The Assyrian (82 page)

I could feel a thousand spears leveled at my
breast, but they did not matter—the battle had begun and as I
collided with what seemed a wall of enemy horsemen I felt myself as
deathless as the very gods.

Words are but poor things to describe what
the next hour was like. They passed in a blood streaked blur as the
ecstasy of battle was upon me. I hit a boulder with my chariot
wheel and broke an axle, so I cut one of the lead horses free from
its traces and, even before I could scramble on its back, armed
with nothing but my short sword and a single javelin, I saw a Mede
galloping down on me, his lance point already swinging around to
impale me like an apple. He was no more than forty or fifty paces
from me when I first noticed him, and riding hard, but I seemed to
have an infinity of time. In one fluid motion, uncoiling like a
snake, I turned and threw, knowing before the javelin left my hand
that it would strike home. The Mede horseman pitched over the
hindquarters of his mount and fell dead almost at my feet, the
point of my javelin sticking a hand span out of his back.

“Good,” I thought, “then I have it again.” I
put my foot on the man’s chest and pulled my javelin free with one
quick yank. Of such things is a man capable when the blood frenzy
is upon him.

For that day I seemed to bear a charmed life.
Nothing could touch me. A hundred swords and lances and arrows
beyond counting drew me for their mark, but always they fell short,
or their aim was wanting, or I seemed able to deflect them.
Sometimes I seemed surrounded by the Medes, on foot and on
horseback, yet I cut then down like summer barley. I was not
afraid—what was there for me to fear when Death was a god who lived
in my right arm?

But at last I broke free from this
enchantment. All at once I found myself alone. There was no enemy
within the reach of my hand, and as I looked about for one I saw
how the field was thickly strewn with dead and dying men—Medes and
my own soldiers both, having sealed that truce which subsists among
the corpses of all nations. It had been a bloody day, and the sun
had not yet descended two hours from noon.

We had reached a terrible standoff, in which
both armies could only butcher one another, each man hoping to
inflict the deadly blow before it fell on his own shoulders. For
the most part, the battle squares of my foot soldiers still held,
but the Medes in their vast numbers and their astonishing, reckless
courage, were pressing down hard upon them. The cavalry on both
sides had abandoned even the pretense of a cohesive strategy, and
their horses weaved in and out of the mobs of soldiers to strike at
what targets they could find.

Nothing could be worse than this, I thought.
The gods made war to punish men’s iniquity. And then: We must break
free. We must. . .

But what? I was not the rab shaqe now—I was
only one more soldier among so many. The time for grand strategies
was long past, and these men, locked in an embrace of the most
sickening carnage, would only fall away from each other when, on
one side or both, they grew too weary to hold on any longer.

And before then. . .

I could hear something—a shrill war cry that
seemed to come from nowhere, like the screams of a hunting hawk as
it falls upon its prey. It was an oddly familiar sound, yet I could
not remember where I had heard it before. . .

And then I knew. I turned my head, knowing
what I would see—the Scythian riders, streaming down from a nearby
bluff, an avalanche of men and horses. Tabiti had kept his
bargain.

My men heard it too—and so did the Medes—and
at once it seemed to turn the fortune of battle. Suddenly, as if
they had found new hearts, even before the shock of that first
charge made itself felt, the soldiers of Ashur surged forward. The
Medes began to buckle, and then, from one instant to the next, like
a rotting plank under a man’s foot, their lines simply broke.

These things happen quickly. What a few
minutes before had been a battle all at once became a rout. The
Scythians, like scavenging birds, merely finished off an enemy
already wounded to the death. Daiaukka’s brave warriors, those who
did not take to their heels, were simply trampled under the wild
rush of our victory. The slaughter which followed was terrible to
witness.

And it went on until the merciful darkness
forced it to a halt. As long as the sun’s light held, the Medes
suffered death and mutilation. Those who were wounded or had been
left without a horse or found themselves trapped behind the swift
current of our advance perished like sheep at the butcher’s block
as the victors took their revenge and collected trophies: heads,
hands—in one case I recall the skin from a man’s arm, peeled off
even to the fingernails, red with blood. It would make a quiver
cover when it dried.

My own soldiers soon grew weary of the
business. They had fought since the hours before dawn and were sick
of blood, so their officers had little difficulty in bringing them
to good order. But the Scythians were fresh and, having been
cheated of their proper share of the battle, felt disposed, after
the fashion of barbarians, to make the most of whatever was left.
They were not my men. I could not have restrained them.

Did I even wish to? I know not. At first the
necessity of taking any kind of action did not even enter my brain.
I was stupid with exhaustion and for several minutes could only
gaze out over the developing carnage with the mute incomprehension
of an animal. As soon as the Medes had begun their flight, however,
my principal officers began gathering about me on the field to
await my commands. It was time to return to life.

“Lushakin!” I shouted—suddenly I was filled
with alarm. “Lushakin, take as many men as you need and find
Daiaukka. If he is still on the field, find him! Find him alive, if
you can—he will be far less use to us with his throat cut by some
Scythian bandit—but alive or dead, find him!”

“Rab Shaqe, no one except yourself has ever
seen him,” was his highly sensible answer. “How are we to know one
blood smeared Mede from another?”

“Take prisoners then—find a few willing to
sell their lord for a chance to live. Hurry!”

As Lushakin climbed on his horse to do my
bidding, I tried to force myself to think. There were orders which
at this moment should have sprung naturally to my lips—what were
they? My mind seemed unable to hold any idea except that of
Daiaukka’s hacked and bloody corpse.

He could not be allowed to cheat me. Now
now—not after all this.

“Think!” I told myself. “Today, you are the
victor here. Act the part!”

“Give the men one hour,” I said, “and then I
want this brought to an end. And send out patrols to look for
whatever has escaped of Daiaukka’s cavalry. Do not interfere with
them; simply report on their numbers.”

“What of the Scythians, Rab Shaqe?”

“Yes, what of the Scythians, Rab Shaqe?”

I looked up and saw Tabiti leaning over his
horse’s neck to grin down at me pityingly. He looked as fresh as if
he had just risen from his bed.

“We will leave them to their robber chief,” I
said. “How are you, brother? We would have carried the day without
you, but perhaps men will say that you helped a little.”

The headman of the Sacan threw his head back
and laughed like a jackal. Then, as if he had remembered something,
he swung his horse around and scanned the field.

“Not many of the foot soldiers have escaped,”
he said. “But the riders were more fortunate. It is a thing to be
regretted, for the Medes are possessed of fine horses. Yet a robber
must take his booty were he finds it, brother.”

He laughed again. Tabiti was wise enough to
know he had no reason to be displeased with this day’s work.

“But I tarry,” he went on, gathering up his
reins. “My men require me as the companion of their sport.”

“Tabiti. . .”

“Yes, brother—what is it?” His catlike eyes
widened inquisitively.

“The shah Daiaukka, if you find him alive. .
.”

“Then I shall kill him. What of it,
brother.”

“I need him alive, if that is
convenient.”

“You wish to kill him yourself—yes, I
understand perfectly.” He flashed his white teeth in an amused
smile. “If he falls in my way, I will save him for you. Farewell,
brother.”

He rode away, like a boy eager to chase
rabbits. His was an uncomplicated view of the world and I envied
him.

The silence that he left behind was broken by
the hurried sounds of voices and the screams of dying men. The real
horrors always come at the ends of battles and perhaps it is better
so, lest men forget that fighting is a serious matter, not to be
entered into lightly. I saw soldiers, their tunics soaked in blood,
sitting down among the corpses of their enemies, clearing the dust
from their throats with water from goatskin bags filled by women
who did not yet know that their sons and husbands were dead.
Already my men were starting to quarrel over their loot—it would
not be long, if they were left to themselves, before they began
cutting each other’s throats. Such is ever the glorious conclusion
of war.

“I weary of this,” I said, to no one in
particular. “Someone fetch me a horse that I may return to camp.
See that everything I have ordered is done.”

It was almost dark before I found my own tent
again. With the smell of carnage finally out of my nostrils, I was
looking forward to my dinner and then, perhaps, the unimaginable
luxury of a full night’s sleep, but it was not to be.

A small knot of men was waiting for me and,
lying on the ground in front of them, was some object wrapped in a
blanket. No one spoke.

At last, in the imperfect way of one whose
eyes have seen more than his mind can hold, I understood that what
the blanket concealed was yet another corpse—there were so many,
why trouble me about one more?

And then I felt my bowels grow cold with
apprehension. I knelt down beside the body and uncovered its face.
It was Tabshar Sin, staring at me with wide, cloudy eyes that still
registered the shock of death.

I had been in many battles, but never, I
think, until that moment had I known what it was to hate my
enemy.

. . . . .

There are times when it seems impossible to
grow drunk. I tried, but it was hopeless. Each swallow merely
sharpened the hard edge on things, so that my mind, like a small
child playing with a dagger, seemed to cut itself with every
fumbling movement.

So I was in no very happy frame of mind as I
sat by the campfire in front of my tent, the corpse of Tabshar Sin
at my feet, wrapped and ready for burial. A spear had caught him
under the arm, breaking off at the shaft only when its point had
crossed straight through the center of his chest. They say that
such a massive wound brings no pain, that a man is dead before he
feels more than the impact of the blow which kills him. I can only
hope it is true.

He had met his simtu as an ordinary soldier
and had lain unnoticed until someone remembered that this was the
old man who had taught Prince Tiglath his first lessons in the
warrior’s craft and enjoyed the rab shaqe’s love almost as a second
father. I indeed had loved him, yet I could not even weep for him.
What was missing in me that I could not shed tears over the body of
Tabshar Sin? Why could grief find no outlet except in dark
hate?

The wine tasted bitter—life was bitter, and
death merely the last of the god’s cruel jests. In the morning I
would bury my old rab kisir, and I promised myself that many Median
prisoners would pacify his ghost by emptying their heart’s blood
onto his grave. They would pay, although it was my fault more than
theirs—I should have left him back in Amat, where he would have
lived to die in bed. That did not matter, however. The Medes would
still pay. I would find an ax and hack off their heads myself as
they knelt over his burial mound, and thus they would make my
amends for me. Lack of sleep, the strain of battle, grief, and my
own uncomfortable conscience all combined to make me cruel.

Or perhaps I was drunk. Perhaps it is best to
assume that I must have been. Otherwise it becomes difficult to
explain what happened when they brought Daiaukka to me.

The process had been going on throughout the
afternoon and evening—Lushakin and his spies had been rounding up
every man of importance they could find among the surviving Medes,
those fortunate enough to have been taken prisoner and those simply
discovered somewhere on the battlefield with enough life left in
them to make it worth the trouble of fetching them in. Perhaps
twenty or thirty of them, bound hand and foot, waited on their
knees before my tent, waited for the conqueror to decide their
fates. Most, doubtless, expected to die, but I had settled nothing
with myself. Indeed, I had not even considered the matter. A new
man would be brought to me, I would glance at him long enough to
confirm that he was not Daiaukka, and then dismiss him from my
mind, returning to my own morose reflections.

But at last there he was, alive and in my
hands. I stood up and turned to Lushakin, who grinned at me.

“Yes, Rab Shaqe” he said. “I thought this
would be the one. These slaves will try to sell you as many
Daiaukkas as there are seeds in a barley field, but this time I had
a bit more confidence in their word. He stayed behind, did our hero
here. He was still trying to fight off a crowd of those Scythian
rascals with nothing but a half burned piece of tent pole. They
weren’t very pleased to have their quarry stolen from them, I can
tell you—you may even hear of it from your friend the Lord Tabiti,
because we had to cut one of them a little before they would mind
their manners.”

“Take the rest away and leave me alone with
him,” I said, which made Lushakin frown.