by H A CULLEY
The first time it had struck the gates one of the securing bars had cracked and had to be replaced. It was obvious to Mutu-Namaha that a few more blows like that would break the gates open so he had sent for some large vessels full of oil. Whilst the archers kept up a furious exchange with their counterparts in the tower on the battering ram, the oil was emptied down onto the ram from the towers on either side of the gate. When he was satisfied that it was coated in oil, torches were lobbed over the parapet and the roof of the ram and the wooden tower went up in flames with a whoosh. The smell of roasting pork that wafted back over the wall told its own story. The Assyrian archers in the tower never had a chance.
Not only was the battering ram put out of action, its blackened remains blocked the path of any replacement ram. Mutu-Namaha thought that was the end of an attack by a ram but a week later another one appeared. This time the ditch had been filled in at night underneath the centre of the longest wall. This was a good place to choose because it was out of range of the archers on top of the corner towers. He also noted that this time the roof was covered in wet fleeces as a defence against the oil trick.
The end of the tree had been sharpened like a stake and the end sheathed in bronze. This was then pushed repeatedly at the same point in the wall, loosening the mortar and reducing several large bricks near the point of impact to dust. The wall was ten bricks thick but only the outer two courses and the inner course were solid brick. The rest was in-filled with rubbish, broken bricks, stones and earth. The wall wasn’t going to last long under that sort of attack.
Luckily the Assyrians were overconfident and hadn’t provided the ram with proper guard force. There were plenty of soldiers watching, who had nothing better to do but they stood back out of arrow range and weren’t properly armed.
Suddenly the water gates opened and Mutu-Namaha led his small force of chariots, camel archers, a hundred spearmen and the boy slingers round the corner to where the ram sat. The camel archers made straight for the onlookers, who fled in panic, whilst the slingers and the archers on the wall concentrated on the bowmen in the tower on top of the ram. The two hundred men pushing the ram fled in panic, only to be cut down by the pursuing chariots. The ram lay deserted and it was the work of a few minutes for the Babylonian spearmen to heave it over the side of the filled in section of ditch. It crashed to the bottom and lay on its side, its wheels broken and beyond recovery. Within fifteen minutes, and before the defenders could react properly, the sally was over and the water gates were shut and barred again.
Next the Assyrians tried something new. They started to dig a tunnel down into the ground just out of arrow range from the walls.
‘What do you think they are trying to do?’ a puzzled Narem-Suen asked his army commander.
Mutu-Namaha shrugged. ‘I don’t understand it. If they come up somewhere inside the city we will hear them and be ready to kill them as they emerge, so it can’t be that; can it?’
‘I wouldn’t have thought so.’
As they watched earth was carted out of the hole in baskets and rough-hewn planks and short lengths of tree truck were carried in.
‘They are obviously afraid of the tunnel collapsing on top of them.’ Narem-Suen grinned at the other man.
Suddenly Mutu-Namaha drew his breath in sharply. ‘That’s it!’ he cried. ‘They dig down until they are underneath the walls and then they collapse the tunnel, bringing the wall down with it!’
‘What?’ The thought thoroughly alarmed the king. ‘If they succeed we’re doomed. But how can they collapse the tunnel? They won’t get the diggers to commit suicide by pulling it down on top of them, will they?’
‘Not unless they’re mad. I’ll have to think how they might be able to do that without burying them.’
By the time of that evening’s command conference, attended by all the captains of a thousand and the senior captains of smaller contingents, such as the camel archers and the slingers, Mutu-Namaha had worked out how the Assyrians might be able to collapse the tunnel safely.
‘If they set fire to the wood propping up the roof, having coated it with oil, they can be safely outside before the weakened props give way,’ he explained. ‘The question is what can we do to stop them?’
The hushed discussions between his senior officers failed to produce any feasible ideas until the sixteen-year-old senior captain of the recently recruited Hiritum boy slingers stood up. Ignoring the cries of his elders and supposedly betters to sit down, he started to speak but was drowned out by those incensed that he should dare to speak in their company. It seemed that the respect that the boy slingers of Babylon had earned was something that had yet to be accepted by the citizens of Hiritum.
‘Silence!’ Mutu-Namaha stood up and quelled the uproar with an angry glance that swept over everyone in the room. ‘Let him be heard.’ He nodded at the youth and sat down again.
‘Thank you, lord. I was saying why don’t we dig towards them, break into their tunnel and kill the diggers. Then we can set fire to the props and collapse the tunnel before it reaches our wall.’
A few started to ridicule the idea but most were intrigued by it and thought about it in silence. The mocking voices faded away and the army commander stood up again.
‘I think that idea has real merit. Thank you, Ubar.’ He smiled at the boy. He thought for a while. ‘Now we need to estimate where to intercept their tunnel and at what depth.’
‘Won’t we hear them digging?’ Ubar stood again. ‘As long as we are roughly in the right place and at the right depth, we can head for their noise.’
~#~
Ubar peered through the small hole at the end of the tunnel and stared into the gloom of the Assyrians’ tunnel. There was a light further along where they were working but the basket hauliers clambered past with the displaced soil in darkness. Ubar nodded to the three brawny men who stood ready with their bronze tools to break into the other tunnel and eased his way back past them. As soon as the hole was wide enough they flattened themselves against the tunnel walls and let Ubar and ten slingers go through. The boys were all armed with daggers and quickly killed two unarmed basket hauliers as they approached, one from each direction. Three boys faced in each direction to stop anyone interfering whist the other boys and the men coated eight of the pit props thoroughly in oil.
Once that was done the boys guarding each direction withdrew and Ubar thrust a torch at the base of each prop before he followed the rest back into their tunnel. The fire took hold with a roar that followed him into the other tunnel and singed the back of his head. They were halfway back along their tunnel when the felt the earth shake as the Assyrian tunnel collapsed. For a moment Ubar thought that his tunnel might collapse too, but it held.
When he climbed out into fresh air he ran, filthy as he was and dressed only in a loin cloth, up to the top of the nearby tower to see what had happened. He felt slightly abashed at his dishevelled appearance when he saw that both the king and Mutu-Namaha were there, but the latter came and shook his hand before ushering him forward to view the results of his plan.
About fifty yards from the wall a groove had appeared in the land; some six feet deep and four feet wide, it ran for another fifteen feet directly away from the wall.
‘I don’t think that they will try that one again.’ Narem-Suen smiled at Mutu-Namaha and then thanked Ubar again.
‘Maybe not, but we are still besieged with no sign of help coming from Mari.’
The next day the Assyrians started to build a ramp; the same tactic used by the Elamites. It took time but it had only failed previously because of the Babylonian forces outside of the city. They didn’t have that advantage this time.
Three weeks later the ramp had reached the edge of the ditch. Because that had been filled in for the battering ram the Assyrians and the Eshnunnans could carry straight on over the ditch this time.
‘How long do you think?’
‘About another two weeks at most at this rate, lord King,’ Mutu-Namaha
replied gloomily.
Both men retired to bed knowing that it would be difficult to sleep for fear of their impending doom. However, in the middle of the night, just after they had both managed to drift off, they awoke to the sound of fighting coming from outside the walls.
Mutu-Namaha was the first dressed and up onto the walls.
‘What’s happening?’ he asked one of the sentries.
‘I can’t be sure lord, but twenty minutes ago their camp came under attack by fire arrows; then, once many of their tents were ablaze, camel archers rode into the camp creating more disorder and then thousands of spearmen swept through the enemy lines.’
As they watched the spearmen withdrew in good order leaving absolute chaos behind. When dawn eventually lit up the scene, the extent of the damage was revealed. There was scarcely a tent left standing and there were bodies everywhere, practically all Assyrian or Eshnunnan. Those whose task it was to count the bodies estimated that there were between three and four thousand dead. Of those who had attacked the camp there was no sign.
~#~
Samsu-Iluna had eventually decided to pursue the campaign against Sumeria and, at the same time, send an army north to save Hiritum. By using the seven thousand spearmen of mixed Sumerian and Babylonian units and three thousand more purely Babylonian spearmen he had the nucleus of a powerful army. He added a thousand archers and half of his chariots and camel archers to this, together with fifty horsemen as scouts and three hundred slingers. He gave command of these twelve thousand men to Uktannu.
All the way north Uktannu worried in case they wouldn’t arrive in time. While they paused at Sippar to rest and resupply he sent a patrol of horsemen and camel archers forward under the command of Haban. As he neared Hiritum, Haban rode forward on a horse with a small escort. He found that riding the animal was completely different to a camel and was surprised how chaffed his inner thighs were after half a day in the saddle.
He arrived at a vantage point just outside of the city – the same one that Arishaka had used a few years before – to see that the enemy were starting work on the ramp. Not being aware of the Assyrians other, more novel, tactics, he was amazed that they had made so little progress. But it came as a great relief to him. Three days later he arrived back at Sippar just as Uktannu’s army were leaving, having enlisted another five hundred archers and slingers from the city’s militia.
Uktannu was well aware of the rumours that had circulated about the reason he didn’t want to hand over the slingers, but it had nothing to do with his sexuality. It was true that he had bedded some of the better looking boys when he was younger, but he had left that phase behind him several years ago. The real reason he didn’t want another command was his lack of self-confidence. He felt comfortable commanding the boys: he knew them and they knew him. Many of them hero-worshipped him and he enjoyed that.
He was far less self-assured amongst older men. He ascribed this to having grown up in his brother’s shadow; he had even taken over command of the slingers from him. Now his brother was a king a long way away and he had clutched at his comfortable existence instead of trying something new. What had given him the confidence to accept command of the army sent to relieve Hiritum was the fact that he would be going to save his brother.
Uktannu would have been surprised to know that others saw him in a completely different light to the insecure youth that he felt he was. He was an excellent administrator, a logical thinker, a clever strategist and a good leader. When he had walked into his first command council and looked at the sea of faces looking back at him his mind was too full of how to re-organise the hotchpotch of Babylonians and Sumerians he had been given to be nervous. His plan was simple: every one hundred spearmen would consist of fifty Babylonians and fifty Sumerians. They would hate it, of course, especially the three thousand who were in purely Babylonian units, but a long march interspersed with training drills would soon get them working together as teams; and so it had proved.
He had also taken two hundred of the best foot archers and trained them to shoot from a camel. He had purchased the extra camels he needed during the stop in Sippur and had trained the two hundred camel boys. Some of these were recruited in the city and some were found from the youngest of the slingers. Further training took place on the long march north to Hiritum.
Once they reached the environs of the city the set up a defended camp but no enemy patrols came near them. Having studied the situation on the ground and having thought deeply about the situation, Uktannu came to two conclusions. He needed to even the odds, as he was outnumbered two to one, and he didn’t know what situation the forces inside Hiritum were in and, secondly, he needed to split the Assyrians and the Eshnunnans apart. He had an idea for the first but he couldn’t think how to do the latter. Then the solution struck him.
He put the first part of his plans into operation that night. Surprise was the key element and so he needed to strike whist his army’s presence was undetected. Of all his soldiers, the slingers were the most adept at moving stealthily and at killing unsuspecting sentries. Boys didn’t seem to mind killing in cold blood as much as men did either; or perhaps it was the fact that they recovered mentally from the act more quickly.
The perimeter sentries weren’t particularly alert, in fact many of them were asleep. Soon the call of an ibis told Uktannu that the coast was clear. The captain of the archers gave his men the signal and a thousand fire arrows rained down all over the camp, followed by four thousand more within two minutes. By this time befuddled soldiers were staggering out of goat hair tents before they were burned to death. Most forgot about their weapons in their haste. Others were hit by the flaming arrows. No-one seemed to know what to do and certainly no-one took command of the situation.
Then Uktannu gave Haban the signal and the chariots and the camel archers sped into the camp launching spears and volley after volley of arrows at the groups of soldiers standing around waiting for orders. Their targets were illuminated by the fire arrows and the burning tents whilst the Babylonians moved too quickly for the enemy to hit them easily.
Two hundred and fifty slingers joined the eight hundred foot archers around the perimeter of the camp and kept up a steady fire at anything on foot. Ten minutes later they stood down and the chariots and camel archers withdrew. Now it was the turn of the ten units of spearmen. They advanced through the camp in two lines, killing the wounded and herding the Assyrians and the Eshnunnans before them. The army commander had begun to organise his men and resistance to Uktannu’s men grew as they advanced. However, many hundreds had already fled the camp rather than face the advancing spearmen. When his men began to face serious opposition and had begun to take casualties, Uktannu told his trumpeter to sound the withdrawal.
In the meantime, the slingers who had taken care of the sentries had made their way to the large enclosed paddock where the onagers used to draw the chariots and the baggage carts were kept. Here about fifty guards had stuck to their posts but they were clustered together, illuminated by the large number of fires burning in the camp. There was a whirring sound then about fifteen of them dropped like felled trees. The others looked around bemused then alarmed as the whirring noise started again. This time even more were killed or suffered broken bones. The remainder panicked and fled. It was then the turn of the horsemen to ride in and drive the hundreds of onagers away with them.
Uktannu’s men returned to their camp for the rest of the night but at dawn they were on the move again. They skirted the city and the besiegers camp well to the west and then headed further north. Uktannu’s next target was the Assyrian capital of Assur. He was determined that Ishme-Dagan was going to rue the day he decided to attack his brother’s city. Never again would this weak fool of a king ever contemplate taking on Babylon again.
~#~
It took the besiegers several days to sort out their camp and bury their dead. The few Babylonian corpses were stuck on stakes for the birds to feast on.
‘That just shows t
he stupidity of Ishme-Dagan; it achieves nothing and merely lowers his men’s morale because they will fear the same treatment from us in revenge,’ Narem-Suen muttered contemptuously to Mutu-Namaha.
‘I have a feeling that this particular act of barbarity might have been Sulu-Sin’s idea,’ the latter replied. ‘He was supervising the impalement himself.’
Neither man had been sure that the Eshnunnan king had been present in person until he had been spotted that morning.
‘We still don’t know who our saviours were; or why they now seem to have disappeared, leaving the enemy to carry on with the siege.’
‘Yes, most odd,’ the king agreed. ‘Perhaps they will reappear and do the same again?’
‘Oh, I hope not, for their sakes.’ Mutu-Namaha looked worried. ‘They won’t catch our enemies off guard again and they could be in for a nasty surprise if they try to. We don’t want that as it would seem that they are our only hope.’
‘Do you think it was the Marians.’
‘No, definitely not. My intelligence is that they have been paid to renege on their treaty with Hammurabi and stay neutral. No, I think it must be a Babylonian force, despite the fact that Hammurabi is at war with Sumeria, but who their commander is and what he is up to remains a mystery.’
~#~
Assur lay on a dog-leg bend in the Tigris thirty miles north of Hiritum. The old city was enclosed by a stout wall but a new city had sprung up outside the walls over the past thirty years. Unlike Babylon, where Hammurabi had built the new city over the other side of the Euphrates and put a wall around it, the new city at Assur sprawled to the south and west with no defensive perimeter. It was pure chance that Uktannu had heard about this from a merchant in Babylon who had made conversation by comparing the two cities.
Uktannu’s army arrived at the outskirts of Assur at midday four days after the attack on the besiegers’ camp at Hiritum. Haban had been chosen to command the five hundred camel archers and they swept through the streets, sending people scuttling for cover. When they arrived at the market they caused chaos with traders and customers running in all directions. Haban was under order not to kill civilians but several died anyway, trampled underfoot. When they arrived at the gates of the old city they found them closed against them but, judging by the paucity of soldiers manning the walls, it was evident that most of the garrison was at Hiritum.