The Assyrian

by Nicholas Guild

  That one sentence’s slight shift of emphasis spoke most eloquently.

  No—she did not wish to tell me anything.

  “But if there were something, you would speak. Would you not?”

  Silence.

  How many possibilities were there? Why did I even trouble to ask, since I could guess easily enough what had been going on while I was absent in Nineveh.

  “Send Naiba to me in the morning,” I said, rising from the table. There was a half full pitcher of wine by my place; I decided to take it with me, since I would have no other company at my sleeping mat. “I do not wish to see her before then, but she must attend me while I breakfast.”

  “Lathikados, I. . .”

  “Yes, Mother?”

  “Nothing,” she answered. And then she looked up at me with dry, hot eyes. “Except—be kind, for my sake.”

  “Yes, Mother. Tomorrow morning I will decide on the limits of my kindness. See to it that Naiba comes to me then.” I went to bed.

  I slept that night as if I had been dead many years. No dreams—nothing. But the next morning I felt much better.

  Naiba brought me in my breakfast. She was very quiet and did not look at me directly, but averted her gaze. I did not require an explanation.

  “Have you conceived a love for this boy?” I asked suddenly—the instant before, I had intended to say nothing. “You know of whom I speak. Qurdi, the son of my overseer Tahu Ishtar.”

  “Dread Lord, I. . .” She glanced up, her eyes welling with tears—her eyes, so much like Esharhamat’s.

  Of course she was afraid, but I had had enough of women’s tears.

  “Well, if you want him, then I suppose you must have him,” I said evenly, tearing the corner from a loaf of bread and dipping it in my beer. “I shall speak to his father this morning and see what he requires in the way of a dowry—no, no, girl, rise. Enough of this.”

  She had prostrated herself on the floor in front of me and was embracing my ankles, covering my feet with kisses mixed with tears. I almost wanted to laugh, it seemed so simple to make at least this woman happy.

  “Stop, Naiba—stop this at once! Yes, that is better. We will speak again, after I have settled the matter. Go—let me have my breakfast in peace.”

  At last, Naiba dried her eyes and left me. I could hear the patter of her naked feet against the floor tiles, the sound dying away, like wind pushing at fallen leaves.

  When one of the house servants came to take away my breakfast things, I ordered that a fire be lit in the sweating house and told her to fetch me a jar of the Nairian wine I had brought with me from Amat—it was now nearly gone but this did not distress me, since King Argistis, I had no doubt, would soon be sending another ambassador seeking yet another favor. I went out to the sweating house and sat for over an hour in the hot, steam laden air. Then I dressed myself and anointed my hair and beard with oil. I felt quite human again. Then I sent for Tahu Ishtar.

  “Overseer, is your son of a mind to take a wife?”

  I could see I had taken him by surprise. His face puckered with worry, and he bowed low.

  “My Lord, I am shamed,” he began. “This matter—this insult to my lord—is a great grief to me. . .”

  “I asked only if he wishes to marry, Tahu Ishtar. I make no inquiries. The slave woman Naiba knows her way around a sleeping mat and will bring your son happiness. She is a barbarian, true, and I fancy a few years older than Qurdi, but this is not necessarily such a bad thing—it would not do if they were both children. She knows how to work, too. I will give a hundred silver shekels that she does not come to her husband a beggar. What say you, overseer?”

  I can only guess what Tahu Ishtar might have expected, but in that moment his massive dignity deserted him and he stood before me with his mouth open, unable to say anything. I had to labor to keep from smiling.

  “But—forgive me,” I went on, when it was clear I was to receive no answer. “Perhaps you object to the girl.”

  “No, Lord. I. . . She has been your. . . You honor my son to. . . A hundred silver shekels—it is a great sum.”

  “Then may we regard this bargain as struck?”

  I held out my hand, and after staring at it as if he could not think what he was expected to do, Tahu Ishtar took it and shook it vigorously.

  “My son will be your debtor all his life, Lord,” he said, almost shouting the words. “You raise my house to honor when you could have—”

  “Let us speak no more of that.” I disengaged my hand—no easy thing—and we began walking back to my house. “Let them marry when I return from Amat for the winter. In the meantime, while I stay at Three Lions, I engage not to take the girl to my sleeping mat again and she can live here under the protection of my lady mother, who even now loves her as a daughter.”

  “As to your sleeping mat, Lord, there is no need that you be inconvenienced,” Tahu Ishtar replied, shaking his head—he was a man who understood the proprieties of such a matter. “She remains your property until she takes the veil from my son, and a royal prince is not like other men. My son cannot fault her—”

  “Nevertheless, let her be as a daughter of my house. I shall know her no more until Qurdi is prepared to claim her.”

  And that was where we left the matter. I parted from Tahu Ishtar and sought my own house to tell Naiba and my mother that they must prepare for a wedding. Then, weary of talk, I had my horse saddled and went out with a quiverful of javelins to hunt wild pigs. I did not return until after dark.

  A week later, when the dust raised by the columns of my new soldiers was visible from our rooftop, I bade my mother farewell.

  “I will be away for only three or four months,” I told her. “I will be with the troops almost all the time, so it is better that you stay here.”

  She said nothing but merely nodded and kissed me. In two hours I was with my army.

  At my back as I headed north were three thousand men, the first payment of my father’s pledge for the war against the Medes. They would train through the summer and, after wintering at Amat, would take their place among soldiers hardened by the previous campaign.

  But I would not place all my hopes on the forces of Ashur’s arms, for it was my intention to make Daiaukka’s lot harder than he could ever hope to bear. And to that end I had sent a rider north, over the Kashiari Mountains and across the Bohtan River into the Land of Shubria, whither he was to carry a message:

  “To the Lord Tabiti, son of Argimpasa, headman of the Sacan tribe of the Scoloti, greetings and all honor from his brother in blood the Lord Tiglath Ashur, son of Sennacherib, who is king in the Land of Ashur. If the Lord Tabiti remembers the love he vowed to the Lord Tiglath Ashur, he will mount his horse no later than the first day of the month of Iyyar and hasten to join him at the garrison at Amat, where they may drink Nairian wine together and plan the conquest of a fruitful land.”

  He was there, waiting, camped beside the river with fifty of his warriors, when I arrived.

  “You have put on flesh,” he said, smiling his catlike smile as he held my horse’s bridle and waited for me to dismount. I had not even passed beneath the fortress gate but had come directly to his camp. “Did the conspiracies of Nineveh give you no time to take a little wholesome exercise?”

  “Why did not you and your riders lodge within the garrison walls? I sent word that you were to be received with honor, and I find you here, squatting by the riverbank. Were my instructions disregarded, or is it simply that the Scoloti hold all comfort in contempt?”

  Tabiti laughed and threw his arm across my shoulders as we walked to his leather tent.

  “No, your instructions were not disregarded. Your officers have treated us to every kindness, especially that fat Ionian who dresses like a prince—what is his name?”

  “Kephalos,” I answered, smiling to myself. “He is not a soldier, but he is a cunning fellow and my friend.”

  “I, too, am a cunning fellow. This Ionian speaks of trading for horses and
gold, but since you say he is a friend of yours I will only cheat him a little.”

  “If you hope to die a rich man, I would advise you to look elsewhere for a victim.”

  “Doubtless you advise me well, for you must know the proverb: ‘Trust a Hebrew before a Phoenician and a Phoenician before an Ionian, but do not trust an Ionian.’ However, I am forgetting you are half an Ionian yourself.”

  We both laughed, but I was not to be so easily deflected.

  “You still have not told me,” I said, “why you are here, in leather tents, rather than enjoying the garrison’s hospitality.”

  “I have been trying to explain, Prince Tiglath Ashur, but you will not listen.” He sat down on a horse blanket spread beneath the shade of his tent flap and gestured for me to follow his example. When we were both comfortable he clapped his hands and a small boy, doubtless another of Tabiti’s numberless sons, brought us steaming cloths with which to clean our hands and faces and then a pair of copper cups and a skin of the fermented horse’s milk called saftd atesh — this last was an attention I could easily have forgone.

  “Do not expect too much trust,” he continued finally, after he had already drained his cup and was refilling both. “My men would think me a great fool if I came so far with so few and then slept surrounded by armed foreigners within the high stone walls of their stockade. I honor you as a soldier, Prince, and could not love you more if you really were my brother, the son by the same woman of my father, Argimpasa. But your soldiers were only lately my enemies in battle, and a man must exercise reasonable prudence. Do not be offended.”

  I was not offended. In fact he had raised my regard for him even higher, and I was yet more sure of the wisdom of including him in my plans.

  We sat drinking together until late into the afternoon and, as before, the safid atesh began to taste less disgusting after I had drunk enough of it. Tabiti and I spoke of many things, of the gossip which had reached him from the court of King Argistis—that monarch, it seemed, was indeed slipping into the madness which everyone believed awaited him—of the reputed wealth of Egypt, of the notorious perfidy of the Lydians, of everything, in fact, except any mention of the Medes or my conflict with them. These topics, I noticed, he avoided as scrupulously as I did myself.

  But, of course, finally one of us had to speak.

  “You are increasing the size of your garrison,” he said at last. “You must have brought three thousand soldiers back with you from Nineveh—and I counted twenty chariots. You had not half such a force at the Bohtan River. I have also been struck by the numbers of horses you have pastured in the vicinity.”

  “You have missed little, it seems.”

  “A nomad lives by keeping his eyes open.” Tabiti, headman of the Sacan, shrugged his shoulders, like a great cat stretching in the hot sun, and grinned. “It is my impression that you prepare for a final reckoning with the Lord Daiaukka—is that not so? I have not been deaf to the stories about your campaign of last summer. I think I am here because you seek allies against the Medes.”

  “And is that the reason you have come—because such a venture would be to your taste?”

  But my barbaric friend, who in sharp trading thought himself a match for my slave Kephalos, only refilled both our cups with his powerful, evil tasting liquor.

  “I am here out of love for you,” he said, catching my eye and smiling slightly. “War is another matter—a practical matter, in which a leader must consider the welfare of his people.”

  “Which means—what?”

  “Which means, my brother, that like a good Scoloti, one whom my father would not be ashamed to call his son, I am waiting to hear what bribes you will offer.”

  . . . . .

  It took us but a short time to strike our bargain. By suppertime Tabiti and I had settled between us that the Sacan would attack from the north, forcing the Mannai—a tribe of importance less for their abilities as warriors than for their strategic position, threatening Musasir and the headwaters of the Lower Zab—out of Daiaukka’s confederation. My friend’s reward for this would be as much of the rich grasslands south and east of Lake Urmia as he could hold, and his presence would be a permanent check on the ambitions of the Medes. The only difficulty we could foresee was from the Urartians.

  “We shall have to travel over the northern edge of the Shaking Sea and then south,” Tabiti said, dragging his finger through the dust to trace its outline, like a goat stretching to steal grapes from an arbor. “We will keep well away from Tushpa, but King Argistis still claims all those lands and will be unlikely to let us pass unchallenged.”

  “He will if he knows you will not stop—why drive you over his borders when you are already on your way thither? This is something which I can arrange for you.”

  “You think so? You had better be sure, for if I am to make war on the Mannai next summer, I will have to spend all of this summer traveling. I cannot afford to be delayed—the lands of the Urartians are a harsh place when the snows begin.”

  “Trust me in this. We will come at the Medes from the north and the west, like a pair of hands closing around their throats.”

  “It is well then, for I am tired of Shubria and my people will be better for a season of fighting. No good Scoloti dies in his bed—it is not dignified.”

  It was well after dark before I finally rode in through the fortress gates. At first the guards did not even recognize me.

  “We were not even sure you had come, Rab Shaqe,” they shouted down from the barricades, once I had hailed them and they had recognized my voice. “We were beginning to think perhaps you had decided to stay in Nineveh forever.”

  “Nothing could keep me long from Amat—is it not the garden of the world? Open the gate, dogs, before I have you flogged.”

  They laughed, and at once I found myself surrounded by soldiers to light the way for me—so many that my horse almost went mad for fear of the torches. In all honesty, I felt I was home once more, for I too was a soldier and a soldier’s only true home is his garrison.

  The fortress was now virtually completed. Its great wall, the stones still raw from the earth, still glittering with the marks of the cutter’s chisel, towered over the rows of mud-brick barracks, the drill fields and stables. Everywhere soldiers and their women sat outside to enjoy the cool, moist night air, and their oil lamps twinkled in the surrounding dark like stars that had fallen from heaven’s grace. There was the murmur of numberless conversations, punctuated here and there with laughter, and I could sometimes hear the restless snorting of horses and the sound of their hoofs striking against the hard packed earth. The cooking fires were almost cold now, but still the smells of meat and millet and boiled onions reached my nostrils. Yes, I really was home. At last I had left Nineveh, with its brick streets and its intrigues, behind me.

  The windows of the palace Kephalos had built for me were twinkling with light—my servants, no doubt, were wondering what had kept their master. A groom took my horse and I mounted the great stone staircase even as the tall cedar doors opened to receive me. The house women knelt, and the scribes in their linen tunics bowed from the waist. The shaknu had returned, and with him the power of the king. My moment of private homecoming had come and passed.

  “My Lord Prince, there is much of business that—”

  “And there will be no less tomorrow, Ushnu,” I snapped, waving him aside. “So let it wait until then, eh? The road from Nineveh is a long one, and I feel as if I had ridden every beru of it in this one day.”

  My chief scribe bowed again, seeming little pleased with this answer, and I began stripping off my leather breastplate as a slave pulled the sandals from my feet.

  “Will the Dread Lord take some supper?” she asked, wiping the dust from my ankles with a damp cloth. She looked up at me and smiled uncertainly, as if afraid I might suddenly decide to strike her. Had I sounded as impatient as that?

  “No, Gamelat—I thank you.” Gently, I took the cloth from her hand. She was one of my
mother’s women, purchased when first we had settled at Three Lions. She had known me for years. “Just a little wine perhaps, and then I will find my bed.”

  She scrambled to her feet, like a dog that has heard its master’s voice.

  “Yes, my lord. At once.”

  “And, Gamelat—where is the Lord Kephalos? I had expected to see him here tonight.”

  “He was here, my lord. He is. . . gone away. Shall I have him summoned back?”

  “No—it is not important.”

  I sat there, in a hallway, drinking the wine that Gamelat had brought me, glad to be alone but for the moment too tired even to stumble off to my sleeping mat. For several minutes my mind would hold to nothing and then, very gradually, the pleasant sadness of memory filled me.

  “Esharhamat.”

  The name seemed to speak itself. Esharhamat. I had only to think of nothing else, and she flooded my soul. Esharhamat.

  At any rate, she was safe for the moment. Esarhaddon would not visit her bed that whole summer, not while she nursed his son, and I was far enough away that the breath of scandal could not touch her. Was she thinking of me? It would be a pleasant thing to believe.

  I got up. Enough—I would sleep.

  Where was Kephalos, I wondered. It was unlike him not to be there to greet me after a long absence. He had been here—Gamelat had said so. What could have called him away?

  But it did not matter. At least, it did not matter tonight. Tomorrow, once more, I would belong to my scribes and my soldiers, my friends and my enemies. Tonight I did not want to be the Lord Tiglath Ashur, rab shaqe of the king’s army, shaknu of the north, son of the Lord Sennacherib, and master of a fat, rascally Greek who treated me as if I were his property instead of the other way about. Tonight I did not want to be anyone. I wanted to be asleep.

  There was a flicker of light coming from my chamber. Good—some thoughtful slave had left a lamp burning for me. I was a fortunate man to be surrounded by such attention. I must remember to do something, I thought, to make some gesture of appreciation. But that too could wait until tomorrow.