Gilgamesh the King

by Robert Silverberg

  It grieved me that he felt fear again, and that our comrades should see him in such a state. But he would not go through the gate, and I could hardly leave him behind. So we made camp in that place and stayed there some time, until he ceased to writhe in anguish and said he felt the power of his hand returning. Even then he was reluctant to go forward. He sat in dismal bleak silence, lost in brooding. Fear was upon him like a dreadful bird of night that clung with terrible talons to his shoulder. I went to him and said, “Come, dear friend, it is time to move on.”

  He shook his head. “Go without me, Gilgamesh!”

  Sharply I said, “It makes me ache to hear you speak like a weakling. Have we traveled so far, and come through so many dangers, only to turn back at the gate?”

  Just as sharply he replied, “When did I ask you to turn back?”

  “No, you never did.”

  “Then go on without me!”

  “That I will not do. Nor am I willing to go back empty-handed to Uruk.”

  “If that is so, you leave me no choice. Must I come with you, then? Am I to be swept along by whatever you wish?”

  “I would not force you,” I said in no little distress. “But we are brothers, Enkidu. We should face all perils side by side.”

  He gave me a bitter jaundiced look. “We should, should we? And if I am unwilling?”

  I stared. “This is not like you.”

  “No,” he said gloomily, with a sigh. “This is not like me. But what can I do? What can we do? When I hurt my hand a great terror entered me, Gilgamesh. I am afraid. Do you understand that word? I am afraid, Gilgamesh!” There was a look in his eyes I had never seen there before: terror, shame, self-reproach, anger, fifty somber things gleaming there at once. His face was glossy with sweat. He looked around as if fearing that the others had overheard us. In a low anguished voice he said, “What can we do?”

  I shook my head. “There is a way. Here: stand close by me, take hold of my robe. My strength will go into you. Your weakness will pass. The trembling will leave your hand. And then let us go down into the forest together. Will you do that?”

  He hesitated. Then he said, “Do you think I am a coward, Gilgamesh?”

  “No. You are no coward, Enkidu.”

  “You called me a weakling.”

  “I said it pained me to hear you speak like a weakling. It is because you are not a weakling that it pained me. Do you understand that, brother?”

  “I understand.”

  “Come, then. Let me heal you.”

  “Can you do that?”

  “I think I can.”

  “Do it, then.”

  He came to me and stood close; he reached for my robe and held it a moment; then I embraced him so tightly that my arms quivered. After a moment he grasped me with equal strength. We did not speak, but I could feel his fear leaving him. I could feel his courage returning. He seemed to be becoming Enkidu again, and I knew that he would journey onward with me into the forest.

  “Go,” I said. “Make yourself ready. Huwawa awaits us. The heat of combat will warm your blood and strengthen your resolve. I think there is no demon that can harm us, if we stand side by side. But if we fall in the struggle, why, we will leave a name that will last forever.”

  He listened without replying. After a time he nodded and rose and touched his hand to mine, and trampled out our campfire, and went off to oil his weapons. In the morning we passed through the gate and into the forest of cedars, not in any foolhardy way, but with boldness and determination.

  It was an awesome place. It was almost like a temple: I felt the presence of gods all about me, though I did not know which gods they were. The cedars were the loftiest trees I had ever seen, rising like spears into the heavens, with clear open space between them; but so dense were their crowns that the sunlight could scarcely penetrate the cover they made. It was a green and silent world, cool, full of delight. Ahead of us lay a single mountain, beyond doubt an abode of the gods, a fitting throne for the highest of them. But also about us lay the presence of Huwawa: we felt him, and we saw the traces of him, for there were certain zones of the forest where the underground gases and fires had broken through, and that was the mark of the demon.

  Yet there was no immediate sign of him. We went deeper, until darkness halted us. As the sun began to descend I dug a well and made the water-offering, and scattered three handfuls of fine meal before the mountain, and asked the gods of the mountain to send me a favorable dream. Then I lay down beside Enkidu and entrusted myself to sleep.

  In the middle hour of the night I woke suddenly, and sat bolt upright, utterly awake. By the smouldering light of our fire I saw Enkidu’s gleaming eyes.

  “What troubles you, brother?”

  “Was it you that awakened me?”

  “Not I,” he said. “You must have had a dream.”

  “A dream, yes. Yes.”

  “Tell me.”

  I looked inward and saw the mists lying heavy on my mind, like thick white fleece; but behind them I caught sight of my dream, or of some part of it. We were crossing a deep gorge of the cedar mountain, Enkidu and I, in that dream; against the great bulk of the mountain we seemed no larger than the little black flies that buzz among the swamp-reeds; and then the mountain heaved like a ship tossed on the bosom of the sea and began to fall. That was all I could remember. I told the dream to Enkidu, hoping he would be able to read it for me; but he shrugged and said it was an unfinished vision, and urged me to return to it. I doubted I would sleep again that night, but I was wrong, for as soon as I closed my eyes I was dreaming once more. And it was the same dream: the mountain was toppling upon me. A rumbling rockslide swept my feet from under me, and a terrible light glared and blazed intolerably. But then a man appeared, or a god, I think, of such grace and beauty as is not found in this world. He pulled me out from under the mountain and gave me water to drink, and my heart took comfort; he raised me and set my feet on the ground.

  I woke Enkidu and told him my second dream. He said at once, “It is a favorable dream, it is an excellent dream. The mountain you saw, my friend, is Huwawa. Even if he falls on us, we will defeat him, do you see? The gods stand by you: tomorrow we will seize him. We will kill him. We will cast his body on the plain.”

  “You sound very certain of that.”

  “I am certain,” he said. “Now sleep again, brother. Sleep.”

  Once more we slept. This time the cedar mountain devised a dream for Enkidu, and not a cheering one: cold rain-showers fell upon him, and he huddled and shivered like the mountain barley in a winter storm. I heard him cry out, and awakened, and he told me his dream. We did not search for its meaning. There are times when it is best not to probe a dream too deeply. One more time in that dream-thronged night I let my chin rest upon my knees and gave myself up to sleep; and yet again I dreamed, and again I woke amazed from it, startled, trembling.

  “Another?” Enkidu asked.

  “Look how I shake!” I whispered. “What awakened me? Did some god pass by? Why is my flesh so numb?”

  “Tell me, did you dream again?”

  “Yes. I dreamed a third dream, more frightful even than the others.”

  “Tell it.”

  “What did we eat, that gave us such dreams tonight?”

  “Until you tell it, it will burden your soul.”

  “Yes. Yes,” I said. But still I held back from it, though its horrendous images still blazed in my mind. He was right: one must tell dreams, one must bring them into the light, or they will bore your soul like maggots. After a moment I took a deep breath and said, speaking in a slow halting way, “This is what it was. The day was calm, the air was still. And then suddenly the heavens shrieked, the earth cried out in booming roars. Daylight failed; darkness came. Lightning flashed, and fires blazed on the horizon. The clouds grew heavy and death came raining down from them. Then the brightness vanished. The fire went out, and everything about us was turned to ashes.”

  Enkidu shivered. �
�I think we should not sleep again tonight,” he said.

  “But the dream? What of the dream?”

  “Come, rise, walk with me, brother. Forget the dream.”

  “Forget it? How?”

  “It is only a dream, Gilgamesh.”

  I looked at him, puzzled. Then I smiled. “When the omens are favorable, you say the dream is excellent. When the omens are grim, you say it is only a dream. Do you not see—”

  “I see that the morning is near,” he said. “Come, walk with me in the forest. We have heavy work to do at dawn.”

  Yes, I thought. Perhaps he was right. Perhaps the dream did not bear close inspection. The morning would bring great challenges: we needed all our courage about us.

  By first light I roused my men. We donned our breastplates and swords and grasped our axes, and set out down the slope into the valley that lay before the cedar-covered mountain. This was the place, said Enkidu, where he had encountered Huwawa that other time he had been here. The demon had risen up without warning from the ground, he said: he had been lucky to escape.

  “Today,” I said, “it will be Huwawa who is lucky to escape. And when we have done with him, we will see to these Elamites who build walls around a forest, eh, brother?” And I laughed. It felt good to be going to war. No matter that our enemy was a demon. No matter that my last dream and Enkidu’s had been full of dark omens. There is a joy in going to war: there is poetry in it, there is music. It is what we were meant to do on this world, those of us who are warriors. You will not understand this, you who sit at home in cities and grow fat. But true warfare is not mere mindless destruction: it is the setting to rights of those things which must be set to rights, and that is a holy task.

  As we went forward I felt a rumbling in the earth, distant but unmistakable. It seemed perhaps as though one of the horn-crowned gods might be stirring and walking to and fro down there. That gave me some pause. I will do battle against demons with a glad heart, but what hope is there in contending against the gods? I prayed to Lugalbanda that I was mistaken, that the far-off underground thundering that I felt did not portend the anger of Enlil. Let it merely be Huwawa awakening, I prayed. Let it be just the demon, and not the god.

  Behind me I heard my men murmuring uneasily. “What is this demon like?” asked one, and another said, “Dragon’s fangs, lion’s face,” and another said, “He roars like the whirlwind,” and yet another said, “Feet with claws, eyes of death.” I looked back at them and laughed out loud and cried, “Yes, go on, frighten yourselves! Make him really awesome! Three heads, ten arms!” And I cupped my hand to my lips and called into the mist-shrouded forest, “Huwawa! Come! Come, Huwawa!”

  The earth trembled again, more vehemently.

  I rushed onward, Enkidu beside me and the others keeping close pace just behind. There was a single great cedar that stood like a mast before us, higher than all the others, and I thought, this is the way to summon Huwawa. So I unslung my axe and set to work at it with all my might, and Enkidu worked on its other side, cutting the lesser notch to guide it in its falling. I felt a great heat entering the air, which was strange, this still being the coolest part of the morning. A third time there were tremors beneath my feet. Something was awakening, no question of it, something vast and fierce, hot and furious. In the distance I saw the treetops swaying. I heard the tearing and crackling of branches. With stroke upon stroke we cut away at that great cedar, until it was on the verge of toppling.

  Then to my horror I became aware of the droning and buzzing that told me the god-presence was surging within me. My fit was coming upon me as surely as though I had drummed it into wakefulness. Not now, I begged desperately. Not now! But it would have been easier to hold back the eight winds. The veins of my neck swelled up and beat with a hard pulsation. My eyeballs throbbed as if they meant to leap from their sockets. My hands tingled. Each stroke of the axe against the wood sent fire through my veins.

  “Chop, brother, chop!” Enkidu called from the far side of the cedar. He did not understand what was happening to me. “We have it, now. Another four strokes—three—”

  I felt ecstasy and terror both at once. The air about me was blue and sizzling. A river of black water was rising from the earth. A golden aura surrounded everything I could see. The god was seizing my mind.

  The earth shook and bucked and heaved wildly. I called out to Lugalbanda three times.

  Then I heard Enkidu’s voice roaring above all the confusion: “Huwawa! Huwawa! Huwawa!”

  The demon came, but I did not see him just then. The blackness overtook me; the god swallowed me up.

  22

  WHEN NEXT I PERCEIVED ANYTHING that made sense to me I found myself lying on the ground with my head in Enkidu’s lap. He was rubbing my forehead and shoulders, which was most soothing. I ached everywhere, but most especially in my face and neck. The great cedar was down; indeed, most of the trees around us were toppled or partly toppled, as if half the forest had been thrown over in the earthquake. Dark fissures furrowed the ground in a dozen places. Directly in front of us the earth had split wide open and a horrendous column of smoke, black with fiery streaks in it, was belching forth straight up to the sky, making a noise like that of the bellowing of the Bull of Heaven upon the last day of the world.

  “What is that thing?” I said to Enkidu, pointing at the roaring column of smoke.

  “It is Huwawa,” he said.

  “That? Is Huwawa nothing but smoke and flame?”

  “That is the form he has taken today.”

  “Did he have another form, that time you were here?”

  “He is a demon,” said Enkidu with a shrug. “Demons take whatever appearance they please. He is afraid to strike, for he feels the god in you. He hovers there, pouring himself forth. This is the moment to slay him.”

  “Help me to my feet.”

  He lifted me as though I were a child, and set me aright. I felt dizzy, and swayed, but he steadied me, and then the dizziness passed. I planted my feet on the ground. The earth beneath me was thrumming from the force of the outrush of Huwawa from his subterranean lair, but otherwise it was firm again. Whatever had stirred down there before the quake, whether it had been horned Enlil or only his minion Huwawa, was no longer troubling the pillars and foundations that uphold the world.

  I stepped forward and looked upon Huwawa.

  It was difficult to get close. The air in the vicinity of that smoky column was foul and oily, and lay upon my lungs like something slimy. My head pounded, and not only from the aftermath of my fit. I bethought me of the time of which they tell when Lugalbanda, traveling in these eastern parts, was overcome by a smoke-demon much like this on the slopes of Mount Hurum, and was left for dead by his comrades. “We must be careful,” I told the others, “to keep the demon-stuff from entering into our nostrils.” We cut apart the hems of our robes and wrapped them over our faces, and took care to breathe the smallest of breaths while we peered into that noxious smoke.

  The crevice that had opened in the earth to release Huwawa was not large: I could span the width of it between my two hands. Out of it, though, the demon came boiling upward with enormous force. I looked, trying to see the face and eyes, but I saw nothing but smoke. I cried out, “I conjure you, Huwawa, show yourself as you are!” But still I saw nothing but smoke.

  Enkidu said, “How can we slay him, if he is only smoke?”

  “By drowning him,” I replied. “And by smothering him.”

  I pointed toward the side, where the earthquake had set free some underground spring. A little rivulet now was running toward the bottom of the valley: the water was warm, from the breath of the god beneath the earth, I suppose, and steam was rising from it. We drew ourselves together and formed a plan. I put thirty of my men to work digging a channel to guide the stream sideways toward the mouth through which Huwawa raged into the air; and I assigned the others the task of trimming the trunk of the great cedar, cutting a length about twice the length of a man from it an
d giving it the form of a pointed stake. We worked swiftly, lest the demon take on its solid form and attack us; but the god-presence in me still seemed to hold it at bay. To be certain of safety I set three men at work chanting and making signs without pause.

  When we were ready I called out, “Huwawa? Do you hear my voice, demon? It is Gilgamesh king of Uruk who slays you now!” I looked to Enkidu, and for an instant, I tell you in truth, I felt fear and doubt. It is no little thing to slay a demon who is in the service of Enlil. Also I wondered after all whether there was need to slay him—whether it might not be sufficient only to seal his hole and leave him bound in there. I tell you my heart was moved with compassion for the demon. Does that sound strange? But it is what I felt.

  Enkidu, who knew my soul as he did his own, saw me waver. He said to me, “Hurry, now, Gilgamesh! This is no moment for hesitating. The demon must die, brother, if you have any hope of leaving this place. There is no arguing it. Spare him and you will never make it back to your own city and to the mother who bore you. He will block the mountain road against you. He will make the pathways impassable.”

  I saw the wisdom of that. I raised my hand and gave the signal.

  In that moment my men chopped an opening in the earthen dam that they had built across the rivulet, and let its waters pour forth into the new channel that ran toward Huwawa’s blowhole. I watched the cascade of steaming water flow swiftly to its home: and when it reached the crevice and tumbled in, there arose such a wailing and howling from the depths that I could scarcely believe it. A white jet of hot cloud rose up in the heart of the black cloud, and I heard thunder and roaring. The ground trembled as though it would begin to heave and upsurge all over again. But it held fast. The crevice drank the stream, and the stream poured onward, giving it all it could drink. The red sparks dimmed within the black column; the foul smoke wavered and came in choked spurts.