I, the Sun

by Morris, Janet

  Takkuri and fifty chariots accompanied us at a leisurely pace northeasterly, while Himuili with some few Hittites and all our Hayasaeans, foot and chariots both, went deeper into the Arzawaean country. He was to advance until he came to a strategic mountain range in which the Arzawaean leader himself reportedly resided.

  The rest of the troops, each under their respective field commanders or commanders of ten, went about their business, policing the frontier and taking whatever advantage came to them under each commander’s initiative in the different towns.

  No sooner had we bid farewell to Takkuri at King’s Gate in Hattusas than a messenger came clattering in, gasping out the news:

  “Himuili and the Hattians, my lords, have been defeated!” With that not-unexpected news, the man, a Hayasaean upon horseback, then slid off his mount, bowing to his liege while all around us Hittites pricked up their ears, sauntering over to the gatehouse, to meditate upon the stone warrior who looms just within the inner arch: a man on horseback is to this day a remarkable sight in Hatti.

  I waited until the Hayasaean messenger had recovered himself, while around me more Hittites gathered. When I deemed the moment most propitious, I loudly bade the man to repeat all he knew of the affair. But the Hayasaean courier only muttered a few unintelligible words.

  “You! Get this man water.” A gate guard went running. “And you, find my Master of Horses and get him here.” The Golden Lancer minced away. “You, fetch the Gal Meshedi Zida.” The Meshedi saluted, disappeared. “And you, go after Takkuri and bring him hither!” This last, to a passing charioteer.

  Hugganas of Hayasa conversed in soft murmurs with his equestrian scout, his low brow furrowed, no hint of satisfaction on his kingly visage. In response to his prompting the man related the details of his tale before the crowd gathered about the gate: “Himuili took us into the country of Arzawa and we attacked it; we held it. But when Anzapahhaddu and his helpers heard this, they came after him out of the mountains. He was… My lords… Himuili was with the Hittite troops and we… Our Hayasaeans were not accompanying them… the Arzawaeans surprised him and defeated him on the way…”

  Hugganas looked steadily at me with an expression that said, “It is as I have predicted.”

  “And how many died?” I boomed into the silence.

  The man blinked and sputtered that he did not know, for he was expecting me to question him as to the whereabouts of the Hayasaeans while Himuili was being so ignominiously defeated. But since I had been expecting it, I said no such thing, only ranted awhile about the Arzawaeans and gave orders to mobilize all the troops and chariots of Hatti at once, that I might take them myself down into the country of Arzawa.

  Said Hugganas to me that evening on the palace ramparts, “Well played, my brother.”

  By that time triumph had ebbed from me and I was wondering whether Himuili himself had survived. “This is the last time,” I vowed, “that I will have to resort to subterfuge to field an army.” It was not the last time, but the first.

  “It is the last time you will have to, with Arzawa. Any king in receipt of such an ultimatum as you sent Anzapahhaddu must respond with battle; any court, hearing of such a defeat, cannot do otherwise than support a retribution.”

  “A curse upon all scheming! Why is it not enough to say come let us fight? Why these games and why these sacrifices? It should be sufficient that two warlords desire a settling of affairs!”

  “And you call me uncivilized! Try it thus, and you will spend your years chasing here and there amid the mountains for your adversaries… not every king is as anxious as yourself to test his gods and his armies on the field. Most are content enough where they reside in their fortresses; to roust them, one must bait the kind of trap we laid out for the Arzawaeans. Most men, my lord and overlord, will accept a gift; few will accept a challenge unless they have nothing to lose.”

  “By making them a gift of Himuili and my own men –” At that moment my sister sniffed us out and, having heard this last, had to be placated.

  But though I had my way, mounting by this subterfuge the punitive expedition my court would never have sanctioned otherwise, and though Himuili survived to fight another day, never suspecting the use I had made of him, I was ill at ease until I saw with my own eyes that these things were so.

  By the time I had gathered the armies and joined the offensive, the enemy had a firm hold upon the mountain called Tiwatassa, and my own men had taken its sister peak and built there three fortified camps. When I drove up with my chariotry and my foot behind me blackening the distance, the howling from our beleaguered troops could be heard to the borders. So great was the army I had gleaned from every corner of Hatti that when we had marched through the country of Mira, their prince came out and threw himself down before me and I took his submission formally before the armies, his and mine. This we were all pleased to construe as an omen from the gods. I added the Mirans to my care and their troops I levied on the spot into service.

  But when we saw our besieged camps and took reports from ‘Takkuri and a pale Himuili – who would limp evermore from the work the Arzawaeans had done upon him-- the warm glow of excitement fled from me and a dark, chill purpose took its place. Sometimes it is said that in the early days of my kingship I was more idealistic than conditions warranted, but this Arzawa campaign saw the end of the boy-king who loved war above all else. It is one thing to risk yourself; it is almost as easy to risk a company of chariotry, be those men mere numbers on a tablet; it is another thing to spend your friends like enemy prisoners, playing the Storm God, deciding who will live and who will die.

  I warred in Arzawa until the ground turned bare and hard and the horses snorted smoke from their nostrils – longer than I had anticipated, longer than I wished. We fought through to our own troops and I sent to Anzapahhaddu the requisite challenge: “Come let us fight.” But he did not come, though a battle between us two would have saved countless lives. He wrote back to me in an insulting fashion and so began the long profitless days during which neither of us could gain a decisive advantage.

  I must simply hold until the weather took its toll; when the Arzawaeans’ bellies grated against their backbones, they themselves would slay their craven lord, so the omens said. The two eagles caught and slain to determine that in the end we would be triumphant died for nothing: the Arzawaeans somehow snuck an envoy by us, and thus we in turn were besieged from the rear by fresh enemy troops. I gave Mammali men and chariots and sent him down the mountain to strike toward Mira for an additional troop levy, but the enemy overtook him on his way, capturing his troops, chariots, and even the deportees he had with him.

  By then we had a permanent headquarters on the mountain and it was there I received Mammali’s defiled corpse. I sat over it a time, wroth with myself and sick from fighting.

  “Every man who dies in battle cannot be your responsibility,” said Himuili; “you torture yourself and the men feel it – there is unease in the camp.” Himuili, his own condition yet salt in my heart’s wound whenever I saw him, had insisted that Mammali was the man to lead that fateful expedition which had been his last.

  I said nothing to him: he owes the life he yet leads to the sickness of the spirit then upon me. Never again have I felt such loathing for war and death. Some say it is a thing of youth; personally, I think every man whose word sends others to their deaths must experience it, or become like the stone god Ullikummis; with no heart in him to speak like a mortal man’s.

  I pulled my men off the mountain, and many did not like it. Some liked it so little they went over to the enemy and spoke evil about the Hittite army, calling my decision cowardice before the enemy host. Because of this, the war did not end cleanly, as I had willed it, but dragged on until the Arzawaeans were convinced by heavy losses that there was no fear in the Sun or in his armies. By the time it ended, I had regained for Hatti all that my stepfather and my father and my grandsire before him had lost; though I failed to claim Mount Tiwatassa or secure a f
ormal treaty, I had reduced Arzawa to the proportions she had formerly enjoyed, and I was content then to police those borders and maintain them. This I have managed to do, though even to this day the Hittites who live in Arzawa cannot forget that once they had no suzerain. I treated Arzawa in a less friendly fashion than I have other conquered lands initially, but my heart has softened to them: they were once Hattians and are Hattians once again; if they are less placid than other peoples and continually testing their bonds, then that is because they are Hittites by blood – I expect no less of them.

  The woman whom Mammali had wed I took into the palace and she became my strongest adherent among the Old Women whose rituals the Arzawaean Hittites had maintained exactly as they had been performed in former times when Arzawa was a province of Hatti. This woman was useful to me in other ways: she negotiated – unofficially, of course – with the parents of the girl Khinti, whom I was now more anxious than ever to receive into my bed – and into Great Queenship.

  One might think that any woman would be more than pleased to aspire to such a position. I thought so. If I had not been occupied with the Arzawaean matter described above, and with my sister’s marriage to Hugganas, or if I had been longer in Hatti that season, I should have taken offense at the protracted delays her family proffered.

  However, when I said farewell to Hugganas and winter closed down the passes, I considered the matter anew, determining to consummate it that season – or not at all. Gimant, the winter, is not called the “season of impregnation” for nothing. And with my sister (and six half-sisters and two priestesses and an honor guard of thirty chariots) gone to spend the winter up in Hayasa hoping to divine whether she could find fulfillment ruling at Hugganas’ side, the burden of my motherless boys settled fully upon my shoulders.

  Arnuwandas, my eldest, knew little of hunting, and nothing of the tactics of war. His brothers were no better tutored, and though this state of affairs was my responsibility, I thought a mother would help set them right. Takkuri’s sister was doing her best, but judging by the disarray of the residential palace and the boys’ neglected schooling, she was insufficient to the task. Her own son was a deep-night wailer, lusty-lunged and as yet too young to be less than a full-time occupation, or so she affirmed when I brought her failings to her attention.

  Biting her full lips, she apologized so sincerely that I took my first long look at her since I had given her the child she had so unwisely named Kantuzilis. Seeing fear glaze her brown eyes and stiffen her posture so that she reminded me of a namra peering through the bars of her pen, I took pains to put her at ease. But she would not – or could not --relax with me; I dismissed her, disgusted, before the meal I had ordered us both was served.

  A man in a position such as mine has little time to dwell on matters peripheral to his survival: there are always affairs pressing, situations to be sniffed out so complex that the familial and the domestic seldom come to the fore.

  But that evening, while the season’s first snow fell on Hattusas, I walked my ramparts – the Sun of Hatti, triumphant overlord of an empire well-started. I had Arzawa on her knees and Mira licked my sandals; my country was protected on the east and on the west; only Ishuwa. Armatana and Kizzuwadna stood between me and the Hurrian empire of Mitanni – and in Hugganas I had found an ally as anxious to burn and pillage there as I. All these feats I had accomplished, and yet I lacked what any groom or toolmaker had; pleasures enjoyed by the lowliest soldiers posted to frontier garrisons were denied me. All over Hatti this night men were reacquainting themselves with their loved ones, huddling warm beneath bedclothes with banked fires on their hearths and flames in the bellies of their women. But in the palace there had been no tears at my safe return, no heartfelt embraces. By then, I would estimate, my concubines numbered fifty. I had chosen none of them myself: a king gets them as gifts. Often such gifts cannot be trusted; more often, they are in some way flawed. The best I could expect from those was concealed fear and loathing – a fine enough thing in the field from a namra but less than a man wants when he yearns to drive out the chill of war from his gut.

  And, though I was just beginning to suspect it then, there is no flame but that in a lover’s heart fierce enough to melt the ice which collects around the throne of kingship..

  Of friends, I was bereft: even Kuwatna-ziti could not be trusted. I knew no man over whom I was not sovereign, who did not desire special favors or my attention to areas in which he had concerns; to some, I owed my own debts, destined never to be settled – as in the case of Himuili, whose health would never again be what it was before the Arzawaean campaigns.

  Spitting square into the face of despair, I sought out my brother Zida. I never made it back to the palace from his Gal Meshedi’s chambers but instead, well warmed by wine, went out with him into the town in nondescript garb, as I had been wont to do when I was yet a princeling.

  I found no satisfaction reveling in the streets with my brother, for I had not been able to reveal my feelings, only managing to arouse his curiosity as to what might be in my heart. To all his queries I could make no satisfactory answer – I had none to give. Something, I knew, was very wrong. What that thing was I could not have said in those days if my kingship depended upon it.

  I endured this uneasiness throughout the cold months. It rode with me while I instructed my boys in stag hunting and while I did my own hunting in the archives. There I sniffed out its trail, chiefly among the shelves of-precedent and treaty, sometimes between the lines written by kings of former times. This stalking in the mountains of clay tablets only caused me to become more restless, and I turned to omen-taking and awaiting answers in my dreams and sat long nights awake in the Great Temple in the lower city, hopeful of an answer through incubation.

  Men say I am less than pious: that winter I had every tablet of clay and wood recopied for the Sun Goddess; even the bronze and silver originals that had been carried away by the Gasgaean enemy in their sack of Hattusas I ordered restored from copies and placed again in her care, though this enrichment of the goddess puffed up her priesthood as if it were they and not Hebat who had been increased. To the Storm God I offered numerous sacrifices, pledging all manner of service if only he would speak in my heart or, failing that, take the sour taint of sleepless nights from my mouth. But neither the Storm God nor his wife, Hebat, spoke to me though I listened well the winter long.

  Even the blue-cloaked lord who padded silent into my future hid himself from my sight. You may think I make too much of this, but being deaf to the gods but at the same time their steward and disseminator of their will unto the people is no easy task. Others heard the gods – peasants heard them; men of my army hearkened to their whispered wisdom and lived to tell of it, swearing that without divine guidance they would have surely perished. I have seen Old Women curse men thrice their size and seen those men fall senseless into the dust, never to rise again. That season, I was greatly concerned with rightness in all things and wanted above all else to see in myself some sign or talent god-given, some ratification of my kingship by those immortal beings whom I ostensibly was to serve.

  Forthcoming from the gods was only silence. I was rewarded with an all-pervasive lack of response to whatever I attempted; And yet, in that regard, I now think I got what I then truly desired: in my heart I was no gods’ steward, and if they heard me at all, they heard that. In the silence, I heard my own voice and began to heed it. I had placated the clergy by my evinced interest and rich gifts to the temples; I enlisted their aid in freeing my hands insofar as the armies were concerned, saying that the Storm God had recommended this course or that. And the god did not gainsay me, so perhaps he did prompt me, in his way.

  By the time the frost had turned to mud on the tundra, I knew my own mind, and those things that had sent me into the temples I sought to remedy on my own.

  I called my court in for an early session to discuss the need to put aside prejudice and accept the folk I had brought – and would continually be bringing –
into Hatti as citizens. Slaves we had aplenty; and deportees, sullen and lazy doing share-work. Citizens, on the other hand, fight fiercely where their own profit or loss is concerned. I proposed as an example the treaty I had drawn between myself and the king of Hayasa, who would retain domestic sovereignty but give up the right to conduct an independent foreign policy. Once Hugganas accepted the treaty, he accepted my terms of tribute in men and chariots yearly: he would return all the occupied land, boundaries, and deportees to me. But I felt the Hattian people must accept my terms also – even the gods of the Hayasaeans they should accord respect as they did their own.

  I insisted upon the right to make such decisions on my own initiative and without any counsel from the nobility, laying out the next season’s campaigns for their support without any feigned interest in their cries of penury and hardship. There were grumbles, but the hierophants of the Storm God and the Sun Goddess of Arinna, my Lord and Lady, aided me, and we pushed the agenda to completion without serious opposition. After all, I was giving my sister, my own flesh and blood, into the arms of a Hayasaean. Since none of them were giving up anything, but were prospering, and fully expected to be further increased by continued Hittite conquests, there was little the lords could say.