by H A CULLEY
She smiled back at him, revealing a perfect set of pearly white teeth, and ignored the disapproving glare from her mother. ‘I quite like goat.’ She murmured.
Arishaka reached over and held the bowl whilst the girl ladled some of the stew onto the platter in front of her. He offered her some bread and watched entranced as she tore off delicate bits of bread and picked up pieces of meat with it before popping it into her mouth.
‘Aren’t you going to eat?’ she asked him with a mischievous grin after a few minutes.
‘What? Oh! Yes, course.’ He tried to hide his discomfiture by reaching for some locally caught fish. Adiar caught the girl’s eye and tut-tutted, causing Sabitum to dissolve in giggles. By this stage her mother had given up on her and was busy talking to Mutu-Namaha, trying to find out more about the man who was obviously interested in her one and only daughter.
‘What are you laughing at?’ Arishaka asked, whilst he helped himself to some bread and olives to eat with the fish.
‘You; you’re so funny. You don’t have to tread carefully around me you know; I’m not some delicate little flower.’
‘No, you’re prettier than any flower.’ Then he realised what he had said and blushed again. ‘Oh, drat. I didn’t mean to flirt with you. I’m so sorry.’
She smiled back at him, raising an eyebrow. ‘Why not? I enjoy it when you flirt with me.’
‘Sabitum!’ her mother looked shocked. ‘That is no way for a well brought up young girl to speak.’
The girl gave her mother an exasperated look. ‘Oh mother. Arishaka obviously likes me, why shouldn’t I let him know I like him too?’
‘You like me?’ He could believe what she had just said. He immediately relaxed and started to be what he had intended all along – just himself.
For the rest of the meal they talked with scarcely a pause. Arishaka tried not to boast about his achievements but, whenever he tried to be modest, Mutu-Namaha would step in and paint him in glowing colours. Sabitum showed an interest in the expansion of the army and asked several quite perceptive questions. There was obviously a lot more to her than just being pretty. Arishaka tried not to regard her as a younger version of Adiar, but it was difficult. He glanced at the queen once or twice and it was obvious that she approved of his choice.
Eventually the supper party broke up. Arishaka, Mutu-Namaha and Uktannu were headed back to the camp and Arishaka, reluctant to leave Sabitum’s company, suggested that he escort her and her mother back to their house just outside the palace walls. To his annoyance the other two tagged along, whispering to each other and smirking. After they had seen the two females safely to their home, they set off for the main gates.
Arishaka was totally distracted and could only see the image of Sabitum in his mind’s eye. Had he been on his own he wouldn’t have known anything until the assassin’s spear entered his guts. Luckily the two boys were more alert. As Balshazzar ran out of the alley near the gates where he had hidden himself he found that Mutu-Namaha’s horse was between him and his quarry. He stabbed the horse, causing it to rear up in pain, depositing its rider on the hard packed earth. Balshazzar ducked under the hooves of the rearing horse and aimed the deadly spearhead at the chest of the startled Arishaka, but it never reached its intended target.
As he thrust it upwards, he was struck by Uktannu’s horse and knocked to the ground, dropping his spear. The boy had been riding behind the other two and, when he saw Mutu-Namaha hit the ground, he dug his heels into his mount which sprang forward at the crucial moment.
Before the assassin could get back on his feet Uktannu slid off his horse and drew his dagger. Balshazzar was halfway up before Uktannu realised who it was.
‘Balshazzar? What in Marduk’s name…’ He stopped in shock and, before he could recover, the youth was back on his feet and sprinting away. Arishaka was stunned. He couldn’t understand why the youth had tried to kill him and said so to Uktannu.
‘Sabitum,’ the boy replied succinctly. ‘He fancied himself in love with her and his one failing was always that his brains were between his legs.’ So saying he held out a hand to help a groggy Mutu-Namaha to his feet.
‘You alright?’ The older boy winced and nodded.
‘Just a bit shaken up. Shame about my horse though.’ The wounded animal had collapsed, whinnying in pain until Arishaka knelt and drew his dagger across the animal’s throat.
‘Get the city watch alerted. I want that bastard found and brought before the king for trial.’
~#~
Sabitum’s father had been only too delighted to agree to his daughter’s betrothal to the king’s brother and three months’ later they were wed by Mannui-Qipi, the aging high priest of Marduk. Balshazzar had been caught and found guilty but Sabitum had surprised everyone by pleading for mercy for him. Arishaka was annoyed at this evidence of affection for his erstwhile rival, but he agreed to speak to the king. Instead of beheading the youth was sentenced to the only alternative for attempted murder under Hammurabi’s Code – to be sold into slavery. It could have been worse for him, such as working in a mine, but he ended up working on a farm in Mari. Arishaka thought no more about him and concentrated on his two interests in life: his new wife and building up the standing army.
When twins were born a year later he felt that his life was complete. It might have been a difficult birth as Sabitum was still only fourteen, but the babies – a boy and a girl – were quite small. At first there was some doubt whether they would survive and every day Arishaka sacrificed a goat or a sheep to Marduk and prayed for their survival. Gradually the twins started to put on weight and, after a month, the danger had passed and he sacrificed a bull in gratitude.
They decided to call the boy Rimush and the girl Ku-Aya. By the time that they were six months old, Arishaka had almost completed the expansion of the standing army. By now it consisted of two hundred horsemen, still used mainly as messengers and scouts, a thousand camel archers and six thousand spearmen. Two hundred of the original boy slingers had become men and had joined the archers, bringing their numbers up to fifteen hundred with new recruits. The number of slingers had remained at one thousand. With two hundred chariots, now all drawn by a matched pair of horses, the total standing army currently stood at nearly nine thousand men and two thousand boys.
The slingers and the camel boys no longer came from the street urchins and orphans. As Babylon prospered there weren’t enough of those, though there were always a few. But increasingly the army was seen as a proper alternative to learning a trade or working on a farm. Ten and eleven year old boys flocked to join the army and many had to be turned away. These were recruited into the militia, which now boasted camel archers and a corps of slingers in addition to the original spearmen and foot archers. Hammurabi could now call on sixty thousand well trained and equipped men and boys to defend Babylonia if necessary.
‘When will you strike at Sumeria?’ Adiar asked him in bed one night after they had made love.
‘I need an excuse to invade and Rim-Sim knows that, so he is behaving himself. After betraying me by agreeing to a treaty with Elam two years ago, he is treading very cautiously.’
Sin-Bel-Alim had found out that the treacherous King of Sumeria had agreed not to invade Elam so that they could send part of their army of the south to the relief of Diniktum. Much good did it do them. The struggle for power in Elam after the death of Siwe-Palar-Hupak was now over. Atta-Merra-Halki had established himself as king, but not before Elam had weakened itself, both politically and militarily. The tribesmen along the east coast of the Gulf in the south and those in the Zargos Mountains in the north had both taken advantage of the internal strife to revolt and the new king would have his hands full re-establishing his rule for a few years to come.
It therefore came as something of a shock when Hammurabi received a report from the north saying that Sulu-Sin had closed the trade route through Eshnunna to Babylonian merchants and was demanding that Narem-Suen of Hiritum acknowledge him as his overl
ord.
‘The ungrateful cur! Is the man mad?’ Hammurabi was incensed over Sulu-Sin’s actions. ‘It’s only two years since we threw the Elamites out of his country for him.’
‘He’s a megalomaniac,’ agreed Adiar. ‘You may recall that I warned you not to recognise him as king.’
‘That’s not very helpful,’ he snapped back.
‘Then perhaps this advice is. Invade Eshnunna and replace him on the throne by me, or by Mutu-Namaha, as members of the royal house of Eshnunna.’
‘No, not our son. I’m about to send him to take command of our men at Hiritum. He has learned all he can as my brother’s assistant. Now, at sixteen, he is ready for a command of his own. But you should be Queen of Eshnunna; we can then rule it together, effectively as an integral part of Babylonia.’
‘You would use me to gain the throne for yourself?’ Adiar’s eyes narrowed suspiciously.
‘No,’ Hammurabi sighed. His wife was rather paranoid when I came to the country where she was brought up. ‘You would be queen and I would advise you, just as you advise me in Babylon.’
‘Hmmm. It seems to be more of an annexation than that.’
Hammurabi couldn’t believe that his wife was being so distrustful after all their years together and he was getting angry.
‘What would you suggest then: that we do nothing and let Eshnunna turn into an enemy, or perhaps we lose more men replacing Sulu-Sin with another, who is just as likely to turn against us after another couple of years?’ he asked scornfully.
Adiar started to lose her temper in turn but checked herself just in time. There was no point in falling out over this. She took a deep breath before replying.
‘You are right, my love. We should rule Eshnunna jointly.’
‘Good. I’m glad you have seen sense.’ The fact that he had said something so crass, which would have normally caused a really heated argument to break out, showed Adiar how het up he was over Sulu-Sin’s breach of faith.
Hammurabi paced up and down for another few minutes before going over to his wife and taking her in his arms.
‘I’m sorry, my love. I didn’t mean that; well, at least I didn’t mean to say it out loud.’
Adiar looked at him in surprise, then spluttered with laughter. ‘If that was an apology, it was the most ham-fisted one I have ever heard,’ she told him, smiling up into his face and stroking his beard. ‘You are an ass sometimes.’
Two days later the standing army marched north, leaving behind one thousand of the most recent recruits to complete their training. A few days later a messenger arrived from Borsippa, the city to the south of Babylon and the one nearest to the border with Sumeria. As soon as he had received the message Hammurabi went in search of Adiar.
‘We’ve been tricked,’ he told her angrily. ‘Sulu-Sin must be in league with Rim-Sim. Whilst he lures the standing army away to Hiritum, the Sumerians raid into Babylonia. This dispatch from Borsippa says that the villages, farms and forts have all been attacked all along the border within the last few days. Either Rim-Sim is testing our defences or he is trying to provoke me into a war before I am ready for one.’
‘What will you do?’
‘Eshnunna will have to wait, but we must protect Narem-Suen and Hiritum. I would ask Mari for help but putting my protégé on the throne there has soured relations somewhat. I will have to reinforce Hiritum so that Sulu-Sin gets the message but I’m going to need most of the standing army for the coming war against Sumeria.’
‘You think it will come to that – a full-scale war?’
‘Sumeria has been a threat to Babylon for longer than I have been alive. Isin and Nippur used to be independent city states but with strong ties to Babylon before Rim-Sim invaded and captured them during my father’s reign. Babylon wasn’t strong enough to do anything about it then; it’s very different now.’
‘And what if Eshnunna gets beyond the threat stage and takes advantage of your war with Sumeria?’
‘Eshnunna is still recovering from the Elamite invasion; I can’t see them being in a position to besiege Hiritum for some time yet.’
‘There are eight hundred of our soldiers there now. How many are you thinking of sending to strengthen them?’
‘Good question. Perhaps a thousand? A few horsemen and camel archers for patrols and the rest made up of a mixed force of spearmen, foot archers and slingers to reinforce the garrison and help train the Hiritum militia.’
‘Makes sense. But you will talk to Arishaka first?’
‘Yes, I’ll need to send messengers to catch him up and to let Narem-Suen know what is happening.’
‘Who will you put in command?’
‘Mutu-Namaha I think. It’ll give him responsibility so he can carry on learning and it will keep him safe during what will prove to be my greatest military struggle to date.’
‘What about Es-Nasir; how will he take being supplanted in command by Mutu-Namaha?’ Es-Nasir had been left in charge of the contingent of the army at Hiritum.
‘I need experienced captains like him by my side when we take on Sumeria. He can take over the camel archers; the present captain is getting too old for a long campaign.’ Adiar nodded; she could see the sense in that.
Hammurabi kissed her affectionately and set off to find Abi-Maras to discuss building more siege engines; he had a feeling he would need more than they had now in order to capture the cities of Sumeria.
Chapter Eight – The Invasion of Sumeria – 1764 BCE
The captain of a hundred camel archers led his men cautiously down the road towards Isin. The Sumerian city lay thirty miles south east of Bilbat, the last Babylonian town before the ill-defined border between the two kingdoms. There were a few farming settlements clustered around the large lake to the south of Bilbat; after that there was only the fort on the Isin road. The captain, a twenty-two year old by the name of Haban, had learned from the headman in Bilbat that the fort had been captured and its small garrison massacred, though the town itself hadn’t been attacked as yet. However, he feared for the farmers and their families in the surrounding area.
Haban’s fears were realised as soon as they came to the first farm. A man lay sprawled beside an irrigation ditch with his head under the water and his neck at an impossible angle. The hut in which the family lived had been made of barusti and was now a smouldering ruin. Inside they found the charred bodies of a woman and a young girl. Two boys, one about ten years old and the other twelve, lay dead behind what had been their home; blood from multiple wounds had seeped into the dry earth, turning it a deeper shade of brown. Both were naked and their small genitals had been cut off and stuffed into their mouths. Haban could only think of one reason for doing that: it was intended to enrage the Babylonians.
It was a similar situation at the next farmstead, except here there were dead slaves as well as the butchered family. Haban had a choice: either he could bury the bodies as he went or he could chase after the raiders in the hope of catching them before they reached Isin so he could exact retribution for the murdered and mutilated Babylonians. But he was wary of running into a trap.
He pushed out four of his men as scouts in front of the patrol and another four to each flank. Less than an hour later they passed the ruins of the border fort. The bodies of the small garrison lay where they had fallen, buzzards pecking at the putrefying flesh; their eyes had been pecked out long since. A significant number of graves had been dug near the fort, so it was obvious that the garrison had given a good account of themselves. Once again he was tempted to stop and deal with the corpses but he pressed on after the Sumerians who had done this.
An hour later one of the forward scouts came riding back to say that the enemy were in sight. Haban rode forward and from the top of the next rise he looked down on a group of perhaps four hundred Sumerian spearmen and fifty archers in a straggling line walking as fast as they could away from them. The column was led by three chariots, presumably transporting the officers. At the rear several carts trundled
along, drawn by onagers, full of wounded men as well as a few stores.
The raiding party were traversing a shallow bowl of stony ground peppered by scrub. Small hills surrounded the bowl and Haban realised that he could ride around the raiders out of sight and get ahead of them before they reached the far side if he hurried.
He gave the depression a wide berth in case they were given away by the dust cloud they raised as they rode. When he reached where the road of hard packed earth emerged from the depression and ran through low hills he split his men into two groups of fifty. They were heavily outnumbered and so they would have to whittle the enemy down by hit and run tactics.
The commander of the raiders was dreaming of the delights that the whores of Isin could offer him that night when he was startled out of his reverie by the camel archers as they erupted out of several valleys on either side of his column. He had barely cried out the alarm when an arrow pierced his coat of bronze plates and pitched him backwards out of his chariot. Two seconds later the vehicle came to a halt as one of the onagers pulling it was struck in the side and collapsed.
The rest of the Babylonians concentrated on the Sumerians archers, whilst a few of them put the chariots out of action. Some of the latter managed to get a few arrows off before they were killed but they hadn’t been trained to hit fast moving targets and most of their arrows shot behind the camel they were aiming at. Unfortunately a few lucky arrows struck the following camel and one hit a camel boy in the throat. By the time that the last of the enemy archers had fallen ten camels lay dead or wounded in addition to the boy, but the archers were unharmed.
This left the spearmen at the mercy of the camel archers. They had sensibly formed a circle bristling with spears and were protected to some extent by their shields. But instead of shooting directly at the spearmen facing them, Haban ordered his men to fire over their heads at the backs of the spearmen on the other side of the circle.