Dawn of Empire

by H A CULLEY

  Like many buildings in Mesopotamia, the farmhouse and the outbuildings were constructed of mud bricks and roofed in barusti. Balshazzar used a leather bucket to throw oil onto the roof of the house and the outbuilding where the slaves slept, then lit two torches which he threw onto the two roofs. Within minutes the dry barusti was ablaze and, as the flames rose higher and higher, bits started to drop down inside the buildings, setting the rush strew floors and wooden furniture alight.

  The farm was isolated but the smoke would soon attract attention so, once he was sure that no-one had managed to escape the flames, he went over to the barn and saddled the best of the onagers, filled a pair of panniers with the coins and rode off towards Hiritum.

  The man calling himself Xvarenah was not anxious to visit Mari, even though he was fairly certain he had covered his tracks well. There was always the possibility that someone had escaped the fire and, in any case, he wanted Mutu-Namaha, the person who had got in the way of his attempt on Arishaka’s life, to suffer the hardships of the siege and, hopefully, die during it. His plan was to kill the sentry during the first night’s halt and then cut the throats of the two elders and the rest of the escort whist they slept. He would then make his way to Assur in one of the chariots they were travelling in and join the Assyrian army.

  It nearly went according to plan. He managed to creep up behind the sentry and kill him silently and then dealt with the two elders. He was just about to start on the other nine members of the escort when one of them stirred and got up to relieve himself. Balshazzar followed him to the edge of the hollow where the man had gone to squat down and crept around until he was behind him. Unfortunately for him, he dislodged a stone as he carefully descended the slope and the man turned round. The man was astounded to see Balshazzar behind him with a dagger in his hand and froze but, just before the dagger entered his neck, he managed to cry out.

  Balshazzar wiped his dagger on the dead man’s clothing and then cautiously made his way back to the camp, appearing from the opposite direction. The place was in uproar with the eight survivors armed and facing in a circle, unsure of what to do.

  ‘They got away, heading in that direction,’ Balshazzar informed them, pointing away from the hollow with the dead soldier.

  ‘How many of them were there?’ the leader of the escort asked.

  ‘Just two I think. That’s all I saw anyway.’

  As Balshazzar walked into the firelight the escort leader looked at him and asked him suspiciously about the blood on his arms and clothing.

  ‘Oh, it’s alright; it’s not mine. I managed to tackle one of them and I had wrestled him to the ground when the other one came back for him and I had to let him go. They scuttled off together.’

  ‘You were lucky they didn’t kill you.’ Balshazzar could tell that the man wasn’t satisfied but he wasn’t certain enough of his ground to challenge a senior officer directly.

  They buried the dead in a common grave to keep the animals from eating them for now and pressed on towards Mari. The bodies would be collected later for a proper funeral. That night the leader of the escort posted three sentries whilst the other six slept. When it was Balshazzar’s turn to stand watch he pretended he had to relieve himself and then, as he re-joined them, drew his dagger across both their throats in quick succession as they stood up to greet him. He grabbed them as they collapsed, blood spewing across his body, and gently lowered them to the ground.

  It took a matter of moments for him to cut the throats of five of the sleeping men but he left their leader until last. It was a mistake. The man suddenly woke up and quickly realised what was happening. Yelling ‘Traitor!’, he leapt up from his bedroll and grabbed his spear. He and Balshazzar circled each other warily, then he made at stab with the spear. Balshazzar leaped to the side and the spear missed him.

  Grabbing hold of it with one hand, Balshazzar pulled the man towards him and stuck his dagger into his side. His opponent was wounded, but not fatally. Having drawn first blood Balshazzar relaxed; it was another mistake. The man made another stab but it was a feint and, when Balshazzar twisted to the side again, he hit him hard on the jaw with his fist. Balshazzar staggered and went down on one knee. With a cry of triumph he went to lunge again with his spear; but Balshazzar threw a handful of sand in the man’s face and he staggered around blindly. The next thing he felt was a pinprick in his side which rapidly became increasingly agonising. He fell onto the sand and bled out his life.

  The party had been travelling in several chariots, so Balshazzar harnessed one of them to four onagers and left the rest to be discovered with the dead, or not. It didn’t really make much difference to his plan.

  ~#~

  Balshazzar, now back under his assumed identity as Xvarenah, stood in the deep shadows with his back to the wall of a house watching the main gate of Hiritum. His plan had worked perfectly. True, he had had some difficulty in getting to see Ishme-Dagan when he reached Assur and he had been beaten up quite badly before the captain of the city watch had believed his story and passed him up the line; but that was all in the past.

  When he had got back to Hiritum he pretended that he had been captured by an Assyrian patrol who had killed the rest of his party. He had managed to escape but had been tracked down and caught. He had been tortured at Assur – that part was true – before he had managed to escape again and had finally made it back to Hiritum. He wasn’t sure that he was entirely believed - Mutu-Namaha in particular kept giving him suspicious looks – but he had been allowed to take up his previous position.

  He was slightly worried that reinforcements from Mari might arrive as a second embassy had been sent out when a patrol had found the slaughtered remains of the first one, but he also knew that Ishme-Dagan had approached Zimri-Lim, King of Mari, with the offer of an alliance. He had a shrewd feeling that Zimri-Lim might prefer friendship with Assyria than the much smaller city-state of Hiritum. Of course, Hammurabi was an important factor but he was fully occupied in the south, so he didn’t think that he would be in a position to send help to Hiritum, even if the army commander was his son.

  Once back in the city he had frequented taverns in the poorer areas seeking the type of men who would murder their own grandmothers for a copper coin. He had to approach them cautiously but his judgement had only failed him once. One man with a cloth over a missing eye had looked the sort but he didn’t want to get involved. He had been left with his throat cut in an alley some way away from his habitual drinking den, just in case anyone remembered him talking to Balshazzar and could identify him, despite the ragged clothing he wore for his evening outings.

  Now he was creeping along in the shadows followed by half a dozen men with the aim of overcoming the guard on the main gate before the sun’s rays first broke the horizon, at which time he was due to open the gates to let the Assyrians and Eshnunnans in. When they reached the edge of the open space leading to the gates they halted. It was a new moon so there was only a little light to see by. He could just make out the three guards standing by the gates and four more on top of the gatehouse. The remainder would be asleep in the guardhouse to the right of the gates.

  Mutu-Namaha was well aware that the Assyrians and their Eshnunnan allies were only a day’s march away but he had delayed putting the city on a war footing until they actually appeared. He had every confidence in the city’s improved defences and this time they had enough food stored to last for nine months. What he wasn’t aware of was the fact that the enemy hadn’t halted for the night but were making a forced march to reach Hiritum just before dawn.

  Balshazzar and his cronies worked their way around, still keeping in the shadows, until they were close to the gate. Then they waited. The approach of the attackers would be obvious once there was enough light. As soon as the alarm was given his plan was to rush the three men by the gates and kill them. Two of his men would, at the same time, delay the rest of the gate guards from leaving their room. They had bows and so would simply skewer anyone who appeared
in the doorway. He and the other four men would then lift the two big locking bars and pull open the heavy gates. No doubt the archers on top of the gate would kill a few of the attackers making for the now open gates but that wouldn’t matter.

  Mutu-Namaha had been extremely suspicious of the story told by the man he knew as Xvarenah. He didn’t understand why an Assyrian patrol would take one chariot and leave the rest. It didn’t make sense. And all the soldiers had been killed by slitting their throats, except the leader who had obviously been killed in a fight. Xvarenah had said that the two elders and one of the soldiers were still held captive so that explained why they weren’t with the dead but that part of his story and the way he had escaped had lacked detail, and therefore conviction.

  Something still niggled away at the back of his brain too. He was certain that he had seen Xvarenah somewhere before, but he just couldn’t place him. Nevertheless he was suspicious enough to get two teams of the youngest slingers in the Hiritum army to follow Xvarenah. The boys wore the filthy robes of beggars and street urchins so they attracted little attention. Now, as they waited in the gloom near the gates, one of the boys ran back to tell his captain where Xvarenah was and that he had a small gang with him.

  The boy’s captain of a hundred slingers was a bright lad and he immediately ran to the palace to inform Mutu-Namaha without going up the chain of command. The prince threw on his kilt and sandals and picking up his sword he called out fifty of the palace guards, being the nearest soldiers to hand, and they doubled down to the main gates. He sent the slinger captain to rouse his boys and follow him.

  When he arrived at the gates he found that he was too late. The gates were open and twenty or thirty of the enemy had already entered the city. The palace guards linked shields and tried to hold the enemy back. However, more and more of the enemy arrived every second and the palace guards had to slowly give ground. They also began to take casualties. Then the slingers arrived.

  Their captain, seeing that he could do little good at ground level without hitting his own men, took the three hundred slingers up onto the walls from where they started to strike at the men at the rear of the assaulting column. Seeing how exposed they were, the men coming to add their weight to the attack drew off out of range after they had lost about a hundred men. This eased the pressure on the palace guards and gradually they forced the enemy back.

  More and more spearmen arrived to reinforce them and archers joined the slingers on the wall. Gradually the tide of battle began to swing towards the defenders. Mutu-Namaha had picked up the shield of a fallen soldier and had pushed his way forward into the front rank. He used his shield to deflect spear thrusts and swung his sword under his shield to cut at the legs of the attackers. Once they had fallen howling to the ground, he stabbed down to kill them. It was a remarkably successful tactic and he had lost count of how many he had killed.

  Then he found himself facing a face he recognised: the renegade Xvarenah. As he beat away the man’s spear and saw the hate in his eyes, he suddenly realised where he had seen him before.

  ‘This time, Balshazzar, I shall make certain of your death.’

  The young man looked surprised at being recognised and, just for a moment, he was off guard. It was enough. Ignoring the risk to himself, Mutu-Namaha stepped forward out of line and thrust his sword towards the traitor’s belly but, before his blade bit home a blow to the side of his helmet sent him reeling. By the time he had recovered the man had vanished.

  He and his men slowly forced the Assyrians back until they were able to shut and lock the gates again. Once he had recovered, Mutu-Namaha searched the pile of enemy dead but, to his disappointment, Balshazzar wasn’t amongst them.

  Chapter Ten – War in the North – 1764 -1763 BCE

  Hammurabi had been devastated by the death of his brother. Arishaka had always been there to help him and guide him, almost as much as Adiar had. As soon as she learned of his death she travelled down to Nippur to be with her husband. He was sunk in grief and didn’t even seem to welcome her arrival. Adiar and Samsu-Iluna both tried to revitalize his desire to defeat Rim-Sim but it seemed as if he had lost all drive and ambition.

  ‘It looks as if we are going to have to take some major decisions without him,’ Adiar told her son. ‘I just hope that he gets over mourning for his brother once the funeral has been held.’

  ‘I’ll get on with the arrangements as quickly as possible. Has anyone told Sabitum?’

  ‘Yes, I went to see her as soon as I heard the news. She was heartbroken, of course, but she is young and she’ll get over it. We must think about a new husband for her as quickly as we can.’ Her eye slid sideways to her son.

  ‘Mother, no! You can’t be thinking ...’

  ‘No! Of course not. You will need to marry to cement a political alliance, but it’s time that your brother thought about it. He could do worse. Uktannu is another possibility.’

  ‘From what I hear, he’s more interested in good looking boys. Why do you think he’s so reluctant to hand over command of his corps of slingers and take on a unit that’s more fitting to his status and age?’ He ignored his mother’s look of surprise. ‘I’m more concerned that Mutu-Namaha, who’s earmarked to take over command of the army now, is wasting his time at Hiritum when he should be here. It was a mistake to send him so far away, especially when we have lost so many senior commanders recently.’

  ‘I agree. We had better recall him. What do you intend to do about all those prisoners?’ she asked, switching the subject to a more immediate matter.

  Of the forty thousand who had march north to attack Kish some eleven thousand had perished in the battle or had died later of their wounds. Nearly ten thousand had escaped, which left nineteen thousand sitting in the makeshift compound outside the city. Of these some eight thousand were militia from either Nippur or Isin, both former Babylonian cities until captured by Rim-Sim before Hammurabi became King of Babylon. After the surrender of Nippur, Isin had sent a delegation to surrender and return to Babylonian rule as well. The remainder came from other northern Sumerian cities such as Kissura, Adab, Shurruppak and Umma. These cities had to be the Babylonians next targets. That would leave four cities in the east and six in the south centred around Larsa, Rim-Sim’s capital.

  ‘I think that it should be easy to persuade those from Nippur and Isin to change their allegiance. After all, their homes and families are now back under Babylonian rule.’ He thought for a moment. ‘How about if we give the remaining eleven thousand a choice. Either they swear obedience to Hammurabi, giving a sacred oath to the priests of their respective gods, or they are sold into slavery?’

  ‘Hmm, it might work but I would be worried about their loyalty when we attack their cities all the same. If only we had somewhere we could use them that would put their trustworthiness to the test without too much risk.’

  Two days later, just as the last of the soldiers from Nippur and Isin had sworn their oaths and been allocated to join various units to replace losses and to form five new units of spearmen together with two thousand existing Babylonian soldiers in order to dilute the new soldiers’ numbers. This gave Samsu-Iluna considerably more spearmen and archers, but he was short of camel archers and charioteers to replace those who had been killed. However, he reasoned that this would only be important if he had to fight another pitched battle. Spearmen and archers were more useful in a siege.

  Hammurabi still took little interest in the war, or anything else, so Adiar decided to take him back to Babylon with her and leave the campaign against Sumeria to her eldest son for the time being. It was unfortunate that the messenger from Hiritum didn’t arrive until three days after they had left. Samsu-Iluna was now in something of a dilemma. Should he continue to prosecute the war against Sumeria at full strength or should he detach an army for the relief of his brother? He wished more than ever that both his father and his uncle were here to take responsibility for what would be a momentous decision.

  ~#~

&n
bsp; Mutu-Namaha stood on the parapet behind the walls of Hiritum and looked out at the enemy camp. He calculated that there must be around twenty five thousand besieging the city in all, almost equally split between Assyrians and Eshnunnans. Many of the latter were scarcely more than farmers with leather shields stretched over a wooden frame and copper tipped spears, nevertheless there were a lot of them. He sighed. Just as the Elamites had done a few years before, the watercourse below the walls had been dammed at the junction with the Tigris and the broad ditch was dry. Unlike the Elamites though, the Assyrians siege-craft was a little more advanced.

  Es-Nasir, when he had been the commander, had persuaded the city to extend the sides of the ditch to within couple of feet of the wall so that there was no place to put the bottom of an assault ladder.

  The bridge over the ditch leading to the main gates had been fired after the surprise attack at the start of the siege, but the Assyrians had filled in the ditch at night, at some cost in terms of casualties, and had brought an elaborate battering ram to attack the gates.

  Unlike the usual tree trunk on wheels, this one was covered by a sloping roof to protect those pushing it. It also featured a small wooden tower on top of the roof from where half a dozen archers could fire at the defenders so as to prevent them shooting at the men pushing at the back, outside the protection of the roof.