by Sam Barone
Eskkar and his men reached the first resupply point, thirty-six miles from Akkad, late in the afternoon, and found it manned by six guards and as many pack men. Food and water waited, with two spare horses in case any of the animals had gone lame. As always, Trella’s planning left little to chance. When Eskkar told his wife that he and eighty men wanted to cover almost two hundred miles in less than five days, Trella made sure that everything needed would be available along the route.
Three cooking fires already burned, sending crooked trails of smoke into the sky. The mouth-watering aroma of burning mutton floated over the campsite.
Eskkar slid to the ground with a grunt of satisfaction and lifted his long arms to the sky in a welcome stretch. Despite all his recent training, many months had passed since he’d spent an entire day on the back of a horse, let alone a long ride that finished with the prospect of sleeping on the hard ground.
Nevertheless, Eskkar knew he would sleep well tonight. He filled his lungs with the clean air of the countryside, so different from the thick city-smells of Akkad.
All around him, hungry men swung down from their mounts and stripped off their horse blankets. All the riders saw to their horses’ needs first, then rushed to join the lines already forming beside each fire pit.
Drakis, one of Eskkar’s senior commanders, stood near the largest cooking fire. Eskkar handed A-tuku’s halter over to one of the camp’s liverymen. The horse had learned to accept the ministrations of others, though it still proved restive if anyone other than Eskkar or Dimuzi attempted to ride it. Satisfied that his horse would be well cared for, Eskkar turned to find Drakis jogging over to greet his commander.
Short, with a wide chest and thick arms, Drakis had a coarse black beard that climbed up his cheeks almost to his eyes, but failed to cover a scar from a Sumerian arrow that had nearly torn his eye out. Even before that battle, he’d proven his courage in the fight against the Egyptian invaders who had once seized Akkad.
“Must you look so happy, Captain?” Drakis clasped his arms around Eskkar and gave him a powerful hug. “I’ve been riding for three days, and every bone in my body aches.”
Only Eskkar’s most senior commanders, or those who had known him in the old days when he was Orak’s Captain of the Guard, dared to call him ‘Captain.’ Still, Eskkar preferred that title to the formal ‘Lord Eskkar,’ as he was known in Akkad or even worse, ‘King Eskkar.’
Such a subservient address, unique to the dirt eaters, always rankled something in his head. A warrior should not need to preen himself before his men, especially while on campaign.
“Serves you right,” Eskkar said, when Drakis released him. “You should spend more time on your horse.” Eskkar found a fresh patch of grass and spread his cloak, to mark it as his sleeping place. “Tomorrow night will be even worse, after another long day’s ride.”
Drakis swore at the outlook. “I had to waste two days taking the hill trail and swinging around Akkad.”
A city dweller most of his life, Drakis spent the least amount of time of any of Akkad’s commanders on the back of a horse. He had ridden in from one of the southern training camps, detouring around the city so that no one would know of his whereabouts.
“Another ten or twenty days riding, and you’ll toughen up.” Eskkar laughed at the look of dismay on his commander’s face.
“You enjoy riding and camping out too much, Captain,” Drakis said. “If this fight wasn’t against the Alur Meriki, we would have insisted you stay in the city.”
Eskkar ignored Drakis’s comment. No one had tried to dissuade him from this campaign, not even Trella. Every one of Akkad’s commanders knew his experience fighting the barbarian Alur Meriki Clan would be needed in this encounter. They also were aware that Eskkar had a personal score to settle.
Born and raised in the Clan, Eskkar’s entire family had died one night in a blood feud, murdered on orders of the clan’s Sarum, or king. Only fourteen years old, Eskkar killed his first man that night, stabbing him in the back with a knife. Nevertheless, the stroke came a moment too late to save the life of Eskkar’s younger brother.
In almost the same instant, and with her dying breath, Eskkar’s mother had cried out for him to run from the Clan and save himself. With his family dead around him, Eskkar had no other choice but to flee.
Luck and his father’s fastest horse had helped him escape the same fate as his kin. Even as he ran for his life, Eskkar swore to avenge his family’s murder. For the next fourteen years, he had endured the lonely life of an outcast, hunted by his own people yet never accepted and always distrusted by the dirt eaters he was forced to live among.
Eventually he arrived in Orak, where he spent three years as a soldier and handler of horses. A slow spiral of apathy ensued, and Eskkar indulged his fondness for ale to hold back the gloom that filled his dreary days.
Then a stroke of chance and the threat of a barbarian invasion by the Alur Meriki had made him Captain of the Guard in Orak, and the gift of a slave girl named Trella had upended his existence. Trella’s keen wits turned Eskkar’s life around, and in time placed the power of Orak in his hands, soon renamed the City of Akkad.
And in saving the City from destruction by the barbarian warriors, Eskkar had extracted the first payment of his blood debt. Now he intended to take the full measure to avenge his family’s murder at the hands of his former clansmen. At the same time, he would end the Alur Meriki’s never-ending depredations against Akkad and its people once and for all.
“By the gods, I haven’t been this hungry in months.” Eskkar heard his stomach growling with anticipation for a haunch of burnt meat. The cooks had already started handing out the thick slices of mutton.
“Well, there’s plenty of food, and ale, too” Drakis said. “Not like the last time we rode out to fight the barbarians. After we’ve eaten, I’ll fill you in on what the men are thinking.”
Later, Eskkar’s belly stuffed with food and the raw ale favored by the soldiers, he stretched out on the ground with his hands behind his head and let himself relax. “How are the men?”
Drakis tossed the last of the bone he’d been gnawing into the fire, dragged the back of his hand across his mouth, then wiped his fingers on his tunic. “Good. All the subcommanders now know that you’re coming. We’ll pick up the rest of the horsemen as we travel north. By the time we reach Aratta, our entire force will be assembled there.”
Drakis glanced around. All the men were too busy eating and talking among themselves to pay any attention to their commanders. Nevertheless, Drakis lowered his voice almost to a whisper, and his broad white teeth flashed a wide grin in the fire’s light. “They’ll be surprised to learn where we’re going.”
The soldiers believed they were on another training march, destined for the tiny village of Aratta, almost two hundred miles northwest of Akkad. Aratta bordered the unclaimed lands, and the village lay just a hundred miles from the base of the Zagros Mountains. When Eskkar and his men arrived at Aratta, talk of a training mission would vanish.
“If we make good time,” Eskkar said, “we’ll reach Aratta in five, six days at the most.”
“And have time to rest there for a day or two,” Drakis agreed. “Then the hard march begins.”
For months, troops of men and horses, companies of bowmen, spearmen, and slingers, had trained in the cool and hilly horse country, so different from the level countryside surrounding Akkad and stretching south almost all the way to Sumeria.
To maintain the secrecy of this campaign, Eskkar had relied on his subcommanders to prepare the men, and without his usual close inspection of their progress. Now those leaders of ten, twenty, and fifty would be judged by their peers for each and every failure.
“I hope they’re ready.” Eskkar knew just how much depended on the men and their preparations. “We’re going to need every man.”
Drakis’s laugh held little mirth. “Oh, they are ready. Whether we have enough soldiers to do the job, that’s another mat
ter. I still think you should have brought the whole army.”
Eskkar grunted. That argument among his senior commanders had gone on for nearly a year. But he had overruled every objection. Too many men away from the city would weaken its defenses, and worse, jeopardize the plan’s secrecy. No, if he could not defeat the Alur Meriki with almost a thousand picked men, another few hundred wouldn’t make a difference. At any rate, he didn’t intend to go over those arguments yet again.
“Get some sleep, Drakis. Starting tomorrow, we’ll be doing some real riding.”
Drakis groaned.
Smiling at his friend’s discomfort Eskkar wrapped himself in his cloak, rolled over onto his side, closed his eyes, and promptly fell asleep. Throughout the camp, one by one, the men of his troop did the same, covering themselves with their horse blankets and drifting quickly to sleep despite the cold earth.
Drakis gazed at the relaxed figure of his friend and commander, and shook his head. The man could sleep soundly on a pile of rocks. With a sigh, Drakis nodded to the guards, kicked dirt over the fire, and tried to get himself comfortable on the hard ground. Eskkar had spoken the truth. Drakis knew he would really be stiff by the end of tomorrow’s ride.
In the morning, Eskkar climbed on A-tuku and again led the men north. They hadn’t covered much ground before a gentle rain fell from an overcast sky. The wind coming down from the north drove the moisture into their faces as they rode. By midmorning, the drizzle stopped, the sun pushed the clouds aside, and the riders made better time. Still, the wet ground slowed their pace, and most of the sun had descended below the horizon before they reached the next resting place.
Two more days passed in much the same way. As they rode north, the land gradually changed to more hilly terrain, and the thick grass of the south gave way to sparser clumps of vegetation. At the village of Morphoza they joined up with Hathor and two hundred of his horsemen.
Originally from the far off land of Egypt, Hathor commanded Akkad’s cavalry. As tall as Eskkar, Hathor possessed the lean body of an experienced horseman. His bald head and darker complexion made him appear even more ferocious than he was.
He had fought against Eskkar in the battle to retake the City, and been captured before he could kill himself. Only Trella’s intervention had kept Hathor from Akkad’s torturers and saved his life. Every other Egyptian renegade had died that night.
Over the years, Hathor had become one of Eskkar’s closest friends. The two men shared many traits. Both were outcasts living in a strange land, and both had found a new home in Akkad. Now they fought together to preserve their adopted city.
The next day, Muta, Hathor’s second in command and another two hundred and thirty riders from the training campground of Ramparna linked up with them. With the men that accompanied Eskkar, Hathor’s force of mounted horsemen now numbered just over five hundred.
When Eskkar and the cavalry rode into camp at Aratta, he found the remainder of his soldiers waiting. Two hundred archers, carrying the longer and more powerful war bows, had arrived the day before, commanded by Mitrac, Akkad’s master bowman. Two hundred spearmen, led by Alexar, and a hundred slingers, under Shappa’s command, had reached the gathering place eight days earlier.
Another hundred or so supply men guarded the supplies, extra weapons, and spare horses. Not counting those, just over a thousand fighting men stood ready, though almost none of them knew what enemy they might soon be facing.
In the center of the camp, a large square of linen stretched between four tall posts hammered into the ground. Soldiers and commanders watched in silence as Eskkar dismounted beside the makeshift awning, large enough to shelter ten or twelve men from the sun. The trodden down grass felt soft beneath his feet, especially after so many days of riding.
A glance up at the sun told him that mid-afternoon had just passed, so plenty of daylight remained. Eskkar used it to inspect the men, to see for himself if they were ready to fight, and to search their faces for any signs of fear or doubt.
Eskkar strolled through the ranks, talking to the men and especially their commanders, the leaders of ten and twenty who directed much of the actual fighting. Once any battle started, it fell to these subcommanders to provide the leadership and maintain discipline in the face of the enemy. Their decisions in the heat of battle might mean the difference between victory or defeat.
What Eskkar saw and heard reassured him. The men looked fit and ready to fight. His presence in these unclaimed lands dispelled the last rumors about a training mission. Only a fool could believe the King of Akkad would journey so far north, and with so many veteran soldiers, without a real enemy in mind. Nevertheless, the prospect of a fight only whetted the men’s good spirits.
The sun still remained above the horizon when Eskkar and his leaders gathered outside the shelter to eat. The cooks had slaughtered ten cattle that had been turning on spits since morning. After each man received a thick slice of beef, the cooks tossed all the scraps and handfuls of vegetables into the cooking pot. A cup of stew would complete the soldiers’ hearty meal.
Eskkar chewed away at the tough morsels as eagerly as any of his men. Unlike his soldiers, he knew it might be a long time before any of them feasted this well again.
A fine rain began to fall, so Eskkar moved beneath the linen awning. One by one, his commanders finished their supper and joined him. Drakis came in last, after making sure the Hawk Clan guards had formed a perimeter around the shelter, far enough away to ensure that none of the curious soldiers listened to their leaders’ conversation.
Hathor unfolded the linen map on the grass, stitched with colored threads to show its features, that he’d brought with him from Akkad. Made by Trella’s craftswomen, the map identified landmarks, watering places, and possible camp sites.
All the terrain from Aratta to the Zagros Mountains, and the particular gorge that was their destination, could be identified easily enough. The map itself was but a copy of the master layout that rested in the Map Room back in Akkad.
Eskkar and the others took their places around it. He gazed at the faces of his commanders. Only his most senior men, Hathor, Alexar, Drakis, and Mitrac, knew the true target of the campaign. The rest of Eskkar’s commanders present, Muta, Daro, Shappa, and Draelin, did not. Or at least, Eskkar hoped they still didn’t know.
Back in Akkad, only Trella and a handful of others knew the soldiers’ destination. Trella had gone to great lengths to keep their purpose secret. The fewer who knew the truth, the better. Even so, all these men had their wits about them, and any of them might have figured out their real enemy.
“It’s time to tell all of you who we’re going to fight,” Eskkar began. “You can forget the rumors and wild guesses. We’ve assembled this force to march against the Alur Meriki.”
Broad smiles greeted his words from those who knew or had guessed right, while a gasp of surprise escaped from those who’d guessed wrong.
“For almost two years, Trella and Annok-sur’s agents have collected information about the Alur Meriki Clan, and the route of their migration. Ten months ago, we learned that the barbarians had started their return from the northeast, hugging the foothills of the mountains. The Clan had traveled nearly to the Indus before they swung north, and some of our spies claimed the barbarians had been pushed back by those dwelling in that distant land.”
And that had made more sense as soon Bracca delivered his warning about the Elamites. Of course they would be eager to get rid of a large, hostile force on their northern frontier.
“Now the Alur Meriki are moving back toward these lands,” Eskkar continued. “They’re not foolish enough to ride through Akkad’s countryside, so they’ll stay close to the mountains. Far enough away to think they’re safe from our soldiers, but close enough to raid our outlying settlements. But this time we have a surprise for them. We’re going to cut across their route and force them to fight, at a time and place of our choosing.”
He glanced around the circle of faces. Shappa a
nd Draelin had their mouths open. Even Muta and Daro appeared concerned. Eskkar turned toward the youngest commander. Always start with the most junior of your men, Trella had advised. Let them offer their thoughts before the words of the more senior men tended to discourage such discourse.
“Well, Shappa, what do you think?”
When only in his fifteenth season, Shappa had led the newly formed troop of slingers against the Sumerian cavalry. He and his men, most even younger than himself, had managed to hold off a superior force long enough for Eskkar to charge to victory.
Now in his early twenties, Shappa’s slim build had changed little in those years, except that he cut his hair short to make himself appear older. Freckles and scars from the pox were sprinkled equally across his cheeks.
“How many fighters do they have?”
“Trella’s people estimate that Thutmose-sin, their clan leader, has between twelve hundred and fifteen hundred fighters available. When he includes the young boys and old men, Thutmose-sin can add another three or four hundred to that.”
Eskkar ignored the small signs of surprise that came from the men. The Alur Meriki were still considered to be the fiercest fighters in the land.
Shappa’s eyes widened. “How many men will we have to face them?”
“Only those here at Aratta,” Eskkar replied. “It was necessary to assemble this force in secret. The Alur Meriki have their own spies, and of late they’ve gotten into the habit of dealing with traders and others who can supply weapons and goods as well as information. That’s why this ‘training mission’ was scarcely mentioned. Except for those here, and a few back in Akkad, none are aware of the real plan.”
Eskkar turned to Daro, who had commanded the river archers during the battle against Sumer. “And what do you think of all this?”