I, the Sun

by Morris, Janet

  “My lord king, the Two Lands are troubled. Her children flock to her. The Good God – Pharaoh – seeks to separate himself from the priesthood. A prince has died at the hands of the hierophants. I have family there, and a woman to whose safety I must see.” Somewhat more Egyptian rolled off his tongue than I could follow: I caught the pharaoh’s name; then a city’s; then a god’s: Aten. Aten: None of us could know, then, what that name would come to mean, how much of the world would be transformed by its speaking. Sometime I have been tempted to offer to that god, regent of the solar disk, for he has brought me better fortune then he did to any of his own Egyptian children. Then, it was just a name heard dimly through ignorance. No one – least of all (if I may conjecture) Nimmuria, Amenhotep III, who first elevated him – knew who the Aten was.

  What we did know, Hatib and I, was one another. We talked the sun down, and as it blew out the day’s crimson breath across the sky, we devised a method of service and payment flexible enough to grow with my empire, if indeed I managed to remake it.

  So when I released Hatib he knew more about what was in my heart than any Hittite. And if indeed the gods fulfill what is in the heart of a Hittite king, from my early days to late, Hatib has been one of their finest instruments. That day, I was concerned only with retaining what I might of Hatib’s multinational intelligence. When we parted there I had not only done that, but laid the foundations on which the new Hittite empire would mount to heaven. Filled with visions of a thousand scribes singing our glories to the ages, I descended the staircase alone.

  When I had reached its foot a shrill hawk’s challenge sounded stridently from above me – Hatib, leaning out between two of the wall’s teeth, waved me a final farewell.

  Until the first “dusty men” mounted to Hattusas and sought out service behind the armies, I wondered whether Hatib’s laconic solution to my need for mercenaries would work. I have never established how the plainsmen get their news, but the years have taught me one thing: be they Sutu, Hapiru, or any other homeless wanderers; they know kings’ business before the kings themselves. Innumerable times since I threw open my borders to the unlanded nomads (who in Hittite service grew dusty indeed behind the chariots, behind the pikemen, behind the Hittite foot) have I been repaid for allowing their women to glean and their children to sing and their men to fight for me. From these men I have received more loyalty than from my own, though what I offered them was merely a chance to die for the Hatti lands – no more than I have done for all the repossessed towns and recovered citizenry who yet hate me for it. About men’s hearts, I was just learning, there is no fruitful conjecture.

  CHAPTER 11

  “What is it, Abuya, to become a wolf?” My son’s eyes, as he asked his question from the relative safety of his ancient horses’ far side, were as big as the royal seal of Hatti.

  A man hates to think that his children are avoiding him; Arnuwandas’ behavior during the months since Hatib’s departure, had forced me to that conclusion. In my presence he stood stiff and pale, silent, grim as a foot soldier on the battle line.

  I had noticed his odd demeanor before I joined the campaigns in mid-summer, but graver troubles were oppressing me. On this side and on that – within Hatti and without – I had been beset by my enemies. Aided by Anna (whose head could not be got last season) the Arzawaean enemy had become so presumptuous that their rampaging magically solved the most stubborn problems besetting me at court, freeing me to set about what I do best. My blacks were joyous, swift as the wind – it almost seemed they knew that the good iron-bedecked chariot they bore now belonged to a king.

  As a king, I performed my first ceremonies at the borders of enemy lands. When we crossed back over this ground, it would mark borders no longer, but be part of Hatti again. We fought in the town of Anisa and below; we met six tribes in one town and seven in another. Fiercely we slew them, so that the Arzawaean enemy died in a multitude. Farther south into the country we pushed, to meet Anna and the Arzawaeans he was helping, who had attacked the towns around the Salt Lake and taken all of Mount Ammuna, along with its inhabitants, sheep and cattle. When I had finished smiting the enemy in the towns above the lake and gone back to Tiwanzana to spend the night, a messenger brought me word, while I rested in the king’s estate there that Anna himself was fighting below the lake in the town of Tuwanuwa.

  Now in my formal annals I have listed my conquests, and what is said therein is truth. But a man nowhere says, in such reportage, that he was tired, or cranky, or that he might have erred in his judgment. In the matter of that first campaign it is nowhere stated why, with only six chariots supporting me, I went back to Tiwanzana to sleep while my tattered troops rested as they could in the homes of newly, liberated Hittite citizens of Sapparanda and its neighboring towns.

  I did this because of a woman I had seen bathing in the moonlight in the Salt Lake while her belled attendants held torch and towel and sang softly to her from the .bank. Pulling up my blacks, I had watched from a distance, amazed, while the ritual languorously lilted through the night as if the land were not torn asunder by war so that the ground was a red mudflat to the horizon. Truly, I could not conceive of anyone so foolish as to linger at lakeside in deepest night, though I circled the shore unaccompanied and the girl had a score of attendants, male and female. When she came up out of the salt-pale water, I forgot everything else: She was the moon goddess arisen from the mountain. When her gilded wagons were filled with laughing women and went rumbling off toward the town, I followed. When they turned into a courtyard, I pulled up my blacks and tarried, one leg thrown over the car’s side, until no more lyres could be heard.

  The next day’s fighting saw me preoccupied; if not for the gods, my Lords, I doubtless would have lost the battle to Anna’s troops. Because Anna’s head was not my utmost concern, I did not acquire it.

  When, after an indecisive engagement, I led my six chariots back to my commandeered lakeside estate, I went directly to the official I had charged with fulfilling what was in my heart.

  The girl’s name was Khinti and her breeding such that, considering my precarious situation in Hattusas, I could not simply order her delivered up to me. So I proposed to make her a wife and install her by the lake in a summer palace I was willing to build, which – considering her age and Daduhepa’s jealousy – seemed the safest course. So long had it been since I had enjoyed trouble-free thoughts about a woman, I had forgotten the pleasure of it: the day dawned sparkling clear, and in my heart was a quiet that had eluded me since I first sat upon the seat of kingship.

  I had with me twenty men; we were carrying a third fighter in each chariot. This third man might wield spear or bow, and though in former times the spearman found his place upon unmoving ground, I was weighing alternatives: chariot’s heavier load against increased mobility of a larger segment of my force.

  Driving down into the country that morning, I was light-hearted. Day dawned bright; men called to each other over the drumming of the teams; the noise of my own iron-shod wheels masked their words. Around a bend we thundered, and were amid the enemy without warning. It seemed that the whole Arzawaean army surged around us there. My third man was Lupakki that day. I remember most clearly his gleeful tallying of his dead – a shriek accompanying every successive loosing of a shaft. He had thirty arrows; twenty-eight times I heard him howl a higher number, assigning each kill to one of the gods.

  Later, I chided him, saying that human sacrifice is no longer performed in the Hatti lands. “In former times, we did it thus, but no longer. If you must consecrate the spirits of your dead, do so in silence.”

  Solemnly he stared at me: “Shall we not say that the gods helped the army: the Sun Goddess of Arinna, the Storm God of Hatti, the Storm God of the Army, and Istar of the Battlefield, so that we smote the enemy?” Battle fever had deserted Lupakki, and the sick soul which follows after was plaguing him. Over time, I have learned not to mock what he does and says in battle: he hardly remembers. Then, sensing his disqui
et, I clapped him about the shoulders and slid down from the car to see if Anna’s head might somehow lie on the field. But it did not.

  When we had stripped all the dead of weapons, we fired only our own, and set out to rejoin the rest of the army. On the way I saw what pillage the enemy had wrought: the namra, the deportees, the cattle and sheep that scattered my way were countless. From this I determined that still more Arzawaeans must be abroad in the land, but had fled in fear while we battled their advance. So when I rejoined the strength of the army and heard that the enemy who had cast away the booty had retreated and taken hold of the mountain, I was not surprised.

  I drove up to Tuwanuwa and bound the enemy there with what portion of the army I had. I had been there fighting one whole day before my gathered troops and the chariots I had left behind to accompany them arrived on the mountain. When we drove down from there, I had Anna’s head.

  But still I could not quiet the Arzawaeans. That entire season we fought in the south, in a score of towns, and always I would return to the Salt Lake. But although I slept there, I slept alone. Khinti’s parents sorely tried my patience, but their every excuse and delay was bound up carefully with temple obligations and lordly protocol and there was little I could do about it with a war raging like flame through the country.

  Hattusas grew dim and dreamlike. The Great Queen, Daduhepa, ruled in my name. She sent word of my other commanders, and of the Gasgaeans and of Hayasaeans, but since none of the aforementioned news was good, I paid it little heed. Himuili and Takkuri had the Upper Country; if they could not hold it, I could not help them.

  As it happened, they did not need more help than the free hand I gave them. While I was finally preparing to return to Hattusas, word came down that Himuili’s troops and chariots had smitten the enemy with the aid of a certain Mariyas of Hayasa. This chieftain’s son had appeared out of the Upper Country, bearing aid and an enigmatic message for me from his father. Both now awaited me in Hattusas.

  I have told you of the taking of King Lanni of Hayasa’s head, which later I piked up before old Tuthaliyas. And I have intimated that Tuthaliyas began treaty negotiations with Lanni’s sons. But intimations and negotiations were all we had – no treaty existed between us at that time. Thus, no one was more surprised than I to hear of the new king of Hayasa’s generous loan.

  I wrote back right there in my own hand, inviting him and his warlord Mariyas to Hattusas.

  No longer did I dread going up to the city; for if my wife and my court awaited me, soon also would a man whose kingly overture to me was the first of its kind I had received from any of my “brother” regents.

  A king, to be effective, must treat with kings. If instead he spends his days mediating underlings’ disputes and defending his kingship, it becomes as though he never sat the throne at all. Though I knew this (it was a bitter knowledge I had swallowed along with the god’s meal which the king shares), in bringing it about, I had had little success. When I wrote to the other Great Kings, it was as if I were a child. New to them, unknowable, I had entered forcibly into their brotherhood. They would wait and see; by my deeds, they would accept me or not. Or so I had wagered, casually writing to each, making reference to the esteem between our lands in former times, and of past treaties and my desire to rework some or ratify others unchanged. All kings do it; it is the form for friendly relations. But with each change of rulers, countries consider anew whether it is to their betterment to keep relations peaceful – or to war. And if a king should determine, as I have had to do, that a treaty no longer serves the people he represents, then all the Oath Gods in the world cannot maintain those boundaries set out on bronze, or in clay, or on wood.

  Good or bad, this is truth, which in my eyes has taken on a value which to all men is not apparent. Often it is said that gods make treaties, and we Great Kings, stewards of the gods, are merely instruments of their temper; this runs contrary to life as I have experienced it. If the gods themselves contest through men, then Tushratta, the greatest enemy of my youth, and I would have had the face-to-face confrontation which the Oath Gods denied us: as deeply as one Great King could hate another, I hated Tushratta of Mitanni. As fiercely as one god’s steward could defy another, did we vie for the lands and people of the plains. And as thoroughly as I cursed him, I loved him; as fully as he earned my despite did he garner my respect. No king should die as he did, at the hands of his own children – alone, friendless in the cloudy streets of age. People say, wrongly, that the Oath Gods took Tushratta, and call it a lawful resolution of his affront to kin and gods; I do not believe it.

  There, are things that happen in life so poor in grace and empty that no god could condone them, unless he be meaner even than a man. So say I, the Sun, who have come from god deafness to true stewardship over forty years of kingship, though in my first year I was as bereft of gods as a Hapiru wanderer chasing his Hidden One toward the Promised Land.

  Upon arriving in Hattusas, I found little changed but the paintings on the palace walls. The Shepherd had still not come down from the temple at Arinna. The king of Hayasa’s letter was as enigmatic as Daduhepa had adjudged it. Himuili and Takkuri were yet in the field. Titai wore that same haunted look in her huge eyes and if she had a priestess’ robe around her, she was even more the foreign sorceress wrapped in it. The complaints of the Old Women had gotten no quieter. My court was a bitumen cup dropped upon the stair: fragmented but just possibly salvageable. It remained to me to fit the pieces back together. But though I had hardened myself to the loathing of my detractors and the temerity of my supporters, and accustomed myself to the people’s fear of me so that I hardly noticed, when my children fled my presence on the day of my return, I was struck speechless. My face flushed hot and to cover my shame and confusion, I accused Daduhepa of turning them away from me.

  In reply she spat: “I did not have to say a word, Tasmisarri.” She never called by my throne name. “Your reputation speaks for itself. Should children not flee from an eater-of-children? Don’t you wash that good iron sword in baby’s blood to keep the metal shining?” Lines grooved her forehead, deep as scars; her skin was sallow, the bones under it sharp and graceless; black ringed her eyes. I had heard she never recovered from Telipinus’ birth, yet refused to believe it. She seemed as aged as the scarp upon which Hattusas rests. Her hands, twisting together, shook so badly I could see their tremors.

  Finally she ran dry of imprecation and I promised to speak to Arnuwandas and Piyassilis. Telipinus, barely walking, did not yet consider his father a demon, although I was strange to him he had still been suckling Daduhepa’s teat when I drove out to fight in the south.

  I left the testy Great Queen then, forfending her when she tried to direct my attention to this woe and that. Though I wanted nothing less than a fight, in her presence I would soon have had one; I had had enough fighting for one season.

  Standing aimlessly in the hall, leaning against the door I had closed on her, my eyelids weighed heavy. And though I wanted desperately to sleep, I could not think where in the whole of the palace I could find a bed. I could not sleep with my wife – not in that room I had just left; I had not the strength for Daduhepa, either in my body or my heart. The very thought of Titai caused me to wince as if some part of me were badly bruised. I should have gone to her; I had seen her only briefly. I did not. Her pain, a palpable shroud of barren alienation, I had not the fortitude to add to my own. Takurri’s sister was ripe with child, somewhere in the palace’s women’s rooms among the various girls I had received as gifts (most of whom I had not even had a chance to look over).

  A Meshedi in the corridor stepped back against one wall.

  We scrutinized each other in silence – the praetorian and his king, neither acquainted with the other, each with a predetermined relationship of mutual service which had not yet been ratified in our hearts. He was about my age and size, noble blood stamped on him like a royal seal. We could probably have taken up one another’s lives without any but our intima
tes noticing a swap had been made. “Meshedi, find somebody to take your duty, and come sniff out my brother Zida with me.” The Great King can quell a thousand rising rebels, but in the citadel if the king walks the corridors alone it is an occasion for the tearing of official hair and the gnashing of highborn teeth. To the extent that a bodyguard did not inhibit my movements, I was willing to abide by tradition. That night, if Hattu-ziti’s intense young man insisted on sleeping on the floor beside my bed, I would not have argued.

  In the end, he did almost exactly that, after we found Zida where I expected, in the house of the Gal Meshedi, fretting his commanders about increased security now that I was returned. Chasing out everyone but the bodyguard (who was some distant cousin of my wife’s) and my brother himself, we drank what wine remained from the meeting. Then Zida and I shared the small officer’s bed and the Meshedi curled himself up before the door.

  The whole of the next day I spent in contemplation of the matter of my sons, utilizing the Shepherd’s favorite ploy: I went into the sanctuary of the Storm God of Hatti, and there I stayed until the Seven Stars twinkled in the sky. Entering the citadel directly from the eastern bridge, avoiding the city, I had preceded the bulk of the army by three days into Hattusas. When I went out early tomorrow to rejoin my army and its train of namra-borne booty for a triumphant entrance into the city, I would take my sons with me.

  Having given orders to that effect, I slunk like a jackal through the night to my concubine and my bed. When I entered my apartments, though the hour was late, scented smokes thickened the air and cymbals tinkled. She fell to kiss my feet with heaving breasts and lips swelled as if by passion. She had been studying her lessons, she assured me, and I did not pursue it further, content to let her strip me and serve me as she would. In truth, I was more concerned with what I might say to my two sons to undo what the Great Queen had done, thinking hard about it long into the night while Titai murmured and tossed and sought me in her restless sleep.