Son of Ishtar

by Gordon Doherty

  ‘Our fallen sing his ageless song,’ more were roused to sing along. The gorge trembled such was the strength of the baritone doggerel.

  ‘And in our hearts they’re never gone…’ Kurunta sang louder than any other, his head twisting to look back, his lone eye narrowing to a crescent as it settled upon Hattu.

  Two more days passed, with the Hittite column making slow progress through the gorge. Tanku muttered an oath as he slipped and nearly turned an ankle on a loose rock for the third time that day. Hattu looked over his shoulder across the ranks of the Storm. Back there he saw the mules and ox wagons labouring over this torturous ground. The army could only move as fast as this vital sumpter train.

  Dagon pulled the collar of his linen vest to try to usher in a breath of air. His face was streaked with sweat and his thin hair was matted to the sides of his face. ‘Too damned hot,’ he panted. Hattu tried to reply, but his throat was coated in dust and it came out as a cough. He envied Arrow, gliding in a breeze near the front of the column as an aerial vanguard of sorts. There was some commotion in the front ranks of the Fury when she evacuated her bowels over one hulking, red-faced soldier.

  The drowsy, hot march seemed to lose its sense of danger until a sudden, urgent call from up ahead echoed sharply from the gorge sides. ‘Halt!’

  Angry curses split the air as nervous soldiers, surprised by the sudden stop, marched into the back of the men ahead. They quickly righted themselves, each division bringing their spears level, ready to react. But after a short silence, the order was given to continue. Hattu saw the cause of concern as the Storm Division marched past a stretch of flat ground where the gorge swelled: a large Kaskan ‘settlement’ – or at least one of the seasonal camps they built in and around these mountains. It consisted of several hundred timber shacks and domes of mud and twigs – each a home for a dozen or so. These mud huts were dried out and broken, shards of the domes having fallen in like holes in smashed skulls, and the many black stains of campfires dotting the ground had grass growing through them – a sure sign the place had been abandoned some time ago.

  ‘My father used to talk of these mountains as the home of the Kaskans,’ Dagon said, eyeing the deserted settlement, ‘and I always imagined the peaks to be crawling with them – like ants on a nest.’ He shrugged. ‘Where are they?’

  ‘Retreating,’ Tanku said confidently, eyeing the north. ‘Ten thousand strong, I heard. They don’t have the numbers to beat us.’

  ‘Drawing us further from familiar ground,’ Hattu said, his face stony. ‘Where our greater numbers might mean little. Where many more tribes of uncertain fealty roam.’

  They passed three more Kaskan settlements – broken, derelict shells like the first one – during the following day. The heat continued to rob the marching men of their vigour. But things slowly changed as the path rose with the surrounding mountains – the route becoming more of a high pass than a gorge, studded with dark green conifer thickets and alive with the chirping of sparrowhawks. When they rose into the smaller peaks, the air became decidedly fresh. Some men even took to pulling their woollen cloaks from their bags and throwing them over their shoulders. The cool, dry winds up here moaned through the crags and caused men’s lips to crack and throats to grow hoarse. They climbed into the upper peaks and were soon so high that goats in the gullies below resembled tiny insects. They even marched over patches of rock that were veined with frost, so cold it was – with one nearby peak clad in snow, a white streak of ice crystals being whipped from its summit by the winds. Vultures and eagles cried out overhead, and Arrow got caught up in a tussle with one angry raptor.

  They marched until twilight obscured the precarious path and they could go forwards no more. Strewn along the high pass, they camped that night in the chilly heights, wind moaning around them and causing their bivouac tents to rap fiercely. Hattu helped Tanku, Dagon and a clutch of the Wolves to set up their tents, then threw himself down on the rocky ground in Kurunta-esque fashion, sure that a deep, exhausted and dreamless sleep was soon to follow.

  ***

  Muwa sat by the royal carriage, hearing from within his Father’s weak breaths, each digging into him like a spade. The chill wind rocked the wagon with every gust, and the shutters and curtains – supposedly sealing the carriage’s interior off from the elements – rattled and creaked.

  ‘The Labarna should not be up here,’ Muwa said. ‘The mountain air is for the young and the strong.’

  Across the small fire, Nuwanza washed the last bite of his bread down with a mouthful of water, his three tight tails of hair billowing in the latest gust of cold wind. ‘There is a fire in his eyes yet, Tuhkanti.’

  A scuff of boots brought both men’s heads round to the figure approaching the carriage. A horned helm, a billowing red cloak, a fierce trident.

  ‘Watch out, arsehole approaching,’ Nuwanza muttered under his breath.

  ‘The Labarna is asleep?’ Volca asked, halting by the small fire, his pale features and copper accoutrements ablaze in the reflected light.

  ‘Aye, it would seem so,’ Muwa replied absently.

  Volca nodded a few times as if in some inner dialogue. ‘The men have not seen their king on his feet once during this march. It is not ideal for morale.’

  ‘If he is ill, he is ill,’ Muwa snapped. ‘Why fret over that which we cannot change?’

  ‘True, true,’ Volca replied. ‘In any case, I’ve been talking with the men of the ranks. It seems they have a new hero of sorts – one whose presence is partly making up for the king’s continued malaise.’

  Muwa’s ears pricked up.

  ‘Your young brother,’ Volca beamed, crouching to warm his hands by the flames, ‘they talk in fulsome tones about Hattu. They laud him as they do you, Tuhkanti,’ He squared his shoulders and rested his trident butt on the ground, staring off into the night with a mock-heroic gaze. ‘Son… of Ishtar! That’s what they call him.’

  Muwa felt the words sting his skin like a nettle. ‘The men are fickle. Let them praise who they wish, as long as they are loyal to the Labarna,’ he said, annoyed that his tone sounded terser than he had intended.

  ‘Hmm, the way some speak, it’s as if they’d rather see the ‘Son of Ishtar’ as their Labarna. Ha! Can you imagine?’ Volca’s shoulders rocked with laughter. ‘But then again, like you he has all the attributes…’

  Muwa shot to his feet and swept by the Gal Mesedi. ‘I’ll check on the sentries.’

  ***

  ‘Was it something I said?’ Volca asked, wide eyed.

  Nuwanza stoked at the embers of the fire with a twig, his eyes narrow and his lips thin. ‘Every word to the Labarna or his issue should be measured and worthy. Keep idle chatter for the arzana houses.’

  ‘You’ve never liked me, have you, Bowman?’ Volca chuckled.

  ‘I don’t make friends easily,’ Nuwanza shrugged. ‘My trust is hard won.’

  Volca stood, stretching. ‘Aye, perhaps. You are the king’s longest-serving general, are you not? I can see why he values you so.’ His playful expression faded and he bowed from the neck. ‘I have some way to go to even deserve a place in your shadow.’

  Nuwanza’s eyes narrowed further.

  ‘I will do all I can to prove myself. That’s what I came to tell you: I cannot sleep, so I’m taking a few scout riders out to look around while it’s dark – up onto the mountain spine. Perhaps we’ll be able to spot the Kaskan camp beyond? Their night fires will be like beacons.’

  Nuwanza looked up, his high forehead wrinkling. ‘Night scouts? I think the Tuhkanti should be the one to sanction the idea.’

  Volca sighed and looked off into the night in the direction Muwa had gone. ‘The Tuhkanti is in no mood for conversation, it would seem. I will be back not long after daybreak.’

  ***

  King Mursili heard taunting voices in his fitful sleep, his sons exchange of fiery words at Baka Fortress echoing over and over. He saw a ring of bulls standing in a circle, pushing his two b
oys towards one another. Hattu and Muwa fought back at first, batting the animals on the nose with the flats of their swords. But try as they might they could not break free of the pen of beasts. Suddenly, Muwa asked for help from Hattu, but Hattu snapped at him in reply – too busy trying to batter back one of the bulls to come to Muwa’s aid. Muwa snarled some curse in response. They fought the bulls valiantly, and slew them. But a moment later the pair swung to face one another, their heated words exploding into shouts.

  Beyond the ring of bulls, he saw a tall, curvaceous, winged woman watching on from a veil of shadow. In her palm, she held a silver chair. Blood dripped down its back and the armrests. ‘And so it begins,’ Ishtar whispered.

  King Mursili sat up with a start, his right arm propping up his useless left side. Despite the perishing mountain wind that searched and shook the carriage, his skin was drenched with cold sweat and his grey locks were plastered to his face and neck. The noise of trotting hooves sounded, fading into the north. He pulled the curtain and shutter there open. Fading into the darkness of night, he saw three scouts riding off along the pass, up and over the mountain spine, into the Lost North. Confused, he fell back, panting, groaning.

  ***

  Despite aching shoulders, burning calves and throbbing feet, Hattu found sleep hard to come by. His body longed for rest but his mind sought answers. Atiya, where are you? Silence, bar the bivouac cloth flapping in the stiff wind. He opened one eye. The five other Wolves under the shelter with him were sound asleep, using their woollen cloaks as blankets, comically hugging one another like nested bowls for extra warmth.

  Hattu rose, drawing his cloak around his shoulders, tossing his leather bag over one arm, thinking a light snack might help him feel drowsy. As he walked to the edge of the irregular camp, the pale light of a low moon portrayed the Soaring Mountains like a frozen sea of sharp, white crests and grey, plunging troughs. Clouds scudded across the moon from time to time, their shadows creeping across the mountains. ‘Arma, God of the Moon, watch over us… watch over Atiya,’ he muttered, placing a hand over his heart.

  ‘The Gods are cruel,’ a voice said, a few paces away from him. Unnoticed, Kurunta had settled down on a rock nearby. Dressed inexplicably in just the same leather kilt and crossed-leather chest bands that he had been wearing in the boiling lower stretches of the gorge, the bald general was peeling a strip from a piece of goat-meat, munching and dragging stringy parts from his teeth, good eye fixed on the moon. ‘So how does it feel? This is always what you wished for, is it not?’ he flicked his head back over the camp. ‘To be a soldier?’

  Hattu felt the chill stiffen around him. He looked back across the mountain camp and saw the bronze ring of Mesedi guardsmen around the king’s wagon. ‘He wanted you to break me, didn’t he?’

  Silence.

  ‘That’s my job,’ Kurunta said in a low, expressionless voice.

  ‘And I realise that now. I don’t begrudge you for any of it.’ Hattu flexed one arm straight out before him, seeing the ribbons of shadow and moonlight that marked out his hard-won muscles. ‘I longed to be a soldier because that is what my father was… is. Before my time at the Fields of Bronze I spent long summers left back in Hattusa, dreaming of making him proud, of being a shield for him as Muwa is. To stand alongside the Great King Mursili – that was the dream. And now I have passed through the military academy and find myself here on campaign, yet he is barely able to speak. When he does, his words to me are still curt, frosted. He will never truly trust me, will he? Even as he gave me the cup of wine at the victory ceremony after the Chariot Ordeal, or when he consigned me to march with the ranks, I could see it in his eyes. He fears me still.’

  ‘He fears the Gods,’ Kurunta corrected him, ‘and what they show him.’

  ‘You believe Ishtar’s song?’ Hattu asked.

  Kurunta shuffled awkwardly. ‘The king was a different man from that moment onwards.’

  ‘Do you believe it?’ Hattu repeated.

  ‘I don’t want to,’ Kurunta replied, shooting a nervous look at the sky as if worried that the Moon God might hear and tell his kin.

  Hattu sighed, looking over towards the royal wagon. ‘What does it matter? Now I fear it is my father who is broken.’

  Kurunta’s pitted features creased a little. ‘When I was a young soldier – a mere spear-stand, like you,’ he said, deadpan, ‘I fought in the Mitannian wars – out in the hot east.’

  ‘I know where Mitanni was,’ Hattu said.

  ‘Aye, of course you do. Old Ruba may be gone, but his wisdom is not,’ Kurunta’s face bent into something akin to a sad smile. ‘Once a great power in the world, the people of Mitanni made the mistake of plotting against the Hittite Empire. Now, they are no more than a fable.’ He looked up at the stars, his silver braid coiled across his neck like a scarf. ‘Out there, I served under a beast of a general. Lurma was his name. Imagine you could catch a lion’s roar and mould it into a man… that was Lurma. His mind was keen as a blade: when his fellow generals were planning for the day after tomorrow, he was already setting in place his designs for the next moon. He marched with us, broke bread with us, took his share of marching burden and endured our every hardship. I would have died for him, gladly.’ He patted the crossed sword belts on his chest. ‘Yet it was not to be. He is gone and I wear his war-garb in witness to his legend.’

  ‘What happened to him?’ Hattu asked.

  ‘He routed the Mitannian chariot elite with half their number of vehicles and only a small party of infantry. Won us the battle and the war. On the way home, he went to his stallions who had served him so well the previous day, to feed and water them. One of them had taken a cut to the eye and it was agitated, nervous. I saw how it nickered and snorted, but the more he tried to calm it, the more anxious the stallion became. It reared up and thrashed its forelegs in the air.’ Kurunta paused to spit into the dust. ‘A hoof caught Lurma on the temple. He was fine, or so it seemed – he waved away his closest comrades who rushed to aid him. Later that night he fell asleep by the fireside before he had even eaten. Most thought he was merely tired after the exertions of the war. But the next day, men noticed how distant he seemed. He became weak – easy to tire and shambling in his gait. I was sure then that he was a spent force. But I noticed something: every day he took to drawing out in the dirt the routes and the supply strategies for the division. Wily and careful in every aspect. While the horse’s hoof had robbed him of his strength, his mind was as sharp as ever. The fire still burned brightly within,’ he said, tapping his temple. ‘The healers insisted Lurma could not ride or march any longer. Yet we soldiers did as soldiers do: we formed a shell around him, refused to heed the advice of the healers and others. It was for the good of the division and the good of Lurma. Every day we carried him from his bed and helped him onto his chariot, strapping his weakened legs to a frame within that allowed him to stand, to ride and to see the battlefields – to direct us with his expert eye. We were the division’s legs and arms, he was its mind. We won another six clashes like that, and Lurma embraced us all like brothers after each, weeping, thanking us for our support. After a few years, the king of the time – your grandfather – forced Lurma to retire to his estate, thinking the offer of a life of comfort would be a gift.’ Kurunta shook his head slowly. ‘He died within a few days. The crack to his skull damaged him, but it was the loss of his most trusted comrades that killed him.’ The general looked Hattu hard in the eye. ‘The king needs strong men around him now. Nuwanza, Colta and I will do what we can, but it is you and Muwa that matter so much to him. You and your brother are the only things that can keep the fire burning within him. He… he heard your crossed words at Baka Hill.’

  ‘It was because of Atiya,’ Hattu said.

  ‘The young priestess on the Tapikka pilgrimage?’

  ‘Aye. Now she is in Pitagga’s hands,’ Hattu threw a cold look northwards, ‘somewhere, out there. She means a lot to both of us and… it was a misunderstanding,’ Hattu insisted,
but the anger still stung at his breast even as the words came out. A misunderstanding on Muwa’s part!

  ‘Aye, I truly hope so,’ Kurunta said, rising. ‘You and Muwa will make strong leaders one day, when…’ he left the rest of the sentence unsaid, looking away awkwardly. ‘And I… I have grown to tolerate you both,’ now he really was struggling, ‘and your bothersome ways,’ he added with a cough. ‘Now don’t stay out here too long. Turn in, get some rest.’ He flicked his head in the rough direction of the Mountain Wolves. ‘You and your men will need to be sharp, fresh.’

  ‘Tanku’s men,’ Hattu corrected him.

  Kurunta made a short grunting noise and arched one eyebrow, then rose and left.

  As Kurunta stalked away, Hattu noticed another figure standing some way away dressed all in black, one foot mounted on a boulder, watching him, staring. Muwa. His thick mane of hair danced in the mountain wind, the moonlight setting his bright eyes aflame. A moment later he turned away and was gone.

  ***

  Atiya saw blackness and tasted a coppery bile in the back of her throat. The gloom of the rough sack they had pulled over her head seemed to have lasted for an eternity. Voices moaned and mumbled as if speaking in another room. Strange words, yet familiar all the same. Kaskan, she realised with a shiver of horror. Her mind’s eye flooded with images of the severed heads on spears the day they had raided Hattusa. Rough hands carried her here and there, through cold and warmth, through winds and calm, day after day. She smelt clean, high air, then the rich aroma of damp earth and then the stink of horses and pigs. The sack was torn off and she was dumped, exhausted, onto her side on a bed of sorts. It was here that she lay still for some time, barely conscious and unable to open her eyes. She felt a healer’s hands upon her, but there was something missing from the healer’s touch: it was cold, methodical. Whoever it was pressed chill swabs against the back of her head roughly, carelessly. After one session of prodding and dabbing, Atiya fell asleep. When the blackness receded and she woke again, her head ached as if it had been struck by a hammer. Voices, angry and loud, pealed nearby, though she could not understand the mountain men’s native tongue. Then another voice spoke, and at once she understood.