Son of Ishtar

by Gordon Doherty

  Hattu barged over beside them, lurching into the gap. ‘With me! Close the gap or we’re all dead.’ he howled. He leapt up, hurling his spear down and into the shoulder of one Galasman. The shaft punctured the bare strip of skin by the Galasman’s collarbone and sank deep into his chest. A fountain of black blood jumped from the rim of the wound and the man fell, shaking violently, mouth agape. He drew his curved sword from his belt and drove it up into a tall Galasman’s gut, wrenching it to one side as Kurunta had taught him. Hot, stinking guts flooded across his forearm, then pink-grey entrails squirmed clear like escaping worms as the Galasman folded over. He tore the blade free then shoved the dying man away.

  But comrades fell either side of them, riven with spears, shoulders and heads cloven with axes or staved in with clubs. Hattu blocked a sword strike of one foe and stole a look across the battle line: the two hundred had lost sixty at least. Thrum, thwack! Another volley of missiles from the high fort landed in the flesh of the men at the hillfort-facing side of the tiny square.

  Another two Hittite soldiers were cut down with gurgling cries.

  ‘Set fire to the sky,’ Kurunta rasped, twin-swords working in a blur, cutting down Galasmans like wheat, ‘else our king and our comrades will die in that damned gorge.’

  Another blazing arrow was loosed from within the beset Hittite square with a snap by one archer sitting on the shoulders of a spearman.

  ‘Still not high enough,’ Nuwanza cried. ‘Gods hear us!’

  Hattu dug his spear into the ribs of an attacker, then glanced over his shoulder and up at the lofty Baka Fortress. A fire arrow loosed from there would be seen for miles, but the fort was nigh-on impenetrable, its front wall lined with Pitagga and his nobles, its approaches a death trap. And in any case, the Galasman traitors had them pinned here at the foot of the golden slope in a maw of spears. Hattu heard the blood crash in his ears. Was this it? No hope of escape, no way of alerting the rest of the army as to what awaited them.

  When a Galasman speared towards him, he flinched, caught his foot in a rock and fell back into the crushed Hittite square. He landed hard, right beside a small patch of ground where the dust was puckering, sinking, falling away from underneath. He scrambled away from it just before the ground vanished with a whoosh. A puff of dust shot up like the breath of a spirit, clouding the skirmish. He blinked and coughed, then saw the hole that had been revealed: as wide as a man and leading to a warren-like passageway. An old mining tunnel leading under the hill, Hattu realised. And there was light within. A dim glow of daylight… coming from the far side of the hill, to the eastern face? He leapt to his haunches, staring into the hole, trying to imagine the path of the shaft. If it indeed led to the sheer eastern face…

  He looked up at Baka fort again. ‘Sir,’ he shouted over the battle-din to Kurunta. ‘I can get up there, into Baka. I can send up the fire arrow.’

  Kurunta glowered at him for a heartbeat, his good eye like a hot coal, his face streaked with runnels of blood. ‘Have you taken a blow to the head?’ But then his lone eye grew wide as he saw the burrow in the ground.

  ***

  Muwa stood on a smooth rock, midriver, waving the ranks of the Blaze on over the Green River ford at a gentle, splashing march. The wagon train was still perched on the western banks and they would take the longest to cross. Every so often he shot a glance up to the northern sky. Sun-streaked and clear, still. Colta and Volca, by the royal wagon on the far side, were watching for the fire signal in any case, but Muwa felt an acute need to lend his eye to the matter also. For just a moment, he imagined that his brother had been assailed up ahead. For a trice, he even wanted it to be true. Then he was overcome with horror.

  What have you become? he warred with himself. He felt a panic grip his breast as he imagined his younger brother in danger… then he saw the image of Atiya and Hattu again, by the temple gates. It was a lover’s embrace. The guilt ebbed and he felt detached from the troubling thoughts. He looked back to the lazy Green River, gazing into its depths. You knew how I felt about her, he seethed, yet you chose to betray me.

  A cry split the air and Muwa’s head swung back to the north. There, a Hittite soldier was shielding his eyes and standing on his toes, peering into the sky… but the fellow slumped and waved a dismissive hand. ‘Just a bird,’ he said contritely.

  ***

  They fell from the skirmish as if being snatched by some great underground creature. Hattu thudded down into the tunnel first, then Dagon, Kurunta and a pair from the Ravens: a reed-thin soldier and a small, muscly-limbed one. The din of battle suddenly became an odd, distant sound. The roughly-hewn tunnel was cold – mercifully so compared to the baking heat above – its walls veined with black and green, old timber props supporting the shaft every so often. The ceiling was low, forcing them to run at a crouch. Hattu kept his eyes on the dim orb of light ahead, praying to all the Gods he was not mistaken. Then… daylight!

  They burst clear of the tunnel and onto a shelf of rock that ran like a belt around the foot of Baka hill’s sheer eastern face. Hattu tilted his head back, staring up at the impossibly distant rear wall of Baka Fortress high above. This was higher than anything he had ever attempted before – at least twice the height of any of the crags around Hattusa. Hattu felt the splash of moisture left in his mouth drain away.

  ‘Dispense with everything: boots, helms, armour,’ he said, throwing off his battle gear as he spoke until he was barefoot, wearing just his linen kilt, carrying his bow and quiver and his curved sword. He eyed the climb: blank. Where to start? Now his eagerness stalled.

  ‘Prince Hattu!’ Kurunta said urgently. The muffled din of their comrades dying on the opposite slope came in waves.

  Hattu looked around the three with him and Kurunta. They were pale, still shaking with battle-vigour, eyes wide and on him, demanding. He turned back to the rock face.

  Every climb looks blank on the first read, Sarpa’s words came back to him like a welcome hand on his shoulder. Read the rock once, then read it again – like one of old Ruba’s tales… always, you will find new meaning, new possibilities.

  It was like the scrape of a whetstone on a blade, honing his thoughts. Now he saw the faint ribbons of shade and tiny dots of darkness here and there. ‘We start here,’ he said, stooping to gather dry dust from the ground in both hands, before patting his palms together – they now felt dry and smooth, the moisture of sweat absorbed.

  He moved to the cliff face. ‘Follow my every handhold and foothold,’ he offered over his shoulder, but saw the doubt on their faces. Over winter, Dagon had climbed with him, but on the smallest slopes near Hattusa and no more. The troubled looks on the faces of the two Ravens suggested equally patchy experience.

  He turned to them. ‘It is always worst at the outset, when the rock face is looking down on you like your master. Climb, and watch it shrink. Become the master of the rock.’

  Dagon managed a half-smile. The two Ravens filled their lungs and nodded.

  Hattu and Kurunta led the way, the powerful general scaling the cliff-face by Hattu’s side. The lower surface was rich with handholds, Hattu found, and it soon became a rhythmic ascent, shifting his weight from one side to the other, gripping crimps with his fingertips and sliding his hand into cracks – making fists to anchor himself. But after a while he began to appreciate just how much higher this face was than any he had attempted before. He became annoyed at the sound of his ever-quickening breaths echoing from the close rock. The hot, still air grew a little breezy, and he felt the strength ebb from his battle-weakened limbs. Worse, the hot sun had caused the granite to sweat – the moisture within seeping out to form a fine film on the surface of the rock. A sloping hand-grip – near vertical and reliant on the friction of his palm – felt like it was smeared in tallow thanks to this. Climb with your feet, balance with your hands, he retold himself one of Sarpa’s old mantras, pushing up with his right leg to find another scant and clammy-feeling impression.

  A weak groan f
rom one of the soldiers below drew his eye downwards. The drop was enormous. A lock of hair escaped his tight ponytail and whipped round to stick to his sweat and blood-spotted face. As he lifted a hand to sweep it away, a shard of rock in the other handhold shifted and his entire body locked up in fear. He shot the free hand back to the rock just in time to stabilise himself.

  ‘Take heart, Prince Hattu. We are nearly there,’ Kurunta panted, flicking his eyes up.

  Hattu looked up to see the chunky stone and red clay wall of Baka Fortress looming just a short stretch above, flush with the cliff face. But over the muffled din of the battle on the far side of the hill, he heard two low, gruff voices on the near parapet. Kaskan sentries, he realised. Old Ruba had taught him parts of the mountain men’s tongue. He whistled like a swallow to halt Kurunta. The three men below them halted too. But then one slipped, losing his grip, dangling by one hand and barely catching a stifled yelp.

  ‘Did you hear that?’ one of the voices said. ‘Have a look.’

  Hattu’s heart galloped as a set of fingers wrapped around the parapet, knowing a staring head was about to follow. He imagined a thousand deaths: being poked from the cliff face by long poles, shot with slingstones or having boiling water poured down on them. Instead, a falcon’s shriek was enough to spare them. Arrow swept down and Hattu saw the hands up there flap and swat. ‘Damned bird. I’ll wring its neck,’ the Kaskan snarled.

  Hattu’s breath stayed captive in his lungs until he was sure the sentry would not return for another look, then he whistled again and mouthed silently to the climbers. Onwards.

  When they scaled right up to the fort’s foundations, the stonework offered easy handholds. The mud brick of the upper section, however, proved tricky – smooth and crumbling whenever he tried to work a handhold. But up they went, carefully, until he and Kurunta clung just below the battlements like spiders. They waited a moment for Dagon and the two Ravens to ascend to the same spot. The din of the clash on the far side of the slope was a little sharper now: screaming, grunting, and a smashing of bronze. He thought of Tanku, Kisna, Sargis and the rest of the Wolves. Of poor Garin. Only a short time had passed since they had stolen away from the fray, but it felt like an eternity.

  When we go over, Kurunta mouthed, signalling up and over with one hand, we must despatch the sentries up there silently.

  They checked for agreement. Hattu noticed the Raven soldier beside Dagon freeing a hand to repeat and affirm Kurunta’s ‘up and over’ gesture. As he did so, the mud brick securing his other hand wrenched loose. It was a horrific sight: the soldier suddenly peeling back, arms flailing, legs kicking out as he plummeted.

  Hattu and Kurunta could only watch, horrified, seeing the soldier’s face agape and moon-white, knowing death was unavoidable. But the man was heroic, uttering not a sound as he fell. He was cruelly dashed from a jutting wart of rock, a blow that ruptured his head and sent him spinning crazily on towards the ground. But then, at the last moment when his lifeless body thumped into the hard dirt below, a loud animal grunt leapt from his bursting lungs. The grunt echoed around the Baka hillside.

  Gods, no, Hattu mouthed.

  ‘That was no falcon!’ the gruff Kaskan voice on the battlements exclaimed. Footsteps padded over rapidly to the parapet again. A bearded warrior poked his head over, angered, then suddenly flooded with alarm when he saw the four Hittites clinging to the precipice like limpets. Quick as a striking snake, Kurunta lurched up to chop his hand into the sentry’s throat, winding him, then tugged at the man’s collar, hauling him over the edge. The sentry flailed to the ground far below, a jagged star of blood exploding from under him.

  Hattu saw a second sentry, the one the first had been talking to, glance over the parapet then back away. The man’s mouth peeled open, ready to alert the rest of the Kaskans in the fort, when Arrow swooped down again, thrashing past the fellow’s face. It gave Hattu time enough to lever himself up and over, onto the walkway, then throw a right hook at the Kaskan. It connected sweetly, sending the warrior into a spin and toppling to the parapet, dazed. In a flash, Dagon leapt over too and, as the sentry tried to rise, whacked him hard on the nose, breaking bone and knocking him out cold.

  Instantly, Hattu ducked down behind a pair of barrels on the eastern battlement walkway, only now seeing the interior of the fort: the stronghold floor was all but empty: Pitagga and his knot of nobles lined the western wall, backs turned obliviously and still hurling all they could down the golden slope at the beset Hittite scouting party. All eyes were on that clash. Just the two now-despatched men had been spared to watch the seemingly impossible approach on this sheer side.

  Bows, Kurunta mouthed as the reed-thin Raven leapt over to join them on the parapet.

  The general struck his flint pieces to light his lone fire arrow, then knelt – like the great effigy at the archery range, and loosed. The flaming missile tore high into the sky, silent and surely high enough to be seen from many danna away.

  ‘What now, sir?’ Hattu breathed. Only now he realised the magnitude of that fire arrow: the Hittite column would spot it and halt at once, knowing it meant danger lay ahead. The scouting party were alone like thieves in this fort and on the hillside, forsaken and beset.

  ‘And now, we die with honour,’ Kurunta whispered, nocking his bow again with a normal arrow and looking across at the Kaskan nobles on the far wall.

  Hattu realised it was the only option. ‘Pitagga is mine,’ he hissed to the others as they each unhitched the bows from their backs and lifted an arrow from their quivers, kneeling on the eastern parapet and aiming across to the western one.

  ‘Make your shot count,’ Kurunta whispered, encouraging him and the others. ‘For once we have loosed we will have to face with swords all of those we do not strike down.’

  Hattu exhaled the last of the air in his lungs. Normally, this would see his body fall still for a perfect shot – but his forearms still trembled from the strain of the climb. He drew the string back to his ear, winked, training his right eye on the arrow tip and sighting it on the back of Pitagga’s neck. This was it: with the slaying of the Lord of the Mountains, the twelve tribes would break apart and the Kaskan threat would disintegrate. The war would be over.

  Like a breath of wind soughing through the trees, Kurunta said: ‘loose…’

  For Sarpa, for Ruba… Hattu mouthed as his fingers peeled away from the bowstring.

  ***

  Muwa’s head craned back with nearly fifteen thousand others, his eyes following the tiny orange streak that shot past the sun, hovered, then fell towards the earth, somewhere beyond the hills of the river valley. A clamour broke out around him.

  All he could think about was his choice. And it would be an easy one to make. Hittite generals for generations had heeded such a warning signal in one way and one way only: by halting the march of their column, by not striding on into the hazards ahead. And the scouts who braved those dangers to send the fire arrows skywards?

  To the Dark Earth with those brave souls.

  ***

  The bowstring whipped past Hattu’s face. His arrow and the three others flew. They spat across the fort interior, the targets unawares… until the fire arrow whacked down into a wooden hay cart by the fort gates with a thud.

  Pitagga and his noblemen swung round at the noise. Three of the finely armoured mountain men could only gawp before the shafts aimed at them punched into their chests and bellies, but Pitagga shifted his weight onto one foot, Hattu’s arrow grazing past his neck. The Kaskan lord gawked at the four figures on the eastern wall. The seventeen unharmed guards with him did likewise. There was a stunned hiatus, ended only when the wooden hay wagon roared with a sudden eruption of flame.

  ‘Defend your lord,’ Pitagga howled, shoving his men towards the parapet stairs, urging them onto the fort floor before him like a shield.

  Kurunta and Dagon drew and hurled their maces into the bunched group, staving in one’s head and shattering the shoulder of another. The surv
iving Raven soldier picked up the felled Kaskan sentry’s spear and launched it down, lancing one man through the belly, the tip shooting on through to skewer the thigh of the man behind. The cluster of noble guards broke apart, panicked, despite Pitagga’s hectoring demands.

  ‘Swords!’ Kurunta cried, drawing his twin blades and leaping down onto the fort floor.

  Hattu leapt down with Dagon and the Raven soldier, swords drawn. The smoke now billowed across the fort floor as the wagon fire spread to the timber beams jutting from the armoury walls. The thirteen Kaskan guards fanned out to encircle them, now grinning and confident seeing there were just these four Hittites to deal with. With a cry, they pounced. Hattu dashed the spear from one fat noble’s grasp before throwing a leg out to trip another. Spinning, he brought his blade across the thighs of a third. A thrown spear cut through the air before him, nicking his shoulder as he dipped to avoid a fatal blow before lunging forward to clash swords with the black-toothed thrower: Hattu’s curved dirk slid along the Kaskan’s straight-edged blade, all the way to the hilt until the enemy blade bit deep into his knuckles. Hattu cried out then threw Black-teeth off with a kick, then ducked as an axe from another tried to take his head off.

  He sprung up to defend himself against these two, who circled him, certain they had picked an easy kill – each of them a head taller than Hattu. He flicked his dirk up and caught it to hold it blade down, watching each man’s eyes and step. The axe-man scythed down for him and Hattu staggered back, almost losing his footing, and when he threw up his dirk to block the sword-strike of Black-teeth, it was feeble, the curved blade sailing out of his hand. Weaponless, he backed away from the two. He saw a dropped Kaskan straightsword and made to squat and snatch it up, but the axe-man’s blade chopped into the ground, almost slicing his fingers off. He felt sun-warmed stone behind him and realised he had backed against the fort wall.