Deathgrip

by Brian Hodge

  Summer midday sun from a cloudless sky, the city baked as surely as an oven. Tempers grew hotter on such days. Perhaps, as well, their minds dwindled in the heat like sun-scorched plants.

  The procession below numbered at least two thousand. All on foot, but for the four condemned innocents. In the lead was the lugal, their king. Following him was his near-equal in the city’s eyes, the high priestess of the temple of Inanna. Following them were temple slaves, women who played instruments to soothe the tempers of the gods. And behind them…

  Each condemned man stood tied into his own chariot, drawn by a donkey, with wrists lashed to either side to root him where he stood. Submissive now, the finest and strongest slaves of the temple, naked before the world and the gods. And escorted by ranks of Uruk’s soldiers, whose copper helmets gleamed with a blinding sun.

  It could never be said that the temple was unwilling to sacrifice less than its best.

  The gaze of one, sadly resigned to fate, traveled up and back toward the temple he had served so very proudly, locking across the distance with Annemardu. Scribe. Master. Friend.

  “Eannatum,” he murmured. “I wish you a better lot in the netherworld.”

  Slim hopes, in all likelihood, but one could always wish.

  The gates were opened. And with reverence, with fear, with hallowed purpose, the procession moved into the world beyond walls.

  Later. The sun had traveled farther toward the desert, still high, ignorant of mercy. So far, since the trek beyond the walls, the day had been uneventful.

  Annemardu concluded his daily accounting and hobbled from his chambers. His left leg had been shorter than the other since birth, not so badly that he couldn’t walk, but he’d never been a man who moved with authority. Once, when the world was less civilized, a deformed child such as he would have been put to death, a burden instead of a family asset. But in his lifetime, the only real stigma he felt was his inability to serve under the generals as a younger man. A heavy enough shame in those days, but younger men’s pride is easily wounded. Older men may be slower, but they know more of importance. And as a man of learning, Annemardu had more than earned his right to walk as proudly as any man with two good legs. Scribe; keeper of myth and fable, proverb and law. The man or woman who wrote was a creature of awe, eagerly sought by the people to aid their business. In a scribe’s head lived the eight hundred symbols of the cuneiform vocabulary, and it guaranteed high regard.

  He descended the ziggurat’s flights of steps, his youngers affording him ample room whenever he met them on their way up. Annemardu wore the traditional garb of male temple scribes, kilt of sheepskin, upper body bare. His flabby torso was burnished bronze, and his teats sagged like an old woman’s.

  He felt it in the streets, that veiled fear. Apprehension. The eternal question, Are we truly doing right? They spoke little, the masses, and it was far more than just the heat.

  At the city walls, Annemardu ascended the stairs. Slow going. From the top he could view the land with a soldier’s eye. West, gazing across harsh baking plains, boundary between civilization and chaos. He paced around the top of the wall, wide enough for a chariot to circle the city, then stopped along a northwest stretch. Ascended more stairs into the tower, so that he might better peer down.

  He was not alone. Sartuk, one of the priests who served Inanna. His head and beard shaved, the bare skull beaded with sweat. Away from the temple, at so crucial a time in Uruk’s tempestuous history, he would have left a gypsum votive statue at the altar as a stand-in for himself. Busy worshippers often did, in this world where gods demanded constant prayer. The statuettes praying in their stead, graven eyes huge in awe of the dingir whose favor was sought.

  “They live, still?”

  “Still.” Sartuk motioned him to step nearer the edge, see for himself.

  Annemardu leaned against the ledge, peered down along the outer wall. There, off to one side — the four sacrificial offerings. Upright, tied by wrist and ankle with tanned hide to copper bands affixed earlier to the wall. Their bodies gleamed with sweat, and they bent at the knee under the weight of the sun. Periodically, a soldier trekked past the gates to give them water. Even this high, one could still hear the occasional mournful groan. Eannatum among them…

  Eannatum, the young bearded man who had for years fetched his clay, shaped it for writing, smoothed it for the reed. He had always done so with great cheer, his only regret in life being his inability to attend the edubba for schooling in the scribal art, in math and science. That irked him more than his impoverished father selling him into slavery as a boy.

  Annemardu felt like the worst of traitors now. He drew back from the ledge, sighed. You came to love others, you could sometimes not help but hate the dingir for what they demanded of mortals.

  “It was their request, you know this,” Sartuk said.

  Annemardu had never been good at wiping his feelings from his face. “You have no friends among that lot. One slave as good as the next.”

  Sartuk bowed his head a moment, then raised. Placed a hand on Annemardu’s shoulder. “Slave or freeman, priest or not, we love our gods first. Without them, we would not be. And if they choose to take from us, we and all we build are theirs to be taken.”

  Annemardu shut his eyes, no outward arguments. Yes, we belong to the gods, with this he had no qualm. But what of those who speak for the gods? Can they always be believed? Can they always be trusted to pull themselves apart from their own vanity and speak truth?

  This was as important now as any occasion he could recall. Times were fierce as summer sun. For this farming season, the Euphrates was frightfully low. Less water, less irrigation for the fields, less food. Already the effects of famine could be felt rippling across Sumer. Disease came next, fevers and other plagues birthing from the bodies of the weak and the dead. Hostilities were rarely quiet, but had now erupted with renewed fury over water rights across the land, with the city-states of Ur, Eridu, Lagash, Nippur, others. And, as always, with the marauding wildmen from the eastern hills, the Elamites, who had much less than the Sumerians, and meant to take what they could.

  Sumer knew the stink of death this season like none other.

  And so the priestess had prayed, had dreamed dreams and read the entrails of a butchered ox. And knew what was required.

  Uruk need not unduly fear. Inanna had not forsaken them, or worse, turned against them. Nor had An or Enlil or Enki or Ninkhursag, the four creators. Lesser gods were deviling them, petty and jealous sky gods who had, in the Days Before Men, fallen to the underworld to lord over plagues and famines, wars and death and destruction. They could be cruel, indeed, but could nevertheless show kindness. Nergal, for one, was also a god of healing.

  They were not unreasonable. They could be bargained with. A sacrifice for each, to restore and maintain the balance. And to give them their due.

  Naturally.

  And wasn’t it just the way of things, Annemardu reasoned: When you acknowledge something with a name, you thereby create something to appease.

  Hours later, when the moment of transition had come. Night for day, in a moment that was neither. A lowered sun, a sky and a desert as deeply red as a battlefield. Annemardu could easily imagine the creation of Man occurring on such a twilight as this, Man, who had been fashioned from clay and the blood of a slaughtered god. Half lowly, half divine.

  Sartuk saw it first, perking up at a hint of distant noise. Annemardu joined him at the ledge and they watched it gather…

  A spot on the western horizon, darker than the coming night, boiling across the desert and blotting out a portion of the setting sun. And heading their way, of that there was no doubt.

  “They come,” Sartuk whispered, face in frightened rapture.

  Annemardu’s throat tightened, dried. Fists clutching the ledge so tightly that grit worked beneath his nails. And he stared. The storm-that-was-not-a-storm marched across the desert at a terrible speed. Surely nothing could live in its path. Serpent would
wither, scorpion would roast.

  It bore down upon them without signs of slowing, a cloud of driven dust and wind and rage. Feeling its approach was like standing before an oven.

  “What have we summoned?” Annemardu could scarcely find his voice.

  “Pazuzu!” Sartuk screamed, and reeled back from the furnace onslaught.

  Pazuzu, lord of the searing north wind. The name alone inspired pristine fear. The city wall was assaulted as never before, by past winds or army or foe unknown. Even Gilgamesh may never have intended them to withstand so formidable an attack. Gusts of hot sand lapped over the wall, and the roar of fiery wind was like that of a lion.

  Annemardu steadied himself at tower’s edge, bracing with thick stocky legs, one shielding arm crooked round his face. He may never have been a swift runner, but he could stand, oh, he could stand firm. This he would not allow himself to miss, learned and rational man staring into the maw of the unknowable. He glanced back, found he was alone in his resolve. Sartuk was sprawled back onto the platform, paralyzed with fright, his tunic bunched around his waist. Coward.

  The darkness poured in across the desert, much as the tail traveling behind the lights that sometimes arced across night skies. Thickening behind the wind of Pazuzu, gathering in a black knot. Annemardu squinted against wind and sand, felt grit collect in his eyes, nose, mouth. He stared into the heart of the maelstrom, no, no, you will hold no secrets from me, I promise you that, or I promise I will die…

  It moved within; it squirmed. It lived. It lusted.

  And what of Eannatum? Dear young man, if the gods were merciful, he and his fellows would have been taken in that first terrible instant. Surely. No one below could have survived.

  And yet…

  They moved.

  Annemardu clung to the ledge, staring straight down through the cloud, and when would this end? To watch a loved one suffer was to feel the bile of helplessness. And to feel helpless was to know the true might of the gods…

  While wind and heat and sand slowly scoured the flesh from their bones and filled their mouths with silent screams. No enemy army could be more cruel than this. Choking on powdery dust, Annemardu reeled back from the wall. No longer able to stare into its face. If this was what the gods were like, let him be godless.

  A tremendous cacophony had arisen from within the heart of Uruk. Priests and priestesses exhorting temple slave musicians, come, come — come play for the gods so that they will be pleased with us, that our offerings will be enough. The din arose, the dissonant clamor of harp and lyre and pipe, the frantic striking of drum and tambourine. To mortal ears it grated; to chthonic gods it may well have been music. For it spoke so very eloquently of the terror of men and women.

  Pazuzu roared. Paving the way…

  Beyond the walls they gathered, these gods no less mighty for their fallen state. And they waited, unable to hold still. He could chart their progress around the city walls, a churning dustcloud in their wake, boiling into the red sky of dusk. South, then east, then north and west and finally south again to where they had begun. Again. Again. Around, around, this was impossible, nothing could move with such speed. Around yet again, whipping along the perimeter of the city, a hike that took an able-bodied man the better part of half a day to complete. While each circuit of the gods took scarcely a minute.

  Annemardu fell to his knees, seeing this sight of terrifying majesty as no one else in Uruk was able. Poised between earth and sky, oh puny man, who was he to sit in his temple quarters and ponder the wisdom of the gods, thinking he could stare into their saturnine faces and remain in control? Surely no man on earth had beheld such a sight as this, and lived. He sobbed in sheer awe of its spectacle.

  Walls trembled. Earth rumbled. The blood of the sky deepened toward black…

  On this longest of Uruk’s nights.

  Morning, too long in coming, never a more welcome sight.

  An eerie calm had settled over Uruk for the past hours. Morning brought few of its usual noises. The city, man and animal alike, seemed to hold its breath. Dust settled wherever breezes carried it, and lingered in the air, a yellow-brown haze to filter the rising sun.

  While it had been calm for hours, no one dared venture beyond the walls before daybreak. Desert night held too many ill secrets.

  Annemardu had joined the masses gathering on the boulevard before the city gates. Hot, exhausted from a night of little sleep. Filthy from head to toe, skin raw from heat and stinging sand. He combed his beard with fingers, amazed at just how much dirt it could hold.

  Daybreak. Lots of talk here at the gates, very little action taken. It seemed prudent to wait for the lugal and the high priestess. Only when they came, quiet and solemn, were the gates opened. And out streamed the curious, the faithful, the brave.

  Annemardu hobbled at the forefront, resolute, following the lead of priestess and king as they moved along the outer wall. See what had become of the offerings. Hundreds of feet tramped behind, raising a dustcloud, small by last night’s standards.

  They halted. Stared. Those toward the back who could not see surged around front.

  Annemardu had been expecting little, if anything. Perhaps a jumble of dry bones, heaped along the wall where wind and sand had pushed them. Skull here, rib cage there, half-buried. The rest, flesh and blood and muscle and spirit, consumed. Or maybe a small scrap of hide, tanned like leather.

  But this? This? This he had not expected in his wildest imaginings.

  I saw them die, with my own two eyes I watched them die.

  And yet…

  They lived.

  I saw Pazuzu tear them open.

  Four of them, temple slaves in a former life. Had their eyes ever been so wide, so staring? Had they ever beheld such wonders as last night? Had they even dreamed such things existed?

  Surely not.

  But had I waited … I might have seen … the rest.

  Just what might that have been? The filling of body with new spirit. The restoration. But he would never know. Maybe the gods knew best after all, for they had not taken selfishly and left those behind to mourn.

  He lives and breathes, still.

  The authority of the dumbfounded king was forgotten, and Annemardu smiled broadly and stumped forward toward the slave who had been more like a son. Eannatum stared, as if any moment he might scream, or burst into tears. Did he even know who he was anymore? Annemardu would tell him, gladly, as much as he needed to know. Man’s memory, sometimes such a frail thing.

  Eannatum sobbed, dropped to his knees before his one-time master. Clutching tight to the uneven legs with the desperation of a lost child. Annemardu reached down to pat his head, brush the matted hair.

  Then fell beside him with a scream.

  His leg, his leg. He could feel flesh and bone straining beneath his kilt, and while there was no pain, incomprehension was far more terrifying. He was no longer a boy; his bones had ceased to grow some thirty years before.

  And when it was finished — while murmur and comment rippled through the crowd behind him — Annemardu stood. Trembling. Atop two good legs like any man of dignity, and so very little in this world did he understand anymore.

  Eannatum backed away, naked and cowering, staring at his own hands. Their eyes met, and his understood no better than did Annemardu’s.

  “What magic is this?” asked the lugal. Flanking him, soldiers stood at the ready, short spears thrust before them. Annemardu had never seen a soldier look any more bewildered as to friend or foe.

  Eannatum, now the center of attention, was joined by the other three, clustering about him as if they were only just beginning to comprehend the night. Its gifts, its curses.

  “Nergal?” Annemardu whispered to his slave, remembering. Lord of plague, lord of healing.

  The night of wind and storm had loosened more than flesh and spirit. The base of Uruk’s wall was littered with bricks, fallen whole, crumbled into halves. The high priestess, still regal in elaborate braids, one should
er bared by her robes, walked to the wall. Stooped. Retrieved half a shattered brick…

  And hurled it at Eannatum. It struck his chest, sent him staggering backward. He reached forward in confused plea, but dozens of others had been quick to follow the priestess’s lead. The morning sky rained brick, and the four naked slaves scrambled for safer ground, covering heads with folded arms.

  Annemardu’s heart broke, he wanted only to give aid, give comfort, give thanks. He was about to cry out in objection. A respected man, they would listen to him. But one look into the face of the lugal was enough to seize his tongue.

  “They have no more life with us.” The lugal at least spoke kindly to him. Was there sorrow in his eyes? Yes. Yes. “They can no longer live as citizens of Uruk. They are no longer ours. They belong to something else now.”

  Annemardu bowed his head while crowd became mob, and mob gave chase. As the fallen bricks were cleared away, to be put to new use…

  Driving the unwanted into the welcoming arms of the desert.

  His temple chambers offered little comfort that day, after he was cleaned and dressed in fresh clothing. Annemardu sat quiet and still at his worktable, staring into the blank face of a wet square of clay.