The Assyrian

by Nicholas Guild

  “What is it?” I asked—it was a foolish question to which I desperately wanted to hear the answer I knew already. I took my place beside her and recklessly took her hands in my own. She did not withdraw them. “What has made you unhappy, Esharhamat? Tell me.”

  “What is to become of me if you are killed, Tiglath?”

  I had only to look into her eyes, glistening with tears, to know what she meant. The time of childhood was over, she was saying, and of this woman I was the beloved.

  “I wonder what will become of you if I am not.”

  Together we looked across the garden to the spot of shade where the Lady Tashmetum-sharrat lay on a wicker couch, fanned by one of her women while she stared at nothing.

  “I will not be her son’s wife,” Esharhamat murmured in an icy voice. “I am a widow—soon I will have control over Ashurnadinshum’s estate, and then I will be free. No one can compel me to marry Arad Ninlil, who makes the flesh crawl up my back like a serpent. I may choose whom I like, and I choose you!”

  I smiled, partly at her still childish confidence that she could have whatever pleased her—I speak only of her power of choice, for it was not the child but the woman who knew I would risk any fearful death for her sake—and partly because no man could hear such words from those lips and not be happy. I smiled, but I knew it was impossible.

  “We are the king’s servants,” I said—I had never felt the truth of it so deeply as I did that moment. “It is your simtu to be the mother of kings. You cannot avoid that, no more than I can choose to take the crown upon my head. You will marry whom the king my father commands, as I follow him into battle now.”

  “You are suddenly very noble, Tiglath. I think I liked you better when you were impudent.”

  She withdrew her hands from mine. The tears had already dried on her cheeks, and when I looked at her I saw someone I did not know. The woman had put aside the child’s softness, and her unsmiling mouth mirrored a will as hard as flint.

  “This war will not quickly end,” she went on, almost as if she were telling these things to herself. “More than one of the king’s sons may die in it. You told me once you have a sedu—or was that simply more of your impudence?”

  “I think perhaps it was nothing more than the fantasy of a crazy old man.”

  “Mind you come back from the war alive, Tiglath.”

  She smiled at me, and the smile was also one I had not seen before.

  “I have every intention. . .”

  “I believe you will come back.” This time it was she who took my hand. “He was not a crazy old man—I believe in your sedu, Tiglath. Make the king love you, as the god does—as I do. I will not marry Arad Ninlil, and if I must be the mother of kings, you must be their father.”

  . . . . .

  When I returned to the royal barrack I found I had a visitor of my own. Kephalos was waiting for me, sitting on a stool outside my door, looking very important and out of patience as the boy Ernos held a fan of ostrich feathers over him to keep off the sun. He rose when he saw me, and I was at some trouble to keep him from going down on all fours to embrace my knees.

  “Master, come—let us go inside out of this heat.” He took a large leather pouch and an even larger pottery jug from the boy and then waved him away. “As you see, I have brought my lord the finest wine from Lebanon that we may refresh ourselves.”

  “Then come inside,” I said, placing my hand upon his shoulder and pushing open the door. “For the sight of you is always welcome, Kephalos, my friend, even without the finest wine, and from Lebanon at that.”

  I really was glad to see him, for it had been my intention to call upon him at his house that very evening and now I was saved the trouble. I took two goblets made of blue glass from a shelf under the room’s only window and, while my slave made himself quite comfortable on my rolled up sleeping mat, I broke the seal of the wine jug and filled them both to the rim.

  Kephalos was as impressive a sight as ever. He had grown stout in his prosperity and his beard, which had reached vast proportions over the last few years, was combed and curled and smelled of pomegranate oil, and he wore more rings and bracelets than the most expensive harlot in Nineveh. His tunic was of blue wool, shot through with silver thread like one of the king’s own nobles and embroidered richly with yellow and green. The turban on his head was set off with a silver clasp the size of a war shield. No one looking at him would ever have taken him for a soldier’s slave.

  When we had both gladdened our hearts with wine and Kephalos had entertained me with stories of his many successes as a physician—which to him was merely a pretext for robbing selfish and witless women—he lifted the leather pouch onto his lap and opened the string.

  “I bring you gifts, master—having been a warrior myself and knowing you for a thoughtless and improvident youth, I thought to supply a few items against this mad campaign. No, no, my young lord—all wars are madness and enrich only the crows and the jackals, but since you have set your heart upon this one. . .”

  From the pouch he took two small enameled jars, green and red, their mouths sealed with clay.

  “In this,” he said, holding the green one in his left hand, “you will find a salve of great benefit in treating all manner of wounds, but be sure you use it at once lest the wound come to fester.” He lifted the other jar between first finger and thumb, as if he wished to assess its weight. “And this, this is the one sovereign remedy against the infections carried by unclean women. Remember, Lord, that a soldier going into strange lands. . .”

  “Thank you, my friend,” I answered, making a solemn show of refilling his goblet, for had I been compelled to look him in the face I should have burst out in laughter and I had no desire to offend him. Kephalos saw all men as no less wicked then himself, but in his way he was an honest soul and I loved him.

  “And I, for my part, have a gift for you.”

  I rose and went to my kit bag, from which I took an object folded carefully in leather. When I sat down again I placed it before Kephalos and unwrapped it.

  “I have made my will,” I said. “In the event I should not return from his war, what I own—the silver you have gained for me with your industry—I would wish put into my mother’s hands, and I ask you, as a favor to a friend, to see to it.”

  “This I will, master, but yours is a melancholy subject. I would as soon. . .”

  “I have but one other item of property, and that is yourself.” He began to make a gesture of obedience, placing his hands and forehead against my knees, but I held him back. “I do not know what might befall you if I die, so you also are among my heirs. Should my simtu come to me in the south, this tablet, of which there is a copy in the royal archives, will attest that you have been given your freedom.”

  I could not restrain him now for he threw himself to the floor, burying his face in his arms and clasping me by the feet. He wept, and I wept—we were both, I suspect, a trifle drunk, for the wines of Lebanon are notoriously strong.

  “As you know, master, I was born a free man,” he said, when he had regained his composure. “And I feel sure that I am destined to die one. But know, Lord, that I would not purchase liberty at the price of your life. Come back from your war no worse than you are this moment—and mind about those filthy southern women!”

  At last, when he had risen to leave, he placed his hand upon my shoulder.

  “And, Lord, when you have used all that the jars contain, be careful that you do not throw them away.”

  The door closed on him. I poured myself the dregs of the wine, puzzling over what he could have meant. Finally I picked up one of the jars and was surprised by its heaviness. Then I took my sword and with the edge scraped away a little of the enamel on the bottom of the red one. The metal underneath was the color of old honey and as soft as wax.

  “Solid gold,” I whispered. I balanced them again in my hands—each, discounting its contents, must have weighed close to seventy shekels. “Kephalos, you clever rogue,
may you live forever.”

  Chapter 5

  The world holds many fine things to look upon, but I have always believed that the finest sight which can fill a young man’s eyes is that of an army on its way to war. A young man’s heart swells with dreams of glory, and while kings wage wars for revenge or profit and common men to escape their debts or their wives or the reach of the law—or because they have been conscripted—the dreamy youth shoulders his arms and marches to the drum of greatness, fame, adventure. The army of Sennacherib was a magic carpet stretching far, far into the distance, and it would carry me. . . I hardly knew where, but surely to some shining triumph. This impression stayed with me for many weeks—indeed, up to the morning of my first battle.

  On the day of our departure from Nineveh I almost envied the crowds that lined the southern road, for I was a great way back in the parade, looking after my baggage and my company of a hundred men, some of them old campaigners but some of whom knew less about being a soldier even than I did myself. I did not see the king in his war chariot, and the sound of the trumpets was but a distant murmur. By the time we passed through the city gates, the people had stopped cheering hours before. The only witnesses to our going were a few glum shopkeepers and the poorest among the harlots, those who served travelers with the dust of their journeys still clinging to them, and they merely laughed at us, shouting obscene jokes and lifting up their tunics that we might know what we were leaving behind, perhaps forever.

  I held the rank of rab kisir, with authority over a hundred men, but this was purely a matter of courtesy. The armies of Ashur had not conquered most of the world because they were led by fools and raw boys, and I had been made to understand quite clearly that, until I proved my worth, I was to regard myself as no more than another soldier. The man who had been set at my elbow as ekalli—the word means nothing more than “messenger”—was in actual command. His name was Nargi Adad, and he had campaigned with Tabshar Sin in the wars of the great Sargon. Indeed, he had been part of the army that had had to fight its way home after the king’s death, and it was from him that I heard the story of that final battle.

  Nargi Adad had a quick laugh and a sunny temper. He was always hungry and never tired, and he was as fine a soldier as ever lived. In appearance he was a short, thick man and as hairy as a goat. He had almost no forehead at all and his beard seemed to begin just below his eyes. His hands and even his feet were matted with black hair, and when he took off his tunic he looked like the animals called bears which I have seen in the mountains of the east. What another man might have cursed as a disfigurement was to him a source of immense pride, and he claimed the harlots of all nations found him irresistible, a thing I doubted not since, as Kephalos was always fond of pointing out, women are great lovers of novelty.

  Under conditions of forced march, traveling during the whole six hours of daylight, an army could cover in four days the distance between Nineveh and the disputed territories that lay in Akkad east of the Tigris, but they would arrive in no fit condition to fight. We were more leisurely, since we knew that the Elamites and their Chaldean allies were already in the field, and, as pious men, on all unlucky days, of which each month carries five, we kept to our tents, wearing ragged clothes and eating no food cooked in a pot. Thus we did not wet our sandals in the Radanu River until the twelfth day.

  “Well, Prince, when once we are across this dribble of ox piss we will have to look about us, for between here and the Turnat surely we will meet the enemy.”

  Nargi Adad laughed and clapped me on the shoulder, for like most of the soldiers of Ashur he was no respecter of birth. The uniform of a rab kisir makes no man a warrior and I took some small pride in the fact that my own ekalli, who had fought by the side of mighty Sargon, treated me quite as if I were neither his officer nor the king’s son but a comrade in arms of long standing. I knew this was no more than his whim, but it meant that Tabshar Sin, who was his friend, had given a good report of me.

  “How many, do you think?”

  “An army, Prince, and a big one.” He nodded at the flat brown shoreline beyond the river, no longer smiling. “These men are not cowards and they know it is past a joke with the king your father, that they must stop him here or he will march us straight on to Susa to couch with Kudur-Nahhunte’s women and dig up the bones of his ancestors. They will be fighting for their homes and fields, as we might be ourselves before long—if we don’t stop them.”

  “But we will stop them.”

  Nargi Adad turned the head on his short neck and looked at me out of the corner of his eye. He was on the verge of making some remark but then stopped and laughed.

  “Yes, Prince—with Ashur’s help, we will stop them. Their bones will be stretched from here to the Bitter River so that a man could walk there stepping on the faces of dead Elamites. Come. Let us feed the men and be off. Tomorrow night we will camp within sight of the Turnat River, and the next morning there will be a battle which, should somehow you chance to survive it, will provide you with tavern stories for the rest of your days.”

  And so we crossed the Radanu, and the next day, near a wretched little cluster of mud huts called Khalule—may its name disappear from the lips of men and the fields there be plowed with salt—the army made camp.

  Nargi Adad and I decided to see for ourselves how the land lay, and together we went into the village. The inhabitants had fled, since they knew there was about to be a great battle and that, no matter who won, the pillaging and slaughter to follow would be terrible. As we walked among the deserted houses, the only sound we heard was the barking of a dog unfortunate enough to have been left behind. The place made a dismal enough impression. We climbed to the roof of the highest building there and looked about us that we might know the terrain.

  I do not like the southern lands. This is in greater part because my memories of them are a chronicle of destruction—no one who took part in the wars in Babylon longs ever to look upon that slaughtering ground again—but also, to some degree, because I was born in the Land of Ashur and love the sight of distant mountains. The plains of the south are flat as a drumhead, with nothing to distract the eye except, perhaps, the sight of a mud filled river or a clump of date palms—as all men know, the ugliest tree the gods ever made. From that rooftop in Khalule the land seemed to stretch without a ripple into misty infinity.

  “See how they come?” Nargi Adad murmured, almost as if afraid that Elamites might hear him. He pointed with his furred arm toward the distant glimmering ribbon of water that was the Turnat. Already its surface was half covered with the round little boats made with pitched reeds and called gufas. “They are crossing in force. In two hours we shall be able to see their cooking fires, and in the morning. . . They mean to make a fight of it, Prince. They have no thought of retreat. As you see, they will have their backs to the river.”

  By the time we returned to camp we could already hear their war drums, like the brooding of distant thunder.

  “They will keep that up all night. No doubt they mean to frighten us to death.” My ekalli grinned, showing his large stained teeth. “I don’t know how well they will sleep, but for myself I find the sound quite restful.”

  That night, after I had had my dinner and the half jug of strong Babylonian beer Nargi Adad forced down me, I took off my sandals and wrapped myself in a blanket, letting it cover my ears to keep out the booming of the Elamite drums. It was a hot night, so I cannot claim that I was trembling with anything except a great fear of death. My head buzzed from the beer, but still I was tingling in all my limbs, feeling alive as those who have not known battle rarely do—fear does that to a man.

  Tomorrow, as early as first light, I thought to myself, tomorrow I may be dead. An arrow, perhaps, or I may be trampled to death under a chariot. And afterward when the battle is finished, they may mutilate my corpse. Some Chaldean, it might be, will go back to his wife and children with my private parts dangling from his quiver. I had forgotten all about my sedu and my dreams o
f glory. All I wanted was to rise from my bed, choose a direction away from the Turnat River, and run until I dropped. If I slept at all that night, it was only for seconds at a time, but I do not believe I did sleep.

  I was a rab kisir and deeply ashamed to be afraid, but I have fought many battles since then and yet never lost that stark terror in the darkness before, so I have learned not to think so badly of myself for it. Fear is as natural as breathing. How a man copes with it is the only question.

  The next morning I had a breakfast of bread and grapes, put on my greaves, my leather corselet, and helmet of bronze and, as I stood with my javelin in my hand, discovered with surprise and relief that my fear had deserted me. I would not turn tail and flee, at least, and that was almost the same thing. I found I was actually looking forward to the battle. It is thus, I think, with most soldiers.

  I will not speak of the ordering of troops, of which forces were held in reserve and which not, of the weight of cavalry or the tactical disposition of the chariots, for if there was any grand strategy at work that day, I did not see it. In any case, the schemes of both commanders must have been hopelessly inept to go so wrong, for a well planned battle does not end in so general a slaughter. The object in war is to kill one’s enemies, and this at as little cost as possible. On that day at Khalule it was not kings and generals who fought, but men. The armies were like two giants locked in combat, their hands about each other’s throats, and when at last they separated it was not because one had vanquished the other but because both were too weary and wounded to go on. That was how it was.