The Assyrian

by Nicholas Guild

  More than a few times they even left some few of their women behind, or the women simply stayed of their own accord. Once I found two sisters in the hut of the village elder—his wives, they told me, and he a man in his seventies. They were weary of their lot and begged me to find them young husbands among the soldiers of Ashur. They would do well by any man worthy of the name, they said, and to prove it invited me to go into them. I had been many days alone and thus was glad to oblige them both. Afterward, I gave each two shekels of silver and told them they were at liberty to go with the army as camp followers but that when peace returned they could make their choice from whoever had most pleased them and take the veil after the custom of my country. With this they were well satisfied.

  But for most in the lands of the Medes this was a bitter season. Slowly, the land grew waste. There would be famine that winter, and many who had fled would never live to return but would die in the hills—would welcome death as an end to their sufferings. It was an evil thing, but it rested with Daiaukka to end it. He knew this as well as I.

  So I was not surprised when his messenger arrived, carrying a token of truce.

  The Medes, when they wish to parley, send a rider who bears a spear with white ribbons streaming down from its point. He waves the spear above his head as he approaches, and the ribbons flash in the sun. One man on horseback is not enough to frighten an army, and we would have allowed him through our lines without the elaborate display of his intentions.

  He dismounted as soon as he was inside the camp, and without a word spoken on either side, a sentry took him straight to my tent.

  “Have you come from Daiaukka?” I asked him.

  “I bring a message from the shah-ye-shah,” he answered, as if correcting my impertinence for referring to that exalted person by the name he was born with. “He would meet with you—alone. He guarantees your safety.”

  He was a handsome, tall youth with eyes as large as a woman’s and a fine, shining black beard, elaborately curled. He smiled, showing his teeth, as if perfectly conscious of the impression he must be making.

  “Why should we trust the life of our prince to such ‘guarantees’?” Lushakin asked him. The question almost amounted to an open challenge. “Why should we believe the words of Daiaukka?”

  “Because I believe them,” the messenger announced—yes, he was a peacock. “I am Tanus, eldest son of Rameteia, parsua of the Upasha tribe. I will remain behind here until the Lord Tiglath Ashur returns to you unharmed.”

  He glanced about him, as if waiting to be congratulated on his heroism.

  “Where am I to meet the shah-ye-shah?” I asked. “Or is that to be a surprise?”

  “He awaits you not two hours’ ride from here, near where the foothills begin their rise—there.”

  I could see them beyond the steppes, a barren, fissured wall. Against the green grasslands they were hard edges of rock which looked as if they had broken through from so great a depth that they could have been the ghosts of some ancient creation come back to haunt the green world. And beyond these the Zagros Mountains, shadowed in blue black mist the color of burned iron. Daiaukka would meet me there, alone, in some hidden place of his own choosing, out of sight, far from the possibility of help.

  “Very well,” I said, without giving myself time to hesitate, “the foothills. How will I find him?”

  “Do not be anxious on that point, my lord. The shah-ye-shah will find you.”

  He smiled at me, narrowing his eyes. He had all the arrogance one finds in primitive men who have seen little of the world beyond their own village. I did not like him.

  “Then I will not be anxious—on that or any other point.” I mimicked his smile. “Lushakin, take the Lord Tanus to my tent. See that he is fed and made comfortable against my return.”

  Tabshar Sin stamped along behind me as I went to fetch my horse, his anger etched in every movement of his hard old body—but at least he had the grace to wait until our hostage was out of earshot.

  “Have your brains baked dry, Prince?” he hissed, casting his eyes about to be certain his disrespect was not overheard. “Have you lost all sense of what is due these men you have led to the edge of the world? This shah-ye-shah of theirs, this barbarian who was born under a saddle blanket, surely has twenty good men with him and waits only to cut your throat for you.”

  “Would you have the Medes imagine that the sedu of Great Sargon is afraid of them?” I asked, throwing my arm across his shoulders.

  “Yes—I would have them know that the men of Ashur are not commanded by a fool who tosses his life away like a broken sandal strap.”

  “Oh, I have no intention of doing that.” I laughed, for I loved my old rab kisir, the terror of all the Lord Sennacherib’s soldier sons, no less than if he had been my own father. “And if I err in this, you can send me back to clean stables in the house of war.”

  “I will send you back in a leather bag,” he answered, almost shouting between his clenched teeth. “At least take an escort—a few men only.”

  “No. Daiaukka said alone.’“

  “Who are we to listen to what Daiaukka says and does not say? Let me come. He cannot object to the presence of an old man with only one hand.”

  “If he sees you he will certainly think I have come intending to massacre him. No, he said ‘alone.’ I am not afraid of him, for the shah-ye-shah has given his word.”

  “What trust can any man put in the word of a barbarian?”

  “In the word of this barbarian, a great deal.”

  The sun had declined perhaps an hour in its westward flight when the long grass of the steppes stopped brushing against my horse’s knees and we began our climb into the rocky foothills of the Zagros Mountains. Ghost picked his careful way among the sharp, flinty stones. He seemed to sense the danger of these narrow paths, full of twists and sudden inclines, where every bluff could conceal twenty men waiting in ambush and both our lives might stretch no farther than the next few paces of clear ground, and his long ears twisted this way and that, straining for the least whisper of sound. But there was no sound. Daiukka was waiting somewhere ahead, as silent as death. I put my faith in his word and in my protecting sedu, but my heart was not easy.

  “You have consented to come. Then at least we may speak as men who understand one another.”

  He was simply there. I had not heard his approach. I merely lifted my eyes and saw him in front of me. He still rode his fine black horse, and on another that might have been its twin was mounted a handsome, well knit lad of eight or nine years, a son obviously, and one who, for all his smooth face, had already lost the girlish prettiness of childhood. I suspected—even feared—that he would grow up to resemble his father in every particular.

  Daiaukka had brought no other companion, and he carried no weapon beyond the short sword thrust into his belt. I had been right about him—he was not a man who would stoop to treachery.

  “My eldest,” he said, without even glancing at the boy. “His name is Khshathrita, and I have brought him that he may look upon your face and learn something of men’s characters.”

  I did not require this explanation. The boy Khshathrita was searching me with his eyes as if he wished to carry every detail of my appearance with him to the grave. His father had brought him that I might understand that this struggle would not end with one battle or ten but would be carried on onto the next generation and the next, as long as the seed of Ukshatar lived, and perhaps beyond that. Daiaukka wished to show me that my enemy was not one man only but a nation, and that nations are always being reborn. The point was not lost on me.

  “I have seen your army,” he went on, after a short pause. “It is a fine sight and strikes terror into the hearts of simple villagers. It will perish here in the grasslands of Media.”

  “One or another army will perish—of that we can both be reasonably sure. I do not, however, think it will be the men of Ashur who leave their bones to dry in the sun.”

  I smiled at t
he boy, who for just an instant forgot himself enough to smile back. I could not help but wonder what he made of these preliminary taunts I was exchanging with his father. Did he understand that they were meaningless, a kind of incantation to summon up ghosts in which no one believed? It seemed unlikely.

  “The men who follow me number three times the strength of your army,” Daiaukka answered. “We have horses beyond counting. Leave now if you ever hope to see your home again. How can you imagine you will prevail?”

  “But I have prevailed—and more than once—against forces far larger than my own. Have as many warriors at your back as you care to, and you will still be vanquished. We are not a rabble, Daiaukka. We are the soldiers of Ashur, and we have conquered a world wider than you can dream. A dagger’s blade may be no longer than your finger, yet it will cut to the heart where a sword made of clay will crumble under its own weight.”

  He did not speak, for he had no need of words to give his answer. I could see everything in his proud black eyes—this was not a man who would be made afraid by the sound of a few threats. Yes, I would have my great battle, since it would serve Daiaukka’s purposes as well as my own. He merely wished me to understand that he expected it to end with my head on his spear.

  “Being so careless of death, you will bring your great army down from the mountains?” I asked. It was not this question which mattered, but the next—not if, but when.

  The shah-ye-shah, master of the Aryan, merely nodded.

  “Yes,” he said at last. “The time and the place will be of my choosing, but we will meet once more. We will measure our virtue against yours and see whom the Ahura favors.”

  “War has little enough to do with virtue, Daiaukka. He triumphs who makes the fewest mistakes.”

  He smiled at me, as if he pitied the littleness of my soul.

  “I leave you with a gift,” he said finally. Without looking, he reached behind him and his son put a leather bag into his hand. “As you say; he triumphs who makes the fewest mistakes.”

  He dropped the leather bag to the ground and, without a word, turned his horse upon the stony path. I waited until he and his son were out of sight and then dismounted, picked up the bag, and opened it. Inside was the head of Upash, the Uqukadi noble who had thought he could sell me his new lord like so many bushels of millet. I pulled it out by the hair and looked at it. It had not been off his shoulders long, for it still stank of fresh blood. His eyes, clouded by death, looked startled, as if he had been caught by surprise. Perhaps he had. It seemed that this time he had not been able to ride away from his simtu.

  I made my way back down to the grassy steppes and returned to camp. There was only an hour left before dark when the sentries’ drums sounded to announce my return.

  It was Tanus of the Upasha who rode out to meet me.

  “You have come back alive, then,” he said, as if to taunt me for having doubted his king’s word.

  “Yes, I have come back. We will not meet again until the day we stain the grass red with blood.”

  He laughed at this. He was filled with triumph, and he laughed. All his eyes could see was the approach of a great battle—perhaps it would be his first, and so the victory would belong to no one except himself. He was young enough to believe that. Lashing his horse, he galloped away, back to his mountains and his own people and his mighty lord.

  “The poor fool,” I thought. “He understands nothing.”

  The soldiers cheered as I rode through camp to my own tent. They cheered out of relief that I was not dead in some rocky gorge but had returned to lead them safely home again when we had killed the last Mede—this is how every soldier thinks, and the commander who does not know it is a lost man. They shouted my name and bellowed themselves hoarse, pounding their shields with the flats of their swords when I raised my hand to show the blood star on the palm. They were like children frightened of the dark and I, and the sedu of Great Sargon, had become their only light.

  “Tabshar Sin,” I said, when the old man met me with a cup of wine, “there shall be such slaughter as has not been known since Khalule. It shall be worse, perhaps, for the Medes will fight until we have broken them under the wheels of our chariots.”

  “Have we come on a fool’s errand then, Prince?” he asked—I could see by the look in his eye he was merely testing my nerve, for no man feared death less than my old rab kisir. I could only laugh.

  “No. We have no choice,” I said, when my laughter died. “We must fight them here, or a year from now under the walls of Nineveh. That is not a choice.”

  “Then we shall defeat them,” he said, as if stating the obvious. “The god shall not desert us.”

  “Yes, we shall defeat them.”

  I went to my bed that night remembering the smile on Daiaukka’s lips when he parted from me. He too believed in the favor of his god.

  . . . . .

  Over the next ten days our progress was slow and cautious. I had no intention of being surprised by the sudden appearance of Daiaukka’s army, so our scouts fanned out to all points of the compass, even into the mountains, to bring back reports of everything that moved within twenty beru of our columns. We never saw them—they were as invisible as the wind—yet I had no doubt the Medes were close by and massing for battle.

  It was on the afternoon of the tenth day, in the middle of a dust storm that blew in from the northern desert to choke men and horses and bring the sky down around us until it seemed like a vault of earth, that a lone rider came into our camp. He wore the costume of a Mede and his mouth and nose were swathed in a long scarf with small silver coins sewn around the fringe, so that only his eyes were visible. When the sentries challenged him he requested to be brought to me.

  “Well, what is it?” I asked impatiently, little pleased to be standing in the raw, gritty wind—no man who could help himself ventured out of his tent on such a day. “What would you have of me?”

  It was only when he took a step nearer me, and I could see his eyes, that I understood. Wary and intelligent, they reminded one of a cat.

  This man was no Mede. I dismissed the guard.

  “Come inside,” I said, as soon as we were alone. “You bring word from the Lord Tabiti?”

  “Brother, I am the Lord Tabiti.”

  With a single deft movement he removed the scarf, and all at once it was the headman of the Sacan who stood before me. He laughed at my surprise, and we fell into each other’s arms.

  “I hope the Lord Tiglath carried wine with him when he came into this forbidding place,” he said, wiping the dust from his arms and shoulders. “My throat is parched, and even that filthy stuff you had from the Urartians would be welcome. By the gods, are those the rich grasslands where you promised the Scoloti would win an empire fit for princes of the earth?”

  “It makes a better impression when the wind is still and, yes, there is wine.”

  I gave orders for a goat to be roasted, and while we waited for it Tabiti and I broke open a jar and grew drunk together. He was very weary, having departed his own encampment twenty days before to see how the ground lay and to find the army of Ashur.

  “We have left the wagons and the women and children behind on the shore of Lake Urmia,” he told me. “I have ten thousand good men, and we were traveling fast. They are perhaps no more than eight days behind me and are staying close to the foothills of the Elburz Mountains. I had to cross the desert which lies between here and there—it is a wretched place where only scorpions can live in comfort. I have seen where the Medes are gathering. They have chosen well for themselves if they mean to fight there, for they occupy rising ground some eight days from here. Daiaukka must have five and fifty thousand men with him.”

  “He says sixty.”

  “Sixty then. I believe him. You have what, thirty thousand?”

  “Twenty.”

  “Twenty against sixty—so be it.” Tabiti shrugged his shoulders, as if dismissing a trifle. “You defeated my Sacan at the Bohtan River, where our ad
vantage in numbers was even greater.”

  “Do the Medes know of your coming yet?”

  “No, I think not. The people of the northern mountains are all Cimmerians and hate the Medes. As soon as we draw near, they cut the throats of the headmen Daiaukka has put over them and invite us to a feast of celebration. I doubt if any word of us has found its way south. It is a pleasant thing to invade lands where one is welcomed as a liberator.”

  I said nothing, since my experience had been different. But neither did I, like Tabiti, have any thought of settling in this place.

  “Is it important?” Tabiti asked suddenly. “Do your plans depend upon surprise?”

  I almost laughed.

  “No, my lord. I entertain a doubt that anything will ever be likely to surprise Daiaukka—even his own defeat.”

  “Then he must have powerful necromancers in his service.” The headman of the Sacan frowned, shaking his head. “Magic is a great advantage in war. Perhaps we should. . .”

  “No—it is not that.” I did laugh now, unable to help myself, but Tabiti was by then too drunk to take offense. “It is simply that the shah-ye-shah has a habit of looking far into the future. His plans do not depend on success in this battle, or the next, or even on his own survival. He prepares the foundations of a house in which he will never dwell, but the design is clear in his mind. One day, long after he is dead, the Medes will be a great nation, rulers of the wide world. He works for this. He knows it will all come to pass, and this knowledge, it seems, is enough for him.”

  “Then he is mad — but a madman of the most dangerous sort, for he infects others with his own madness.”

  “Yes, my friend.” I filled our cups again and took a long swallow of the wine, which seemed to clear my mind even as I felt the fumes rising in my brain. “Yes, he is very dangerous.”

  Tabiti remained with us through the next day and night, and in that time he told me of all he had seen since entering the lands where the Medes are called “master.” He was a clever man and had kept his eyes open. With more ambition he might have been as great a threat as Daiaukka, but his dreams did not encompass empires and neither did he long to serve the avarice of strange gods. He merely wanted a little well watered grassland for his people and, of course, some share of a soldier’s glory. Perhaps in this he was wise enough to be envied. And, for the moment at least, he was my friend and he opened his mind to me.