Son of Ishtar

by Gordon Doherty

  The wind howled as they sped, tossing up Muwa’s thick dark hair and Volca’s red cloak. Volca caressed his trident and eyed the southern stretches of the basin and the mountain paths to which Pitagga was headed. It was foolish for one prince of the Grey Throne to give chase in there, detached from their army, but both? Anything could happen in there.

  Anything.

  Chapter 23

  Of Spiteful Kin

  Summer 1300 BC

  The world around Hattu was a blur: the grassy plain speeding past in the whipping wind of the ride. The fleeing trio of chariots was but a distant blur, hurtling towards a shadowy pass that led into the Soaring Mountains.

  ‘Their horses are no match for ours – they’ll tire soon,’ Dagon yelled. ‘Colta’s horses can run and run.’

  Hattu willed it to be so. And a short way before the shadowy mountain pass, he saw that they were gaining on Pitagga’s two flanking chariots.

  ‘Look, they’re slowing.’

  ‘Aye, but not because they’re tired,’ Hattu said.

  Indeed, the three Azzi war cars moved like ibises in flight, the two flankers falling back in perfect harmony until they were just a handful of paces from the left and right edges of Hattu’s chariot. Hattu watched each, knowing that one would attack first and would need his full attention. The leftmost chariot warrior shrieked something and Hattu’s mind flashed with Ruba’s teachings once more, interpreting the words: ‘Loose spears, as one!’

  ‘Ho!’ Hattu cried, grabbing the lip of the chariot.

  Dagon, Gods’ blessing, did not hesitate. Colta’s assiduous training kicked in and he yanked on the reins without delay. ‘Ho!’ Rage and Thunder’s blistering pace halved within a heartbeat – the same heartbeat that saw the spears of the two enemy chariots fly through the air where Hattu and Dagon might have been, ploughing harmlessly into the grass instead. The enemy pair gawped, then reached down to snatch up fresh spears as their drivers slowed a little to fall level once more. Hattu swung right, pulling his bow from his shoulder, nocking, drawing and aiming in one fluid motion. Twang! The arrow thrummed through the air and tore out the throat of the warrior, who slumped heavily forwards against the lip of the car, clawing at his neck. The sudden shift of weight result was calamitous, the front of the car tipping and knocking one horse from its stride, the forward end of the draught pole stabbing into the ground, bending then shooting upright, the car then bucking violently up and over the shredded end of the pole like a vaulter. It hurtled through the air, tossing both men out and dashing them on the ground, before crashing down in an explosion of bronze and timber.

  ‘Hattu!’ Dagon screamed, slapping a hand over his chest, pushing him back. A spear spat through the tiny corridor of space the action had created, and Hattu swung to the leftmost chariot. The warrior there did not attack again, instead shooting a look to the trail ahead then barking something at his driver. The Azzi war-car bucked and shuddered as it closed in, like a runner intent on shouldering a rival off the track.

  Hattu soon understood: a wall of shadow enveloped them then as they entered the mountain pass. Instantly, the din of the chase intensified tenfold, echoing hooves, snapping whips, frantic whinnies and crunching wheels. As they sped side-by-side up the narrowing, winding mountain path – a wall of rock on the left side and a drop on Hattu and Dagon’s right – the Azzi warrior lifted his spear two handed, preparing to thrust down towards Hattu’s chest as if to poke him and his car off the edge of the swiftly-rising track.

  Hattu’s fingers flexed impulsively for the spear and shield he did not possess. The bow was no use at this closeness either. He snatched the curved sword from his belt. Against a lengthy spear, it was a poor match. The enemy warrior’s lance lashed out. Hattu dodged it but lost his footing in doing so. Balance deserted him and he toppled from the back of the car.

  He dropped the sword, head and feet changing places and dread seizing him. But his palms clasped the low lip at the back of the chariot. His knees and lower legs thwacked into the dust however, trailing behind the chariot, skin being flayed off as if by shaving blades. He cried out, dust and pebbles scattering under him, spitting out over the now precipitous drop on the right-hand edge of the path. He clawed at the mesh of the rawhide floor in an attempt to haul himself back into the car, when a crude thump knocked the chariot towards the edge of the high track and cast Hattu back to dangling from the rear lip of the vehicle.

  ‘Die, Hittite scum!’ the Azzi snarled, bashing his spear butt against the side of the chariot again. This time, the right wheel skidded and skated on the shale right on the track’s edge. Hattu swung out like a bob on a string, legs kicking out over the drop – now a deadly plunge onto a dry ravine bed. He held on with the fingers of one hand, seeing their rightmost chariot wheel on the cusp of slipping over the edge, seeing Rage’s hooves scraping and sliding to keep away from the precipice. But he growled and drew on all of the hard-won muscles his few summers of training had bestowed upon him, pulling himself back onto the carriage. He scrambled onto his burning, flayed knees on the rawhide floor and grabbed his sword, just as the Azzi warrior stabbed out with his spear at Dagon, over Hattu’s crouched head. The strike was brutal, and well-placed to pierce Dagon’s ear and burst his head like a ripe pomegranate, until Hattu lurched up to bat the spear away with one palm then cut upwards with his sword, cleaving the foe’s face off. The man’s fingers moved to the pink cross-section of bone and flesh that had once been his face, at once robbed of all his senses. Hattu saw the enemy driver gawp in alarm, and his hands twitch to try and barge them from the side again. In a flash, Hattu snatched Dagon’s whip and lashed it past the bewildered, faceless Azzi warrior so the end raked across the eyes of the driver like a cat’s claws. The driver screamed, his hands going for his face, one rein pulled unintentionally tight, one dropped. The enemy horses sped up in confusion, the Azzi car shooting ahead of Hattu and Dagon towards a sharp left bend in the path. The enemy chariot slewed to the right and shot off the edge of the path. The screams and whinnies were shrill and unbroken, until a cacophonous crunch of flesh and timber dashing on stone echoed up from the drop.

  Hattu panted, spitting sweat from his lips and blinking it from his eyes, scouring the ever-rising path ahead for Pitagga’s chariot. ‘Where is he?’

  ‘Not far, look,’ Dagon panted.

  About a quarter danna ahead, approaching the next bend in the track, they saw Pitagga’s chariot – marked out by the grim head-topped pole that jutted vertically from the car. He was speeding ever higher into the mountains. Speeding, then slowing, then crawling. Pitagga lashed and lashed the whip at the two exhausted white stallions, not over their heads, but at their backs, flaying the hair and flesh from them. The Kaskan Lord slipped round a blind bend at a mere trot, but Hattu knew they had him.

  ‘He’s alone,’ Hattu said as they approached the bend. ‘He is strong and well-armed, but we have each other.’

  ‘But damn, we do,’ Dagon said immediately.

  ‘When he abandons his chariot,’ Hattu said as they drove round the bend, ‘we can outfox him. He is strong but he will ti-’

  Hattu’s words ended as they rounded the bend where the path opened out on a high, wide table of rock, splashed with molten sun and long shadow, open to a drop left and right before it became a winding path again on the other side. Pitagga’s chariot rested there, driverless and stationary.

  Hattu saw the slumped form in the car. Atiya? And poor Sarpa’s head. But no Pitagga.

  ‘Wher-’ Dagon started, just as, from the rock-face at the left side of their slowing chariot, a shape leapt from a niche, a flash of bronze catching the sunlight.

  ‘Dagon!’ Hattu yelled, throwing his friend out of the way. But the flat of the axe smacked into Dagon’s temple. Knocking him from the chariot and onto the track where he lay, motionless. Hattu leapt back as the axe came around again, splintering the wall of the now halted chariot car. Rage and Thunder whinnied and reared up, fetlocks thrashing. It was enoug
h to drive Pitagga back. But he laughed, withdrawing just a few steps onto the table of rock to stand wide-legged before his own chariot.

  Hattu, shivering with exhaustion, stooped to check on Dagon – keeping his eyes on Pitagga the whole time. Dagon’s neck pulsed and he let out a weak moan. Hattu stood, curved sword in hand. He stalked forward, ahead of Rage and Thunder and onto the flat, circular table of rock. Silence reigned bar the gentle mountain breeze. After the relentless din of the battle and the chase, it was an eerie contrast. Pitagga squared his bulky frame, making it clear that none would get past him.

  ‘Atiya, I’m here,’ he shouted past Pitagga.

  ‘Ha-Hattu?’ she mumbled, her legs and arms tightly bound.

  ‘You’ll be free soon,’ he assured her.

  ‘Will she? You know I have killed hundreds of warriors, don’t you?’ Pitagga chuckled.

  ‘But none today,’ Hattu remarked, noticing how Pitagga’s lion-helm was undented, how his rusty beard and locks, his fine black vest and fierce axe were untainted with blood.

  ‘Many older and far stronger than you,’ Pitagga continued, ignoring the comment.

  Hattu glowered at Pitagga, standing between him and his tortured love, standing between him and the dishonoured skull of his long-dead brother. ‘Then your head will be some prize,’ he said flatly.

  Pitagga laughed fiercely, pointing at Hattu’s short curved sword. ‘You do not even have a proper weapon, Prince.’

  ‘Stand aside or I will show you its edge, up close,’ Hattu said, his body pulsing with cold, anticipatory dread. But the fear was harnessed, his feet poised to spring, fingers flexing on his sword hilt, eyes on the Kaskan Lord.

  ‘Very well,’ Pitagga said with a smirk. The dark mirth faded though as he hoisted his double-headed axe and swung it around his head, leaping forward and roaring as if taking on the spirit of the lion whose skull crowned his head.

  Hattu and Pitagga’s blades clashed. The Kaskan Lord’s axe-blow was mighty, and Hattu’s sword edge could only deflect it, the axe head streaking along his arm, making a shallow but lengthy and stinging cut.

  ‘I killed a man like that once,’ Pitagga chuckled as they stumbled past each other and came round once more, ‘a hundred such cuts and he bled to death.’

  ‘Then his wraith will be waiting for you in the Dark Earth tonight,’ Hattu growled.

  Pitagga swung his axe again, this time for Hattu’s midriff. Hattu ducked back, his heels scuffing the edge of the table of rock and the death plummet as the pair circled. Hattu jabbed his dirk up for Pitagga’s ribs, but the Kaskan Lord threw an elbow down, batting the strike away. His breath came in rasps now – his throat unwatered since noon. His limbs felt weak and his blood like tar.

  ‘That’s the trouble with young warriors,’ Pitagga purred. ‘They are over-eager, and tire themselves early in the day. When I walk in the ashes of Hattusa, I will be sure to have my bards tell stories of your foolishness.’

  ‘Your bards already compose tales of your efforts today. The brave lord with the unsullied sword… fleeing alone from a catastrophic defeat.’

  Pitagga’s lip twitched. ‘Enough play,’ he said with a low growl and lunged forward, the axe swinging and chopping in a blur. Hattu leapt and rolled, the mighty blade crashing down in his wake. He tried to score his sword across Pitagga’s calves, only for the axe to chop down and cut the blade in half. Weaponless, Hattu scrambled back. Pitagga’s axe hacked down again and again, and it was all Hattu could do to roll clear each time.

  ‘But damn, you are a bothersome foe,’ Pitagga said, steadying his breath. ‘Can’t you stay still for a moment so I can cleave your skull?’ He glanced at the chariot, then grunted in amusement, stalked over there and plunged his hand into the car, then wrenched Atiya up by her hair. Bound and thrashing, Atiya cried out. ‘Perhaps this will bring you closer?’ He tossed Atiya down like a trussed hog. Her head dashed on the ground and she fell limp as Pitagga brought his axe up over her neck.

  Hattu saw the axe rise, saw Pitagga’s face twist with effort, saw the bronze edge plunge towards Atiya. In an instinctive blur, he dragged the chariot whip from his belt and lashed out with it. The leather strap licked out, across the gap between Pitagga and him. It coiled around the Kaskan lord’s right wrist, snatching the axe from his grip. The great weapon clattered to the ground and Pitagga staggered a few steps to one side, crying out.

  There was a brief hiatus of disbelief, before Pitagga roared, drawing out his straightsword and sliding to his knees and raise it over Atiya. Hattu felt his heart thunder as the very ether around him crackled. He lunged forward to take up the fallen axe, then swept it up, batting the sword from Pitagga’s hand with one strike, then bringing it down upon the Kaskan’s head with the other. With a thick clunk like a breaking slab, Pitagga’s lion-skull helm was cloven and his head too. His shrewd and dark mind was scattered across the high, wide stretch of mountain path like a pot of rotten offal. The axe-blade sank deep, cleaving right to his neck. His eyes rolled in his head and some hollow grunting sound escaped from his riven throat, the mighty axe wedged tight. Hattu let go of the weapon haft and Pitagga swayed there for a moment, near the cliff’s edge, before he slumped to his side and plummeted, soundlessly, into the shadowy abyss of the mountain gully.

  ‘And so ends the reign of the Lord of the Mountains… ’ Hattu panted.

  He fell to his knees, taking Atiya in his arms and hugging her, kissing her forehead. She groaned – as did Dagon nearby – as he set about untying her ankles. ‘I’m so sorry, Atiya. I should have been there to protect you. I should have freed you long before now, I… ’

  The grinding of more chariot wheels echoed up the mountain path. He looked up, seeing a single vehicle ascending. When he saw the driver, all of the emotion of the day – the hatred, the anger, the spite – rose in him again.

  Muwa…

  He stood, taking up Pitagga’s dropped straightsword instinctively, letting the blade hang by his side.

  ***

  The dying sun dripped fire, casting long, weary shadows across the plains of Nerik – shining a harsh light across what had only hours ago been a silvery meadow, and was now a bruised, scarlet fen, decorated with riven men: twisted, trampled corpses, gaping, lifeless faces and blue-grey innards. Shards of white bone, arrows and broken spears jutted. A frenzy of flies swarmed and an army of feasting carrion birds tore at corpses.

  King Mursili saw from his sick bed his famous and feared army, limping like a broken thing. Victorious… but at an incredible cost. Men stumbled to and fro amongst the dead, shaking, shivering, clutching shattered arms or stumps, holding mortally gashed bellies and pressing dirty rags to torn faces. Propped in his wagon, he heard the panting, croaking reports of many officers, saw from the corner of his rheumy eyes the concern on their faces as they stood by the wagon window, slick with sweat and blood.

  ‘Four whole regiments have been annihilated, My Sun,’ a Captain of the Blaze said darkly. ‘Another five have lost half their men or more. All told, nearly five thousand men met the Dark Earth today and another three and a half thousand will never fight again.’

  A clatter of wood rang out here and there as pyres were thrown together. The scrape of spades seemed unending as others dug graves – there was simply not enough wood in the surrounds of Nerik to burn so many corpses. Mursili felt a bead of rheum spill over one eyelid and scamper down his cheek.

  ‘But the divisions still retain their strong core, My Sun. The Storm, the Blaze, and the Fury – the veteran regiments within each fought like lions,’ Colta said without a trace of triumph. ‘Pitagga’s trap was a wily one, but the masses he gathered were simply not strong enough to break the bronze shoulders of the Hittite army. The Kaskans lost three men for every two of ours. They are broken, My Sun.’

  Mursili felt a swell of urgency. ‘Pi…’ he croaked weakly. ‘Pitag… ’ The poison Volca had fed him a short while before had been potent, and he could almost feel it seizing his already wasted mu
scles, turning them grey and useless.

  Colta’s face lengthened. ‘Pitagga escaped,’ he said.

  The Hurrian knew as well as the king: so long as Pitagga roamed to whip up dissent, the Kaskan War remained alive, the Hittite realm could afford no attention to the badly neglected and gravely threatened eastern and western frontiers… and the Grey Throne remained curtailed, tangled with its own near north, a great power in name only. His vision changed, darkening around the edges.

  ‘But Prince Hattu took chase after him,’ Colta added, his eyes alight again with an ember of hope and fear, ‘into the mountains on a chariot.’

  ‘Prince Muwa set off after him too, in a chariot with Volca,’ another officer added.

  The shadows drew back and Mursili’s body seized up for an instant.

  He remembered Volca’s last words to him: The princes need my help, it seems…

  ‘M… my… bo… boys?’ he said with ever-more distress. He felt his weak heart bang like a drum.

  ‘Aye,’ Colta said uneasily, ‘we haven’t seen either of them for some time. Scouts are heading up there now, but… ’

  The shadow-veil closed in, and Mursili saw in the darkness the swaying, curvaceous form of the winged goddess, her talons clacking as she stalked around him.

  High in the Soaring Mountains, they chased the Kaskan lord,

  They turned upon each other, and both did draw a sword…

  Mursili felt a part of his heart blacken and crumble away. No… please!

  ***

  High within the Soaring Mountains, Muwa’s chariot ground to a halt by the circular table of rock.

  ‘The young prince has done it again,’ Volca gasped, leaning keenly over the front of the chariot, agape. ‘This is his victory.’

  Muwa’s mind was in strips. The battle rage pounded in his veins still. The ignominy of leading the army into Pitagga’s trap flayed at his pride.