The Assyrian

by Nicholas Guild

  Slowly, half a cubit at a time, they lowered him down toward the coals. He was so hoarse now that his screams could hardly be heard, but he was still very alive, twisting this way and that, trying to escape—to what, one wondered, when to be free of his chains was to fall straight to the burning death which awaited him? But a man will struggle to escape death, and when there is no escape he will struggle just the same.

  Slowly, he came closer and closer to the fire.

  He was still alive, still conscious, when the blisters began to rise on his face and neck—huge things, full of water and blood. Then his hair started to smoke, and then burn, and then his clothes. Yet he was still alive, still writhing in his chains, when the guards decided he was close enough and anchored their end of the chain to the ground with an iron pin.

  At last he was still. It seemed to take hours, but the spectacle of his agony lasted probably only a few minutes. A man will not die so quickly as that of burns alone, so perhaps he smothered in the thin, white smoke. He dangled there, perhaps the height of a man above the glowing coals, lifeless, burning like a joint of meat left unattended. When the flesh from one foot simply sloughed off, allowing the bone to slip through the manacle, I heard a choking sound beside me. I turned and saw Kephalos, his head between his knees, unburdening himself of breakfast.

  Esarhaddon did not stir. He watched, never letting his eyes look away from this horror he had commanded, his face a blank mask. It seemed he had learned that much about being a king—that he was not allowed to feel anything.

  When he was satisfied, he rose from his chair and dismissed us. No one was eager to stay. I took Kephalos back to my tent and gave him small sips of wine until he could stop sobbing. It had not been what he had expected.

  “By the gods,” he said at last, “you are a brutal race, you Assyrians.”

  I could only smile, although my heart was far from merry.

  “I suspect it is the same everywhere,” I said. “Esarhaddon is no worse than many. It is the justice of kings.”

  . . . . .

  Yet the justice of kings did not check the nightly pilgrimage of deserters from the rebel army. Each morning found them camped outside the earthworks in still greater numbers, and if Esarhaddon’s craving for revenge snatched off some few of these, others lived, and all were willing to try their luck.

  The executions continued. The iron tripod was in daily use, and there were times when the smell of roasted flesh hung over the camp like a pall. I do not fault Esarhaddon for this, since it was wise policy to offer examples of what the law demands from traitors. Hedged about by rebellion, he could not afford to seem weak. Yet I believe the deaths of many could have been traced not to wisdom but to fear. My brother was trying to kill his own doubts.

  On the last day of Sebat I received a message. A friend, one Sinqi Adad, who had recanted his allegiance to Arad Malik but had been denied clemency, was to swing over the coals the following morning—he had asked to see me.

  “We were boys together,” I told Kephalos. “He fought at Babylon with us—he was as much Esarhaddon’s friend as mine. It is a cruel thing that he should die like this.”

  “It is a cruel thing that anyone should die like this,” my servant replied, with admirable clarity of mind.

  “Yet I would prevent it if I could.”

  I looked at him questioningly, and Kephalos puckered his face with misgivings. At last he nodded.

  “It will be a bad thing should it be discovered,” he said, taking a small clay vial from his medicine bag. “Indeed, I had meant this for you, should you come to grief, but do as you think best, my foolish master.”

  I thanked him and left to pay my call.

  Sinqi Adad was sitting in the mud, chained to an iron peg. His hair and beard were matted with filth, and on his arms and back were long bruises from where the guards had beaten him with their spears. He looked exhausted and weak. It is not the custom to waste food on condemned men, but I had brought bread and wine with me and no one attempted to prevent me from carrying them into the stockade.

  I knelt beside him, holding out the loaf and the wine jar. With shaking hands he tore off a corner of the round, flat loaf, stuffed it into his mouth and washed it down with the wine. It was several minutes before he was very much disposed to conversation, but at last, when the urgency of his hunger had abated a little, he looked up at me with a sigh and nodded.

  “My thanks,” he said. “It doesn’t atone for your throwing in your lot with Esarhaddon, but I thank you just the same.”

  “I had always made it clear that I would honor the lawful succession. No man has a right to say I misled him.”

  “Perhaps not, but men will always believe what they wish.”

  He grinned. Under the circumstances, it was a remarkable act of courage.

  “Arad Malik, that gutter dog, you should have seen him when he received word that you had carried your army over to Esarhaddon’s side. If the gods honored such a man’s curses, what a death you would have died in that moment.”

  “Is it bad over there?’“ I asked, hardly knowing why.

  “Bad?” He raised his eyebrows as if wondering what I could mean. “It is as bad as this place, only bigger.”

  With a gesture of his chained arm, he took in the perimeter of the stockade.

  “When will Esarhaddon force the battle, do you think? Tomorrow? The next day? Everyone over there knows that there will be no escape if they are caught under that millstone. Already when I left, soldiers were cutting the throats of their officers. Yes, it is very bad.”

  “Then perhaps there will be no battle. Perhaps, when the moment comes, Esarhaddon will find his enemies on their knees.”

  “You were not always such a fool, Tiglath.” He tore off another corner of the bread and ate it with savage ferocity, all the while looking at me as if he would have liked to tear out my heart as well. There are some who would prefer an honorable death in battle to a lifetime of serving your brother and his Babylonian gods. I was weak, and stupid enough to believe I could buy my life with submission—you see what an error that was. And now I will die because once I told Esarhaddon to his face that he was not fit to be keeper of the king’s pigeons, let alone king. Others, braver than I, will not risk the same fate.”

  Suddenly he let the bread fall into the mud and covered his face with his hands. He was sobbing.

  “Oh, that it should all have come to this!” he said finally, brushing the tears away with his fingers—he smiled, for he was embarrassed. “And for the sake of Arad Malik. . . That is what rankles. Who would wish such a man king? He is no better than Esarhaddon, perhaps not even as good. But Nabusharusur—oh, how I curse the day I first listened to that gelded serpent.”

  “Why? What of him?” I shrugged my shoulders, understanding nothing. “What has Nabusharusur. . ?”

  Sinqi Adad, clasping my arm with both hands, shook it as if to rouse me from my slumbers.

  “He told everyone that Arad Malik was only holding your place, Tiglath. He made everyone believe that this rebellion was in your name!”

  At last he released my arm and let his hands fall into his lap. All the strength seemed to leave him as he acknowledged the enormity of his mistake.

  “Have I not said men will always believe what they wish?”

  I reached into my pocket of my tunic and took out the vial Kephalos had given to me, keeping it hidden so that only Sinqi Adad could see.

  “What is it?” he asked. I think at first he was only surprised.

  “Take this before they come for you tomorrow.”

  “What is it? Poison?”

  “No—I am not so brave as that. If I gave you poison to cheat the king of his spectacle, I would end by taking your place in the fire. No, it is not poison.”

  “Then what. .. ?”

  “It kills pain and fear. It makes death easy. You will die, but you will not suffer. Take it just before they come to fetch you, or its effects may not last long enough. And bury th
e empty vial in the mud when you have finished, or someone may guess.”

  He hid the vial under his ragged clothes and took my arm again.

  “You take a dreadful risk, Tiglath—may the gods bless you for it.”

  “Let it stand as my rebellion against Esarhaddon. I am sorry to have failed you, my friend.”

  “We have all failed each other, you no worse than the rest of us.”

  And thus we parted. I went back to my tent and hid my face from men. I did not go the next morning to see Sinqi Adad’s end, but I was told he died bravely.

  That night a messenger arrived from Arad Malik, asking terms for surrender. He came under a standard of truce, and Esarhaddon sent him back in a leather sack, cut by sword thrusts in a hundred places so that his corpse held hardly a drop of blood. Thus the rebels knew what they could expect.

  It was clear that the battle, if there was to be one, must be soon—Esarhaddon would have felt himself cheated if there were to be no battle, so plans were rushed ahead. I was not asked to the staff meetings, but even a prince in disgrace is not without his informants, so I knew that orders had been issued to take the field the next morning, which was to be the second day of the month of Adar. And, beyond this, I was given instructions by Sha Nabushu.

  “You will take no part,” he told me, yet again. “You may not fight, even as a common soldier. The glory of this day shall be entirely the king’s.”

  “So you keep saying. Yet do not fear—I will not make a shadow in the Lord Esarhaddon’s sunlight. I shall be present as an observer only, since that is a penance I feel I owe to those who will die tomorrow, but I am just as happy to stay clear of this fight. You see, I have little taste for the butcher’s trade.”

  It was not an answer which pleased, but there was no doubt that Sha Nabushu took my meaning. All the day long one could hear the sound of grindstones. Everyone knew of the wagonload of axes my brother had brought with him from Nineveh. Everyone could guess what they were for.

  That night I was invited to Lushakin’s tent, where the senior officers of the northern army, who tomorrow would fight under Sha Nabushu, were busy drinking themselves into a stupor. No one was afraid of losing—and, under such circumstances, it hardly occurs to a man that he might be killed, even by accident—but the mood was one of defeat.

  “My wife’s nephew was in the Nineveh garrison,” one of them said. “He has not turned up among the deserters—what am I to say to her when I return to Amat?”

  “We shall all have to wash our weapons and make purifying sacrifice. This kind of fighting stinks in the nostrils of the gods.”

  “They say that the Lord Esarhaddon plans to. . .”

  I raised my hand to indicate I would hear no insult offered to the king, and everyone fell silent. I think they, too, in their hearts, blamed me for bringing them to evil days. I stayed only a little longer and then left.

  And the next morning, in the gray light before dawn, my head was near split open by the blare of war trumpets.

  “Why was I not awakened?” I asked, stumbling out of my tent with my corselet of copper armor plates still only half buckled. “And where in the Lady Ishtar’s name is my horse?”

  The orderly shook his head, as if ashamed to own it was all his doing.

  “Taken away last night, Rab Shaqe” he said. They left you a brown mare in his place, but you won’t find much to praise about her. She’s the next thing to crow bait.”

  “My horse?” I squinted at him, hardly able to credit it. They took my horse?”

  “Yes, Rab Shaqe—you see, it is known by sight. . .”

  Yes, of course. Esarhaddon would have to assure himself that, even if I should decide to follow the battle from a distance, I would be as one invisible.

  “Then put a bridle on the mare.”

  She almost was the next thing to crow bait. There was nothing covering her shoulder bones but hide and I suspected she would probably drop dead if somehow I forced her to a gallop. Yet, since I had no intention of making such demands on her, she would do well enough. She was a match for her rider, for it seemed that neither of us was fit for war.

  I kept to a line of low hills, where I would be in no one’s way, staying somewhere between the main body of foot soldiers and the cavalry companies who rode ahead to seek the initial contacts with Arad Malik’s army. And as the god has made me his witness, I will describe the terrible truth of that day, which saw so monstrous and pointless a bloodletting. For the battle at Khanirabbat was far less a battle than a simple massacre.

  It was just an hour after sunrise when the first skirmishes took place. The rebel horsemen were waiting in ambush and staged a mass attack in Esarhaddon’s cavalry. The rebels charged in a body. Even half a beru away I could hear their war cries, and for a moment they seemed to have plunged deep enough into their enemy’s battle groups perhaps to scatter them and carry their point. Yet what can three hundred men do—and I wonder if they had so many—against three or four thousand? And how do bees overcome the solitary ferret that tries to raid their hive? The king’s horsemen swarmed over the rebels, engulfing them, leaving them no escape. Within half an hour the fight was over and the ground was strewn with horses and men, dead and dying, from both sides. Yet there could be no doubt about the winner. That was the last cavalry engagement of the day. The rebels had left their last rider a corpse upon the withered grass.

  Two hours later it was the infantry’s turn. The rebels had four or five and twenty battle squares, and these assembled in haste from companies whose strength had been bled away by the desertions of the last several days—not even three thousand men, not a fifth part of their original numbers, proposing to do battle against Esarhaddon’s army; perhaps by now seventy or eighty thousand strong.

  I will not speak of tactics, for what are tactics when one man stands against twenty or thirty? The rebels were simply crushed—there is no other word. They fought bravely, as men will who know they have no choice except in the manner of their deaths, but they fought without hope.

  By midday it was over, except for the killing. Esarhaddon’s chosen men went over the field with their axes, hacking to death any of the wounded they could find and taking trophies from the fallen—a wagon rode around to collect the heads. Those few who were unlucky or foolish enough to be taken alive were treated with even less respect. The officers were flayed on the spot; they were pegged down on the first convenient piece of cleared earth and had their skins ripped off like rabbits. I counted at least forty who met this fate, and there were doubtless many I did not see. The common soldiers were spared for the moment. They were rounded up and taken away, but they had not escaped. I heard later that they were marched straight from the battlefield to Calah, a distance of some fifty or sixty beru, a distance which fresh and provisioned men could not cross in less than ten days, and these were without food and water. There the few survivors of this ordeal were set to work as slave labor making the mud bricks for Esarhaddon’s new temple to the god Marduk. I wonder if one of them lived into the summer.

  This is what happened at Khanirabbat. As I honor the gods of my fathers, this is the truth of it.

  I saw all this from a distance, happy to be no nearer. Yet I reproached myself bitterly, for was I not the true author of this carnage? The omens had declared it the god’s will that Esarhaddon should be king in the Land of Ashur, and I, because I scrupled to defy the god for the sake of a woman’s love, had submitted. I do not pretend my motives were nobler—Esharhamat was all I thought of, and I gave her up, a sacrifice to my obedience.

  Yet was this the god’s will? His sons, the manhood of his nation, left for the feasting of birds and dogs? Had I truly obeyed, or had I so prided myself on the nobility of a gesture that I set all else at nothing? What had I done? I had left the decision of my own fate—of the fates of thousands, perhaps of the nation and the world beyond—to the entrails of a goat.

  Some impressions stay with a man for life. I will never forget the slaughter at Khanira
bbat. I will never forget my sense of guilt and shame. On that day the world became a different place for me. I lost forever the final illusion of youth—that I could hold myself free from sin.

  . . . . .

  The rest of the day, until the light failed utterly as the bloodstained landscape could at last cover itself in the decency of darkness, patrols crisscrossed the hills looking for fugitives from Esarhaddon’s revenge. I do not think that very many of these escaped, but one did cheat the slave gangs and the executioner’s knife. For my brother Nabusharusur did not die at Khanirabbat, although it was only the merest chance that I and no other found him.

  It was close to sunset. I had ridden about, almost at random, more than for any other reason because I could not stomach the prospect of returning to camp. I did not wish to look into the guilty faces of murderers whom I had known all my manhood. I wished to spare both them and myself that final humiliation. So I let the brown mare wander where she would, only taking care to keep away from the battlefield.

  I passed by a great pile of boulders, stacked on top of one another like onions on a dish. I stopped for a moment—for no reason I can remember—and took a sip from the water skin I carried by a cord over my shoulder. I was expecting nothing, looking for nothing, and suddenly I heard a sound. It was faint, but still recognizable. It was the scrape of metal against stone.

  I turned to look—I saw nothing. I listened again and heard nothing. There was nothing. I was sure of it.

  Then I looked again, into one of the deep crevices in that pile of rock, and there I saw, dimly but unmistakably, the outline of a human figure, crouched and hiding, still as death.

  I drew my sword. Then I looked about, saw that there was no one near, and put it back in its scabbard, feeling a fool.

  “Come out. There is nothing to fear from me.”

  The figure moved. Gradually, into the dusty twilight, came Nabusharusur. Whomever I had expected, it had not been he.

  He sat down at the mouth of the crevice, still holding a dagger in his right hand, and looked at me with an expression of mingled disgust and relief.