To Ride the Gods’ Own Stallion

by Diane Lee Wilson

  In and out and around the startled travelers they raced, until they reached a bridge spanning the wide moat that protected the city. A long line of sand-colored asses, each tied to the animal ahead of it, clogged both the bridge and the Nergal Gate. Several of the agitated animals looked like they were about to sit upon their haunches, and the twin bags of pomegranates strapped to their backs swayed dangerously. An impatient crowd began to gather behind them. A few individuals pushed their way through the asses. Men shouted, oxen bellowed, and guards left their posts to bring order to the mess. Soulai used the commotion to slip unnoticed into the city.

  His breathing quickened as he passed through the first massive wall. And despite the heat of the day, his skin felt chilled. Why am I doing this? Why am I walking back into the snare? It would be almost five years—more if he were punished—before he’d again see the outside of Nineveh.

  Sunshine briefly warmed his head, then shadow cooled it as he passed through the second wall. His heartbeat doubled. He felt like an animal walking into a hunter’s trap. One of the inner guards nodded respectfully, then squinted and looked closer. Soulai faked a casual glance away, suddenly remembering that he was dressed not only as a noble, but as Habasle. He would attract even more hunters. The determination that had filled him that very morning drained away. I’m not brave enough for this, he thought. He suddenly longed to just return Ti to the stable, take his beating from Mousidnou, and resume his work.

  The marketplace was elbow to elbow with vendors hawking fragrant foods, women and children bargaining for the ingredients for the evening meal, and men trading stories and goods. Over the sea of dark heads, Soulai saw the scowling stone lamassu guarding the palace’s western gate. At the top of the steps, in front of a large crowd, sat an old man. His yellow robe and halo of wild gray hair told Soulai it was Naboushoumidin. At least he’d done one thing right: He’d made it in time!

  Looking around for a place to hide, he saw Jahdunlim enter the marketplace. The man sat on his horse, high above everyone else, searching the crowd. Soulai gasped, hurriedly slid off Ti, and pulled him behind some vendors’ carts. As he squeezed in beside him, he noticed that the sweat had washed the dust from the stallion’s coat. Once again it shone a brilliant gold and white—easy to spot! Unwrapping Habasle’s robe, he tied it around the horse’s neck. I don’t know if I can do this, he thought again, as he drew his fingers through his hair. Above the clamor of the crowd he could hear that Naboushoumidin was just finishing a story.

  Another figure appeared on the far side of the marketplace. His blood-red attire and piercing stare were unmistakable: the ashipu! He, too, was searching the crowd. Touching the cylinder seal that lay against his collarbone, Soulai had a new understanding of Habasle’s tormented days. Even though it authorized great power, he considered taking it off.

  At that moment the crowd groaned in unison, then applauded. Naboushoumidin slapped his knees and waited for the chuckling and chattering to subside. When an expectant hush fell over the crowd, he spoke again.

  “Now, this next story—my last one today—is for anyone in the audience who has ever been a friend or who has ever had a friend. I challenge you to turn to that person, look into their eyes, and learn whether or not you could trust that friend with your life. My story begins like this:

  “Many, many years ago, a camel and a dog each became lost in the wilderness, and, as chance would have it, their miserable paths crossed. They were wary of each other at first, as strangers often are, but being unhappy together seemed better than being unhappy apart, so they agreed to travel on in the same direction. It didn’t take long before the differences between the two animals became less bothersome, and the camel and the dog actually looked upon each other as friends.

  “One day, however, it came to their attention that a lion was stalking them. So they bent their heads together to discuss what to do.

  “‘You have the sharp teeth,’ said the camel to the dog, ‘snarl and growl and show him your fangs and maybe he’ll leave us alone.’

  “Now, the dog nodded to all that the camel was saying, but the whole time he was thinking only about how he could save his own skin. ‘All right,’ he said to the camel, ‘I’ll run back and try to scare him away.’ And off he went.

  “But when the dog reached the lion, he didn’t snarl or growl or show his fangs. Instead, he walked right up to the lion and boldly said, ‘If you’ll promise to spare my life, I’ll make it possible—nay, I’ll make it easy—for you to take the camel.’

  “The lion, of course, agreed to this offer. The dog scampered right back to his friend, bragged about his bravery, and they traveled on. It wasn’t too much farther until the pair came upon a wadi with very steep banks and only a trickle of water at the bottom, but as they were both very thirsty they decided to risk climbing down for a drink.

  “‘You may go first,’ said the camel to his friend. ‘After all, you saved both our lives.’

  “‘Oh, no,’ countered the dog, without even a trace of guilt. ‘You are much bigger and likely much thirstier. You go first.’

  “So the camel bent his knees and took a tentative step down the bank. And you can just imagine what that deceitful old dog did. He gave his friend a shove and sent the creature tumbling end over end into the wadi. The lion rushed up and, seeing that the camel had been knocked senseless from the fall and was in no danger of escaping, turned to the dog. And ate him up first!”

  Naboushoumidin sat back, watching the abrupt ending of his story sink in across the many upturned faces. A ripple of understanding cascaded into laughter. Friends elbowed each other, smiling good-naturedly, though a few blushed and hung their heads. Soulai felt his own face grow warm.

  Another storyteller came from the palace to take Naboushoumidin’s place and the chief scribe rose, stretched his neck, and started to turn away. Soulai panicked. He lifted his bandaged hand; then, afraid of attracting the wrong attention, dropped it. But the hasty movement caught Naboushoumidin’s eye. He paused in his leaving to look back over his shoulder. Then he tossed a smile at the audience and nonchalantly walked down the steps to disappear into the crowd.

  The other storyteller cleared his throat and began, leaving Naboushoumidin to meander past the baskets and behind the carts, until, noiselessly, he appeared at Soulai’s side. Naboushoumidin’s blue eyes widened in surprise. Then a toothy grin shot across his face. “A puzzle, a puzzle indeed,” he exclaimed as he clasped his hands to his chest. “The prince Habasle is nowhere to be found. Now his slave appears, wearing his owner’s robe and leading his horse.” He leaned close. “I must say it doesn’t bode well. You do have a good story, don’t you?”

  Soulai was taken aback. “No, no…it’s not like that. Habasle’s…sick,” he stammered. “The ashipu’s curse. An uridimmu—”

  “Where is Habasle?” Naboushoumidin interrupted, his tone surprisingly sharp.

  Soulai took a step away and fussed with the robe around Ti’s neck. “A long way from here, ” he answered evasively. Something in the scribe’s questions made him wonder whose side he was on. “And he’s sick—very sick. There’s a worm in his side and he’s got the fever. He sent me to get the cure for the mad-dog curse.”

  “Hmm.” Naboushoumidin rubbed his scraggly beard with his thick brown fingers. “Habasle wants something else from me when he has already stolen something from me.”

  Soulai’s heart thudded so loud he could hardly hear. This is how the hare feels when the lion stalks near, he thought.

  “The boy believes, perhaps,” Naboushoumidin mused, “that because there are 268,492 tablets in the royal library that I would not miss one. But the skies are changing, King Ashurbanipal’s astronomers tell me. The stars are realigning. So you can imagine my surprise when I am asked to bring forth the ancient tablets recording the moon’s cycles—and find one missing. It is a small tablet, yet a particularly important one. In fact, as of this moment, it is the most important one.”

  An image flashed
in Soulai’s mind of Habasle clutching a flat clay object to his chest and rambling on about controlling the moon. The missing tablet! Habasle had stolen it.

  The scribe’s next words came dripping in honey: “You, perhaps, will know the location of this small tablet?”

  Soulai shook his head. “I…I can’t read,” he mumbled. “I wouldn’t know…”

  The sound of coins jingling in a pouch beckoned him. “Silver has a way of clearing one’s eyes, wouldn’t you agree?”

  Soulai swallowed. Staring at the bulging bag, he reluctantly nodded. For the second time that day he’d been offered enough silver to not only buy his freedom, but to most likely feed his family for a year. Enough silver to make him a man.

  He looked nervously across the marketplace. A horse whinnied and Ti lifted his head to answer. Soulai caught his breath. The neighs wouldn’t be noticed amid the noise—unless you were looking for a horse. As Jahdunlim was. And the ashipu as well.

  Naboushoumidin pounced on Soulai’s hesitation. “That’s right. Eyes are everywhere. And not only are they looking for Habasle. They’re looking for you, too. Rumor has it that you stole two of the palace’s horses—ran away with them—though one, I have since heard, found its way home.”

  “I didn’t steal them,” Soulai protested. “Habasle took Ti and made me ride the other.” Well, that wasn’t exactly the truth, but he hadn’t stolen them.

  “And people have come to the library asking questions, interrupting my work. They left, but their eyes remain upon me.” He shook his head. “So much trouble from two mere boys! And now you come pleading for my help.”

  Naboushoumidin spun the ivory cylinder seal on the thong around his neck. He studied the blue one around Soulai’s.

  “Does Habasle have my tablet?” he asked.

  Soulai fidgeted. “I don’t know,” he mumbled. “Really, I don’t.” He looked up. “But I do know he’s sick; he might even be dying. He needs your help.”

  “If he’s dying, he’s beyond anyone’s help but the vultures’. And if he’s sick he needs an asu.”

  Soulai sighed. He understood. The scribe hadn’t gotten what he wanted and therefore he wasn’t going to give him what Habasle needed. “Thank you anyway,” he murmured. He began backing Ti along the wall. Where am I going to turn now? Soulai wondered.

  “Describe his demeanor,” Naboushoumidin commanded.

  Soulai stopped. He looked down at his toes—funny, he was dressed as a prince and yet stood barefoot—and tried to remember everything. “He has the fever,” he recounted carefully, “and a worm crawls in and out of the hole in his side—the one he got from the lance. And he’s cold, and then he’s hot. The spirits take over his tongue,” he said, remembering Habasle’s rantings at Dur Sharrukin. “The ashipu put an amulet carved of lapis lazuli in his pouch—Habasle said it was an uridimmu, a mad dog or mad lion, but I think the uridimmu already took his dog’s form, because he got the sickness, too, and he’s already dead and still Habasle’s not right.”

  “One of his hunting dogs died? How?” The scribe was taking a keener interest now.

  “A boar killed him when—”

  “Oh, well, that is no sickness,” he interrupted.

  “But the dog was acting strange ever since we left the palace,” Soulai argued. Maybe the man would help after all. “He was drooling and he wouldn’t eat or drink—even when he was standing in water. He wouldn’t come near us, even when Habasle ordered it, except that when the boar was on top of Habasle, about to kill him, Annakum charged through and killed it. But just as Annakum was dying he tried to bite Habasle. I know he had the sickness. It’s the curse, isn’t it?”

  Naboushoumidin scratched his beard again. “Where did all this take place?”

  A small alarm sounded in Soulai’s head. “On the road to Harran,” he said truthfully.

  “And how did you find a boar on the road to Harran?”

  “Well, it was near the road. Ti was thirsty so we headed for the river. That’s where the boars were. We killed two of them.”

  “Mmm.” The scribe continued stroking his beard.

  Panic kicked at reason again. Soulai considered running. “I think I’d better be going,” he said nervously. “Do you…know the cure?”

  The smile twitching on Naboushoumidin’s face made Soulai very uneasy. “Aren’t you the slave who wished Habasle dead?” he asked. “Why are you now risking your life to save him?”

  Soulai just stared, frozen. This was the hare’s final moment, he thought, too frightened to bound away. He couldn’t even save himself.

  Naboushoumidin clapped his hands loudly, making Soulai jump. “Scribe!” he called into the marketplace. Several faces turned and Soulai shrank behind the cart, then straightened, for why would a noble be trying to hide?

  A young scribe with a damp tablet of clay and raised stylus appeared. He glanced questioningly at the mismatch between Soulai’s royal clothing and his bare feet.

  “Now write this exactly,” the gray-haired man said. “‘So says Naboushoumidin, chief scribe to Ashurbanipal, king of all Assyria, to Habasle, son of Ashurbanipal. Drink down in its entirety milk in which a lizard has been boiled. Then say these words: He is long of leg, a fast runner. He does not need much food, is a poor eater. But to his teeth clings his seed; wherever he bites, he births a son. Away with him.’”

  Naboushoumidin paused while the boy continued pressing the stylus into the clay. When the finished product was handed to him, he looked it over, took the stylus to correct a few strokes, then handed it back. He lifted his cylinder seal off over his head and rolled it across the bottom of the wet clay, leaving his signature pattern—an endless line of men carrying tablets into a library. Then he took a coin from his pouch, dropped it into the hand of the waiting scribe, and, taking back the tablet, dismissed him.

  “Habasle reads better than he writes, so he should be able to understand this.”

  “Thank you,” Soulai said. He unwrapped the robe from Ti’s neck and carefully bundled it around the tablet.

  “I can send someone with you, an asu if you’d like, to tend to the hole in Habasle’s side.”

  Soulai shook his head. He was already searching the area for a place to get some goat’s milk for Habasle, and measuring the distance to the Nergal Gate for a hasty escape.

  “This cure, you understand,” Naboushoumidin was saying, “is specific to the mad-dog disease. You say that the ashipu has set upon Habasle the uridimmu’s curse. But I remind you that madness can take many forms.” He smiled with a warmth that Soulai remembered from their talk outside the library. “You come to me again if you need me.” With a nod, he backed away.

  Soulai took a deep breath and, holding the robe with its valuable tablet close to his chest, led Ti into the bustling marketplace once more. He tried not to look around, but his eyes strayed. Fortunately he saw neither Jahdunlim nor the ashipu. When he spotted Mousidnou talking with a barley vendor, he ducked aside and hurried his steps, but the stable master didn’t look his way.

  A woman pulling two donkeys jostled her way in front of him and Soulai paused to let her pass.

  “Well, the little bat returns in the daylight.”

  Soulai froze. The ashipu’s long fingers gripped his shoulder and spun him around. Two other men, by the ashipu’s order, tore the reins from Soulai’s hands. A sharp blow to his stomach doubled him over. He fell to the ground, almost passing out, but through the nauseating fog managed to hear the ashipu exclaim, “What is this? Who are you?” A sandaled foot rolled him onto his back, exposing his face.

  With his head reeling and vomit rising in his throat, there was no way Soulai could answer. He didn’t have to, for the ashipu was already celebrating his triumph.

  “Why, you’re Habasle’s slave. He’s dead, isn’t he? The curse has worked! You’ve got his clothes and I’ve got his horse. I knew it. The stars spoke of the death of a pretender to the throne and this proves it. It’s over.”

  A heel slamme
d into Soulai’s skull, once, twice, and a third blow landed on his throat. The clip-clop of horse hooves blended with the clamor of the marketplace, and then there was only the sun shining too brightly in his eyes and the vibration of many feet stepping around him.

  19

  Hysteria

  If anyone noticed Soulai’s misery, they soon forgot, for a shriek split the marketplace.

  “He’s dead!” a woman screamed. “My son’s dead!” Through bleary eyes, Soulai caught a glimpse of her carrying the blood-covered body of a small child. The crowd closed around. Each curious newcomer asked the same question—“What happened?”—and received the same shrugged answer. But gradually, trickling back from the hysterical crying, came a murmur. “A lion!” “She said she saw a lion.” The words leaped across the knots of people like a wildfire. “There’s a lion loose here in the city.” “A mad lion!” “A killer lion!”

  Numbed beyond caring, Soulai let the news blaze around him. Then he heard another voice, as familiar as it was angry: Mousidnou’s.

  “Where in the name of Nergal have you been hiding your skinny ass?” he roared.

  Soulai couldn’t come up with a response, so he lay there, stupefied, until a hard kick landed between his ribs. He moaned and rolled over.

  “Plagues! Looks like you’ve traveled through the underworld, boy. But where’s the parti-color stallion? If he has but one hair out of place—one hair, mind you—I’ll skin your worthless hide myself.”

  “I didn’t steal him,” was all Soulai managed to say. Then a horse’s shrill whinny rent the air. “They’re killing him. They’re killing him,” he cried, looking around wild-eyed.

  Mousidnou tried to pull him upright. “Here, now,” he scolded. “Sit up. I can’t understand your whining. Who’s killing what?”

  “Ti. The ashipu is killing Ti. I was trying to save him but they took him—and I let him go. It’s my fault.”

  The stable master looked around in vain. “Here, now,” he said again. “Sit up.” He tugged at Soulai once more. “Come out of the sun, boy.”