I, the Sun

by Morris, Janet

  That he had come offering aid to me, appearing on his own initiative at the citadel in those most troubled times has been construed by many, including the Great Shepherd, as a favor bestowed on me by the gods, my Lords.

  On manifold occasions the Hayasaean would shake his lion’s head to and fro and with a twitch of his bearded lips, turn peril to advantage, uttering judgments more sagacious than a priest’s, unveiling alternatives where I had seen only entrapment, always in a manner which allowed him to remain the faithful vassal and I the magnanimous overlord. Indeed, he made it seem that I myself had suggested every canny strategy he authored, and he was simply recapitulating. To my fulmination against my precariously unsettled court and what amounted, in my eyes to near imprisonment by kingship, he added the honey of patience, and that same cup which seemed brimful of bitter dregs when I drank alone became a soothing draught when he swilled with me. We would sit like two hunters awaiting the eagle under cover, though our cover was no brake of branches but the gap-toothed walls of Hatti, and our prey, far distant lands, was as yet only imagined at the horizon of our line of sight. The wooing of the country of Kizzuwadna, the projected capture of Ishuwa, and, interspersed, analyses of our interminable indecisive battles with the enemy from Arzawa – all came under discussion that season of our first meeting, the second of my reign, while my sister peeked, coy and decorated, from behind column and fenestration and took a sudden interest in the affairs of the land.

  For his assistance I have well repaid him, looking with favor upon his country and with leniency upon its merchants and profiting him exceedingly thereby. Yet, I am what I have become: overlord to the very gates of Egypt; ruler of kings; and he is no more than he was in those days – more comfortable, perhaps, but a paltry hero, nonetheless.

  The protracted delay in formalizing our relationship was not upon my sister’s account – she warmed to him that winter and in spring urged me to consummate the affair as soon as I might, nor upon Hugganas’ account – he was anxious to make firm our bond and turn my attention toward Ishuwa and Kizzuwadna (both in the east of Hatti and south of his own lands), and to facilitate movement of our joint forces down toward the Hurrian-controlled plain he even committed his troops to aid mine in our war with the far western Arzawaean enemy, which was then my greatest concern. But on my own account, I held the matter pending while I wrestled in the arena of words with my court and warred the seasons through.

  When I went finally to join Takkuri and Himuili who were overseeing the troops and beating back the Arzawaeans hill by hill, I took Hugganas himself with me, though for us two rulers, overseeing the western campaign was more a welcome respite from priestly duties and civil judgment (and endless evenings of wheedling merchants and foreign emissaries with duplicity in their hearts and doggerel on their lips) than a duty.

  Thus we became acquainted with each other as two men; as two commanders: as two charioteers – which was what I had in my heart. In war a man’s lusts ride close to the skin, emprise sparkles brighter than the golden clothes of the Sun Goddess, and there is no time for posturing. Hugganas revealed himself a fearsome opponent, a general who could draw from his men the extra measure of valor that brings with it victory. In everything but his comportment during our long crackling nights of encampment, when his aches were eased with wine and his Hayasaean nature sharpened by it, did he meet with my approval.

  But his handling of captives and his choices of bed partners was scandalous to a Hittite. I bespoke my concern to no one; green-eyed Himuili unknowingly voiced my qualms for me: “They’re welcome enough until the spoils are divided and the namra and captive soldiers apportioned. I have heard they do such things to men in Assyria; I have not heard that Hittites do it. Not even an Arzawaean deserves protracted mutilation. No man of common rank knows the answers to such questions as condemn those poor bastards to death inflicted on them limb by limb. Half of one man, half of another on the same pyre, arms and legs scattered about the landscape. I tripped over a foot lying, in the dirt on my way here. Their screaming keeps my men awake at night.”

  “May it keep the Arzawaeans awake also,” I growled at him.

  “Are you condoning this torture?” My commander’s eyes flicked from fire, to tent, to me, then back to his feet. The king’s tents are traditionally pitched amid the baggage train surrounded by his foot and his Sutu and what Meshedi he has brought along. I habitually forsook that security and took my rest wherever I chose among the men. It was my way of keeping them alert and, in a sense, romancing them. None knew when he might turn and find the Sun of Hatti, as dusty and trail-worn as himself and his comrades, hunkering down by a stewpot presided over by some commander of ten and settling in beside him for the night. Recalling all their names was impossible, but I began to know just what I had fighting for me, under this commander or that, and they began to know just what they had, in their king. And, since no one knew just where I might be resting of an evening, my chances of ascending to heaven in my sleep were greatly lessened. If my officers needed me, they sent up a call.

  I had determined when the sun went down to seek out Himuili – whose feelings could be divined in the dark during a thunderstorm by one who knew him and learn just what he thought of our Hayasaean allies.

  Arzawaean fires burned, presumptuously arrogant, on a rump of hills that paralleled those on which we were entrenched, visible from the revetment of timber astride which I found him, staring outward at the enemy encampment.

  As soon as I scrambled up beside him he had begun telling me, in a low but emotional tone, all that I had come here to the far edge of the camp to learn.

  I assured him that I condoned no dismemberment, but softly added that should we lose our engagement, Himuili himself would be called upon to halve a likely prisoner or two for the armies to ride between, thus assuring both our revenge upon those who had defeated us and, by the way of the spilt guts of the enemy, transferring to them any curse which might have hampered the Hittite army.

  “It is not the same!” he snarled, then took himself in hand. “Does the Sun see no difference between two or three men sacrificed in the unlikely event that we should lose this, this –” his hand spread out to encompass the Arzawaean hills “– exercise, this training for my troops, and a multitude tortured? These Arzawaeans have no god strong enough to preserve them – the fact that the Hayasaeans cut Arzawaean generals into pieces like they were spring lambs proves that!”

  “I wish I were so confident as you.”

  Himuili, having no need to do temple service, had the option of growing whatever amount of hair he wished; his forehead was bound with a band and his black hair tumbled loose down his back, shining and damp, doubtless the result of a trip to the latticework of springs that dotted the gently rolling chain of hills we had bought with Hittite lives. He scratched a season’s worth of beard, staring out at the enemy fire, not answering. I waited. At last, he said, “Suppiluliumas, my Sun, are you sure about this? Do we really need them?”

  “Are you sure that we could triumph without them?”

  “Yes! I am.” Defiant, he locked his stare on me. Great power has that look on women – I have seen it.

  The king and commanding general of the armies, however, was no woman: “And could we hold the whole plateau, and the plain below, and the coast down to Tushratta’s navel, in such a fashion?’

  His eyes widened when he realized what I meant. “No, we could not do that,” he admitted, quite low, obviously taken aback by the audacity of my implication. In the firelight, his lips twitched beneath his beard, then twitched again; a chortle rose up from his belly and danced upon the air: “No easier than Mammali could wed that Arzawaean noblewoman he has following him around camp.”

  My turn came to stare into the flames; I was thinking of the girl Khinti, whose beauty had nearly brought me death on the shores of the Salt Lake, and whose body I did not yet possess for reasons of political affiliation and public opinion similar to those my one-eyed field commander mu
st be facing. Each of my original thirty from Samuha had I given field commands, according to their abilities, putting them all under Takkuri, whose second in command was Himuili. Himuili’s punishment – that of not himself being field commander of the armies – I had levied on him in response to his rejection of the appointment I had offered him as Chief of 1,000. Seemingly he had accepted his demotion without an objection. Actually, he performed Takkuri’s function and the latter subordinated himself to Himuili, and everybody knew it. It was Himuili who kept track of the hearts and minds of the Samuha veterans who made up the core of my army, and, in the off season, the backbone of the Great Ones. Especially now, since I had drafted into service every lord’s son capable of drawing a bow, the influential Hattusas-born commander was like a living omen on the state of the troops’ morale and, more even than previously, a shaper of opinions.

  “Tell me of Mammali and this woman,” I suggested.

  He snorted, spat, and looked at me as if weighing his words. “Mammali happened upon her in an estate he commandeered; she has spent not a single night among the namra, but has her own chariot and a driver he’s assigned to her. He accords her all the rights of a Hittite lady. Show me the Hattian woman who hikes up her skirts and becomes a camp follower…. Men snicker at him behind his back; soon, they will dare it to his face! He should have better sense… an Arzawaean, yet!”

  “Himuili, you disappoint me. Once, all these lands were Hittite. The people who lived here when the enemy came from Arzawa and made Uda and Tuwanuwa their frontier were Hattian people previously. Can you tell an Arzawaean from a Hittite by looking at him? No, you cannot. The blood that they carry is Hittite, the names that they bear are as Hittite names…” He was chewing on a stalk, clearly not in agreement. “Good commander, what we build is empire. Love your Arzawaean captives, for they are Hittites once again.”

  “As I must love the Hayasaeans?”

  “Exactly the same.”

  “It is not the same, my Sun.”

  “Then how is it different?”

  “It is… we have been fighting Arzawaeans for years….”

  “How much longer than we have been fighting Azzi-Hayasa?”

  “Suppiluliumas, I am having no easy time loving Hayasaeans,” he rasped; “those so-called ‘Azzi’ fighting women are enough to give any man restless nights. If you would welcome Arzawaeans-who-were-once-Hittites back into the country and make them again your subjects, you had better find a way to stop the Hayasaeans from hacking them up!”

  “That is true. See to it that there is no more torture. But be gentle with our Hayasaean neighbors. Love them as your brothers. You will need the practice. Soon enough you will have to love all manner of former enemies. Perhaps even someday Hurrian subjects, or worse. And as for Mammali, I will marry him to this Arzawaean woman myself, if he wishes. We must all learn new ways in which to deal with both our former subjects, and those who shall become Hittites for the first time. To that end, accompany me on a tour of the camp of the Hayasaeans; I will introduce you to an Azzi woman or two who may change your mind about their sisterhood.” When the Hayasaean king and I came down from Hattusas, we had brought with us the remaining fifty chariots of his pledge and five hundred foot. Among them was a unit commanded and composed of these ladies of the battlefield, daughters of the Istar-who-presides-over-war; they bind down their breasts and pull back their hair and wield bow and ax as well as any man. Contrary to popular opinion, what warrior-women I have encountered evince no repulsion toward men, nor had any such girls whom I have bedded sacrificed a breast to their goddess to improve their aim. But the stories of their prowess in war are not exaggerated, from what I have seen, and I found one among them whom I would gladly have made Great Queen and Tawananna beside me, though the matter was decided for us by her goddess, who called her up to whatever fate awaits the Daughters of the Field, doubtless saving us both from a long, difficult interlude of coming to terms with the disparities in our beliefs. Once, long ago, before the first empire and all that came with it, women ruled the cults and men bowed down to them. A vestige of that culture hides behind the ridges of Hayasa, and it is said that the Daughters still demand the begetting parts of a man in some of their rites. It was, I think, a blessing from my gods that my Azzi girl did not survive that season; for rituals I later saw performed by certain of the daughters might have caused me great unrest had I attempted to make a queen of her, as the Hayasaean continually urged me.

  True to my word, I found Himuili a fighting girl with the help of mine, and took leave of him to seek out Mammali and see how much of what Himuili told me was true. Searching for him, I skirted the edges of the camp, for I had my red-haired warrior woman by my side. Also, I was fain to meet Takkuri, whom by rights I should have sought before taking council with his second-in-command, Himuili; I did not have any intention of listening to my field commander’s delicate reproaches, framed around inquiries as to the health of his sister – and of his nephew, Kantuzilis, the son she had borne me and named (presumably in ignorance of the enmity between me and my deceased uncle, the prince) after the Pale One himself. As things presently stood, this woman had whelped me a son of the second degree. But if Takkuri had his way and I elevated her to Great Queen, the child would then be a son of the first order and eventually eligible for any honor including kingship, should it come to pass that my eldest prove insufficient to the task or die prematurely.

  A predecessor of mine, one Hattusilis, objected vehemently to the institution of the Tawananna. This barbaric custom, he said, would be the end of us all. Women, he said, should not wield the power with which the title “Tawananna” invests them. The title itself devolved from a mighty queen in ancient times whose name it was, and now a woman who is Tawananna can render judgment and perform ceremonies and act unilaterally in the Great King’s stead when he is at war. A Tawananna, unless demoted, retains her title and power until her death, and a Great King who inherits a predecessor’s Tawananna may not raise his own wife to equal heights until the old Tawananna dies. Now, whether the Great King Hattusilis was right about the barbarism of the institution I would not venture to say, but those duties that my Tawananna Daduhepa had formerly performed for me were a weight heavy upon my shoulders, amounting to fetters binding me close to Hattusas, now that I had no Great Queen, no Tawananna to perform them. A sample, perhaps? The driving of the deified fleece to its stations in the different towns at New Year takes nearly forty days, each one filled with rite and benediction. I had not realized how much of the load the Tawananna bears until I had lost mine.

  And by the same token, I was hesitant, cautious in choosing another woman to wield such power, for she can be to the Great King the most insidious of enemies should their wills not coincide. Daduhepa, who loved me and in her own way did me honor while she lived, had on occasion opposed my wishes. What worse might befall me, should the next Tawananna of Hatti be Takkuri’s vacuous sister? Aside from the hold she afforded me on her brother, the woman’s main function was decorative, and her concerns ran to the mundane. I was seriously considering sending her to one of the southern winter palaces before I returned home to Hattusas so that I would not have to listen to her simpering, and my temper was so frayed that I would have decreed it in Takkuri’s presence should he question me about it. Thus I took pains to avoid him, while I kept company with my Hayasaean girl, ruminating upon the advantages of that diplomatic marriage for which Hugganas of Hayasa pressed, weighing it against some future, indeterminate wiving with more far-reaching benefits. The glorious days and nights I spent with my warrior girl convinced me to postpone the whole question, and after her blood had soaked my tunic as she died in my arms on some nameless hillside I had no more interest in such as she: it is romantic, so appealing to a man who lives a warrior’s life, to take a woman who can fight upon his right during battle and warm him during the long evenings, but when that man sees her soft flesh rived from breastbone to gullet in her own chariot, all he can do is try to fight his way
to her in time to hold her while life flees, lest when she cries out in fear as the dark comes over her eyes, no one is there to answer… I dreamed it a score of times before I lost her to a length of Arzawaean bronze: when it occurred it was almost a relief.

  I buried her there on the hillside; her sisters assured me that she would have wanted to go full-fleshed back to the soil. Though it sat uneasily with me, I allowed it, and then got so drunk I thought not of worms and grubs and slugs and those long-lashed, round eyes.

  The next day I married Mammali to his Arzawaean girl and endured her confidences as to her new husband’s precarious health and his enemies who resided within the very camp itself, paying her worries little mind. Mammali, my one-eyed commander – for whom I had taken an arrow in Samuha and who in turn had taken a beating for me when the original thirty of us first laid siege to Hattusas – was well-known to me, his resilience near legend in the Upper Country. So I made light of her words, distracted, with my lost girl on my mind, and the tenacity of the Arzawaeans, whom we were having to push back hill by hill. And, even had I agreed with her, it would have been an inopportune time to meddle in affairs rightly the prerogative of the field commander Takkuri and his second, Himuili.

  Instead, I held council with Hugganas as to how we might put an end to this costly war. There was sorrow in the king’s almond eyes, not just for me, but for what might have been lost to our two countries. He ran thick fingers through his hair and knuckled his brow, and tried once again to follow the shifting of border battles that had led to this state of affairs. The latest of these, which had occurred even while my girl died fighting with our troops, caused me to write the Arzawaean as to these Hittite towns he kept reclaiming for Arzawa just as soon as I had finished subduing them. Having written, I sent the message to the Arzawaeans camp, which I could see across the valley, by way of a prisoner. And my words were strong: what had been border skirmishing would soon become something else. I had lost more than a hilltop fighting the Arzawaeans, and for my warrior girl, my heart needed retribution. I gave the Arzawaean warlord, whose name was Anzapahhaddu, an ultimatum: either he return my subjects, those in the towns he had recently taken and those who were in former times Hittite citizens, or be my avowed enemy and be destroyed. This I did hurriedly; for I wanted to set out straightaway for Hattusas, taking Hugganas with me, but leaving all the Hayasaean support troops I dared. To accomplish the plan I had in my mind, it must look as though the armies were splitting, reassigned, and everyone must see the two kings heading, unconcerned, back up country. So did it look.