The Assyrian (27 page)

But the seed of rebellion had taken deep root
among the black headed peoples, and the war we waged against them
to kill it was hard and brutal. It was a war not of pitched battles
but of sieges against fortified cities, a type of war at which the
soldiers of Ashur are more gifted than those of any other nation,
but it was a cruel way to bring the land to submission and we found
our one justification in the hope that this would be the last time
we would need to be cruel.

Yet we did not think of justification, only
of victory and a return to our homes. A long campaign dries all
pity from the hearts of men—we grew to hate the peoples of the
south, to hate them for what they made us suffer and for what they
made us make them suffer. The butcher learns to hate his victims,
and the war turned us into butchers.

And this was the campaign in which Esarhaddon
learned the warrior’s trade. He was a fine commander of horse,
brave, imaginative, and tenacious— so stubborn in battle that his
men came to call him “the Donkey”—but I fear he never learned to
distinguish the limits of what could be achieved by force. He never
grasped that the conquered must be reconciled to defeat or the
victory is empty. He never learned to be anything more than a
warrior, and for that the Land of Ashur was in time to pay
dearly.

The Lord Sennacherib saw this and his mind
darkened against my brother, whom he never could bring himself to
love—Sinahiusur had said it would be so, and Sinahiusur was a wise
man.

Still, he who was the king knew a king’s duty
and therefore understood that his royal son could not simply be
ignored. Thus as he raised me, first to a seat on his military
council and then to that inner circle of advisers who helped him
rule the world from a war tent in the swamplands of the lower
Euphrates, he raised Esarhaddon as well—but always one or two steps
behind. I became the king’s adviser and emissary, who as the voice
of my master treated with sovereign princes as their equal in rank,
and Esarhaddon became. . . What did he become—what was he allowed
to become—except a soldier whose voice no one heard except his
troops?

“When you go to parley with the elders of
Umma,” the king said to me, “take the Donkey with you.” The name
made him grin—I do not think he understood it as a compliment.
“Perhaps, if he sees how gentlemen are expected to behave, we can
make something more of him than a stable hand.”

I listened in silence—it was not my place to
tell the king he misjudged his son—and went off in search of
Esarhaddon.

Did my brother care that he was thus
slighted? He said nothing. He seemed not even to notice. But I
think he was not such an ox that he did not smart under the king’s
contemptuous neglect.

Was he not satisfied? Had we not become what
we had dreamed of as boys, terrible in war, the king’s two mailed
fists to crush the enemies of Ashur? Yes, we were that. And we
loved one another as of old, with the perfect confidence of
children. But Esarhaddon would not have been human if he had not
resented the manner in which I was preferred over him, and there
was little enough I could do to set the thing right.

So I went to fetch him, that together we
might overwhelm the elders of Umma with the glory of Ashur.

Esarhaddon was indeed good at that sort of
diplomacy, for by the simple expediency of saying nothing he could
make common men afraid of him—and I had learned long since that the
nobles of these southern cities were no better than goatherds in
clean clothes. So as I wove together my tapestry of threats and
promises, describing to them the mercy of my king and the terror of
his wrath, Esarhaddon would stand at my back, solid and silent as
any wall, and the great men of Umma would listen as much to him as
to me.

“You are a serpent,” Esarhaddon would say.
“You hiss like an adder, and they piss in their loincloths for
fear.”

“Yes, but only because they can look at you
and imagine how those thick fingers would feel around their necks.
No city was ever taken by bluff, brother.”

“Perhaps not. But if one ever is, you will be
the one to take it.”

The elders asked for half an hour to consider
our demands. We waited outside the city walls and, half an hour
later, the gates opened and out walked their prince, their
sovereign lord whose house had ruled in Umma for four hundred
years, dressed in rags with the hangman’s rope already knotted
around his neck.

That campaign saw the destruction of many
cities, their walls torn down, their palaces razed, the wives and
daughters of their kings burned with fire. We would leave famine
and death in our wake, for Sennacherib wished all men to know who
was master in the lands between the rivers. It was his will, and
through him the god found voice, so all must obey.

And yet he spared Umma. He forgave their
prince, who kissed the royal feet, and returned to him his life and
honors. It was not simple caprice, for the king knew that men must
not be made desperate.

“He should have hanged him,” Esarhaddon
grumbled as we sat together at the banquet given to the conqueror
of Umma by her prince. “He should have left him dangling from the
city walls until the rope rotted through—by the sixty great gods,
this is filthy stuff this traitor serves us for wine!”

“You are in a bad temper because you haven’t
had a woman in two months, but never fear—I have seen to it you
will not be cheated of your rightful pillage. This prince was badly
frightened by his brush with death and plans to make us all rich
gifts. I have had words with his chamberlain, and yours will be two
sisters from his own harem. Egyptian women, very skilled.”

“No, I am not in a bad temper over
that—sisters, you say? Not, perhaps, twins, you think?”

“No, not twins. A year apart in age. Then
what vexes you, brother? Surely even Esarhaddon the Donkey is tired
of watching towns burn like cooking fires.”

“Yes—no. How would I know what tires me and
what does not? The Lady Tashmetum-sharrat is dead, dead of grief
for that son of hers, who was a loss to no one, it seems, except
her. Did you know? I read it not an hour ago in a letter from my
mother.”

“No, I did not know.”

I glanced up at the head of the table, where
the king was in the midst of telling a joke. Everyone around him
was already laughing loudly, even though the joke was not finished,
and the king laughed with them, interrupting himself that he might
share in their pleasure. He did not look like a man who had lost
his wife, but perhaps he had not yet heard.

Yet how could he not have heard? I remembered
that lady, her eves vacant, sitting on a couch while her women
fanned her, dead to life. Yes, of course, why should she not die of
grief, poor neglected creature? And why should the king care if she
did?

“What didn’t you know—that the Lady
Tashmetum-sharrat is dead, or that my mother can write?” Esarhaddon
grinned and dug his elbow into my ribs that I might appreciate his
witticism. “She had a scribe write it for her. She can do such
things now.”

“Yes, of course. For now she is. . .”

“Yes—lady of the palace. And you wonder why
my heart is bitter. The king should have hanged that traitor—look
at the way he smirks at him! Sisters, you say, but not twins?”

“No, not twins.”

“Are they at least witches? Are they skilled
at necromancy? Can either of them do magic?”

“Perhaps not the sort you mean.”

“If they are Egyptians they can do magic. All
Egyptian women do magic. They learn how from their mothers.”

“Then perhaps one of them is a witch. Perhaps
they both are.”

“Ashur is good to a humble man.”

. . . . .

It was not until the month of Ab, when Lord
Ashur’s sun burns the land until its face is as hard as building
bricks, that I returned to Nineveh. The king of Babylon had not
taken the field against us all that season, but had kept his army
walled up within his city, which vexed Sennacherib most cruelly. No
man might claim to be the master of Sumer unless his soldiers
controlled the streets of Babylon, and my royal father knew all his
victories, all the tribute that had poured into his treasury, all
the submissions of lesser kings meant nothing if he could not
return home with some one of his loyal servants on the throne of
Babylon. He was impatient that the new companies which were forming
in the north be brought down with all speed for the final assault.
Thus he sent me back to Nineveh to see that his will was done.

I traveled with a bodyguard of twelve men,
and we rode without rest during the hours of daylight. By the end
of the eighth day we were within sight of the great wall. I entered
through the gate that night and in the uniform of a common soldier
that my return might give rise to no false rumors—a great city is
like a woman and believes every evil whisper it hears. But if I had
any thought of keeping my arrival a secret from the ear of my
servant Kephalos I was disappointed. He was there at the door to
the officers’ barrack when I stepped out into the morning light. So
quick was he to make his obeisance that I almost tripped over
him.

“Master! May the gods grant you a thousand
lives!” he cried as I helped him back up on his feet—it seemed that
each time I saw him he grew more massive, and today he was almost
beyond my strength. “You must forgive me, for I did not receive
word of your return until an hour since.”

“I cannot conceive how you heard of it at
all, considering that I was at some pains to keep that news from
the world. If the king’s intelligence were as good as yours, his
rule would extend by now to the lands beyond the Bitter River.”

As we walked through the streets of the city,
I noticed that people stepped out of our way and bowed to me as we
passed. It was a new experience—almost everyone seemed to know who
I was, for even the blue uniform of rab abru would not have excited
such respect. Kephalos pretended to pay no attention, but I noticed
that he had drawn himself up very straight and strode through the
crowds with all the dignity of a great prince.

“See, Lord?” he said finally, and out of the
corner of his mouth—to acknowledge the thing openly would have been
inconsistent with his gravity of deportment. “There is not a dog in
Nineveh who does not know the future king.”

“And, putting aside the question of your
impudence in styling me so, how is it that the dogs of Nineveh
recognize this humble soldier as their marsarru?”

“Because it is well known that the physician
Kephalos is the slave of the great Tiglath Ashur, whom Ishtar, Lady
of Battles, loves as her own son.”

“And, of course, every dog in Nineveh knows
the physician Kephalos by sight.”

“Of course.”

Of course—probably by now, I thought to
myself, most of them owed him money.

It was well that I hadn’t broken my fast yet
that morning, for Kephalos had laid on something of a banquet at
his house near the Gate of Adad. There was bread, beer, wine,
cheese, and fruits in varieties I had never seen before, and the
servants, I noticed, were all women, all very young, and spoke
among themselves a language I did not recognize.

“Uqukadi,” Kephalos whispered, glancing about
him to suggest his object. “The slave market does not smile on baby
girls, so I kept out some twelve or fifteen for myself as a
speculation — naturally I discounted their value just a little in
my accounts, since I will have the maintenance of them, but you
will find, Lord, that I did not rob you beyond the bounds of
decency. In a few years, when their charms are a little more
obvious, they will fetch a good price.”

He smiled, as if he expected me to
congratulate him on his sagacity.

“And where have you hidden the fair Philinna,
sweet as a fig?”

“Oh—do not speak of her. Lord. She is even at
this moment upstairs in my bed, snoring like a water ox. I have not
had a decent day’s work from her this year, since she has taken it
into her head that I cannot live without her embraces—I can, Lord;
I could and do, most of the time. That is half the reason I loaded
the house with these tittering children, hoping she would rise to
the challenge. But it has all been in vain. By accident, my royal
master, you have hit upon the right way—for I know you are too
young and thoughtless to have acquired much wisdom. To live the
hard life of a soldier, keeping ever to the company of men—that is
the only path for him who wishes to enjoy a quiet mind.”

I laughed, as delighted at the picture of
Kephalos enjoying his quiet mind in the midst of a crowded,
stinking war camp as with his pitiful distress as the victim of
women—for Kephalos, I knew, would never be anyone’s victim very
long.

“Nevertheless, we both did very well out of
your booty, Lord. Were you not a prince, you could now feel
yourself entitled to live like one. For myself, surely nothing
keeps me toiling except my concern for your welfare and, of course,
that bottomless greed which is the glory and burden of every true
Greek—you, doubtless, are less afflicted, since the mother’s strain
is ever the weaker. I let word be spread that you personally had
lain with each of these women—they, naturally, were all too puffed
up with pride at the idea to even think of denying it—and such is
the credulity of the Assyrians that the story was generally
credited. Over a hundred women — think of it! Such fools. The
bidding, as a result, was very brisk, for every cur loves to
believe he dines on the leavings of royalty. You are very popular
in the city, Lord, and since you were absent in the north at the
time, no suspicion concerning Arad Ninlil’s death has attached
itself to you. . .”

This was the first I had heard of the general
report that the marsarru had been poisoned. It seemed that when his
physicians had attempted to move the body, a thick black fluid had
streamed out of his nose and mouth—this, when only a few drops were
forced down the throat of a dog, had resulted in the animal’s death
within the span of a few hours.