“Taunt me again,” I thought. “Go ahead—give me a reason to kill you. I hardly need one.”
“Oh, brother,” she whispered through her bruised lips. “How I love you! Here—let me lick the blood from your fingers!”
She grasped my arm with her free hand and tried to raise herself. I tried to shake her off, but she hung on with what seemed like the fear of death.
“Let me kiss your cruel hands,” she said, with a voice thick and trembling. “Let me. . .”
I could not help myself. Tears of anguish were streaming down my face. My knees seemed ready to buckle. I knelt beside her, taking her little neck in my two hands. I meant to choke her to death. I would kill her—I would. Then why did I see no fear in her eyes? Why did her fingers caress my arms? I would break her. . .
But I did not. Suddenly I was covering her face with harsh, hating kisses. She moaned softly, and her tongue licked at my lips.
“Damn you!” I whispered. “Damn you!”
“Yes—yes. . . Damn me, yes.”
Her hand slipped down, reaching under my tunic to grasp my manhood, which with astonishment I found was swollen and hard. Her fingers moved up and down its length—I could hardly breathe.
“Hurt me, brother—yes. Avenge yourself on my body, Tiglath Ashur, favorite of the gods, true king. Kill me if it pleases you. Who has a better right—why should I care if I die?”
But I did not kill her. I covered her breasts with my hands, letting my fingers close around them until she screamed with the pain of it. Yet mixed with the pain was a raw longing, as if she hoped it would never stop. Even while I hurt her, she began lifting the tunic up over my
shoulders.
Tiglath Ashur, favorite of the gods. Of late the gods had shown me their favor in strange ways. But I did not think to ask what she meant—I was beyond thinking, of that or anything else. If I did not take this woman—not Shaditu, not my sister, but merely this body which writhed beneath me—then I felt as if my breast would shatter with rage.
I went into her. With the first thrust she rolled back on the top of her head and began to moan, a low, hollow sound, as if her body were inhabited by a demon struggling to get out. Her hips moved in time with me, at first slowly and then faster. I buried my teeth in her shoulder and she cried out—even as I reached my climax, she cried out.
I did not look at her as I put on my tunic again. I was not ashamed of what I had done. I merely hated her and desired never to see her face again.
“Will you come to me again?” she asked, in the small, meek voice of a child.
“No—tonight I leave for the north. I am leaving now.”
She sat up suddenly, pulling the blanket around her. Even in the flickering light of the oil lamp I could see that her face was flushed and angry.
“You cannot leave. I will not allow it. I will tell the king what you have done!”
“Tell him.” I turned to her with cold, indifferent eyes—indeed I felt nothing. “Do, tell him. But never seek to see me again, Shaditu, for the next time I really will kill you and you will take no pleasure in the manner of your death.”
“Dog! I hate you! The gods damn you, Tiglath. . !”
Even as I left this dwelling for the last time, I could hear her curses trembling in the air behind me.
Chapter 16
“Tiglath Ashur, favorite of the gods, true king.” “Did you think I would let that cold little bitch puppy have you?” As I rode through the night, the lights of Nineveh fading at my back, these words of Shaditu’s throbbed in my mind like a bruise someone had made the mistake of touching. What could she have been talking about? Had she even known herself?
“Can you not see that we have both been tricked?” What had Esharhamat tried to tell me as I abandoned her? What was this secret that everyone seemed to understand except myself?
“Tiglath Ashur, favorite of the gods. . .” The words trembling with desire.
I had raped my own sister, if rape may have so willing a victim. She had wanted it to happen, and just that way, but if she had not wanted it I would have taken her in any case, and I would have killed her if she had resisted. But she had not thought of resisting. It would seem she had been as busy in her seduction as I had been in my rape.
And somehow this crime, for which I felt no remorse, not then nor later, brought peace to my mind—if peace can be the dead, icy, unfeeling calm which had descended on me. But it gave me the leisure to consider many things: the follies of hope, the blank wall that was my own future, and my sister’s strange words. And Esharhamat’s.
Somehow, I knew not how, she had snatched my life from me. I was not to learn the truth of it for many years.
But at least she did not seek my death. I do not believe that Shaditu made good on her threat to tell the king about our encounter. At least, I received no summons back to Nineveh. No armed men were sent to take my head. And after some time, when I saw my father once more, he did not speak of it or act toward me as if I had stolen his heart’s jewel.
What, after all, could she have told him? The truth, perhaps. She might have been unwise enough to do that. And perhaps the king decided to do nothing. As I have said, these are things I will never know.
What I did know, or came to know—word reached me by dispatch within a few weeks after the event—was that on the day after my brother’s proclamation as marsarru, even before he had slept through a whole night in the house of succession, the baru Rimani Ashur was found hanging by his neck in the sanctuary of the god Shamash.
There seemed to be no doubt he had died by his own hand. He had left no word behind to explain himself, but that his death had been his own act was clear enough. He had nailed one end of a leather belt to the lintel of the doorway, made a noose, stuck his head through it, and kicked away the stool upon which he had been standing. All this he had done under the very eyes of the god, the Lord of Decision.
It was a strange thing to happen, and it made a strange impression. Rimani Ashur might have killed himself for many reasons—I believe now that I know the reason, but I could not have then—and yet the city, by the conjunction of the two events, saw his suicide as an act of remorse for calling Esarhaddon to be the marsarru. All through his days, and through no sin of his own, my brother was to live with the stain of this event upon him. He was cursed from the beginning.
But as, in the darkness, my way lit by torchbearers, I traveled along the road north, I understood nothing of these matters. They lay in the future and in the past, both of which were closed to me.
It was not quite first light when we arrived at Three Lions, but even at such an hour we passed men on the road, shouldering their hoes as they made their way to the fields. They stared at me with astonishment as I rode by, unaccustomed to the sight of armed men, not recognizing their lord in the darkness. I can only guess what terrible apprehensions must have risen in their minds.
As I came near my house, one of the kitchen women came outside to see what the commotion was. She was a huge, sturdy woman and she carried an oil lamp, treading over the bare ground with ridiculous delicacy.
“Well, Shulmunaid,” I said, smiling broadly as I dismounted from my horse. “And have I changed so much that you no longer know me?”
She glanced quickly up at my face and let out a shriek, dropping the lamp in the dust as she turned and ran back into the house. Within a quarter of a minute there were twelve or fifteen people come to witness the master’s unexpected return. Even my mother came, only a moment later than the others—she must still have been asleep. She rushed into my arms, burying her head in my chest.
“Oh, Lathikadas,” she wept, “is it really you? I thought. . . I was afraid. . .”
“No, Merope, they have not killed your son.” I let my hand settle on her bronze-colored hair. “The king has not made me pay with my life because I cannot succeed him.”
I gave orders that my men were to be fed and that beds were to be found for them. We would stay a day and a night, whic
h would give me just time to settle my affairs. I did not expect to be back for a long time.
A breakfast was prepared for me and I ate it while the fires in the sweating house were lit. I would clean myself and then sleep and then speak with the overseer Tahu Ishtar, but these matters could wait. First it was necessary to explain to my mother all that had happened and how the future would now shape itself. This I did over breakfast, and she listened to my words, saying nothing. Her stillness was that quiet sorrow of one who has seen from the first how all things must work themselves out.
“I do not know what I will find in Amat,” I said. “I will send for you as soon as I know I can do so in safety, but garrison towns are wild places, so that may not be soon.”
“I can leave here on an hour’s notice,” she said calmly, and I found it possible to believe her. “I would rather follow you to the earth’s end than stay here alone.”
“Amat is the earth’s end.” I smiled at her, knowing what she meant. “Beyond is only the kingdom of Urartu and the tribes of the eastern mountains—it is the point of the spear with which the Land of Ashur keeps these at bay. I am afraid we will not discover there a very refined society.”
“What is that to me?”
“What is that to me?” For Merope it was all very simple—her son had hurt himself playing with the big boys in Nineveh, and now she and he were heading off into a mountain exile. Time and love would bring all right again. This was why she lived.
I went to the sweating house and steamed out the poisons which collect in a man when he has been vexed in his liver and then I slept until it was nearly dark again. I was too tired to dream, which was a blessing.
When I awoke Tahu Ishtar was waiting for me under the vine arbor in the garden. He rose and bowed when I approached.
“It is well with your son Qurdi?” I asked him, and he nodded.
“He is grown almost to manhood. Lord. I think he will make a fine overseer when my sedu beckons.”
“But may the god grant this will not be soon, Tahu Ishtar.”
He bowed again, with all the dignity of a great prince before his king, for this was a man who understood the uses of power.
“I gather you are bound for the north, Lord,” he said, as if it were the most indifferent matter in the world—the god alone knew what they understood here of how matters stood in Nineveh, but my overseer was neither blind nor a fool. He must have guessed much.
“Yes. I will be gone for a long time. I may not return for many years.”
“It is a harsh place, the north.”
“It is that, Tahu Ishtar, and its links with the world outside are tenuous. I think it best that you take the management of Three Lions entirely into your own hands.”
“Am I not to write, Lord?” He raised his eyebrows, as if mildly surprised, but gave no other sign. I could only smile.
“Yes, write—by all means, write. Tell me how the crops do and if the river floods more or less than last year. A man likes to receive news of such things. But do not wait from any word from me before you do what is needful. It may not come in time.”
“It shall be as the master of Three Lions declares.”
Thus did I order all things against my departure.
. . . . .
The journey to Amat lasted twelve days. There were no towns of any size along the way and few villages, so for the most part we pitched our tents wherever the darkness found us and slept on the ground. At first this was no hardship, for the month of Ab is a time when many choose to sleep outside, wrapped in a blanket on their roofs to escape the heat of their houses, but as we climbed higher into the mountains the nights turned cold. By the time we reached our destination I think we were all looking forward to a bed in a warm room.
Amat—we stood on the crest of a hill and looked down at it in the valley where it nestled like something held in a man’s hand. Behind it rose the mountains of the Hakkari range, ragged as broken ice. In mountains such as these, in such holy silences, the gods were supposed to have their dwelling places, where they could look down upon the little works of men, smiling with indifference. What must Nineveh seem from such a height? What must Tiglath Ashur and his little sorrows seem to these, which had risen from the foundations of the world and would endure forever? If a man grieves, it is well for him to remember his own insignificance, to remember that his heart can break without shattering the earth as well. If I had been searching for a place in which to lose myself, I had found it.
But a man is not a god and cannot live in the peaks of mountains, so we turned our eyes to the valley.
The town was a poor thing even by the standard of some other garrison towns I had seen. There was the fortress and, outside its walls, grouped around the market square, some twenty or thirty squat little buildings of unpainted brick, mostly wine shops and brothels and the houses of various other small traders who lived off the custom of the soldiers. There was a general atmosphere of slackness—everywhere there were the little telltale symptoms of sagging discipline and hopelessness, as if the men stationed here had long since forgotten that they were part of the army of Ashur.
I was shaknu of a vast territory, but, like most frontiers, it was sparsely settled and my capital, it seemed, was no Nineveh. That was just as well, I thought. I would have my work set before me, and work was to be my salvation. I had not come here to delight myself in the pleasure palaces of a great city.
When I approached the fortress gate, the guards, who seemed completely occupied in a game of lots, did not even trouble to challenge me—indeed, they hardly seemed to notice my presence. I rode up to one who wore the uniform of an ekalli and, as he came up from his crouch and turned to see who addressed him, I caught him across the side of the head with the butt on my whip, knocking him to the ground.
“You and you!” I shouted, pointing at random to two of his company. “Arrest this man and have him put in a cage in your stockade. He is to have neither food nor blankets for three nights; if he is still alive at the end of that time, bring him to me. Now someone go find the commanding officer of this dog hole and tell him that the rab shaqe Tiglath Ashur has arrived and would be gratified of an audience—run, you scum!”
They ran, but I doubt if it was to find anything except a hiding place. The fortress compound made a depressing spectacle. The drill fields were muddy and overgrown with weeds, dirty children played on the plank sidewalks outside the headquarters offices, which looked as if they had not seen a daub of whitewash since the reign of Great Sargon, and on the walls there did not seem to be even a proper guard mounted. Boredom hung in the air like the pall of death. It would be many months before these soldiers were ready to face an enemy in battle—I would have no time here for bitter memories. The king my father had done well when he chose Amat as the scene of my exile.
As my escort dismounted and looked around them with as much dismay as I felt in my own heart, I summoned Lushakin to me with a silent gesture.
“See that the men are billeted and fed,” I told him. “Then have a look around this pigsty—without drawing attention to yourself—and bring me word of what you find.”
“Yes, my prince. We are a long way from home, eh?”
Longer, as it turned out, than either of us could have imagined. As I walked through the mud to the garrison commander’s quarters I had the sense of having stepped outside the civilized world—even the Elamites would have been ashamed of this place.
“We had no idea you would arrive so quickly,” I was informed as I stepped up onto the porch. The young officer who met me—”young” being entirely a relative term; I was his senior by no more than a year—gave the impression of being torn between his duty to offer the customary welcoming courtesies to the new shaknu and a strong desire to bar my way. “Our rab abru is gone for the day on province business—I really couldn’t say precisely where he might be found. He will be back by evening, so if perhaps you would allow me—”
“I suspect you know precisely where the r
ab abru might be found,” I said, fixing my eyes on the bright yellow pennant that hung with the army wing standard over the fortress gate and proclaimed the rank of its senior officer. My own was in my luggage and would be run up before nightfall. I never went anywhere without it, nor would any other commander.
I smiled, not very pleasantly, at this adjutant who, after all, was merely doing what honor required in protecting his superior.
“Find him. Bring him to me within the half hour, or I will send out an arrest party for the two of you. Is that clear?”
“Yes, Rab Shaqe—very clear!”
In saluting, the fellow struck his chest so hard that he would probably carry a mark there for half the month. He went scurrying off toward the town as fast as he could work his legs.
The northern frontier was not a desirable posting. Men were sent to places like this because they had made powerful enemies, or because they had somehow disgraced themselves, or perhaps most often because no good commander wanted them and thus they settled here the way a stone will settle in the mud at the bottom of a horse pond. Doubtless the soldiers here, who probably had heard no news from the capital in many months, were already busy wondering what the rab shaqe Tiglath Ashur had done to get himself banished to Amat. I would let them think anything they liked, but they would learn soon enough, and to their sorrow, that my crimes had not included laxness of discipline.
I went inside the headquarters building—there was nothing to be gained from standing about outside, and my interview with the garrison commander, when it finally did take place, would be better conducted in private.
The public rooms presented a sorry enough sight. The floors were dirty, dust and not quite empty wine cups seemed to be everywhere, and much of the furniture looked as if it would fall to pieces at a hard glance. What the living quarters might be like I did not even care to imagine.
Without much difficulty I had concluded that it would be necessary to make a few examples among the officers—one cannot expect soldiers to be better than the men who lead them—and I had even less trouble deciding where to start. The garrison commander was in for a trying day. I found myself hoping that he would be deserving of the fate I had in mind for him.
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