“Six months then.” She smiled with a kind of radiant happiness, as if her dearest wish had been answered. “So you will be back in time for the birth of our child.”
I carry on my body many scars received in battle and know the shock of a great wound, like a sheet of lightning that blinds the world, when an arrow point or lance has torn at my flesh. These few simple words, in time for the birth of our child, were just such. I was a moment just finding their import—our child?—and longer than that finding my tongue again.
“Are you sure?” I asked, stupidly, gathering her into my arms. “Are you quite sure?”
“I am quite sure.” She smiled again, and this time I could see the tears shining in her eyes. “Yes—yes, I am very sure.”
. . . . .
I left the city at first light with an escort of twenty soldiers from the Nineveh garrison. The road into the mountain provinces covers rough country, so perhaps they wondered what there could be in these northern wastes that I pushed them so hard to reach it. Between sunrise and sunset, and for ten days, I hardly allowed them to climb down from their horses.
This was my first real journey with Ghost for a mount, and I was anxious to see if he had the stamina for campaigning. I needn’t have been concerned. Like his sire before him, he seemed never to weary.
We reached Amat just before noon of the eleventh day, and the ekalli in command of the watch—a boy almost, with hardly enough beard to hide his face—rode out to challenge our approach.
“Who goes there and what is your business?” he roared, pulling up smartly like a man perfectly prepared to draw his sword against the whole lot of us. He made an excellect impression.
“The Lord Tiglath Ashur,” I answered, “prince of the royal house and rab shaqe in the king’s army, and my business is with the garrison commander.”
“Ti—Ti—?” The first syllable of my name came out of his mouth as little more than a clicking sound. I cannot remember when I have ever seen anyone’s eyes open so wide.
He did not try to speak again but pulled his horse around with a jerk and galloped back through the fortress gate as if a demon had risen up before him in broad day—perhaps he thought one had.
Five minutes later he came back, on foot, bringing the garrison commander with him. Now it was my turn to be surprised, for the rab abru, who almost dragged me down from my horse that he might throw his arms around me in welcome, was my old comrade-in-arms Lushakin.
“Prince, is it really you?” he exclaimed, when his voice came back to him. “So you are not dead, and the king found you at last—may the gods be thanked!”
An army is like a family, and men who have suffered the hazards of battle together grow closer than brothers. Lushakin had been my ekalli in my first battle and had fought at my side against the Uqukadi, the Babylonians, the Scythians, and the Medes. When first I had come to Amat to take command of the garrison as shaknu of the northern provinces, Lushakin had been in my bodyguard. We embraced and wept.
As we walked across the parade ground together, crowds of old soldiers, men who had been with me in the wars against the northern tribes, crowded around us. I looked upon them, men whose faces I had not seen in seven years, and their names sprang of their own accord to my lips. They had not forgotten me, nor I them. I was home again and among my own.
That night Lushakin and I, sitting together in the garden of the commander’s residence, broke open many a jar of good soldier’s beer and grew pleasantly drunk.
“I was surprised to find you in command here,” I said and then, thinking how such words must sound, “I mean, I did not expect that the officers of the northern army would prosper much after Khanirabbat.”
“You mistake your brother then, Prince. No man suffered for having served under you. Indeed, we have been much preferred, and many went on his western campaign with him—I, alas, had to stay behind to keep the tribesmen in good order and thus missed the fun.”
“Then you will be pleased to hear that the king proposes to make war against the Shuprians this autumn. We will join him in three months.”
“Is that why you have returned, Prince?” he asked, grasping my arm in his eagerness. “Will you assume command again? Oh, it will be like the old days!”
“I will be there, Lushakin, but I do not think I will command the northern armies—I am not here for that. The king wishes me to secure his back against attack from the east. I am to pacify the Scythians and the Medes, who threaten to form an alliance.”
My old ekalli seemed to consider the matter for a time, and his face began to grow dark with anger. Finally he picked up an empty beer jar and threw it against the flagstones with such violence that it seemed to shatter into dust.
“This is madness!” he declared hotly. “The last time it took us two years of campaigning to render the Medes harmless, and we needed an army three times the size of the force I have presently under my command, together with the Scythians as allies—and, as you doubtless remember, it was a very close thing. Now, with the Scythians allied to the Medes, the king expects us to do the same work in two months? My Lord Prince, you have been sent upon a fool’s errand!”
“I know all this, my friend. That is why I will not lead the garrison at Amat into the steppes of the Zagros. I would only be throwing away the lives of your soldiers to no purpose, and perhaps supplying the Medes with just the provocation they have been seeking.”
“Then what will you do? If the king. . .”
“The king commands that I pacify the tribes—nothing else. This I believe I can best achieve on my own.”
Lushakin stared at me in disbelief.
“My Lord Tiglath Ashur is a madman,” he said at last, in the tone of one making a profound discovery. “I have seen you do many foolish things, Prince, and always your sedu, which all men know is mighty, has protected you from your own folly. But do not tempt the god’s favor too far. Do not even think about venturing into the Zagros without an army at your back, or you will never come out again.”
I smiled, for I would not have Lushakin imagine that I feared death.
“Then only one will be dead, instead of many,” I said. “A man’s simtu is written on the day of his birth—he cannot evade it. And the king will not leave the murder of a royal prince unavenged. Perhaps it will not be a bad thing if we have our final reckoning with the Medes now rather than twenty or forty or sixty years hence.”
The commander of the Amat garrison broke the seal on another beer jar and drained off the contents almost in one swallow. Then he set the jar back down on the flagstones, very gently. I knew he was about to say something dangerous.
“Prince, you know I am loyal to the king,” he began, holding up a hand to prevent any interruption. “All the officers of the king’s army reverence him, for he is the god’s choice to rule over the Land of Ashur. Yet things are said when men feel themselves in the company of friends—the truth will always find a voice. I have spoken to many who have served under your brother in his campaigns, officers whose judgment I respect, and the king, while an able soldier, is by no means brilliant. He imagines everything can be achieved by brute force and the stubbornness of his own will. He has neither your cold clarity of thought nor your genius for the unexpected. He is not the man to trust against an enemy as wily as the Medes. If he had been in command ten years ago, we would all have laid down our bones in the tall grass and Daiaukka would today be reigning in Nineveh.”
“Lushakin, I must tell you that what you say is very close to treason.”
“It is no less true for being so.”
“Then I think it best we all pray that I come back from Media alive.”
. . . . .
Lushakin, when he discovered that I could not be turned from my purpose, insisted on accompanying me with a force of three hundred men at least as far as our eastern borderstone.
“You are a great fool, Prince,” he said to me as we parted beside the stile my grandfather had put up to mark the limit of his e
mpire and to warn away barbarians. “Think again what the Medes do to enemies unlucky enough to fall into their hands alive.”
“I think of it constantly—I hardly think of anything else. Yet there is no turning back.”
I smiled, perhaps a little foolishly, and Lushakin offered me a final salute, even as he shook his head in disgust.
“You are a fool, My Lord Tiglath Ashur, but no man living has the right to call you a coward. May the god be with you.”
He turned his horse and rode back the way we had come, his three companies of cavalry behind him. I waited there a long time beneath the frowning stone image of the Great Sargon, until I could see nothing except the dust raised by my departing bodyguard, and then I struck out for the foothills of the Zagros Mountains and whatever fate awaited me in the wilderness of the east. I cannot remember a time when I was ever so conscious of being alone.
Besides Ghost, I had a pack horse bearing provisions for a month. This was good country for hunting, so I knew I would not starve, even after three months. The hazard lay elsewhere.
I reached the steppes after six days. The sun was fierce, burning yellow grass that reached sometimes as high as my chest. In all that time I never saw a living man, yet I knew I was being watched. Now and then I would see horse droppings that could not have been more than a few hours old and, besides, an old soldier develops a sense for these things. Sometimes I could almost feel their gaze upon me.
The Zagros are a wild place. In the mountains, which from a distance seem all sharp stone, lifeless as any desert, there are valleys astonishing in their lushness and canyons, hidden to the eyes of strangers, where a thousand men could hide while an army passed by outside. I kept to the plains, for this was not my home and I did not care to be ambushed.
On the eleventh day, just at noon, I saw three horsemen at the crest of a foothill. They were perhaps half an hour’s ride distant, but I had no difficulty making them out. They intended to be seen.
I stopped and, as if that were the signal for which they had been waiting, they started down the hill towards me. From their dress I knew them to be Medes.
The ground just there was fairly clear, which was a blessing. I dismounted and, since I did not yet know how Ghost would stand the shock of battle, tethered the horses where they would have good grazing and be out of the way. I took my sword and a quiver with some eight or ten javelins in it and found myself a good spot to wait. The three riders thus far had kept their horses to a walk, but if they urged them to a gallop I knew I would have a fight on my hands.
At first they kept bunched together, but gradually, keeping abreast, they began to spread out in a line. This I took for a bad sign, since horsemen know to keep clear of one another in a charge. I took out a javelin, tested its bronze point against my thumb, and decided this was as good a day as any for men to die in combat.
They did not disappoint me. When they were some hundred paces distant they began to gather speed. First one drew his sword and then another—I could see the blades flashing in the sunlight.
Any sudden attempt to turn a horse at full gallop is an enterprise full of danger, so in battle a cavalryman has no more control over his destiny than if he were riding a comet. Thus the first Mede was a dead man long before his corpse hit the ground—I had only to measure the distance, compensate for his speed, and throw. My javelin arched through the air and fell on him like a clap of thunder.
My second throw was not so elegant, for I had little time. I killed the horse instead of the rider, but the dying animal pitched him over its neck and when he went down he did not get up again, so I thought perhaps the fall had done for him. I was not really at leisure to consider the matter.
The last Mede was almost upon me now. There was no time for a throw—the only use I could make of my javelin was to parry the slash of his long curved sword. My javelin splintered under the blow and the impact dashed me to the ground, but at least my head was still on my shoulders.
He pulled his horse to a gradual stop and turned to look back at me. It was almost insulting, as if he thought he had the rest of his life to kill me at his convenience. I drew two more javelins from my quiver, stuck one of them point-first in the ground and balanced the other in my hand, ready for any mistake my opponent thought fit to make.
Suddenly he charged. Perhaps he imagined the range was too short to allow me another throw, and he was almost right. There was no time even to aim. My javelin followed a low arc and bounced off his horse’s shoulder, leaving an ugly, blood-soaked tear behind it. Yet even this was enough. The horse screamed with pain and terror and stopped. The Mede struck it cruelly on the flank with the flat of his sword, but the horse would not go forward. For the moment at least, it would have no more of fighting.
“Get down,” I said, reaching back ten years to the few words of Farsi I had learned while making war against these people. “Get down, and fight or die like a man.”
I drew my sword. The Mede considered the matter for a moment and then smiled—why should he not smile, when his sword was easily two handspans longer than mine? He was young, with a beautifully curled black beard, and he knew no better. He threw his leg over the horse’s neck and slid to the ground as carelessly as if he were crawling out of bed. I knew I had him.
The javelin and the bow were my weapons, in the management of which I had few rivals, but by the standards of the Nineveh barrack I was not much of a swordsman. Esarhaddon was much better. But this Mede was not Esarhaddon and had never been closer to the Nineveh barrack than a twenty day’s journey. I did not care if his sword was long enough to stir the stars with.
Cavalrymen only know how to slash, and this he did with terrifying energy. Yet I only had to keep out of his way and wait until he tired enough to grow careless and overreach himself. This he did and very quickly. He cut at me with too wide a swing. I parried, throwing his blade even farther out of reach, and stepped inside its arc. One quick thrust up under his rib cage finished him. He did not even have time to cry out, for he discovered his error and died in the same instant.
I cleaned the blood from my sword with the skirt of his tunic and sat down beside the corpse to rest for a moment. I did not look at his face, for I had learned long ago that there was no sense of triumph in contemplating one’s dead enemies. At that moment all I could think of was how much I would have given for a few sips of beer.
The dead Mede’s horse was grazing nearby and seemed to have forgotten all about the wound in its shoulder, which was already closing under a heavy scab of dried blood. I had no trouble catching its reins, and it was willing enough to be led provided I did not urge it above a walk.
The second Mede, whose horse was lying dead beside him, was alive after all. The fall had knocked him out, but he came to himself quickly enough and had suffered nothing worse than a broken ankle. He was only a boy, hardly more than fifteen. He watched me with large, frightened eyes—I fancied there was something familiar about his face, but I could not have said what it was. I had been myself just fifteen the first time I went to war. I found I did not have it in my bowels to kill him.
“Is Khshathrita still shah over the Medes?” I asked, crouching beside him on the ground. “Or have his people, who are as treacherous as serpents, turned against him and left his corpse to the delicate feasting of crows?”
He made an answer, most of which I could not understand but the import of which was that Khshathrita still lived and ruled.
I opened my right hand and held it up before the young Mede’s face.
“Then tell him you have met the man who carries the mark of the blood star on his palm.”
Ten years before, this boy with his downy beard would have been a mere child, following his mother about, clutching at her skirt with his tiny hand. Yet he understood now who I was. I could see it in his eyes, which were filled with more than the terror of mere death. It seemed that I had not been forgotten in the villages of the Zagros.
“Go now. Accept your life as a gift of
the Lord Tiglath Ashur.”
I had to help him onto his dead comrade’s horse, for his ankle would bear no weight. As he rode away, as fast as his wounded mount would allow, he kept glancing back over his shoulder, as if he expected that I would turn into a pillar of fire.
. . . . .
I knew the Medes would be back, if only to collect their dead for burial according to their own barbaric rites, and I had no desire to risk another confrontation before Khshathrita had been made aware of my presence in his domain. Thus I departed the scene of battle at once, camping toward sunset on a bluff several beru distant, from which I would have some notice of any approach of strangers.
I did not light a fire that night, but I had no illusions that I could keep myself concealed for very long. It would be just as well if tempers had a few days to cool, but in the end I had come here to be found.
Yet for five days no one ventured near me—I even lost the sense of being watched from a distance. I might have been alone in this vast landscape.
I had not seen Khshathrita since he was a boy, not since that summer, nearly ten years before, when my armies had held him hostage while I recovered from the wounds I had received in mortal combat against his father. We had grown to be good friends then, but the boy was now a man and the leader of his people, and anyone who counts on the friendship of kings to save him has mud where his brains should be. It would be necessary to wait upon events.
There was nothing to make me pursue one direction over another, so I followed the hunting, which was good. I dined on fresh meat every night, and in the morning whatever was left on the blackened bones, plus a little cooked millet, did me very well for breakfast. The nights were warm and I slept well. It was a luxurious existence, made uncomfortable only by the knowledge that it continued at the sufferance of my enemies.
The Blood Star Page 59