The Concubine's Son

by H A CULLEY

  Once they had left Adiar sat down on a chair and wept. She knew that she shouldn’t have lost control of her temper and she was fearful of what Hammurabi would say when he heard about her actions. It wasn’t the first time that her fierce pride had got her into trouble. She sat there for an hour wondering what to do re remedy the situation when there was a tentative knock on the door.

  When the three men had left Adiar they had made for somewhere where they couldn’t be overheard.

  ‘I have promised the city council that Kinau would be freed and I can’t go back on my word; besides I think there will be a riot if the chief elder remains in prison for much longer.’ Isiratuu was really worried about what might happen because of Adiar’s high-handed action.

  ‘Mmmm, I have an idea,’ muttered Sin-Bel-Alim and disappeared.

  A little while later he knocked on the door of Adiar’s audience chamber and then stood aside to allow the slave who looked after Samuditana to carry the little boy in to see his mother. He followed her in and then stood quietly, just inside the door.

  Adiar gave a cry of pleasure as her son ran towards her on unsteady legs; then he suddenly sat down with a bump. She picked him up and hugged him in her arms for a few minutes and talked to him before handing him back. She turned to Sin-Bel-Alim.

  ‘Thank you. I can see why the king thinks you are such a clever man.’ She smiled at him.

  ‘And I know how devoted he is to you, lady. But he won’t thank you if Babylon revolts whilst he is away.’

  ‘He wouldn’t expect me to condone treachery either,’ she snapped, nettled by the implication that she had mishandled things, though she knew she had.

  ‘I have known Kinau since he was a boy, lady. He was utterly loyal to Sin-Muballit and he hates his killer. However, he is a fair man; whilst he can never ever forgive Zuuthusu for what he did, he saw him grow up. He knows that he has some good qualities as well. I think he is more saddened than anything else by what has happened. But he is completely loyal to Babylon and to Hammurabi.’

  Adiar’s shoulders slumped. ‘Perhaps what you say is right; but I can’t lose face and just release him. I’ve backed myself into a corner, haven’t I?’

  ‘Not necessarily. I suggest you send for him and interrogate him about what he actually said. He will have learned a hard lesson after two days in prison. Provided he makes an abject apology to you and makes a contribution to the royal treasury, no-one could criticise you if you forgave him.’

  She thought for a moment, then nodded. ‘Send for him; I’ll do as you suggest.’ She paused and looked the foreign minister in the eye. ‘I am in your debt.’

  ~#~

  Arishaka suddenly woke up when the sentries changed over. He thought he had been miserable enough when he had been taken away from his mother to live in the palace in Babylon, but he felt ten times worse now. Whilst he hadn’t been beaten or abused, he had been treated roughly, something he was totally unused to, and he didn’t know where he was or what was going to happen to him, which ate away at his normal self-confidence.

  He tugged experimentally at the bonds tying his hands together. He only had small hands, something that had worried him up to now in case he couldn’t hold weapons properly when he was older. He pushed the thumb of his left hand as far into his palm as he could and tried to twist the hand out of the loops of rope that bound it. He was dying to wriggle about to try and work his hand free but he had to lie as if asleep or he would attract some guard’s attention. Eventually he got his hand to the point where his knuckles were all that was stopping it from coming free. He wept tears of frustration, but then, with a final effort that tore the skin from his hand, he pulled his left hand free. He nursed his sore hand for a while then, curling up, he unpicked the knots that tied his feet together: that done, it was the work of moments to undo the rope from his right hand.

  He glanced around him. It was a new moon but there was enough light for him to see where the three sentries sat. One by the fire, keeping it going, one near the river, downstream of the camp, and one on top of a small hillock to the south. The man next to him was snoring loudly. He had put his water skin next to him so Arishaka reached for it and emptied it out so that it would be easier to carry. For a moment the boy considered trying to find the patrol’s leader so he could recover his dagger, but he regretfully concluded that he would have to leave it behind.

  He slowly crawled away through the camp until he reached the river well upstream of where the sentry was. He filled the water skin and then headed back into the desert, following the circular indentations left in the sand by the patrol the previous day.

  By dawn he was a good five miles away from the camp so he wasn’t aware of the attack on the Marian patrol by Hammurabi’s camel wing. The patrol was outnumbered three to one and quickly surrendered. It was only then that the Babylonians found out that Arishaka had escaped.

  Shortly after midday a breeze sprang up which quickly obliterated the indentations in the sand that the boy was following. He took another small swig of the water that was almost hot by now, heated by the sun’s relentless rays, and realised that he had less than a third of it left. He looked around him from the top of the next dune but all he could see in every direction was an endless sea of sand. The sun was almost directly overhead but it had been on his left during the morning. As he stood there he saw that he made a very small shadow. He reasoned that it must point east if the sun was starting to move to the west and walked in the opposite direction to the shadow. The shadow lengthened behind him as the day wore on he grew more confident that he was walking towards the Euphrates.

  He hadn’t eaten since the previous evening and his water was almost gone. The sun was beating down on him and he began to feel light-headed, but he knew that if he stopped he would die there. Then he crested a dune and couldn’t believe his eyes. The wide waters of the Euphrates lay before him, perhaps half a mile away. He tried to run down the last dune, but he lost his footing and rolled to the bottom. He lay there winded for several moments, then struggled to his feet and stumbled the rest of the way before throwing himself into the blessedly cool river.

  After a while he filled his water skin and struggled through the reeds and up the muddy bank back to the road. He calculated that he only had a couple of hours of daylight left but the road should be easy to follow, even by moonlight. Buoyed up by the thought that he would soon catch the army up, he tried to ignore the rumblings of his empty stomach and set off at a slow run.

  Hammurabi blamed himself for the loss of his brother. He should never have let him go out with such a small patrol when he knew they might run into the enemy. It was tempting to lash out at the patrol leader for abandoning the boy, but he knew that the man’s priorities were the safety of his men and to report the enemy presence as soon as possible. He had done the right thing by leaving three camels behind so that they could track the Mari patrol and then send word back when they had camped for the night.

  Had his brother still been a captive he would have been rescued by now. Instead, he had had the initiative to escape but he was now in the trackless wastes of sand somewhere. He had sent out camel patrols to search for him but he wasn’t hopeful. It would be like looking for a leaf in the Euphrates. He offered up a prayer to Marduk that they didn’t get lost out there as well. Thankfully, the patrols had all returned safely before nightfall, but they had found no trace of Arishaka.

  He was offering up yet another prayer for the boy’s safety before retiring for the night when a smiling Tarhunda entered unannounced. Even his commander was meant to ask for permission to enter but, before the king could rebuke him, he stood aside so that a sunburned and dishevelled boy could limp past him into the tent.

  ~#~

  Hammurabi was surprised at how much the experience had matured his brother. Before, he had been a normal excitable little boy. Now he was much more serious and self-confident. No longer did he get bored quite so quickly when someone tried to explain strategy and tactics to him
. Now he seemed interested and asked intelligent questions. He had grown up a lot during those two days. In a strange way he had also grown closer to his elder brother. Instead of over-reacting when Hammurabi gave the dagger back to him, which had been recovered from the Marian leader, the boy had merely smiled his pleasure and tucked it back into his belt.

  When the Babylonian army joined the Assyrians before their joint attack on Mari, Hammurabi decided to take Arishaka with him when he and Tarhunda went to meet Shamshi-Adad and his two sons. When they arrived the King of Assyria had looked dubiously at the young boy with a face and shoulders blistered by the sun during his ordeal in the desert the previous week, but Hammurabi merely introduced him as his brother without explaining further.

  The King of Babylon quickly formed the opinion that the two sons were pale imitations of their father and he ignored them. He, Shamshi-Adad and Tarhunda were debating the various methods of breaching the strong walls of Mari when suddenly Arishaka added his high pitched voice to the discussion.

  ‘Wouldn’t it be simpler to send a party of men inside the walls at night to open the gates?’

  ‘Well, obviously, but how do you propose get men inside? By magic?’ Shamshi-Adad sneered and turned his back on the boy.

  ‘Through the underground tunnel.’

  The men turned to stare at Arishaka.

  ‘What underground tunnel?’ Hammurabi wanted to know.

  ‘When they thought I was asleep I heard my captors worrying about returning to find Mari already under siege, but the leader told them not to worry. There is a passage into the city with an entrance in a clump of rocks in the middle of a grove of trees to the north of the city.’

  ‘How does the boy know this? What captors?’ A bewildered Shamshi-Adad asked, so Hammurabi briefly described what had happened to his brother.

  ‘It’s a pity we cut all the trees around the city down to make assault towers then.’ Yasmah-Addu remarked, seemingly pleased that Arishaka’s idea had come to naught.

  ‘Don’t be stupid, the stumps will still be there and, although there are various clumps of rocks dotted around, it shouldn’t take too long to find the one with a hidden entrance.’ Shamshi-Adad gave his son a disparaging look before nodded his approval to Arishaka. ‘We will have to be discreet in our search for this entrance; we don’t want to alert the city to the fact that we know about it. They would only seal off the other end. No-one would suspect a small boy scrambling up some rocks though. Arishaka, why don’t you see if you can find it?’

  He had bridled at the description of him as a small boy, but Arishaka was flattered by the trust placed in him by the Assyrian king and set off at once to locate the entrance. It took him two hours but eventually he found a fissure in the rocks in the middle of a large group of tree stumps that was just wide enough for a man to slide through sideways. Once inside it was pitch black but, swallowing nervously, the boy edged his way down what seemed to be the start of a tunnel. It was as well for him that he was edging his way along very slowly as the floor suddenly gave way beneath his right foot as he put his weight on it. He just managed to transfer his weight back onto his left foot in time to stop himself falling into the trap. As he made his way back outside again he wondered how many more traps there were for the uninitiated.

  When he reported back to his brother they proceeded to have an argument. Arishaka wanted to go with the infiltration party; after all he was the one who had found the secret entrance. Hammurabi was equally adamant that his brother had risked his life enough already. Goodness knows what Ashlatum would say about the risks the boy had been exposed to when she found out.

  In the end Hammurabi agreed that his brother could show the men the entrance but he was not to go with them. He sent two of the palace guards along to make sure that his orders were obeyed. Arishaka climbed up to the fissure and showed the captain leading the infiltration party where it was. He then moved along the ledge to allow the thirty men to enter the passage.

  As they entered every one in four lit a torch from one which had been lit by one of the palace guards out of sight from the city. As the last man disappeared, the two guards extinguished the torch and signalled for Arishaka to climb down the rocks with them. Instead, he darted into the passage and followed the last man along it. The two guards cursed and stood outside debating what to do. By the time that they had decided to follow him, the last torch bearer had disappeared. Cursing the boy, they struck the flint again to rekindle their torch and set off down the tunnel after him.

  ~#~

  The plan that Shamshi-Adad and Hammurabi had agreed was simple. Some of the Assyrians would launch an assault on the south wall to divert the Marians’ attention away from the north gate. As soon as the infiltrators had captured that gate they would open it and wave their torches to signal to the rest of the Babylonians, who would then enter the town and make straight for the palace. The Assyrians would follow them in and secure the city itself.

  When the assault on the south wall started, the rest of the besiegers moved into position to the north of the city. Once there, they waited, wondering how the group of thirty were faring. Meanwhile, Hammurabi was concerned when his brother didn’t return to him and had sent a party to the tunnel entrance. Half an hour later they returned to say that there was no sign of him or of the two guards sent to protect him. Hammurabi was certain that the boy had disobeyed him and followed the others. He felt a mixture of emotions: whilst he was angry that Arishaka had disobeyed him, he admired his courage; but his overriding reaction was fear for his safety in the middle of a city that was about to be sacked. Soldiers let loose in an enemy stronghold acted like crazed beasts and Arishaka was just as likely to be killed by one his own side as by the enemy.

  The thirty men sent to open the North Gate emerged from the tunnel into a pit with a ladder leading up to a trapdoor. They had no idea what lay the other side of the trapdoor and their leader hesitated, listening for sounds the other side. Arishaka emerged into the crowded pit and pushed his way through the surprised soldiers to the bottom of the ladder.

  ‘What’s the problem?’ he hissed at the man in charge.

  ‘What are you doing here? The king’s orders…’

  ‘Never mind about that, what are you waiting for? My brother’s orders were to capture the gate and open it.’

  The man stared at him, affronted at being told what to do by a ten-year old, even if he was the king’s brother. However, Arishaka was something of a hero to the army after escaping and crossing the desert on his own. He continued to dither so the boy uttered an expression of impatience, pushed past him and started to climb the ladder. He cautiously raised the trapdoor an inch and peered into absolute darkness. He reasoned that no-one would sit in the dark so he pushed the trapdoor wide and climbed out. The men followed him and Arishaka took the torch from the first man to emerge with one. He peered about him. It was a storeroom of some kind.

  Once all the men were present, Arishaka led them to the door. By his example and determination he had gained the confidence of the men and their official leader had little choice but to accept it. The boy cautiously opened the door a couple of inches. Through the crack he could see a building with a balcony running along it at first floor level. He opened the door wider and saw that it was a house with a central courtyard. Opposite the storeroom lay an arch with a wooden gate. The doorkeeper sat on a stool fast asleep.

  Arishaka whispered to the two men behind him and they silently crept across the courtyard. One clamped his hand over the doorkeeper’s mouth whilst the other dragged his bronze dagger cross the man’s throat. Two minutes later they were all standing in the lane outside the gate.

  ‘Which way is the gate?’ one of the palace guards asked. Having been put in charge of Arishaka’s safety the two guards had pushed their way to his side. The boy looked up at the sky to locate the North Star.

  ‘That way,’ he pointed in its direction and the thirty two men set off following him. Five minutes later they emerge
d into an open space in front of the gate they sought. They had encountered three people on their way and, initially stunned to encounter Babylonians, they had no time to recover and cry a warning before they were disposed of quickly and silently.

  Arishaka held back in the shadows whilst he studied the situation. There were six soldiers standing in front of the barred gate itself, but there were at least a hundred manning the towers either side of it and the adjacent walls. The aim of the diversionary attack had been to draw all available Marian soldiers to that side of the city but it seemed that enough had remained behind to thwart them.

  Then the boy saw a solution and whispered his plan to the two palace guards as well as the erstwhile leader of the group. When he yelled ‘now’ in a shrill treble, the two guards each led half a dozen men to the bottom of the two sets of steps either side of the gate leading up to the parapet. At the same time twelve archers, keeping in the shadows, skewered the guards by the gate then started shooting at the exposed Marians on the parapet. Arishaka led his six to the gate where they struggled to lift the two hefty locking bars out of their sockets so that they could open the gates.

  The men trying to hold the bottom of the steps were heavily outnumbered by those trying to descend from the walls but the steps were narrow and the Babylonian archers kept up a steady rate of fire at them.

  Just as those to the right of the gate were overwhelmed, Arishaka’s men managed to get the gates open. He looked around for man with a torch, but they had all thrown them aside when they rushed to open the gates. He saw one in a sconce a few yards away but it was out of his reach. He had just told one of his men to fetch it when the Marians reached the bottom of the steps. Luckily, the leader of the archers realised what was happening and he ordered his men to concentrate on the front runners, who were trying to cut off the man with the torch.