The Blood Star

by Nicholas Guild

  Would they come swooping down one night, a hundred strong, and butcher me in my sleep? Would I be taken alive and staked out on the ground to have my skin peeled off? Lushakin had been right, for the Medes are cruel to their prisoners. If it came to the point, I resolved to die by my own hand before allowing myself to be captured.

  But even fear loses its edge with time. After the second day I stopped thinking about death. I let my mind go empty and achieved something like peace.

  I thought of Selana and the child she carried in her womb—it might be a son for all I knew, to be born after his father’s death. A son is like immortality, or as good as any man can hope for.

  I thought of Esharhamat, who had borne me a son, a child conceived in guilty love, one I could never name as my own.

  I thought of the child Nodjmanefer had not lived to bear, and my bowels went cold. It was well that Enkidu had remained in Nineveh to guard my family, for the world was an evil and uncertain place.

  At the end of the sixth day, near sunset, I saw a lone rider approaching over the grassy steppes. I could not see his face, for it was covered up to the eyes with the end of his turban, as is the custom in that part of the world, for the dust can be terrible, yet he was not dressed like a Mede. He carried a bow across his back and a quiver of arrows. When he came closer I saw a short curved dagger stuck in his belt.

  At last we were no more than twenty paces apart. He stopped his horse, and I could see from the way his eyes narrowed to slits—they were the eyes of a cat—that he was smiling.

  Then he took down the cloth covering his face and I knew him.

  “Brother!” he exclaimed, in Aramaic, “have I aged more than you that you stare so? It is Tabiti, son of Argimpasa, headman of the Sacan tribe of the Scoloti.

  XXXVII

  “This Ahura of the Medes is not a god much given to hospitality. Each time I visit young Khshathrita in Ekbatana I must camp outside the city walls, for I am an unbeliever and therefore impure. When first we contemplated this alliance, I offered him the elder of my two daughters for a wife and he refused her. Well, I thought, perhaps she is not to his taste, so I offered her sister as well, and still he persisted in his refusal, for it seems he will not risk defilement by taking women of other races to his sleeping mat. Can you imagine such a thing? Where would the world be if all of us were so fastidious? Clearly, the man is a barbarian.”

  We sat under the bright stars while Tabiti stirred the fire with the point of his dagger. He had brought with him a goatskin full of safid atesh, a wine the Scythians make from horses’ milk—the name means something like “white lightning” and is a reasonable description.

  “Then this alliance cannot last long,” I suggested, but Tabiti, ever the practical man, shook his head.

  “This is not marriage but statecraft, and our mutual distaste will not keep us apart. It serves the interests of my people that I should join Khshathrita if he makes war against Esarhaddon, for otherwise we will be left out of the spoils. That I do not love him is beside the point. I love you, my friend Tiglath Ashur, no less than if you were my own brother, yet, had I not sworn an oath to you that day at the Bohtan River, when your soldiers had conquered the Sacan, spilling our blood as punishment for having entered the Land of Ashur, I would this minute be cutting your throat.”

  This struck me as a rare jest, no less because I knew he spoke the truth, and I laughed.

  “It is good to be among friends again,” I said, and laughed still more.

  “And I am glad to see you, My Lord, for I had thought you long dead and my liver was afflicted that you should suffer so at the hands of your own king and brother. Still, it is a grief to me that now the Scoloti may not fall like wolves upon the Land of Ashur. For years now visions of her plundered cities have filled my dreams.”

  We spoke no more of such matters but remembered, as warriors will, the old days. We drank to the brave men, his and mine, who had drenched the earth with each other’s blood when we fought against each other beside the Bohtan River. We lived again our war against the Medes, for memories of ancient battles are full of sweetness.

  “I still think you were a fool not to have killed Daiaukka the moment he came into your hands,” Tabiti said. “As it was, he nearly killed you. I do not know what it is in you, brother, that makes you take such risks.”

  “Perhaps, if I had listened to you and had the father strangled, I would not have had to come back to this place to make peace with the son.”

  But the headman of the Sacan waved this aside as mere giddy talk, worthy of women.

  “Daiaukka was a brave man and a great leader, but leaders are less important than you imagine and war is the common condition of life. The Medes will fight the Assyrians until they have poured over your borders and laid your land waste—or until you have butchered them to the last sucking babe. It does not depend on any of us, not on you nor me nor that ill-mannered brat of Daiaukka’s who now calls himself `king of kings.’ It is the way things are.”

  “Then Daiaukka was right: it will never end.”

  “No, it will never end, and that is just as well”—he nudged me with his elbow, as if telling me something in confidence—“for you and I are warriors, My Lord, and there is no one more to be pitied than a warrior who knows he will never again see battle.”

  “How did you know I was here, brother?”

  I found I did not entirely trust Tabiti in this reflective mood, for when a man such as he, a savage accustomed to living each day as if it held his whole life, begins to brood darkly over the meaning of things, it is usually a sign that his conscience is not clear.

  And I knew I was right the instant he looked at me. The reddish color of burned brick, with narrow, catlike eyes and only a few wisps of beard framing his mouth, Tabiti’s was not a face to show much range of feeling, yet I knew he was holding something back.

  “I happened to be with Khshathrita when his younger brother returned,” he answered, implying that this was a sufficient reply.

  “His brother?”

  “Yes—his brother. It is well you spared his life, yet this is still a messy business, My Lord. The two you killed were cousins.”

  He made a gesture with his hand as if it were loose on his wrist and the wind moved it.

  “At this moment the Medes are struggling among themselves over who is to lead them,” Tabiti continued. “Khshathrita is the true shah, but he is young and he has an uncle who fancies himself a great man—you, the son of a king, will know the sort of thing I mean. It can only end one way, for at last Khshathrita will crush his uncle and gather all power to himself, yet it may not end soon. Do you understand me, Lord? Your life is threatened now, while a foolish and vain man grieves over the deaths of his sons and perhaps has the power to demand that they be avenged.”

  “Where is Khshathrita now?”

  “In a village about four days from here.”

  The direction he indicated lay over a line of rocky foothills, so I knew the sort of place he meant. The Medes often built their villages straight into the face of a mountain, like fortresses, with only a goat path leading down to the plain.

  “I am on my way back north.” Tabiti glanced away, as if the admission shamed him. “There is nothing I can do to help you, my friend, and it is better that I do not become involved.”

  “I understand your position. You must act for your people, and it is always better not to take sides in another family’s quarrels.”

  “You are wise, brother. But take heart, and do not imagine I will forget you. No alliance can endure forever, so be sure that one day, should the Medes chance to strip you of your life, I shall exact from them a fitting blood price.”

  . . . . .

  Tabiti rode away the next morning. I waited two more days, and still the Medes did not intrude upon my solitude.

  Why? What held them back? I was an old enemy, a trespasser in a land they held sacred to their unforgiving god, and I had recently killed two cousins of their sha
h. Why did they stay their revenge?

  I thought perhaps I knew.

  Ten years before, when I first came into the Zagros with a vast army at my back to make war against the Medes, their sorcerers had told them that I was the spirit of the Great Sargon made flesh again. There had been many who still remembered him from the days of his own campaign in their mountains, when he had taken their first shah, one Ukshatar, father of Daiaukka and grandfather of Khshathrita, a captive that he might wear out his life under the yoke of Ashur. They fancied a resemblance, and it had filled their hearts with terror, for they are a superstitious people. I had used this as a weapon, invoking the magic of my grandfather’s name and leading my army under the banner of the blood star which had blazed in the eastern sky the night of his death. I defeated the Medes and then, in answer to his challenge, killed Daiaukka in single combat, nearly losing my own life as well but greatly impressing the Medes. From that day there had been peace.

  Daiaukka, on the night before his death, had told his son that if I prevailed against him it could only mean that I lived under the protection of Ahura, the Median god who is lord of all truth and power. Thus he made the boy swear an oath that there would be no war between his people and mine as long as I stood at my king’s right hand.

  The Medes do not lie, not even to their enemies, so Khshathrita would never have broken that oath had not my banishment released him from it. Yet now, like the taint of some ancient curse, I had returned to spoil his plans for an alliance with the Scythians and an attack upon the Land of Ashur.

  Ten years, however, was not a moment, and none among the Medes except their shah would feel bound to keep the peace only because an unclean foreigner had returned as if from the dead.

  Still, they would hesitate. They would remember the fate of Daiaukka. They would remember that the man who killed him might be something else besides a man, and they would not be anxious to test his magic. Perhaps they would be just as pleased if I slinked quietly away, for they were afraid—the fact that I was still alive was testimony to their fear.

  I would have to stake my life, and the success of my mission, on that fear. My only hope lay in boldness. If the Medes would not come to me, then I would have to force myself upon them.

  I had had enough of waiting. I mounted Ghost and rode in the direction that Tabiti had indicated led to Khshathrita’s headquarters.

  My sense of utter isolation returned, and with it a cold, unforgiving fear that settled in my bowels like a piece of jagged ice. I was alone in this land where once I had earned for myself the enmity of a conquered people—a people who might now be watching my every movement, whose moment for revenge had now come if only they chose to take it. They were many and I was alone. How should I contrive to leave this place with the flesh still on my bones?

  Yet long ago I had delivered myself into the hands of my god, and he had thus far kept me from death. If he had indeed given me a sedu to watch over my life, then I could only pray that it had not deserted me.

  On the third day there was a frightful lightning storm such as sometimes happens in those mountains. In the middle of the afternoon the sky was black as night yet torn by ghastly sheets of fire that burned a man’s eyes. I thought the thunder would shatter my head, for it made the very breath in my nostrils tremble. There was no wind, and the air was dry as sand. My horses were terrified, but I judged it best to keep them moving ahead, for a horse is like a man and will panic the sooner if tethered to one spot.

  I rode over the summit of a line of low hills and saw a village, much as I had imagined I would find, spread out against the face of a cliff.

  Perhaps I have been here before, I thought. Perhaps I have spent a night in one of those stone houses after my advancing armies had sent the inhabitants fleeing into the mountains. Yet there were so many in those days, who can know?

  At the base of the mountain was grassland. I could have crossed it and been in that village in an hour, except that spread out across the plain was a line of horsemen, fifty at least. They seemed to be waiting for me.

  In their center, mounted on a black horse that could have been the great stallion his father rode on that last day, was Khshathrita. He was some distance from me and I had not seen him since he was a boy, yet I picked him out from the rest as easily as one might pick a lion cub from among a litter of kittens. After all, he was Daiaukka’s son.

  At precisely that moment, when I first looked across and saw the Medes, the storm ended abruptly. It might have been a sign from the gods—I hoped Khshathrita and his followers would interpret it as such. The thunder died away in an echo, and a light wind stirred the grass on the plain below. I rode down the rocky hillside to meet whatever destiny the Lord Ashur had prepared for me.

  When perhaps no more than forty paces separated us, I reined in Ghost and stopped to contemplate the faces of the men who seemed to make of themselves a wall against my approach. Many of them, I discovered, I knew by sight; they were the parsua, as the Medes call their tribal leaders, who had gone down on their knees to me after Daiaukka’s final defeat. They meant nothing, for they had tasted subjection once and, of their own, would never dare to raise their hands against me a second time. They were beaten men who could not even meet my glance.

  Then there was Khshathrita himself, a young man now, perhaps not yet twenty years old but already a king in his bearing, the image of his father. He could be restrained, I thought, but never by fear. At his left hand was the youth whose life I had spared, whom Tabiti had designated Khshathrita’s younger brother. He kept his gaze down, as if conscious that he had made a fool of himself once already.

  And at Khshathrita’s right hand, on a dappled stallion that seemed to totter under his weight, was my real enemy. A huge man, as tall as myself yet built on a broader scale, with thick-fingered hands that made the reins they held look like threads. I knew him at once from the expression of hatred that seemed to have stamped itself permanently around his eyes, which were just a trifle too close together. This was not a clever man—I could see as much at once—but he was dangerous the way a bull is dangerous, by virtue of its mindless ferocity. This was Arashtua, parsua of the Miyaneh and younger brother of Daiaukka. And not twenty days before I had slain his two eldest sons.

  Yet my fear had deserted me, as it always did at such moments. The great merit of danger that it does not leave a man leisure to be afraid. I could look this man in the face and feel nothing but a certain impatience to be finished with him, one way or the other.

  “So it is you in truth, My Lord Tiglath Ashur. I will not claim that I am not disappointed.”

  I had to force my attention back to Khshathrita, for it was he who had broken the silence. I looked at him and smiled.

  “A king should learn to be less candid,” I answered. “Yet you were always so, My Lord Shah, even as a boy. Still, I see you are a boy no longer.”

  An expression crossed Khshathrita’s face like a shadow, and I saw that he did not relish this interview, conducted in the presence of so many of his vassals. I could only guess what had constrained him to arrange it so.

  “Why have you come back, My Lord?” He glanced quickly from side to side, as if to tell me that it was not he whom I must satisfy with my answer, that the question, though spoken with his voice, had passed already through many other lips.

  I allowed myself one more faint smile before speaking, that he might know I understood my part in this recital.

  “I have come, My Lord Khshathrita, Son of Daiaukka, Shah-ye-shah among the Medes, to remind you of your oath, made not to me but to your noble father, may the glory of his name survive forever, that there must be peace between your nation and mine so long as I live as a servant of my king. I remind you of this because it is folly to challenge the might of Ashur and because I would not have your people’s blood on my hands a second time.”

  “Oh Worshiper of Fiends, you need have no fear of more blood on your hands!” shouted Arashtua, his horse stamping the ground with its
hooves, as if it shared his impatience for my life. “Your conscience will be clear while you live, for that will not be long!”

  His words died away into silence, leaving behind a terrible suspense as palpably real as the ache that gathers in a man’s wounds to tell him of an approaching storm. I could see it in the faces of the Medes, that longing that a hasty word might be taken back, that dread of what must follow because it cannot.

  Yet the fact still remained that I was one and they were many, so why would they be afraid when I was not?

  And then, of course, I understood: I faced only death, whereas they. . . I threw my head back and gave myself to the luxury of laughter.

  “It is not a jest, My Lord,” exclaimed Khshathrita—I believe he was not angry but shocked. “You have slain two of this man’s sons, for all that no one can hold you guilty of their deaths. . .”

  “I hold him guilty.” Arashtua’s horse cantered a few steps forward and then was reined back. “He is here, speaking and breathing, while they lie in the towers of silence, their flesh picked over by carrion birds. He gave them no more chance that he did the Lord Daiaukka, whom all men know he murdered with treachery and foul magic.”

  “My magic lay in the strength of my arm and the favor of the bright gods!” I snapped. Let them see my anger, I thought. I will gain nothing by abasing myself. “It is my proudest boast that I carry on my body the scars from Daiaukka’s lance—magic did not hold back his point when it tore into my bowels. Daiaukka issued his challenge and I accepted it, for Daiaukka was a great man whom even his enemies respected, and whom it was an honor to have killed in equal combat! Yet I can see the same generation can bring forth both a hero and a buffoon.”

  Arashtua’s neck seemed to sink into his shoulders. His eyes bulged and the muscles in his whole body tensed and trembled with wrath. I think it likely he would have gone for me that instant if Khshathrita had not laid a restraining hand upon his uncle’s arm.