The Assyrian

by Nicholas Guild

  And when at last he arrived—half led, half supported by his adjutant, like a blind man or a cripple—I was not disappointed. Even from halfway across the room I could smell him. His uniform tunic was wrinkled and covered with what looked like food stains, and his beard was a greasy tangle. And already, hardly two hours past noon, he was drunk—so drunk that when he tried to speak he was no more intelligible than a grunting sow. There was nothing to be gained from berating such a man. He would probably not have understood one word in five.

  “Clean this vagabond up,” I told his adjutant, keeping my voice level, almost indifferent. “Lock him in a sweating house until he remembers how to think, but have him presentable and sober within two hours. Further, you may issue orders for a general assembly.”

  “And when shall the garrison present itself, Rab Shaqe?”

  “In two hours. Everything will happen in two hours, Rab Kisir.”

  The man looked at me as if I had just pronounced a death sentence on him.

  I waited inside the headquarters building. I would not show myself again until the entire garrison had assembled for inspection; it would do them no harm to make their new commander’s acquaintance under the rigors of parade discipline. None of the officers thought fit to disturb me—doubtless they were engaged elsewhere. My only visitor was Lushakin.

  “By the great gods, Prince, this place is more like a brothel than a fortress,” he said, sitting down and breaking the seal of a jar he had brought with him. He offered me the first swallow—we had been together a long time, and such, in his view, were all the courtesies to which my rank entitled me—and then tilted back his head to wash his throat in beer. “The place seems to have as many harlots as lice. So far at least five different women have offered me their backsides, and we have been in barracks not yet an hour together. However, if they are as dirty as everything else around here, I would be afraid to touch them. The food, by the way—at least such as the common soldiers eat—isn’t fit for anything except mending walls with.”

  “The beer is no pleasure either,” I said, making a face as he offered me another pull from his jar.

  “Ah, Prince, we have all been spoiled by the beer in Sumer. The water of the Euphrates makes the best beer in the world—you cannot expect to find anything like it this far north.”

  And Lushakin, to whom all beer was merely beer, finished his off with a single long swallow.

  “I will tell you something else, though,” he said, lowering his voice. “You mustn’t expect to go into battle with troops like these and come away alive. They have gone to seed. They hate the very idea of war, almost as much as they hate their officers. Mark my words, Prince, the first flash of a tribesman’s sword and they will run like rabbits, every one of them.”

  “Then we shall have to teach them that there are things far more frightful than any enemy.”

  “Oh, I think they are learning that already,” Lushakin answered, showing his teeth in a wide grin. “Like all soldiers, they have a great curiosity about the new commander, and our boys have been telling them stories.”

  “Good—let them think I eat babies for breakfast.” I could not help but laugh. “Lushakin, I am glad you are my friend and not my enemy, for you have no more scruples than an adder.”

  My ekalli merely shrugged his shoulders, as if I had said no more than what would be obvious to a child.

  “And what, Prince, have scruples to do with soldiering?”

  An hour later I stepped out into the cold white sunlight to inspect my new army. Their commander, looking as if he would have preferred to be dead, but sober and in a clean uniform, stood in front of their ranks, watching me with an expression of sullen hatred on his face.

  Even from a distance these men of Ashur made a sorry sight. I saw rusted weapons and bowstrings grown frayed enough to be mistaken for shocks of wheat. I saw dirt and boredom. They were soldiers, but they stood about like prisoners in a labor gang, and indeed for most of them the army probably was a kind of servitude. They had lost their pride—or perhaps, more accurately, they had never had any to begin with.

  “I have come here to assume command,” I shouted, still standing on the porch of the garrison headquarters. “Let me show you how that is done.”

  At a nod from me, Lushakin and five of my quradu came forward from the ranks and seized the rab abru, grabbing him by the arms and legs and carrying him to the front of the parade ground. He was so astonished that at first he did not even protest, but he was loud enough when they put his feet through rope nooses and hung him upside down from the log railing in front of a horse trough.

  He screamed and shouted curses in a high pitched, cracking voice, but one could hardly hear him over the laughter of his own troops—it was a measure of how low their morale had sunk that they would take such delight in seeing their commander thus humiliated. Indeed, he made a comical sight, lying on his back in the mud, his legs sticking straight up so that his tunic had slipped to his waist, but soldiers must hate their officers before they will laugh at their disgrace—and an officer who is hated by his men is invariably a bad lot.

  When the rab abru was well secured and his sandals had been removed, Lushakin turned to me, saluted smartly, and stood waiting for his orders. He knew well enough what they would be. We had discussed the whole performance, and the form of punishment had been his own suggestion—a thing he had once seen in Naharina, done to an Arab caught cheating at lots. But before soldiers the appearance was everything, and so Lushakin waited.

  “Ten apiece, Ekalli. And don’t spare your arm.”

  Lushakin had found a whip, perhaps the length of a man’s arm, made of hippopotamus hide. While another of our troop gripped the rab abru’s feet by the toes, forcing him to hold them as level as the top of a table, he laid his whip gently across the soles, as if to measure his stroke.

  I will not soon forget how the rab abru screamed, like a woman in hard labor. The neat little whip whistled through the air and bit into the soles of his feet, and each time he screamed with what seemed a mingling of terror, pain, and something almost like indignation. Lushakin obeyed his orders—each stroke raised a fine spray of blood, stripping away the skin as efficiently as a knife. Ten strokes on each foot, carefully paced that the performance should not end too quickly—the whistling whip, the dull, sickening thud as it found its mark, the rab abru’s feral scream. And the whole time, his soldiers laughed at his agony. It was a spectacle they found very much to their taste. They had seen nothing so amusing in months.

  When Lushakin was finished, he poured cold water over the man’s by then raw soles and cut him down. The rab abru was driven out of the fortress where, until that day, his word had been law. He was driven forth with a lash, his every step leaving a bloody footprint on the muddy ground. If he had friends in the town to succor him, then he might be saved from privation and death, but to this garrison he was less than a shadow. The sentence, should he ever return, was death. Beyond that, his fate was to be a matter of indifference.

  I waited until the soldiers had finished with their joke. I stood in silence, watching them disdainfully, until they grew quiet once more.

  “In one month, we shall take the field against the mountain nomads. It will be our last chance while the weather holds, and I have no intention of awaiting your convenience. You have but that one month to make yourselves into an army—otherwise your only hope of life is that the barbarians will take pity upon the armies of Ashur and send only their women and young children into battle against you, for I do not know how a rabble such as I see before me could ever hope to prevail against men.”

  They did not laugh now. Some of them, no doubt, had fought with the Lord Sennacherib against these same mountain tribes, and they felt the truth of my words, realizing, perhaps for the first time, to what a depth they had allowed themselves to sink, and had the decency to feel ashamed. It was a beginning.

  “With your commander—with your late commander, whose name shall not be spoken
here—I have dealt lightly because I would not stain the day of my arrival with the taking of life. Doubtless he was not alone in his corruption, for no officer fails in his duty if he believes his men will not suffer it, but he shall take the blame for you all. I will make no inquiries into past sins. I will not ask who among you has dealt falsely or been a coward or robbed another of his food and drink—all of this will be allowed to pass into oblivion. But if it happens again, then the next time you are called to witness punishment you will see death. You will see the fortress walls covered with the hides of traitors. Remember this, and tempt not my wrath.

  “Tonight, no man will see his bed—not I, and certainly none of you. This den of vermin shall be put in order, if it must be done by torchlight.

  “And tomorrow, at one hour after dawn, we will assemble here again, and we will see if you have forgotten utterly what separates men from beasts. If you have, then I can promise you a day such as you will not soon forget. Your officers shall give you your assignments. I dismiss you to them.”

  I spent the rest of the day going over the account tablets, and fortune smiled on my predecessor that I had not done so earlier, otherwise he might have lost the skin from more than just the soles of his feet. The man had been a thief as well as a drunkard, and the great gods knew what else besides.

  Already, when I sat down to dinner, I could see the blaze of torches and smell the burning pitch. The meal was quite good—lamb dressed with okra, bread and cheese, with only the deplorable local beer to let me know I was not eating at my own table at Three Lions. Before such a meal it was easy to forget that common soldiers might have only such food as was fit to mend a wall with, but no one can fight with his belly full of straw. I decided that in the morning I would issue orders that officers and men would be fed the same rations.

  Having ordered the entire garrison to work through the night, I could hardly seek my own bed, but there was no difficulty in keeping awake—the noise of the work crews, the orders and curses shouted back and forth, the unearthly play of torchlight outside my windows would have kept a corpse from sleeping. And added to all that was the cold, for which, at this season of the year, nothing could have prepared me. In Nineveh, doubtless, half the populace were sleeping on their rooftops, hoping vainly for the tiniest breath of wind, but in Amat I sat in front of a brazier, wrapped in an old cloak, my teeth chattering uncontrollably. I could almost envy the soldiers outside, who had at least each other and their work to keep them occupied and warm. I had nothing except solitude and discomfort, and an idleness that left my mind a prey to painful recollections—for even here, I found, I could not drive Esharhamat from my thoughts.

  “Remember, all your life, each night, that I will be in Esarhaddon’s bed. . .” They would be married by now, and she would be asleep beside my brother, her belly filled with his seed. She would bear his sons—and forget, in time, that there had ever been such a man as Tiglath Ashur.

  That was how she would avenge herself upon her coward lover, by forgetting his existence.

  But I would not forget hers. My ears were filled with the soft sound of her voice, my eyes with the sight of her. Longing and remorse tore at my breast with their heavy claws, and I knew she was right to hate me and believed I could not live another night without her forgiveness and her love and the cool touch of her little hands. I suffered then as I knew I would suffer every time that her name sounded in my mind, and that would be every hour of my life. Esharhamat. Esharhamat. Drive me mad, but do not abandon me. Esharhamat.

  Morning’s first gray light was like the mercy of the gods, and it found me in a forgiving mood. I stepped outside, and the parade ground was a changed place—the weeds were gone, the dead leaves had been gathered up, even the barrack walls were sparkling with whitewash. And the men themselves? I saw many a haggard face, but at least their uniforms were clean and their equipment in order. The night had worked a kind of miracle.

  But I kept my face empty of expression—no first effort can be allowed to seem sufficient.

  “This, at least, is a beginning,” I said. “I will allow you three hours of rest before the start of drill practice. We will see then if you still remember anything of being soldiers.”

  Even as I let the door swing shut behind me, I could hear the murmur of a thousand voices. The news had not been sweet to their ears.

  An orderly, one of my own quradu, took my cloak as I headed toward my bed. He had been the luckiest man in Amat last night, for there had been nothing to prevent him from sleeping straight through till morning.

  “Wake me in two hours,” I told him. “Remember, two hours.”

  I pulled a blanket around me and closed my eyes, not even bothering to kick the sandals from my feet.

  . . . . .

  It was as well the mountain tribes could not witness that afternoon’s drill, or they might have commenced pouring over our borders like locusts. We stumbled through routine exercises like sleepwalkers. Partly this was simple fatigue, for everyone was clumsy with exhaustion, but the real blame lay with neglect—one might have supposed these men had been conscripted only that morning. Experienced soldiers fell from their horses or impaled themselves on their own weapons. Our casualties would have done justice to a small battle, and our war was against no enemy except ourselves.

  This giddy performance went on all afternoon. My quradu formed up a battle square and took on all comers in a mock engagement fought with wooden swords and javelins with padded points. I led the chariot drills myself, since I would not have these men think their new commander was but a mud scratching soldier. Every man worked until he was ready to drop.

  And finally, when the light died, we dragged ourselves back to barracks for a hot meal—a wretched, thin, bad smelling porridge but at least the same meal for all ranks—and a night’s sleep.

  But we made progress. On the next day and the day after, the quality of drill improved, and on the third day the supply officer himself came to me asking to be returned to line duties—it seemed his brother officers had made him afraid for his life. I granted the request, promoted Lushakin to rab kisir, and turned the matter over to him. He was not pleased, saying that the gods had not intended him for a kitchen soldier, but almost from that hour the quality of rations improved—even the beer.

  And also on the third day the ekalli I had thrashed at the fortress gate was released from stockade and brought to me while I finished my supper. He was a short man with sloping shoulders and long, powerful arms; indeed, there was something nearly apelike about him. His face was haggard and almost gray from his ordeal, but as he waited for me to speak—doubtless expecting the worst, that I would have him flogged to death now, or driven from camp naked and bleeding, like the rab abru, or degraded to a garrison slave—his eyes were too proud to beg. He had endured cold and hunger and the terror of an uncertain fate, but he would not lower himself to show his own weakness. He watched me with something like defiance. “Do what more you like with me,” he seemed to say. “You will find that I can stand that too.” I decided I did not care to waste such a man.

  “The next time you lead a watch, watch. I could just as easily have put a javelin between your shoulder blades, and then you would not be alive to cast covetous glances upon your commander’s wretched meal. Here—sit down and feed yourself. There is enough for two, and I don’t like a man to divide his attention when I speak to him.”

  He sat and ate, with his fingers, as greedy as an animal. And when he had finished he threw himself back in his chair and sighed with pleasure.

  “Did you enjoy that?” I asked, as if only to satisfy my own curiosity.

  “No—it was no better than the slop the rest of us get. I thought the officers took better care of themselves.”

  “Not anymore.”

  The tone of my answer must have reminded him that this was no social occasion and he rose to his feet, standing not quite at attention.

  “Go back to your barracks, Ekalli,” I went on. “Get a decent nigh
t’s sleep for a change and have your men ready for drill practice at the first hour after dawn. That is all.”

  “Then I am to retain my rank, Rab Shaqe?” His voice reflected not so much relief as astonishment.

  “Yes. But in the months ahead do endeavor to show me that I have not made a mistake. And be sure to tell me if you have any more complaints about the food.”

  “I will, Rab Shaqe.”

  Even as he walked away into the darkness, I could hear him laughing to himself. His name was Girittu, and after that he proved himself a good soldier. I never had cause to regret that act of clemency.

  And there were no further complaints about the food, which perhaps made more difference than anything else. Better food led inevitably to better morale, and that in its turn led to better drill. Everyone, down to the humblest shield carrier, was more cheerful, as if he had rediscovered his purpose in living. Even the camp prostitutes began to look less slovenly. Within ten days the garrison at Amat was actually coming once more to resemble an army. I decided that at the end of the second week I could risk taking a few companies into the mountains for field exercises.

  It was on the night before our intended departure that I received a reminder that some in Nineveh still held me in their thoughts.

  I had gone to my sleeping mat early, and, knowing that for the next half month I would have no bed but a blanket spread over the cold ground, had ordered the added luxury of a brazier, heaped high with coals so that my room was almost like a sweating house.

  A man is generally punished for these little extravagances, and I spent a restless night, visited by nightmares.

  Zaqar, that god who presides over the hours of sleep, sends us our dreams as messages, glimpses into the future and our own hearts. He punishes the wicked with visions of terror, but even in this he is a gentle god, a merciful god, for through these are we brought to seek pardon, and through pardon comes peace and rest. That night Zaqar punished me for my brazier, as he punishes the drunkard and the glutton, for my dreams were full of violence and death.