U’Sumi set his jaw. “It’s good then that we move after sundown. We’ll need to make our attack on the wall especially noisy, and hope the Plague has left Kush’s baby boy addled enough to mistake noise for danger.”
“If not, he’ll escape us easily by boat, downriver, along any number of channels, while we fight mires to island-hop just to keep his flotilla in sight. We’ll lose them, if we go west for the grasslands to keep pace.”
A commotion broke out atop the walls extending along the approach road on either side of the city gate, which still caught good light from the lowering sun. U’Sumi took out his ancient bronze telescope for a better look.
“What is it?” Iyapeti said.
Through the eyepiece, U’Sumi saw men running along the wall-walk toward the gate, some of them seeming to fall off into the city. Then one of the runners tumbled over U’Sumi’s side of the wall, and lay still in the approach road. He had an arrow sticking out of his chest.
“Some one’s taking the gate for us!”
“What?”
U’Sumi wasted no time explaining. He gave the order to attack the wall, and signaled to concentrate forces at the main gate.
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En’Tarah-ana loosed his arrow, and watched the wall sentry fall to the inner pavement.
T’Qinna rushed into the battlement’s shadow, grabbed the dead man’s bow and quiver, fitted an arrow, and called back to En’Tarah-ana, “Which men are loyal to the M’El-Ki?”
‘Tarah pointed up the gate ladder. “Not even all of mine. Only the men on either side of the gate; anyone else approaching is Ninurta’s man!”
She scurried up the ladder with the speed of a sphinx-cat, even with only one free hand.
The Asshurian could barely keep up with her. When he reached the fighting top, he found her firing at approaching archers on both sides of the gate with stunning speed and accuracy.
“Don’t just stand there, boy, order your men to open the gate!” she shouted to him as if he were some oafish ‘tween.
“Tul, open the gate!”
Mother T’Qinna moved with the speed and gracefulness of a girl only a tenth her age. En’Tarah-ana followed, truly frightened of the rage in the green fire of her eyes, which he saw briefly, whenever she turned and retrieved used arrows from fallen corpses. As she advanced to the highest point over the gate, she reduced him to gathering arrows for her, as she unleashed missile after missile, rapid-fire, until trained men-at-arms began to run from her in terror. They screamed warnings of “the terrible Leopard Woman.”
A column of cavalry galloped hard for the gate as Tul and his men slowly pushed it open for them. At their lead, came Mother T’Qinna’s husband, the M’El-Ki, whom En’Tarah-ana had hoped to see return, but had honestly lost confidence of its ever happening. The grim flame of his ancestor’s bright, blue eyes in the dying sun, and the shadow of his dark, silver-streaked beard were almost as terrible as the battle fury of his wife.
Mother T’Qinna, on seeing her husband’s approach, re-slung her bow and quiver, tore the lower part of her skirt off at the thighs to free up her legs, and vaulted from the wall into the keep. En’Tarah-ana expected her to injure herself, but instead, she landed on all fours, absorbing the impact by bending her limbs like the very Leopard Woman of the retreating soldiers’ fear-crazed imaginations. When she stood again, she unslung her weapons, and cried to Tul, his men, and the entering riders, “To me! To me!”
Her husband rode through the gate, while En’Tarah-ana scrambled down a wall ladder. As the M’El-Ki slowed his mount, his wife swung herself up behind him in a single fluid motion.
Before they rode further into the city, En’Tarah-ana heard her say something that chilled his blood: “Ride to the palace, my Love! I will pin that giant to his throne with arrows!”
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Iyapeti’s horse galloped not far behind that of his brother. He had seen T’Qinna up above the gate, in the the setting sunlight, as they had approached the walls. How she came to be there was anyone’s guess, but it made him wonder if Surrupag had not been heavily watched, and perhaps she had stumbled on a scout party.
Once inside Kish, with T’Qinna riding behind her husband, the riders split off to subdue any resistance inside the city. Iyapeti kept close to U’Sumi’s back, and headed for what he figured to be Kush’s “palace.”
By now, the sun had completely set, and the palace courtyard was the only well-lit part of the city. ‘Peti expected ambushes from the many shadows on either side, but he and the others speedily drew near the torch-lit area uncontested. Dismounting, they found the inner court deserted. Other riders joined them, and likewise dismounted, with swords or maces drawn.
As they slowly approached the throne portico, T’Qinna quickly explained how Ninurta had personally scouted out Surupag alone, and captured her as an unexpected prize. She had found her captor quite suggestible, as most of her patients at the hospice had been, especially when he was not in the presence of his Vizier. P’Tah-Tahut, she reported, was just as immune to the Plague as she was, and therefore quite dangerous.
News of this conspirator’s immunity left Iyapeti more shaken than he cared to admit. He banished such thoughts, for now.
When ‘Peti, U’Sumi, and T’Qinna entered the throne portico, they halted at what they saw partially hidden behind the three great chairs.
A young servant girl lay on the brick pavement, her throat slit, fresh blood still draining into a dark pool over a stack of golden slabs set under her head like a pillow. The girl bled over the stolen Tablets of Destiny as if she were a blood offering, and the tablets some form of altar. Huge footprints tracked the sticky, fire-lit redness from the corpse to an area of the brick wall between two flickering sconces. Painted there in the girl’s blood was a message in crude pictograms:
“Etana the Shepherd rises on phoenix wings to the heavens.”
Iyapeti stepped up behind them, and said, “I’ll take some men and check the boat landing. There’s a chance that Iavanni’s infantry may have spotted and intercepted them if they tried to escape by river.”
U’Sumi nodded, but did not take his eyes from the message. “T’Qinna and I will search the palace.”
‘Peti signaled a few men to follow him through the other side of the portico, down to the shadowy landing on the Hiddekhel River, beyond. No boats remained along the quayside. In the darkening night, he watched river mist swallow five manned boats, floating off to the south, already out of bowshot. Iyapeti could not see his own infantry boats on the west bank of the Ufratsi from that angle, only where the Hiddekhel channel bent to join the Ufratsi. The battle for the gate had begun unexpectedly, before nightfall. The infantry boats were only supposed to cross the Ufratsi after dark.
The evening fog thickened.
Iyapeti swallowed his anger and climbed back to the portico. He was unsurprised when U’Sumi and T’Qinna told him that the palace was deserted. By this time, their forces had fully occupied Kish, and En’Tarah-ana’s remaining men were rounded-up for interrogation. T’Qinna explained how the son of Asshur and his sub-captain, Tul, with his squad, had helped her take the gate from inside—which had been En’Tarah-ana’s plan all along, once he had learned of the approach of Iyapeti’s army.
It was almost dawn before they were able to connect with Iavanni, who commanded the infantry force across the Ufratsi. The fog had obscured the city waterfront, and nobody had received the signal to begin the assault, before a courier came with news that the city had already fallen.
The boats escaping Kish had passed Iavanni’s position, unseen in the mists. Ninurta, P’Tah-Tahut, and over a hundred fighting men had escaped, doubtless toward Uruk. Last intelligence, before U’Sumi and Iyapeti had left Surupag, reported that Lugalbanda’s numbers increased weekly due to stragglers seeking refuge from the terror of the “monster Huwawah.”
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Morning sickness hit Inana full force; her chunky floating slick trailed amid the sun-sprites reflecting
off the channel in the wake of Mag’Margidda’s boat. Only now, instead of sacrificing their wet, flaming lives to ease her passage, their mocking laughter sparkled after her, rocking the sacred boat, and making her nausea worse. She felt too queasy to storm and rage at the affrontery of Ninurta in sending her off to newfound Kuara like some inconvenient cow ready to calve. She had only recently begun to show!
Inana had never even heard of Kuara before last week.
She looked up at the giant boatman, and sighed. Mag’Margidda had abandoned his wife and children to serve Inana exclusively. She occasionally rewarded him after dark—more so, now that Ninurta had the strange prisoner to occupy his mind. He never would let her see whoever it was—which added to Inana’s sense of abandonment. She imagined Mag’Margidda would be “rewarded” more still, since Kuara had a population of less than twenty.
She closed her eyes and flopped back into the boat’s gunwales. My Mighty Hunter pouts for not-suredness if the child is his.
The inner voice of En-Ki rose from the waters, “How can he be sure? Let’s see, there’s Mag’Margidda, two of the five palace guards, and over ten of En’Tarah-ana’s men—but I have no such petty jealousies. This is why you will bear the son to me, instead of Ninurta. You are the Goddess, and you have had visions in which I have been your lover. I tell you that they are no mere visions! You now travel regularly to the place of the gods. As the Goddess, you bear from the seed of gods a boy who will also be a god!”
Inana’s despair left her as En-Ki’s warm light embraced her in the bottom of the boat. “I should not have doubted you!”
“You are growing. It is well. The man-child you carry is the Falcon. He shall rule for a time at Uruk, but shall go on a quest to create an empire in a far land, and you shall go with him. He shall be a shepherd, like Dumuzi, and shall fish the rivers to unite scattered denizens of the Absu under me.”
“Then is Ninurta my husband, or you?”
En-Ki whispered in her ear, “Do not simper of husbands, girl. I name you the New Ishtar! All husbands are your husband. May the wives of armies howl and weep after their husbands, lost to the joys of your couch!”
Inana looked up through half-shut eyes at Mag’Margidda, and grinned hungrily.
Dilmun – The Sumerian paradise, perhaps the Persian Gulf, sometimes described as ‘the place where the sun rises’ and ‘the Land of the Living.’ It is the scene of a Sumerian creation myth and the place where the deified Sumerian hero of the flood, Ziusudra, was taken by the gods to live for ever.
—Encyclopedia Mythica
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Dilmun
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U’Sumi and Iyapeti left Kish to En’Tarah-ana and his men. Terms for the Asshurians loyal to Ninurta were generous; they could swear fealty to U’Sumi or go back to Asshur. All but three swore fealty to U’Sumi, and moved into Kish with the wives and children they had brought south with them. The two sons of A’Nu-Ahki anointed En’Tarah-ana as Saar of Kish.
The scouts sent southeast along the branching riverways never caught sight of Ninurta’s escape boats. U’Sumi, Iyapeti, and much of their army set out for Surupag, after two weeks of establishing En’Tarah-ana’s government. U’Sumi kept reminding himself that E’Yahavah had given them a great victory without the punishing losses they had expected from taking the wall. On top of that, Kish was now a centrally situated stronghold under lawful government again. Uruk still controlled the sea approaches, but not decisively so—it was possible to bypass the old haven the way Haviri went.
Once the Ufratsi ferries dropped U’Sumi and Iyapeti’s horsemen on the west bank, and the formation began its long ride back to Surupag, the two brothers rode alongside each other to talk, with T’Qinna behind her husband in the large saddle.
“I should feel good about the victory,” U’Sumi said. “Why do I have this tightness in my chest, and a sense of hanging shadows?”
‘Peti shrugged. “The scouts have ridden far ahead and reported back. Ninurta’s not waiting to ambush us; it wouldn’t make sense. We outnumber his largest possible force ten to one, and there’s no high ground. He’s slinked back to Uruk, where he can swell his numbers. Haviri’s surely met the incoming Sun Ships by now, so we have three oracle sets to warn any other returning ships to avoid Uruk. It’s maddening that Ninurta escaped, but we’ve had the best of it.”
U’Sumi smiled that even they were using the corrupted name pronunciations. Easier on the afflicted—at least those that still spoke a broken-down version of the old Language, he supposed.
T’Qinna broke her silence. “I’m more concerned about P’Tah-Tahut than I am with Ninurta—Tahut has all his faculties, and he’s Academy trained. He said things that scared me far more than anything Ninurta is capable of in his diminished capacity.”
U’Sumi said, “That stuff you told me the other night?”
“Yes,” she answered. “Humanly speaking, he’s the real brains behind Ninurta. En’Tarah-ana said that Kush’s wicked astronomer, Suinne, is also untouched by the fever, and is already at Uruk with this Lugalbanda. This is why I think this Madness Plague is more than just a Divine judgment. When has E’Yahavah ever punished the good, and left the most evil untouched during a Divine judgment? Didn’t Malaq the oracle mage say strange things of Lugalbanda when he reported the Amirdu taken?”
Her husband reached behind and squeezed her thigh. “He said he thought he heard Lugalbanda speaking to Kush in Kush’s new jabber. But he was in the water. He might have misheard things.”
‘Peti said, “Yeah, that just doesn’t make sense, unless Lugalbanda’s smarter than you are, and taken more time than you have, T’Qinna, to understand the stricken. I can’t imagine anyone, much less an impaired Kengu, who can’t even recall his own name, being able to do half of what you’ve done with all the time you’ve spent studying the Plague-struck. Malaq also said that Kush was among those who can only make noise.”
T’Qinna raised her voice. “It’s not noise! Some of them speak entirely new languages. I’ve tested it. What’s more, I’ve seen disconnected groups come to Surupag who spoke nothing based on our original Language, who nevertheless seemed to understand one another.”
Iyapeti said, “Yes, but how do we know they didn’t have some form of past relationship? You mentioned that frequently those of the same family could understand each other, even if no one else understands them. You briefed my men on that.”
T’Qinna cleared her multi-colored hair from her eyes in the breeze. “That’s possible, but it still doesn’t explain the power this Lugalbanda seems to have to unite people with disparate speech, and send them off as organized colonists. That’s what Tahut said he was doing at Uruk, and that they were all speaking the words of this new deity, En-Ki. Malaq’s report was consistent with that interpretation, too. Why else did they take your ship?”
U’Sumi said, “En-Ki—God of the Earth—over my dead body!”
He felt his wife tense up behind him. “That’s what P’Tah-Tahut said. He said that this En-Ki is real—that he didn’t think so at first, but that now he does, and that En-Ki has overthrown E’Yahavah in the heavens, just as the Ensi Council was overthrown on Earth!”
U’Sumi reached behind and pulled her close. “Nobody has overthrown E’Yahavah in the heavens or anywhere else.”
“I know that!” she snapped, “Maybe I’m just terrified from being alone with them for so long. I was afraid one of them would…”
“It’s over now. And I think you’ve earned yourself such a huge reputation as some kind of fierce battle-queen that nobody’s going to want to take you hostage again.”
Her arms tightened around him. “Battle-queen? Half of me likes that, while the other half wonders how many of our own grandchildren I killed on that wall. Worst of it is, I’m not sure anymore which half is the real me.”
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Palqui felt good to be up and around again, doing something useful. It was even better that Eya permitted him to be that way with Loma and Yokt
i. The new Loma had grown on him, and he figured that he, too, must seem equally changed to her.
The community at Shurrupak had to go gathering farther afield as time went on. They had already emptied the granaries of the two nearest tent villages to supply Elder Yapheth and Melchi Shemi’s army for their march on Kish. Not enough seed remained for planting, if they continued to live at Shurrupak. The Madness and the Big Wave had wiped out a year’s farming. Too few remained to work the fields, unless the soldiers returned soon. Even then, it should have been time to harvest, not plant.
Palqui also kept his eyes out for Mother Pyrrha, but saw no sign of her anywhere. Her disappearance badly frightened him.
He had remembered Shatru and his wife, up at Isin, and led his party that direction in hope of finding friendly faces. Yokti and one of Father Cham’s soldiers carried maces in case the faces were not so friendly. Palqui did not want one, but his brother carried an extra one for him if need forced him. The Glow remained faint, but still hovered over him as always. He took that as a good sign.
They found Shatru and his not-quite-so-fat-as-before wife had moved their tent some distance south of Isin, since the Wave had washed away most of the village. Two young, well-dressed couples, one with a new baby, had joined Palqui’s friends at Isin’s new site. Everything seemed changed—less threatening, as if a tiny seed of as-things-should-be had germinated in that corner of the world.
Shatru beamed proudly at the two other families as he welcomed Palqui’s party, “See, good Eya-man! Wife dresses some who before be foolish nakeds, but now be goodly men’n wives. We have small crop, but good. Cooler this year, with many wetnesses, but orange tubers grow. Me have set-lines to catch much fish. Have feast for you!”
Gate of the Gods: Book 5 of The Windows of Heaven Page 34