The Assyrian (57 page)

I saw the great Tigris, mother of rivers, her
waters burning. I stood on the bank across from Nineveh and watched
the city of men disappear behind a curtain of flames. Did the
burning waters consume her? I did not know. I only knew that she
was lost to me forever and that I could not enter her gates
again.

And then, all at once, I was in the city, and
the city was a cage of iron, and my brother Esarhaddon was without,
dressed in the uniform of a common soldier, his face twisted with
rage as he beat against the bars with his sword. And then the door
to the cage opened, and Esarhaddon pointed with his sword out to
the trackless wastes and said, “Go!” And the cage disappeared from
around me and I was alone in the world.

And I saw my father, Sennacherib, the great
king, worshiping before the image of the god. His robes were of
gold, but he was an old man and his hair had turned white and his
strength had left him. His glory was as nothing, and god crushed
him beneath his wooden hand.

And the hand of the god became Esarhaddon’s
hand, holding my own. I felt his fingers grow slack in my
grasp.

And then everything faded away into a clean,
white light that filled the world, leaving room for none. That was
how the dream ended, in a blinding light.

It ended, and I was alone once more in the
darkness. I do not know how long I waited before the dawn came.
Time seemed to have stopped forever.

But the dawn did come. Soon I could see the
outline of my sword, still stuck in the earth. When I tried, I
discovered that I could not pull it free. I pulled until I thought
my back would break, but it would not yield. It seemed to have
become anchored to the foundations of the world. Finally I left it
there.

I hardly remember the journey back down the
mountain. I was almost too weary to put one foot in front of
another and my mind buzzed like a hornets’ nest—over and over again
these strange and troubling dreams returned to me, like the ghosts
of slaughtered men haunting their murderer. But the god must have
protected my every step, for at last, with the approach of night, I
reached level ground. I could already see the soldiers’
campfire.

“Rab Shaqe, you have returned! Indeed the god
must have blessed you above all men.”

“I would hardly call it a blessing,” I said
in a toneless voice as I sat down before the fire, staring into its
flames as the ekalli Sinduri threw a blanket over my shoulders, for
I must have left my cloak on the mountaintop and I was shivering
with cold. My brain felt numb. When at last I could be brought to
understand what he wished for me, I accepted a cup of wine from his
hands and drank it greedily.

“You have returned alive from a fearful and
holy place, Rab Shaqe. That is blessing enough.”

“Yes, but he has put his curse upon me for my
impertinence, Sinduri. He has shown me the future but has kept its
meaning from my grasp. I believe I am condemned only to recognize
it when at last it comes.”

Chapter 21

In ways I would have found difficult to
explain, this one encounter with the inexplicable changed me
forever. Or perhaps it might be more honest to say that it changed
not me but the terms in which I understood myself. What I had
gained on the summit of Mount Epih I could not have said—not then,
at any rate—but what I had lost was clear enough. The god had
stripped me of my sense of power. He had made me the witness to
events over which I was to have no control. He had taught me that I
was nothing, that I had no will, that I was merely the instrument
of a future the course of which his contrivance alone would settle.
Man, for all the arrogance of his pitiful strength, has no power.
There is no power under heaven but that of fate, which is no more
than Mighty Ashur’s pleasure.

It was enough to learn on one journey. I was
weary of the lesson and desired no more to wander into strange
adventures. We turned our horses into the rising sun and headed
home. The ride back to Amat took us ten more days.

At last we came within sight of the garrison,
with the town, on the other side, closer to the river, hidden
behind it. I was pleased to see that the fortress walls had risen
another two cubits in height since our departure. As we drew near,
the soldiers, taken by surprise in their labors, dropped the tools
they had been using and rushed to greet us with cheers. “Ashur is
King! Ashur is King!” sounded from many throats, and men held out
their hands to touch me as I rode past. Even Kephalos, fat as a
brood sow, came running up the road, his arms held high in the air,
shouting like a caravan driver.

“So!” he panted, slapping my horse’s withers
as he walked beside me, “you have not left your bones to dry in the
wilderness after all. See how the wall goes up? These mongrel dogs
of camp soldiers will work even faster now you are home, Master,
for they have made you their heart.”

I looked down into his bloated, shining face
and felt a rush of joy and gratitude that the gods had granted me
youth and life and the loyal love of this thieving foreigner. I
almost said as much, but then, laughing loudly, was just able to
stop myself.

“It looks as if you too have been sweating,
Worthy Physician—although I do not notice it has made you any the
leaner.”

Then we were both able to laugh. I was
home—Amat, it seemed, was now my home, and I was glad of it.

“Dine with me tonight, Kephalos, and tell me
all the news.”

“No, Lord,” he answered, shaking his head.
“You dine with me, for your cook is only a soldier who knows how to
cook nothing except goat flesh sauced with its own stale fat. I
will, however, allow you to drink such of your own wines as I have
condescended to steal from you.

. . . . .

The table before us was spread with plates of
fruit, honeyed locusts, spiced lamb’s meat, and strange,
sweet-smelling millet. There was wine in golden cups and a pretty
slave girl named Sahish to pour it. Life on the frontiers of empire
had done nothing to curb my servant’s taste for luxury.

“Did your tour go well, Master?” he inquired,
in the polite tone that indicated as clearly as any words that he
regarded me as a great fool who had been wasting his time on
profitless wandering. “I trust you noticed that while you were gone
I raised the garrison wall to twice a man’s height.”

He puffed out his chest, at the same time
allowing his hand to wander down the girl’s shoulder until the
thumb rested on her breast. As if she understood this as some
manner of signal, she refilled his wine cup almost to the rim.

“So high as that, Kephalos?” I said, finding
it difficult not to laugh. “And by your own labors, I’ll wager,
without a soul to help you!”

He merely shrugged, as if no jest could wound
such dignity as his. “It will soon come to that, Master, for, as
you know, the impressed workers will shortly be returning to their
fields. Building will proceed slowly enough from now until the end
of the warm weather.”

“So be it. A great city is not the work of
one winter, and we will both be here to push the task on for many
years to come.”

Kephalos did not look much encouraged by the
prospect. He sat in silence for a long moment.

“You have received letters in your absence,”
he told me at last, and in a low voice, leaning back against the
cushions that surrounded him on his banqueting chair. “From
Nineveh, bearing the king’s seal—and another from Calah. The riders
came five days ago, within hours of each other.”

“And I suppose you have no idea what might be
in them?” I asked, wondering at his tone—what should surprise
anyone about my receiving letters from the king?

“Ah, Master. . .” Kephalos twisted
uncomfortably in his seat. “When would I presume to let my eyes
rest upon your private correspondence? And besides, you know I
command no more than some few dozen symbols in the dagger-shaped
writing.”

“Kephalos. . .

“Lord?” He smiled painfully, since he would
have the truth wrung out of him—we both knew perfectly well that my
scribes, whom he bribed, were as much in his employ as my own.

“Speak, Kephalos. What is the news of
Calah?”

“Nothing, Lord. Only that the Lord Esarhaddon
plans to inspect the garrison this summer. . .”

“‘Inspect?’” I repeated—I could hardly
believe it. “‘Inspect?’ He uses this word to me?”

“Yes, Lord. He uses the word.”

“And what else?”

“And he wishes to announce the impending
birth of a son. He says that the diviners are quite certain the
Lady Esharhamat will be brought to the labor of a son, no later
than the last ten days of the month of Iyyar.”

The same thought, I imagine, was in both our
minds. I had last seen Esharhamat on the sixteenth day of Ab, and
Kephalos could count to nine as well as anyone.

With an irritation born of that
consciousness, he peered into his now empty wine cup and
frowned.

“Sahish, you lazy slut,” he shouted, in
Akkadian, “shall your master and his guest be left to perish of
thirst? Be about your duties, girl, or you’ll find yourself
sweeping out the sleeping chambers in a brothel!”

. . . . .

The king’s letter contained no word of
Esharhamat. If his son and successor was about to be blessed with
an heir my father did not see fit to mention it to me—perhaps the
prospect was not very much to his taste, since his message
consisted principally of abuse of Esarhaddon.

“The Donkey has been in the south, worshiping
at the shrines of the old Sumerian gods and collecting
sorcerers—one supposes that even the great are entitled to their
diversions. I am constantly pestered with warnings that I must
rebuild Babylon before the patience of heaven is exhausted, and
perhaps some gesture in that direction is necessary before this
division between us becomes a focus for dissent. The Donkey is not
popular, so I am forced to clear his way to the throne all the more
carefully.

“He proposes to make a tour of the north and
no doubt thinks to overawe you with his new splendor. As you love
him better than I do, I wish you pleasure in his visit. Certainly
it will do him no harm to be separated from his mother for the
space of a few months. Since I have grown old and lost my pleasure
in her fair flesh, I can see clearly the error I committed by
covering her with a veil and calling her ‘wife,’ but the gods
punish old men by opening their eyes to follies which cannot be
undone.

“Ghosts flutter about my head and I am
oppressed in spirit. My son, has it all been wasted. . ?”

But if my father could hear only the beating
wings of death, all the world around him was awakening to the new
year. Each day the sun shone a little longer as it melted the last
of the winter snows. The Upper Zab, its waters heavy with their
burden of silt, was near its crest. Life had ceased to feel such a
vexation.

Since the new barracks were almost finished,
I sent some ten of my officers south to collect the reinforcements
which would begin their march to Amat as soon as the flooding
ended. They had orders to stop at Three Lions on their return and
to bring my mother and some of her women with them. The first phase
of my life in this place had ended, and I now longed for so much of
a settled existence as a soldier can expect. I looked forward to
her coming, and to the season of campaigning which would begin with
the hot weather.

The night of my return was the last I spent
in my rooms at the old garrison headquarters, for the next morning
saw the beginning of our move to the new palace. The offices and
public rooms were still unfinished, but my own wing, where I could
live not as shaknu but as a private man, was ready to receive
me.

My mother’s chamber still smelled of wet
plaster, but I ordered that the wooden floor be sanded and polished
with wax so that all would be ready against her arrival. Naiba
worked from dawn to dark in the arrangement of our new household,
tiring herself with anxiety that all should be ready to receive the
Great Lady Merope, as she called her. Naiba was, after all, still
little more than a child and I could not convince her that she had
nothing to fear, that the Great Lady was a mild, harmless creature
who had herself been a slave in a lord’s house.

Naiba was a stranger here—like my mother,
like myself. We were an odd enough match, she and I. I could not
help but wonder what my mother would make of it all when she
arrived.

But the spring would bring the answer—to that
and many other questions. There was nothing to do except to wait as
the river, having bestowed its gift, went back once more into its
own banks and the farmers began again to yoke their oxen to the
plow. My soldiers, grown cranky with boredom, talked of campaigns
and loot, and once more the battle squares of Ashur’s army formed
upon the parade grounds at Amat. It was the time for new
undertakings, when once more anything seemed possible.

It was on the first day of Iyyar that
outriders brought back word that wagons, cavalry, and columns of
infantry had been seen less than three days’ march from the city. I
gave orders to make ready to receive the twelve companies of
reinforcements the king had promised. But even before they arrived,
when I rode out to count their lines in the distance, I discovered
there were only eight, five of foot and three of horse. The
dispatches they carried contained no explanation, so it was simply
necessary that I content myself with less.

Still, they made a noble show when they
marched up to the fortress gates to present their standards. We
could hear the throb of their war drums an hour before the first
sentry shouted down from the wall that he had seen their dust on
the wind.

The citizens lined the roads to cheer and I,
mounted on my horse with nearly the whole garrison assembled for
parade, waited to receive them at the gate. The drums grew louder
and I had to keep the reins tight on my horse, made skittish by the
gathering noise. I felt my heart beating within me as if in answer
as it swelled with a soldier’s pride, for the armies of the god
made a fine sight.