by H A CULLEY
When he finished speaking there was a stunned silence. Eventually Arishaka walked across and gripped the boy by his thin shoulders, looking him hard in the eye.
‘No-one, not even Hammurabi himself, could have done better. If you weren’t a Babylonian hero yesterday, you have certainly earned the right to be called one today.’ He looked at Dadanum who nodded.
‘You are no longer Dadanum’s aide.’ The boy looked crestfallen until the commander continued. ‘There is a vacancy as captain of a hundred in the camel archers and the post is yours if you want it.’
‘If I want it … I don’t know what to say. I had hoped for command of some sort one day, but a hundred camel archers …’ His voice faded away. Then he seemed to reach a decision. ‘I am truly honoured by your trust in me, my lord, but these boys have no-one to command them and look out for them, train them or discipline them. They are at everyone’s beck and call as servants and can only be used en masse in battle. They have so much more potential. I would prefer to lead them, if you will allow it.’
Arishaka was stunned. His immediate reaction was to sternly rebuke the boy for throwing the offer of command of the camel archers back in his face, but he had seen what this former pampered prince of Elam had achieved with just a hundred slingers. Perhaps his proposal to organise and train the boys properly had some merit. They might even start training with the bow then, instead of joining the massed ranks of spearmen when they became adults, they could join the archers instead; Marduk knows there were never enough good archers, either on foot or on camels.
He reached a decision but he needed to preserve his dignity. ‘There may be some merit in what you propose, but you will have to convince me. You need a good night’s sleep. Come back to me tomorrow afternoon and let me know what you propose in detail and I’ll think about it.’
Two days later the thousand boy slingers were called together to be addressed by Arishaka. They ranged in age from ten to sixteen and whispered excitedly amongst themselves, speculating about the reason for the assembly. The older boys confidently told the younger ones that they were about to be sent out on another raid. Arishaka frowned at the hubbub and remarked to his nephew that Narem-Suen was right about the boys needing discipline. He held up his hands and after his officers had yelled for silence a couple of times, the excited chatter died away and all eyes turned to the commander.
Arishaka regarded the mass of boys in their filthy robes for a minute or two from the elevation his horse gave him. Narem-Suen was correct. They needed someone to look after them and train them. He wondered why he hadn’t seen it before, then admitted to himself that he hadn’t bothered to think about them very much, if at all. Initially their recruitment had been designed more to rid the streets of Babylon and the other cities of orphans, urchins and thieves rather than produce an important fighting force.
‘I wanted to speak to you for two reasons. Firstly, I wanted to congratulate those of you who conducted the raid on the Elamite boats with such spectacular success a few nights ago. You can all take pride in their achievement.’ He had decided to add the last bit to bolster the morale of all the boys, not just the ones chosen for the raid.
‘In particular your leader, Narem-Suen, deserves to be singled out for particular praise.’
At this a great cheer went up. It was obvious that the boy would be a popular choice as their captain. Arishaka was just going to say that he had been appointed to command them but he decided it would do no harm to tell them the whole story.
‘In view of the success of his mission and the leadership he displayed, I had decided to offer him the captaincy of a hundred camel archers.’ The slingers’ disappointment was almost palpable. ‘But he turned down my offer.’
The boys were now completely silent. There was no fidgeting, not even the sound of breathing interrupted their rapt attention to every word he was saying.
‘Instead he asked for command of the slingers, and I have agreed. He is promoted to captain of a thousand and will be your leader from now on.’
For a second or two there was a stunned silence as his words sunk in, then it was broken by rapturous cheering. The thought passed through Arishaka’s mind that his soldiers had cheered him, but never like that. What had he done? These boys now belonged to Narem-Suen heart and soul; the more so because a former prince had preferred to command the lowest of the low rather than a unit of the elite camel archers. He just hoped that the transfer of the boy’s allegiance from Elam to Babylon was genuine and not a subterfuge. But then, if he was pretending loyalty he wouldn’t have made the attack on the boats such a spectacular success, even re-supplying the city in the process, would he?
Narem-Suen had decided against appearing on horseback to address his new command. Four servants ran forward with a tall wooden box onto which he clambered so he could be seen by those at the back. He had dressed in a simple linen kilt and, instead of a helmet sporting the red plumes of a commander of a thousand, he wore a plain red headband. In his hand he carried ten blue ribbons.
‘Men. For that is what you can regard yourself as from today onwards, my men.’ He waited for silence again. ‘If you think that I will be an easy commander, if you think I will court popularity with you, if you think that from today your life will be easier, you couldn’t be more wrong. Soon some of you will hate me, but you will respect me, I hope. You are now a filthy rabble of boys. I will turn you into a disciplined fighting machine. Nothing worthwhile is gained easily, so have no illusions that this can be done without pain; it can’t. But through pain you will gain pride, self-confidence and be able to fight as well as any unit in this army.‘ This time there was no cheering, just a wary silence.
‘We will start by making you look like soldiers. You can throw away the filthy rags you’re wearing. In the stores we raided two nights ago there was a large quantity of white linen, which we left behind. It has been collected and from it you will make kilts like the one I’m wearing, plus a spare so you can always parade in a clean one. And you will wash thoroughly in the river each morning. Those who aren’t clean enough will get even filthier digging latrines for the rest of us to use.’ This was greeted by grins and some laughter.
He held up the blue ribbons. ‘We will spend the rest of today organising ourselves into groups of ten who will cook and live together. Each group will have a mixture of ages so that the older boys can look after the younger ones. Ten groups will band together to form a hundred and each hundred will elect a captain. Each captain of a hundred will get to wear one of these blue headbands.’
He cast his eyes over the boys, trying to look as many as possible in the eye. ‘But these appointments of captains of a hundred are only temporary. I will need to depend on my captains to help me train and to discipline you. I therefore need the best of you for this. I will try to get to know you all over the next month and then the present elected captains will stand down and I will select the ten I want to help me. I know it will be difficult for those of you who are captains one minute and back in the ranks the next, so those who don’t make the grade will start training with the bow. Once you have mastered archery sufficiently you will start to train the older boys to use one in preparation for the day when you reach seventeen, or we think you must be about seventeen for those of you who don’t know how old you are. On that day you will be transferred to the foot archers.’
Excited muttering broke out at this news and Narem-Suen had to raise his hands to restore quiet. ‘Now sort yourselves out into groups of ten, remembering what I said about a spread of ages in each group.’
Two days later the re-organisation of the slingers was complete and they had all made themselves two simple kilts, those who knew how to sew helping the others. They were clean, or mostly so, and they could parade without chattering. The captains reported their hundreds present and Narem-Suen led them off on a run through the barren and rocky land behind the camp. The boys had left their slings behind but they were escorted by a hundred camel archers in case th
ey ran into an Elamite patrol or a foraging party. The latter were becoming more numerous since their supply line from the other side of the Tigris had been cut.
Fitness training was interspersed with target practice with slings and lessons on how to use their daggers to kill a man. Every day one hundred were sent out to kill what game they could find, which wasn’t much. Not only did this help to supplement the rations brought in by supply caravans, but it also deprived the Elamite and Eshnunnan foraging parties of the same.
Narem-Suen had soon learned that he had little aptitude with sling, a failure which seemed to endear him to his boys. Perhaps a paragon with no flaws would have been too difficult to stomach. Instead he used a recurve bow with which he was adept. This was more expensive, and more powerful, than the simple bows made from a single piece of wood used by most archers, though Arishaka had started to equip the camel archers with recurve bows.
On this particular day he had decided to accompany one of the units of a hundred on their hunting trip as he had some doubts about their captain and he wanted to see him in action. The slingers were spread out over half a mile, each keeping the boy on their left and right in sight as they advanced in line. Suddenly fifty Eshnunnan spearmen and archers appeared over the ridge two hundred yards in front of Narem-Suen. With his hundred so spread out, most would not be able to help as they were too far away from the enemy. It looked as if his luck had finally run out.
~#~
Arishaka and Abi-Maras had gone forward again to examine progress on the ramp. The ditch had been filled in and work had started to build the ramp on top of this foundation. So far it was only five feet above the level of the surrounding land.
‘It’s got another fifteen feet to go, and they can only work at night to minimise casualties.’
‘Even so, they must be losing hundreds for every foot higher it gets.’ Abi-Maras replied.
‘How much longer before we need to think about pulling the plug do you think?’
‘No more than ten days.’
‘It’s got to work, otherwise Mari and Yamhad will get here too late.’
‘Oh, it’ll work if your archers can keep the enemy off my back long enough for my men to make the breach.’
‘And the slingers, don’t forget them. I can’t believe the improvement that Narem-Suen has made to them in just three weeks.’
Both men were quiet for a few seconds and then Abi-Maras suddenly had a thought.
‘Why do you think the enemy haven’t attacked our camp? They must know where it is after all this time.’
‘Perhaps they are losing too many men constructing the ramp that they don’t want to risk losing more by attacking us, as long as we leave them alone, that is.’
‘Or perhaps they are planning a night attack. Perhaps it is time you found a new site?’
‘Perhaps. But we haven’t found one within striking distance of the city that is reasonably defensible. But you’re right. They’ve now brought a new fleet of boats up the Tigris to re-establish their supply lines and more troops have joined them. They may well now have enough men to attack us as well as continue with the siege.’
As soon as they had returned to camp, Abi-Maras, accompanied by Uktannu and an escort of twenty camel archers, went in search of a new defensive position. They hadn’t gone more than five miles before he came across a skirmish; fifty Eshnunnans were attacking a long line of Babylonian slingers. The enemy archers were concentrating their efforts on the centre of the extended line and, as he watched several boys went down, including one wearing a red headband: undoubtedly Narem-Suen. He vaguely heard Uktannu cry out ‘no’ as he gave the order to charge.
More and more boys were running in from the flanks now and their flying stones were causing quite a few casualties amongst the enemy. As soon as the camel archers arrived and started shooting arrows after arrow into the Eshnunnans, they threw down their weapons and surrendered. Of the fifty who had attacked the slingers, thirty one were dead or badly wounded. The boys took great delight in cutting the throats of the wounded and it was only the orders of Abi-Maras, backed up by the camel archers, that prevented the boys from exacting their revenge on the rest.
Uktannu had thrown himself off his horse to run to his brother whilst the skirmish was still in progress. He was relieved to find that Narem-Suen was only wounded. He had taken an arrow in his right thigh. His brother didn’t know what to do. In falling the youth had struck his head on a rock so he was mercifully unconscious. He went to pull the arrow out but a boy of about sixteen with a blue headband put his hand on his arm.
‘Best leave it there until the priests are ready to remove it; otherwise he could die from loss of blood.’
Uktannu nodded reluctantly and mounted his horse so that they could put his prostrate brother across in front of him. Leaving his master and the camel archers to sort out the prisoners, he walked his horse back to the camp escorted by the slingers. Once there the priests, some of whom were trained physicians and surgeons, took him into a large tent beside the temple and told the boys to go away. They didn’t, but sat down with Uktannu to wait.
Once the priest who was tending to Narem-Suen had broken the arrow and pulled it out of the wound, some of the other priests intoned payers and incantations whilst he cleaned the wound with beer and bound it with a bandage soaked in wine and olive oil. Luckily it had pierced his bare leg below his linen kilt and so no clothing or other debris had been driven into the wound.
As they finished the patient began to come round and they gave him a potion to ease the pain and make him sleep again. The physician-priest went outside the tent to talk to Uktannu.
‘He is very lucky, the wound is deep but it is clean and hasn’t hit anything major as far as I can tell. He needs to rest now. It will be at least two or three weeks before he can get out of bed and I would say another month or two after that before he can walk any distance unaided.’
All the other blue leaders of a hundred had gathered whilst Narem-Suen was being operated on and now they moved to one side to confer. The one who had accompanied Uktannu back to the camp came up to the boy when the group broke up.
‘If Arishaka permits it, we would like you to lead us until your brother is able to do so again.’
‘Me? I’m no leader; I’m much happier learning to be an engineer and an administrator. One of you should take over surely? I can’t even use a sling. And I’m not yet fourteen. Arishaka would never agree.’
‘The boys will accept you because you are Narem-Suen’s brother. It doesn’t matter that you can’t use a sling; neither can your brother. We need someone the boys will respect and someone to organise us. You yourself said you were good at administration. Part of the captain’s job is making sure we are fed and clothed. If Arishaka agrees, will you stand in for your brother until he is fit again?’
‘Yes, I would be proud to.’
‘What do you think?’ The army commander asked his senior officers that evening. They waited for Abi-Maras to speak first, as the person who knew the boy best.
‘He is conscientious and bright. He loves engineering problems and he will make a really good one in time. He is an able administrator and logistician too. His problem is that he lacks confidence in himself. Part of the reason for that is his elder brother. He hero worships Narem-Suen and thinks he is but a pale shadow of him. This could be just what he needs to develop his latent leadership qualities and to make him believe in himself. On the other hand, he could fall flat on his face and never recover his confidence.’
‘I agree that it’s a risk,’ Dadanum added, ‘but I think it’s one worth taking. When we left Babylon I questioned the wisdom of taking a load of boys with slings along to do a man’s job but, by Marduk, they have proved their worth. Hiritum may well have fallen by now if it wasn’t for their bravery. If you don’t appoint Uktannu to lead them, who else could do so?’
‘I suppose the options are one of the adult captains or Mutu-Namaha.’
Arishaka looked
at his nephew. ‘Would you want the job?’
‘Yes, I would, but I’m not sure how the slingers would regard me. They respect me because I’m the king’s son and I’m being trained for command, but I don’t think I could gain their devotion in the same way as Narem-Suen has, especially just for a couple of months. It would be different for his brother. They’ll see him as a younger version of their leader. Furthermore, I would want to put my own stamp on them, not keep things running as they are now until their proper commander returns.’ He grinned. ‘Now, if you were going to offer me captaincy of a hundred camel archers, it would be different.’
‘Well said, and I’m sure you are right. We’ll see about a small command of your own in due course, but not yet.’ He looked at his officers. ‘Well, I think we are agreed that Uktannu gets temporary command.’
~#~
At long last the armies of Mari and Yamhad were on the move. Zimri-Lim set out towards Hiritum a week after Narem-Suen was wounded leading a combined force of twelve thousand infantry, a thousand archers and a hundred and fifty Onager-drawn chariots; but they were travelling very slowly, barely making fifteen miles each day. It would take them the best part of a fortnight to reach Hiritum.
The ramp was now a mere five feet below the top of the city walls. The next night there would be a new moon and so Arishaka decided that the time had come to seriously delay the Elamites again. He had moved his camp to a much better defensive position but it was eight miles from the city. It would take three hours or more to walk the distance, even if there were no delays, so he planned to depart at seven in the evening, after it was dark, and attack at one in the morning. This would give Abi-Maras four hours to destroy the dam and get well away from the city before dawn.
Two days before the night of the attack he called the slinger whose father had been a boat captain, two of the spearmen who had been river fishermen before joining the standing army and Uktannu to see him.