I, the Sun

by Morris, Janet

  But when I went out to join the Shepherd she had gained no enlightenment from her Lady. In the matter of the blue-cloaked lord the Goddess was as mute as the citadel walls.

  Revenge was sweet in the land of Armatana: we burned it to the ground and enslaved its inhabitants upon the spot. Some Hittite lives had been lost in the endeavor, and it was not until I myself arrived there that the fortified town surrendered, doubtless having heard that the bloody Suppiluliumas was sharpening the iron knives with which he butchered babies.

  We laughed about it, the Great Shepherd and I, and the heady wine of success made me forget Khinti and our tearful leave-taking, and my three princes who had watched from the high walls with my lesser sons and their mothers, waving and shouting themselves hoarse.

  But the namra were not as feisty, nor the eastern girls as nubile nor the battle morns as crisp as I had remembered them, and the Shepherd and I held a long and fruitless debate as to whether it was that such affairs are made much more than they really are by a trick of memory; or whether indeed the spring was warmer than usual and the girls less comely and the wine a touch sour.

  Now that I am sure of the answer, I will say it is a combination of true events experienced without, and reactions, no less true, experienced within.

  Discrimination is a process of learning criteria by which to judge shrewdly the present in comparison to an idealized memory held of the past. A long arduous campaign such as the one that took Ishuwa is a thing a man is proud and glad to be a part of – afterward. Afterward, one recalls a moment of thirst, a fall or a suppurating wound differently than he experienced them: he has survived, the pain or fear or illness has passed. Heroes are fashioned from forgotten hardship gilded with retrospective pride. Once a man can say: ‘I have done it!”, he is willing to forget, or at least try to forget, the irritable, vicious, overtired and underfed person who performed deeds from desperation for which he is later lauded and increased. In time, if he is foolish, he may come to believe the things others say of him and even that all was as bright and shining as those who stay at home and write songs about this war or that insist that they are.

  War is a way of life, however, and though the ground may have seemed a trifle harder to my bones at first, I soon fell into the rhythm of it; and if in comforts of the flesh the field is lacking, in sustenance for the spirit it overflows. Doing what had long been denied me, I was replete. Doing what it is that I do best, I had no anxious moments, no vociferous detractors, no sleepless nights over niceties of protocol or dire diplomacy.

  The months stretched before, a deepening green with the coming of summer, and we knew then that indeed it was a dry, unseasonable heat the gods granted us that year. In the early yellowing of the grass many read ill, but there was no going home with that war half-won, and we took our portion of enemy soil each day, and were content.

  Kuwatna-ziti and I caught our own eagles, drove with them alone into the country, and when we let them go they flew in the direction we intended. Thus we did not truly falsify the auguries, but for the first time in anyone’s memory the strength of the Hattian army stayed the winter in the field, and with the blessings of the gods.

  I was conducting my foreign policy from tent and chariot, dictating variously to Pikku or whatever other scribe was about, and even received a surreptitious visit from the king of Kizzuwadna while we were watching the first snow fall from a full round moon. To this willing adherent I gave wine and comfort, for he was ready to come over to Hatti and be quit of Tushratta’s demeaning overlordship then and there. But I did not want that.

  The Kizzuwadnam king shook his head so that the gold disks hanging from his ears danced in the firelight, but at length agreed that he would hold back his formal defection until a moment of my choosing, and supply me as many Kizzuwadnans as I had Hayasaeans if we could find Hittite guises in which to outfit them.

  I explained that I would rather his men patrol Kizzuwadna borders and trap the fleeing Ishuwan deportees and hold them in camps, as we had done with the refugees we had chased into Hayasaean territory, and with a baffled laugh he agreed to that.

  Thereupon he remarked as to the quantity of booty: namra, cattle, sheep, utensils of the gods and of the armies which were scattered about our baggage train and made a mobile deportees city of the Hittite flanks, and I explained that in the Hittite lands proper there had been a dry season, and all the goods and namra would be sent westward as soon as was feasible, but that should he have the inclination he could take whatever goods or persons he wished southeast with him.

  Then came the king to what was in his heart: the wildness of my troops and the harsh treatment they had meted out to the peoples of the towns which had been in the armies’ path on the drive projected to end with my Hittite forces at the Kizzuwadnan’s frontier.

  I asked him then if he had never been part of such a campaign, and quieted his fears as to his folk receiving similar treatment to that he had seen with his own eyes, and with soft words he departed to his tent and the morrow’s eastward journey, saying that his house was open to me should I seek relief from what promised to be another year campaigning.

  We were then in some town or other in the upper middle of what had been Ishuwa. Behind us lay blackened, charred villages and the wails of the homeless, ahead lay all who had been fleet enough to flee but foolish enough to remain within their country’s borders to defend their land. Those who had fled to Hayasa had fled into a Hittite trap, but those who had gone down the river Mala into Hurrian lands I had lost, if I could not extradite them from out of Tushratta’s lap.

  Now, I had been hoping for just such an occurrence and did not really expect Tushratta to give me back the citizens who had fled before My Majesty. In fact, it was in my heart as necessary as the putative neutrality of Kizzuwadna that this be so.

  It was also necessary that I write to Tushratta, king of the Hurrians who called himself Great King of Mitanni, and demand these refugees’ return so that he could refuse me.

  So I sent word to the Hurrian: “Return my subjects to me.”

  And before we had moved much further into Ishuwa word came up from the Hurrian as follows:

  “No! Those cities had previously come to the Hurri country and had settled there. It is true they later went back to the Land of Hatti as fugitives; but now finally the cattle have chosen their stable, they have definitely chosen my country.”

  So the Hurrian did not extradite my subjects to me… And I, the Sun, sent word to the Hurrian as follows:

  “If some country seceded from you and went over to the Land of Hatti, how would that be?”

  The Hurrian sent word back to me:

  “Exactly the same.”

  So I wrote to Sunasarra king of Kizzuwadna that the moment was propitious for his defection, and I sent word to all the kings of the different lands as to what I had said and what Tushratta had said and finishing:

  “Now the people of Kizzuwadna are Hittite cattle and they have chosen their stable, they have deserted the Hurrian and gone over to My Majesty… The land of Kizzuwadna rejoices very much over its liberation.”

  And, having swallowed up Ishuwa entire, the armies were fêted in Kizzuwadna before we returned across the newly reclaimed Hittite territories home to Hattusas to spend the winter.

  My men, by then having spent nearly two years fighting, were not easy on the Kizzuwadnan city. If the people of Kizzuwadna had not been so busy rejoicing over their liberation they might with good cause have taken offense at the comportment of their liberators. But I could not blame my men; I too was touched with the madness that long campaigns bring…

  I have said we were encamped in ‘some town or other in the upper middle of Ishuwa’, and that statement, if I may, I shall hold up as an effect of which such long arduous campaigns are always the cause.

  The most commonly asked question on that tour of the evermore-Hittite east was: “What place is this?”

  I spoke myself to a town who had put down its weapons at th
e feet of the Sun and called it by the name of another town taken scant days before.

  Once I stood with Kuwatna-ziti on a hill top and sorted hurriedly through a score of place-names to find the one applicable to the hamlet spread out below, but none of the names in my head seemed any more familiar than the others… You may have had that experience with a girl just-met when things grow dim in passion’s heat. That day, in disgust, it was I who had to say, “What is the name of this town?”

  Nor is that the only infirmity the campaigns bring. A man who spends his time in company with his peers in an abode unfixed in space develops a different set of criteria than those who lead normal lives. His privacy is nonexistent, his behavior sharply circumscribed by his rank and his worth in the eyes of his fellows. It matters to him how the soldiers hold him: his survival may depend upon it. His life renders up daily reaffirmation of his ability to perform in a crisis. He cares for little but the condition of his weapons and his success upon the field. He is a part of a vast host of men whose loyalty he can command, and in whom he takes great pride. They grow closer than lovers, such men, and often serve even that function for one another, in the knowledge that shared peril has changed them, made them creatures only another of their kind can understand.

  So is it no wonder that when a scout troop drives into a town before the hosts and the townspeople greet them with surly eyes and flat beer and moldy bread, they take offense; and when their brothers blacken the streets and the people pale and rethink their manners – then, is it any wonder that it is often too late?

  A man who has not slept in his own bed nor eaten from his own board nor made love to his own woman becomes obsessed with beds free from fleas and tables free from garbage and women freed from their husbands embraces. It is the way of it: what is denied the soldier he rips from the conquered as repayment. There is no way around it, anymore than there is a salve for short tempers or a potion that will teach the merchants and innkeepers that if they try to fleece the armies it is themselves who will be decreased.

  As for the Ishuwans, in my eyes they deserved it, all that they got from us. They had played the part of Hurrian subjects long ago, then had come into the Hittite fold when it suited them, and gone again to sit by Tushratta’s father’s knee when Hittite fortunes had sunk to their lowest ebb. They should have kept up that manner of behavior and crawled back into the Hittite camp when I came to power. But they were subverted by their fear of their mighty Mitannian ally, and even plundered Hittite towns… so on the return drive I turned their conquerors loose upon them, and what was left of the land shuddered on its knees.

  The land of Kizzuwadna, had they defied me and then fled my wrath into the shadow of the Mitannian throne, I would have treated no better. In the matter of Ishuwa, my heart remained hard, and later I opened the land to occupation by good upper country families without any regard to the fact that Ishuwans had been Hittites in former times,

  The discrepancy between my treatment of the aforementioned country Ishuwa and that of Kizzuwadna is no discrepancy at all: the king of Kizzuwadna came to me on my brother-in-law’s arm, and so I made him a ‘brother’: oh, he was a vassal and bound by oath to appear yearly at Hattusas with tribute in silver and chariots and men; but him I stroked gently like a young chariot-horse, being always careful to allow him his pride. After all, he had delivered unto me the first success I had had against Tushratta, and by his bloodless defection had laid the foundations upon which I would build empire, and I saw approaching the opportunity to use the kingdom of Mitanni as blocks in my cellar and even to mortar them secure with Tushratta’s blood.

  So I was not displeased with the fruits of our winter-spanning journey to the east, and turned homeward with that tight, sardonic ease of a king who knows what compromise inevitably follows the acquisition of even his most coveted desire.

  I had been to Hatti twice during the fighting, once to perform the harvest festivals, and once to honor the Storm God. I had been once to Arinna, performing the rituals for the armies in the Sun Goddess’ most sacred temple and then went back to the front to see how well I had done.

  So when we came in sight of Hattusas and drove in double file across the bridge that spans the gorge and up toward the southeast gate whose ramp leads directly into the citadel, I halted the column and looked awhile at my city. Nor was I the only one who took that opportunity to meditate upon all that had gone before. A man is happy to be home, but sad to be done collecting tales to tell, regretful even of an end to awful danger and worse living conditions, if it be the beginning of quiet days and simpering stay-at-homes and the dissolution of friendships grown deep with lives saved and grief shared.

  Up from the rear, when I gave them their ease and men took the opportunity to walk upon familiar ground and check their horses’ harness and slake their thirst, came the queries: when would we be going out again? what were the chances of this ten or that finding a post together? who was wintering on the borders? who would make the hero’s roll? who would be promoted? who wanted to stay the festival month in the Southern Citadel? who knew what had been going on in this town or that?

  Those who possessed confirmed commands found themselves surrounded by the hopeful; some would smile and laugh, and clap a man’s shoulder, and find a friend a place; others, either because they had something assured or no hope of assurances, leaned or sat in their cars, and talked of what they had done as if they must catch the memory ere it deserted them.

  None of them were far from tears. My blood-tempered, invincible veterans were moved to a man, and I saw expressions on the terrible and the implacable that I had never thought to see. Now, I know that the hardest softens when a triumphant army is disbanded after so long. We had joined, each of us, the brotherhood of his fellows and had not known it, most of us, until then. Warriors do not much dwell upon such things; they have few moments suited. When the whole of the armies paraded up through the city the next day, no face would show a sign of what some might construe unmanly weakness. Tomorrow there would be the cheers and the music and the fêting and the willing noble ladies after a hero for their collection.

  On those thoughts, I nodded to Lupakki and he snapped the reins to the greys and shouted the signal, and we took two hundred in through the chariot gate.

  That vision of Hattusas on her scarp gleaming fanged and clawed with the white plaster throwing back shadows of purple and gold on the citadel walls, I shall always treasure: while I was warring, Hattu-ziti had much strengthened my city. Her double walls did not gape, and even the postern gate tunnel I had wanted in the ground he had had dug for me. I marked it just before the gatekeeper saw us and gave the call and the double-wings of the gates were drawn inward and we passed through the gate-house and into the palace yards.

  I recollect only the girl flying down the corridor between the chariots with unqueenly haste. Take heart, gentle lords: if you would keep the ardor of a new bride year after year, simply make yourself scarce.

  Before the host of the armies she scrambled up into my chariot to throw herself against me, barely clothed, naked of foot and head, her unbound hair damp and throwing all the colors of a crow’s wing into the air. I had my nose buried in the mass of it, and her high off the ground in my embrace before I knew it, and only the hooting of my thirty brought me round and I pushed her back and held her at arm’s length.

  The girl who I had abandoned to Great Queenship seemed a girl no longer; the woman who had lain with her husband so infrequently the last two years was haggard around the cheeks and dark under the eyes, but those eyes were sparkling and free from accusation and as much the panther’s as ever.

  “Suppiluliumas, my lord,” she said upon a little gulp, “you are unscathed.”

  “And you, also,” I chuckled. “You have survived my court, and by the look of you, thrived doing it. It is more remarkable than any feat I have accomplished in the whole of the war.”

  Her face clouded, and I saw the pulse in her throat and the tremor across her eyelid
s as she squeezed them shut. “My husband, I must speak with you.”

  “You can speak with me all you want, Khinti: we will have a whole winter for talk… and other things.” Her priestess’ garb made any other thoughts than those of her beauty fly from me: I had not yet succeeded in planting a seed in her womb, and she was high of breast and hard of belly and carried herself with a maiden grace.

  I swatted her on the rump and bade her be off and await me in the residence. She stepped back, lowered her head as if raped, and turned without a word, descending the chariot.

  In former times, I would have let her go.

  I leaned down, my elbows on the polished wood that railed the chariot.

  “Khinti,” I called softly to her retreating back. I saw her fists clench, and her stride stiffen, and the black hair bouncing, and when she turned I motioned her to approach me once again.

  “What is it that cannot wait until the sun sets?” With my eyes I showed her Lupakki at my team’s head, Hannutti the Master of Horses loitering at a circumspect distance, and when she came up to the car I leaned out of it and kissed her upon paled lips.

  “My Sun, it is your affairs that concern me, those you have left to my care.”

  “Is it?”

  “And your sons, for whom not even the Goddess, My Lady, could serve in your stead.” And then formality deserted her and I realized that she was but a girl staggering under the heavy load of responsibilities I had lain upon her, after all. And when in a choked and broken voice she begged me never to leave her again, I could make her no answer, so when she pleaded that if I should go again and leave her to deal with prince Arnuwandas on her own, she would surely die. So she got me to promise her that until my eldest took his majority I would oversee the matter of his upbringing. I soothed her, somewhat desperately, before my men, for the heat was rising in my neck and the muscles jumping on my back and I wished she would go into the palace and shed her tears like any other woman, where no man must look on the sight.