And in that same instant, like a changing wind, the clash on the bridge turned too. Hattu saw Kurunta in the midst of it, leaping in battle-fury, shieldless, his silvery braid of hair swinging. He elbowed a Kaskan in the face before turning on his heel to drive one curved blade into the collarbone of a stocky foe and then bring the other sword slashing across the belly of a sprightly one. Three splashes sounded as this doomed trio staggered to the edge of the bridge and fell into the river. He saw Kurunta’s face contort, mouth agape as he cried encouragement to his soldiers. Over the din of dying men and clashing weapons, he could not make out the words, but he saw that they certainly worked: for just a heartbeat later, the Kaskan push faltered and the Hittites edged forward.
But then a hand slapped on his shoulder.
Hattu felt his heart leap into his throat. He swung round in fright, only to see Sarpa, panting, shaved head beaded with sweat having hobbled from the walls of the Storm Temple. ‘Brother, you should have stayed in the temple strong room.’
‘I was on the temple roof and I saw you out here, so close to the fray.’ Sarpa said, his eyes darting over Hattu, one hand reaching up to trace over the swollen, grazed cheek where Pitagga had struck him.
‘I’m fine,’ Hattu insisted, pushing his brother’s hand back from the stinging wound. ‘And the Kaskans are losing, look.’
A few snatched breaths passed and true enough, the first Hittite step forward became a second then a third. Soon, they were almost at a slow, grim march, the front rank a blaze of jabbing spears and curved swords. Kurunta leapt clear of the push, up onto the bridge’s edge again, driving them on with his words and his pointing blades: ‘Forwaaard.’
‘Some thought King Mursili was a fool when he set off for Wahina and left Kurunta behind,’ Sarpa grinned. ‘But I doubt they will question his loyalty again. He’s saved our city.’
Hattu saw Pitagga on the far bank: the Lord of the Mountains’ hubris was draining, head switching in every direction for some way of turning the tide. ‘Still, you are right, we should draw back,’ Hattu said. But before the words were fully out, he saw Pitagga lift a small throwing axe, then with a flash of bronze, hurl it across the Ambar.
‘Sarpa!’ Hattu cried. But his brother was too slow to move. The axe spun and hammered into the back of Sarpa’s neck, wedging side-on and deep just above the collarbone. Sarpa staggered, honey-gold eyes wide in shock. Black blood pumped from the awful wound in gouts, and Sarpa’s head tilted to one side, almost peeling away from his shoulders, his dying breath coming as a choked rasp.
‘Brother,’ Hattu cried, lunging forward to halt Sarpa from toppling down into the Ambar. A hot, shower of blood sprayed over Hattu’s face and torso: the coppery reek branding itself on his memory forever. His brother’s blood-slick body slid clear of his grasp and crashed into the waters. Hattu fell to his knees, hearing the Kaskans roar in delight as Sarpa’s corpse was carried out into the centre of the Ambar.
‘We have the head of a prince as our prize,’ he heard Pitagga howl from across the water.
In a blur of tears, he saw the Kaskan leader’s men over there poking their spears into the current, then hooking poor Sarpa out like a fish, hoisting him. Pitagga seized the body by the scruff of the collar and brought his great double axe slicing down to sever the last tendons that held Sarpa’s head in place. The Kaskan lord held the Hittite prince’s head aloft and he and his men howled as if it was some sort of victory. Yet it was short-lived as their attempt to take the Spirit Bridge crumbled moments later. In a trice, Pitagga had turned away from the river with his ‘prize’, fleeing with his personal guards.
A moment later and the last resisting Kaskans on the bridge broke too, turning, all sense of cohesion vanishing as they spilled back from whence they came, some trampling or barging comrades out of the way. Pursued by the men of the Storm, the remnant of the horde was soon just a dull rabble, surging back into the black smoke clouds of the lower town ward, charging through the ruins they had created, leaping over the dead they had stolen life from, fleeing through the ruined Tawinian Gate. A breath of wind swept some of the smoke away and revealed the full extent of the dancing fires, the wrecked mass of blackened or part-tumbled homes and the broken gates and listing, cracked walls. Hattu saw the three-legged dog, pining, tail wagging in forlorn hope as it stood over the prone, still form of its owner. He saw Sarpa’s body and the red mess at the end of his neck.
‘They took… his head,’ he whispered, realising he was shaking, badly.
He barely noticed the figure striding towards him.
Kurunta’s mottled skin was lashed with blood. Steam coiled from his bald scalp and torso as the sweat of battle began to evaporate. If this wasn’t fearsome enough, his face was a crumpled ball of fury.
‘Boy? What in the name of Tarhunda were you doing? I told you to get back. A moment later and-’ his words ended abruptly as he saw the runnels of redness dripping from Hattu’s face, soaking his tunic. ‘Prince Hattu?’ he said in alarm.
‘It is not my blood. I am unhurt,’ Hattu said with a tremor, then pointed across the river to the headless corpse. ‘But Prince Sarpa is dead,’ he wailed. Rivulets of Sarpa’s blood snaked from Hattu’s person, through the shingle and into the Ambar’s waters. ‘My brother is dead.’
Kurunta took a step back, his breath caged and his good eye wide as he realised what had happened. ‘By all the Gods, no… it will begin on the day he stands by the banks of the Ambar…’
Hattu looked at the gnarled general, confused.
‘… soaked in the blood of his brother,’ Kurunta finished, his face draining of colour.
Chapter 5
Shield of the King
Late Autumn 1303 BC
Red dust rose from the age-old track like an ethereal serpent into the crisp blue morning sky. Almost nine thousand men marched southwards along it, back into the Hittite heartlands. They went without their armoured vests – carried instead in the mule and ox-cart train – but wore their bronze and leather helms and carried their spears and shields still as Hittite martial code demanded. Leather bags of rations and personal effects tied near the tops of their spear tips swung and they alternated between chants of prayer and coarser marching songs.
The singing stopped when they came to a clay altar by the left side of the route. The commanders bellowed an order to halt, and the regiments obeyed, taking time and care to leave small portions of bread by the altar – gifts to the God of the Road and a ruse to trap the evil spirits that many said lingered on that side. Others sent prayers up to the familiar hills ahead, for they were but a few weeks’ march from Hattusa... from home.
Up on the cliff top that overlooked the procession of his army, two gleaming Mesedi stood guard by the royal carriage – a sturdy, bronze-banded, cedarwood wagon. King Mursili himself stood at the cliff’s edge, shrouded in his dark-grey cloak, his silver-threaded locks dancing in the biting wind. An entire campaigning season, gone. And what have we achieved? His bones ached in the breeze – as if demanding he become an old man before his time. He let his tired eyes trace the bronze-scaled serpent of the Hittite army from head to tail as it set off again: leading the way was the Wrath of Sarruma – his own division, dedicated to and named after the Mountain God. Next came the Fury of Aplu – devoted to the God of the Dark Earth. Chosen Prince Muwa marched at their head, resplendent in his black garb and shining white silver cuirass. Next year would be the lad’s seventeenth summer, and it showed: he was tall, strapping and strong… and he had certainly developed an eye for women. He had mentioned more than once how eager he was to return to Hattusa, to meet with the priestess girl. Perhaps that is why he marches at such haste? Mursili chuckled.
His eyes swung to the next division: the Blaze of Arinniti, Division of the Sun Goddess. He could see their fine ranks and their barking captains, but could not see General Nuwanza at their head. Where is the bowman? Behind the Blaze rode the bloated pack of sumpter mules, thousands strong, laden with bags of grain
and salted meats. With them came a caravan of ox-wagons carrying the dread spearhead of his army: the chariots, disassembled and strapped down to the wagon floors. A pack of four hundred unburdened war stallions trotted alongside the vehicles and the fork-bearded Hurrian Chariot Master, Colta, walked with them, wandering amongst them, whispering to each of them like children. The horses and cars had gone unused. Wahina had been re-established as Hittite territory, a bite had been taken out of the Lost North, but only because the enemy that had rampaged there the previous year was gone, like an autumnal mist.
He felt a nagging, gnawing doubt – nebulous and persistent. It was like the dream that had plagued him all throughout this campaign: a dream where he wandered in an unfamiliar palace in search of the distant echoing call. Father! The call would lead him to the doorway of a room, where Ishtar would greet him with a warm smile, then direct him with an open hand to the opposite door and on along a corridor. Yet at the end of the corridor, he would find himself in the same damned room, the goddess there too, playfully guiding him down the same corridor. He grunted and shook the thought away – the mere memory of the dream maddening.
Father! the call from the dream persevered.
He thought of his youngest son, left back in Hattusa. Hot pins of guilt pricked his heart as he thought of the life he had enforced upon Hattu. He imagined his long-dead wife’s face gazing at him in cold censure. ‘I’m sorry, Gassula, there is no other way. At least he wants for nothing,’ he whispered.
Nothing but his father’s love, his wife’s wraith replied.
Seeking distraction, he looked back whence the army had come. Wahina, that strange, bare land of endless green hills. Wahina, a land of shadows. Volca the Sherden had led them to a creek where he and his two men had heard rumour of the Kaskan masses, but ultimately, those sites were as bare as all the others and their quarry had continued to elude them. His eyes traced along the northern horizon and the jagged Soaring Mountains, grey-blue in the haze of distance: near-impenetrable rocky fortresses where Pitagga and his growing army had no doubt retreated to.
‘I’ll find you, you basta-’ he stopped, wincing, clutching his left arm. A shooting pain on the inside of his bicep almost blinded him such was its ferocity.
‘My Sun,’ a voice spoke behind him.
‘What?’ he said tetchily, swinging round to glare at the two Mesedi, expecting to see Zida there with some bothersome issue. But he saw it was Nuwanza who had spoken. His ire faded with the pain in his arm – few men could remain angry in the bowman’s company. ‘I’m sorry, my friend. I was letting my thoughts get the better me for a moment there.’
‘If it was only the odd fleeting moment, My Sun,’ Nuwanza said, striding over to stand by the king and behold the north with him.
‘We didn’t even catch sight of him, Nuwanza,’ Mursili snapped.
‘Such is the Kaskan way. They know they cannot match us on an open plain, thus they melt into the trees and the hills and,’ the veins in his temples under his V of hair stood proud, ‘those damned mountains.’
Mursili’s jaw worked, not satisfied. ‘In days past they might have been content to do so, year after year: raid and retreat. But those we spoke to in the shanty villages by the pillaged cities did not speak of raiding bands.’
‘Like ants, one fellow claimed, Kaskans moving in a single drove, many thousands strong, and more than one such force,’ Nuwanza mused. ‘My Sun, what if… if Pitagga has managed to…’
‘To unite the twelve tribes?’ Mursili finished for him. ‘Then he must have promised them a fine prize for them to set aside their differences.’ His brow pinched and he heard that call from the nagging dream again. Father! Instinctively, he looked south in the direction of Hattusa.
Nuwanza read his disquiet instantly. ‘I sense something is wrong too, My Sun. We should hurry back to the capital.’
A clop-clop of horse’s hooves cut off the exchange. The pair looked up to see Volca the horn-helmed Sherden riding on a mare, coming up the winding path by the cliffside to join them. The comical sight softened Mursili’s hard thoughts.
‘Warriors do not sit on horses, man,’ he laughed, ‘messengers, scouts and boys might, but not warriors.’
Volca slowed the mare and slid from his awkward sitting position on the beast’s croup. He landed on the ground with a thump and stroked the mare’s nose. ‘I am not warrior today,’ he said in his improving but still-simplistic Hittite tongue, with a wide grin that exaggerated his impeccable looks, gesturing to the thin linen tunic and belt he wore. ‘My armour is stowed on mule train.’
No armour save for the helmet, Mursili thought but did not say. Volca had been a charismatic addition to his retinue: affable, knowledgeable and inspirational throughout the chase to pin down Pitagga. Yet never once had Mursili or any other seen him without that nightmarish horned helm. Hiding a bald crown? Mursili wondered with an inner chuckle.
‘The danger is over, is it not?’ Volca continued. ‘You said we are now safely back on sacred Hittite soil, no?’
‘Danger is pervasive,’ Nuwanza said in a remedial tone. ‘And we should neither be lax nor let our pace lessen.’
Volca shrugged, unimpressed. Then he nodded towards the snaking army down on the ground below. ‘Prince Muwatalli is keen to lead march back to Hattusa. I thought we could ease off on our return – spend rest of day hunting then follow on?’ he said, then turned away from the cliff edge and looked southeast to the run of bumpy foothills. He crouched by imprints in the dirt. ‘The spoor of lion! I have heard many rumours of the creatures in these lands: deer, lynx, tigers, bulls, wolf and boar. Elephant, even.’
That smile again – enough to convince a harlot to pay for his company, Mursili reckoned. Volca handed him a drinking skin. ‘I prepared some more of the Sherden root brew for you. Drink, wet your lips and whet your appetite for the thrill of the hunt.’
Mursili took the skin and sipped on the drink. It was deliciously sweet and spicy at once, invigorating indeed. He smacked his lips in satisfaction, his eyes following Volca’s sweeping hand. ‘It has been some time… ’
‘My Sun,’ Nuwanza interrupted, ‘perhaps a hunt could be organised for another day. It has been more than a summer since last the people saw their Labarna. Think of the throne…’ he hesitated before adding, ‘think of the soft beds and the wine… think of the harem?’
Mursili shot the Master Archer a fiery look that faded into a salty half-smile. ‘Perhaps you are right.’
Volca’s handsome features crumpled. ‘Not even single catch – to honour Gods? Did you not tell me how dark skies gather over your city when the Storm God is not honoured?’
Mursili balked at this. It was an unwelcome seed of doubt that he knew would plague his every moment were something grim to occur. A deer hunt, perhaps, and then they could catch up with the army on the royal carriage. They could offer the beast up on the altar within the Storm Temple. Its meat would feed many weary mouths, so it would be no wasteful hunt. The Goddess Kamrusepa, protector of the herds, would approve.
‘My Sun,’ Nuwanza started to protest.
Just then, a faint drumming of wild hooves sounded, deep in the wooded vales of the foothills. The trees there shook. Volca’s face opened up. ‘The hunt is on, My Sun?’
***
A scent of pine spiced the air as Mursili stalked through a mesh of ferns and a frosty carpet of golden leaves and bracken, wishing away their every crackle and crunch. He silently thanked the Gods for taking up Volca’s suggestion: never did the stresses of the throne drain as swiftly as when on the hunt. For the first time in so long he felt like a boy again. Shadowing him was a lone Mesedi – like Mursili, barefoot, stripped to just a tunic and carrying only a hunting spear and bow.
The two halted as they heard a shuffle of leaves and bracken just beyond a small, root-knotted ridge ahead. Mursili ducked and made eyes with his guard, who indicated his agreement: their prey was just ahead.
Mursili cupped his hands together and in
tertwined his fingers, then blew softly, imitating the whistling melody of a song thrush twice. Silence. Even the crunching footsteps of their prey fell quiet. Then, in reply, the chirruping bird call of one of the other two hunting parties: Zida and another Mesedi, or Volca and the two other Sherden.
‘Only one repetition,’ Mursili whispered to his Mesedi.
‘Then the beast is watching, listening,’ the bodyguard replied. ‘We must wait, My Sun.’
An eternity passed, and Mursili’s thighs began to ache. There was a rush of moving leaves then the shuffling beyond the ridge sounded different, heavier. He was about to give the call to abandon the hunt when, at last, the chirruping sounded again. Twice? ‘The creature is at ease,’ he mouthed, his usually pouchy, weary eyes alert and wide.
Aye, his guard mouthed.
Mursili rose, ghosting forward, catsoft on his feet, the Mesedi following him. They came to the tip of the rise, keeping low and as yet unable to see over it. They heard the call again – twice. Zida and Volca’s lot in position, surely.
‘Ready?’ he mouthed to his guard. The fellow nodded. Mursili crouched a little lower to charge his legs with energy, made the double call to let Zida and Volca know it was time, then sprung up and over the parapet of ferns atop the ridge.
He barely heard the third, muted call from the woods.
At once he took it all in: a small glade, ringed with red-gold leafed poplars and carpeted in moss. The deer was nowhere to be seen. Instead, a great, grey mass dominated the centre of the clearing: ferocious ivory tusks, colossal legs and a scarred trunk. The cow elephant – huge and very old – instantly swung its great head to face him. He realised straight away what peril he was in – seeing its calves stripping and eating tree bark. She put herself between them and him.
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