I, the Sun

by Morris, Janet

  These snorting, quivering dancers calmed as if by magic when they were backed up to the training cart, and with Piyassilis accompanying me behind a pair of white stockinged, blaze-faced chestnuts, I took them out of the citadel and down the ramp and across the bridge whose gorge ran white with the swollen water of winter’s end.

  They were, I thought, as good as their ancestors, and with my son’s prideful, serious eyes on them, we drove westward, until we had come in sight of the encampment on the plain.

  There I pulled them up on a rise and Piyassilis wrestled down his chestnuts, and we sat on the rims of our carts and talked for a long while of the armies, only two men readying themselves for war. I had worked hard, these three years, at making my sons believe that with their manhood they had acquired a certain separateness from the “family,” so that the men they were becoming and the king they were serving could become acquainted and make better use the one of the other thereby. It was harder for me to do than for them to accept, but no other way is there for a man who is a king before he is twenty, an overlord before he is thirty, and at thirty-one has a Crown Prince seventeen and a charioteer of note a year younger.

  I praised him about the horses, and he said softly that he hoped I would use them on my iron-trimmed chariot; they would match it well. I had three teams more decorous that I was planning to take, but I said that I would be honored to take their virginity in the field, though they would warm to it more did they go into their first war under the hands that trained them.

  “My Sun, I know you strive to be impartial, and I respect that, nor have I ever asked you for a favor, or played on my blood to get my way.”

  “But?”

  “But… Lupakki says I am ready to drive for a king. I believe I am. He would take the driver you had slotted for yourself. The man whom you chose and I drink together. In the clarity of wine, this Tarkhunta-zalma has confided that while he is honored to have been chosen to drive for your Majesty, he is afraid his sonship to Kuwatna-ziti rather than his skill has precipitated it, and that if a single thing should go amiss, he fears the wrath of the Great Shepherd more than a thousand Mitannian charioteers. Under those circumstances I just described, I had to warn you. Though you may think me importunate, a man so inhibited is not the one to drive for the Sun of Hatti.”

  “And you say this Tarkhunta-zalma would be at ease driving for Lupakki?”

  “He has a long acquaintance with him; they could work together as easily as they spit namra… and I, more than anyone else, am free from awe as regards your person.

  “Is that a nice thing to say to your father?”

  “It is the truth.”

  “And truth is its own reward? Not always, not always.” I was thinking of the black eagle, looking out upon my hosts crouched bristling on the treeless plain. I saw the neatly quadranted armies cast all asunder, as in the confusion of joined battle, when a man must mark closely car and helm or skewer one of his brothers instead of the enemy, but a king must have faith in his own. If Piyassilis thought himself man enough to protect and succor me in battle without thought to what his failure to do so might mean, then I, at least, must equal him in valor.

  “You have it. But do me one service. Get your concubines with child before we leave. It never hurts to secure your line.” I was watching him closely as I spoke, to sniff out any surreptitious doubt or fear as I conjectured the unconjecturable for his benefit. A man, especially a young man relatively unbloodied, never thinks: “What if I should fail?” He thinks of others’ dying, but his own death whispers not in his ear. It would be screaming at him, its icy talons deep in his neck, when at last he faced a multitude of hollering strangers intent on separating his head from his body.

  But Piyassilis stared back at me rubbing his finger along the manly hair which drooped around his mouth, and said nothing, and after a time I said that it is a braver man who hacks off his braid and sews it on his helmet than one so enamored of his peers as to go into battle offering out a luxurious handhold to the enemy, and turned the team toward home.

  I myself did not obey that maxim, but neither did I grow hair on my chin except from laxity, and though Piyassilis’ beard concerned me more than his braid, I knew than when the lice and fleas and ticks of the field started nesting in it, he would shave it off and I would get to see what my second son’s face looked like now that he was a man.

  When we handed the lathered teams to the grooms, Piyassilis suggested diffidently that in the matter of my youngest boy, Telipinus, I might be wise to take a hand. With that enigmatic statement he was taken up with ordering those who mix horse-feed as to a change in his beauties’ rations, and from across the stable-yard a Meshedi hurried in my direction.

  So it was not until two nights before we were to see the southeastward march of the troops quartered on the plain commence that I found time to invite my youngest son to meet with his stepmother and me.

  The pace of events had escalated so by then that I had not sat for a moment the day long, nor eaten other than standing on my feet. I might as well have already been gone from Hattusas myself, so crowded were my waking moments with matters of war. Detail in those times multiplies as quickly as a beekeeper’s swarm, and like such a swarm at the honey’s harvest, each constituent thereof buzzed around my head with ready stinger, awaiting its chance.

  But I had done it all before, and knew well how to avoid the hurry that nurtures error. I proceeded carefully, my attention on the task at hand, conscious at all times of the price of a misstep. I succumbed not to the excitement that blew in like pollen on the wind, covering everything with a golden, softened pall that leant an air of unreality to that most real of undertakings.

  Khinti had been watching me accelerate by reducing speed, as it were, well knowing that my tolerance for the routine and the methodical was fast being exhausted, and so without even my suggestion that it be so, she arranged for us a languid, private supper on the terraced bank of the pool amid the gardens in the shadow of the citadel wall.

  This private feast my black concubine served us, so that even with the matter of servants I was not disturbed. Nor did Khinti show the faintest trace of the disquiet she had evinced when, the day before, she had come to me with downcast eyes and tiny voice and said that she had done it: falsified the omens and made others do likewise: all the indications were now favorable as regards our first foray into Mitanni.

  And I had said to her crossly that it was nothing, that she should not fear, that soldiers, especially charioteers, are the most superstitious of folk. I recounted a tale of example, about a charioteer who would not change harness nor bit nor buckle before a battle, and Khinti tried valiantly to smile, but failed, and I had slammed out of the hall to make more constructive use of my time.

  There was none of that this evening, and when young Telipinus was brought to table, all scrubbed and red of cheek and wet of head as twelve-year-olds must be before their elders, dressed princely in a fine robe of blue wool with a shawl like a man’s thrown diagonally over his shoulder and girded about his waist with a dirk there was no discord to be seen upon the table of the Sun, or about it.

  I was feeling invincible and full of anticipation; after a day so stuffed with endeavor, the warm wine and the stewed kid and the familial and elegantly measured talk made all seem distantly sure, decided, far away. I was enwrapped in a languor the like of which there is none so sweet, full- hearted, as content as a man may be at a moment of beginnings, all qualm and conjecture quieted.

  “When I am a man, I will not drive another’s chariot, but wield an axe and bow,” pontificated Telipinus, who was struggling to conceal his jealousy, but not succeeding, as concerned Piyassilis’ new posting.

  “I thought you were decided upon the priesthood,” interjected Khinti, for the first time showing concern. It suited me as well as her melancholy, valorous gaiety.

  “I will be a warrior priest, like the Shepherd.”

  “Do that, and I will give you your own kingdom,” I
offered. “But you must be as wise as Kuwatna-ziti, and as pure of heart.”

  “I will be so,” said Telipinus gravely. “The God has told me.”

  As Khinti’s eyes met mine across the table, I was wondering if it was she who had instilled in Telipinus this passion for the voice of his namesake deity.

  “Indeed? What did He say to you?”

  “To study kingship, and meditate upon it, and make myself ready.”

  A shiver crawled many-legged up my spine. That shiver was my first intimation of the “specialness” of Telipinus, who has the sight. Then, I was only glad Piyassilis had drawn my attention thence. Sound, pragmatic, Piyassilis, made in my image, and deaf as I to those whisperings which make men fanatics and prophets, had been worried. I was only mildly concerned.

  “Telipinus, there is a thing about man and god: each must remain what they are. If man aspires to exaltation through his closeness to the Gods, my Lords, he may do it – but only in a manly way. They are the first to strike down pretenders to their company, and it is well noted that too many godly embraces drive mortals mad.”

  “Your father is trying to tell you that fanaticism has no place in the heart of a Hittite prince,” said Khinti, and reached out to take Telipinus’ hand.

  He pulled it roughly away, and squared back his shoulders, those black eyes of his burning priestly from out of a visage already sharpening from boy to man.

  “The gods call whomsoever they will,” rebuked Telipinus. “Neither I nor you, dear mother-surrogate, nor my father, are going to have anything to say about it.”

  “And to what have the gods called you?” I said, forcing a grin, not willing to allow myself to become irritated.

  “Firstly, to repairing the archives. There are many broken tablets, and two that contradict each other, and about my mother there is almost nothing, about my grandmother, less than that.”

  Then I knew where the conversation was leading. So I did not wait, but broke in: “The task you attempt is laudable; you will learn much thereby. But those things you find confusing – the particulars of myself and my immediate predecessors and events occurring between the decimation of Hattusas and when I sat down on the seat of kingship – were made that way by a number of factors. Firstly, the sack of Hattusas itself. Secondly, the prince Kantuzilis who was my uncle swore that none would recall my name nor my deeds nor anything about me, when I was a mere prince and he was sure of his power to end my life before I took the throne. So, much of what is missing is missing because of his ill-will. Thirdly, your “grandfather” Tuthaliyas was his own man in the morning, but wine’s slave by mid-day. You will see in his writings that I was Crown Prince while I was fighting in Samuha – no one knew that, not even myself, at the time. That is a lesson for you: the histories tell us what those who write them would like to be true, and when all involved are gone to be gods, it is true. From former times down to these, kings have twisted new truths from out of old embarrassments. There is nothing in those archives that a man can take on faith, any more than any of my fellow kings really host in their hearts the brotherhood they expound so beautifully. Do you understand?”

  In a subdued voice, Telipinus agreed that he understood, but I felt he was playing me false, and was sure of it when he asked if I would go through the records with him and set things right.

  So, lest he think I was making small of him, I said that when I could I would sit down with him and explain everything, though I doubted privately that I would ever find so free a moment, and even my ability to do what I had said. In the matter of my parentage it was certainly not possible. But I did not want him looking at me so suspiciously, though mistrust is perhaps the first sign of maturity in a boy, and when at last we parted I felt sure that I had allayed at least his most gnawing doubts.

  After he was gone back to his bed, Khinti and I walked the pond’s edge in the torchlight and spoke of little things until the mid-watch’s cry rang out.

  Then, amazingly for she had said nary a word about my nightly absences since I had got her with child, Khinti stopped stock still, pressed close and put her hand upon the buckle holding the swordbelt at my hips, saying: “Those things that you do with your wanton black and with your namra in the field – do them to me.”

  I chuckled, thinking I could not very well do that, lest I injure the child she held within, but her fingers penetrated my robe and her eyes were luminous with the intensity of her emotions, and in them I saw that it cost her dearly to say what she had, and how long she had wanted to say it. And though I was not sure quite what it was she thought she was missing, nor how I might fare at treating her like a piece of booty; nor even if she would find whatever it was she thought she was being denied if, like a namra, she ended the evening weeping at my feet, I did my best to honor her heart-felt desire, albeit “honor” is something decidedly lacking on the woman’s part in such affairs, and I had to take care to her safety, and to the child’s, which in the true situation is no consideration whatsoever.

  And it seemed, when the deed was done, that she was content, that she had indeed acquired whatever she had felt herself denied in prior lovemaking – all of which left me with the uneasy conclusion that for all the nights of all the eight years I had had her she had been unsatisfied in my bed, feigning her passion all along.

  I found myself often thinking about the irony of her pretending and my pretending, and all the agonizing care I had taken to be gentle and kind and all the agonizing care she had taken to pretend that she appreciated my gentility and my kindness, and what this revelation might portend for the future: after all, she was my Queen and Tawananna, mistress of Hatti in her own right, and we both were keenly aware of the dignity, inheritable and totally separate from that of kingship, she alone could bequeath to her heirs; and after all, she could stop at any moment any situation that excessively demeaned her with her command; so, after all, we were not really doing it, only playing. Which meant I was no better off than I had been while trying my utmost to bring my respect for her into bed; in point of fact, I still must tote it there…

  Be there any answer for the above-mentioned quandary, I have not found it, unless it is this: should a man not care sufficiently to wade in the river of deceit at the outset, he will not, so to speak, get his feet wet. But I have only succeeded in doing that with women about whom I cared moderately – at least, I could not do it with Khinti; it was my feigned moderation of immoderate lust at the outset that allowed things to develop as they did. But tell me, is there such a quality as moderation in lust?

  There is no moderation in war.

  When I joined the armies massed in Kizzuwadna, all my vassal kings and I watched them pass in review. Hugganas of Hayasa was there, and young Mariyas who would head the Hayasaean contingent of my force, and the Little Mouse of Mira, with his fourteen chariots to lend; and from all the parts of Hatti, the Upper and the Lower from Ishuwa to Arzawa’s shrunken frontier, my warrior-governors and warrior-feoffees and warrior-priests had come with what troops they could field.

  I was no fool, not to make sure that every land whose care rested in my hands, no matter how restively, added their citizens to this endeavor. There was no town or village in Hatti, no matter how small, who could say: “We had no part in it.”

  And my Hapiru and my Sutu and what bedawins wandered my hills, they also took a part. The auxiliaries and the Hittite foot marched by mixed one with the other, and a glow of pride suffused me: this, I thought, is how it should be.

  Then Kuwatna-ziti and I did the ceremony of the border at the boundary stone dividing Kizzuwadna from Mitanni near the mountain pass, and when I waved a farewell to the Shepherd who was headed back to Hattusas to attend the war of words in my stead, I was already standing in Mitanni.

  We were striking for Carchemish on the Mala river, and once down through the pass our path was almost due southeast.

  I had known the heat would be a factor for the horses, if not the men, and planned accordingly. A man can fold up his robe
and his tunic, bind his kilt about his loins, exchange his boots for sandals, and hardly mind the warmth. A horse cannot. Oh, they shed at great speed their remaining winter’s coats, but horses in their way are most delicate, and those first few hot days were a nightmare of horse ailments: the thick sweet grass loosened their bowels; the sweaty work gave them chills and some went lame despite everything we did to prevent it; horses groaned in the night with colic and buckled to their knees in the day with founder, rivers of sweat rolling down their necks and steam spewing out from their trembling flanks. I had expected three, four days of it; we had ten.

  When our horse troubles subsided like a storm blown off during the night, I called my bleary-eyed commanders in for a tally. We lost thirty horses by their dying and turned another thirty loose, and one of those was the lead-horse of Piyassilis’ greys.

  He seemed inconsolable, which reminded me that though he was near as tall as I he was yet a lad.

  There was nothing to do but turn the surviving horses of split teams into our reserve, which was much diminished by taking fifty teams out of it. On the theory that the second bite of the snake heals the first, I set Piyassilis to patching teams up out of the single horses, even calling a camp-day to sort things out, which I had not done since we entered Mitanni, no matter how needful the cause. But we were about to enter settled country; the no-man’s land around the borders, the small villages in the hills, all were behind us; momentarily, if not already, Mitanni would know we had arrived.

  And my men were sleepless from horse-doctoring and dispirited from standing helpless while their beasts lay down with bloated stomachs and bellowed out their lives. And there were many sacrifices during the camp-day to this god and to that, and many mutterings, and many men just simply drinking away their fear. In a foot army, it is the plagues that do it. In a horse army, it is more to be feared that a man lose his lead-horse than his axe, his bow, or even the arm that wields them. A charioteer driving into battle with a mis-matched team of strange horses on his centerpole is a very unhappy man.