The Assyrian (81 page)

“We will have no room to maneuver, and the
wind will be against us in the afternoon.”

“Then we must engage the Medes on their own
ground, and we must conquer before the wind can change. Besides, by
the afternoon our Scythian allies will have joined the attack—from
the Medes’ rear.”

“You put too much faith in that bandit
Tabiti. Probably by now he has already sold us to Daiaukka.”

I made no answer beyond a cold silence, in
the face of which men who had been my brothers in arms since the
beginning could only stare at the ground, clearing their throats in
embarrassment.

“The grass here is too high,” they continued
at last. “We could lose half our chariots before they even reach
the enemy lines.”

“I have a thought or two about the grass.
Issue orders that the campfires are to be kept burning all night
and that every man should be with his company and ready to march
three hours before dawn. Tell the cooks to have their breakfast
ready by then. We are all in for a long day.

“And—remember—if we have victory tomorrow,
and if it is at all possible, I want Daiaukka taken alive. We make
war less against a man than an idea, and this king of the Medes
will be more dangerous dead than he ever was alive.”

At two hours after midnight the last
reconnaissance patrol came in, five men who had taken the ghastly
risk of approaching the enemy lines on foot and in the dark; had
they been discovered, nothing could have saved them from the
terrible death the Medes visit upon their prisoners.

“What did you see?” I asked them.

“Not much, Rab Shaqe. They are dancing.”

“Dancing?”

“Yes—dancing. And howling like devils. They
take turns running through great bonfires. I would say they are all
crazy drunk, except no wine I know of makes a man act like
that.”

“We shall have to see if we can contrive a
day as entertaining for them as the night,” I said, smiling thinly.
The man looked at me as if he imagined I had lost my mind.

“Yes, Rab Shaqe—as you say.”

I sent him off to the hour or so of sleep he
would be able to enjoy before the entire army began marshaling for
battle. Yes, of course he had thought I was mad. Perhaps he was
even right. The idea which had shaped in my brain sounded mad
enough, even to me. A mad commander leading his soldiers against a
mad enemy—not a happy prospect to carry to his sleeping roll.

“My soul is heavy with dread, Prince. What do
you plan to do?”

It was Tabshar Sin. He had come up behind me
so quietly that I had not even known he was there.

“Do?” I turned and smiled. “I will do as you
taught me, Rab Kisir—triumph or die. I may perhaps even achieve
both.”

“Do not jest with me, Prince. I hear the
beating of heavy black wings above our heads.”

One had only to look at him to see that this
was so. I felt ashamed, for death is not a fit matter for a young
man’s idle jokes.

“Did you hear the patrols report?”

He nodded.

“Then if the Medes like running through fire
so much, they will have a fine time of it tomorrow. In the first
hour before dawn, when the winds will have begun in earnest, I will
cause the grass beyond our earthworks to be torched. I will make a
line of flames, as wide as the valley itself, and within two hours
the wind will carry it straight up to Daiaukka’s camp. We will not
be far behind.”

“And the fire will clear the ground for our
chariots.” Tabshar Sin’s gray old head bobbed up and down as he
considered the matter. “And the Medes, on the high ground and with
the wind in their faces, will have two enemies to fight.”

“And when they break through—if they break
through—their horses will he panicked and their battle lines in
ruins. That is the way I see it in my mind. But in my mind my plans
are always perfect and always work. I wish I could fight this
engagement there instead of here in this valley.”

“And what of the heat? Most of our soldiers
are barefoot, and to walk across scorched ground...”

“We will follow one quarter hour behind the
flames. If those advance as quickly as I hope, the ground will have
had time to cool.”

“And if the wind should change?”

I put my arm across his shoulders, for I
loved him. Yet I could still wish he would not give words to the
very dread of my heart.

“Then,” I said, looking out into the
darkness, where the campfires of the Medes were only tiny points of
light, like dying stars, “then I will know what a fool I have been,
and that the god has at last turned his back on me.”

. . . . .

In the blackest part of the night, in the
eerie, flickering light of a thousand campfires, the northern army
assembled for the attack. I could read men’s fear in their
faces—they would not even be allowed the grace of meeting their
enemy in the daylight but must perhaps die before the sun could
rise, their souls escaping to wander in this terrible darkness. It
was a dreadful thing to prepare for battle in the dark.

I had already chosen some fifty of the quradu
under Lushakin’s command, men sworn to silence, who, at my signal,
would jump across our earthworks and with their torches begin this
awful conflagration. They would be the first to die if things went
against us—in this they might be lucky.

No one else, save these and Tabshar Sin, knew
of my mad plan. I had not even told my officers. I did not wish to
give men time to think, to weigh the risk to which I was putting
all our lives. They would all know soon enough.

In the last hour before dawn, just as I had
hoped, the wind found its voice. I mounted my chariot and rode out
to face the judgment of my soldiers.

“We have been favored by Ashur,” I shouted,
my words echoing through the lines as they were repeated to men too
far away to hear them, “to stop the Medes here, on the lands they
call theirs, and not under the very walls of our own proud cities.
This will be a terrible battle, for it will be fought to the
death—theirs, or ours. But we do not wage war alone. We have many
allies. Perhaps even before the sun reaches its zenith, Daiaukka
will find he has the Scythians snarling at his back. And even
before then—even before a single man of Ashur will have need to
draw his sword—the Medes must fight an enemy more terrible than any
man. Behold, the bright fire of Ashur, Lord of Heaven!”

I raised my arm. Lushakin and his men crossed
the earthworks and put their pitchy torches to the grass. In an
instant we all found ourselves gazing into a curtain of fire,
yellow and black-red, hissing like some vast and wrathful serpent,
terrible to see.

“Behold how the wind takes it!” I bellowed—I
could hardly make myself heard above the fury of the fire. “See how
it advances against the god’s enemies! Prepare your hearts—make
ready to follow it to conquest and to glory!”

Even the fire could not have roared as loud
as the army of Ashur. As one man, with twenty thousand voices, they
shouted, “Ashur is King! Ashur is King! Ashur is King!” I think, in
that moment, when at last they had found themselves, they would
have followed me into the very flames.

The fire swept forward, faster than I would
have thought possible, turning the night into a ghastly daylight.
It was fine to see—I could not help but wonder what was in
Daiaukka’s breast as he watched it coming.

“Slowly now, at walking pace—advance!”

We surged forward, the horses whinnying in
barely controlled terror, across the earthworks and onto the
blackened ground, grown cool already beneath our feet. The fire
surged farther and farther ahead of us, beaten forward by the
unrelenting wind. Ashur, in his mercy, had not failed us.

I rode in one of the great war chariots,
pulled by a team of four horses covered in glittering copper armor.
Even from beneath the pall of smoke I could see that the night sky
was beginning to lighten. Dawn was coming.

“Let Tabiti keep his word,” I thought to
myself. “Let him bring his horsemen down on Daiaukka’s back—if only
to avenge us if we fail.”

I had not driven far, not two hundred cubits
across the scorched grasslands, before I found the first dead Mede,
his corpse twisted and blackened by the fire, his eyes open but the
balls melted from their sockets, his lips pulled back in a
grotesque grin. He must have been a spy, caught by the sudden wall
of flames, unable to escape. It must have been a fearful death.

There were others—I know not how many others,
horses and men, their dying cries muffled for us by the fire’s
roar. Had Daiaukka been preparing some surprise of his own? Who
would ever know now?

We had crossed half the valley floor before
we saw any other sign of our enemy. The fire was moving in fits and
starts now, seeming to sink to nothing and then thundering back to
life. In one of these lulls the Medes broke through—two, perhaps
three thousand men on horses that had been blindfolded for the
charge but were still half mad from panic. With a cry that was like
the barking of dogs wild with the scent of blood, they ripped the
bandages off their horses’ eyes and came galloping down on us. One
flight of arrows and a quarter of them fell dead from their mounts,
but still they came. The fire behind them and certain death ahead,
they came, their god’s name on their lips as they died. A man may
take pride in his enemies, and surely these were fine, brave men
whom it was an honor to kill in battle.

And kill them we did. The blind confusion
born of the fire had scattered the Medes’ cavalry formations, so
these men could only attack in swarms, like angry bees. They had no
chance of breaking up our battle squares—they could only harry us,
and then fall before our arrows and javelins and under the wheels
of our chariots. Fighting with magnificent courage, they threw
their lives away. They died, seeming to hold death itself in
contempt.

I wheeled back and forth across the field,
scattering the Median horsemen as they tried to regroup for a
charge. The black earth was now carpeted with dead and dying men,
lying about like fallen leaves after a rainstorm, and my heavy
armored chariot, which eight men could hardly

lift as high as their knees, bounced over
them as if they were rocks in the road. I could hear the screams as
my wheels, by now slippery with blood, came down with a sudden
shock to crush a man’s chest. One, his legs mangled, tried to
avenge himself against my horses, slashing wildly at their bellies
with his sword. I pulled away, just beyond his reach, and, as I
passed, buried the point of my javelin in his neck. He pitched over
into the arms of death.

Thus the Median horsemen fought and perished.
They slowed our advance but a little—but that little, it seemed,
was reason enough for the fury of their hopeless onslaught.

By this time the fire had achieved the summit
of the long upward slope, reaching as far as the earthworks around
Daiaukkas camp, and, with the wind dying but still strong, these
did not stop its advance. It leaped across, and soon the very tents
were burning. As the last Medes on the field turned to flee, I
halted my chariot to give the horse a chance to rest and watched.
In a few moments the fire laid everything waste, as if no one had
ever dwelt there.

But where were the Medes?

Of course—why hadn’t I seen it before? They
had slipped away behind the wall of flames and smoke and were
regrouping farther on, out of reach of both us and the fire. That
was why their cavalry had charged us with such reckless courage, to
purchase a few extra moments in case the wind changed.

And it was changing—our luck would not hold
forever. Having driven the fire up the valley wall to the very
summit, the wind began to fade. The fire seemed trapped inside
Daiaukka’s camp, where slowly it would sputter out. That was where
we would meet our enemy, amidst the ashes of his stronghold. And it
would not be long before the battle was joined.

The sun was within an hour of noon when we
first reached the outskirts of Daiaukka’s burned out campsite.
Within minutes teams of laborers had dug out sections of the earth
ramparts and pushed them into the surrounding ditch so that our
chariots could cross. We took possession, having conquered nothing,
not even the scorched earth itself. We had merely arrived at the
scene of our ordeal by combat—even as the smoke drifted away we
could see the Medes marshaling themselves for the
counterattack.

Thus the two great armies faced each other
across not even half a beru of flat, fire-blackened land. We would
fight on level ground now—Daiaukka had lost that tactical
advantage—but he had withdrawn his men in good order and his force
was still greatly superior in numbers. And now we were all, the
Medes and us alike, weary, hardened to fear, and sick of the smell
of blood, which meant that the coming battle would be waged with
the desperate cruelty of men who have already learned to despair of
their lives.

The Medes had their lines drawn up after the
pattern they had learned from us: foot soldiers in the center with
horsemen at both wings. They had no chariots, an instrument of
warfare with which the mountain nations had yet to grow familiar,
but our battlefield was so constricted that I feared we would not
be able to use our own to very great advantage— the time had come
for close fighting, the hardest and most pitiless kind of war. It
but wanted a beginning.

There was silence. It was that terrible calm
just before the storm breaks as each side waits upon the other. I
could hear the rattle of my horses’ harness. Everyone, even the
Medes, seemed to be waiting for my signal to begin.

At last, when I could stand it no longer, I
raised my arm and shouted, “Ashur is King!” Instantly that shout
was echoed by twenty thousand voices. I cracked my whip, the
chariot lurched forward, and I found myself hurtling down on the
Median lines.