Nerik, Spring. Reign of Mursili III, Year 1

His sword slick with the blood of fallen Kaskans, Urhi-Teshub strode into the Temple of Teshub, its sacred hall strewn with the bodies of the dead. Between the pillars in the alcoves meant for burning incense, the Kaskans had erected idols to their violent gods. Upon the altars before a half dozen of them, the sacrificed bodies of infants lay twisted and mutilated, bearing gaping holes in their breasts where their tiny hearts had once beat.

Urhi-Teshub stared at the grinning, ugly images of the Kaskan gods, their effigies rough-cut from the hallowed stone surrounding the city. His temper ignited, hard, jagged, his blood still afire from the temple's brutal purge. He drew a deep breath, suppressing a sudden longing to hack the bodies of the Kaskan priests to pieces. Beside him, his commander eyed the massacred babes, their fragile hearts piled up in the stone hands of the vile statues.

"Destroy their gods," Urhi-Teshub muttered. "And give those babes full burial rights, with offerings for their protection through the Under Realm."

As his men began the long work of clearing the temple, Urhi-Teshub pressed on, alone, toward the sanctuary of Teshub, the holiest of all places in Hatti. A place only a king and the high priest might enter. At the furthest end of the temple, he moved through the torchlit outer rooms, toward the smallest one, ensconced within a nest of rooms at the back. Pushing the heavy cedarwood door open, stripped bare of its gold panels, he entered the dark sanctuary, bracing himself for the sacrilege he knew he would find.

The stench hit him first, worse than the smell of the butchery of dozens of sacrifices, worse than the stink of plague, fouler than the aftermath of battle. He stared, horrified, bile rising in his throat as the firelight from the torches outside filtered into the room. The image of Teshub had been torn down and smashed into pieces. In its place, another god stood; its penis enormous and erect, far out of proportion to the rest of its naked body. Surrounding the feet of the hideous, malevolent thing--the bones of the dead. On top of them: naked bodies of men and women, in various stages of decay. At least fifty of the bodies were fresh. Several of the victims had been pregnant women, their babes torn from their bellies, presumably used in the sacrifices to the lesser gods without. Rats, sleek and black, swarmed over the dead, feeding. Their muzzles worked at the rotting flesh, swollen and stinking with foul gases. A rat the size of a cat emerged from the belly of an eviscerated woman, its fur slick with blood and entrails.

Urhi-Teshub stepped over the threshold, into a pool of black-dark, fetid fluids, two fingers deep. It rippled as he moved, lapping up against the stone walls, viscous, sickening. He backed away, swallowing his rising gorge. In the outer rooms, he collected the torches, his hands quaking with suppressed rage. The heat of the torches blazed over him, searing his skin, cleansing him.

At the sanctuary's threshold, he threw the torches onto the bodies, watching as they caught, one by one, the gases in their bodies igniting, explosions of greasy green and yellow flames spreading across the gruesome miasma. He stood, waiting, grim, as the flames did their work--ignoring the rats scrambling over his bloodstained boots in their haste to escape.

He clenched his fists, revolted by the filth, the desecration. Anger, raw and virulent threatened to overwhelm him. He pressed it down, inhaling deep, the heated air harsh against his lungs. His father had let the Kaskans hold Nerik for far too long. Their wicked taint had seeped into the very foundation of Hatti's most sacred site. It would take months to purify the temple enough for Teshub's return.

The flames rose up, licking against the effigy of the Kaskan god, blackening it. Satisfied, Urhi-Teshub turned away, the heat of the room blasting against the back of his leather tunic, hotter than a blacksmith's furnace. He strode through the outer rooms toward the temple's main hall, the blazing light of the fire driving even the deepest shadows away.

He halted at the top of the steps leading down into the temple's decimated hall. Blood soaked the stone floor, pillars, and walls. Most of the infants had been collected and laid out in a row at the temple's threshold, ready to be collected and taken away for burial. He watched his men working as they gathered up the last of the infants, their faces set in lines of anger, sorrow, pity.

Veiled Kaskan women crept through the temple's broken outer doors, furtive, frightened, wary; their desperation to find their young driving them past their fear of the bloodied soldiers of Hatti. They scuttled along the row of infants, their cries gathering, rising, wails of anguish, strong as the wind.

His heart tight, Urhi-Teshub watched them. One step at a time. Nerik was his. The Kaskans were no more. Soon, Teshub would be returned to his holy city. With enough sacrifices and offerings, the favor of Hatti's god would return to the empire and end the unnatural cold and incessant rains. Crops would grow again and Hatti would rise out of its ashes.

He glanced down at his bloodstained armor. He had not spared a single Kaskan man or boy over the age of twelve. The women and children could be assimilated into Hatti, their numbers would help replenish the empire's dwindling numbers. By the look of them, their lives had been hard, brutal, even. They had looked at him with gratitude when he spared them, their emaciated, bruised and broken bodies telling him more than he needed to know about their miserable existence under their oppressive tribal leaders. The Kaskans would never rise again. Not so long as he was king.

And yet, how long would he remain king? His hand strayed to the pouch tied to his belt. The message tucked within had arrived at dawn, just as he and his men prepared to make the final push into the holy citadel. His uncle, Hattusilis, had not been wasting time during Urhi-Teshub's campaign at Nerik. Another kingdom had allied itself to Hattusilis, swayed by his uncle's smooth words and twisted logic, pointing out the wastefulness of Urhi-Teshub's Nerik campaign during such a time of hardship--costing Urhi-Teshub one of his most powerful eastern kingdoms, one he had believed to be his staunchest supporter.

No longer could he afford to ignore the shifting winds; the switching loyalties. The tide was rising against him. He let out a long, slow breath, frustration eating at him. Why must his path be so hard? What had he done to deserve such difficulty? Had he not always sought to honor the gods?

A fresh upwelling of bitterness threatened to overwhelm him. He gritted his teeth and shoved it back down. Instead, in the midst of the desecrated temple, his hands and body stained with the blood of the dead, Urhi-Teshub knelt, and prayed.