Son of Ishtar

by Gordon Doherty

  ‘For the same reason as the Galasmans,’ Kisna conceded. ‘Pitagga has threatened them.’

  ‘Of course he has,’ Hattu agreed. ‘But unlike the Galasmans, these people have no army, no choice.’

  ‘Then what do we do?’ Tanku asked.

  ‘As we were ordered: we question them,’ Hattu explained. ‘If they see we mean them no harm – that Pitagga’s threat is removed by our being here – then they will perhaps tell us what they know.’

  Volca stood. ‘The approach is clear. With me,’ he said.

  The tall Sherden hoisted his trident and broke into a quick step. The Leopard Clan and the Wolves fell into place behind him. Hattu saw the faces of the village folk turn to the approaching troops.

  ‘Faster,’ Volca said as they drew closer. The party broke into a light run. Now the village folk froze. Some of the men snatched up poles and hoes – farming tools, none of them true weapons.

  ‘Sir,’ Hattu said over the rumble of their boots, ‘they’re frightened. We should approach carefully, so they know-’

  ‘At a run,’ Volca bawled over him, then sped forward. With a cry, the Leopard Clan went with him, hoisting their spears when Volca pumped his trident aloft.

  ‘They think we’re attacking them,’ Hattu yelled over the din, but none listened. On the Wolves ran in the wake of the rest, glancing at one another, confused.

  Now the Hatenzuwans scrambled in fright, women and children running, men throwing down their crude implements. But there were a few who stood their ground. One fellow tossed a pole at them with a terrified scream. The pole thwacked against the shield of one of the Leopard Clan.

  ‘The treacherous Hatenzuwans attack us,’ Volca yelled.

  ‘Slay them!’ Slit-eyes bawled. He rapped his weapon against his small shield and waved his hundred into a charge. Swept along in the anger of what had happened in the clearing, they surged forward with a guttural roar.

  ‘This isn’t right, Tanku,’ Hattu bawled over the din of their charge, slowing. The other Wolves slowed with him and finally Tanku did too. The big captain’s face was dark with frustration at first, shooting looks to the recalcitrant Wolves then the rest, but his annoyance quickly faded when he heard the first piercing screams of women and children. They watched as, just ahead, the old hag fell to her knees before Volca and the Leopard Clan, dropping her water, hands up in fright. ‘Pitagga said they would spare our village only if we fed you the hon-,’ she stammered, before Volca’s trident lanced into her eye. With a spurt of white, milky matter and black blood she crumpled onto her side like a dropped rag.

  Volca and the Leopard Clan spilled across the village grounds. The horn-helmed Sherden was ferocious, leaping to and fro, his red cloak swishing like a counterweight to his trident. He struck down millers, smiths, weavers, herdsmen. The hundred men of the Leopard Clan went with him in a fervent spree, chopping out at everything that moved. Pigs and sheep squealed and bleated in terror as corral fences were booted over. One young woman ran for the cover of a mud hut when the tip of a thrust Hittite spear punched through her breastbone and hauled her back. Arrows spat across the small space, shooting down dogs and elderly men who were clustered in one corner, quivering.

  ‘Not a soul raises their weapon to these people,’ Hattu demanded flatly as the Wolves jogged into the village in the wake of the slaughter. Not one did. Tanku did not challenge him. ‘Enough… enough,’ he screamed as they came to the well where Slit-eyes had cornered an unarmed man and run him through with his spear.

  Slit-eyes took heed, blinking and shaking his head as if breaking free from a spell. He saw nearby the tiny, swaddled crying baby the fellow had been trying to protect. ‘What have I done?’ he quailed, stepping back from the body of the man and the screaming babe. He had but a trice to consider his own question, before a young boy ran into him, shouldering him in the stomach. Slit-eyes’ arms flailed as he toppled into the stony ring of the well. His cry was shrill and short, ended with a thick, bony crunch.

  The cry of the slain captain only spurred Volca and the Leopard Clan men on more. They slew with fervour, kicking over carts, wagons and stalls and even butchering pets. When one Leopard Clan man came for the boy who had despatched their captain into the well, Hattu stepped forward and thrust out his spear, blocking the soldier’s sword-strike. The veteran soldier swung to face Hattu with a snarl. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ he roared.

  ‘Serving the Grey Throne… with honour. Slaying farmers is not what we were trained to do.’

  The soldier’s face creased in anger. ‘Wait till the Tuhkanti hears of thi-’

  ‘Nor is it what the Tuhkanti asked us to do,’ Hattu cut him off.

  The soldier took a step towards Hattu at first, but when Dagon, Tanku and the rest of the Wolves closed up around him, the man backed off.

  ‘Run,’ Hattu hissed at the little boy they had saved. The lad scampered away, snatching up the swaddled baby and sprinting off into the brush behind the village. By now, torches were being tossed at houses and the village was ablaze. Black smoke scudded across the land, and the simple dust streets were stained with blood. All within lay dead. Hattu eyed Volca with disgust.

  The sun was casting long shadows by the time the rest of the army arrived at the village. ‘We saw the smoke,’ Nuwanza said, arriving first at a run.

  ‘What happened?’ Kurunta panted, close behind. ‘Where are the Kaskans?’

  ‘There were no Kaskans, sir,’ Hattu replied. ‘Just this village of simple men.’

  Kurunta and Nuwanza’s faces fell aghast. ‘How… who…why?’ Kurunta stammered.

  ‘The Wolves played no part in this… ’ he started, then saw the royal carriage drawing up alongside the wrecked village. The curtain was drawn back. Father lay inside, feeble but propped up to sitting. His eyes cut through everything, glaring at Hattu, blood and smoke-stained, standing amongst the bodies of men, women and children.

  Muwa arrived next. ‘What is this?’ he gasped, eyes bulging at the horror of the slaughter. ‘What happened?’

  ***

  Later that evening, the army camped on a broad, dry heath at the far end of the forked valley. The ringed spear palisade was lined with a triple watch, so sure were they of Pitagga’s closeness. The sun was dropping towards the horizon when Volca entered his bivouac tent, slid off his boots and red cloak and had an attendant unbuckle his green scale corselet.

  ‘Clean it,’ he snapped.

  ‘Your helm too?’ the slave offered.

  ‘I’ll clean it myself,’ he growled. The slave scuttled off.

  Volca waited a few moments, then checked nobody was looking before unbuckling his chinstrap and lifting off his horned helm. For a moment, he caught a glimpse of the strange creature in the dull, blood-spattered reflection of the helm. As he wiped and buffed it with a rag, the visage became clearer: a handsome man with a fiery, scabrous red cap of gristle, veins and ragged sinew clinging to a white dome of skull. The angry Sherden people who called him a king slayer had meant to skin him whole, but they had only got as far as peeling off his scalp and cutting away his genitals before he had broken free. He carefully wrapped a headscarf around the old, ugly wound, the rim of the linen overlapping the peeled skin, and knotted it at the back. Now he could see only a handsome fellow.

  ‘Those ingrates should have hailed you as new King of the Sherden,’ he smiled, his copper earrings shivering with each word. ‘But you will not be denied. You will have a throne of your own one day soon.’

  ‘Who are you talking to?’ a voice interrupted his thoughts.

  He swung round to see Nuwanza, his jutting, triple tails of hair almost scraping the tent ceiling. The bowman had always eyed him askance, but now his gaze seemed more prying than usual.

  ‘My closest friend,’ Volca grinned, then turned to the small table that bore a jug of watered wine and a few cups. ‘Time to wash the dust from our throats?’ he offered.

  Nuwanza eyed the relative fineries with a slight wrinkl
e of the nose. ‘No. I prefer to drink my wine from a skin, sitting by the fire with my men. I find they respect me more for it.’

  ‘Ha! The asceticism of the Hittites,’ Volca mocked. ‘If not wine, then bread?’

  ‘No. First, we scout the countryside.’

  ‘Isn’t that the job of… scouts?’ Volca chuckled.

  ‘Normally. But the Lord of the Mountains is close. Too close. I want to put my own eyes on the land, to see every hill, meadow and river for myself. You’re coming with me.’

  ‘Am I?’ Volca said straightening up to express his height advantage.

  Nuwanza was utterly unphased. ‘The Labarna’s orders,’ he said with a smirk.

  Alarmed, Volca looked past Nuwanza, towards the royal pavilion. ‘The Labarna is well? Well enough to communicate?’

  ‘Far from it. He’s managed only a few words since we made camp: the order I’ve just passed on to you.’

  Just then, the slave came back, presenting Volca with his now-gleaming armour.

  ‘Very well,’ Volca shrugged and slid on his boots again. He had bargained on having this time to think, to plan. Pitagga’s last messenger bird had come in at dusk the previous evening. A white raven. A rare bird. It meant one thing, as they had agreed when last they met. If a white bird comes, lead them to Nerik, the land of the waning moon. A challenge indeed. He would think on the ride, he decided.

  ‘The horses are being readied by the camp’s western entrance and my servant is bringing water there – and Prince Muwa has gifted me a quiver of his goose-feather arrows too. Go there and meet my servant, then wait for me.’ Nuwanza gave him another of those dry looks then left.

  A short while later, the pair rode on horseback along a dry stream bed veining a rocky gully, two danna west of the camp, each man’s head swinging steadily back and forth along the horizon. The echo of their horses’ hooves played tricks on the mind, conjuring images of many hundreds of steeds in pursuit. But they were alone.

  ‘Pitagga has drawn southwest, heading for the hill routes,’ Volca sighed, removing his helm to stroke the linen headscarf underneath. ‘All the tracks we have found say it is so.’

  ‘Southwest,’ Nuwanza mused. ‘That would take him to the basin of old Nerik.’

  Volca tried to hold back the grin that was tugging at his lips.

  ‘But that’s probably what he wants us to think,’ Nuwanza concluded flatly. ‘We keep scouting until the sun is down.’ With that, he returned to scouring his edge of the gully.

  Volca scowled at the back of the general’s head. If he was to bring down the Royal House of Hattusa and take the Grey Throne, he would have to think carefully about who – if any – he would allow to live. He would have to begin a dynasty of his own. He thought of the mangled and useless lump of scar tissue the angry Sherden people had left him with between his legs. Well, perhaps not a dynasty entirely of my own, he mused. His two fellow Sherden would be needed to spread their seed amongst the highborn women of Hattusa in his stead.

  It would be a challenging time. In any case, he mused, when that time came, there would be little need for irritating men like Nuwanza. And here we are, out in the wilds, just the two of us…

  A shadow scudded across them. Both men looked up.

  ‘A vulture?’ Volca cooed. ‘We’re not corpses yet.’

  ‘No, that’s a falcon,’ Nuwanza said with a chuckle. ‘It’s been following us all the way from the camp. Prince Hattu’s hunting bird.’

  ‘Preying on men?’

  ‘Watching over us, Hattu would claim. She has had her moments, to be fair,’ Nuwanza chuckled.

  They rode on in silence. Volca shot Nuwanza sideways glances and he sensed the Master Archer do the same in return. The balmy heat and rhythmic cicada song lulled them into a sense that only they existed in this empty land, until the sound of crumbling rock brought both their heads switching round to the gully-side. For an instant, a face was up there, on the ledge, and then it was gone. Volca hoisted his trident like a javelin, but Nuwanza threw up a hand to catch his arm. ‘Easy, it’s just a boy,’ he said. ‘I’ll deal with this.’

  Nuwanza rode on ahead to the end of the gully, then wheeled round to ride back along the low side. Volca watched, his eyes tapering, as the bowman slowed and slid from his steed, then approached the spot where the boy had been, speaking soft, soothing words. ‘At ease, lad. Nobody will harm you.’ The boy rose timidly from his hiding place, and Volca saw how he held a swaddled baby, which began to cry. Nuwanza fell to one knee, handing the boy a strip of soldier bread and a tiny vial of honey for the baby. Nuwanza seemed to be winning the lad over. Volca sighed and slid his horned helm back on. As soon as he did so, the boy froze, eyes falling upon him. His face fell at once and he backed away from Nuwanza, who whispered at him, tried to calm him. After a hurried exchange of words, the lad turned and ran, off along the ledge and then scrambled up a snaking track into the hills. Nuwanza stood, watching him go, then turned and re-mounted his horse.

  Shortly, Nuwanza cantered back along the gully floor to join up with Volca again.

  ‘Strange, a boy and a babe on their own, out here?’ Volca remarked.

  ‘Aye, strange indeed,’ was all Nuwanza said.

  They rode in silence. It was some time before Nuwanza spoke again. ‘That town you churned into the dirt earlier today. Tell me about it.’

  ‘Ah. Now that was Prince Hattu’s victory,’ Volca corrected him.

  Nuwanza smiled wryly. ‘Only because you reported it as such. The prince’s sword and spear were clean. Yet somehow he and the Mountain Wolves were the ones to suffer Prince Muwa’s anger over the whole affair – condemned to half-rations when they played no part in the slaughter.’

  ‘They will eat properly again soon. The victory was more important: don’t you want Hattu to breed a strong reputation? Victory means little to me, but to the prince…’

  ‘That was no victory, and no man would want a reputation for such an act,’ Nuwanza said. ‘Why did you spur the Leopard Clan men to behave like that?’

  ‘You are a general too,’ Volca reasoned. ‘You understand that once inside an enemy town, soldiers cannot be restrained.’

  ‘Aye, that is true,’ Nuwanza conceded. ‘But they did not slay soldiers in there. Just families. They cut down everyone. Everyone.’

  Volca felt a streak of warmth at the completeness of the job. Too many within the Hatenzuwan village had seen his face in the past.

  ‘Well, almost everyone,’ Nuwanza added.

  Volca gripped the horse’s reins a little more tightly, his steed slowing just a fraction. ‘Hmm?’

  ‘That boy and the baby escaped the town and have been hiding in these hills in the hours since,’ Nuwanza replied. ‘It took a long time to reassure him I meant him no harm. I told him we could feed and tend to him and the babe in camp. He seemed to trust me, for a moment.’

  Volca felt Nuwanza’s gaze on the side of his face, unblinking.

  ‘Then he said he froze with fright,’ Nuwanza continued. ‘Stammered something about the bull-man.’

  ‘My helm,’ Volca laughed.

  Nuwanza did not laugh. ‘The bull-man, I asked? Do you know what he said?’

  ‘Enlighten me,’ Volca said.

  ‘The bull-man, the one who killed my parents today… ’ Nuwanza continued, ‘the one who roamed with Lord Pitagga, four summers past.’

  Volca continued to laugh, long and loud while his mind flashed with a thousand replies.

  ‘Tell me, Volca, why would a boy say something like that? Three summers ago we found you bound by an ants’ nest. We saved you. You told us you had sailed east that year from distant lands.’

  Volca’s laughter tapered off, but his smile remained. ‘As I say, Nuwanza, we may never have seen eye to eye, but you and I are generals. And a good general should be suspicious,’ he lifted his water skin from his belt to take a sip from it, ‘should think of this day but the next too, and most of all… expect the unexpected.’


  He dropped the water skin, revealing the small copper knife he had drawn unseen, then hammered the blade towards Nuwanza’s broad, unarmoured chest.

  But the Master Archer, fast as a lion, threw up a forearm, deflecting the blow, then thrust an elbow into Volca’s face. Volca felt sky and earth switch places as he toppled from his mount, his red cloak blinding and entangling him. With a crunch, he landed, then scrambled back, swinging his trident from his back and instinctively dropping into a warrior’s crouch.

  With a thud, Nuwanza dismounted, tearing his sword from his belt.

  ‘And traitors like you,’ Nuwanza snarled through gritted teeth, ‘should be strung up by their balls. Throw down your trident and I might let you live, but only so you may kneel before the king’s wagon and confess to him all you and Pitagga have planned.’

  ‘The king will find out all we have in store for him and his army… in good time,’ Volca replied, flexing his fingers on the trident shaft, his eyes tapering to crescents. ‘However you, my friend, are done for.’

  ‘Am I?’ Nuwanza said stonily.

  Volca’s eyes widened as Nuwanza sprang for him like a bolt of lightning, curved blade coming round for his neck. He ducked, feeling the sword scuff across the tip of his helm, ripping helm and headscarf off. He felt the heat of the sun on his grotesque dome of skull, scar tissue and wiry strips of vein.

  Nuwanza laughed once, without a grain of mirth. ‘You are a web of lies and deception,’ he scoffed.

  Alight with indignation, Volca rushed for Nuwanza, trident trained on his belly. Nuwanza’s face fell and he let one leg buckle to roll left, before leaping back to his feet, twirling his sword in one hand. ‘I knew there was something odd about you. Kurunta said you were just an arsehole – and you are – but I knew there was more to it. You were behind Zida’s death. You’ve been behind every misfortune we have encountered so far. The king will decide your fate, and I can assure you it will be grim. Perhaps an ants’ nest? It would seem right.’

  Volca felt his heart rap madly as Nuwanza stalked towards him, fearless of his hovering trident points. Panic almost consumed him before he spotted a root growing along the gully floor, running under his feet and Nuwanza’s. He dropped to his haunches to grasp the root, hauling it up with all his strength. In a cloud of dirt and debris, the rope-like vine whipped up, hooking Nuwanza’s ankle and throwing him onto his back. The impact sent the Hittite general’s sword spinning from his hand and across the dirt, past Volca.