The Assyrian (79 page)

It was not long before the village elders
began coming to us, as they had on our last campaign, meeting us on
our way to offer tribute if we would spare them. But I was without
mercy.

“You have given allegiance to a wicked king,”
I told them. “He has visited this vengeance upon you by warring
against the Land of Ashur. That which you suffer, my own people
have suffered before you—this and worse. All those following
Daiaukka must learn what price my god exacts from any who mock his
power.”

At my words the elders lamented in cracking
voices and tore their beards.

“Yet, Dread Lord, we are but farmers and
herdsmen. We are not warriors to carry arms into the Land of Ashur.
Spare us.”

“Are not my own people farmers and herdsmen?
Do not your sons ride with Daiaukka’s army? Yet I will grant you a
little pity—more, indeed, than was shown to those I have come to
avenge. I will give you one day’s grace. Gather together what you
can and turn your faces to the mountains. You must leave your
wagons, but what you are able to carry on your backs I will spare
you. Take it, and find Daiaukka. Tell him of your sufferings and
demand his protection as a right. Tell him that the Lord Tiglath
Ashur, a king’s son and prince in the Western Lands, will not cease
his devastation until he is driven away by force or vanquishes his
enemies in open battle.”

I raised my hand in salute, that they might
see the blood star across my palm and know to whom they
listened.

And this, as my words were whispered about
from one village to another, was how the Steppes of the Zagros grew
filled with the sounds of sorrow, how the footpaths and trails
became clogged with pilgrims. As water breaks before the prow of a
ship, the people who called themselves the Aryan scattered before
our advancing columns. Always, just in the distance, we could see
the clouds of dust raised by their unsandaled feet as they set out
on their hopeless flight from destruction.

And always we found their settlements empty
of men, the goats still tethered in their yards, the grain stores
intact, for they knew that if they broke this covenant we would
ride them down and leave their corpses to feed the dogs. What we
could not carry away as loot we burned and slaughtered.

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 the 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.