The Assyrian

by Nicholas Guild

  And our rule brought the blessing of peace. This, I know, is no more than is claimed by every conqueror, but it is still the truth. The tiny western kingdoms that called us a den of lions and cried after their lost freedom had bled each other to exhaustion for a thousand years before we came. Each would be a tyrant over the others and cursed us only because we were in the place they would have had for themselves. Thus the merchants and artisans and the common farmers, who cared nothing for the ambitions of princes, such humble folk might complain because we taxed them, but they would not have rejoiced to see us overthrown. The trade routes were open and men might live in peace. And these are not small things.

  Thus was I taught in the house of war.

  But such matters mean little in youth. What I loved were the horses and the bronze tipped arrows and the growing strength of my own body. I would be great in the Land of Ashur. I had for this the word of the king my father. Happy is that boy, yearning after manhood, whose hand has been filled with a sword.

  On the first morning after my arrival at the royal barrack, I awoke with a violent shudder of astonishment and found myself dangling by my sleeping tunic, my toes reaching in vain for the rush mat beneath me.

  “You are not in the house of women now, Prince,” said a voice very close to my ear. I twisted around and with no small surprise beheld the sun blackened face of a man in the green uniform of a rab kisir. His hair and beard were streaked with gray. He looked inexpressibly old to me, but he might have been forty. He seemed angry. He was holding me up by the scruff of the neck with one hand. The other hand was missing—there was only a stump sticking out of the sleeve.

  “I am Tabshar Sin, Prince Tiglath, your servant. In the army of your grandfather the Lord Sargon, I led a hundred men against the Nairians. We won a great victory that day. I lost my left hand, as you see, but I spilled much blood and the great king was pleased to provide for me by giving his grandsons into my charge to be trained up as soldiers. And soldiers, Prince, do not sleep till noon like tavern harlots. Dress yourself and wash your face. There is no one here to perform that office for you.”

  I was dropped to the ground like a broken water pot. Two minutes later I had performed my toilet and was standing outside in the gray light of morning. Tabshar Sin was waiting for me. We were alone on the dusty parade ground.

  “What a great pity, Prince—it would seem you have missed breakfast!” He grinned at me, showing strong white teeth. I felt like the rabbit under the paw of a lion. “Nevertheless, we will hit upon something to keep you occupied.”

  This was my introduction to the life of glory. From first light to dusk, out of everyone’s sight and with an empty belly, I studied the art of foddering the royal war horses.

  The king’s stables boasted over a hundred horses, great stallions, each more skittish and fierce than the last, with flaring nostrils and stone hardened hoofs that could have taken a man’s head from his shoulders as neatly as the executioner’s ax. Among these I made my way through the narrow stalls, carrying huge bundles of hay and sacks of barley. I felt myself ill used, and more than once I sat down on an empty grain jar to weep for the sad fate that had taken me from my mother and put me among such cruel strangers. There was no noon meal in the royal barrack—a soldier has to learn to work all the day on his breakfast—but I did not know this and was sure all had forgotten me.

  But at nightfall, when I was quite convinced I had been given over to starvation and despair, Tabshar Sin returned, looked about him, and seemed pleased to see that I had performed the tasks assigned to me.

  “This, Prince, is a soldier’s lot,” he said, putting his hand upon my shoulder as if he understood everything of my sorrow. “Most of his time is filled with drudgery and boredom. The rest is fear, pain and, finally, death. Glory awaits but few, and only those who have accepted all the rest. Come. It is time to eat, and then to sleep. Tomorrow will be better.”

  We dined that night on bread and goat cheese and strong brown beer. I sat among the royal princes and at Tabshar Sin’s right—indeed, his only—hand. This was meant, it seemed, as a singular honor. Tabshar Sin told stories of his campaigns, and I and my brothers listened with attention and admiration. Never had I tasted such fine food nor known such splendid company. I had forgotten all about the king’s stables. It was the most glorious evening of my life.

  Esarhaddon was not there. When I asked after him I was met at first with an embarrassed silence and then informed that he had been sent to sleep under the stars, a bitter punishment indeed because the nights were cold. He had been caught fighting. I had only to look around me to discover with whom—at the end of the table was a boy with a blackened eye. His name was Arad Malik and I knew him slightly, since he had been removed from the house of women only the year before. He had a wide, stupid face and he stared at me with hatred all evening, for he knew Esarhaddon was my friend.

  The only other one of my royal brothers whom I knew by sight was Arad Ninlil, the second son of the Lady Tashmetum-sharrat. He was a thin, sickly looking boy of about fourteen, with blue shadows under his eyes. He never spoke or smiled and hardly seemed to be listening to Tabshar Sin, as if his mind were occupied with the contemplation of some private sorrow. His training was nearly finished, and in a few months he would leave to join the army in the north. After his brother Ashurnadinshum, he was heir to the throne.

  When the meal was over I managed to steal half a loaf of bread and one of the small sealed jugs of beer. It would not surprise me to discover that Tabshar Sin was aware of my theft, but if he was he said nothing. I returned to the barrack, rolled up my blanket and that of Esarhaddon and went looking for him. I found him on the roof, his hands clasped behind his head, watching the stars. He was happy to see me but happier, I think, for the bread and beer.

  “Why did you blacken Arad Malik’s eye?” I asked him.

  His mouth full of bread, Esarhaddon smiled in recollection as his heavy fingers broke through the seal of the beer jug.

  “He gave me no choice.” he answered. “He would fight, and only because I said his mother’s breasts were as round as summer melons and just as green. It’s quite true, you know—I saw them once when I was but a child of six. They aren’t a sight to be forgotten.”

  We both laughed. We couldn’t help ourselves. Arad Malik’s mother was from Hamath, a gift of their king from his own harem, and the men of Hamath are famous for their sharp trading. It did not surprise me to learn the Lord Sennacherib had received less than full value.

  “Nevertheless, it is a fool who makes enemies needlessly my brother.” I accepted the jug from Esarhaddon’s hand and took a swallow. I was unused to beer and suspect I had grown a trifle drunk at dinner. “Learn caution. Arad Malik is a stupid lout, but one day he may do you an injury.”

  “To make enemies is the business of a warrior’s life, and besides, the day I have aught to fear from that son of a cow. . .”

  And we laughed yet again and passed the beer jug until it was well and truly empty and our heads were buzzing like the inside of a termite mound. And then the empty jug rolled over the edge of the roof and smashed to pieces on the ground and we laughed then even more. We were laughing still while we wrapped ourselves in our blankets.

  At last Esarhaddon stared up at the blight stars and smiled.

  “Would that there were other worlds to conquer besides just this one,” he said dreamily. “Would that they were as many as the stars.”

  “One is enough, brother. You and I will have our fill of battles before we are done.”

  There was no answer. Esarhaddon lay there beside me with his eyes closed, already dreaming of the glory of war.

  We slept together that night under the dome of night, content in our lot and in each other, for we were brothers and shared a brother’s love, and we believed it would always be so between us, that there was safety in the heart. To the eye of a child the world is simplicity itself.

  The following day I was issued a bronze helmet and a co
rselet made of leather, and Tabshar Sin began to teach me the elements of swordsmanship. He worked me until I could no longer raise my right hand higher than my shoulder, and then he strapped a small round shield to my other arm, drew his own sword, and told me to defend myself or begin collecting scars. In the end I collected no scars, but I fancy that was due more to Tabshar Sin’s restraint than to any skill of my own. By the middle of the afternoon everything above the navel felt as stiff as wood and I was quite sure I would be crippled for the rest of my life. Finally Tabshar Sin led me to the shade of a wall, sat me down, and poured water over my head and body until I covered my face with my arms and begged him to stop.

  “‘I am Tiglath Ashur, son of Sennacherib!’ Yes, boy, I heard about your skill with a knife. It would seem, though, that you are only fierce in front of priests and eunuchs.”

  I swore at him, calling him all the worst names I could remember, but he only laughed. He was an old campaigner. Nothing shocked him and he was without pity. Tabshar Sin had decided I had the makings of a soldier.

  A boy’s body hardens quickly, and it was not many days before I could train from sunrise to sunset, feast and make jokes all the evening, and then stagger off to bed to rise the next morning as fresh and cheerful as a maiden on her bridal day. I loved the house of war.

  The royal barrack, of course, was only one part of that vast complex, which had been intended originally to provide the king with his bodyguard and the city of Nineveh with its garrison. The princes of the blood mixed on friendly terms with officers and common soldiers alike, for the men of Ashur are a proud race and only the king himself is sacred. Although still a boy, I lived a man’s life among men, and I was profoundly happy.

  My time there passed quickly. I learned all the arts of siege and pitched battle and became proficient in some of them. Esarhaddon, with whom I maintained a fierce competition, was always a better swordsman, but I was better with the bow and, most particularly, the javelin. I had no equal for managing a chariot, but he was my superior as a rider. Esarhaddon was a fine wrestler, as I have had occasion to mention already, but I was more agile and could run great distances without tiring. We never grew weary of this rivalry. We never grew weary of each other’s company, or of thinking of ourselves as the most amiable, the most accomplished, the most blessed of boys. So passed each hour of each day of each month in the tranquil violence of camp life.

  The one variation came after I had been in the royal barrack for about half a year, and it took the form of an unexpected gift from my uncle the Lord Sinahiusur.

  It was only the middle of the afternoon when a runner came to fetch me from the parade ground, saying only that I had a visitor whose presence would excuse me from my exercises. I was not sorry to leave, being tired and dirty and having had my backside scraped raw from waist to neck by falling off a horse. My foot had caught in the stirrup and the broken winded old mare, who knew all about little boys who fancied themselves masters of the king’s cavalry and had evidently decided she would teach me to respect my elders, dragged me perhaps as many as twenty paces before Tabshar Sin could overcome his paralysis of laughter enough to disentangle me. It had not been one of my better days, and I welcomed any excuse to quit the scene of such a humiliation. I didn’t care who wanted me, or for what.

  “Go to the dwelling of the camp commander,” I was told. The thought entered my mind that perhaps I had disgraced myself enough to warrant dismissal, but it was all one to me.

  But it was not the camp commander whom I found sitting on a stool beneath the vine arbor in his garden, drinking beer from a brightly glazed jar, but the Lord Sinahiusur.

  The king’s turtanu had lost none of his majesty of bearing since the last time I had seen him, nearly seven months before, when he had saved me from the gelding knife. His tunic, the color of the hot summer sun, blazed with silver threads, and his beard was as black as pitch. He sat calmly, impassive as a monument, seeming to notice nothing, the jar held delicately in his right hand, as if he were considering if he should let it drop to the ground. I approached him to kneel and place my hands upon his knee in token of respect. There was no servant to attend him, so we were quite alone. At last the Lord Sinahiusur touched my head and bid me rise.

  “What happened to you?” he asked, bidding me turn around that he might examine the scratches on the backs of my arms.

  “I fell from a horse, my lord.”

  It was not a subject for which I had much enthusiasm, and I was just as happy when I was allowed to hide my injuries from his sight. They were painful enough, for the winter sun had dried them until they were as cracked as mud, but I felt the injury most deeply in my pride.

  “And dragged, from the looks of things.”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  “So you are not yet ready to lead a charge?” He searched my face and smiled, though there was that in his smile to suggest it was more to put me at my ease than because his liver was quiet. “Nevertheless. I hear good reports of your progress, Tiglath Ashur. So you get on well here? The life pleases you?”

  “Yes. my lord.”

  “And do you fancy you will make a good soldier for our master the king?”

  “I hope so, my lord.”

  “Well, and there is more to the soldier’s craft than can be taught in the house of war—or learned from the back of a horse. You would be wise to remember that, Tiglath Ashur.”

  I did not know what answer to make, so I made none. Instead, I let his wise old eyes hold me and I waited, for the turtanu had not come to this garden merely to exchange pleasantries with a boy—I did not need Tabshar Sin to tell me that.

  And he, it seemed, waited too. I do not know what sign he expected, but perhaps, finally, he saw it because he smiled once more, this time with something like real pleasure, and his hand settled upon my shoulder.

  “You will live in a troubled world, Tiglath Ashur. You will need many friends. I wonder if you will count me among them. What do you think? Shall we be friends, boy?”

  He tilted his head to one side, still holding my shoulder in his strong brown fingers.

  “What do I not owe you, lord?” I asked—I hardly know where I found the courage to speak, for my heart was in great confusion and I understood nothing. “All that I am is yours to command, and if you wish the friendship of one so insignificant. . .”

  “Good, then, we are agreed,” he barked, shaking me as his grip tightened and then relaxed. “You speak well for a boy, but sometimes it is best to say nothing. You will learn that. I think you may have learned it already. Come.”

  He rose from his seat and we walked out to the front of the camp commander’s house, where the Lord Sinahiusur’s chair was waiting for him. His bearers, their naked bodies blackened by the sun, crouched on the ground like dogs, staring up at us with eyes that seemed to measure us only as weight.

  “I think it possible, my friend Tiglath Ashur, you may grow up to be of some small use to your king, whose servants we both are. And thus I wish to be of use to you—is that not the truest meaning of friendship? Yes, of course it is. So I have brought you a gift. Where is he?”

  I looked about me as if the question had been addressed to myself, but the turtanu’s eyes were fixed on his head bearer, a huge fellow with a captive’s ring through his nose, who used his thumb to point back toward the curtained chair.

  “Get out of there, you cursed rascal!”

  The Lord Sinahiusur’s face went suddenly black with rage. A few quick steps took him to the chair, and he pushed back the curtain with an impatient gesture to reveal the cursed rascal, only just awakened from his comfortable nap. Never had I seen such a ridiculous mixture of surprise and slinking guilt as when the turtanu grasped him by the collar of his slave’s tunic and pulled him out with a yank that sent him sprawling in the dust some four or five paces distant. The bearers roared with approving laughter at the sight, and I laughed with them. Even the fellow himself smiled foolishly as he knelt in the dust, his hands raised in suppl
ication as if to ward off the beating he must have expected.

  But the turtanu did not strike. His whip stayed in his belt as he studied the slave with obvious distaste.

  “You must think it a poor gift I bring you,” he said at last. “But perhaps, Tiglath Ashur, you will find him of more use than I ever did. He has certain talents and he is cunning—make of him what you can.

  “And, you there, see to the boy’s back lest you shame me utterly.”

  The slave ducked his head in eager compliance, his hands still raised to shield his face though he would have known he was safe enough now. The Lord Sinahiusur glared at him, as the cat glares after the rat that has escaped his jaws.

  He spoke no more, but held out his hand that I might touch my forehead against it, stepped into his chair, so recently vacated, and pulled the curtain shut. As he was carried away, I turned to the slave who was still kneeling in the dust, wondering what I was to do with this curious new possession.

  I regarded him with puzzlement. Finally the slave stood up and looked about him. He was perhaps twenty-five years of age, though he did not exhibit the bearing of a young man. He had a fair complexion which, in our part of the world, suggested he had spent most of his life within doors, and there was something almost of insolence in his manner, as if he did not greatly fancy the idea of being slave to a boy not yet ten. This in itself irritated me greatly, for I had had enough reminders already that day that I was still less than a man grown.