by H A CULLEY
The slingers formed the next line with the spearmen drawn up in four ranks behind them. As usual, the horsemen were kept in reserve for the pursuit. However, this time the Elamites showed that they had learned from their previous encounters with the Babylonians and didn’t do as expected. It was so very nearly a disaster for Hammurabi.
Uktannu had taken position in the front rank of his slingers, who were organised in three rows with three hundreds under their captains in each row. They had practice this formation dozens of times. The front rank would sling their stones and then withdraw to reload. The next ranks would step forward and then the third rank. By this time the first rank were ready again. As it took less than a minute to load and sling a stone, the boys could keep up a rate of fire of over a thousand stones per minute.
They would need to. The Elamites had deployed their archers up on the hillsides so that they could engage the Babylonian archers. This prevented the latter from concentrating on the enemy chariots and spearmen on the floor of the valley.
The chariots of both sides charged each other and, although the Elamites came off worse, the Babylonians were not able to destroy the onager-drawn chariots as they had in the past. The Elamites had put two archers in each chariot which gave them an advantage over the horse drawn chariots with their one archer, despite the Babylonians’ superior speed and manoeuvrability. The Elamites had also learned the lesson about aiming for the camels instead of the archers.
After the second encounter both sides had taken so many casualties that they were a spent force and the remaining chariots and camels withdrew to the rear. This left Uktannu and his slingers, backed by less than four thousand spearmen, facing ten thousand enemy militia. Uktannu watched as the spearmen advanced at a run. As soon as they came within range he gave the order and the first rank twirled their slings and let fly. Uktannu remained in the front rank and the next three hundred stepped forward and sent another volley at the enemy. He was pleased to see that about one in two stones hit a target. Of course, some of the enemy were hit by more than one stone and some stones only broke limbs, cracked ribs or bounced off shields, but quite a few smashed into skulls, killing instantly.
He watched as men in the first rank of the Elamites fell, bringing down those running behind them and so slowing the advance. By the time that his third rank of slingers had sent their stones winging on their way the second time the leading spearmen were less than twenty paces away. He blew a shrill blast on his whistle made of bone and the captains of a hundred blew on theirs. The boys ran back and slipped between the front rank of Babylonian spearmen. As he withdrew Uktannu reckoned that his slingers had killed several hundred spearmen and incapacitated perhaps a thousand more.
Then, as they had trained, the boys crouched down between the soldiers legs and drew their daggers. As the Elamites crashed into the shields of the Babylonians, the boys darted forward, crouching low and either cut at the enemy’s legs, often hamstringing them, or stabbed upwards into the groin. By now the odds had been reduced to two to one and the whistle went again for the boys to withdraw.
After a quick head count, his captains reported that they had lost seventy boys so far. Uktannu then split his force in two and sent them clambering up the hillside to support the archers. The Babylonian bowmen were faced by an equal number of Elamites, but the latter were not as well trained and their bows were often inferior. Already Hammurabi’s men were winning the fight on the hills and, once the slingers arrived, they quickly drove the enemy back.
This allowed the captain of archers to start to take a hundred archers at a time out of the fight for the hills and start to target the spearmen below. Slowly the tide of battle turned and the fight started to go out of the Elamites. Their archers were now withdrawing along the hills on both sides and Uktannu led his boys forward to keep them moving back, leaving all the archers free to direct their arrows at the rear ranks of the Elamite spearmen in the valley.
As Uktannu advanced, he passed what he thought was a dead Elamite archer, but the man was only feigning and leapt up as the boy came level. The man had lost his bow and dagger but he knocked the boy down and he tumbled down to a ledge ten feet below. Before he could recover, the man slithered down to join him and wrapped his hands round the boy’s throat. Uktannu fumbled desperately for his dagger as he felt himself fading into unconsciousness, but he just couldn’t seem to get it out of its sheath.
Just before he blacked out he managed to finally pull the dagger free and desperately tried to stab the man, but failed. He drifted away and his body went limp. He regained consciousness what seemed like ages later, but he was told that he was only out for a few seconds. His throat was badly bruised and he started to cough and splutter, then painfully draw in great lungfuls of air. He looked around for his saviour and gazed into the face of one of his youngest slingers, just eleven years old, who was wiping his knife clean on the Elamite’s clothes with a look on his face that was pure elation.
Uktannu re-joined the land of the living just in time to see the Elamites break and flee. He watched the rout as the remaining chariots, camel archers and the horsemen started the pursuit. The Babylonians were furious about the heavy casualties they had sustained during the battle and Uktannu didn’t give much for the chances of any of the Elamites escaping alive.
~#~
‘Well, let’s hear the worst.’ Hammurabi watched his brother’s face as he entered the king’s tent that night. Arishaka sat down and poured himself a beaker of wine.
‘It’s not good. We can put the undamaged chariots together with the surviving horses and charioteers to make perhaps seventy useable ones. Considering we began the battle with a hundred and twenty that’s bad.’ He paused. ‘The camels took an even bigger hit. Of the four hundred and fifty we started with we have no more than two hundred left. Of course, we can take some replacements from the baggage train and we can man them with enough archers, but some will need training to use a bow from a moving platform, and we also lost quite a few of the camel boys. We can probably take some of the younger slingers but they will need training with the camels, and Uktannu won’t like it.’
‘He’ll have to put up with it. He and his boys did well today though; in fact, they probably saved the day, but a camel archer is worth a lot more than a slinger.’
‘He lost over two hundred slingers too, some were killed whilst hamstringing spearmen, but most were killed by arrows in the fight for the hillside. The spearmen got off remarkably lightly, compared to the rest of the army; just three hundred killed or so badly wounded they won’t recover enough to fight again.’
‘Thank you. It is a high price to pay, but worth it to destroy the last Elamite army in Eshnunna. Have we heard how the revolt is going?’
‘No, it’s too soon. I’ve asked to be woken as soon as there’s any news.’
Hammurabi nodded. ‘Well done today. I know how badly you take the loss of your men but we won; that’s always the main thing.’
‘Perhaps. But I am deeply depressed at the loss of so many good soldiers. Let’s hope Eshnunna is worth it.’
‘We just need to make sure that every last Elamite leaves this kingdom and then we need a period of peace in order to recruit more men and train them. I suspect that, like Hiritum, the Eshnunnans may well need our help to rebuild their army.’
A little later Uktannu came to see him.
‘Lord king,’ he began a little hesitantly, ‘I, I’ve … well, I ...’
Hammurabi sighed. He thought that the boy’s lack of confidence was a thing of the past. It looked as if the battle, and the loss of so many of his slingers, had undermined his growing self-assurance.
‘Come on Uktannu, you don’t have to be afraid of me; especially when your slingers won the battle for me yesterday.’ It was an exaggeration but his praise for Uktannu and his boys did the trick.
‘We did?’ The thought brought a smile to the boy’s nervous face. He squared his shoulders. ‘I need to recruit and train more boys as quic
kly as possible, especially as you are going to take a hundred to train as camel boys. It’ll only leave me with a little over six hundred. The slingers’ value in battle is when they are used en masse to pepper the enemy.’
Hammurabi sat up straight. From being hesitant, the little scamp was now starting to take him to task over losing more of his boys! He bit back the retort he was about to make, realising that knocking him down a peg or two wasn’t what he needed. He held up his hand to halt the boy in mid-flow.
‘Uktannu, you know I wouldn’t have weakened you even further if I had had a choice. As good and as useful as your slingers are, we need camel archers to protect our flanks and the rear on the march and to give us the mobility to dominate the battlefield.’
He sighed. ‘We scraped the streets of the cities clean to find the waifs and strays that I brought with me. I have no idea where we are going to find replacements from either, at least for a few years. There are always orphans and unwanted children thrown out by parents who can’t afford to feed them, but they are all too young at the moment.’
Uktannu seized on this. ‘Hiritum!’ he said excitedly. ‘My brother says that the city is full of orphans since the siege. Half the city died but a lot of the cleverer boys found ways of surviving after losing their parents. Narem-Suen says that they are useless mouths to feed at the moment. He had half considered forming them into a corps of slingers but re-building and training the army has to be his priority. I’m sure that he would be happy to see the back of them. And then there’s the two hundred we left as part of the garrison’
Hammurabi stroked his combed and perfumed black beard, lost in thought for a while, before nodding his approval. Uktannu set out that afternoon with an escort of forty horsemen.
The next day reports started to arrive about the revolt. The city of Eshnunna itself had fallen to Sullu-Sin and most of the uprisings elsewhere had been successful, but the Elamites had managed to hold onto Diniktum, the key city on the border between Eshnunna and Elam. It controlled the main route between the two kingdoms and without it Eshnunna could face another invasion, using that city as a bridgehead.
‘We leave the wounded here with a small guard for the camp and march now to Eshnunna. I will then discuss with this Sullu-Sin how best to capture Diniktum without delay.’ Arishaka gave his brother a curt nod to acknowledge the order and he strode out of the king’s tent calling for his captains.
~#~
Adiar was concerned. She had returned to Babylon with the recovering Samsu-Iluna so that she could rule the kingdom during her husband’s absence on campaign. There she had found a delegation from Rim-Sim, King of Sumeria, awaiting her and she had a feeling that they hadn’t come with offers of support and help. After the usual pleasantries and expressions of eternal friendship, the leader of the delegation came to the point.
‘Lady, my master, Rim Sim, King of Sumeria, has been approached by the King of Elam to enter into an alliance. The purpose of the alliance would appear to be to allow Rim-Sim to attack and conquer Babylon and the cities that your husband controls in the south whilst Elam launches another attack into Eshnunna to defeat the standing Babylonian army in the north.’
‘On the face of it, that would seem to be a tempting offer and makes strategic sense.’ Adiar tried to speak calmly and hide her mounting anxiety. ‘With such a treaty in place, Rim-Sim can concentrate all his forces on besieging Babylon without having to worry about Elam attacking Sumeria. From Elam’s point of view, having lost their army in the north, they can replace it with the one in the south as Siwe-Palar-Hupak won’t have to guard his border with Sumeria.’ She smiled mirthlessly. ‘So the question is: why are you sharing this vital piece of information with me?’
The leader of the Sumerian delegation opened his mouth to reply but Adiar held up her hand.
‘No, don’t tell me. Let me guess. Rim-Sim doesn’t trust Siwe-Palar-Hupak and believes that, as soon as his army is committed to attacking Babylon, Elam could well invade and overrun his kingdom whist he is engaged here. Or, perhaps that, having destroyed Babylon, Rim-Sim would be left unsupported and thus powerless to resist Elam in the future. How am I doing?’
After registering an initial flicker of surprise and then wariness, the envoy’s face then adopted its customary inscrutability during Adiar’s analysis of his master’s thinking. He remained silent for a full minute after the queen had finished speaking. Then, as Adiar’s mouth started to form the word ‘Well?’ to indicate her growing impatience, he started to speak again.
‘You do my king an injustice, lady. He has always been a friend to Babylon, and hopes to remain so for many years to come.’
Adiar stared at the man in silence whilst she wondered how Hammurabi would want her to respond to this unexpected approach. Her own instinct was to send the delegation packing with a curtly worded rejection of their offer, but she realised the importance of treating this approach from Rim-Sim with a little more tact. She was sure that Hammurabi, had he been there, would have played for time; so instead of giving way to her instinct, the queen smiled at the delegation and asked them to give her a week to consider their offer and to seek the views of her husband.
She had no intention of sending a messenger to Hammurabi. For a start he had other things to worry about and, if she went scurrying to him for instructions, it would make her appear weak and indecisive. Instead, she decided to consult Isiratuu and Sin-Bel-Alim. She also invited Samsu-Iluna along believing that it would help his education as the future king.
The two ministers were suffering from their advanced years. Isiratuu was now sixty-nine and his body was increasingly frail. His back was bent over so that he had a permanent stoop. He could only walk slowly, and then had to lean on a stick. However, his mind was still as sharp as ever. The foreign minister, who was only a few years younger than the chief minister, suffered from a wasting disease which had reduced him to a painfully thin shadow of his former portly self. He was in constant pain and frequently vomited. Invaluable as these two had been to Babylon over the years, she realised that the time was fast approaching when they would need to be replaced.
The natural choice to replace Isiratuu would be his eldest son, Abi-Maras. The trouble was he was far too valuable to the army as its chief engineer and logistician. He also suspected that the man wouldn’t be keen to exchange his present role for that of a politician. He might enjoy the administrative side of the chief minister’s job but he was far too blunt and straightforward to make a successful diplomat. His younger brother, Ipqu-Api, was a possibility. He was now in his mid-thirties and a city elder. Sin-Bel-Alim had sent him as an envoy to Mari and to Yamhad in the past and he had displayed a natural flair for diplomacy. That led Adiar on to consider whether he might not be a better candidate for foreign minister. Once again, she wished Hammurabi was here to discuss it with her.
Sighing she turned her attention back to the problem of the Sumerian delegation.
‘So how should I respond to Rim-Sim?’ she asked the two ministers.
‘I don’t see that we have any option but to agree.’ Isiratuu replied, looking at the foreign minister for confirmation. Adiar was well aware that this was for her benefit. The two men would have met and agreed their advice before coming to see her.
‘I agree,’ Sin-Bel-Alim nodded. ‘If we reject his overtures, Rim-Sim will be insulted and may well ally himself with Elam, and we are in no position to face enemies on nearly all our borders.’
‘And there is no guarantee that Mari wouldn’t desert us if the odds against us became too high,’ Isiratuu pointed out. ‘On the other hand, an alliance with Sumeria will strengthen our hand against Elam, even if Rim-Sim doesn’t actually keep his word and send troops to help us if Elam enters Babylonian territory.’
‘I don’t understand. Why wouldn’t the King of Sumeria keep his word? We would help him if his kingdom was invaded, wouldn’t we?’ At seventeen, Samsu-Iluna still had a relatively uncomplicated view of life.
‘Rim-Sim
is an old man now but when he came to the throne of Larsa he ruled over a small city state. Over the past thirty years he has defeated all the surrounding city states and the larger kingdoms of Uruk and Ur so that he now holds sway over all of southern Mesopotamia,’ his mother explained.
‘Yes, I know all that,’ the youth cut in impatiently, ‘but it doesn’t explain why you think he might betray us after we have signed a treaty.’
‘Don’t interrupt,’ Adiar reprimanded him curtly, her eyes flashing a warning that he had overstepped the mark. She took a deep breath. ‘He now faces three threats: Elam, the growing power of Babylon and internal revolt. He is not the enlightened ruler your father is and is known for his oppressive taxation. If Elam did attack him, he could probably resist the invasion, but not if he faced an uprising from some of his recent conquests or an invasion from the north – from us. He therefore needs to neutralise Babylon until he has strengthened his grip on his own people and to deter Elam. However, if Elam attacked Babylon in strength, we wouldn’t be able to fight them and defeat an assault by Sumeria at the same time. Your father and I also suspect that, if we and Elam weakened each other through prolonged conflict, he would feel strong enough to attempt to annex Babylonia.’
‘So this treaty just buys time for both of us, giving him time to prepare and us to resolve the problem of Eshnunna?’
‘In essence, yes.’ His mother was annoyed by his reference to the land of her birth as a problem, but she supposed that he was right.
‘So what have we got to lose by agreeing to this treaty?’
Adiar looked at Sin-Bel-Alim, inviting him to explain.
‘We suspect that Rim-Sim won’t be slow in informing Elam about the treaty. He may well also agree a secret treaty with them, giving them a free hand to attack Eshnunna again, and even invade Babylonia with no interference from him. Elam could then use their army in the south to reinforce the north without worrying about Sumeria. Rim-Sim could then join in an invasion of South Babylonia without much risk.’