The Assyrian

by Nicholas Guild

  The executioners were waiting, their arms crossed over their massive chests. In every army there are always men set aside for such work, and they are always shunned by their fellow soldiers, and they are always just alike—great mute lumps of muscle with tiny eyes, and wearing the smile of an idiot. There were two of them today, and they came forward and one of them took Marduknasir by the chain that ran between his manacles, pulling him to his knees, while the other hammered iron pegs into the ground at the corners of a square perhaps three paces at a side. When he was finished, their victim was dragged to the center and chained by his arms and legs to the four iron pegs, the chains pulled tight so he could hardly move at all. It was time to go to work.

  They began with Marduknasir’s left hand. One of the executioners took a copper knife from his belt. Its blade was hacked in places, but it looked sharp enough. As he began cutting from the tip of the middle finger and down across the palm, the other poured a trickle of water into

  the ever lengthening wound—this, in part, to clear away the blood but principally to intensify the suffering. He then made a second careful incision from the tip of the thumb to the wrist and, this finished, started stripping back the skin so that finally they had peeled it from the whole hand in a single piece, fingernails and all. Then, after removing the manacle for a moment, they started up the arm.

  I had never heard anyone scream as did Marduknasir. Perhaps all along he had not believed he would be made to suffer this, for there was in the animal shrieks that rent the air a certain note of panicky incredulity, as if, in addition to everything else, he was experiencing the full terror of the unforeseen, the mortal blow that comes out of the darkness.

  But very soon even this was gone, as with his skin they stripped away all that had been human about Marduknasir. It was not long before he was not a man at all, merely a thing that can feel pain and nothing else.

  The crowd watched in sullen silence. If any of the man’s family were there to witness his ordeal they did not make themselves known, but perhaps they were afraid—that was the purpose of this exercise, to make people afraid. The king and I sat close enough that we could smell the blood that poured down over the exposed, quivering muscles, but our faces revealed nothing. That is what conquerors do. They close their hearts.

  It was a slow business, this death—the executioners were in no hurry. Marduknasir, if one could still call that mass of raw, bloody flesh by a name, lived at least until the skin was peeled from his breast and thighs. At least, he still cried out in a soft, mindless whimper. How long he lived after that only the god knows; there was only the twitching of his limbs. At last the executioners stood up. One of them, covered in blood and smiling—I remember how he smiled—held in his hands, like a garment he was presenting for sale, the whole skin, even the face with hair and beard.

  “Nail it to the wall of his house,” the king said, rising from his seat. He was sober now, and he did not smile. “Post a guard that none may take it down for burial. Feed the corpse to the dogs.”

  Once more he put his arm across my shoulder, but this time I think it was to steady me.

  “Come, my son. It was just so with me the first time—I do not envy you the hard lessons of your youth.”

  . . . . .

  The execution of Marduknasir was like a portent of the whole of that year’s campaign, for the king was to show no mercy to any who resisted him. We burned villages and sacked cities, sending the survivors into exile after we had impaled their great men on pointed stakes. The Elamites crossed to the west bank of the Tigris only once in defense of their allies. They tried their strength against us at a place called Lagas—I remember there was a lake nearby where Esarhaddon and I went swimming the day before the battle, which was terrible but not so terrible as Khalule had been. After this one foray, which the annals do not lie in calling a victory for Great Sennacherib, Kudur-Nahhunte retreated into the mountains of his own land and died soon after at the hands of his subjects. It would be many years before Elam, weak and demoralized, ventured once more to stir up trouble among her neighbors.

  But the seed of rebellion had taken deep root among the black headed peoples, and the war we waged against them to kill it was hard and brutal. It was a war not of pitched battles but of sieges against fortified cities, a type of war at which the soldiers of Ashur are more gifted than those of any other nation, but it was a cruel way to bring the land to submission and we found our one justification in the hope that this would be the last time we would need to be cruel.

  Yet we did not think of justification, only of victory and a return to our homes. A long campaign dries all pity from the hearts of men—we grew to hate the peoples of the south, to hate them for what they made us suffer and for what they made us make them suffer. The butcher learns to hate his victims, and the war turned us into butchers.

  And this was the campaign in which Esarhaddon learned the warrior’s trade. He was a fine commander of horse, brave, imaginative, and tenacious— so stubborn in battle that his men came to call him “the Donkey”—but I fear he never learned to distinguish the limits of what could be achieved by force. He never grasped that the conquered must be reconciled to defeat or the victory is empty. He never learned to be anything more than a warrior, and for that the Land of Ashur was in time to pay dearly.

  The Lord Sennacherib saw this and his mind darkened against my brother, whom he never could bring himself to love—Sinahiusur had said it would be so, and Sinahiusur was a wise man.

  Still, he who was the king knew a king’s duty and therefore understood that his royal son could not simply be ignored. Thus as he raised me, first to a seat on his military council and then to that inner circle of advisers who helped him rule the world from a war tent in the swamplands of the lower Euphrates, he raised Esarhaddon as well—but always one or two steps behind. I became the king’s adviser and emissary, who as the voice of my master treated with sovereign princes as their equal in rank, and Esarhaddon became. . . What did he become—what was he allowed to become—except a soldier whose voice no one heard except his troops?

  “When you go to parley with the elders of Umma,” the king said to me, “take the Donkey with you.” The name made him grin—I do not think he understood it as a compliment. “Perhaps, if he sees how gentlemen are expected to behave, we can make something more of him than a stable hand.”

  I listened in silence—it was not my place to tell the king he misjudged his son—and went off in search of Esarhaddon.

  Did my brother care that he was thus slighted? He said nothing. He seemed not even to notice. But I think he was not such an ox that he did not smart under the king’s contemptuous neglect.

  Was he not satisfied? Had we not become what we had dreamed of as boys, terrible in war, the king’s two mailed fists to crush the enemies of Ashur? Yes, we were that. And we loved one another as of old, with the perfect confidence of children. But Esarhaddon would not have been human if he had not resented the manner in which I was preferred over him, and there was little enough I could do to set the thing right.

  So I went to fetch him, that together we might overwhelm the elders of Umma with the glory of Ashur.

  Esarhaddon was indeed good at that sort of diplomacy, for by the simple expediency of saying nothing he could make common men afraid of him—and I had learned long since that the nobles of these southern cities were no better than goatherds in clean clothes. So as I wove together my tapestry of threats and promises, describing to them the mercy of my king and the terror of his wrath, Esarhaddon would stand at my back, solid and silent as any wall, and the great men of Umma would listen as much to him as to me.

  “You are a serpent,” Esarhaddon would say. “You hiss like an adder, and they piss in their loincloths for fear.”

  “Yes, but only because they can look at you and imagine how those thick fingers would feel around their necks. No city was ever taken by bluff, brother.”

  “Perhaps not. But if one ever is, you will be the
one to take it.”

  The elders asked for half an hour to consider our demands. We waited outside the city walls and, half an hour later, the gates opened and out walked their prince, their sovereign lord whose house had ruled in Umma for four hundred years, dressed in rags with the hangman’s rope already knotted around his neck.

  That campaign saw the destruction of many cities, their walls torn down, their palaces razed, the wives and daughters of their kings burned with fire. We would leave famine and death in our wake, for Sennacherib wished all men to know who was master in the lands between the rivers. It was his will, and through him the god found voice, so all must obey.

  And yet he spared Umma. He forgave their prince, who kissed the royal feet, and returned to him his life and honors. It was not simple caprice, for the king knew that men must not be made desperate.

  “He should have hanged him,” Esarhaddon grumbled as we sat together at the banquet given to the conqueror of Umma by her prince. “He should have left him dangling from the city walls until the rope rotted through—by the sixty great gods, this is filthy stuff this traitor serves us for wine!”

  “You are in a bad temper because you haven’t had a woman in two months, but never fear—I have seen to it you will not be cheated of your rightful pillage. This prince was badly frightened by his brush with death and plans to make us all rich gifts. I have had words with his chamberlain, and yours will be two sisters from his own harem. Egyptian women, very skilled.”

  “No, I am not in a bad temper over that—sisters, you say? Not, perhaps, twins, you think?”

  “No, not twins. A year apart in age. Then what vexes you, brother? Surely even Esarhaddon the Donkey is tired of watching towns burn like cooking fires.”

  “Yes—no. How would I know what tires me and what does not? The Lady Tashmetum-sharrat is dead, dead of grief for that son of hers, who was a loss to no one, it seems, except her. Did you know? I read it not an hour ago in a letter from my mother.”

  “No, I did not know.”

  I glanced up at the head of the table, where the king was in the midst of telling a joke. Everyone around him was already laughing loudly, even though the joke was not finished, and the king laughed with them, interrupting himself that he might share in their pleasure. He did not look like a man who had lost his wife, but perhaps he had not yet heard.

  Yet how could he not have heard? I remembered that lady, her eves vacant, sitting on a couch while her women fanned her, dead to life. Yes, of course, why should she not die of grief, poor neglected creature? And why should the king care if she did?

  “What didn’t you know—that the Lady Tashmetum-sharrat is dead, or that my mother can write?” Esarhaddon grinned and dug his elbow into my ribs that I might appreciate his witticism. “She had a scribe write it for her. She can do such things now.”

  “Yes, of course. For now she is. . .”

  “Yes—lady of the palace. And you wonder why my heart is bitter. The king should have hanged that traitor—look at the way he smirks at him! Sisters, you say, but not twins?”

  “No, not twins.”

  “Are they at least witches? Are they skilled at necromancy? Can either of them do magic?”

  “Perhaps not the sort you mean.”

  “If they are Egyptians they can do magic. All Egyptian women do magic. They learn how from their mothers.”

  “Then perhaps one of them is a witch. Perhaps they both are.”

  “Ashur is good to a humble man.”

  . . . . .

  It was not until the month of Ab, when Lord Ashur’s sun burns the land until its face is as hard as building bricks, that I returned to Nineveh. The king of Babylon had not taken the field against us all that season, but had kept his army walled up within his city, which vexed Sennacherib most cruelly. No man might claim to be the master of Sumer unless his soldiers controlled the streets of Babylon, and my royal father knew all his victories, all the tribute that had poured into his treasury, all the submissions of lesser kings meant nothing if he could not return home with some one of his loyal servants on the throne of Babylon. He was impatient that the new companies which were forming in the north be brought down with all speed for the final assault. Thus he sent me back to Nineveh to see that his will was done.

  I traveled with a bodyguard of twelve men, and we rode without rest during the hours of daylight. By the end of the eighth day we were within sight of the great wall. I entered through the gate that night and in the uniform of a common soldier that my return might give rise to no false rumors—a great city is like a woman and believes every evil whisper it hears. But if I had any thought of keeping my arrival a secret from the ear of my servant Kephalos I was disappointed. He was there at the door to the officers’ barrack when I stepped out into the morning light. So quick was he to make his obeisance that I almost tripped over him.

  “Master! May the gods grant you a thousand lives!” he cried as I helped him back up on his feet—it seemed that each time I saw him he grew more massive, and today he was almost beyond my strength. “You must forgive me, for I did not receive word of your return until an hour since.”

  “I cannot conceive how you heard of it at all, considering that I was at some pains to keep that news from the world. If the king’s intelligence were as good as yours, his rule would extend by now to the lands beyond the Bitter River.”

  As we walked through the streets of the city, I noticed that people stepped out of our way and bowed to me as we passed. It was a new experience—almost everyone seemed to know who I was, for even the blue uniform of rab abru would not have excited such respect. Kephalos pretended to pay no attention, but I noticed that he had drawn himself up very straight and strode through the crowds with all the dignity of a great prince.

  “See, Lord?” he said finally, and out of the corner of his mouth—to acknowledge the thing openly would have been inconsistent with his gravity of deportment. “There is not a dog in Nineveh who does not know the future king.”

  “And, putting aside the question of your impudence in styling me so, how is it that the dogs of Nineveh recognize this humble soldier as their marsarru?”

  “Because it is well known that the physician Kephalos is the slave of the great Tiglath Ashur, whom Ishtar, Lady of Battles, loves as her own son.”

  “And, of course, every dog in Nineveh knows the physician Kephalos by sight.”

  “Of course.”

  Of course—probably by now, I thought to myself, most of them owed him money.

  It was well that I hadn’t broken my fast yet that morning, for Kephalos had laid on something of a banquet at his house near the Gate of Adad. There was bread, beer, wine, cheese, and fruits in varieties I had never seen before, and the servants, I noticed, were all women, all very young, and spoke among themselves a language I did not recognize.

  “Uqukadi,” Kephalos whispered, glancing about him to suggest his object. “The slave market does not smile on baby girls, so I kept out some twelve or fifteen for myself as a speculation — naturally I discounted their value just a little in my accounts, since I will have the maintenance of them, but you will find, Lord, that I did not rob you beyond the bounds of decency. In a few years, when their charms are a little more obvious, they will fetch a good price.”

  He smiled, as if he expected me to congratulate him on his sagacity.

  “And where have you hidden the fair Philinna, sweet as a fig?”

  “Oh—do not speak of her. Lord. She is even at this moment upstairs in my bed, snoring like a water ox. I have not had a decent day’s work from her this year, since she has taken it into her head that I cannot live without her embraces—I can, Lord; I could and do, most of the time. That is half the reason I loaded the house with these tittering children, hoping she would rise to the challenge. But it has all been in vain. By accident, my royal master, you have hit upon the right way—for I know you are too young and thoughtless to have acquired much wisdom. To live the hard life of a soldier,
keeping ever to the company of men—that is the only path for him who wishes to enjoy a quiet mind.”

  I laughed, as delighted at the picture of Kephalos enjoying his quiet mind in the midst of a crowded, stinking war camp as with his pitiful distress as the victim of women—for Kephalos, I knew, would never be anyone’s victim very long.

  “Nevertheless, we both did very well out of your booty, Lord. Were you not a prince, you could now feel yourself entitled to live like one. For myself, surely nothing keeps me toiling except my concern for your welfare and, of course, that bottomless greed which is the glory and burden of every true Greek—you, doubtless, are less afflicted, since the mother’s strain is ever the weaker. I let word be spread that you personally had lain with each of these women—they, naturally, were all too puffed up with pride at the idea to even think of denying it—and such is the credulity of the Assyrians that the story was generally credited. Over a hundred women — think of it! Such fools. The bidding, as a result, was very brisk, for every cur loves to believe he dines on the leavings of royalty. You are very popular in the city, Lord, and since you were absent in the north at the time, no suspicion concerning Arad Ninlil’s death has attached itself to you. . .”

  This was the first I had heard of the general report that the marsarru had been poisoned. It seemed that when his physicians had attempted to move the body, a thick black fluid had streamed out of his nose and mouth—this, when only a few drops were forced down the throat of a dog, had resulted in the animal’s death within the span of a few hours.

  There had been no further inquiries, of course. The murder of a prince is the private business of the king—it is not wise even to admit publicly that such a thing could happen—so no one would be summoned to justice. If the lord Sennacherib had his suspicions he would keep them to himself. And he would strike back at a time and in a manner of his own choosing.