The Hittite - Ben Bova [0]
BOOKS BY BEN BOVA FROM TOM DOHERTY ASSOCIATES
The Aftermath Powersat
As on a Darkling Plain The Precipice
The Astral Mirror Privateers
Battle Station Prometheans
The Best of Nebulas (editor) The Rock Rats
Challenges Saturn
Colony The Silent War
Cyberbooks Star Peace: Assured Survival
Escape Plus The Starcrossed
The Green Trap Tale of the Grand Tour
Gremlins Go Home Test of Fire
(with Gordon R. Dickson)
Titan
The Hittite To Fear the Light (with A. J. Austin)
Jupiter To Save the Sun (with A. J. Austin)
The Kinsman Saga The Trikon Deception
Mars Life (with Bill Pogue)
Mercury Triumph
The Multiple Man Vengeance of Orion
Orion Venus
Orion Among the Stars Voyagers
Orion and the Conqueror Voyagers II: The Alien Within
Orion in the Dying Time Voyagers III: Star Brothers
Out of Sun The Return: Book IV of Voyagers
Peacekeepers The Winds of Altair
THE
HITTITE
BEN BOVA
A TOM DOHERTY ASSOCIATEA BOOK
NEW YORK
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
THE HITTITE
Copyright © 2010 by Ben Bova
All rights reserved.
A Forge Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010
www.tor-forge.com
Forge® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.
ISBN 978-0-7653-2402-3
First Edition: April 2010
Printed in the United States of America
0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
TO BRAVE
AND BEAUTIFUL
BARBARA;
AND TO
HAROLD LAMB,
WHO OPENED MY EYES
Zeus now addressed the immortals: “What a lamentable thing it is that men should blame the gods and regard us as the source of their troubles when it is their own wickedness that brings them sufferings worse than any which Destiny allots them.”
Homer, The Iliad
I
THE PATH TO TROY
1
The dreadful news reached us when we were less than a day’s march from the capital, returning home after a long, hard campaign against the wily Armenians, in the mountains far to the north. The gods had turned their backs on our rightful emperor; he had been poisoned by his own scheming sons. Now, lusting for the power their father had wielded, the sons made war on one another.
The empire of the Hatti stretched from beyond the twin peaks of Mount Ararat in the northeast to the shores of the Great Sea. Our armies sacked Babylon and fought the prideful Egyptians at Qadesh and Megiddo in the gaunt lands of Canaan. With swords of iron and discipline even stronger we conquered all that we encountered.
Except ourselves.
Now Hattusas, our capital, had crumbled into chaos. Even before we reached its outer wall we could hear the tumult of terrified voices wailing to the gods for protection. It seemed as if the city’s entire population was streaming out of the gates: white-bearded men, aged grandmothers, children wide-eyed with fear, whole families pushing carts loaded with their meager possessions, mothers with crying babies in their arms, all blindly fleeing. Smoke was rising from the citadel up on the hill in the center of the city, an ugly black plume staining the clouded sky.
I knew what each of my men was thinking: what’s happened to my family, my wife, my children, my mother and father? I felt that fear clutch at my own heart as we reached the city’s main gate.
“Stay together,” I commanded my squad. “March in step.”
I knew that we would need iron discipline now more than ever. They obeyed, good soldiers that they were. Instinct born of hard training made us move as one unit, spears at the ready.
Once inside the gates the stream of fleeing populace turned into a torrent of people ashen with panic, all rushing to get away from the city. And we saw why. Gangs of young men were marauding drunkenly through the twisting streets, breaking into houses and shops, stealing all that they could carry, brutally raping any women they found. Screams and pleas for mercy filled the air.
“Where are the constables?” one of my men cried.
Gone, I realized. With the emperor dead and his sons