The Assyrian

by Nicholas Guild

  Their cheers broke in upon me like thunder, echoing from the cliff faces, and I was silenced. Would they have believed me in the cold light of morning? Did they truly believe me then, or did they but wish to believe? I know not.

  “Ashur is King!” they shouted. “Ashur is King! Ashur is King! Ashur is King!” They made the night tremble with the sound.

  Did they believe me? I know not. I know only that they had made my will theirs and would die for the god’s glory at my word. In the hearts of simple men is the only truth.

  I raised my arm, and at last they grew silent.

  “You all know the story of the blood star that blazed in the eastern sky on the night of Mighty Sargon’s death—some among you may even have seen it, since it lit the heavens like a torch. And you all know the mark I bear on my hand.”

  I unclenched my fist that they might see, and a murmur rose among them, for all men fear such things. And rightly so.

  “This I have carried since the hour of my birth—the same hour in which King Sargon, my father’s father, found his simtu on this very ground. I was born, and he died, in one instant. And that night the blood star burned in the sky like a wound in the god’s own flesh—and it was not for nothing that Holy Ashur thus placed his mark upon me!”

  “Ashur is King!” they shouted, their voices like the pounding of drums. “Ashur is King! Ashur is King!”

  “The enemy will come for us here!” I cried, when at last they would hear me. “Perhaps this night, perhaps the next, but they will come, creeping through the darkness like jackals. You know them—they are the inheritors of those who slew our king, who stripped him of his life and held his corpse for ransom that his son, whose son I am, was forced to buy him back with silver and gold before he could sleep in the earth of his fathers. They will return here, as we have returned, thinking yet again to accomplish great slaughter among the men of Ashur, but it is they who will perish!”

  Mighty Sargon, whom the god loved, the pride of his nation. There was not a soldier in the king’s army who did not hold his name and memory in reverence. Yes—they would fight, these common men, whether they believed me or not, for they believed in him, and in the grandeur he had made of their nation. They would fight, to avenge his death of long ago. Or, if not for that, for the honor of dying where he had died.

  Each man took up his station that night, his heart full. No man closed his eyes that night—no man could. We all waited, in silence, as brothers, sons of the same ghostly father. Our minds, our wills, were one. No word was spoken, for there was no more place for words. We all understood, without words. In this I was but one of many.

  It was the last cold hours before dawn when I received the whispered signal that our sentries had heard the approach of many horses.

  Of all the countless horrors of war, the worst is the waiting. We were to absorb the full force of the enemy’s attack—we knew not their numbers nor even their names; they were only The Enemy, vague, faceless, a black shadow crowding in upon us. And their onslaught would come in the dark of night, which somehow made it more terrible. To die in the broad light of day was bad enough, but at night. . . A man has visions of his soul wandering blind and lost, knowing no rest, in endless torment, a prey to demons. I was a man no different from the poorest soldier, and I felt all these things. As we waited there, in the Place of Bones, I felt sick with dread.

  It was almost a relief when at last we heard their war cries and felt the thunder of their horses’ hoofs. They were upon us—the waiting was over and we would see the end now.

  I gave a silent signal, and in an instant a hundred bonfires blazed into life—we had banished the covering darkness. Let the Medes know our numbers. Let them know they had lost their chance for surprise.

  Nevertheless, they came. Their horses bore down upon us across the length of that rocky plain, but we held back. We waited, watching their charge, knowing they had not seen the traps.

  Working until their hands were raw, my men had dug a long trench across the entrance to our camp. They had piled up the earth as a rampart, what must have looked to the enemy horsemen like a crude defense perimeter, the sort thrown up by soldiers who do not really expect attack—the sort a horse and rider could climb over in an instant. They did not see the trench, which had been covered over with reed mats and a sprinkling of dirt, not enough to fool anyone in daylight but almost invisible at night. Its bottom, bristling with sharpened stakes, was hidden from them. They would only learn when it was too late.

  The Medes galloped toward us. Even now, as they shook the earth, I could hardly see them except as a dark wave. But they were many. They must have had eight or ten thousand riders—this was no single tribe defending its territory. We did not fight merely the Miyaneh or the Sagarians, men loyal to their clan and a bit of grazing land, but a mighty confederation, a nation. This was what I had feared, all along. I could see it as their horsemen sped across the plain, burning the earth like a blaze through dry grass.

  On command, and as one, our bowmen let fly their arrows—dipped in pitch and flaming like torches. They lit the air, turning the night into a weird half daylight, roofing the sky with smoke and lurid, red black fire. The Medes would not have to die in darkness. Yet they did die—dropping from their saddles, our arrows still burning in their breasts. The javelin throwers, their targets clear now, let fly, death whistling through the air like a flight of birds. How many fell before they reached the trench, I know not.

  And at the trench . . . How can I describe it? When the earth gave way beneath them, and their horses screamed in terror and pain, their backs broken by the fall or their bellies and necks pierced by the cruel stakes, was it not terrible? Even for us, who had planned it, whose lives would be spared by this awful trap, it was unspeakable. We stood upon the rampart and they perished at our feet, falling into that gruesome tangle of the dead and the dying. And those who did not die at once, we killed as they tried to climb out. We killed them with arrows and javelins and spattered their brains with great stones. Sometimes we killed them with swords and cut their throats with the knives we carried in our belts. We made a rich banquet for the Lady Ereshkigal, and our hearts sickened within us.

  When the Medes saw that we had stopped their first rush, they withdrew their cavalry—this was not a fight which would be won by horsemen. But a trench would not stop foot soldiers, and these now followed in their numbers beyond counting, swarming at us like angry bees.

  Yet we were ready. Our own soldiers poured over the ramparts and the ditch, now nearly filled in with Median dead. And we were not a mob but a disciplined army. And we had chariots.

  At either end of the trench we had left a little pathway clear, just enough for our war chariots, carried over these mountains in pieces and hastily reassembled, to pass out onto the field of battle, there to do their grim work.

  I myself rode in the lead chariot, so I saw what happened in the gray light of that last terrible hour before dawn. It was not a battle, but a massacre. The Medes, disorganized, frightened, their plan in ruins, deserted by even the hope of victory, fought with futile courage and fell like grain before the farmer’s scythe. Our army butchered them with pitiless efficiency. They had no chance. They were as men condemned.

  By the time the sun had risen over the mountains, it was over. The few who could, or would, had fled that killing ground, and almost none were left except the dying and the dead. A ghastly silence descended over the face of the land.

  I ordered my driver to halt and stepped down. I wished to have a better look at the field of battle—I wished to view my handiwork at close range, but I felt a strange mingling of pride and disgust. Perhaps it was not so strange, for I had known the feeling before. Perhaps it is no more than every successful commander experiences, for the end of all a soldier’s patient work is no more than death.

  “Look here, Rab Shaqe—we’ve found one still alive and kicking,” a soldier shouted to me. “Look, hardly a mark on him!”

  I went ov
er to see, making my way carefully across the web of sprawled corpses, and it was true. A Median cavalryman, his forehead grazed by an arrow, had probably been no more than stunned by the blow. He was awake now; crouched on the ground, looking around with fierce, frightened eyes at his captors, who surrounded him with drawn swords, grinning, looking forward to the sport of finishing him off.

  But, as it happened, I had other plans for him.

  He was a handsome man, and as brave in the face of death as anyone had a right to expect of him. He was young, no older than myself, so it was hard for him. Doubtless he had seen how prisoners were treated among his own people and thought he knew what to expect.

  “Do you understand me?” I asked, in Aramaic—he looked well born, so there was the chance that some attention had been paid to his education.

  He nodded. Yes, he understood.

  “Then look.”

  I squatted on the ground beside him and held my hand up before his eyes so he could see the birthmark across my palm. He knew then who I was—he recognized the blood star, the mark of Sargon. I could read all that in his expression.

  “When you find your way back,” I said, “go to your shah and ask him why he thought I would fall into the same trap twice.”

  Never have I seen such fear in a man’s eyes. He believed, I think, really believed that he had come face to face with a living ghost. I was not the Lord Tiglath Ashur to him. I was the wrath of the dead.

  I rose and looked about me, seeming not to care that I was on a field carpeted with corpses.

  “Shall we kill him now, Rab Shaqe?” the soldier asked. I felt almost sorry for him, for he was so looking forward to it.

  “No—find him a horse. He is going home.”

  Chapter 24

  Thus was born the legend of Sargon’s return to the Zagros. We unfurled the banner of the blood star and it waved before us on the standard of the king’s army, just below the winged disk of Ashur, striking terror into the hearts of our enemies. I was the old champion reborn. I would avenge him. The Medes believed all this—may the god forgive me, I half believed it myself.

  For the next month our march followed the northern slope of the mountains. We accepted the surrender of many hamlets and towns, taking hostages, horses, food, whatever we needed. The village people, who are always the prisoners and main victims of war, sometimes met us with offerings, casting flowers in my chariot’s path as if I truly were some angry demon whose wrath could be thus softened. Sometimes their priests tried to drive me off with strange rites and mantras. I had become a figure of myth, and it caused a giddiness in my mind such as a man suffers when he stands at the river’s edge in flood time and feels the dark waters beckoning to him. It was thus with me, this feeling, like a sickness, of having trespassed. I addressed prayers to Ashur and to the sedu of my grandfather, begging forgiveness if this ruse of mine offended against the divinity of either, but these afforded me no comfort.

  Only twice in that time did the Medes take the field against us, and only then in small surprise attacks easily repulsed. They fought bravely, leaving many dead behind them, but it was as if they were testing us, feeling for some weakness. And the great, decisive battle never came.

  But the days were not wasted. Our scouts ranged wide, and with them went the map makers and the scribes, who recorded all they saw and heard. The lands of the Aryan were becoming something more than simply a great blank emptiness, and when I returned another day with yet another army—and this I knew I would do—I would not then be groping my way in the dark.

  By the first dawn of the month of Elul we were within ten days’ march of the city of Ecbatana, the goal I had set myself, and still the Medes fled before us into the safety of their mountains. I took no comfort in the ease of these conquests.

  One cannot conquer the land—only nations can feel the yoke. The land is always the same, no matter who stands on it, and if I held so and so much territory today, it would revert to itself the moment I left. And leave I must, for I had no intention of establishing garrisons where there was nothing to guard except rocks and grass and crooked little riverbeds that were dry two thirds of the year. I did not want to own this place. I wanted only that its inhabitants should never think to leave it for the rich plains of the Land of Ashur. And to achieve that I had to give them such a taste of defeat that they would never risk another. And to achieve that I had somehow to make them fight, for victory is always a collaboration between the conquered and the conqueror. But in this they would not oblige me.

  We had taken over a village that was well placed for watching the approaches of Ecbatana. Its inhabitants had already deserted it by the time we arrived; in a few of the houses the embers from the cooking fires were still warm. Here my officers and I began drawing up the final plans for our assault on the city, the capital of Ellipi, whose “kings” had already made their submission to Sargon in the last reign and who would therefore be regarded as traitors. It would be a costly triumph and by no means a decisive one, for what is a city after all except brick and stone?

  It was here that I received the report that a sentry had seen a lone rider approaching the village, and that he carried a banner of truce.

  “Let him pass,” I ordered. What harm could he do?

  Within two hours I found the Uqukadi noble called Upash bowing before me like a carpet peddler.

  “Blessings on you, Mighty Conqueror, before whom all the world. . .”

  “Yes—very well,” I answered, gesturing to him to rise, for such servility filled me with impatience and a gnawing suspicion that this oily savage was trying to make a fool of me. “What have you come here to say, barbarian?”

  If he was discomfited by this reception he gave no sign, but fell back at once into the attitude of amused contempt he had shown me at our first meeting, five years before. His hand went up to secure the leather cap that fitted so tightly over his close-cropped hair, and he smiled.

  “I bear a message from Daiaukka, shah of all the Medes. He would parley with you, Lord.”

  “There can be no objection to this. I will grant him safe passage if he wishes to come to me here.”

  “Alone, Lord—and in some place of safety. He trusts you no more than you do him.”

  I shrugged my shoulders, having expected nothing less.

  “Very well, then. Let him meet me tomorrow, one hour after midday, on the plain half a day’s ride north from this village. I will carry no weapon and will bring an escort of twenty men. Let him keep to the same terms, and I will speak with him—alone.”

  “‘To this he will agree. And now—if we might have a private word?”

  He glanced around at my officers, as if his meaning had not been clear enough, and I dismissed them and then sat down on the room’s only chair, drawing my sword from its scabbard and laying it on the table before me lest my visitor harbor any ambitions concerning revenge.

  “You misjudge me, Prince,” he said, his eyes fastened on the sword as if to measure its length. “I am not your enemy.”

  “You are my enemy—men like you are every man’s enemy.”

  “Perhaps. I have lived long enough, Young Lord, to have lost most of my illusions and, in any case, men with high ideals are rarely useful to conquerors.”

  He smiled, as if we had already reached an understanding.

  “Then you have come, I take it, to sell me your present protectors like so many baskets of dates?”

  “What loyalty could I owe to the Medes, Lord?” He made a gesture with his left hand that seemed to dismiss the very possibility of such an idea. “Please remember that I have seen you make war before and I know that you will be the victor here, not Daiaukku—now or later, it must happen. A man may be allowed to be practical.”

  “Very well, then. Tell me what you want and what you can offer in exchange.”

  We struck our bargain, then and there. I did not like this man and had no reason to trust him, but, yes, I would make him great in the lands of the Aryan. And f
or this he would be my eyes and ears in the councils of Daiaukka’s nobles. He would tell me the numbers of horsemen and foot soldiers commanded by each of the parsua of the Median tribes, of the limits of their loyalties, of the jealousies among them, and the weaknesses of each. He would play the perfect traitor. He would make himself very useful, for a conqueror rules not through men’s virtues but through their defects. Nevertheless, I did not like this man.

  “And what of this meeting? What does Daiaukka want? Is it a trap?”

  “It is not that, Lord, for Daiaukka has said that it is not and these people never tarnish themselves with lies. Perhaps he hopes for an honorable peace.”

  That I did not believe. But Daiaukka had been right not to open his mind to this man, so perhaps he was wise. I would know soon enough.

  . . . . .

  Daiaukka, shah of all the Medes, rode a fine black horse that stood at least two spans higher at the shoulder than that of any of his companions. This horse, as I had been told, was his single indulgence, for his was a nature of the most perfect integrity, possessed of neither avarice nor greed nor fear. He never lied but still contrived to be as cunning as an adder. Both cruelty and pity were unknown to him, since both only deflect a man from his purpose, and his will was as unbending as granite. It was his will that the Medes should be a great nation, as his father Ukshatar, who had died in exile, had envisioned them, and that he should be their master. It was his will that the Medes should one day be masters of the world, the inheritors of the race of Ashur, whom he regarded with unconcealed contempt.

  As I watched him across those two hundred paces of whispering grass, noting the skill with which he managed his skittish, high spirited horse and the graceful economy of his every gesture, I began to realize that this was probably the most dangerous enemy a man could have. I respected and admired him, and hoped that he might die here, in his own mountains, and by my hand. It was my prayer to Holy Ashur that he might spare the world from the purity of men like Daiaukka, shah of all the Medes.