the ravine, staring down. The hundred sped to look over the edge too, some kneeling, some on all fours.

  Hattu felt a cold sense of horror for the boy’s end. An enemy, but a decent lad behind it all, he reckoned. Then he heard a weak cry.

  ‘Ah… Argh… I ca-can’t hold on!’

  Hattu stretched his neck out a little further then saw it: Tanku, clinging by his forearms to a glistening, wet wart of rock poking from the ravine-side, the height of two men below the edge. His wrists and elbows were bleeding and the rest of his body dangled over the gnashing rocky fangs and thrashing waters.

  ‘Spear!’ Kurunta demanded, snatching the first lance offered. He slashed the tip of the spear off with one of his swords then fell prone at the ravine-edge, holding the shaft down. ‘Grab it,’ he called down. Tanku stretched one hand up but the end of the spear fell short of his reach. The momentary effort caused his other forearm to slip and he was nearly gone, were it not for his sudden grabbing of the wart of rock with just his palms.

  ‘Rope?’ Kurunta called over his shoulder, face red like an angry crab, eyes bulging. No reply.

  Hattu knew Tanku was as good as dead. But already, he had mapped out the slight indents and creases on the ravine side. He pulled off his boots, helm and vest and slid his legs over the side, clinging to the edge, feet searching for the first hold.

  ‘Hattu? What in the name of Tarhunda’s crotch are you doing? The rock is wet. Get back up here,’ Kurunta croaked, still trying in vain to stretch a little further down with the spear pole.

  Hattu’s foot found the hold. He shifted one hand to a slight ledge, then stretched his other foot down. Another lip of rock – wet as a fish – and he went lower. It was just like that black day when he and Sarpa had been climbing. Over-brave, he had scaled along a wet section of bluff like this. He had nearly died for it, and poor Sarpa’s hip had been shattered saving him. Give me the strength for this, Sarpa, he muttered inwardly.

  Within a few moments, he heard Tanku’s pained breaths. He scaled down until he was directly over the burly recruit, then halted, checking his grip was good. It was not, the stone slimy and smooth where the water had worn it away and the holds shallow, but it would have to do.

  ‘Climb,’ he panted down at Tanku. ‘Use my leg like a post, climb up.’

  Tanku’s face was wrinkled in terror, now only his fingertips holding him from doom, but even they were slipping. Hattu recognised the look: fear, a land where all the senses blurred and nothing made sense. ‘Tanku!’ he yelled. This seemed to snap the boy from his trance. The big lad stretched up, clamped a hand to Hattu’s shin, then hauled himself up until he had a hold of Hattu’s shoulders.

  ‘Hurry,’ Hattu strained, feeling his fingers slipping in the slimy holds.

  ‘All the Gods be with you,’ Tanku panted as he clambered on over Hattu to grab Kurunta’s spear and scale to safety.

  ‘Take the spear!’ Kurunta roared, louder than a thunderstorm. Hattu looked up to see the puce-faced general thrusting the spear end at him now. He sucked in a few deep breaths then rose to the next pock-shallow hold, before clasping the wooden shaft and clambering up. It all happened in moments, and then he found himself being hauled to safety, falling onto his back on the plateau, the sound of the hundred recruits cheering and whooping, threaded with guttural, blistering curses from Kurunta.

  A hand clasped Hattu’s, bringing him to his feet, then raising his arm in the air. Hattu realised it was Tanku, who emitted a piercing wolf-howl, gesturing for the others to do the same. Hattu felt the ground shiver under him such was their din. He saw the eyes of his detractors: different now, glinting with esteem. He realised a smile was creeping across his face. A moment later, and he joined them, turned his face to the sky, wet hair draping between his shoulders, and howled with all the air left in his lungs.

  ‘Unbroken by the River Ordeal. Undaunted by the red fells or this mountain bridge,’ Tanku panted. ‘We are soldiers now,’ he yelled in delight.

  Kurunta’s curses only became fierier now. ‘I’ll tell you when you’re a company of soldiers. You’re the Hill Pups and the Hill Pups you’ll remain.’

  Dagon lifted Hattu’s other hand, howling too.

  Hattu opened his mouth, hesitating for a moment when he saw Kurunta’s lobster-pink features shaking with rage, then carrying on regardless: ‘We are the Mountain Wolves!’ he cried out joyously.

  ***

  Some days later, Kurunta was stricken with some gut illness that saw him confined to the latrine pits. All within the Fields of Bronze could hear his ox-like oaths that came with every gastric expulsion, and any who dared look the crouching general in the eye when they went to the pits themselves – if they could brave the foul stench – was threatened with dismemberment. So for a blessed few days, the Mountain Wolves were assigned to archery training instead, on the broad ranges near the foot of the red fells, under the auspices of the kneeling archer statue.

  The cool, shady air of the fletcher’s workshop was pleasant on Hattu’s skin, and alive with flecks of sawdust, floating in the golden curtain of sunlight from the roof hatch above. New unstrung composite bows of horn and wood hung in high racks, confined there for the long year it would take for them to fully dry and bind. The pleasant scent of freshly hewn poplar and cherry wood contrasted with the stink from the bubbling vats of glue and decomposing webs of animal skin at the far side of the archery workshop.

  Only twenty or so men of every hundred would carry archery equipment, but every soldier was expected to know how to maintain a bow and shoot one, and so the recruits were gathered around the academy’s Master Archer, who sat hunched over his workbench, demonstrating how to fletch an arrow. While General Nuwanza had the broad build of a bowman, he also had a gentle manner about him, a calm, methodical way of describing intricate detail.

  ‘And the feathers are applied in a specific pattern,’ Nuwanza explained. His dark, wiry eyebrows matching the shape of his sharply receding hairline. ‘It takes three feathers to fletch an arrow. Three feathers, three gaps in between,’ he said holding up three fingers to underline each statement. ‘One of the gaps is bigger than the other two,’ he said, deftly applying a touch of glue to a third goose feather with a brush, then pressing it onto the end of the nearly-complete arrow shaft, then holding the arrow up, end-on, to the gathered recruits and pointing to the bigger gap. ‘The feather opposite this bigger gap is called the cock-feather. Always this should be pointing away from the bow when you nock it to your string, to allow a clean shot.’ He hooked a bow from a lower rack on the wall, tied the string around one horn-tipped end, then expertly looped that end over the front of an ankle and placed his other leg before the bow’s midpoint and bent it round, bringing it under tension until the free ends of the bow and string met. Despite the great strength this required, his hands barely shook as he calmly tied the string into place. He lifted the bow then broke off a chunk of yellow beeswax from the cake sitting on his workbench, and proceeded to wipe the wax up and down the bowstring in long, expert strokes.

  ‘Never let your bowstring dry out,’ he said, taking up a patch of leather and rubbing the wax into the string. ‘And be sure to work the wax in well so the string absorbs it. The heat of your hand through the leather is enough for this.’

  Nuwanza moved over to a rack on the wall behind the recruits, who turned like flowers following the sun. The archery master appraised each of the young men’s height and shoulder-width. He plucked out a bow from one of the high racks and gave it to Tanku, then gave a smaller lad one from the lowest rack, and so on. Hattu took his and the string Nuwanza gave him, then stepped back and tried to repeat the stringing routine. What Nuwanza had done effortlessly took Hattu six tries. Garin managed to bring the weapon under tension only for it to slip from his grasp, one ear of the bow thwacking him in the genitals.

  ‘Every man should have a bow that, when drawn back to the ear,’ Nuwanza demonstrated,
lifting the weapon and pulling back the string as if there was an arrow in place, ‘causes your hand to tremble just a little. This means the horn and sinew in the bow are fully compressed and gives the perfect balance of power and accuracy. If your hand shakes too much, take a smaller bow. If you cannot draw back to your ear, take a larger one.’

  Along with the others, Hattu drew his bow back – it came all the way to his ear. Truth be told it was an almighty struggle. He eyed the smaller bows in the rack and saw Dagon and Garin doing likewise. There was a tense moment where none of them wanted to be the first to take a weaker weapon. Nuwanza strode forward and took up the smaller bows, giving one to each of the three. ‘There is no shame in choosing the weapon that makes you a better archer,’ he said. ‘Remember, one day your life may depend upon it – and who would be impressed to look upon you struggling to pull a bow that is too powerful for you? Only your enemy, who will be laughing as he looses his own arrow for your heart.’

  Nuwanza strode past them, beckoning them, his three tails of hair swishing between his powerful shoulders. They followed him outside into the afternoon sunshine. Hattu saw that a company of twenty veteran archers were lined up at the near end of the dusty archery field – their hair scooped back tightly like Nuwanza’s so as not to blow in front of their bows.

  ‘What are they shooting at?’ Dagon asked nobody in particular.

  Hattu scoured the undulating heat haze across the field. There was nothing but dust until the red fell slopes began a good three hundred paces away.

  ‘Ah, look,’ Tanku cooed, pointing. There, at the far end of the field, rested four cross-sections of tree trunk, daubed with dyes to make coloured rings.

  Hattu gasped. ‘That’s impossible.’

  Nuwanza, hearing this, shot him a wry smile. ‘Nock,’ he barked.

  The veteran twenty reached over their shoulders and plucked arrows from their quivers, affixing the grooved channel at one end to their bowstrings.

  ‘Raise,’ Nuwanza said.

  Twenty bows rose up almost in unison, all canted to the same slight angle, all tilted to the same trajectory. Highly-stressed horn and wood groaned as they each drew their strings back to their ears. Nuwanza did this too, the veins in his forearm bulging under the immense tension of the bow.

  ‘Loose,’ Nuwanza howled. With a hiss like a rising flock of birds, the arrows leapt forth. Then, silence. Hattu frowned. It was as if they had melted into the heat haze… only for a thick chorus of thock, thock, thock to herald missiles hitting timber. Hattu strained to see the targets again, and when the heat haze bent once more, he saw the arrows there – or maybe their shadows – quivering in the coloured rings. Instantly, he wanted to dispense with sleep, food, water and everything else, just to learn and harness the skills of these bowmen.

  ‘How can you hit a target you can barely see?’ Hattu asked, directing the question at Garin.

  But it was Nuwanza who answered. ‘It is not what you see, it is what you know,’ he said, tapping a temple. ‘All men of the army are taught to shoot at a set of fixed distances. Then, only one man need scout the enemy and call out the appropriate range: it means we can shoot over hills, in the black of night or in the melting heat of day and know we will strike our targets.’ He turned to the twenty archers and bellowed: ‘Short – loose!’

  With a flurry of nocking and bows rising a lot less than before, twenty arrows hummed into the air and came thwacking down into the dust, almost in a line, around one hundred paces away.

  ‘Mid-range – loose.’ Thrum… thwack! Another perfect line two hundred paces away.

  ‘You see?’ Nuwanza said.

  For the rest of the afternoon, the archery master had them practice their draw, also showing them how to stretch their arms and shoulders before and after to avoid strain and cramp. For the last few hours of daylight, they emptied quiver after quiver into yellow targets drawn up at short range. In truth, it took all of Hattu’s strength to draw the bow enough to achieve this distance and his accuracy suffered as a result, with every second arrow glancing off the edge of the target or plunging into the dust. He had grown strong in these last months, but not yet strong enough.

  He and the others shot on, almost entranced by the practice. Despite his limbs becoming fatigued, he found a rhythm, and soon each set of four or five arrows were thwacking into the timber target. They even took to betting against one another, though few wanted to gamble against the hawk-faced Kisna, who was skilled from the outset.

  When at last dusk claimed the remaining light, they were dismissed by Nuwanza. Hattu had always been scared of the generals whenever they had appeared in the acropolis grounds. Still, he considered Kurunta a living nightmare of sorts. But he realised he liked Nuwanza – warm, encouraging and approachable. A fine teacher. As they filed back from the archery school towards the infantry compound, he, Dagon, Tanku and Garin joked and chatted with the others. It seemed they had accepted him at last. Hattu, as usual, glanced up at the scowling warrior statue standing over the barrack gates. For a change, he returned the stone effigy’s glower with a wry one of his own, then laughed to himself.

  They returned to their barrack hut and combined rations to prepare a hearty stew of lamb boiled in yoghurt and a few loaves of bread, eating it outside the porch area around a fire. The veterans from the neighbouring dorm offered them a barrel of barley beer which they took gladly, and Raku, the flat-faced regimental chief brought them a vase of strong wine too. It seemed that it was not just the recruits who had thawed to the idea of having the Cursed Son in their midst. The warm meal filled Hattu’s belly and the frothy beer washed it down perfectly, warming his blood and softening his thoughts. Garin started a tale about home life and the woman who lived next door. All the recruits listened, rapt, as he began to describe her, drawing her figure in the air with his hands.

  ‘… and she had the most massive… and I mean massive-’

  ‘What’s this?’ a stern voice cut the story short.

  Hattu looked up to see Kurunta standing there. His face was fixed in its default state of apoplexy as he eyed the recruits and the fire. And he was a little gaunter than usual – probably thanks to his extended spell in the latrine pits.

  ‘Sir,’ Garin saluted with a croak. ‘I was just telling my comrades about the woman that lives by our house in the temple ward.’ He held out his hands again, squeezing invisible orbs, his face wide with a grin. ‘You should see her t-’

  ‘Ah,’ Kurunta said, his good eye brightening, ‘yes, I know her. Caya, isn’t it?’

  Garin’s neck grew long. ‘Yes,’ he nodded in excitement.

  Kurunta’s face fell expressionless. ‘She’s my niece.’

  With a whimper, Garin shrunk and stared intently at his feet.

  Hattu watched as Kurunta strode around the sitting circle of recruits. When the general passed behind Garin, he did something entirely unexpected: he winked at the others, flicked his head towards the shamed Garin and mouthed: she’s not really.

  A few gasps and stifled laughs brought Garin’s head up again, confused. ‘Eh, what?’

  But Kurunta threw down a small sack by the fire and crouched by it, his mien uplit by the flames. ‘You can all talk about tits and arses again soon enough. First,’ he said, opening the sack, ‘you must make the Comrades’ Oath. It signifies… ’ he started, then sighed, a brief look of sadness crossing his lone eye, ‘the end of infantry training.’

  The recruits all looked at one another, owl-eyed.

  He drew from the sack a handful of tallow, grey-white and gelatinous, smearing a dab on the back of Garin’s hand, then on Tanku’s, then passing the sack around. Hattu followed suit, smearing the cold sheep fat on the back of his hand. Finally, the sack came round to Kurunta again. The general took another scoop of fat and tossed it on the fire. It hissed and sparked and quickly melted away to nothing.

  ‘As the fat melts away into the Dark Earth, so also will he who breaks the trust of his brothers.’ As he said this, the
general passed his fat-smeared hand across the fire, holding it at the highest point of the flames. The fat bubbled and spat and the hair on his arm shrivelled and vanished. Kurunta was like a rock, unflinching, until the molten fat had liquefied and rolled off his hand into the flames. He looked up, darkly. ‘Next?’

  Garin, on the end of Kurunta’s glare, slumped, then steadied himself, meeting the eyes of each of the recruits. He passed his shaking hand through the inferno, stiffening, his face aghast at first. But Hattu saw a change in him and knew the hand would remain. ‘Comrades, I will never abandon you,’ he said as the fat dripped away.

  As Garin furtively nursed his hand, Dagon went next. ‘Kin, friends…’ he looked up, catching Hattu’s eye, ‘I owe each of you my life. Comrades until I breathe my last.’

  A low rumble of anxious, excited agreement broke out amongst the others.

  Tanku was next. ‘I will honour you as I honour the Gods, always,’ he said, the flames licking at his thick arms. ‘We are one spear.’

  Sargis, Kisna and a handful of others took their turn. Next, Kurunta’s good eye swivelled round to Hattu, narrowing to a crescent. It was time.

  Hattu held his gaze as he passed his hand into the fire. The breath caught in his lungs as the flames licked around his flesh. The pain was instant and intense, but he knew it would take a team of six Lukkan horses to drag his hand away. ‘All my life I have been alone,’ he said. ‘Now, I am a soldier, a soldier with ninety-nine brothers… I will give my life for the Mountain Wolves.’

  The circle exploded into a cacophony of cheering. Tanku and Dagon threw their heads back and howled, the others joining in. Hattu kept his eyes on Kurunta. The gnarled general made a single grunting noise, then rose from his haunches. Maybe, just maybe, there was a glint of respect in the haggard demon’s lone eye.

  ***