The Assyrian

by Nicholas Guild

  “My recent adventures have hardened me to campaigning, Dread Lord, and, besides, if you are bent upon committing this folly I cannot leave you bereft of my advice.”

  He grinned rather halfheartedly, and looked about him like a man saying goodbye to the world. At this moment he was in one of the supply wagons, salving his terror with a wine jug. I would probably be the instrument of his death, yet never had any servant deserved better at the hands of his master.

  It was a bitterly cold morning. The ground was encrusted with snow. It was not a good season for campaigning, but in the minds of common soldiers there is no season good for campaigning. And these men were going off to fight not barbarians who lived in tents but their own brothers—I could see it in their faces, that desperation which is born of civil war.

  “It is a wicked day which brings this parting,” my mother said, standing beside me wrapped in a fur lined cloak. “I fear you do an evil thing, Lathikadas.”

  “To fight for Esarhaddon? Yes, Merope, it is an evil thing, but in this affair I do evil no matter what I do, and never more than if I do nothing.”

  “Can there be no going back?”

  There were tears in my mother’s eyes as she turned to me with this question to which she knew the answer as well as I. I said nothing, but merely folded her in my arms. Her sobbing was bitter and reminded me of the day when, as a child, I had left the house of women for the last time to stand before the king’s judgment. Was it so different now?

  “You have been a great man in the Land of Ashur,” she said at last. “Your god has fulfilled his pledge. I despair of the days to come.”

  “Merope, I have gone to war many times before this. Try to be at peace in your mind.”

  “I cannot be at peace, for there is that inside me which says my eyes will never again be filled with the sight of you.”

  What was there to say when I knew that within the month my brother Esarhaddon might have my head on the point of his spear? The maxxu’s words whispered again in my brain, that I had come to the season of partings. Could I tell her that? Hardly that. I could do nothing, except be silent.

  I could not even tell her to flee if I should be killed, for she had said already she would not.

  “If you die, why should I care what becomes of me?” she had asked.

  But perhaps Esarhaddon’s anger would not reach so low as my mother. That hope would have to be enough.

  I kissed her one final time and pulled myself from her embrace. Now I belonged not to her or even to myself, but to the god and a brother who hated me.

  “Goodbye,” I said.

  Until I die my mind will carry the image of her face as she heard me.

  I mounted Ghost and rode out through the fortress gates, the northern army, reluctantly, at my back. The crowds that had gathered along the road to see us off were silent. My mother was right—it was a wicked day.

  And among the crowds I saw one face, for an instant only, before it disappeared. The brown face of an old man with eyes dead to the sun’s light. Yet, in that moment, lost almost before I knew it had come, he seemed to smile, mocking me because I could not see with his eyes.

  Chapter 33

  At another season of the year, the area around Khanirabbat might have been pleasing enough, but in winter it was a picture of ugliness and desolation. The town itself was, of course, empty—and everywhere about, over the low hills and the plain that stretched down to the Euphrates, the grass was withered and yellow and the bare limbs of the few sparse trees trembled in the wind with the palsied motion of an old woman’s fingers. The wind was almost the only sound one heard, for even the crows seemed to have departed.

  Esarhaddon had established himself not three hours’ march from the rebel encampment, yet the terrain was such that the two factions could hardly even see the smoke from each other’s campfires. So the appearance of enemy patrols was an almost hourly occurrence and there had been several clashes even before I arrived, which was on the twenty-sixth day of Sebat.

  Almost the first news I heard was that the king was in a great fright because the night before the royal star of Marduk had appeared surrounded by a yellow ring. The astrologers offered differing interpretations, but they agreed that this was an evil omen for the Land of Ashur—a safe enough conclusion on the eve of such a calamitous war.

  I say “almost” the first news, because the first was that my brother would on no account receive me. I was to establish the northern army as a separate wing to Esarhaddon’s left—the unlucky side—and to await his commands.

  So be it. My tent was raised on a patch of rising ground, and my standard set before the entrance, but I did not venture out among the soldiers. I posted guards that none might be allowed admittance to me except Esarhaddon’s messenger. I took my meals alone. I stayed apart, and my mind hatched out black thoughts like a serpent’s eggs left to warm in the sun.

  At last the king’s herald came, but there were no silver ribbons tied to his staff of office—I was not even to be acknowledged as a member of the royal family. Behind him walked a fat little man with a sparse beard and the blank, protruding eyes of a frog. This, it seemed, was the Sha Nabushu who had presumed to send me orders in the king his master’s name.

  “You are relieved of your command over the northern army,” he told me. “You are to enjoy the freedom of the camp and shall retain your rank of rab shaqe—for the present—but you are forbidden to take any part in the coming battle, even as a common soldier. It is a victory which shall belong to the Lord Esarhaddon alone.”

  I said nothing.

  “Do you agree to this?” he asked, his voice challenging but also a trifle uncertain.

  “Is my agreement required? I am the king’s servant. It is for him to command and for me to obey.”

  Sha Nabushu’s mouth curled into a smile, almost as if he could not help himself.

  “Who is to assume command?” I asked.

  For a moment the little man hesitated—did he imagine Esarhaddon might intend to keep this a secret? But it is ever so. The servants of foolish and changeable masters are always afraid.

  “I have that honor,” he replied finally. Yes—perhaps it was not only my brother whom he feared. “You will inform your officers of the king’s orders and direct them to meet me here at the fifth hour after midday.”

  “They are not my officers now; and I am not in a position to give directions to anyone.”

  It seemed, for the moment, that we had reached an impasse. Sha Nabushu opened his mouth to speak and then, apparently, could not think of the words. I was delighted.

  “Yes, of course,” I said. “I will see to the matter.”

  My officers—mine no longer—were not pleased.

  “Who is this puppy?” Lushakin asked. “Has anyone ever heard of him? How are we to expect men to risk their lives under the command of such a one?”

  “The men will not serve. They recognize no authority except the rab shaqe’s. We shall have desertions.”

  “And we ourselves should be among the first to desert—this is an intolerable insult!”

  “It must be tolerated,” I said, as calmly as I could, for I was moved by their loyalty but must not show it. “It is the king’s will.”

  “What is your will, Rab Shaqe?”

  “That you meet with your new commander and obey such orders as proceed from the king’s authority. That whatever your feelings may be concerning this business, or whatever is to follow, you will keep them to yourselves and warn your troops to do the same, for it is an easy thing for a man to cut his own throat with his tongue.”

  “And what of you, Rab Shaqe?”

  “What of me? I should think my simtu, like every man’s, is written on the god’s tablet. Perhaps I shall learn soon enough what it is to be.”

  I parted from them then, taking each man’s hand, for from this hour I must be as the dead. How else were they to preserve their own lives?

  And then I left. I put a bridle on Ghost and w
ent for a ride into the surrounding hills. Even as I left the camp I was aware that there were two horsemen following me—I was not trusted out of my brother’s sight.

  The time of partings. Truly this was the time of partings and, as before, I had not seen it until it was upon me. The king my father, my mother, the army I loved as a man loves his wife, perhaps even my own life.

  And, of course, Esharhamat. I had lost her first, yet she it was who filled my heart, even now.

  I would never see her again. Now that he was king, Esarhaddon would wall her up in his house of women and I would never see her again. Never would she fill my eyes with her loveliness, as if I were blind or the light had gone out of the world. Then what else mattered, and what was there to fear in death?

  I did the god’s will, yet in my heart I cursed the god.

  Esharhamat, Esharhamat—the name itself had all the sweetness of life. To live was to remember, and to remember to know pain. No, I had no fear of death. And the power of the king my brother became like a shadow. Let him do his will.

  I stayed away from the encampment—it is hoped much to the vexation of my two attendants, who kept five or six hundred paces behind me but did not trouble to conceal themselves—until well after darkness had fallen and the soldiers were settled comfortably around their cooking fires. Then, when I could be sure my tent would be once more my own, I rode back. The soldiers I met greeted me easily enough. They knew nothing of my fall from favor and perhaps would not care if they did, for to such the king was almost as distant as the gods themselves.

  I ate a good dinner and kicked off my sandals to go to bed—it is wonderful how easy a man may be in his mind when he has resigned himself to death. I could wonder how Esarhaddon slept and I found I did not envy him.

  The additional seven thousand soldiers would not arrive from Amat for two or three more days, but already the next morning I had only to look about me to see that, as if by magic, the king’s forces had greatly increased in size. The stretch of open land between our encampment and that occupied by the main army was now filled in with makeshift tents and cooking fires. Perhaps as many as three thousand men had appeared, seemingly from nowhere. They were deserters from the rebels, come to make their peace with Esarhaddon while they still could.

  It was the thing reasonable men would do. For the past few days at least, their scouts must have given the rebel commanders notice that the northern army was drawing near, and our intention of siding with the king must have been obvious. The balance was then clearly tipped in Esarhaddon’s favor, and this, no matter how they tried, my traitor brothers could not have kept from those who had followed them into treason. And no sane man delights to throw his life away in a lost cause.

  The soldiers I saw that morning, camped like beggars at Esarhaddon’s door, were simply the first wave of deserters from Arad Malik’s cause. There would be more—unless I was most seriously mistaken, there would be many more.

  And Esarhaddon was not such a fool as to turn them away. He knew that an enemy, while it grows weaker when confronted by the corrupting hope of mercy, is only strengthened by desperation. Therefore, while they might never stand very high in their king’s good opinion, these deserters from the rebel cause would be allowed to live and to serve. Esarhaddon would curse and threaten and then forgive them—most of them—and they knew it. And because they knew it, Arad Malik’s army would quietly bleed to death before ever a sword was drawn against them.

  So each night the sentries waited for the muffled sounds of men creeping through the darkness, singly or in twos and threes, officers and foot soldiers and cavalrymen on their war horses, and each night these would be made to huddle beyond the camp’s earthworks while they waited, squatting apprehensively on the cold earth, for word of the Lord Esarhaddon’s clemency. All night they might wait, with nothing behind them but the certainty of ruin and nothing ahead but such of safety as could be purchased by embracing my brother’s knees and begging pardon, and finally in the gray light of morning, they would be admitted, given breakfast, and allowed to sleep wherever they could find a place.

  And they were grateful to Esarhaddon—even a dog is grateful to be allowed to live—but as I walked among them, seeing here and there a man whose face or even name was known to me, I saw always the same accusation in their beaten eyes: “Look at us, Prince Tiglath Ashur, favorite son of the Lord Sennacherib, your father who was lord of the world and true king in the Land of Ashur. Look at us, and see that to which we have been brought. Now we must bend our bodies before Esarhaddon—think what future faces us and the nation both. And for this we blame you, no one but you.”

  But at least these had a future. Some there were who came in the night and found only death, for the king’s mercy was not for everyone. My brother had a long memory, as not a few were discovering who had spoken too rashly in the days of the Lord Sennacherib.

  With other officers, I was called to witness the execution of one Zakir Nergal, who had been a rab abru in the Nineveh garrison and was a man of whom I knew no particular evil. Yet somehow he had offended against the king’s majesty and was to pay the price of being roasted in chains, a traditional punishment, honored by custom, but one I had never heard of being employed during my father’s lifetime. It did not promise to be a pretty spectacle.

  Kephalos accompanied me, declaring his interest to be of a medical character. I warned him, but he would come.

  “You need not concern yourself, master,” he said, smiling as if at a child’s fears, “for a physician is hardened to the sight of pain. I can assure you I have seen far worse things merely attending in my father’s consulting room in Naxos—there is no occasion to worry about me.”

  We took our places around the punishment site, nothing more than a piece of bare earth where a great fire of logs had been burning since yesterday evening—it being a cold morning, we were glad of the warmth, although probably Zakir Nergal would not have agreed—and waited for the king’s arrival. His chair was already there for him, and at last he came, glorious in his golden robes and his turban covered with gems. He sat down and looked about him, like the host at a banquet. If he saw me he gave no sign.

  It was the first time I had beheld my brother in two years and, since it seemed unlikely that we would meet many more times before he made up his mind what to do with me, I was curious to see the change that kingship had wrought in him. He did not give the impression of a man who knew any great pleasure in glory.

  Esarhaddon was even a little younger than I, yet already he wore that look of anxious doubt which I had seen so many times on our father’s face. He sat, resting his cheek on the palm of his hand, and all the gold and jewels which were meant to dazzle other men’s eyes could not disguise the uneasiness in his own. It would have been better if he had been allowed to live his life as a soldier, in accordance with the childhood ambition we had both shared, and I think he knew as much himself.

  The fire had by this time been reduced to a bed of coals, a span or so deep and covered with a skin of ash but glowing red as blood beneath it. This had been raked into a circle and over it was raised a huge iron tripod, its legs wide apart and coming together some fourteen or fifteen cubits above the ground. At this apex there was an iron ring through which ran a long copper chain with a hook at one end.

  Esarhaddon nodded. It was time for the entertainment to begin.

  A guard of four men brought in the prisoner, who was trailing copper chains from his hands and feet—he kept rubbing his wrists, as if the manacles chafed him. I had known Zakir Nergal for ten years, but had I not been told in advance who was to suffer that morning I doubt I would have recognized him. Such is the change that can come to a man when he has had a whole night in which to contemplate the approach of death—especially such a death as this. Three days ago he had been in glory, a man of high rank around the usurper Arad Malik, and now this.

  He looked dead already. His face was thin and haggard, and his eyes, wide, lifeless, and staring, suggested
he hardly understood what was about to happen to him. And yet he was afraid. He was half mad with terror—if the guards had released their grip on his arms, I am sure he would have collapsed.

  He said nothing. His mouth was open, but he was only panting for breath. He looked as if he had lost the power of speech.

  We all drew ourselves up to attention as Esarhaddon rose to speak. But the king my brother seemed also to have been struck dumb. He looked at the condemned man and his face flushed black with anger, but he could not find the words for this terrible wrath that held him as fast as the copper chains around Zakir Nergal’s wrists and ankles. At last he sat down again, defeated, and with a distracted wave of his hand signaled that the thing might now begin.

  All this time Zakir Nergal had been staring at the iron tripod, as if he could not comprehend what purpose it might be there to serve. He was marched almost to the foot of the coal bed and then forced down on his knees—it did not require much force. The chains that bound him were linked together behind his back, each end clamped to an iron ring. This ring in turn was hung on the hook at the end of the chain that ran up to the tripod’s apex. While Zakir Nergal knelt beside the burning coals, the guards began to pull on the chain so that he was hauled up like a well bucket.

  It was then that he found his voice. His screams of panic tortured the very air.

  They did not give Zakir Nergal a quick end. At first, as the chain pulled him up, he swung out over the bed of coals, but that was to be no more than a first taste. The guards quickly raised him until, dangling belly down, he was almost at the top of the tripod, where he could feel the fires heat only a little more sharply than we who watched.