“You, boy?”
The one with the fierce eyes took half a step forward, as if prepared to run me through for my insolence. But he would not and we both knew it, so I did not trouble to move.
“Yes, I—Tiglath Ashur, who stood against the Elamites at Khalule and have killed better men than you or any of your tribe, even though any man of Ashur could crush a maggot under his heel and claim as much. Have you come to beg the king’s pardon? Have you gathered up your cooking pots?”
“The land here is fertile.” The heavy one smiled. It meant nothing; it was as unconscious with him as sweating. “We might choose to stay, on terms. We are a mighty people, and the king in Nineveh might welcome us as allies. . .”
“The king, who is king here as well as in Nineveh, welcomes you as nothing except food for the crows. Do not speak to me of terms—you have heard his terms. The Land of Ashur can be nothing to you except a place to lay down your bones, so pay your tribute and depart.”
I had let my anger rise but not my voice. I must not be a boy now. I must not dishonor land and king by losing my temper in front of wandering thieves who knew no king and thought of land as simply a thing to pick loose from their horses’ hoofs. But I was angry. I was angry because I was afraid, and that because I had seen their cooking fires spread out across the plain like flowers after the spring rain. I had come here with less than four hundred men and, judging from the size of their encampment, they could probably field near to a thousand. I was not wrong to be afraid, but I spoke now with my father’s voice.
“And if we choose not to depart? What will your king do then, mighty warrior?”
Their mighty warrior grinned back at me, the scar in his face crinkling like old leather.
“Then he will visit upon you death and the miseries of slavery, so that death will seem a blessing to those who survive.”
“You threaten eloquently, hero.”
“More to the point, I do not threaten idly.”
All at once we seemed to have nothing more to say to one another. After a sullen silence lasting perhaps a quarter of a minute I summoned the guard who was stationed outside the tent entrance.
“Yes, Prince?”
My two principal inquisitors exchanged a glance, the heavy one raising his eyebrows in surprise, but this was not the time for formal introductions, so I gave them no notice.
“Provide our guests with safe passage back to their own lines—doubtless they will welcome the chance to kiss their wives and children one last time.”
I stood at the edge of the camp with my ekalli, who had fought with me at Khalule, watching the three emissaries ride away over the empty plain until even the dust raised by their horses’ hoofs had disappeared, and all the time I kept thinking that by this time tomorrow the same earth would be covered with dead and dying men. We turned to each other and he shrugged his shoulders, as if to say, well, that, at least, is done.
“They are many,” he said, gesturing with his arm toward the horizon as if the Uqukadi were as numerous as a horde of locusts. “And I hear tell they are not cowards either. We will have our bread to earn tomorrow, Prince.”
“Let them be beyond counting and each as brave as lions, but when the time comes each will fight for himself alone. A rabble is never any match for a disciplined army, Lushakin. Never fear—we came here to conquer, not to perish.”
I went back to my tent. The day was dying and I wanted to be alone.
In my first great battle I fought as a common soldier, and in my second as sole commander. I must say that my second night before a day of death and suffering was even harder, if such a thing is possible, than the first. I knew that if we lost tomorrow, my corpse would surely be among those left to rot in the sun, but what plagued me was the thought of all the others who would lie around me, whom I would have led to destruction. To die is terrible enough, but to fail. . . If it should fall out that way, then I would count it a blessing that I had found my simtu here in the land that bore me.
I did not so much as try to sleep that night. There was no Nargi Adad this time to pour strong Babylonian beer down my throat, so I was defenseless prey to my own thoughts and did not even trouble to lie down. All night I fought the coming battle over and over again in my mind, trying to see everything from the enemy’s angle of vision that I might find that spot where my tactics could be defeated. And all around me slept men who would never sleep again save in the arms of death. Those hours were not pleasant for me, and I both feared and hoped that the dawn would never come.
But it did come. The sun, great Ashur’s burning disk, broke out over the eastern mountains to drive away the mist from the cold, snow patched ground, and all around me the camp stirred into life. I could hear the clink of metal upon metal and the muffled sound of many low voices even before I left my tent. Men huddled around cooking fires as they finished their breakfast or, like good workmen, made ready their tools against the day’s toil. I have heard generals say that they despised their men, but I have never understood such words, for soldiers, for the most part, are brave and unpretentious souls with all the simple, straightforward virtues of humble people who must work and struggle to live. I loved my men that morning. Even though many or perhaps most of them were older than I, I loved them with a father’s love and my heart sorrowed for all that they must suffer in the hours ahead.
My plan was very simple. Two companies of infantry, in diamond-shaped formations that they could defend themselves from attack from every side, would march on the enemy camp. The Uqukadi would attack them with their full force—at least such was my hope—for if they did not stop us on open ground, away from their tents, their livestock, and their families, they would lose all. When the battle was fully joined I would commit the remaining company of infantry and also my one contingent of cavalry, these from opposite sides, from the left and from the right, that they might flank the enemy and harry him from many directions at once. It was not a plan displaying much strategic genius. I was not depending on genius. My hopes were pinned on the new iron spears, that they would stop the Uqukadi horsemen, that what had seemed to work on the parade ground at Nineveh would work here, and on the discipline and bravery of my men.
I had drilled these men until they cursed my name, until their wives and children cursed me. I could only hope now that it had been enough. We had all fought together before, and I knew them as soldiers and trusted them. If we failed, the blame would lie with their commander, not with them. I would have it all to myself.
I went back to my tent to fetch my javelin. I would not fight beside them this time, so I would not need it, but I felt better for holding it in my hand.
As the sun mounted, turning the pink sky white, the companies gathered in battle ranks and my officers came to me for their final orders. We spoke in murmurs among ourselves and then I stood up on the tongue of a supply wagon to address the soldiers. My heart seemed lodged in my throat like an apple swallowed whole.
“You all know what is expected of you,” I shouted—there was a low wind that seemed to carry my voice away into nothing. “I will not tell you to fight with courage, for you will do that without any orders from me. But I will tell you to fight with care. They are many and we are few, but they will fight like a mob where we will fight like what we are, the army of Ashur—disciplined, moving and thinking as one man. This battle depends not on any one of us, but on us all. So keep ranks, and tonight it will not be our bodies strewn over the fields like fallen leaves. Good hunting!”
I do not know if it was what they wanted to hear, but they cheered me anyway, after the fashion of soldiers. I only know it was not what was in my belly to say, but I could never have said that. I would not have known where to find the words.
It is a strange thing to watch at a distance as the battle you have set in motion unfolds. Strange, and uncomfortable. Men whose names I knew, whose children I had seen playing in the street, were so small and far away that I could not tell one from another. It was all so abstr
act, like a game of war played on a checkered board with soldiers carved from wood, and yet on this hung so much—my life, the lives of my men; perhaps, someday, even the fate of Ashur’s empire. I sat upon a camp stool on a bluff overlooking the field, surrounded by a few officers and the dozen or so runners who would carry my orders to the men below, and I cursed this life I had chosen for myself as I learned what every commander learns soon enough, that the power over life and death does not rest well on the shoulders of mere mortals.
The two diamond shaped formations trudged across the plain of crushed and yellow grass. I could see the dust raised by their sandals, but at first they hardly seemed to move at all. Their iron spears were invisible to my eye. I watched them as the enemy watched them and tried to imagine how they must look to them. They had crossed almost to the middle of the field before the first Uqukadi horsemen showed themselves, their swords flashing in the sunlight.
The men did well—many a horse pitched over on its side like a pig slipping on ice. They did not waste their arrows, my bowmen, but waited until they could be sure. The Uqukadi had a sea of cavalry, but I doubt if more than half their riders lived even to come near our lines. And those who did had a nasty surprise waiting for them as the bristling iron spears dropped into place. Horses reared in panic at the sight of them, trampling the men they had carried or leaving them behind to die with a javelin between their shoulder blades.
It was working.
Once, twice, three times the infantry raised their spears and ran forward, never breaking formation, then dropped the spears again so that the archers and throwers within could rain down death upon the enemy. I saw a few uniformed bodies lying on the ground, but not many. And the Uqukadi—those who lived—were baffled. Their cavalry was almost useless to them, adding only to the growing numbers of their dead. The plan was working.
“Send in the third company.”
“And the cavalry, Prince?”
“No—hold them back. When the time comes, they will make the final assault. They are not needed now.”
Suddenly there was nothing left for me to do but watch the ensuing carnage.
By midday, all was over. Those enemy horsemen who could, fled. Those who could not, and would not surrender, were cut down. It was hardly an hour after noon when I mounted my horse and rode into the midst of the Uqukadi encampment.
A few dogs barked, but there was no other sound. I saw no one, but that did not mean they were not there. Women and children and men who had been brave all their lives cowered inside the tents, watching me as I looked about me at the chaos of wrecked cooking fires and abandoned weapons. They knew what awaited a beaten enemy, yet none dared raise a hand against me or any of my soldiers.
“Round them up,” I said, leaning over my horse’s neck to speak to Lushakin, who looked about him in astonishment—it seemed almost too easy. “Herd them together like cattle. Kill any who resist. Guard them, but do not make a great point of it; we do not want to seem to be afraid of beaten men. Let them wait for a while. Let them have time to wonder what we plan to do with them. Collect their horses, then feed our troops and allow them to rest. They have earned it. But maintain tight discipline—let there be no looting. I will deal with our prisoners after I have eaten.”
In the twelfth hour of the day, as the sun began to turn to blood, I rode out to the barren spot where what was left of the Uqukadi huddled in a great circle, packed together like dates in a jug. As I approached, the whole multitude dropped to their knees and pressed their faces into the dirt, for their hour of judgment was upon them and they were filled with fear. I let them wait as I kept my mount, my horse snorting and scratching at the earth with its hoofs as if even a dumb beast could sense what must now come.
There might have been near to two thousand souls there, waiting for me to speak the words that for them would mean life or death. Most of them seemed to be women. Their men were either carrion or had fled—I would guess that something like seven hundred of the Uqukadi warriors had fallen that day, leaving their women and children and the old men to pay the price for their pointless courage.
“Stand up! Hear my sentence.”
They rose from their knees, these people, their faces gray and defeated, their eyes on the ground. The women gathered their children behind their full skirts that I might not see them. The men looked as if they could already feel the sword across their necks.
“I want your leaders, your great men—all of them. I want them here at my feet within the tenth part of an hour, or I will burn your bodies with fire and your children will die in chains. You will turn them over to me yourselves, and your time is slipping away!”
They did not make me wait long. Within minutes, twenty men in the blue tunics and black vests that were the badges of their eminence had been forced to the front, cast out from the circle of their followers who wanted only to avoid the full weight of dread Ashur’s vengeance. They fell on their faces before me, although they must have guessed that nothing could save their lives. In an instant my soldiers were standing around them, their swords drawn.
“You and you!” I shouted to two men from my old company. “Run into the dog kennel these people call a camp and find an ax and something we can use for a chopping block. Be quick about it—it is impolite to keep such distinguished persons waiting.”
My men laughed, but our prisoners must not have found the situation nearly so amusing. Finally, when they understood that they were as good as dead, the elders among the Uqukadi rose to their feet. Among them I recognized none but the seeming idiot who had come to my tent to parley and had never opened his lips. I pointed to him, calling him forward.
“Where are the other two?” I asked. For a moment he looked confused, as if he could not understand me, and then he lowered his eyes again.
“Gone, Mighty Prince,” he said—so it seemed that at last he had found his voice. “One of them is fled and the other lies yonder.”
He made a gesture toward the battlefield, where the crows were already busy. I did not have to ask myself which was where—I wondered how far into the mountains the heavy one with the empty smile could have ridden by this time.
“Good. And for that piece of information I give you back your life. Go join your people.”
His knees nearly buckled under him and he made a move that might have ended in his kissing my foot had I not backed my horse away a pace or two. I was not being generous, no more than when I had allowed the Uqukadi to turn in their own leaders to me for punishment. This one was probably a coward but not, I guessed, quite the fool he appeared. Let him lead his tribe, that they might not pick a stronger man. After the betrayals of today, no chief among them would ever trust the loyalty of these people again, and they would know it. A nation stripped of its illusions about itself will never be strong a second time.
By then the soldiers had returned with a fine broad two headed ax and a square block of wood someone might have used as a stool. They looked very pleased with themselves.
“Bring us one of the cook’s helpers,” I told them. “This is butcher’s work.”
For a quarter of an hour the air stank with blood. Each man laid his head upon the block, putting his check in the clotted gore of his predecessors, and the cook’s helper, a great hairy hulk of a fellow who worked stripped to his loincloth that he might not bloody his clothes, took off their heads as neatly as if he had been cutting turnips for a stew and then, even before its head had rolled to the ground, kicked the twitching corpse aside to make room for the next. I stayed on my horse, though the smell of death made him skittish, and the Uqukadi watched in silent horror—I understood precisely how they must have felt.
When it was over, the cook’s helper gathered up the severed heads and put them in a large leather bag. We would send them to the king, who would rejoice.
“Do not mourn for these,” I told the Uqukadi, gesturing down toward the headless trunks that lay at my feet, a few of them still jerking in their limbs like wooden puppets.
“They led you to ruin, and I have done you a kindness to rid you of them. Now I will tell you of the terms under which the great king of this land allows you to keep your own wretched lives—no, you will not die here and now, although you deserve it. Let the women stand separate from the men, but let them keep their children with them. Move. Now!”
They did as they were told—they were too cowed to do anything else. In hardly more than a moment they stood in two masses, the women to the left and the men to the right. I called Lushakin to me.
“Take thirty men,” I said. “Go through the women and sort out any who speak Akkadian—these will be the wives of farmers hereabouts and must be returned. For the rest, take the young ones between ten years and twenty, provided they have no children, up to the number of one in five.”
Lushakin nodded. It was work to his taste. It was quickly done, and the people did not even weep. They were long since past weeping.
“I have taken from you the flower of your young women,” I told them. “Your virgins and young wives—I do not interfere between mother and child, but I will have the rest. They will be slaves in the land of Ashur and die there, their hair gray, in the houses of their masters. They are lost to you forever. I will also have from you your horses and half your goats and cattle. Look about you, mighty Uqukadi, and see your dead warriors. Think of the hardships that await you in the months ahead while you struggle to live in the barren mountains. Remember the faces of your women, whom you will never see again, and rejoice in your misery that the breath is still under your ribs. The mighty king of Ashur has let you live this once—remember that as well, and tempt not his wrath a second time.
“Go now, and if the third sunrise finds you on this sacred soil I will slaughter all of you, down to the sucking babes. The king deals mercifully with you now, for you are no more than ignorant savages and do not understand the customs of great nations, but there will be no mercy should you ever return. So depart now. Go!”
The Assyrian Page 18
