The Assyrian (88 page)

“Yes, if need be. Yet that is up to you,
Tiglath.”

There was the inevitable pause, during which
I had just time to ask myself, Why am I listening to this? Perhaps
because it was something I wanted to hear.

Nabusharusur, who was nothing if not cunning,
gave me just time to frame the thought, and no more.

“The armies are massing to the west of here,”
he went on, as if he had only paused for breath. “They are evenly
matched, and there will be great carnage at the battle—and perhaps
after as well. Do you remember when we were boys, Tiglath, and
Esarhaddon, when he could not read the lesson, threw the tablet at
old Bag Teshub’s head?”

“Yes. I remember.”

“Nothing has changed. What Esarhaddon does
not understand, he destroys. He does not understand this rebellion,
the reason for it, and if he triumphs he will destroy half the
nation trying to salve the wound to his pride. Besides, as I said,
the armies are evenly matched, and who knows better than you that
at such times men drive pity from their hearts?”

“There is nothing I can do.”

“Is there not?”

As I sat there on the cold ground, the
wineskin between my knees, I tried not to understand. I stared out
at nothing, trying to blank my mind so that this viper would have
no power over it. I would not accept the blame he wished to heap on
me. I would not. . .

Nabusharusur smiled, as if he knew how it
would end.

“There are many who follow Esarhaddon without
loving him.” He continued, glancing away. “They know not what else
to do, since they cannot side with Arad Malik without embracing the
man who slew their king. And, as I said, Arad Malik’s only claim is
that he is not Esarhaddon. But say the word, Tiglath, but proclaim
yourself king, even at this hour, and Esarhaddon’s strength will
melt away like spring frost.”

“And what of Arad Malik? Will he ‘melt away’
too?”

“Leave that fool to me.”

“Will you find someone to kill him too?” I
asked, turning to look into Nabusharusur’s face, allowing myself to
smile at him—he could read in it what he would. “Will he go the way
of our father the king? And then after him, who else? Me?”

“After him, it is not I who will have power,
Tiglath, but only you.”

“Yet you would make me responsible for my
brother’s death—for two brothers, Arad Malik and Esarhaddon
both.”

Nabusharusur merely shrugged.

“Two must die in any case. You must choose
which two, no matter what you decide—Arad Malik and Esarhaddon, or
Arad Malik and myself. I do not say the choices are easy, only that
they are yours to make. Yours, and no one else’s. And you cannot
evade them, for to evade is itself a choice. But here is something
you might consider—if it is Esarhaddon whom you elect to spare,
perhaps you too will at last find your head between your feet.
Esarhaddon hates you, or perhaps it had slipped your mind.”

He rose, brushing the earth from his tunic
with a careless gesture, as if all this mattered not at all.

“I do not expect an answer now, brother,” he
said. “Think of it, and when I see you in the field I will know
which way you have chosen—if you can bring yourself to choose.”

He mounted his horse and rode away, vanishing
into the distance.

. . . . .

And finally, at what was almost the last
possible moment, I received a reply from Nineveh. It was addressed
to me not by name but only as the garrison commander at Amat and
shaknu of the northern provinces, and it was not what I would have
expected:

“The king commands that a force numbering
25,000 men shall be assembled from the fortress at Amat, and from
those in Zamua and Namri, and that this force shall proceed with
all haste toward the town of Khanirabbat in the province of Gozan,
there to join with an army under the king’s own authority. And this
no later than the last day of the present month.”

There was nothing else, no acknowledgment of
my letter, no word to suggest that I was more than simply another
faceless field officer in the king’s service. The signature was
that of one Sha Nabushu, whose name was unknown to me.

I could hardly credit it. That Esarhaddon had
intended the insult was clear enough, but had his only object been
to goad me into the arms of his enemies, he could not have hit upon
a likelier means. That my brother meant to hold me in contempt was
no surprise, but even simple prudence should have made him conceal
his purposes a little longer.

Twenty-five thousand men he asked for—rather,
demanded. Twenty-five thousand men would deplete the northern
garrisons to dangerous levels, but presumably, with a civil war on
his hands, Esarhaddon would not worry about that.

I sent off dispatch riders at once, summoning
the required forces to proceed by forced march to Amat. What I
would do with them when they arrived, I had no idea.

Such matters cannot remain secret very long
in a garrison of soldiers, and by nightfall there probably was not
a soul in Amat who did not know of Esarhaddon’s letter. And as
always, and in everyone’s eyes, was the same unspoken question:
“What will you do, Rab Shaqe? What will you do?”

But one voice, however, presumed to make its
advice heard, and that belonged, naturally enough, to Kephalos.

“There are now only two possible courses of
action open to you,” he said, having chased away the slaves who had
been serving us our dinner—I had been invited, on two hours’
notice, to spend the evening with him, so his intentions had been
plain enough.

“The Lord Esarhaddon’s order means that you
may no longer remain here in Amat preserving your neutrality. If
you do so, then no matter who wins you will be a traitor, and if it
is your brother he will doubtless march his army straight to our
door as soon as he has dealt with the rebels. I would expect his
forces to be in number vastly superior to your own.”

“His troops would be exhausted and weakened,
where mine would be fresh. Besides, Esarhaddon has little
experience of command. I would not be afraid to meet him in the
field, no matter if he brought fifty thousand men.”

“That is only your wounded pride speaking—you
know your words are foolish. Besides, you would never subject the
nation to two civil wars, one right after the other. No, you must
choose now.”

I nodded wearily, staring into my wine cup,
sick of life.

“This is so,” I said. “Everything you say is
truth.”

“Then what will you do? You hold the balance
in this conflict. Whichever side you favor will triumph. You can
make Esarhaddon king, or you can put a ring through his lips and
drag him back to Nineveh behind your chariot. Which shall it
be?”

Always one returned to the same question:
“What will you do, Rab Shaqe? What will you do?” And still I had no
answer. I could only shrug my shoulders.

“You must remember, master, that you will
stand in the greatest peril if you side with Esarhaddon. He will
not be grateful.”

“Someone else told me that, only a few days
ago.”

“Then someone else besides your poor slave
sees the truth. I know not if Esarhaddon will require the breath
from under your ribs, master, but he will surely end all that makes
life sweet to you. You and all your friends will he made to
suffer.”

He pulled at his great brown beard and looked
at me with eyes full of supplication—I knew precisely what he
meant.

“Besides,” he went on, straightening himself
and taking a sip of wine, as if these were not matters which
touched either of us, “you would make a better king than
Esarhaddon. If Esarhaddon is king, it will be the magicians and
soothsayers who rule—they and the Lady Naq’ia. You, at least, are
half a Greek and therefore less a prey to these superstitious
terrors.”

“Am I?” I laughed, being unable to help
myself. “It is the god’s will that Esarhaddon follow the Lord
Sennacherib on the throne of Ashur. That is the one fact to which
my mind must forever return.”

Kephalos reached across the table and put his
hand on my arm.

“And if that is so, master, then I despair
for us all.”

. . . . .

In the gray light of dawn I could watch the
companies assembling on the parade ground, eighteen thousand men. I
would leave behind only five hundred until reinforcements could
arrive from Zamua and Namri, and seven thousand of them would
immediately follow my line of march to Khanirabbat. Even Kephalos
was coming, although I had given him his release from slavery and
arranged for him to travel with a trading caravan which would have
carried him well beyond Esarhaddon’s reach. But no, he would
come.

“My recent adventures have hardened me to
campaigning, Dread Lord, and, besides, if you are bent upon
committing this folly I cannot leave you bereft of my advice.”

He grinned rather halfheartedly, and looked
about him like a man saying goodbye to the world. At this moment he
was in one of the supply wagons, salving his terror with a wine
jug. I would probably be the instrument of his death, yet never had
any servant deserved better at the hands of his master.

It was a bitterly cold morning. The ground
was encrusted with snow. It was not a good season for campaigning,
but in the minds of common soldiers there is no season good for
campaigning. And these men were going off to fight not barbarians
who lived in tents but their own brothers—I could see it in their
faces, that desperation which is born of civil war.

“It is a wicked day which brings this
parting,” my mother said, standing beside me wrapped in a fur lined
cloak. “I fear you do an evil thing, Lathikadas.”

“To fight for Esarhaddon? Yes, Merope, it is
an evil thing, but in this affair I do evil no matter what I do,
and never more than if I do nothing.”

“Can there be no going back?”

There were tears in my mother’s eyes as she
turned to me with this question to which she knew the answer as
well as I. I said nothing, but merely folded her in my arms. Her
sobbing was bitter and reminded me of the day when, as a child, I
had left the house of women for the last time to stand before the
king’s judgment. Was it so different now?

“You have been a great man in the Land of
Ashur,” she said at last. “Your god has fulfilled his pledge. I
despair of the days to come.”

“Merope, I have gone to war many times before
this. Try to be at peace in your mind.”

“I cannot be at peace, for there is that
inside me which says my eyes will never again be filled with the
sight of you.”

What was there to say when I knew that within
the month my brother Esarhaddon might have my head on the point of
his spear? The maxxu’s words whispered again in my brain, that I
had come to the season of partings. Could I tell her that? Hardly
that. I could do nothing, except be silent.

I could not even tell her to flee if I should
be killed, for she had said already she would not.

“If you die, why should I care what becomes
of me?” she had asked.

But perhaps Esarhaddon’s anger would not
reach so low as my mother. That hope would have to be enough.

I kissed her one final time and pulled myself
from her embrace. Now I belonged not to her or even to myself, but
to the god and a brother who hated me.

“Goodbye,” I said.

Until I die my mind will carry the image of
her face as she heard me.

I mounted Ghost and rode out through the
fortress gates, the northern army, reluctantly, at my back. The
crowds that had gathered along the road to see us off were silent.
My mother was right—it was a wicked day.

And among the crowds I saw one face, for an
instant only, before it disappeared. The brown face of an old man
with eyes dead to the sun’s light. Yet, in that moment, lost almost
before I knew it had come, he seemed to smile, mocking me because I
could not see with his eyes.

Chapter 33

At another season of the year, the area around
Khanirabbat might have been pleasing enough, but in winter it was a
picture of ugliness and desolation. The town itself was, of course,
empty—and everywhere about, over the low hills and the plain that
stretched down to the Euphrates, the grass was withered and yellow
and the bare limbs of the few sparse trees trembled in the wind
with the palsied motion of an old woman’s fingers. The wind was
almost the only sound one heard, for even the crows seemed to have
departed.

Esarhaddon had established himself not three
hours’ march from the rebel encampment, yet the terrain was such
that the two factions could hardly even see the smoke from each
other’s campfires. So the appearance of enemy patrols was an almost
hourly occurrence and there had been several clashes even before I
arrived, which was on the twenty-sixth day of Sebat.

Almost the first news I heard was that the
king was in a great fright because the night before the royal star
of Marduk had appeared surrounded by a yellow ring. The astrologers
offered differing interpretations, but they agreed that this was an
evil omen for the Land of Ashur—a safe enough conclusion on the eve
of such a calamitous war.

I say “almost” the first news, because the
first was that my brother would on no account receive me. I was to
establish the northern army as a separate wing to Esarhaddon’s
left—the unlucky side—and to await his commands.

So be it. My tent was raised on a patch of
rising ground, and my standard set before the entrance, but I did
not venture out among the soldiers. I posted guards that none might
be allowed admittance to me except Esarhaddon’s messenger. I took
my meals alone. I stayed apart, and my mind hatched out black
thoughts like a serpent’s eggs left to warm in the sun.

At last the king’s herald came, but there
were no silver ribbons tied to his staff of office—I was not even
to be acknowledged as a member of the royal family. Behind him
walked a fat little man with a sparse beard and the blank,
protruding eyes of a frog. This, it seemed, was the Sha Nabushu who
had presumed to send me orders in the king his master’s name.