Son of Ishtar Read online

  Thunder cracked directly overhead, drowning him out and shaking the chamber. In the same instant, the gale outside gained immense strength, the purity hide stretched over the chamber’s outer door bulged inwards and then one edge snapped free, the pegs holding it there spinning across the room. The tallow candles roared and spat at the sudden intrusion of storm-wind and driving rain. The birthing staff shrieked in fright, their robes and hair rapping as they backed away.

  But King Mursili did not move despite the scourging rain, for the tiny bundle in his arms suddenly convulsed, then took a full gasp for breath.

  Baby Hattu cried out at last, in time with the storm.

  Twelve Years Later…

  Chapter 1

  Shadow Prince

  Spring 1303 BC

  The alder woods north of Hattusa were still and tranquil. The noonday sun blazed in the cloudless, pastel-blue sky and all was quiet but for the croaking cicadas and the occasional drumming of woodpeckers.

  When a branch near the southern treeline shuddered, a flock of song thrushes scattered. A muscled arm reached up to still the branch. Bagrat the amber-haired Kaskan scout fell to one knee, eyeing the pale-walled hillside city beyond the forest.

  As a youth, fireside yarns about this place had stoked his dreams. Hattusa, the rocky heart of the enemy realm, where the Hittite King lived in a high palace, well-appointed with precious relics and smoking pools of molten silver. Since his boyhood, he had helped topple the walls of many Hittite cities. But this was a city like no other. Such stout walls, such high towers... too high, surely?

  The trees behind him rustled again. He swung round to see a stout and tall warrior with a tangled mane and beard, both rusty and dashed with grey. He was crowned with a bronze cap, a glaring lion’s skull fused to the metal, the two fangs stabbing down to serve as cheek guards. A fine black leather breastplate engraved with a swirl of silver hugged his torso and he wore a vicious double-headed axe across his back.

  ‘Lord Pitagga,’ Bagrat quailed, ‘you should stay back from the open country. If the Hittite patrols see you then…’

  Pitagga ignored him, turning his hunter’s eyes on Hattusa. He lifted one foot up on a rock and rested his arms across his knees, a ravening half-grin pulling at his lips. ‘I do not fear the Hittite soldiers, scout. And I will show that.’ He lifted and wagged his finger once at Hattusa. ‘And this… this will be my reward,’ he patted Bagrat’s shoulder, ‘yours too. Aye, before winter comes, those walls will tumble, the streets within will run red… and not a soul will be spared.’

  Bagrat felt a shiver of excitement at the grand claim, his earlier misgivings suppressed. Such was Pitagga’s gift. The Lord of the Mountains could inspire the twelve tribes of the north like no other. He looked at Hattusa again. Perhaps it was possible…

  From behind, somewhere in the woods, a distant scrape of rock sounded. Alarmed, Bagrat’s head snapped round, peering through the trees. Nothing. Then he noticed how Lord Pitagga’s gaze looked not into the woods but above.

  A sheer-sided ridge of silvery granite protruded from the heart of the forest like a shark’s fin. The shaded southern side was etched with a grand scene of the Hittite divinities: Tarhunda the Storm God wore a high, thorn-studded hat and stood upon the shoulders of the twin bulls, Serris and Hurris. The carving was ancient, cracked, dotted with falcon’s nests and threaded with vines. Bagrat was confused for a moment, then he saw what had drawn his master’s eye.

  Scaling the rock face high up there was a lean, dusky-skinned boy… a Hittite boy, wearing just a pale linen kilt. He was merely a dot by the Storm God’s neck. And even from here it was clear he was in trouble.

  Pitagga’s half-grin widened. ‘Into the woods, scout. I haven’t shot my bow in months…’

  ***

  Hattu’s limbs trembled with fatigue. His odd eyes – the right one hazel and the left one smoke-grey – were fixed on the Storm God’s lower eyelid. It was high above. Too high. But there was nothing else. His inky hair traced along the nape of his neck as he switched his head to and fro. No other way up.

  Despite all his training, he glanced down: the forest floor seemed impossibly distant; the fallen trunk he had vaulted over down there now small as a twig. When a gentle breeze tugged at him, his belly flooded with ice water. His numb fingertips and toes tightened on the meagre crimps he clung to. At once, he wanted nothing more than to be on flat, safe ground, to be Hattu the scribe, Hattu the forgotten son of the king. Just as terror looked set to overcome him, a welcome voice echoed from the brume of memory, the voice of his brother, Sarpa: Master your doubts, and you will master the climb.

  Hattu closed his eyes and marshalled his ragged breaths as best he could, slowing them and feeling his rapping heart slow with them. He remained, nose-to-nose with his fears, until the storm within steadied. When he opened his eyes again, the fog of panic was gone.

  He looked up towards the groove of the Storm God’s eyelid again. ‘I can do this,’ he insisted. He glanced to his right side, seeing the faintest wrinkle in the rock at waist-height there.

  Keeping his breaths slow and steady, he drew his right leg up towards the wrinkle, the left foot and toes quivering with the strain of his entire body weight. His right instep scraped over the wrinkle twice before finding the merest purchase. He looked up to the Storm God’s eyelid once more, a thousand voices screaming in his head, telling him he was wrong.

  But Sarpa cried above the naysaying clamour: Be brave. Open up the climb. Rise!

  With a cry, he put all his strength into his right leg, pushing against the wrinkle, thrusting upwards. He reached above until his fingertips curled over the rounded lip of the eyelid and a gasp of sweet relief escaped his lips. He swung his left leg up to wedge his foot into a thin, vertical crack on the god’s cheek, then grabbed the edge of the upper eyelid with his left hand. Now fear and euphoria battled in his breast. Up, up… up, he mouthed euphorically as he continued to ascend, using the many thorns in the Storm God’s high hat like a ladder… until the uppermost one crumbled away in his fingers.

  No…

  Dust puffed into his eyes, his fingertip hold fading to nothing. His hands clawed in vain for purchase and found none, his body peeling away from the rock face, into the void.

  No, no, no, NO!

  In the throes of terror, he heard a piercing shriek, saw a streak of white and hazel plumage, a sharp beak and a pair of lethal talons. The falcon swept past, releasing the end of a vine from its claws. Hattu grabbed the vine with both hands, his body jolting as his fall was halted. He hung there for a moment, mouthing a prayer to the gods through shaking lips. Then, by walking his feet against the rock face he used the vine to climb the last stretch in a hurry. And when he reached the grassy top of the ridge he tossed both arms gratefully onto the flat and levered himself up.

  He heard himself laughing as his mind and body settled. The peril of the climb was now a treasure. He sat, cross-legged, tucking his hair behind his ears then tying a strap of leather around his brow to hold it there. His gaze swept across the land: across the forest and the chiselled heartlands of the Hittite Empire, veined with sacred rivers and ancient tracks, on to the hazy blue point of infinity where sky met land. The mystery of the horizon thrilled him and saddened him at once.

  He had never been allowed to journey far – never beyond these woods and certainly never to the horizon. He recalled the previous summer, watching Father leading the Hittite Army from Hattusa, off to the west to fight and win the Arzawan War. The king had taken his two eldest sons with him: Muwatalli the Tuhkanti – Chosen Prince of the Hittite Empire – and Sarpa, next in line to the throne. Hattu had been left behind in old Ruba’s scribal classroom to write out – ironically – the Epic of Gilgamesh and his far-flung adventures. And in autumn, he had watched again as the army had returned, victorious. Muwa and Sarpa had ridden with the king in a chariot parade through the city. Father and scions, as one. The memory stung him now even more fiercely than it had done then.


  Cursed Son, a wicked voice hissed in his head.

  He blinked hard to stave off the voice, then drew open the small leather bag roped to his belt, lifting, weighing and checking the pale, brown-speckled falcon’s egg he had collected halfway up. Intact, he realised, mustering a degree of cheer again.

  The air was again pierced by another shriek, coming right for him once more. He held up a stiff, level arm. The falcon who had brought him the vine swooped down and settled on the dark-brown leather bracer on his forearm, keening again and again.

  ‘Enough, Arrow, enough,’ Hattu chuckled. He looked from her black eyes to the egg in his other hand. ‘This? It’s for Atiya. It was from an abandoned nest,’ he reasoned, ‘just like the one I found you in – but abandoned for much longer: no chick will spring from this egg.’ Another impertinent shriek. ‘Ah, you don’t care about the egg, do you?’ he realised, rustling in his bag again to produce a fat worm. No sooner had he held the specimen up than it was gone, the shrieking blessedly silenced as the falcon gulped down the meal. But the void of stillness and silence was all too brief.

  Cursed Son! the voice snarled this time.

  It was the voice of many: of palace staff, of soldiers, of citizens in the lower town. The Cursed Son, they whispered as he passed, thinking he could not hear them, he who cast Queen Gassula into the Dark Earth. And the gossipers dispensed with whispering when one of his three brothers died of plague in his sixth summer. Death follows that boy, they said openly, an edge of fear in their voices.

  Unconsciously, and as he had become accustomed to doing when in company, he pulled a few locks of hair round from behind his ear to let them drape over his odd, smoke-grey eye. It did not change who he was, but it usually meant fewer people recognised him.

  He stroked Arrow’s head until the dark thoughts eased. When they did, he noticed something: several danna away to the south a cloud of terracotta dust had risen, the plume working its way towards Hattusa. Arrow’s head rose too, suddenly alert. ‘More strange princes for the Gathering. Best we return to the city also,’ he sighed, standing then lifting and flicking his wrist lightly. Arrow took off at once, heading in a straight line towards the capital with a parting shriek.

  Hattu set off down the less-severe northern side of the ridge and was soon making his way through the shady alder woods, the dry bracken crunching under his bare feet. He came to the chalky banks of the River Ambar, a vivid turquoise ribbon that ran through Hattusa and all the way out here. More a series of falls, pools and gentle rapids than a true river, its waters were sacred. He waded across, the thigh-deep water as chilly as the day was hot, and up onto the far banks. There, he froze, his breath held captive.

  A whisper of movement nearby?

  His head turned like an owl’s, but all was still and silent. Yet when he faced forwards again, something snagged the edge of his vision once more. Something had moved. A glint of bronze, he was sure. Only warriors wore bronze. Warriors… and bandits, or worse, Kaskans! Those rugged brigands from the Soaring Mountains who took delight in defiling and toppling Hittite temples… who took Hittite heads as trophies.

  Another crunch of bracken. Closer.

  His heart thundered faster even than that weightless moment when he had fallen from the ridge. ‘Who’s there?’ he called out, feeling afraid and foolish at the same time.

  Silence.

  He took a step towards the forest path, timid as a fawn.

  Whoosh… twang.

  Suddenly, Hattu was still. He stared at the reed arrow shaft quivering in the dirt before him. His limbs almost buckled under him until he saw the fletchings: silver and white striped feathers from a greylag goose. Instantly, his fear evaporated and a broad smile split his face. ‘Muwa?’ he cried, looking this way and that.

  With a crunch of bracken, Prince Muwatalli, Hattu’s eldest brother, emerged from the shade of a nearby oak. At sixteen summers, Muwa towered a good two heads over Hattu, his thick, wavy, coal-dark locks gathering upon his muscular shoulders. His jaw was square like a man’s and his broad, flat-boned features were handsome and hale – if Hattu resembled a fox, then Muwa was a lion. He wore a black cloak, a dark kilt and a shining white, silver-scaled vest – the ancient armour of the Chosen Prince. Muwa slung his cherry wood bow across his back and stalked towards Hattu. But his usually ice-bright eyes were shaded by a frown. ‘Walking the woods alone?’ Muwa said, his gaze on the tell-tale scrapes and cuts on Hattu’s hands and feet. ‘Climbing? After Sarpa’s fall?’

  Hattu’s neck and shoulders prickled at the invisible cloak of shame that settled there. ‘I… I,’ he started.

  Muwa held up a finger, silencing him, his eyes shooting suspiciously to the nearby trees.

  ‘You hear something too?’ Hattu whispered. Only now he noticed the pair of Hittite soldiers lurking further back, behind Muwa. They were dressed in belted, white knee-length tunics and pointed, dark-brown leather helms with cheek guards, aventails and bronze brow bands. Their long dark hair hung loose to their waists, animal teeth knotted in their locks. They held their spears two-handed, eyes alert as if expecting danger.

  ‘Word came in this morning of a small Kaskan band roving in these parts,’ Muwa replied, relaxing just a fraction as his suspicions faded.

  Hattu shivered, despite the hot sun. ‘Father will be angry with me.’

  ‘Father doesn’t know. Ruba went looking for you when you didn’t turn up at the Scribal School this morning. He saw you sneaking down to the city gates… but decided it would be best for your sake only to tell me. Ruba is old and forgetful these days, Hattu. He was lost with worry that you would come to harm.’

  Hattu’s shoulders slumped.

  Muwa crouched by the arrow and worked it free from the dirt. He held up the bronze arrowhead and blew the dust from it, checked the shaft for straightness then tucked it away in his belt quiver. ‘More importantly, you are my brother, Hattu,’ he said, rising again. ‘Were something to happen to Sarpa and me then you would be Father’s last heir. You must not roam alone like this.’

  Cursed Son! the voice screamed. Hattu’s head flopped forward. He could do nothing right, it seemed.

  Muwa’s mood loosened a little and he wrapped an arm around Hattu’s shoulders, giving him a reassuring squeeze. ‘Come, Brother, let us return to the city before anyone notices. The Gathering is set to begin before the afternoon is out.’

  ***

  Pitagga crouched behind the smooth river rocks. His fingers itched to seize his axe and to rush the two young Hittites. Princes, no less. King Mursili’s heir and the odd-eyed runt too! He screamed inwardly, imagining the pair’s heads on poles, back at his mountain villages. But the two Hittite soldiers escorting them were keen-eyed, regarding every inch of the woods around them. He had lied when he told Bagrat that he did not fear Hittite soldiers, but that was not what mattered. What mattered was that the scout believed him… that the multitudes of the north believed him. They would come together soon enough, fight for him, and deliver to him the heads of the Hittite King and all his heirs. He saw in his mind’s eye once more the city of Hattusa ablaze, the streets stained with blood.

  ‘Before winter comes… ’ he vowed once more.

  Then, with a whisper and a waved hand, he and Bagrat darted away, through the trees to the north, back towards the Soaring Mountains.

  ***

  After trekking half a danna upstream, Hattu, Muwa and the escort soldiers emerged from the alder woods. Their eyes snapped at once to the imperious city ahead.

  Hattusa!

  Built around a craggy silver hillside cleaved by the Ambar River valley – narrow as an axe-wound – the capital was ringed by a curtain wall the colour of pale sand, studded every fifty paces or so with square, fort-like towers. Tiny forms of sentries milled along the tower tops and the battlements, their pointed, bronze spear tips and helms like flames, flitting in and out of view behind the smooth, triangular merlons.

  Wrapped within the walls was the rising jungle
of the lower town: a maze of mud-brick temples, homes, workshops, taverns and turquoise pools set on natural and quarried terraces. Crowds swarmed like ants through the streets, upon the flat rooftops and across the vine-like bridges straddling the Ambar.

  The silvery peaks either side of the Ambar shimmered like treasure in the sun. The southernmost and tallest tor served as the city acropolis, crowned with the great citadel, a fortress within a fortress. A thick pole jutted from the roof of the highest building – the twin-storied throneroom known as the Hall of the Sun – bearing a bronze, winged sun disc, gleaming in the spring sky.

  They followed a wheel-rutted track through the farmlands that lay before the city: golden fields of wheat, spelt, sesame and barley dotted with sweating, kilted men and women in simple sleeveless robes and headscarves busy binding early harvest stalks into sheaves. Oxen harrowed fallow fields while sheep and goats grazed in green meadows. They passed beekeepers lifting drawers of sun-gold honeycomb from hives and young milk maids pouring clay vases of chalk-white goat milk into storage urns.

  As they approached Hattusa’s walls, the dirt track became a well-worn, paved path, alive with the clatter of ox-drawn carts and jabbering voices. The arched Tawinian Gates soon loomed over them – tall as four men with the towers flanking it another two men high again. The gates were open, but the queue to enter the city was long – a hectic contraflow of people, animals and wagons shuffling in and out under the hard eyes of sentries on the ground and atop the gatehouse. Hattu saw the sentries stiffen suddenly, theirs and the eyes of the many falling upon Muwa.

  ‘Tuhkanti!’ they hailed him. The sentries pumped clenched left fists in the air in salute as the crowds parted like curtains to let their Chosen Prince enter his city. Muwa rewarded them with a slight nod of approval.