The Assyrian

by Nicholas Guild

  “I went to the rab abru, that son of a brothel keeper Marduk Pashir—you did a foolish thing to leave him in command of the garrison, master, for the wicked little man hates you and plots with your brother the marsarru behind your back—and I asked, with that humility of bearing which is only proper in a slave, if I might be allowed an escort for the journey hither, and I found—you will hardly credit it—that I was refused!

  “‘I cannot spare the men,’ he told me, with scant courtesy. ‘I have been left shorthanded as things are and cannot spare ten or even five able bodied soldiers to go chasing off into the Zagros on some errand for a fat Ionian slave.’

  “‘I am physician to the rab shaqe,’ was my answer. ‘He lies gravely wounded and in peril of his life. I must have an escort that I may attend upon him.’

  “‘From what I hear, he is as good as dead even now. How long will it take you to reach his camp, do you think? Twenty days—provided your throat is not cut along the way. Save yourself the trouble, Physician. He will be bait for crows long before you ever see the outside of his tent.’”

  Kephalos drew himself up, filling his chest with air, and thrust out his beard as if daring someone to pull it.

  “You may imagine, Lord, what I told him then,” he said.

  “No, I cannot even begin to imagine—you must enlighten me.”

  His eyes narrowed for an instant, as if unsure whether I was perhaps not mocking at him, but them, apparently having decided that, one way or the other, he did not care, he extended his hand in the gesture of a king giving judgment.

  “‘And if he should not die—what then?’ I asked him. ‘Or if he should die a month from now through want of proper attention? I might remind you, Marduk Pashir, that the Lord Esarhaddon is not yet king in the Land of Ashur, and that the Lord Sennacherib loves his son and will not be behindhand in punishing any he might suspect of conniving in his death. I leave for the Zagros at sunrise, whether or not you see fit to provide an escort, and if I do not return you may trust that letters reporting this conversation will find their way to Nineveh!’

  “And you may trust, master, that the escort was waiting outside my door in the morning.”

  This I believe was true, for Marduk Pashir, whom I knew to be one of my brother’s creatures and hence did not care to have at my back in battle, was not the man to risk a king’s wrath.

  However, what Kephalos narrated of his subsequent adventures was too full of obvious lies to credit. During every hour of the rest of his journey, so he seemed intent upon convincing me, he was beset by marauding bandits and engaged in fierce skirmishes with the remnants of Daiaukka’s forces, along with every other variety of nonsense he could think of. And each story, more fantastic than the last, displayed his courage and cunning in much the same way an old soldier might show you his battle scars. A month later, when I inquired of one of the soldiers who had made up his escort, I was assured that nothing had happened, that the journey had been without incident. I had known as much even as, that first day, I lay on my cot and listened.

  Yet Kephalos had come. He had made a journey involving hardship and discomfort and, if not actual danger, certainly the threat of it, and all for my sake. Thus I listened to his lies without smiling, for Kephalos, although dishonest in all other things, was my true friend.

  And I believe it possible that he did save my life, for I was still not free from attacks of fever and these Kephalos treated with such success that I never relapsed into the deliriums which had so threatened me during the first days after my wounding.

  Besides, it was a comfort to have him by. He brought with him news of my mother and all the gossip of Nineveh, and I could speak freely in front of him, for he knew each of my secrets.

  It was Kephalos who decided that I was not fit to attempt returning to Amat that summer, and he persuaded me to winter with the garrison at Zakruti. And so by the middle of Tisri—for the snows fall early in those mountains—I was laid out on a cart filled with straw and carried thither. It was a journey of only ten or fifteen beru, but it took three days. And when at last we arrived, and I slept within mud walls for the first time in four months, I was weary unto death.

  The boy Khshathrita remained with us as a hostage throughout all that late autumn and winter, and between us there slowly developed a strange intimacy. It pleased him to come into my room of an hour and sit on a stool beside my bed for a little talk. He seemed to bear me no ill will for his father’s death and, beyond this, to imagine that among his captors I alone, like himself the seed of a king and therefore summoned to greatness, truly understood his position. He expected much of himself, and it is no falsehood to say that he acquitted himself like a man, but, after all, he was still but a child. It did not require the powers of a soothsayer to divine that Daiaukka’s son and heir was lonely.

  Of his father, whom he held in vast admiration, he spoke much. Also, and with a child’s enthusiasm, he described to me the customs and religion of the Medes, whom he regarded as the most virtuous of races. And in his innocence he told me many things about Daiaukka’s plans for this new nation, the Aryan, the Beloved of the Ahura, destined to sweep before them the peoples of the world. It was from Khshathrita that I learned of the few years’ grace which that dangerous man had been pleased to grant to the Land of Ashur.

  “My father spoke of you much the night before his death,” the boy told me. “He said that if it was not the Ahura’s design to spare his life, then it would only mean that the Lord Tiglath, though an unbeliever, lived under the god’s protection—this sedu of which your soldiers speak. He told me that I was to abide in peace with you and never to lead the nation against your king so long as you stood at his right hand. To this he bound me by oath. He did not feel I would be greatly hindered therein, for he said you will fall from favor in the reign of your brother.”

  “Perhaps then, my young friend, you are more to be feared even than was your father.” I smiled, speaking in jest, for he was so very serious a child. “Perhaps then I should have you killed lest in later days you bring harm to the Land of Ashur.”

  “No—this would not be wise,” he said, shaking his head. It was as if he had thought long and deeply on all contingencies. “I too have brothers, with whom I live on terms of affection. If I die, one of them will certainly succeed me, and they are bound by no oath.”

  “Thus it seems I must take what I can get. But can you say truly that it is in your power to enforce this peace upon the tribes?”

  “Oh yes, for I am the shah now. It will yet be a few years before I am able to make my will felt, but it will be longer before any among the Aryan have much yearning for war.”

  Green though his years were, the boy had wisdom. He had learned already that understanding of men and power for which there is no word in my native tongue but which the Greeks call “politics.”

  We became very good friends, Khshathrita and I. When at last I was able to leave my bed and, finally, walk about a bit with the aid of a stick, we spent much time together exploring the environs of Zakruti, which otherwise was as forsaken a place as I ever hope to see. I grew quite fond of him, envying Daiaukka so fine a son, and I hoped it might never prove necessary to have him put to death, for it would afflict me to give the order.

  Gradually the time of my convalescence passed. Soon I was able to attend to correspondence for a few hours every afternoon and to conduct business. There was a hard frost the day I assumed full command of the garrison. I felt the cold bitterly, for it seemed to settle in my wounds—there has not been a winter since when that old scar has not troubled me—but I was healed and gaining strength. By the time the snow began to trickle over the rocks, I was able to sit a horse once again and could even go hunting.

  But even before I was able to do much more than sit in the doorway of my house with a blanket over my knees, I was receiving delegations from the tribes, even from those who had taken no part in the fighting, come to Zakruti to offer their subjection. They piled the ground with t
reasure and bowed low, for it appeared that by the bare act of surviving Daiaukka’s lance I had attained something like the status of a god, an evil spirit perhaps, but one best placated with offerings and homage. As soon as they left me, of course, they went straight to the boy Khshathrita and pledged their allegiance to him—he told me of this himself and, of course, I was having him watched—but I could not blame them for this. I was the army of Ashur within the Zagros Mountains and my power of life and death was absolute. But the boy was their shah and they gave their hearts to him.

  When the spring came, and with it the time approached for me to return to Amat, a delegation of the parsua arrived to collect Khshathrita. I gave a banquet, at which these mountain chiefs sat about uncomfortably, unsure how to behave in the presence both of their conqueror and their sworn lord, and the next morning, on what turned out to be his tenth birthday, the shah-ye-shah and I parted as friends.

  It was not many days after this that I ordered the garrison at Zakruti to prepare for the march home. We had stayed in these eastern lands long enough.

  It was neither an eventful journey nor a quick one. Except in time of war, an army of three thousand men moves at a leisurely pace, and I was not yet so recovered that I did not find so many hours of riding a strain. Kephalos complained most bitterly that he had not been raised up to be a caravan driver, and finally he developed such sores on the insides of his thighs that he had to ride in a wagon. We reached Amat in just a few days under one month.

  Many clay tablets from Nineveh were waiting on my desk. The first one I read was from the Lord Sennacherib:

  “You will be pleased to learn that the Lady Esharhamat has whelped another son, one whom, this time, the Lords of Decision look upon with favor. So your brother the Lord Donkey at last has an heir, although he does not seem greatly pleased. I will say nothing, except that the Lady Esharhamat had honored me with her confidence and that I have caused the child to be given the name Ashurbanipal.”

  So the child of which Esharhamat had told me was born—our child. And the king knew.

  Ashurbanipal. “Ashur has given a son as heir”—that was what the name meant. I would not be surprised if Esarhaddon was displeased.

  But I was pleased. My son, who would one day be king of the world. Our son, Esharhamat’s and mine.

  Chapter 32

  The next summer and autumn were quiet and, if not happy, then at least contented. Each day had its business, but the inner history of my life was largely a blank. My mother returned to Amat and to her place as mistress of the shaknu’s palace, and she, Kephalos, and my friends within the garrison were almost my only society. Once in a while some visitor would arrive, but these interruptions were brief. I preferred it thus. I did not return to Nineveh. From time to time rumors would reach us of one intrigue or another, but at such a distance—and in the blindness of my heart—I found it easy to ignore them. I did my work and enjoyed my little pleasures, and the world, for its part, left me largely to myself.

  All this was to change, abruptly and forever, on the first day of the month of Sebat, with the arrival of a dispatch rider from the palace garrison commander in Nineveh.

  He came late at night—his horse, I heard the next morning, dropped dead from exhaustion as soon as it was inside the fortress walls—and his message, he told the watch officer, could not wait. I was awakened by a frightened housemaid and gave orders that I would receive our visitor in the palace audience chamber.

  He was a rab kisir, a young man, no doubt the son of some great family whose people had had him appointed to the quradu as the first step in a distinguished career. He was handsome, personable, and graceful in his movements, and doubtless he had never been near a real battle. That, however, was probably no fault of his.

  “Prince, my message is for yourself alone,” he said, glancing with suspicion at the officers who had accompanied me to the meeting. He had already been searched and relieved of his sword, so I was in no danger of assassination. I dismissed my officers, with a caution that they should remain within call.

  “Why had he called me ‘Prince’?” I found myself wondering. It was a breach of military etiquette not to have addressed me by my army rank.

  As soon as we were alone he fell to one knee, as he might have in the presence of the king.

  “The Lord Sennacherib is dead,” he announced, not lifting his eyes from the floor. Yes, of course.

  “When?”

  “These ten days ago.”

  “Why did you wait? A good horseman can make the ride from Nineveh in five days.”

  “There were disturbances in the city. The garrison commander thought it best. . .”

  “To let the situation clarify first? I see. Then the king is dead and there is a ‘situation’.” I struggled to keep my face an impassive mask, but what did I really feel? Shock, yes—but what else? I did not know.

  “There was no warning? Did my father meet with some accident?”

  I knew the answer even as he raised his head to speak. I could see it in his face.

  “My Lord. . .”

  “Yes—speak!”

  “The lord king was murdered.”

  He regained his feet. We stood facing one another for a long moment, both silenced by the awful knowledge that someone—for now, at least, some man with neither face nor name—had dared to raise his hand against the Chosen One of Ashur. The fact itself, the sheer incomprehensibility of it, left room for nothing else. I knew neither grief nor fear nor anger. These emotions were too narrow to hold me, no less than if the earth had rent itself asunder at my very feet.

  “How did it happen?” I asked finally, surprised at the sound of my own voice. “Where. . ? How did it happen?”

  “He was at worship in the house of Shamash. Someone—it is not certain who—took one of the idols of the lesser gods and used it to club him to death.”

  It was as in my dream, I thought. The future which had been revealed to me upon Ashur’s holy mountain—and which I had not understood. My father, crushed beneath the god’s wooden hand.

  “Unholy act. . .” It was all I could find words for. What manner of man stood in so little fear of heaven that he could do such a thing? “Unholy, wicked deed. . . Who? If you know, tell me—quick!”

  I had the messenger by the collar of his tunic and was shaking him as a dog shakes a rat.

  “Who, damn you? Speak!”

  “My Lord Prince, I know not. I. . . It is not certain. . .”

  Yes, of course he knew. I released my grip on him and let the wrath in my liver quiet.

  “Who?” I repeated, more calmly now.

  “The belief is that your royal brothers Arad Malik and Nabusharusur. . .”

  Yes, of course. What an idiot I was not to have guessed. Who else could it have been except Arad Malik, too stupid to see the enormity of the crime, and clever, pitiless Nabusharusur, who feared neither god nor man? Naturally, those two—one could only wonder what had taken them so long to act.

  “And there have been disturbances?”

  “Yes, Prince. The city is in open insurrection.” He nodded quickly, as if confirming his own words. “The garrison commander begs to know your intentions.”

  “My intentions?”

  What was the man talking about? I was nearly thirty beru away, and over rough terrain. It would take me a week to reach Nineveh with an army—what could my intentions possibly matter?

  But perhaps I was merely being obtuse. The embarrassed look that came into the rab kisir’s eyes implied as much.

  “Prince, perhaps. . .” He broke off, taking a deep breath. One might have imagined he was preparing himself for judgment. “The fact is, Arad Malik is threatening to proclaim himself king. He may already have done so by now, and if the rebellion is raised in his name. . . Prince, how can you imagine that anyone really wants Arad Malik on the throne of Ashur?”

  My intentions. While the rab kisir waited for his question to be answered, I considered, for the first time, the im
portance that must now be attached to my intentions.

  Because, of course, the garrison commander was no friend to the marsarru—why had it only just occurred to me that Esarhaddon was now the king?—and he was asking me to declare myself. The garrison, it was implied, was remaining neutral, moving neither to support the insurrection nor to suppress it, until he heard from me.

  So he had sent this elegant young man, who was too wily to put the thing into so many words but was nonetheless waiting to know if I was prepared to accept the army’s support and declare myself king.

  I was being invited to lead the rebellion against Esarhaddon.

  And, of course, the rab kisir was still waiting for an answer to his question.

  “You may tell the garrison commander,” I began, weighing each word as if many lives might hang on it, which was no less than the case, “you may tell him that my intentions are to write a letter of condolence to the lord marsarru—pardon me, to the king—in which I will pledge to him all the obedient loyalty which he has a right to expect from a subject and a member of his own family.”

  “Then you will not. . ?”

  “No, I will not.” I fixed him with a stare that implied astonishment that he could even wonder. “But I will do this—I will advise the garrison commander that he would do well to bring the city of Nineveh to good order and to arrest the traitors Arad Malik and Nabusharusur. Otherwise, the Lord Esarhaddon might draw unfortunate conclusions.”

  “I see. Have you no other message, Prince?”

  “None.”

  At the word he drew himself to attention and made his salute. Then he turned on his heel and left my presence. What finally became of him I know not, for I never saw him again.