I, the Sun

by Morris, Janet

  I had expected anger, harsh words, even that he might come against me, for it was just us two in there. He did none of those, but looked upon me sorrowfully, stroking his bearded jaw, and said: “I told him it was no good, I could do nothing for him. The evidence is too incriminating. But my lord, I know the truth, and it was not Aitakama who revolted against you, but his council which rose up and took the scepter from his hand and cast him out of the country. And he came to me, and begged me that since I was coming up to fight with the Sun against your enemies, I must allow him to accompany me, for those men of the Hittite army who were seeking him out would kill him without a thought, and he would never live to tell his tale.”

  “He may not live to spin another, that is the truth.” I was feeling suddenly ill-used. Within me boiled a rage that I was not sure I could hold. But there is no good in saying to a man: “you have disappointed me; you are failing yourself, and thusly failing us all.” My frustration at Aziru’s overlordly pretensions clenched my fists, made my palms sweat. Before me danced, like a living dream, what it would be like to sink my foot into his belly, to drop him gasping to the ground, to let him know that I saw and understood every cheap and selfish trick he had ever attempted to play on me, every flaw which he himself would not admit misdirected him. But I did not – there is no use in it, if you are not going to strike the offender down and walk away. Only resentment and a ready guard can grow in another from facing him with his inadequacies. And I still had use for Aziru. And love, or I would not have turned from inflicting violence then and there upon his person.

  Instead, I said: “Bring him before me in the predawn. I will be with one of my sons in the harness area.” There was a note of strain in my voice which he misconstrued.

  Thus he did not bow back immediately from my presence, but said instead in a commiserating way: “You have decided about the son Ankhsenamun requested, have you not? You had decided even before you put the matter before the council.”

  “I have consulted with the Storm God,” I said, gesturing to the god upon the sacred bulls in his shrine behind me. “Aziru, I have many things to do…”

  “My lord overlord, I depart forthwith. But two things, and I will leave you. First, I am supposed to be overseeing the construction of the siege engines in the predawn…”

  “Send someone else to see to it. What is the second thing?”

  “I have brought gifts for the Sun, and for prince Mursili, gifts born of royal Egyptian stock. Where might I find the Great Bull, your son?”

  I directed him as to where he might find my youngest prince, and thanked him on my own behalf, but suggested he hold on to the girls himself or put them with those namra I had set aside for myself, since the last thing I was needing then was a woman, and most firmly dismissed him.

  In the grey, misty light before the sunrise it is most difficult to send a spear or arrow true to its target. I had collected Zannanza while the stars were fading, and the two of us were letting shafts fly toward a target. The target was a painted square on a wall the fortifications corps had thrown up to contain the captives: or rather, that the namra had built to contain themselves under the direction of the fortification corps.

  Zannanza was just beginning to understand the amount of correction the tricky light demanded, or the light was getting less tricky as the sky began slowly to color, when two men became discernable, approaching out of shadow along the wall.

  I was just notching another shaft, and at Aziru’s hail turned toward them while letting fly. My first arrow tacked Aitakama’s mantle neatly to the wall at waist height. My second, flying through his shout of alarm, caught his hair on the left side of his neck, my third thunked parallel on his right.

  There was only the sound of rustling garments: mine, as I approached, my son Zannanza’s, as he accompanied me, Aziru’s as he backed away from the king of Kinza, who was held against the wall as if in a collar by my arrows.

  “Spread your arms,” I suggested, “and stand very still. And your legs, also.”

  As I outlined my errant vassal’s form in arrows, I suggested certain alterations in his behavior I would in future like him to display, and he was most anxious to appear cooperative in every way. The arrow I sent into his kilt where his legs disappeared under it divested him of what remained of his composure, and he began to gibber.

  Disgustedly, I commended him to my son’s mercies, saying: “If you are going down to Egypt to reign as Pharaoh, you should be able to do as I have done, encircle a vassal’s person with arrows, and yet not draw one drop of blood. Convince me that you can do so, and you shall wear the Double Crown.”

  “Abuya! I am – this is – I cannot thank you –”

  “Do not thank me, let us see what you can do. If Aitakama cannot thank you, by the time the sun is full risen, then there will be no reason for you to thank me.”

  So with utmost concentration, Khinti’s son sent half a score of shafts speeding into the wood about my spread-eagled vassal’s trembling frame.

  His breathing, and the roaring gulps of Aitakama of Kinza, and the sounds the arrows made sinking into the wood were all that could be heard, and yet when it was done and Aitakama’s outline stuck out from the wall in feathered relief, I turned away to see a number of men of the army watching.

  Striding toward them with a growl before which they scattered to their tasks, I was soon joined by Zannanza, whose handsome face was full of wondering joy.

  “Abuya, is it true? Did you mean it?”

  “You will have to study hard between now and when Hattu-ziti returns with word. You will study with Aziru, he knows the most about Egyptian ways. I will arrange it. Nothing is sure until Hattu-ziti gives his approval,” I warned. “But it is a rule of kingship to prepare to act, whether or not in the end you act at all, no matter how difficult that preparation may be.”

  He touched my arm, stopped me. I allowed it: with Khinti’s children, I was more than lenient. With Zannanza’s princely idiosyncrasies I had long practiced patience. The boy had not been able to distinguish himself in battle, though he had been in many engagements in the Upper Country. When he was not quite a man I used to take him hunting, and he would cry over his kills, though he killed to please me. In matters of language and courtly manners and metallurgy and all things abstract, however, he excelled. In Egypt, he would not need to be a field general, but rather be in a position to employ those talents which I have mentioned.

  I clasped him, drawing his wiry, slight frame against me, and said as much, gruffly, and then pushed him gently off to prepare himself for the ensuing siege of Carchemish, whilst I myself did the same.

  When I had besieged it for seven days: lackadaisically, when I was sure that all within were tired from defending their battlements and hungry from lack of food and thirsty for want of water which I encouraged them to pour on my fiery arrows instead of down their throats, I was ready.

  On the eighth day I fought a battle against them, a terrific battle during which I brought the ominous siege engines and mountains into play. And over the crumbled walls and into the city my armies advanced, Hittites, Sutu, Amurrites, Hapiru and even Ugaritic soldiers howled their blood-cries and laid about them with sword.

  And on the eighth day, the one day alone, I conquered the city of Carchemish.

  And since I recollected my dream about the gods of that city, and since I feared the gods and wanted Piyassilis to reign long and successfully in the city I ruled, on the upper citadel I let no one into the presence of the deity Kubaba and of the deity KAL; and I did not rush close to any of the temples. Nay, I even bowed down to these gods and then laid before them sacrifices, and Piyassilis who would be king helped me.

  But from the lower town, where I had laid upon the troops no such cautionary injunctions, came the screams of ravished women and perishing children and old folk roasting on the flames. And from the lower town I removed the inhabitants, the silver, gold, and bronze utensils to carry up to Hattusas. And the namra whom I brought
from the town to be taken to my palace were three thousand three hundred and thirty.

  This may sound like a large number, but the namra who the Hittite armies in total brought home, they were without number, countless, so that when we added the people of Carchemish to the penned deportees they were unnoticeable, as if a man poured a bucket of water into the sea and expected the tide to be increased.

  Then, having subdued the town totally, I called Piyassilis before me, and I installed him in Carchemish as its king. And there was joy on the faces of all the sons of the Sun while this was being done. With the throne of Carchemish and the scepter of Carchemish and with a throne-name suitable to a ruler of Hurrian subjects such as dwelt in Carchemish did Piyassilis ascend unto kingship in the fortified city which had been the dream of his youth. ‘Sarrikusuh’ was the kingly name Piyassilis chose, and it was as Sarrikusuh that all manner of eastern kings would learn to quake before his majesty, his circumspection, and the potency of his battle.

  Then from there my armies, all but the fortifications corps which I loaned Piyassilis/Sarrikusuh to shore up the tumbled walls of which he had been so enamored, descended upon the fractious western dependencies with which I had been having trouble. Countless enemies of the Sun I rounded up; some I deported, some I visited with death upon the spot.

  And when I was in Halap with all the armies, I deported its king who had been plotting against me, and I had Telipinus brought before me.

  And to Telipinus, who had never asked me for anything in the way of estates or countries, I gave the rich city of Halap, and the rich country of Halap to rule over as its king.

  “Abuya,” Telipinus, wordless for the first time in his life, fled to the casement overlooking the plain which was the nexus of all overland trade going up country or down.” My lord, you are too generous. You do not have to do this… not because of Piyassilis. I –”

  “You,” I interrupted, “should have learned by now how gracefully to accept a gift. Say that you are pleased.”

  “I am pleased.”

  “Say that you will sign a treaty as did Piyassilis, obligating yourself to your brothers in peaceful relationship even after I have gone up to become a god.”

  “Do not say that!”

  “I am getting leathery of skin; my neck is full of cords, and I have enough silver hairs to fund a country, were they metal instead of old, tired strands. Are you accepting this country from me, or not?”

  “Accepting! I have loved this place since I first saw it… I told you then.”

  “I remember,” I said, trying not to be sarcastic.

  “I will keep the peace as it has never been kept! I will keep all the countries loyal to you! I will oversee Aziru, and he will not stray! I will –”

  “If you will do all these things, then will you take a wife? A man needs a son of the first degree. Your brood of concubines’ brats will be at each other’s throats trying to determine which will succeed you, or worse, none of them will be able to claim your seat.”

  “I will do something about it. I want no wife, not yet. I will decree a succession among those sons I do have. What is this preoccupation of yours with death, my Sun?”

  “You tell me. It is you, and not I, who have the sight. What do the gods say?”

  “The gods,” said Telipinus quietly, “do not seem to be decided on anything.”

  But it turned out that they, the gods, my lords, were quite decided on one thing. Later Telipinus told me that in matters so highly unpleasant, his sight sometimes failed him.

  It was a useless, desperate attempt at escape by persons due for deportation who had strong supporters among those mistakenly labeled “faithful.” It was a commotion in the middle of the night that woke me so that I was on my feet and clutching the hilt of my sword before I was truly awake. It was the bloody, white-haired head of the Shepherd cradled in my arms while not a man’s length away Telipinus with his own hand carried out the executions of those escapees who had been captured. Heads rolled and blood spurted in the pristine corridors of Halap’s great temple, where Kuwatna-ziti had been and where the escapees had made a stand.

  “Shepherd,” I whispered to eyes that rolled in his seamed, pale face and even as he tried to focus upon me I knew it was no good, that no physician nor priest nor priestess would avail. At the corners of his mouth were pinkish bubbles, down my arm dripped the fluids of his life.

  “Tasmi, do not look so sad,” the Shepherd said, and coughed a rattling sound, and raised an age-spotted, gnarly hand to touch mine. “Kantuzilis, your son of the second degree, said that life is bound up with death; and death is bound up with life. I have always remembered it. We have had good years, a harvest of them. The Storm God will take care of me, now, I who have been his man so long. And we – we will meet again, perhaps, when you take up your seat of kingship in heaven.”

  “Shepherd, I need you. I cannot do it alone, I –” And I took him up and hugged him close, even as he said:

  “You can do it, Tasmi. You have done it. All is finished, like a tablet waiting to be bronzed. Do not grieve, but lay one last sacrifice for me to the God, my lord. We will both –”

  And that was the last the Shepherd ever spoke.

  We gave his ashes to the gods there in Halap, for Telipinus would let no one else perform the rites, and I was sunk in an old man’s despair and was not seeing anything but my memories.

  The next day, I went back to Hattusas for winter.

  CHAPTER 32

  A warrior develops a numbness to tragedy that few sorrows can pierce. But sometimes, the knife cuts deep. Sometimes, the bravest are unmanned. Sometimes, if I may suggest it, tears are not a shame, but a cure.

  Events, however, have no such weakness. The seasons of a man’s life roll implacably onward, no matter how concertedly he sets his feet against them. Nothing stops the greening of the leaves or the brown death they carry in them as a promise even at their birth.

  Zannanza had begged to stay awhile with Telipinus in Halap, and in my aggrieved distraction I allowed it. When later I realized what must have detained him so long, and what also had Telipinus absent from his new palace, it was too late. But before Zannanza raced the first snows up to Hattusas, I had had time to cool my anger, which was not the terrible anger common to the Sun, but some other anger, tinged with resignation and recognition of the fleeting delicacy of all life. So I pretended that I did not know that Zannanza had gone with Telipinus to meet Khinti, Zannanza’s blood and Telipinus’ heart mother, when she put into port there specifically to see her womb’s child before he became Pharaoh. She had last laid eyes upon him when he was four.

  I blamed Telipinus, whose instigation of this disobedience was clear; but besides, I was thinking that if Zannanza loved Malnigal, his step-mother, as much as Telipinus loved Khinti, I would not be having to pretend I did not know what was going on.

  Just before Hattu-ziti was due to arrive back from Egypt, I confronted my son on the matter, for I was feeling myself once more; all the melancholy that had weighed me down the winter long was fading like the snow on the mountains.

  “And how was Khinti, when you saw her?” I asked him casually at table. We were speaking, Aziru, Arnuwandas, Zannanza and I, that mixed tongue known as Babylonian, so that Zannanza’s ears could catch up to his eyes. If not for me, they would have been speaking Egyptian, but in that regard I was largely untutored, and thus in my presence the Egyptian tongue was not being practiced.

  “How, what?” sputtered Zannanza. “How did you know?”

  Arnuwandas snorted, and set down his goblet with a thunk, and said before I could intervene that everyone had known for years that Telipinus wrote forbidden letters to his step-mother, and even went on occasion to meet with her.

  “I had to, Abuya,” said Zannanza, cornered, but not beaten. “She is my mother. Above all else, there is that.”

  Aziru looked as if he wanted to leave, but I touched him, and gave an imperceptible shake of my head.

  “You ha
ve not answered me, Zannanza. How is your mother’s health?”

  “She is well.”

  “And is she still so beautiful?”

  “To me, she is. If you are going to punish me, must you make me wait for it?”

  “I think you have been punishing yourself. I am not going to do anything. But I am not going to laud you for being disobedient, either, nor for succumbing to Telipinus’ urgings that you keep the affair from me. All I am saying is that while you reside under my roof, you will not again disobey me.”

  “I will not. But when I am king in Egypt –”

  “If you are king in Egypt,” corrected Arnuwandas.

  “If I am king in Egypt, I am going to bring her into my country and install her as the King’s-Mother or whatever they call it. They offer great honor in that country to the mother of the king, and my mother could use some honoring; she has been dishonored most of her life.”

  I looked at him a long time in silence, seeing Khinti, however much I tried not to, in every compact, well-made lineament of his body. Then I said that when he was Pharaoh, if he did such a thing, there might be a chance that friendly relations could be reestablished between his mother and myself.

  “She has never married, you know… no other man, she said to me, could be of interest to her, having been in the arms of the Sun. She –”

  “That is enough! I have a wife, a queen, a Tawananna! Do you not recall her? She raised you and taught you how to keep from befouling yourself. I said friendly relationship, nothing more. Now, excuse yourself, before I begin to wonder if you are fit for this kingship you crave!”

  When Hattu-ziti came into Hattusas the next day, he had the Honorable Lord Hani with him.

  Now, since I had, when I sent Hattu-ziti to Egypt, given him orders as follows: “Maybe they have a son of their lord! Maybe they deceive me and do not want my son for the kingship,” therefore the queen of Egypt wrote back to me in a letter thus: “Why did you say ‘they deceive me’ in that way? Had I a son, would I have written about my own and my country’s shame to a foreign land? You did not believe me and have even spoken thus to me! He who was my husband has died. A son I have not! Never shall I take a servant of mine and make him my husband! I have written to no other country, only to you have I written! They say your sons are many; so give me one son of yours! To me he will be husband, but in Egypt he will be king!”