The Causality of Time

by Jonnathan Strawthorne

  Chapter 41

  Warfare

  The drums beat a constant crescendo of the eventual damnation and hell unleashed upon the Assyrians. The horns blew a raucous call to arms. The Babylonian men began to march forward with large shields of toughened hides of leather and papyrus, impenetrable to arrows and worthy of any opponent’s spear. They stamped their feet and blew their breaths out with deep voices of dreadful condemnation. Slaves and oxen followed behind, dragging timbers of mountain pine and ropes to lash the tree trunks together as a barricade in front of the engineers. They steadily moved toward the river with a resolve firmly placed on their faces and hearts.

  The Assyrian archers began launching their volleys of arrows toward the Babylonian men with thumps of sinew and wood. The fight had begun; the dice cast. There was no negotiation and no chance to surrender. There would be no mercy. The unit commanders continued to tell their men to hold and not waste their arrows or stones while the ballistae were made ready and taut with expectation. They waited until the Babylonian army contingent was almost at the shore. The command went out for the arrows and stones unleashed. The men roared, pushing their voices into the air, following the arrows and stones with conviction in the belief of their cause.

  Shortly after that, the next command went out, and the ballistae let loose eight and twelve-pound stones, slamming into the Babylonian formation, smashing bodies and limbs into pulped-up lumps of flesh. The men closed ranks and continued their march forward, moving into the water and holding their ground as the slaves began to latch the logs together to create a buffer.

  The arrows found their marks, the slaves, and sliced through flesh and bone, cutting them down as ripe shafts of wheat. The men screamed in their pain, begging for help of which none was to come; they were only slaves. More expendable slaves were thrust forward into the melee of the war construction as it moved forward. The Assyrian ballistae rapidly rearmed; the command issued; the slipknots pulled, and the stones hurled through the air, once again blasting their way through the soldiers and smashing apart the buffer the slaves were trying to construct. Again and again, the ballistae launched their stone projectiles into the Babylonian defense perimeter, smashing men asunder. They floated away in pools of blood and grime. The slingers and archers continued their barrage with an ever-increasing amount of casualties borne by the Babylonian side.

  Eventually, the Babylonian soldiers and slaves abandoned their course and retreated to their camp in defeat. The Assyrian men shouted and yelled for the Babylonians to come back for more punishment. The Babylonian command had never experienced such a situation and was perplexed by the Assyrians’ abilities. The first day ended with hundreds of Babylonian men dead or dying on the banks of the tributary in front of their commanders. It was impossible to help the wounded as the Assyrian archers and slingers would continually drive any rescuers back.

  Talmido’s men were in high spirits that night, singing praises to their gods and boasting of their deeds. Talmido smiled to himself as he walked among the men, slapping hands and shoulders to encourage the positive morale. Eventually, he went back to his tent to meet with his senior officers and plan for the next day’s continued fight.

  “It was a good day, today, men. You all did well, including the men under your command. We all know this is only the start of the fight we will continually have to attend to as we move toward our goal. We are not here to defeat the Babylonians. We are here to delay them. Once we have the Babylonians in complete confusion and perhaps requesting reinforcements, we will have enough time to slip away and disappear into the wilderness. We will have to move quickly and cover our tracks until we get to the caravan. We will retreat in small groups splitting out from this location to make our way to the rendezvous point,” Talmido said as he looked at all the men in the tent with serious eyes.

  “Commander, the pickets are all stationed to look for any saboteurs or assassins. The Babylonians will change their tactics tomorrow. What do you suggest we do?” a senior officer questioned.

  “Under no circumstances are they to find out about our ballistic machinery. Every man must be vigilant and determined to do his duty. You must communicate this to the men with all seriousness. Two hours before dawn, we need to reposition the ballistae so the enemy cannot determine where the projectiles are coming from and attempt countermeasures. We should expect that they will try to build on two or three fronts as well. Hence, we will need to keep a careful eye on their movements. Other than that, keep killing them. Eventually, we may wear them down and buy more time. You are all dismissed.”

  Talmido ended the meeting, took off his armor, and hung up his sword. He went outside to a washbasin and cleaned off the day’s grime and grit. Once done, he immediately headed back to his tent and lay down to quickly fall asleep.

  That morning, Talmido awoke three hours before sunrise to the soft sounds of men sleeping and men working to position the ballistae. The sky was full of stars, with the Milky Way galaxy stretching out from horizon to horizon in full view of the men. They called it Ishtar’s milk of fertility and love. Talmido gazed up at it for a moment, staring at the awe-inspiring wonders, and eventually brought his gaze back toward earth and more human situations to contemplate. He looked around and saw officers gradually waking up and starting fires while the rank-and-file members began to emerge from their tents to stretch and yawn into the cold morning air.

  He sighed and wondered at the futility of it all. All these men were destined to die either that day or another day in the future; life was so short and so filled with uncertainty and fear. Conversely, the men yearned for the warmth and pleasure of their wives, the love of their children, the camaraderie of men-at-arms, and the brotherhood of people with a common goal and desire. The fact that these men were so willing to give up their lives, no matter how short, for others, for a cause, for an idea, or for acceptance, perplexed Talmido. He initially did this for Sapalulmea; however, that had changed, as she was gone forever. Why did he continue the fight? Why did he keep on with the journey? He knew deep in his heart the reasons why. He did it for justice, because it was the right thing to do, and because he felt a close, brotherly bond with those men. They were the family he had never had, so he would fight and continue, even if it meant his death.

  Eventually, the camp had come to life with the smell of cooking wafting on the morning breeze to the low murmur of men discussing what the day would bring and where they would find themselves. Photons of light gradually floated down to the ground, illuminating the dew-covered greenery of the location. The songs of birds rang out as they awoke to a new morning. Herds of various animals were seen coming down to the river to drink. They twitched their ears in the direction of the camp, oblivious to the struggles experienced by those beings of intellectual capacity and emotional depth.

  The scouts reported, as did the pickets, that there was no activity from the Babylonian army, and no attempts to cross the river that night. It was quiet in the Babylonian camp that morning, and only a few cooking fires identified. So spies were dispatched to determine what was going on within the camp.

  Shortly, messengers arrived with word from the spies that the main body of the Babylonian army group had moved northwest toward the Tigris River. It seemed they were going to come at the situation from two battlefronts after crossing the Tigris. It did not bode well for the Assyrians.

  So they decided to wait the day out and then pack up and slip away that night. Nothing of consequence happened, and the men quietly prepared for the exodus. Dusk came and went with a new moon shining brightly in the night sky, providing light for Talmido and his men along their way. Within a few hours, all the materials were packed up, and the army split up into small groups of two hundred and fifty men. They alternated leaving the camp, and by two o’clock in the morning, it sat deserted as the remaining men moved quickly on their way.

  The whole army group had split up and gone in various directions to confuse the enemy; to eventually meet at the rendezvous po
int, sixty-two leagues southeast of their original position along the banks of the Karkheh River where it met with the Tigris River.

  The Babylonian army group, the Golden Lions, had marched southwest along the tributary toward the Tigris River and a bridge constructed centuries before, out of granite, to last through the ages. Upon coming to the bridge, they marched across, turned around, and followed the path along the banks of the west side of the Tigris River toward the junction of the tributary. Two days later, they came upon the merging of the two rivers; however, a messenger reached the commander to let him know the Assyrians had fled. He immediately sent messengers back to the army outpost with the command to bring two thousand men to reconstruct the bridge on the tributary and to construct a new bridge across the Tigris at the confluence of the two rivers.

  The Golden Lions marched at a steady pace, following the Tigris River southeast while sending messengers to Nippur, Adab, Girsu, and Lagash requesting supplies and reinforcements to continue the pursuit for however long it was to take. Scouts were sent ahead to try to find the Assyrian army group but to no avail, as the group had split up and moved off into various openings of the mountain range to follow the valleys and tributaries within them. It frustrated the Babylonian command to no end and fueled their absolute determination to make Talmido’s group bear the full wrath and punishment of the Babylonian king.

  Chapter 42

  Decisions

  The complexity of a decision can perhaps be measured by the degree of thought and experience required to formulate, implement, and effect whatever purpose the decision might have. Decisions are part of the complex nature of choice and free will.

  It was always the desire of those in power to limit the decision-making abilities of those they wield power over. That is the fundamental basis of their fear and the inherent ineffective nature of their ability to press upon others their decisions for their benefit and well-being. That tyranny, that despotism, that dictatorship of thought and power was at the core of most, if not all, societies and civilizations.

  Assyria and Babylon were no different from their surrounding contemporaries. The struggles of the nations were expressions of the conflict within each man and woman for their desire to express their free will of choice. Hence, the power over people eventually was an expression of control over wealth and ideas and the need of individuals to direct or manipulate directions and outcomes for their selfish gain.

  The defecting Assyrian men and women absolutely could not be tolerated by the Assyrian hierarchy due to the very nature of their infectious, virus-like mental nature. To them, a production of something other than the directing oversight must be destroyed for nonconformity to the natural laws of power and control, or so their thought process went. It was the will of the gods for the individuals involved to be in the positions of power, and anything other than the current situation was intolerable.

  Si-tatious was at a crossroads of decision-making. He needed to bring a plurality of different military, social, and individual needs into a cohesive plan of action. This required manpower, equipment, and the desire of the people surrounding him. He was very familiar with coordinating men and materials, having worked with Talmido for so many years in the organization and coordination of the various army units under their command, so it came as second nature to him. Taking charge and making decisions were not uncommon practices for Si-tatious. He was a man of action who was always looking for solutions. He was a tactician, but not necessarily a strategist. He was an implementer of strategies, making sure the people were fed, clothed, safe, and protected; however, his mind was not that of Talmido’s. He was the right arm of Talmido’s strategies.

  Those facts created a relationship of close friendship beyond the day-to-day, casual associations of people. It was one perhaps between brothers—a relationship where the thoughts and intents of each person are readily understood and accepted without skepticism or mistrust. Si-tatious had fought beside Talmido on so many occasions, and they had saved each other from certain death so many times, that now there was no question of their loyalty or dedication to each other. The relationship was not a sexual one; it was purely one of the mind—one of intent and purpose.

  So it was with this mindset that Si-tatious embarked on a process of thought and decision-making that would eventually impact the outcome of the journey at hand and overall success of their quest. One day, while Si-tatious was sitting upon the Chair of Decision within the tent of meeting, a man approached him. His clothing was tattered and torn; he was filthy and looked half-starved. He shuffled forward on his knees with his hands clasped as if in prayer, looking at the ground.

  Si-tatious looked around at the camp elders with a questioning look and then turned his gaze back to the man before him.

  “Stand up, please. I am not a lord or king. I am but a humble soldier in this group of free men and women,” Si-tatious said as he gestured with his hand in an upward motion.

  The man stood up, shaking due to his hunger and fear.

  “My lord, please, I beg you on behalf of my people for sanctuary. We have been pressed hard by all the people around and have been unable to defend ourselves or take care of our needs. We desire to be free men, as you are, but we are few in number and beaten down by all our neighbors to the point where we cannot support ourselves and continue living. Please, I beg, help us, for we are pitiful to look upon, but at one time, we were a powerful and proud nation of people with the favor of the gods on our side,” he spoke as his legs shook with either fear or exhaustion.

  “Take this man and his people and look after them. Once you are in a more capable position, let us come back together to further this discussion,” Si-tatious instructed while the guards of the tent of meeting helped the man out toward the tent of healing.

  It was a rabble of sick and malnourished individuals, perhaps no more than five hundred. It was with a kindness born out of compassion and empathy that the Assyrian defectors took them in and gave them sanctuary. They were once slaves who were kicked about, bought, and sold as if they were animals, so it was with a tender fellow-feeling that those once slaves and butchers of men for the Assyrian hegemony extended something of serious value—a caring hand.

  Soon, word got out regarding that place of sanctuary, and people from all around traveled to join the free Assyrian men and women. Si-tatious understood what was happening and took it as a good sign of things to come, and instead of turning the people away, he had them embraced, helped, and assimilated into their group and cause.

  To be free did not mean to be free from the law. Law did not intend for men and women to be free from responsibility or accountability. It meant to be free from the tyrannical, despotic dictatorship of a ruling class trying to subvert the natural choices of each beneath it. With this in mind, Si-tatious, a learned man who could read and write in the cuneiform ways of the Chaldean and the Akkadian languages, decided to use the law codes of Hammurabi to put together a code of conduct for the people of the caravan. The process took deep thought and some time to put together, and once finished, he had scribes put it down on papyrus and linen for distribution to all for their understanding of what to expect of each other and themselves.

  The development of a law code was accomplished as the caravan gradually wound its way southeast toward the Karkheh River basin, the agreed-upon rendezvous point of the convoy and the army units.

  Chapter 43

  Misdirection

  Each unit of two hundred and fifty men dispersed across the landscape to thoroughly confuse the Babylonian army pursuing them. They needed to keep out of contact with the cities, so they skirted them, at times traveling meandering, circuitous routes as if they were with no direction. After four days of this, as directed, they turned their attention toward the Karkheh River basin and marched steadily toward it.

  Talmido’s unit of men disguised themselves as Edomite traders and entered a small town northeast of Adab to purchase additional goods for the caravan. Upon entering the tow
n, he noticed the impoverished nature of the citizenry and the lack of products sold at the market. He asked a man what the situation in the city was.

  “The Assyrian Empire exacts such a toll of taxes that it is impossible for us to keep up. Their military expenditures are outstripping our ability to pay,” he replied. “What can we do? There is only so much blood to take before death is the only answer left.”

  “What happens if you do not pay?” Talmido asked.

  “The tax collectors call in the army, and then our homes, livestock, women, or children are confiscated and sold to pay the taxes,” he lamented.

  “Why do you not leave this place and go where perhaps there is a better life?”

  “Where? No one will have us. We do not belong to anyone of importance,” he replied.

  Talmido nodded his head and paid for the goods and took his leave. After exiting the town, he directed his unit south and marched with all haste toward the caravan. They moved throughout the countryside, keeping a low profile to not invite any inquiries from the local population or any officials.

  It was on a night a few days later in their travels that they inadvertently came upon an army group camped along the Tigris River. Looking down from a small hill, Talmido instructed two of his men to investigate the encampment to determine who it was that had amassed such a large group. They were all suspicious, knowing with a degree of certainty that it was the Babylonian army group. The spies came back and confirmed the suspicions, to the surprise of no one present.