Empires of Bronze: The Dark Earth - The Prologue
Prologue
Late Winter 1237 BC
...
The heavens growled, flickering with veins of lightning. Tudha rolled his silver eyes skywards. A fine mist-rain, cold as death, settled on his broad face, causing the white line of scar running from forehead to chin to ache. Why, he thought, did the Thunder God choose to speak now? Where were these rains in the many months past when the crops had failed?
‘Prince Tudha, I beg of you, please!’
Tudha dropped his gaze slowly to the kneeling man: his upper lip was bloody and swollen, his chest heaving from the effort of the skirmish just lost. The sixty or so captives with him were equally wretched. Gaunt cheeks, rotten teeth. Worst of all, they were not bandits or raiders from abroad. These men were Hittites. His own people. The minor town of Lalanda had long been a place of brothers, inherently loyal to the Grey Throne. Then the thin herds around the capital had started to go missing during the night. The animal tracks all led back here.
‘Did you think about the hungry people of Hattusa?’ Tudha replied, the rain on his lips puffing as he spoke, his jet-black collar length hair quivering. ‘Those who went without milk and meat because of what you did?’
‘We took only what we needed for our families,’ the man pleaded. ‘Twelve sheep and seven goa-argh!’ he flailed forwards, landing on his face in the mud. A cloaked officer stood behind him, haft end of his spear trained for a second jab at the downed man’s back. ‘You dare to lie to your prince?’ raged Heshni, Tudha’s half-brother and commander of the royal guard. ‘Hundreds of animals disappeared.’
The grounded man rose on his elbows, blinking and spitting mud. ‘No, we, we did not-’ he fell silent when Heshni swivelled the spear to train the bronze tip on his throat. At the same time, Heshni’s elite Mesedi soldiers pressed their spears and swords to the necks of the other kneeling ones. ‘Just give the word, my prince,’ Heshni said, looking to Tudha.
The thunder crackled overhead, and Tudha felt a spike of fury that these people had forced this choice upon him. He glared down at the ringleader, hoping to see some glint of defiance or malice. But there was nothing. The man’s eyes were like a mirror. For a moment they were just two Hittites on this bleak, wintry plain. He re-appraised the swelling on the man’s muddy lip. A battle injury… or was it? An idea came to him then. ‘Take their weapons,’ he said quietly. ‘Let them go.’
Heshni snorted. ‘What?’
‘They are plague-carriers,’ Tudha said. ‘See the lesion on this one’s face?’
Heshni shuffled back a step, aghast. So did the other soldiers.
‘We can’t take them as slaves, and killing them will most likely infect you too,’ Tudha explained.
‘We can’t just let them go,’ Heshni protested. ‘They stole from your father when they took those animals.’
Tudha did not repeat his decision. Instead he turned to the captured ones. ‘Rise. Go back to your homes.’
The muddy-faced man rose to his feet, trembling. Gingerly, he and his band of men edged from the ring of soldiers, struck dumb and shambling, back towards the bare hills and the track that led to the town of Lalanda. Tudha could not help but notice a few dark looks between the Mesedi. They did not approve of his choice, apparently. ‘Be ready to march,’ he ordered them, ‘we must return to the capital.’
Come noonday, the sky remained sullen, and now the mist-rain had turned to snow that settled in white streaks across the gloomy steppe. Tudha held onto the leatherbound rail of his silver-painted battle chariot as it rumbled northwards, a stiff and bitter wind buffeting him and the hunched old driver by his side. Heshni and his young driver rode abreast in a second war-car, while the bronze-shelled Mesedi contingent jogged behind. Tudha glanced over his shoulder at the train of bodyguards. There had been a time in the past when the Mesedi had numbered in their hundreds. All had perished in the civil war during Tudha’s infant years. These few dozen were the first of a new era, trained in the old way. Heshni noticed him regarding his corps and bumped a fist against his chest armour. ‘We are your shield, Tuhkanti,’ he said, beaming with pride.
Tudha smiled back. As he turned to face forwards again, he noticed from the corner of his eye one of the jogging bodyguards: a bull-necked colossus with three pigtails of hair swishing in his wake. Had the man been… staring at him? It was not unusual for the soldiers to gaze at him – for he was Tuhkanti, heir to the realm. But this felt different, the look had been baleful. Furtively, he snatched another quick look back. The pigtailed warrior was looking dead-ahead now, but his face was still a picture of menace.
Ill at ease, he turned his eyes forwards once more. In this age of poverty and hunger, there had been much disgruntlement amongst the ranks. Talk even of sedition. Amongst the people too. Traitors and claimants everywhere, King Hattu often moaned. Tudha had not begun to recognise the signs for himself until the last few years: the clandestine meetings of nobles in dark corners of the capital; the sly looks and signals between cliques from the temples and the guilds. Twice in the last hot season cutthroats had been caught trying to break into the palace. Who had sponsored them, nobody knew – for both were shot through with arrows before they could be questioned. ‘Cattle thieves are the least of our problems,’ he muttered to himself.
Hearing this, his chariot driver’s old face creased with a wry and poorly-disguised grin. Dagon had a reputation for reading people like a clay tablet.
‘Something to say about my decision, Master Dagon?’ he snapped. ‘I suppose you think I should have ordered those men back there executed too?’
Dagon turned his white-haired head a little towards Tudha, his face riddled with age-lines and scars. ‘You asked me to drive you on this mission, Prince Tudha, not to advise you.’
‘That’s funny, Old Horse, because it looks like you have some sparkling advice hidden behind your lips.’
Dagon cocked an eyebrow.
Tudha sighed. ‘Forgive me. My temper is foul.’
‘Understandable,’ Dagon said, his voice dropping like the sails of a ship on a windless sea. ‘Your father’s condition is… worrying.’
Tudha heard the men jogging behind them chatting about the very same matter. ‘King Hattu will step forth from the acropolis one day soon,’ a veteran proclaimed, ‘and he will stamp his foot on the earth, and all these troubles will be gone.’
‘I have only ever seen the Labarna at the holy festivals,’ replied a younger one. ‘They say when he takes up weapon and wears armour his eyes become like those of an eagle and his teeth like those of a lion. Is it true?’
‘No,’ said a third. ‘He is far greater than that.’
Their voices rose in a baritone doggerel as they went:
‘Lord of the storm, master of battle,
Enemies weep when they see Great King Hattu,
Bright as the sun, heartbeat like thunder,
Speed of the wind, strength of Tarhunda…’
The song was stirring, but the truth was very different, Tudha knew. His father had not been a warrior for many years. Some said he had never been the same from the moment he ousted his murderous nephew Urhi-Teshub from the Hittite throne. The decline had truly begun later, in the moons after they had returned home from the war at Troy – a clash that seemed to have broken something inside the Hittite King. Yes, there had been battles after that, but more and more his father had retreated into a shell of introspection, languishing in the draughty halls of the palace, talking to himself, weeping while he wrote his memoirs. Hundreds upon hundreds of clay tablets Hattu had authored, each detailing a chapter of his past. He had forbidden anyone to set eyes upon the words.
‘Last moon, before he became bedridden,’ said Tudha, ‘I went to Father’s writing room. It was empty.’
Dagon rattled with a wry laugh. ‘For once.’
‘I read his tablets. The things that happened when you were both young. The training at the Fields of Bronze – before they fell into ruin. The battle for the Lost North. The plot of the Volca the Sherden. Is it true?’
Dagon stared ahead, a sadness in his eyes. ‘All of it.’
Tudha shook his head slowly. ‘The soldiers sing of heroism. I saw none of that in those texts. They grow ever more plaintive – tales of tragedy, betrayal and loss. All through the desert clash at Kadesh, and then the civil war. He even writes of his guilt about deposing Urhi-Teshub, and asks the Gods to watch over his nephew in his exile in the Egyptian deserts. So much remorse. And then I read his account of the Trojan War…’
Dagon and he shared a look. Both remembered the moments after the city’s fall, when Hattu had taken the adolescent Tudha’s clay slab – his eye-witness account of the struggle – and smashed it to pieces, declaring that it was best forgotten forever. ‘He came back into the room then, saw me reading it. It was as if he had caught me opening a grave. He stormed across the room to snatch the tablet from me and, once again, smashed it to smithereens.’
Dagon smiled forlornly. ‘He must have written and rewritten the tale of Troy a thousand times now. Every time, he bakes the tablet in the kilns, then destroys it immediately.’
‘Why?’
‘Maybe he has no wish to remember it, yet a compulsion to write it out – to try to understand it all.’ Dagon sighed. ‘I would give anything to see him in there writing again. He looks so weak lying in his bed.’
News had spread far and wide of the king’s condition. Many covetous and powerful Hittite and foreign eyes now watched the Grey Throne and its ailing incumbent, wondering when it might next change hands, recognising the dawn of a game of power. It was an age of doubt.
‘He will recover,’ Tudha said, drumming the words into the air as if to make them true.
Dagon said nothing. Tudha noticed a watery sheen in the old man’s eyes. Perhaps it was the bitter wind? Certainly, he had only once witnessed the old Chariot Master cry. The night he and his beloved wife Nirni had lain down to sleep together, their daughter Wiyani safely tucked up in the neighbouring room. He had risen in the hours of darkness to shuffle outside to the latrine. During those moments, the earth had shaken, and the house had collapsed upon his wife and girl. Tudha had led the rescue team, digging frantically for hours in the darkness. Dagon had been the one to call the dig to a halt, his face wet with tears. The moons of grief that followed had visibly aged him, bringing on his stoop.
‘I always value your advice, Master Dagon. Always. Tell me what was on your mind about the captives back there?’
With a wry look, Dagon flicked his head back in the direction of Lalanda. ‘Those men. They were no plague-victims. I saw you deal the one at the front the injury that burst his lip. Besides,’ he tapped the pock-marks on his own cheeks, ‘I know what real plague scars look like.’
‘Aye. The only plague they carried was hunger, and does that not trouble us all these days?’ said Tudha. ‘Yes, they sinned by stealing from the herds, but what good would it do to bring them back to Hattusa in chains. How would we feed them?’ he shrugged. ‘To kill them? No, I have seen enough blood.’
Dagon stared into the blizzard as if seeing an old enemy out there in the murk. ‘And yet the blood keeps coming.’
The old man’s words sent a shiver through Tudha.
‘Tuhkanti,’ Heshni called out, his chariot wheels scraping as the vehicle peeled wide of the track. He was pointing to a sheltered col overlooking the road. ‘The light is failing. This spot will make a good campsite for the night.’
***
Darkness fell and the blizzard hissed over the col. The Hittite soldiers hunkered down around a fire, pinching their hands for heat. Tudha moved around the edges, thanking each man by name for their swiftness in tracking down the cattle rustlers. It was a technique King Hattu had taught him – to show them that they were more than just soldiers, to forge a bond. He spotted the granite-faced one again, and realised that – to his shame – he didn’t know this man’s name. The mountain of muscle sat in just his leather kilt – no cloak for warmth – re-braiding his three pigtails.
‘What’s your name, soldier?’
The man looked up, sour at the interruption. ‘Skarpi.’
Tudha noticed how he seemed detached from the others. A loner. ‘You did well today. I will not forget your part in things.’
‘Hmm,’ the man said, then turned back to his braiding.
Bemused, Tudha left him to it rather than make an issue of his demeanour. Yet as he strolled away, he was certain – certain – that the man’s eyes were burning into his back.
‘My prince,’ Heshni called from the edge of the camp, beckoning Tudha over, shooting concerned looks past him and towards the spot where Skarpi was seated.
‘Who is that man?’ Tudha asked quietly as he neared his half-brother.
‘Skarpi? A nobody – son of a prostitute, some say. Lucky to be part of the Mesedi.’ Heshni eyed the surly soldier again sceptically, then beckoned Tudha towards the edge of the col. ‘Come, I wanted to show you something. Lights.’
‘Lights?’
‘I saw a torch, out there in the night, shining damply in the murk,’ Heshni explained, guiding Tudha forward, round the base of the col and down a loose track. Outside the lee of their camp, the storm roared, casting their long hair and cloaks horizontal. ‘I think the cattle thieves have doubled back,’ Heshni shouted to be heard in the scream of the blizzard. ‘They mean to steal from you again.’
‘Could they be so foolish?’ Tudha said, the snow stinging his bare arms and face. He could see nothing out there. ‘Where are these lights?’
‘There, look,’ Heshni said, pointing into the whiteout. He stepped aside to allow Tudha past to see for himself.
Tudha stared hard, but could see nothing except speeding white snow and darkness beyond. ‘I see no lights, and even if I could, I cannot believe that those men would risk their necks again. They knew how close they came to death today.’
‘If only you were so wise,’ Heshni purred from behind, the words underscored by the zing of a sword being plucked from its sheath.
Tudha swung on his heel, horrified by the sight of his half-brother, rising over him, teeth gritted in a snarl, blade plunging down towards his chest. Blood erupted, hot and stinking. Tudha fell to his back, coughing, retching. Snow and blood all around.
Yet no pain. No wound.
Shaking with fright, he saw Heshni still towering there, his sword frozen mid swing… his neck stump spurting blood. The severed head spun through the air and tumbled through the snow. Finally, the headless body whumped face-first into the snow, dead.
Skarpi stood there holding a bloody sword, sneering at the corpse of his former commander. ‘I overheard him last night, talking about his plan. He led you to this place specifically. He had it all planned out.’
Tudha stared at the corpse, at Skarpi and then to the glow of firelight from the col where the main group were, just out of sight. ‘Wait… talking? Talking with whom?’
‘Two veterans were in on it with him. They planned to kill you then strike at your father.’
‘Give me your spear,’ Tudha said, his voice flat and emotionless. ‘Point them out to me.’
Skarpi nodded sombrely. Together, the pair stomped back round to the fire. All the way, Tudha heard old Dagon’s words echo in his mind.
And yet the blood keeps coming.
***
The next day, the Hittite band marched homewards. Tudha stood, head bowed, at the rail of the silver-painted chariot as it cut across the blizzard. Thunder cracked and rumbled, tormenting him with memories of last night.
‘He may have been your half-brother, but in the end he was nothing,’ Dagon tried to console him again.
Tudha glanced over to Heshni’s chariot, adjacent, in the cabin of which the driver rode alone. Equally, two of the Mesedi were now gone. The executions had been swift and wordless, Skarpi beheading one and Tudha running the other through. Although shocked, none of the others had questioned the killings, and word quickly spread amongst them of Heshni’s betrayal. ‘The age of the Mesedi has passed,’ he said quietly. ‘During the civil war, the Golden Spearmen became seditious, and now so too have the Mesedi. I will speak to Father about it as soon as we are home. These men will be posted back to the regular divisions from which they came.’ He looked over his shoulder at the colossus, Skarpi, face like granite, his trio of braided tails swishing as he ran. ‘Of them all I trusted him the least. He will be the one I keep by my side.’
‘I will be your eyes and ears also,’ Dagon said. ‘Your father’s too.’
Tudha nodded gently in appreciation. Yet for all that, he could not shake the feeling that, just as the two Mesedi had been working for Heshni… Heshni might have been working for another. Someone higher in either station, power… or ambition.
‘Tuhkanti, beware!’ Skarpi bawled.
Jolting, Tudha dropped into a crouch in the chariot cabin, eyes sweeping the land for some incoming brigand attack. There was nothing out there. Then, an almighty screech! split the air from above. He cranked his head back to stare upwards: a great bird was spiralling down from the thunderous snow clouds. An eagle, he realised… fighting with its prey. Dagon slowed the chariot and Skarpi and his soldiers slowed too. All gawped at the tussle overhead.
‘It is the spirit of Andor,’ one of Skarpi’s spearmen croaked in awe.
Tudha felt a strange shiver pass through him. His father had once kept an eagle, named Andor, as a companion for many years, and falcons before that. Some said that in battle the two were one, the king becoming man and eagle.
Now Tudha could see that it was certainly not the long-dead Andor. He could also see what this eagle was fighting with: a small bundle of grey fur. With a shriek and a howl, the plummeting pair parted, the eagle speeding off up into the sky again, dropping its prey. Instinctively, Tudha reached out to catch the hoary thing. A wolf cub; tiny and weighing almost nothing. Whimpering, bleeding and shivering, the cub nuzzled into the crook of his arm. Tudha looked up to see the eagle vanishing into the dark mass of snow clouds, as if leaving the world behind.
All around him, Skarpi and the other Mesedi gawped, paling, whispering in disbelief. Even Dagon drew back from him in the chariot cabin, struck dumb with amazement at what he had just witnessed. The small marching column ground to a halt.
Tudha felt his heart pounding harder and harder, a terrible sense of dread building within. What was this, if not the most profound of portents? Angered by the spiralling feeling that he was losing control of everything, he roared to them: ‘Onwards. We are but hours from home.’
Soon, the chariots rolled onto a high plateau. A bolt of lightning shuddered across the sky, illuminating Hattusa. Tudha beheld the mighty Sphinx Rampart – a grand, sloping limestone bastion that shielded the capital’s southern approaches, its central gate flanked by a pair of menacing winged sphinxes. On the whaleback hillside within these defences soared an army of temples – majestic structures of shining black stone, bronze statues, pearl-studded doors and fluttering ribbons. Through it all cut a glorious new avenue known as the Thunder Road. I will write my own legend in stone, he mouthed the mantra that had driven him to build this new, lofty ward. King Hattu had granted him all he required, and he had set about the task with zeal. The Temple Plateau, as the district was known, had almost doubled the size of the capital, making it a worthy peer to Pharaoh’s Memphis or the Assyrian capital of Ashur.
Just then, the bundle he held in his left arm shuffled and whimpered. The cub, now wrapped in his black cloak for warmth, licked at the talon slashes on its shoulder. ‘Sleep, little one. The animal healers in the city will tend to your cuts.’ He knew not why he felt he had to care for this wild thing, only that he must.
The brumal wind keened again, as if driving them back from the Hittite capital. Only as the sound faded, did Tudha hear the other noise, shuddering through the storm.
Clang!
He straightened up a little in the cabin. Dagon too.
‘Why does the great bell ring?’ Skarpi asked through chattering teeth, behind them.
Tudha felt the blood in his veins turn cold as he saw, up there in the lee of the Sphinx Gate, a small figure, head hanging in grief: the Great Queen of the Hittites, Puduhepa. Mother? he mouthed. He knew what had happened. He had known – in truth – from the moment the eagle vanished into the heavens.
He wetted his lips and croaked: ‘Because my father has become a god.’
‘Prince Tudha, I beg of you, please!’
Tudha dropped his gaze slowly to the kneeling man: his upper lip was bloody and swollen, his chest heaving from the effort of the skirmish just lost. The sixty or so captives with him were equally wretched. Gaunt cheeks, rotten teeth. Worst of all, they were not bandits or raiders from abroad. These men were Hittites. His own people. The minor town of Lalanda had long been a place of brothers, inherently loyal to the Grey Throne. Then the thin herds around the capital had started to go missing during the night. The animal tracks all led back here.
‘Did you think about the hungry people of Hattusa?’ Tudha replied, the rain on his lips puffing as he spoke, his jet-black collar length hair quivering. ‘Those who went without milk and meat because of what you did?’
‘We took only what we needed for our families,’ the man pleaded. ‘Twelve sheep and seven goa-argh!’ he flailed forwards, landing on his face in the mud. A cloaked officer stood behind him, haft end of his spear trained for a second jab at the downed man’s back. ‘You dare to lie to your prince?’ raged Heshni, Tudha’s half-brother and commander of the royal guard. ‘Hundreds of animals disappeared.’
The grounded man rose on his elbows, blinking and spitting mud. ‘No, we, we did not-’ he fell silent when Heshni swivelled the spear to train the bronze tip on his throat. At the same time, Heshni’s elite Mesedi soldiers pressed their spears and swords to the necks of the other kneeling ones. ‘Just give the word, my prince,’ Heshni said, looking to Tudha.
The thunder crackled overhead, and Tudha felt a spike of fury that these people had forced this choice upon him. He glared down at the ringleader, hoping to see some glint of defiance or malice. But there was nothing. The man’s eyes were like a mirror. For a moment they were just two Hittites on this bleak, wintry plain. He re-appraised the swelling on the man’s muddy lip. A battle injury… or was it? An idea came to him then. ‘Take their weapons,’ he said quietly. ‘Let them go.’
Heshni snorted. ‘What?’
‘They are plague-carriers,’ Tudha said. ‘See the lesion on this one’s face?’
Heshni shuffled back a step, aghast. So did the other soldiers.
‘We can’t take them as slaves, and killing them will most likely infect you too,’ Tudha explained.
‘We can’t just let them go,’ Heshni protested. ‘They stole from your father when they took those animals.’
Tudha did not repeat his decision. Instead he turned to the captured ones. ‘Rise. Go back to your homes.’
The muddy-faced man rose to his feet, trembling. Gingerly, he and his band of men edged from the ring of soldiers, struck dumb and shambling, back towards the bare hills and the track that led to the town of Lalanda. Tudha could not help but notice a few dark looks between the Mesedi. They did not approve of his choice, apparently. ‘Be ready to march,’ he ordered them, ‘we must return to the capital.’
Come noonday, the sky remained sullen, and now the mist-rain had turned to snow that settled in white streaks across the gloomy steppe. Tudha held onto the leatherbound rail of his silver-painted battle chariot as it rumbled northwards, a stiff and bitter wind buffeting him and the hunched old driver by his side. Heshni and his young driver rode abreast in a second war-car, while the bronze-shelled Mesedi contingent jogged behind. Tudha glanced over his shoulder at the train of bodyguards. There had been a time in the past when the Mesedi had numbered in their hundreds. All had perished in the civil war during Tudha’s infant years. These few dozen were the first of a new era, trained in the old way. Heshni noticed him regarding his corps and bumped a fist against his chest armour. ‘We are your shield, Tuhkanti,’ he said, beaming with pride.
Tudha smiled back. As he turned to face forwards again, he noticed from the corner of his eye one of the jogging bodyguards: a bull-necked colossus with three pigtails of hair swishing in his wake. Had the man been… staring at him? It was not unusual for the soldiers to gaze at him – for he was Tuhkanti, heir to the realm. But this felt different, the look had been baleful. Furtively, he snatched another quick look back. The pigtailed warrior was looking dead-ahead now, but his face was still a picture of menace.
Ill at ease, he turned his eyes forwards once more. In this age of poverty and hunger, there had been much disgruntlement amongst the ranks. Talk even of sedition. Amongst the people too. Traitors and claimants everywhere, King Hattu often moaned. Tudha had not begun to recognise the signs for himself until the last few years: the clandestine meetings of nobles in dark corners of the capital; the sly looks and signals between cliques from the temples and the guilds. Twice in the last hot season cutthroats had been caught trying to break into the palace. Who had sponsored them, nobody knew – for both were shot through with arrows before they could be questioned. ‘Cattle thieves are the least of our problems,’ he muttered to himself.
Hearing this, his chariot driver’s old face creased with a wry and poorly-disguised grin. Dagon had a reputation for reading people like a clay tablet.
‘Something to say about my decision, Master Dagon?’ he snapped. ‘I suppose you think I should have ordered those men back there executed too?’
Dagon turned his white-haired head a little towards Tudha, his face riddled with age-lines and scars. ‘You asked me to drive you on this mission, Prince Tudha, not to advise you.’
‘That’s funny, Old Horse, because it looks like you have some sparkling advice hidden behind your lips.’
Dagon cocked an eyebrow.
Tudha sighed. ‘Forgive me. My temper is foul.’
‘Understandable,’ Dagon said, his voice dropping like the sails of a ship on a windless sea. ‘Your father’s condition is… worrying.’
Tudha heard the men jogging behind them chatting about the very same matter. ‘King Hattu will step forth from the acropolis one day soon,’ a veteran proclaimed, ‘and he will stamp his foot on the earth, and all these troubles will be gone.’
‘I have only ever seen the Labarna at the holy festivals,’ replied a younger one. ‘They say when he takes up weapon and wears armour his eyes become like those of an eagle and his teeth like those of a lion. Is it true?’
‘No,’ said a third. ‘He is far greater than that.’
Their voices rose in a baritone doggerel as they went:
‘Lord of the storm, master of battle,
Enemies weep when they see Great King Hattu,
Bright as the sun, heartbeat like thunder,
Speed of the wind, strength of Tarhunda…’
The song was stirring, but the truth was very different, Tudha knew. His father had not been a warrior for many years. Some said he had never been the same from the moment he ousted his murderous nephew Urhi-Teshub from the Hittite throne. The decline had truly begun later, in the moons after they had returned home from the war at Troy – a clash that seemed to have broken something inside the Hittite King. Yes, there had been battles after that, but more and more his father had retreated into a shell of introspection, languishing in the draughty halls of the palace, talking to himself, weeping while he wrote his memoirs. Hundreds upon hundreds of clay tablets Hattu had authored, each detailing a chapter of his past. He had forbidden anyone to set eyes upon the words.
‘Last moon, before he became bedridden,’ said Tudha, ‘I went to Father’s writing room. It was empty.’
Dagon rattled with a wry laugh. ‘For once.’
‘I read his tablets. The things that happened when you were both young. The training at the Fields of Bronze – before they fell into ruin. The battle for the Lost North. The plot of the Volca the Sherden. Is it true?’
Dagon stared ahead, a sadness in his eyes. ‘All of it.’
Tudha shook his head slowly. ‘The soldiers sing of heroism. I saw none of that in those texts. They grow ever more plaintive – tales of tragedy, betrayal and loss. All through the desert clash at Kadesh, and then the civil war. He even writes of his guilt about deposing Urhi-Teshub, and asks the Gods to watch over his nephew in his exile in the Egyptian deserts. So much remorse. And then I read his account of the Trojan War…’
Dagon and he shared a look. Both remembered the moments after the city’s fall, when Hattu had taken the adolescent Tudha’s clay slab – his eye-witness account of the struggle – and smashed it to pieces, declaring that it was best forgotten forever. ‘He came back into the room then, saw me reading it. It was as if he had caught me opening a grave. He stormed across the room to snatch the tablet from me and, once again, smashed it to smithereens.’
Dagon smiled forlornly. ‘He must have written and rewritten the tale of Troy a thousand times now. Every time, he bakes the tablet in the kilns, then destroys it immediately.’
‘Why?’
‘Maybe he has no wish to remember it, yet a compulsion to write it out – to try to understand it all.’ Dagon sighed. ‘I would give anything to see him in there writing again. He looks so weak lying in his bed.’
News had spread far and wide of the king’s condition. Many covetous and powerful Hittite and foreign eyes now watched the Grey Throne and its ailing incumbent, wondering when it might next change hands, recognising the dawn of a game of power. It was an age of doubt.
‘He will recover,’ Tudha said, drumming the words into the air as if to make them true.
Dagon said nothing. Tudha noticed a watery sheen in the old man’s eyes. Perhaps it was the bitter wind? Certainly, he had only once witnessed the old Chariot Master cry. The night he and his beloved wife Nirni had lain down to sleep together, their daughter Wiyani safely tucked up in the neighbouring room. He had risen in the hours of darkness to shuffle outside to the latrine. During those moments, the earth had shaken, and the house had collapsed upon his wife and girl. Tudha had led the rescue team, digging frantically for hours in the darkness. Dagon had been the one to call the dig to a halt, his face wet with tears. The moons of grief that followed had visibly aged him, bringing on his stoop.
‘I always value your advice, Master Dagon. Always. Tell me what was on your mind about the captives back there?’
With a wry look, Dagon flicked his head back in the direction of Lalanda. ‘Those men. They were no plague-victims. I saw you deal the one at the front the injury that burst his lip. Besides,’ he tapped the pock-marks on his own cheeks, ‘I know what real plague scars look like.’
‘Aye. The only plague they carried was hunger, and does that not trouble us all these days?’ said Tudha. ‘Yes, they sinned by stealing from the herds, but what good would it do to bring them back to Hattusa in chains. How would we feed them?’ he shrugged. ‘To kill them? No, I have seen enough blood.’
Dagon stared into the blizzard as if seeing an old enemy out there in the murk. ‘And yet the blood keeps coming.’
The old man’s words sent a shiver through Tudha.
‘Tuhkanti,’ Heshni called out, his chariot wheels scraping as the vehicle peeled wide of the track. He was pointing to a sheltered col overlooking the road. ‘The light is failing. This spot will make a good campsite for the night.’
***
Darkness fell and the blizzard hissed over the col. The Hittite soldiers hunkered down around a fire, pinching their hands for heat. Tudha moved around the edges, thanking each man by name for their swiftness in tracking down the cattle rustlers. It was a technique King Hattu had taught him – to show them that they were more than just soldiers, to forge a bond. He spotted the granite-faced one again, and realised that – to his shame – he didn’t know this man’s name. The mountain of muscle sat in just his leather kilt – no cloak for warmth – re-braiding his three pigtails.
‘What’s your name, soldier?’
The man looked up, sour at the interruption. ‘Skarpi.’
Tudha noticed how he seemed detached from the others. A loner. ‘You did well today. I will not forget your part in things.’
‘Hmm,’ the man said, then turned back to his braiding.
Bemused, Tudha left him to it rather than make an issue of his demeanour. Yet as he strolled away, he was certain – certain – that the man’s eyes were burning into his back.
‘My prince,’ Heshni called from the edge of the camp, beckoning Tudha over, shooting concerned looks past him and towards the spot where Skarpi was seated.
‘Who is that man?’ Tudha asked quietly as he neared his half-brother.
‘Skarpi? A nobody – son of a prostitute, some say. Lucky to be part of the Mesedi.’ Heshni eyed the surly soldier again sceptically, then beckoned Tudha towards the edge of the col. ‘Come, I wanted to show you something. Lights.’
‘Lights?’
‘I saw a torch, out there in the night, shining damply in the murk,’ Heshni explained, guiding Tudha forward, round the base of the col and down a loose track. Outside the lee of their camp, the storm roared, casting their long hair and cloaks horizontal. ‘I think the cattle thieves have doubled back,’ Heshni shouted to be heard in the scream of the blizzard. ‘They mean to steal from you again.’
‘Could they be so foolish?’ Tudha said, the snow stinging his bare arms and face. He could see nothing out there. ‘Where are these lights?’
‘There, look,’ Heshni said, pointing into the whiteout. He stepped aside to allow Tudha past to see for himself.
Tudha stared hard, but could see nothing except speeding white snow and darkness beyond. ‘I see no lights, and even if I could, I cannot believe that those men would risk their necks again. They knew how close they came to death today.’
‘If only you were so wise,’ Heshni purred from behind, the words underscored by the zing of a sword being plucked from its sheath.
Tudha swung on his heel, horrified by the sight of his half-brother, rising over him, teeth gritted in a snarl, blade plunging down towards his chest. Blood erupted, hot and stinking. Tudha fell to his back, coughing, retching. Snow and blood all around.
Yet no pain. No wound.
Shaking with fright, he saw Heshni still towering there, his sword frozen mid swing… his neck stump spurting blood. The severed head spun through the air and tumbled through the snow. Finally, the headless body whumped face-first into the snow, dead.
Skarpi stood there holding a bloody sword, sneering at the corpse of his former commander. ‘I overheard him last night, talking about his plan. He led you to this place specifically. He had it all planned out.’
Tudha stared at the corpse, at Skarpi and then to the glow of firelight from the col where the main group were, just out of sight. ‘Wait… talking? Talking with whom?’
‘Two veterans were in on it with him. They planned to kill you then strike at your father.’
‘Give me your spear,’ Tudha said, his voice flat and emotionless. ‘Point them out to me.’
Skarpi nodded sombrely. Together, the pair stomped back round to the fire. All the way, Tudha heard old Dagon’s words echo in his mind.
And yet the blood keeps coming.
***
The next day, the Hittite band marched homewards. Tudha stood, head bowed, at the rail of the silver-painted chariot as it cut across the blizzard. Thunder cracked and rumbled, tormenting him with memories of last night.
‘He may have been your half-brother, but in the end he was nothing,’ Dagon tried to console him again.
Tudha glanced over to Heshni’s chariot, adjacent, in the cabin of which the driver rode alone. Equally, two of the Mesedi were now gone. The executions had been swift and wordless, Skarpi beheading one and Tudha running the other through. Although shocked, none of the others had questioned the killings, and word quickly spread amongst them of Heshni’s betrayal. ‘The age of the Mesedi has passed,’ he said quietly. ‘During the civil war, the Golden Spearmen became seditious, and now so too have the Mesedi. I will speak to Father about it as soon as we are home. These men will be posted back to the regular divisions from which they came.’ He looked over his shoulder at the colossus, Skarpi, face like granite, his trio of braided tails swishing as he ran. ‘Of them all I trusted him the least. He will be the one I keep by my side.’
‘I will be your eyes and ears also,’ Dagon said. ‘Your father’s too.’
Tudha nodded gently in appreciation. Yet for all that, he could not shake the feeling that, just as the two Mesedi had been working for Heshni… Heshni might have been working for another. Someone higher in either station, power… or ambition.
‘Tuhkanti, beware!’ Skarpi bawled.
Jolting, Tudha dropped into a crouch in the chariot cabin, eyes sweeping the land for some incoming brigand attack. There was nothing out there. Then, an almighty screech! split the air from above. He cranked his head back to stare upwards: a great bird was spiralling down from the thunderous snow clouds. An eagle, he realised… fighting with its prey. Dagon slowed the chariot and Skarpi and his soldiers slowed too. All gawped at the tussle overhead.
‘It is the spirit of Andor,’ one of Skarpi’s spearmen croaked in awe.
Tudha felt a strange shiver pass through him. His father had once kept an eagle, named Andor, as a companion for many years, and falcons before that. Some said that in battle the two were one, the king becoming man and eagle.
Now Tudha could see that it was certainly not the long-dead Andor. He could also see what this eagle was fighting with: a small bundle of grey fur. With a shriek and a howl, the plummeting pair parted, the eagle speeding off up into the sky again, dropping its prey. Instinctively, Tudha reached out to catch the hoary thing. A wolf cub; tiny and weighing almost nothing. Whimpering, bleeding and shivering, the cub nuzzled into the crook of his arm. Tudha looked up to see the eagle vanishing into the dark mass of snow clouds, as if leaving the world behind.
All around him, Skarpi and the other Mesedi gawped, paling, whispering in disbelief. Even Dagon drew back from him in the chariot cabin, struck dumb with amazement at what he had just witnessed. The small marching column ground to a halt.
Tudha felt his heart pounding harder and harder, a terrible sense of dread building within. What was this, if not the most profound of portents? Angered by the spiralling feeling that he was losing control of everything, he roared to them: ‘Onwards. We are but hours from home.’
Soon, the chariots rolled onto a high plateau. A bolt of lightning shuddered across the sky, illuminating Hattusa. Tudha beheld the mighty Sphinx Rampart – a grand, sloping limestone bastion that shielded the capital’s southern approaches, its central gate flanked by a pair of menacing winged sphinxes. On the whaleback hillside within these defences soared an army of temples – majestic structures of shining black stone, bronze statues, pearl-studded doors and fluttering ribbons. Through it all cut a glorious new avenue known as the Thunder Road. I will write my own legend in stone, he mouthed the mantra that had driven him to build this new, lofty ward. King Hattu had granted him all he required, and he had set about the task with zeal. The Temple Plateau, as the district was known, had almost doubled the size of the capital, making it a worthy peer to Pharaoh’s Memphis or the Assyrian capital of Ashur.
Just then, the bundle he held in his left arm shuffled and whimpered. The cub, now wrapped in his black cloak for warmth, licked at the talon slashes on its shoulder. ‘Sleep, little one. The animal healers in the city will tend to your cuts.’ He knew not why he felt he had to care for this wild thing, only that he must.
The brumal wind keened again, as if driving them back from the Hittite capital. Only as the sound faded, did Tudha hear the other noise, shuddering through the storm.
Clang!
He straightened up a little in the cabin. Dagon too.
‘Why does the great bell ring?’ Skarpi asked through chattering teeth, behind them.
Tudha felt the blood in his veins turn cold as he saw, up there in the lee of the Sphinx Gate, a small figure, head hanging in grief: the Great Queen of the Hittites, Puduhepa. Mother? he mouthed. He knew what had happened. He had known – in truth – from the moment the eagle vanished into the heavens.
He wetted his lips and croaked: ‘Because my father has become a god.’
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Hope you enjoyed the intro! You can pick up a copy of Empires of Bronze: The Dark Earth from all good online stores.
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