The Blood Star (48 page)

But not before the defenders had been reduced
almost to starvation. A wise hunter does not make a lion rise from
its dinner.

Therefore, Esarhaddon had hit upon a means of
closing the harbor. No other conclusion was possible.

Four days later, the Tyrians came in a
hundred ships—these the Sidonians could not simply slip between.
Only a madman would have dared putting to sea against them. The
city now felt my brother’s hand around its throat.

XX

Having suffered for such folly twenty years
before, in the reign of my father the Lord Sennacherib, the worthy
citizens of Tyre had not joined the rebellion against my brother. A
siege, as they had learned, was a troublesome and expensive
business and bad for trade. Besides, the kings of Ashur were not
celebrated for their forgiving natures and could be counted on to
take drastic revenge against any second defection. So instead, like
good men of business, they had decided that the greater profit lay
in paying the yearly tribute to Nineveh and, as a reward for adding
their weight toward the destruction of Sidon, being allowed to
inherit her commercial empire.

Thus the Tyrians, who cared only for money,
had allied themselves with my brother, who cared only for conquest
and glory, and between them they would leave Sidon a heap of
smoking ruins.

And Esarhaddon had struck this bargain before
his first sight of the city walls. He was a good soldier and
understood the value of fear and greed.

The effects of the Tyrian blockade were
drastic and immediate. Food simply disappeared from the bazaar
stalls, but men can go longer without food than without drink, and
within three days the price of water had shot up to ten silver
shekels a jar. Within five days the same price only purchased a
cup. By the tenth day people who had been driven mad with thirst
were hurling themselves head-first into the sea.

But it did not take as long as that before
angry mobs were throwing stones at the palace of Abdimilkutte,
cursing his name that he had brought this misery down upon
them.

“Listen to them!” he shouted at me—I had been
summoned by the king, and his soldiers had had to fight their way
through the crowds to escort me through the great cedar doors.
“What do they expect of me that I have not done, My Lord Tiglath? I
have sent messengers, bearing offers of surrender, and the king of
Ashur sends them back with their tongues cut out. You know him—he
must be brought to relent! I will give him gold—anything! He must
relent! I will. . .”

“He will not relent,” Nabusharusur said in a
placid voice. He even smiled, as if wonderfully satisfied with the
fact. Abdimilkutte turned on him like a cornered cat.

“You—all this is your fault! If I had not
listened to you. . .”

But he could not even finish, so choked with
wrath and terror had he become. Finally he sat down on his throne,
slumped over in defeat.

“The Lord Nabusharusur speaks the truth,” I
said. “Esarhaddon will not relent against you, but he may yet spare
the city. Throw open the gates.”

“It means your own death as well, Tiglath.
And the king’s. And mine.”

And still my eunuch brother smiled, making
one wonder what pleasure he found in the idea.

“No—there can be no thought of that!”
Abdimilkutte’s eyes bulged from his head. “I will not turn myself
over to have the skin stripped from my body. No!”

He waved us away, burying his face in his
other hand, and Nabusharusur walked with me to the palace
doors.

“Shall you need an escort home?” he asked.
“The mob is in an ugly mood.”

“No one notices me—all the city’s hatred is
directed against their king.”

“And rightly so, for who could not hate so
cowardly and self- indulgent a buffoon?” Nabusharusur’s smooth face
wrinkled in disgust. “Can you imagine, he still sets aside two
hundred jars of water a day for his gardens—in these times? The
greatness of kings!”

He laughed, contriving nonetheless to make no
sound.

“And Esarhaddon is no better. He is like a
little boy, angry because he cannot open a jar of dates. But you
hate him as much as I do—I can see it in your face. Perhaps you
have even more reason.”

“What reason do you have?”

Nabusharusur cocked his head a trifle to one
side and smiled, his own peculiar smile of contemptuous amusement
that I could be simpleton enough even to ask such a question.

“Ask me rather what reason I have for living.
It is not love, for I have been disqualified from that. Therefore
it must be hate.”

He watched me for a moment, his eyes
narrowing slightly, as if inviting me to disagree. But if he
expected some answer he would have to be disappointed, for what
answer was there? Answers meant nothing to someone like
Nabusharusur. Perhaps this was what he wished me to understand.

“Every life must have a purpose—mine is the
destruction of Esarhaddon. That is why he is here.”

“You think so? It is much more likely he will
destroy Sidon, and you with it.”

“And you, brother. Shall I tell him you are
here? He has spies in the city, so it would be a simple enough
matter.”

He smiled again, and then shook his head. Did
he know of my meeting with Esarhaddon? Who could say?

“No, Tiglath, I am not trying to frighten
you. A man must have two things before he can be frightened:
imagination and something to live for. We two both have the first,
but the second is mine alone. Esarhaddon took everything from you
when he took the throne—have you wandered so far through the world
without discovering that? Make your purpose mine, brother. I can
achieve it without you, but why deny yourself the satisfaction?
Help me to kill Esarhaddon.”

I do not know why I was surprised, yet for a
moment I was speechless. My mind raced, asking a thousand
questions, turning over a thousand possibilities.

“
I can achieve it without you,”
he had
said.
“Help me to kill Esarhaddon—I can achieve it without
you.”

Doubtless he could.

“You have a plan?” I asked finally.

The smile changed slightly, as if he knew he
had won.

“I have a plan. Of course I have a plan. With
your help, I can save the city, kill Esarhaddon, and put you in his
place. But only with your help. Otherwise I will only succeed in
killing Esarhaddon, and at the cost of my own life. The army still
loves you, Tiglath. They will accept Esarhaddon’s death if it is at
your hands.”

“The army has forgotten me—Esarhaddon is
king.”

“You could be.”

No, I could not. And Nabusharusur knew it. I
would perish, and he with me. And the army, in its wrath, would
sack the city and put every living creature within its walls to
death. But what was any of that to Nabusharusur, provided he
achieved his purpose?

“Tell me what you intend,” I said.

So he did. We walked down the stone
passageways of Abdimilkutte’s palace and Nabusharusur described to
me how I would kill Esarhaddon. They were both mad, my two
brothers, and between them they held me and the whole of Sidon
hostage.

“We must act now, Tiglath. We must kill
Esarhaddon. Abdimilkutte thinks of nothing but his own safety, so
we have no choice. If we hesitate, the whole city will perish.”

I left him at the doors, through which,
because of the crowd waiting before them and the soldiers’ quite
understandable fear that the palace might be overrun, I had to
squeeze like sap out of a tree.

I walked back towards the harbor district
through streets which, almost from one hour to the next, had taken
on the stricken appearance of a place from which all hope has fled.
The sides of houses were streaked with dirt because people had
begun digging up their flower gardens to eat the bulbs. I could not
remember how many days it had been since last I had heard a dog
bark—they had all been chased down and eaten as soon as the Tyrians
blockaded the harbor. The odors of cooking had disappeared, even
the smell of excrement. Except to search for food, of which there
was none, people stayed indoors and starved quietly.

It was the quiet which was most oppressive.
Hunger begins in pain and ends in lethargy, so that even the
children stop crying. Abdimilkutte need not have worried—the mob
outside his palace would end by returning to their homes and
staying in them. And a man whose lips are cracked with thirst has
no voice to shout his anger.

What would be the conclusion of all this?
Would the soldiers of Ashur storm the wall or would the citizens
merely open the gates to them, begging for a last sip of water
before offering their throats to be cut?

And was it possible I could prevent such an
outcome by so simple an expedient as murdering Esarhaddon?

“The guards will not attempt to prevent your
leaving the city,” Nabusharusur had said. “I will see to it that
you are given a horse, and then you need only ride into camp and
kill him. His men, down to the commonest soldier, are sick of him.
They will welcome you as their hero and liberator. No one will
interfere, for you are still a royal prince and your person is
sacred. Even Esarhaddon himself will hesitate. At first he will
only want to know what you intend—he will suspect no danger. That
is your great advantage, Tiglath. He hates you, but he has never
learned not to trust you.”

It was all lies. Nabusharusur did not even
believe it himself. Esarhaddon was king in the Land of Ashur, and I
was forgotten—it had been four years.

And the army would show no mercy if their
king was murdered. Their revenge would be terrible. No stone would
be left standing upon another, and there would be such slaughter as
would make the gods weep. I would not be the only one to perish,
merely the first. Sidon and all who dwelt within her walls would
become a memory. This is what Nabusharusur was hoping for. He knew
he was doomed, but he planned a more general destruction. He wanted
the world to be blotted out with him.

But I could not oblige. Even if it had all
been true, even if I could have saved Sidon and raised myself to
glory as king in the Land of Ashur, Esarhaddon was my
brother—whatever else he had become or made himself, he was still
my brother, and I could not forget the love I bore him. If he razed
Sidon to the ground and put her people to the sword, it was not in
me to rob him of his life.

Yet it was for their sake that I had also to
stop Nabusharusur from taking it.
“I can achieve it without
you,”
he had said. I believed him. No one is safe from the man
who despairs of living, who does not care if he lives or not.

Before returning to the tavern where I
occupied rooms, I went down to the great stone quay that guarded
the entrance to the city’s harbor. Perhaps a hundred of the swift
little Sidonian merchant ships and many smaller craft were trapped
there, lying at anchor, deserted. Across the water, obscured by
distance and the dancing sunlight, I could just distinguish the
sails of the Tyrian fleet scattered across the horizon. These tiny
vessels, seemingly numberless but each guided by its own will,
cruised back and forth, back and forth, tacking into the sea
breezes to keep from being run aground among the maze of channels
nearer to shore. They were the net that held us all inside.

But the net was fragile, for the Tyrians,
drifting over the empty water, could not bring their strength to
bear on one spot with any speed. A spider’s web might be useful to
catch a few flies, but before the hawk it breaks like a shadow.

Why had a thing so obvious not occurred to me
before?

I hurried back to the tavern and found
Kephalos.

“Can you buy a ship?” I asked. For a moment
he only stared at me, the expression on his face somewhere between
pity and wonder.

“Yes—yes, of course,” he stammered out at
last. “If a man is fool enough to buy that which is of use to no
one, who would refuse to sell it to him? The harbor is full of
ships I can buy for a cup of fresh water. Yet—Dread Lord—the
Tyrians. . . What would you want with a ship?”

“Buy us a ship, Kephalos. Find one that runs
like the wind and is large enough to carry us across the sea to
Greece.”

He grabbed my arm, his eyes wild with
hope.

“Is that what it will do, Master?”

“Perhaps. If the gods favor us.”

He needed to hear no more. We went in search
of Selana and Enkidu and found them together, sitting in the shade
of the withered garden. I explained my intentions.

“We will all go with Kephalos,” I told them.
“But when I leave, Enkidu, you and Selana must stay with him on
board and wait for me to return. I charge you, my friend, let no
one else come near. At all costs, stay with the ship and guard it
with your life. If you fail in this, by tomorrow we will all be
feeding the crows.”

He nodded, once. I knew he understood and
would show neither weakness nor mercy.

The ship was a merchant craft obviously built
to gratify someone’s private whim. She was perhaps forty cubits in
length and no more than twelve through the waist—too narrow to hold
much cargo—and her great square sail could catch enough wind almost
to lift her out of the water. I doubted if she had been profitable,
but I could not doubt she was fast.

When everyone else was aboard, I untied the
ropes that held her to the wharf and set her adrift.

“In two hours we will have the land winds,” I
said to Kephalos. “Keep away from the wharf, or before very long
you may have enough people clambering on board to swamp her. If I
am not back when the time comes, leave without me.”

He nodded, his heavy face puckered with
anxiety. I watched him cast off from the stone pier and then turned
and left, heading back towards Abdimilkutte’s palace. I had almost
broken into a run by the time I reached the end of the wharf. My
heart was pounding in my ears like a war drum as I thought, There
is just time, before my meeting with Nabusharusur. . .