Son of Ishtar

by Gordon Doherty

  From the corner of his eye he saw one of his fellow soldiers. He was positioned just like Kol, naked and spread-eagled to an upright, X-shaped timber frame. The blurry form shuddered violently, drenched in red wetness. There was something terribly wrong about the shape of the man’s body…

  ‘And now it is your turn,’ the Kaskan voice whispered in his ear from behind. Kol leapt with fright, his restraints biting into his flesh. A crow-faced man stepped into view, right by Kol’s side. His bearded face was spattered with blood, and his teeth shone in an ill-fitting grin. He held a long and savagely-toothed, two-handled copper saw. Kol tried not to look as the fellow mopped at the saw with a filthy rag, wiping the remnants of the last victim away.

  Crow-face flexed his fingers and took hold of the handle at one end of the long saw, a second warrior stepping over to hold the other end. Like men pulling a piece of furniture into place, they passed the saw between Kol’s spread legs and carefully lifted it, so the ragged teeth lightly touched his crotch and genitals. So delicate, so expert in their movements. Kol shivered violently. Crow-face nodded once to his comrade, behind Kol, then yanked up and back, hard.

  The copper saw rasped like a hoarse lion. Kol’s blood and tatters of his skin showered Crow-face. Pain. White, maddening, agony. The noise that lurched from Kol’s lungs was inhuman, like an animal mangled in a trap, his face agape and his neck cracking back to look skywards. There was a moment of quiet, just enough for the fire of the wound to flare in full, then…

  Rasp! The saw was pulled back by the fellow behind Kol.

  Kol closed his eyes tight, feeling the numb sensation of his tongue coming free in his mouth, chewed off in the blindness of agony.

  Rasp… Rasp… Rasp! Over and over. Blood, innards and organs splatted to the ground. Skin and cartilage groaned and stretched as his body was hewn apart from below.

  ‘Be quick,’ another Kaskan hissed through the night. ‘For someone approaches!’

  Crow-face glanced over his shoulder into the mist, peering, uncertain, then turned back to the other sawman. The pair resumed their vicious work with great haste.

  Rasp-rasp-rasp-rasp!

  Lost in hideous torment, Kol’s mind leapt in every direction that his bound limbs could not. Then, blessedly, the sound of the rasping saw faded away into insignificance and his screams seemed to be coming from another as, gradually, he returned to the vaults of the past. His sister was in his arms once more, hugging him, smiling, laughing at his tales. ‘I have missed this,’ she said, looking up at him.

  He kissed her head. ‘As have I.’

  ***

  A ragged cry rang out across the blackness then faded away to nothing. The sixty one Wolves moving across the causeway halted.

  ‘What was that?’ they whispered.

  Hattu looked along the front – eight abreast. Their eyes were wide, glinting in the starlight. Either side of them, the tranquil waters of the lake twinkling likewise, and up ahead, the small fog-shrouded islet churned and cast impossible shapes. He imagined in the mist swirling serpents, great birds, warrior wraiths.

  ‘We have to be swift,’ he said softly to Tanku. ‘Order them onwards.’

  But big Tanku seemed – for once – paralysed with fear. Uncomprehending, Hattu followed his gaze, seeing something hanging from the branches of two skeletal trees up ahead: webs, hanging across their path like delicate veils, dark, eight-legged shapes upon them.

  ‘I… I can’t,’ Tanku said in a tremulous whisper.

  Hattu looked down, seeing the big captain’s feet anchored to the earth with fear. He lowered his voice so only Tanku could hear. ‘Walk behind me, I will see you safe, just as I did in the barracks, remember?’ Then he turned to the rest of the Wolves: ‘Together,’ he whispered, taking the lead. The others clacked their shields together like a mini wall and edged along behind him. As they crept between the trees and into the roiling fog, Hattu flicked his spear tip up, silently cutting away the veil of webs. The way was clear. He shot a furtive glance at Tanku, whose tense features eased in relief.

  ‘Now, be ready,’ Hattu hissed over his shoulder to the sixteen Wolves at the rear who went with their bows nocked and part-drawn. ‘But be careful to identify your target before you shoot. We don’t know what lies on this island. The priestesses may be here.’

  On they went in breathless silence, Hattu at their head. A toad croaked somewhere within the mist, and more than sixty yelps were stifled. Then they saw curtains of fog part… to reveal shapes. The Wolves halted, crouching, breaths stilled.

  Hattu peered through the drifting fog. Men? he wondered. Sentries! he was sure, seeing how they stood, feet wide apart, arms raised to their sides. But when a light wind parted the fog, he saw that they were not men but creatures – for they glistened like halved pomegranates, dripping red from the grievous openings that stretched, groin to chest. He now saw the frames upon which the pair were fastened, the nails that had been hammered through their shins and palms so they could ‘stand’. Underneath each lay heaps of steaming, purged, blue-veined innards. The leftmost wretch was dead. The rightmost one, however, was not.

  Hattu took a step forward, cautiously, the whispered fears of his men sounding behind him. The rightmost wretch’s head rose, shaking like that of a new-born fawn. His face, grey as a storm, gazed through Hattu.

  ‘Kol?’ Hattu croaked, his heart plummeting.

  Kol’s bloody lips moved silently as if he was telling a tale to an absent other.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Hattu said, his throat closing up as he thought of the strong, handsome warrior of the Eagle Kin he had asked to escort the temple procession. Now he was but a butcher’s scrap. Without a further heartbeat passing, Hattu drew his sword and pressed the curved tip quickly into Kol’s ribs, splitting his heart. In a trice and with a wet sigh, the life was gone from him. Hattu withdrew his blade, his shoulders slumping.

  But something deeper in the mist moved, and he realised it was not over. A figure moved in the grey ether. This time, it was like a dream… for she was a priestess, a Hittite priestess. And it was…

  ‘Atiya?’ he stammered.

  It was her. This was no dream.

  But when a muscled arm wrapped around her throat, holding a dagger there, it became a nightmare. The mist parted and a lion’s skull appeared just above Atiya’s head, Pitagga’s face snarling between the long fangs.

  ‘The Cursed Son?’ he hissed, his dagger-arm tensing.

  Tears spilled down Atiya’s cheeks as the Lord of the Mountains drew her back a step, then another. Hattu found himself unconsciously being drawn with them, pace by pace, towards the far shore of the islet.

  ‘Hattu, stop!’ Tanku cried.

  Hattu swung round to see the mist either side of him swirl violently. An instant later, small knots of Kaskans shot into view, ten coming from either side. Hattu swung up his shield in one direction and sword in the other, but knew at that moment he was dead or captured, certain the former was preferable.

  But with a thrum the bowmen in the Wolves loosed their arrows, and a clutch of Kaskans fell. Hattu struck his spear tip at the axe of one who kept coming, deflecting a blow, then rolled clear of another. An instant later, a clatter of bodies and bronze sounded as the Wolves leapt into the fray. The fighting was swift and brutal. Tanku hacked clean through the shin of one Kaskan then drove his sword down into the man’s heart. When another mountain man sliced the top of a Hittite soldier’s skull off with his axe, Hattu lunged forward to pierce the Kaskan’s belly with his spear, forcing the foe to his knees then kicking at the man’s face to release the weapon. He swung round just as Dagon plunged his mace into another warrior’s chest. The fellow went down, wheezing a mizzle of blood. And a moment later, it was over. Hattu looked this way and that for the next opponent, but the few left were melting into the mist towards the back of the islet.

  ‘Atiya!’ he cried, throwing down his spear and shield and drawing his curved blade as he staggered down the shingle bank, reaching t
he water’s edge, splashing in shin-deep, the Wolves coming with him. Pitagga was already out on the waters aboard a raft, his surviving warriors clambering aboard with him. Atiya knelt by the Kaskan Lord, on a rope leash, weeping.

  ‘Hattu!’ she wailed. ‘Hattu, don’t come for me, do-’ Pitagga’s fist cracked across her cheek, ending her words. She slumped to her side on the raft deck.

  ‘You’ll die for this, you cur!’ Hattu roared.

  Pitagga laughed long and loud. ‘Will I, Cursed Son? It looks to me like it is you and your kith and kin who stumble further and further from home, ever in my wake. The earth you tread is mine, and every tree, hill and river will conspire against you. Soon, you will be joining your brother,’ he smiled, gesturing to the top of the raft mast, where a spear was affixed. The sight of Sarpa’s black, hairless, desiccated head atop it stuck like an invisible lance into his heart.

  Hattu fell to his knees in the water.

  ‘Go back to your ailing Labarna and your cub of a Tuhkanti, weak prince. Tell them and all your generals how I mocked you tonight, how I mount a princely head on my raft, how I plan to melt the silver storm god into trinkets for my whores… how I will defile the last of your stolen priestesses.’

  The blood thundered in Hattu’s ears as Pitagga faded into the blackness hanging over the lake.

  Chapter 18

  The Bowman and the Bull

  Summer 1300 BC

  On returning to the camp, Hattu was intercepted by Muwa and a knot of advisors. Hattu gave his report as flatly and factually as he could, trying to ignore what had gone between them before, trying to stick by Nuwanza’s Maxim of calm. But Muwa exploded with ire, tugging at his own hair, calling out to all nearby and highlighting Hattu’s failure to apprehend Pitagga, rescue Atiya or recover the likeness of Tarhunda. It was Nuwanza and Colta who led the Chosen Prince away, leaving Hattu standing alone, enraged.

  So Hattu returned to the Wolves’ camp area, mind aflame. Until he saw the lone bed roll that would go unused tonight and forevermore: the Wolf who had been struck in the head at the Islet. Suddenly he felt a terrible sense of guilt at having volunteered the Wolves for the sortie.

  He curled up and closed his eyes to escape his thoughts, to get what sleep he could. But when he collapsed in his bed roll and his blood finally cooled, he suffered a night of terrible dreams. In one, he was walking gaily with his comrades into a cave whose mouth was rimmed with sharp stalactites and stalagmites, and from within which came a hot, fetid wind. On they went, none of them noticing how the ceiling of the cave became a series of ordered ridges like ribs. Next they came to a boiling, dark red pit. He realised at last that they had wandered into the belly of a beast, and swung back to the cave mouth only to see the upper and lower fangs of stone gnash shut. The hot boiling pit rose to burn them all in the darkness, sucking the air from their lungs and melting the skin from their bones… all to the sound of Pitagga’s laughter.

  The next day, he rose at dawn and the army set off at haste in the direction of the lake, picking up the Kaskan spoor once more. The far shores were pocked with the debris of a large enemy camp, and the tracks leading on from it took them in a wide northwesterly arc, through wooded tracks and wide, grassy plains, the hot sun baking them as they went. By late afternoon, the country grew a little less green, a little dryer and dustier, and they reached a forked valley with three tines. All three bore the markings of boots and hooves. Muwa drew up a hand and the column came to a halt, then sent one scout down each route.

  ‘Three routes, three chances to be ambushed,’ Hattu mused to the Wolves. His words were overheard by the nearby ranks, and he sensed many eyes upon him: not like days past, when their glowers would be accompanied by mutterings about the Cursed Son – now their eyes were bright with esteem, but also shadowed with a new concern: what would happen next between Hattu and the Tuhkanti – their newfound talisman and their beloved Chosen Prince?

  ‘Fill the routes with rock and dust, block the Kaskans beyond,’ big Tanku mused with a mirthless laugh.

  ‘To what end? Pitagga would dig his way out like a worm. This isn’t going to end until we confront him,’ Dagon argued. ‘And to confront him we must catch him.’

  ‘You think he flees?’ Hattu asked.

  Dagon and Tanku gave him a puzzled look.

  ‘That night on the islet… he was not afraid.’ Hattu’s eyes darted in thought. ‘Think of his ploys so far: not the hasty ruses of a panicked mind – the Carrion Gorge was well prepared, wasn’t it? Nuwanza’s archers found rich stocks of spears and rocks up there atop the gorge sides, gathered over a period of months, ready to hurl down had our army passed through there unawares. And the woods, the honey: that was deftly done.’

  Dagon, resting on his haunches, bit into an apple and looked down the three tines. ‘And then there is the bait that draws us on in his wake,’ he said. He looked up, meeting Hattu’s eye. ‘The last priestess and the silver likeness of Tarhunda. There is no more shameful loss he could have inflicted upon us.’

  ‘She’s not lost,’ Hattu said immediately.

  ‘Atiya? By the Gods, no she isn’t,’ Dagon agreed, standing, clasping Hattu’s shoulder.

  The dust of a rider rose from the northernmost tine. The scout returned to the generals and pointed down the path whence he had come. ‘The Kaskan tracks continue on through that route,’ he said, loud enough so many could hear. ‘More, there is a Hatenzuwan village along the way. I saw… I saw her there – the hag who gave us the honey.’

  Volca bristled, as if he had heard his own name. ‘Then she and the rest of them should be arrested,’ he said immediately. ‘Let me take a force ahead at haste and the rest of the column can follow.’

  Muwa gazed down the route, considering this. ‘Take a pair of companies and apprehend the hag.’ He pointed to Slit-eyes and his hundred. ‘Take the Leopard Clan,’ he said, then continued to look along the halted column, eventually meeting Hattu’s eyes, ‘and the Mountain Wolves.’

  ‘Tuhkanti?’ Kurunta interrupted. ‘The Wolves are depleted – from Baka and from their sortie to the islet last night.’

  ‘The fiasco at the islet?’ Muwa said. ‘I’d have thought the Wolves would be eager to make up for that – their second failure to apprehend Pitagga – as soon as possible.’

  Hattu, eyes shaded by the browband of his helm, was unblinking, Muwa’s gaze and his clashing like spears.

  ‘But surely a veteran company would be better suited?’ Kurunta persisted.

  ‘You trained the Wolves, General?’ Muwa barked.

  Kurunta’s eyebrows shot up. ‘I took them to the edge, Tuhkanti, and none moreso than Prince Hattu.’

  ‘Then they are ready for this.’ He twisted back to Volca. ‘Take them.’

  ‘But, Tuhkanti…’ Kurunta protested further.

  ‘Do the men not acclaim the Wolves and this… Son of Ishtar?’ Muwa snapped, throwing out a scathing hand towards Hattu. ‘Well?’

  Kurunta said nothing, though his stance suggested a few fierce thoughts swirled in his head.

  ‘Wolves!’ Muwa cried like a drillmaster.

  Hattu and the Wolves jogged forward, their boots crunching, shields jostling. As they moved along the column, many they passed gave them firm nods and some dared to throw clench-fisted salutes too. They reached the front then waited as the Leopard Clan formed up alongside. Hattu avoided Muwa’s gaze now, but his lips quivered with anger, on the cusp of shouting the darkest oath ever uttered.

  Kurunta strode over, grabbed Hattu’s bicep and shook it. ‘Your brother’s head is in disarray,’ he whispered, ‘but due to the king’s malaise, he is our leader. We cannot turn upon each other out here in this strange land, so put his anger from your mind. Think only of what lies ahead. If you run into Kaskans along that route, get your shield up, get your head down and fend off everything they throw at you. You hear me? The men of this army believe in you now. Live, let them continue to believe.’

  Hattu looked across the Wolves
, each of the young men he had trained with wore hard looks, their faces bearing cuts and scrapes and their hair tousled and ragged. ‘We’ll do as you trained us to, sir.’

  Volca waved the group ahead. ‘March!’

  ***

  The small party trooped on ahead at speed, the rest of the column following on at normal pace in their wake. Soon, the advance group lost visual contact with the rest, and they jogged alone along the dusty vale. After an hour, they slowed at a low hummock. Volca climbed up, crouched and looked ahead like an eagle. Further west the vale widened. By a still, brook-fed pond lay a small village, hemmed on three sides by a sea of yellow gorse bushes.

  Hattu spat the dust from his lips, eyeing the place: a simple collection of timber shacks and animal corrals, a well, a small row of market stalls heaped with bright fruits and a few workshops where smiths worked copper and men milled wheat. And a small wooden handcart resting by the gates. ‘Hatenzuwans,’ he whispered, then saw the old hag shuffling over from the well outside the village with a bucket of water, towards the handcart.

  ‘The hag!’ Tanku said with a tremor of ire in his voice.

  ‘She nearly killed us all,’ Kisna growled.

  ‘She gave us the poisonous honey,’ Hattu reasoned, ‘because someone forced her to.’

  ‘You don’t know that,’ Sargis argued.

  ‘I saw it in her eyes. She knew what she was doing was wrong,’ Hattu countered.

  ‘Yet she still did it,’ Tanku said.

  ‘Hattu is right,’ Dagon reasoned. ‘Why would an old woman in an unwalled town want to make an enemy of an army like ours?’