The Blood Star (47 page)

After he heard Abdimilkutte’s reply,
Esarhaddon ordered the aqueducts pulled down, cutting off the
supply of fresh water from the mainland. The city itself was too
close to sea level for wells to be dug within its walls.

“This is not really a difficulty—we expected
it. We can bring water in from the Litani River by ship. We can
journey even farther if necessary. Esarhaddon’s army can only be in
one place at a time. Besides, how long can he provision such an
army from the surrounding countryside? He must move on soon. His
soldiers will demand it when their bellies begin to grow
pinched.”

Nabusharusur’s confidence seemed general.
After the first surge, prices for food began to steady. After the
first week, Kephalos told me, it was hard to find anyone prepared
to wager the siege would last through the month.

“Then these people understand nothing of the
men of Ashur. In my father’s time, we camped beneath the walls of
Babylon for fifteen months, and finally we took the city. And who
is more obstinate by nature than Esarhaddon?”

A month passed with the army of Ashur camped
beyond the gates, yet life in Sidon changed very little. In an
attempt to close the harbor and starve the city into submission,
Esarhaddon had hired thirty warships from Cyprus, but the harbor
entrance was too narrow for them to think of risking a landing and
the smaller and faster Sidonese merchant ships had little trouble
evading them in open water. Thus the blockade was not successful.
Grain, fruit and water were plentiful, meat was only three or four
times its usual price, and even wine could still be found. It began
to look as if Nabusharusur had been right, that the siege would
fail and that Esarhaddon would be forced to accept a humiliating
defeat.

One had only to look out over the wall,
however, to grasp that the king my brother entertained no such
possibility. There had not as yet been any fighting—Abdimilkutte
had wisely refused battle, keeping his eight thousand troops safely
in their barracks, but the surrounding countryside was completely
in Esarhaddon’s hands and the elaborate series of trenches and
earthworks that fortified his encampments indicated plainly enough
that he meant to stay.

The fortifications began about a quarter of
an hour’s walk from the city gates, but the soldiers of Ashur
always lay out their encampments in the same way, with the
commander’s tent in the center, so I did not have to strain my eyes
to discover where the king met with his officers and put down his
head at night. I spent many hours gazing out over the empty plain
to where the sentries patrolled and the cooking fires burned
bright. It gave me a peculiar, tormented pleasure to watch them, as
if I were divided against myself.

Once, only once, I saw Esarhaddon up close
enough to recognize him. One afternoon he and an escort rode out
beyond the earthworks, coming almost within bowshot of the walls.
He was dressed in the uniform of a
rab shaqe
, with nothing
to distinguish him from the eight or ten senior commanders who
formed his party, but I knew him at once. My heart twisted within
my breast.

He looked tired, but there was nothing of the
sullen grimness I had seen so often in his face during those last
years. I was too far away to hear his voice, but there was
authority in his gesture. He was probably happy, for he had escaped
from Nineveh and had an army to lead, which was what he had been
born for. Esarhaddon was a soldier. He had never wanted to be
king.

Yet he looked like a king now. Perhaps the
god had chosen well after all.

Keeping his horse to a walk, he paced off the
whole length of the wall. He seemed in no hurry. After a few
minutes, he turned and rode back to camp, his officers following at
a respectful distance.

The evening of that same day a stranger
called at my house, a man dressed in a rough farmer’s tunic. He
brought me a message.

“If you go to the main gate an hour after the
sky is dark over the western sea, you will find that a horse has
been provided. The guards have been bribed and will open the gate
for you. The Lord Esarhaddon will meet you halfway between the city
wall and the outer perimeter of the Assyrian camp. He will come
alone and he guarantees your life.”

He spoke in Aramaic—he was no countryman—and
as soon as he had finished speaking he departed. He would not even
stay for a cup of wine but crept away into the dusk, for a spy
lives every moment of his life in fear.

“Needless to say, you will not go,” announced
Kephalos, as if quoting that day’s price for cooking oil. “You
would not be such a fool as to go. If your brother can arrange to
have the city gates opened for you, he can arrange to have them
closed and bolted at your back.”

“And he is not such a fool as that. Do you
think he waits outside with a party of soldiers to take me
prisoner? Do you think he wants me brought into his camp, either
living or dead, that the men of Ashur may look upon my face?” I
shook my head, for Kephalos, though wise in many things, understood
nothing of this matter. “No one, I would wager, beyond a few of the
king’s most trusted officers is aware of my presence in the city,
and my brother has every motive to keep the secret. I am not some
nameless criminal, my friend. I am Tiglath Ashur, a king’s son whom
all the world knows to have been wronged at his brother’s hands.
Esarhaddon might have me murdered secretly, but he will not put me
to death in public. Unless things have changed very much in the
Land of Ashur, he would not dare take the risk.”

“Then you will go?”

“Yes, of course. Who can say that some good
may not come of it?”

“All that will come of it is that you will
end the night a corpse in some ditch,” Selana jeered, as if
spitting the words at me. “You go only because it is your perverse
fancy to go. And because you cannot bear to think that your brother
might believe you are afraid of him.”

“Yes—there is something of that as well.”

I smiled at her, since I knew it would make
her even angrier. For this she threw a cooking pot at my head,
missing by only the width of a few fingers and almost leaving
nothing for Esarhaddon’s assassins to do.

Half an hour after sunset I began walking
toward Sidon’s main gate, making sure as I went along that no one
was following me—after all, Esarhaddon was not the only one I had
to fear, and the kings of besieged cities are naturally suspicious
of those who hold commerce with their besiegers. But I was not
followed, and when I reached the gate I found a horse tethered
beside the guard station. A door in the gate had been left slightly
ajar and no one challenged me when I led the horse through it. What
fate awaits the Sidonians, I found myself wondering, when their
lives are in the hands of soldiers whose vigilance can be bought as
easily as this?

I rode out into the darkness, now knowing
what I would find there.

There was the torchlight from the city wall
behind me, and in front, three or four hundred paces away, the
fires inside Esarhaddon’s camp flickered like sparks from a
grindstone. Between these all was darkness, but it was a clear
night and the moon was close to being full. I had no trouble
finding my way.

I had not gone very far before I could make
out a faint glimmer of light—someone had set an oil lamp on the
ground for me to find. When I approached I saw the outline of a man
behind the lamplight. His horse was tethered not far away. I knew
it was Esarhaddon even before I heard his voice.

“So you came,” he said. “I was beginning to
doubt that you would.”

I slid down from the back of my horse and dug
the point of the javelin I was carrying into the ground.

“I have come. But if you draw your sword or
cry out for help, I will kill you, Esarhaddon. This time I will not
stay my hand.”

“I am your king!”

He stepped forward a little, so that the
light fell across his face, and I saw that he was genuinely
shocked. Under the circumstances, I could only laugh.

“My king has turned his face against me—I
have no king, nor have I country, nor have I brother. And all of
this by your will. What claim can any man make to my loyalty, least
of all you? Do not speak to me of kings.”

My bitter speech died away into a silence
that seemed to last forever. We stood facing each other, and then,
slowly, a change came over my brother, a small thing, hardly
noticeable, something in the way he held himself which stated as
clearly as any words that he felt he was safe. I had lied. I would
never raise my hand against him, and he knew it.

“Yet I am still your king,” he said at last,
as if stating a neutral fact.

“What do you want, Esarhaddon?”

“Among other things, to know how you come to
be here, Tiglath—here, in this city, at this moment.”

“Chance.”

“I do not believe you.”

“Then because it is my
simtu
—the god’s
pleasure. Will you believe that?”

With his left hand, Esarhaddon made a
contemptuous gesture, as if sweeping away a cobweb.

“Then believe what you like,” I said. “It is
much the same to me.”

“I believe you conspire with Abdimilkutte. I
believe you encourage him in his rebellion and traitorously work
against me, you and Nabusharusur together—you did not think I knew
he was here with you?” He shook his head, as if disappointed in me.
“I knew.”

“Then, since you are so wise, there is
nothing I need tell you.”

“You conspire against me! Do you deny
it?”

“I deny nothing.”

Esarhaddon started to answer and then checked
himself. His was not a complicated mind, but he was not a fool and
knew that I was baiting him. He also knew I had not conspired with
his enemies—this was merely something he wished to believe.

“Yet you encourage this king to resist me,”
he said at last, narrowing his eyes as if to suggest he could see
into my heart.

“I do not need to encourage him. He does not
believe you can take his city—no one believes it.”

“I will take his city.” He bared his teeth in
a savage grin. “And when I have taken it, I will tear down its
walls and sack its temples. I will lead its people away into
bondage, and I will slay Abdimilkutte as if he were a dog caught
stealing scraps. I do not care if I wait outside its walls this
year.”

“You can have the city sooner than that,
sparing many lives and much trouble. Let Abdimilkutte keep his
throne—he cares for nothing else—and accept tribute.”

“Why do you speak thus, Tiglath? You know
that if this king surrenders to me he will deliver you into my
hands. Have you no fear of death?”

Esarhaddon cocked his head to one side and
folded his hands in front of him, as a man will who studies some
curious object that has come in his way. Thus he waited in silence,
perhaps actually expecting that I would answer him.

“My reasons are my own concern,” I said at
last. “If I can persuade Abdimilkutte to make submission, will you
spare the city?”

“I have stated my terms, and they have been
refused.” His face darkened as he spoke—I do not believe his anger
was directed against the Sidonese. “This place will be annihilated
so that men will forget it ever existed.”

“Then Nabusharusur will be very pleased, for
you will have given him all he could ask for. Did you know that I
saved his life at Khanirabbat? When the battle was over, I found
him hiding in a cleft of rock. I gave him my horse that he might
make good his escape.”

I do not know why I told Esarhaddon this, but
the effect was immediate. His hand went to the hilt of his sword,
and he would have drawn it to take my life if I had not pulled the
point of my javelin from the earth, reminding him that he lived at
my suffrage.

His hand dropped back to his side, but his
anger persisted.

“Then you are a traitor,” he said, hissing
the words. “For all that the army holds your memory in such honor,
blaming me that I sent you into exile, you are a traitor to the god
and to your own people.”

“Because I would not betray one brother to
another?” I laughed, yet it was a bitter sound. “If you believe
that, then command me, as my king, to open the city gates that the
men of Ashur may pour through them and conquer. You have but to
give the order, to say ‘Do this, out of the loyalty you owe me as
your sovereign master, though Abdimilkutte’s soldiers will surely
kill you for it.’ Why do you hesitate? Do you imagine I will not
obey? Only speak, Esarhaddon, and I will give over to you the
triumph you so crave.”

Yet he did not speak. He could not, for he
knew that if he spoke it must be as my king and I that would obey,
and he could not bring himself to accept victory from my dead hand.
He knew that when his own soldiers captured the city gates and
found my corpse—men who had fought with me against the Elamites,
the Scythians and the Medes—they would know the truth of everything
that had happened between us, and he would never be able to trust
them again.

At last, baffled, full of wrath he could not
utter, he turned from me to mount his horse, riding away into the
darkness.

Yet perhaps his silence was no more than
pride, the knowledge that he did not need me to breach the walls of
Sidon for him. He meant to send the men of Ashur over them, and he
would do it without my help.

For Esarhaddon, whatever his other
limitations, was a good commander. He was careful. He laid his
plans like a builder raising a house. He was a pious man who did
not presume on the favor of the gods but made his own good fortune.
And he knew what was required to storm a city.

At Babylon we had undermined the outer wall,
and Esarhaddon and I together had thrown the great Gate of Ishtar
open to our father’s army. Sidon was not Babylon—with the sea near,
the ground roundabout was too soft to allow for tunneling and,
besides, the wall had not been raised to so great a height. Here
the wall could be scaled. Men with ladders would stream over it
like water over a stick.