The Assyrian

by Nicholas Guild

  The Medes laughed again, louder this time, and the silence of my own soldiers spoke of their shame in me.

  I had torn my wound wider in my fall, and the blood poured thickly over my dust-caked arm. There was no time to bind it, for Daiaukka was already lining himself up, readying for another charge. I felt a shock of pain when I tried to raise my left hand above my shoulder, as if someone were grinding sand into the raw flesh.

  Ghost snorted loudly and reared up on his hind legs—he, at least, was prepared to concede nothing.

  I circled around, trying to put distance between Daiaukka and me, and then, when I felt I would have room to maneuver—let the clash come if it must—I let Ghost have his head.

  Once in range, I threw again, but my aim was no truer and the javelin fell short. Perhaps it startled the black stallion because Daiaukka also missed his mark, the point of his lance swinging in too late to find me.

  Yet it was not men who warred now, but horses. The two great stallions collided almost shoulder to shoulder and we all went down, men and horses both. I scrambled to my feet, drawing my short sword, trying to see through the clouds of dust to discover what had happened. At last I could see Daiaukka, also with his sword drawn. The horses were between us and they were rearing up and striking at each other with their hoofs, seeming to make their masters’ fight their own. It was a wild scene—for a moment we both simply watched, struck motionless by awe.

  It could not go on. I ran for my javelin and managed to scoop it up before Daiaukka could catch me. When he saw it in my hand he ran back behind the horses—his spear, it seemed, was not for throwing and he would not put himself in my way.

  I whistled for Ghost. He came, but not willingly. There was blood on his chest where the black stallion’s hoofs had cut him.

  I had time now to remount, for Daiaukka had not yet caught his horse, but I waited for a moment, thinking that now it would be an easy thing to kill the great black stallion. A horse is not a man and does not think to dodge out of the way—I had only to raise my javelin and throw. . .

  “Kill his horse,” Tabiti had said. “Make him fight you on the ground, where at least you will stand an even chance.”

  It was good advice, except then what would I fight with? I would have only my sword, and Daiaukka would have both sword and spear. How was that better?

  I scrambled onto Ghost’s back, wondering if I was not making a mistake.

  We faced each other again. I waited for Daiaukka’s charge, wondering how I could hope to escape it this time, but now he appeared to hesitate. Why? What was passing through his mind? I could not begin to guess.

  Then I understood—his horse, capering from side to side in that impatient manner one sees in fine stallions, seemed rusty in its movements. And its chest too was marked here and there with crescents of blood, so Ghost, faring better than his master, had at least kept his opponent to an even match.

  Daiaukka, sensing his mount’s hurt and perhaps its fear as well, hesitated, allowing the animal to recapture its breath. And all the while his eyes never left the point of my javelin.

  He needn’t have worried—I was not throwing at all well. I had not yet acquired the knack of it from horseback, but at least I seemed to be improving. Yet if I found my mark within the next two or three attempts, it would only be through pure chance, and that seemed a weak hook upon which to hang one’s life. This charge or the next, surely Daiaukka would kill me.

  Yet what choice had I? To come down to the ground was to abandon myself to a single throw. My javelin had found the hearts of many horsemen, but always in battle, where many darts may be aimed at a single target. Daiaukka had no opponent save me, so his eyes were on my point alone. He could dodge and weave and parry, and finally tempt me into making the fatal cast. And when that was done, and I had no weapon except my short sword, he would ride me down, trampling me into the dust to kill me at his perfect convenience. No, I did not dare abandon my horse.

  He was ready now—I could see it in the set of his shoulders, in the way his hand slid up the shaft of his spear. He would make his charge and I had no choice but to meet it, trying yet once more to catch him on the run.

  I let Ghost have his head—he was far more eager than I—and tried to settle into the rhythm of his gallop, that blur of sound, that jolt as his hoofs struck the earth, seemingly altogether. I had to try to time my throw to the instants between, while we seemed to fly together through the empty air.

  Daiaukka stormed over the plain, like a blind force of nature that would not be turned aside. His lance was already turning in toward me as the javelin shot from my hand—it was a good throw; dropping down on him like a bird of prey. He saw—he knew. He raised his shield and the javelin caught it on the edge, tearing at it with the bronze point.

  But the throw was not good enough, and my dart bounced away to skitter over the ground like a snake.

  And I had waited too long. I could not evade Daiaukka’s lance—it caught me in the side, and I could feel it ripping me open, burning its way through. I twisted away, and the shaft broke off. I fell to the ground, the impact a sickening shudder, a huge tear in my belly and the point still buried under my ribs.

  “He has killed me,” I thought. For a moment I could not get to my feet—my legs would not work. I could feel the blood oozing out between my fingers as I tried to hold myself together. “I am a dead man, even if he leaves the field without a backward look.”

  Somehow I made it to my knees. Then one foot, then another. I would not die like a slave—where was my javelin?

  Twenty paces to my left. It might as well have been in another country. How could I take half so many steps before I bled to death, or Daiaukka trampled me down like a frog in the road?

  Daiaukka wheeled around and stopped. For a moment he merely watched, perhaps waiting for me to collapse and die on my own. He had triumphed—he knew it and I knew it. I would die and he would live. I could not see his face at that distance, but I knew what was in his heart.

  And Ghost—what of Ghost? He cantered about for a moment, seeming not to know what to do now. He snorted loudly. I called, but he paid no heed. Even my horse knew I was a dead man.

  I saw Daiaukka take the sword from his belt. The blade flashed in the sun as he waved it over his head, for he wished me to know what was coming.

  No—I would not merely stand and wait for the stroke to fall. I was a king’s son. I would not shame my father, the Lord Ashur, and the soldiers who had followed me to this place, not by allowing myself to be cut down like a shock of barley. Twenty paces was not too far if they measured the distance to an honorable and manly death.

  My guts felt as if they were stuffed with burning coals, and my knees shook. Yet I could move. I took a step, then another, then another. Daiaukka waited—it seemed to amuse him.

  And then he slapped the great black stallion on the haunch with the flat of his sword blade, and man and beast jolted forward. No more than a trot at first, but slowly gathering speed—they bore down on me. This was the moment.

  I took another step, and another. I had no chance. I was already dead. What good . . ?

  And then Ghost sprang into life, his great hoofs striking out, tearing at the ground. His battle was not over. He was not so easily defeated.

  I cannot describe the sound he made—never have I heard a horse make such a sound, like the snarling of a great cat. His war cry made the air tremble as he closed on the black stallion.

  With a mighty leap that almost carried him onto the horses back, he struck out with his hoofs. His neck was stretched straight and his great square teeth exposed, as if he meant to tear his enemy to pieces. Once more both horses went down, and Daiaukka crashed to the ground, rolling over and over.

  I did not waste my opportunity. I would die, but not alone. I paced off the remaining distance at a painful, jerky trot, as fast as I could bear. I picked up the javelin. It was in my hand—I was a man once more.

  Could I throw it? I did not know. The
whole left side of my body throbbed with pain, and I felt ready to collapse. But I would try to throw. I had to try.

  Daiaukka started to climb to his feet. He was stunned—I think he had forgotten all about me. He looked about, as if trying to remember what had happened. He turned to look at me.

  It was the last chance I would ever have. Willing myself to forget my pain, I coiled and threw. Daiaukka could see, but seemed not to understand. Together we watched the javelin as it arched through the air.

  He might as well have been struck by lightning. He could not have avoided it, and it fell upon him with seemingly as great a shock. The point entered his chest, just under the collarbone, and shot straight through until half its length was buried in his body. I would have known the moment of impact with my eyes shut, by the great cry that went up from the Medes. Daiaukka never made a sound.

  He collapsed. He did not stagger and fall like another man—he simply went limp and crumpled.

  I had all the time I wanted now. I walked toward him, slowly, for it was not in my power to do better. I drew my sword.

  But there was no reason. He was lying on the ground, seemingly unable to move. I knelt beside him.

  The horses, not twenty paces away, were kicking dust into the air and neighing savagely, oblivious to us. If someone did not part them soon, one would kill the other.

  But the quiet of mortality had already come to Daiaukka. He was alive, but only by a little, and lying on his side. He looked into my face and his mouth shaped a word, but there was no sound. His tongue came out to moisten his lips and he tried again.

  “Do you think. . ?” His eyes closed. For a moment I thought he was dead, but at last they opened again. “Do you think it will end now?”

  Already I could hear the slap, slap, slap of sandaled feet as the crowds who had come as witnesses surged forward, eager to be present for even the last moments of a man’s life. It was the end of privacy. In an instant, living and dead, we would belong to our eager nations.

  “It will never end,” I said.

  He smiled, and then became still. Now, at last, he was dead.

  . . . . .

  Of what remained of that day, of the next, and of many which were to follow, I remember very little, I hovered close to death and the black bird shadowed my soul with her wings.

  “By the sixty great gods, what a gash! You can look straight through and see his liver!”

  I recall hearing someone say that as they carried me from the field on a blanket, but nothing more. Daiaukka’s face in death, a few sentences—everything else is missing, even the pain.

  So what I know of that time, while my life seemed as fragile as a spiders web in the wind, I know it only as it was told me after: of the rumors which swept the camp, even as they carried me back to my tent; of the loud voices among my soldiers, demanding vengeance against the Medes; of the terrible wind, howling like a madwoman, which blew all that night and into the next until the ground was scoured clean where Daiaukka and I had squandered each other’s blood—this was taken by both sides as a terrible omen—of these things I knew nothing. For I was not there but in some other place entirely.

  As a check on the Medes during this troubled season—for who can tell what desperate and defeated men will think to do if they suspect confusion among their enemies?—the officers I had left in command decided to take the boy Khshathrita as a hostage. It was a reasonable precaution, for after his father’s death the heir was the one remaining focus of power among the tribes of the Zagros. Without him they were not a nation, and they knew it. So they would sit quietly and wait, while their shah-ye-shah’s son rested by the campfires of his enemies.

  My soldiers treated the boy kindly, for the men of Ashur have a great fondness for the young, yet it must have been a fearful ordeal for him. He was, after all, only a child and surrounded by those whom he had been taught to believe monsters of cruelty, and he could not know what fate would befall him were I to die—an event which must have seemed as certain and imminent as the next sunset. But for all this he behaved with the calm dignity of a man, and one who is of the seed of kings. It would not have shamed his father to see him, for Daiaukka lived again in his son.

  Once, when for a few minutes the mist cleared from my brain. I opened my eyes to find the boy sitting on the floor beside my cot, his head resting on his hands as if his vigil had been a long one. It seemed odd that he should be there, the son of my slain enemy, but this curious turn did not trouble me. I merely assumed that I must be dreaming. I had had many and far odder dreams in my troubled, deathlike sleep, so what was the presence of an inoffensive boy sitting at my bedside? Perhaps, if this was a dream, he was a messenger from the gods and would reveal if at last I had met my simtu—a matter concerning which, in my weakened condition, I had only the mildest curiosity. So I took this visit calmly enough.

  “Will you live or die, my Lord Tiglath?” he asked, his voice low, as if it were a private business between only the two of us.

  “I know not,” I answered. “Have I been a long time deciding?”

  He held up three fingers.

  “This many days, my lord. When will you know?”

  “No sooner than you yourself, boy.”

  I closed my eyes and drifted back to that twilight sleep that seemed to enclose me like the waters of a bottomless sea.

  Later—how much later I could not even have guessed—I woke again and managed to swallow a few sips of beer. The boy was nowhere about.

  That was all I remembered until at last, after what my dreams had made into a long and difficult journey through a land filled with monsters, the Lady Ereshkigal was pleased to open her hand and release me.

  “Ah, so it seems you will yet live!”

  It was Tabiti, squatting like a laundrywoman at the head of my cot. I had to twist my eyes around to see him, and the effort made them throb in their sockets. The wound in my side felt like a nest of scorpions and I seemed to be bathed in sweat.

  “Something to drink,” I whispered thickly. “Something. . .”

  The cup was at my lips before I could finish. It was not beer this time but wine mixed with water. Nothing will ever taste so good again as did those first few sips. Their coolness ran straight through my veins, as if they had been empty until that moment.

  “What is this. . ?”

  I reached down to feel what made my side pain me so. I had forgotten all about Daiaukka and his lance until the sharp sting of a fresh wound reminded me. Yes—then I remembered everything.

  “He cut a hole in you wide enough to reach inside and pull your bowels out by the coil, brother. They have sewn you closed now, but it was a messy business and there was much blood poured onto the earth. The wound turned putrid, and you have been many days delirious with fever, but it is broken now.”

  “How many days?”

  “Daiaukka has been feeding the crows now for ten days. Until this morning, we thought you would be another course in the banquet. It was a close thing.”

  “My horse—what of Ghost?”

  “A bit torn, but alive and well.” Tabiti laughed softly. “Did you know that he killed the big black? He got him down and kicked in his ribs like the walls of a chicken house. He is a fine animal, that horse of yours. Let me have first chance if you decide to sell him.”

  “I will never sell him. He saved my life.”

  “I know he did—he and that sedu of yours. I do not think you are meant to die for a long time, brother.”

  He leaned a little closer, like a man with a secret.

  “For some days now their sorcerers have been telling the Medes that you would recover. They say that Daiaukka was a fool to do battle with one who cannot die, and no one contradicts them. It is a marvelous thing.”

  He said no more, for he saw that his words pressed in on me. Instead, he gave me the wine to taste again—perhaps there was something more mixed in with it than water, for soon I fell asleep again, a true sleep this time. It lasted for three or four h
ours and at its end I felt stronger.

  It seemed that, yet again, and for some purpose of their own, the gods had spared me.

  In the days which followed I had no visitors except Tabiti, the boy Khshathrita, and, once or twice, Lushakin. Command of the northern army was in his hands, and he did not trouble me with its concerns. A month passed before I was called upon to remember that I was rab shaqe. I had first to remember that I was alive.

  The end of that month saw the arrival of perhaps the last person I might have expected to find in the wilderness of Media, for one morning, as a spoonful at a time I was fed the breakfast of barley gruel that was deemed to be the only food my poor punctured guts could tolerate, I heard someone outside my tent talking to the guard, begging to be admitted.

  Suddenly the voice was a bellow, swearing ferociously—and in Greek! There was the sound of a scuffle, and the flap came springing open, letting in the bright sun and my friend and servant Kephalos.

  “Master, may the gods of the west, the lords of all true magic, be praised that I find you alive!” he said as, with great difficulty, for he was as fat as ever, he knelt by the cot and kissed my arm, weeping like a woman. His clothes and beard were dusty, and he smelled of the sweat of many days, yet there was no one the sight of whom could have been more welcome to my eyes.

  “They told me five days ago, in a Cimmerian village near Heshir, that you still breathed, but I hardly dared to believe it could be true. I came as soon as the message rider reached Amat, Dread Lord—I packed my medicine box and came. May Apollo the Mouse God receive homage forever that he has spared you!”

  He could speak no more, for his feelings got the better of him and tears choked his voice. I wept too, touched by this display of love and loyalty. We wept together. It was a most affecting scene and did us both good.

  An hour later, quite calm, a cup of wine in his hand, my slave narrated to me the history of his journey.

  “As doubtless you can imagine, the news of your victory in battle and the defeat and death of the Median king was occasion for much joy throughout the whole city of Amat. Some dreamed of glory, some of the end of war and danger and the campaign tax, and the harlots and shopkeepers dreamed of soldiers’ booty—it went almost as a thing unnoticed that you, Dread Lord, had suffered a grievous wound and even were reported in many quarters to be dead already, but thus unsteady are the affections of men.