The Assyrian

by Nicholas Guild

  “Let this end,” I thought to myself. “Let this madness have an end.”

  I drove down on the enemy, knowing no pity, tearing men’s lives from them, that they might stop. That they might fall back and let me show them some mercy.

  And at last, when we were almost within reach of their wagons and their cooking fires, the Scythians—some of them—withdrew a little that they might begin the work of retreating across the river and saving what they could. The others drove at us all the harder, and the noise of battle grew shrill in our ears. But it was ending—at last it was ending.

  It was when I was circling around to make ready for another charge that I chanced to glance down at the ground and saw, lying on his back in the long grass, the corpse of my driver. Gadi, whose mother would never look on him again, stared up at me with glazed, unseeing eyes—I had almost forgotten his existence.

  I stopped for an instant, letting the horses stand, their ribs wheezing in and out like the sides of a bellows, and Gadi’s eyes seemed to hold me. “Did you not care at all?” they seemed to say. “Did you not even notice? I am dead. I am dust, and you have forgotten me.” I felt such remorse as if I had killed him myself, and then a terrible, wild, mindless anger. They would pay for this, these savages. I would have just a few more die to follow this boy into Arallu. I lashed at the horses and the chariot lurched forward, gathering speed as the wheels whined like dogs.

  It was then that the arrow struck me in the back.

  . . . . .

  The battle ended very quickly after that. When I saw that the Scythians were in full retreat, I gave orders that our advance should stop. We stood on the field, which was now ours, and watched them hurry such of their wagons and animals as they could over the Bohtan River to safety. There was no reason to pursue them—they had lost men and horses almost without number, and I had no inclination to preside over a massacre.

  As long as the enemy was within sight, no one saw that I was wounded. As soon as I knew I had been hit—there was no pain at first; all I felt was the impact, as if a friend had clapped me on the back—I reached around and broke off the shaft, throwing it away without even looking at it. Now even the finger’s length of wood that stuck out from beneath my shoulder blade was hidden underneath my cloak. Surrounded by my officers, my chariot drawn to a halt, I watched as this victory of mine came to completion. I said but little and stood quite still, for I could feel the point of the arrow scraping against bone with almost every breath I drew.

  It was an agony to wait there like that—the arrow point burned in my flesh, and I was sweating with pain. I could feel the blood dripping down underneath my corselet. I stood with my knees locked and one hand on the wheel of my chariot to steady me, watching for the last Scythian rider to quit the field. The wounding of a commander can cause panic among his men, and is at the very least a distraction and a danger. I could wait. Let these soldiers of Ashur have their triumph, let them joy in it at least a little, before they knew.

  “Rab Shaqe, there is blood running down your leg. Rab Shaqe, what is. . ?

  I could hardly hear him, he sounded so far away. I turned to see who had spoken but the light seemed to die in my eyes.

  “I am not—that is. . .”

  I suppose I must have fainted, for the next I knew I was lying face down on a makeshift stretcher and being carried back to camp. I did not relish the journey—with every step what was left of the arrow’s point seemed to push its way deeper into my back.

  In the middle of the afternoon, lying on a cot in my tent, I was trying very hard to become drunk while the cook, who, one presumed, knew more about slicing meat than most men, was heating up his knife in a brazier, preparing to cut the arrowhead out from beneath my shoulder blade, where it seemed to be lodged. I was not looking forward to the operation, and neither was he.

  “Just be sure that you are quick,” I told him—he looked as if he could have used a little wine himself, but it seemed best to wait until he was finished. “Cut deep, pluck the thing out with your forceps, and sear the wound closed behind you. You needn’t worry—no blame will attach to you, no matter what happens. But please, once you begin, do not be timid.”

  “Yes, Rab Shaqe, I will. . . Yes, Rab Shaqe”

  We waited quietly, he and I, watching the iron blade, which was half buried in the coals, turn dark red.

  “Look what we have found for you, Rab Shaqe—is he not a pretty bird?”

  The flap of my tent was open, and through it sailed—and I use the word advisedly, for I do not think his feet touched the ground until he fell over on his face—what at first I took to be a dead body. I was very annoyed; I did not appreciate that sort of joke. And then I saw that the man’s hands were tied behind his back and that he was struggling to get up.

  Three soldiers were standing just outside. I recognized one of them as the ekalli Girittu, his face streaked with dust but grinning proudly.

  “We found him among the dead. He must have fallen from his horse and knocked his head against a rock, because he came to while we were practically standing on him—we were engaged in a little looting, as you no doubt can understand, Rab Shaqe. A man must have something to show for his day’s work. Look at all the gold on him! We think he must be some sort of king.”

  As if to illustrate his point, Girittu stepped inside the tent and pulled the man upright so that he rested on his knees and I could see the front of his heavy coat—which was covered with round gold spangles, each sewn onto the fabric and about the size of a child’s fist. Clearly this was someone of importance.

  “Look at the gash in his leg, Rab Shaqe. We marched him straight up here and he never so much as stumbled. You have to give them that—these Scythians are not women.”

  Yes, his leg did have a hole in it, just above the knee. He looked as if a javelin must have found him. Fortunately for him—or unfortunately, depending on what I decided to do with him—he had not bled to death, but it must have been a painful wound. Waiting for the cook’s knife to heat up, I could sympathize.

  This was the first of the enemy I had seen up close—or, at least, had the leisure to study, since I had been close enough to more than just a few that day—and I was interested. I had never seen a man who looked quite like this one. His face was a reddish color such as one sees in the faces of those who have been burned by the wind, only darker. But the extraordinary thing about him was not the color of his face but its shape—his cheekbones were high up and very pronounced, and his eyes were slanted, hardly more than slits. It struck me at once that he looked like nothing in the world so much as a cat, an impression heightened by his thin beard, hardly more than a few long black strands over his lips and chin, like a cats whiskers. I wondered where under the sun these people could have come from that they had such faces—what place grew men like this?

  This one looked as if he might have been between thirty and forty years old, but it is no easy matter to guess the age of one who is of another race.

  “You did well to bring him to me,” I said. “And I will see you do not lose by it.”

  The men nodded and left. I glanced at one of my officers who happened to be standing near the prisoner.

  “Cut him loose.”

  “But, Rab Shaqe, is that. . .”

  “I said, ‘cut him loose’—do not worry, I will not let him bite you.”

  After another moment’s hesitation the rab kisir, a short man whose eyes were so close together in his broad face that he always seemed worried, took the dagger from his belt. The Scythian, for just an instant, let a flicker of something like suspicion show in his catlike eyes—he might have imagined I had just ordered his throat cut—but he showed us nothing more. As soon as the bowstring about his wrists was severed he brought his hands around to the front as if to inspect the damage.

  “Rab Shaqe, the knife is ready.”

  The cook did not seem pleased with his announcement, but this was not something which could be delayed. The wine had begun to wear off
—I hoped I would not shame myself before this barbarian.

  “Then do your work,” I said. “Pretend you are carving a joint for dinner, but hurry.”

  It took but the third part of a minute to dig the arrowhead out of my back, but I did not notice that the time passed too quickly. I clutched the legs of the cot and clenched my teeth, but I need not have worried that I might scream. It is easy enough to be brave in front of an audience, and besides, I would not have dared to draw the breath to scream, not with a burning knife in my back. So I managed to get through the business with tolerable credit—at least the Scythian, who watched it all with what seemed an almost jealous interest, did not sneer at me.

  When the cook was finished and the hole under my shoulder blade had been plastered with salve, he dropped the arrowhead into my open hand.

  “This was made in Nineveh,” I said, in Aramaic. “I should have known no Scythian arrow could have touched me.”

  The light seemed to change in our prisoners narrow eyes, and I knew at once that he had understood me.

  I sat up. It was not pleasant to move, and I felt weak from pain and loss of blood, but a prince of Ashur does not treat with foreigners lying on his belly.

  “What is your name?”

  “I am Tabiti, son of Argimpasa,” he said finally, having apparently considered the matter and decided that it would not involve a loss of honor to answer. “I am headman of the Sacan tribe of the Scoloti.”

  “Scoloti.” It was close enough to the Akkadian name, which was “Ishkuzai,” that I understood to whom he referred.

  “Then Tabiti, son of Argimpasa, since you are a man of distinction, get up off your knees and take a seat.”

  I motioned to an adjutant, who brought a stool and was unwise enough to try helping the headman of the Sacan tribe to his feet—Tabiti shook him off with contempt, but sat down anyway.

  “Why did you attack my people?” he asked. There was nothing like an accusation in his question. He merely wanted to know.

  “Because the river yonder marks the sovereign territory of the god Ashur—our king was not pleased with your intrusion.”

  Tabiti, son of Argimpasa, nodded.

  “We care nothing for borders,” he said.

  “You would do well to care for that one.”

  He did not answer—he seemed almost not to have heard. And then I noticed that he was looking at my chest.

  “You have collected many scars for one so young. It is troublesome to be so unlucky.”

  He smiled, looking even more like a cat. It appeared that now I had my answer.

  “I have fought in many battles,” I said. “Thus I have many scars. A man is not counted unlucky in battle unless he is killed—or loses. Neither of these fates has been mine, so it is not I who has been unlucky.”

  There was no reaction, but of course there would not have been. Doubtless this man had traded insults before.

  “I have two choices,” I went on, smiling thinly, hoping this proud man would not think I either mocked or insulted him. “I can kill you, and then pursue a leaderless people across the Bohtan River until I have exterminated them all—this, surely you realize, is now well within my power—or you and I can come to an understanding which will save much bloodshed.”

  “I am not afraid of any death you may visit upon me.”

  “How have I suggested that you are?”

  The answer seemed not what he had expected. He sat quietly for a moment, hardly even seeming to breathe, as if turning something over in his soul.

  “Of course, there is always the question of whether you can speak for your people—and whether any of your nation can be trusted.”

  “My word is law among the Sacan,” he said, with a kind of cold fury, seeming almost to spit the words at me. “And the word of a Sacan is his blood oath.”

  “I am delighted to have that point settled.”

  We sat facing each other, separated, it seemed, by more than a mere few cubits of air. We were on opposite sides of an unbridgeable hostility; each as alien to the other as if we were not both men. Thus it must be—or must it? I found I was unable to suppress a conviction that this was someone whom I could both understand and, within reasonable limits, trust.

  “You do grasp, I hope, that if we follow your people as enemies they cannot escape. This has nothing to do with courage—after today no warrior of the Sacan tribe needs to prove to me that he is a man. I am speaking of facts, of war and the way it is waged against a people in flight, of how their animals will be destroyed and their women and children will starve after the husbands and fathers are dead. You are their leader and must be their eyes into the future. Have I made myself plain?”

  He said nothing. For a long moment he did not even move, and then, at last, he consented to nod his head.

  “Now—will Tabiti, son of Argimpasa, headman of the Sacan tribe of the Scoloti, give his blood oath that he acknowledges the lordship of King Sennacherib, King of the World’s Four Corners, King of Kings? Will he pledge himself to aid the Lord Sennacherib against his enemies? Will he forswear war against the Land of Ashur and honor such boundaries as the king chooses to have respected? Will he give his word on this?”

  He sat quiet again, listening to that voice which only he could hear, and then his narrow eyes turned to my face.

  “Sennacherib is nothing to us,” he said. “We have not seen his might or his prowess in war, and the Sacan will not bow to an empty name. How are you called?”

  “I am Tiglath Ashur, son of the Lord Sennacherib, a prince in this land.”

  “Then I will give such a pledge to Tiglath Ashur, who is the son of a king and who has bested the Sacan in honorable combat—to him and to no other. Will this content you?”

  “It seems it must.”

  Chapter 18

  The next day, by agreement, both sides collected their dead. I gave orders that there was to be no further looting, and no hands or heads were to be collected as trophies. Our losses numbered less than a hundred, but among the Scythians Ereshkigal had reaped a rich harvest—their corpses covered the plain like mown barley. Strangely, they seemed to nurse no bitterness toward us for this. Their defeat seemed to have for them the character of a natural disaster, impersonal, a thing to be endured but no man’s fault.

  It had been settled between the headman Tabiti and myself that our forces would follow his as they retreated back to the western shores of the Shaking Sea. This journey would take some three days, and it was my intention then to march east to Tushpa before racing the snows back to Amat. The lord Lutipri did not know it, but I had every intention of collecting my twenty mina of gold. Although I had forbidden them to plunder the enemy, either the living or the dead, my men were not to be denied their booty, and the king’s portion would provide against the maintenance of his garrison for perhaps as long as two or three years. This, I decided, would be a good trick to play upon the Urartians and would teach them, in a way they would be likely to remember, not to trifle with the shaknu of the north.

  But first there was the work of burial to be done. We dug a long trench by the banks of the Bohtan River, that our fallen comrades might have the satisfaction of lying in the ground they had won with their blood, and interred with them offerings of food and wine to quiet their souls. It was a simple business, the work of an afternoon, for the peoples who live beside the swift-flowing Tigris do not entertain very lively hopes concerning the next world. The duties to the dead ensure nothing more than that they will lie quietly and not trouble the living.

  Such did not, however, seem to be the prevailing opinion among the Scythians.

  The first thing that struck me, as I watched them gathering up the corpses of their dead warriors, was that they had dug no graves, either on this side of the river or the other. Instead, the bodies were sewn into long leather bags, which they seemed to have already at hand—perhaps each man carried one with him on all his journeys, against the day of his death—and then they were loaded aboard their
wagons.

  That night the survivors conducted a wild ceremony of grief, in which they danced around bonfires which were visible from a great distance, breaching the cold, still air with shrieks that sent shudders down the backs of men hardened to fear. I dispatched spies to watch in secret, and they reported to me that many of the Scythian men, in what seemed a drunken ecstasy of mourning, had been seen driving arrows through their own left hands—indeed, over the next few days I saw several of them bearing precisely such a wound. These sad revels were kept up for several hours, dying off only as the night sky began to lighten with dawn.

  And at sunrise the Scythian caravan started on its journey north to the waters of the Shaking Sea.

  As soon as the last of their wagons had departed camp, we crossed the Bohtan in force. Let them feel us at their heels, I thought—let them be reminded that they return to the mountains a conquered people. I wished to be quite sure Tabiti understood that he had not entirely escaped our hands.

  It was a few minutes after noon when one of their riders came back toward us, bearing an invitation from Tabiti, son of Argimpasa, to Tiglath Ashur, son of Sennacherib, to share a meal with him that evening in the midst of his people. He proposed to make camp that evening at the foot of a high place which he called by the name of Surti. I accepted, over the strenuous objections of my officers, who feared I might be going to have my throat cut. The Scythian rider grinned at my answer, quite as if it represented some purely personal victory, and tore away at a wild gallop.

  My officers could easily have been correct—these people seemed capable of anything—but I could not have refused without offering an insult which would have been the ruin of all my plans. Besides, I did not want to refuse. I was, quite frankly, much too curious about what I would find to allow me to do that.

  In the late afternoon I goaded my horse into a trot and began making my careful way through the Sacan caravan in search of Tabiti, who, of course, would be traveling with the vanguard. That ride itself revealed many sights to me, and those few hours were among the most interesting of my life.