Nine White Horses (23 page)

They took away her wedding garments but left the ornaments,
and set her in the midst of the bed. They shook her hair out of all its plaits
and combed the shining waves of it. Then they anointed her with sweet oils and
bowed low before her and left her there, alone, to wait for the coming of the
king.

She had hoped as a coward might, that he would lose himself
in the pleasures of food and drink and lively company. But he had not forgotten
why he celebrated the feast. He came as soon as he reasonably could. The sun
had barely left the sky; it was still light beyond the walls. The king’s men
would carry on until dawn, but he had come to take what he had bargained for.

He was clean—that much she could grant him. He took no care
for her pleasure, but neither did he cause her pain. He seemed not to notice
that she lay still, unresponsive, while he kissed and fondled her. It was
enough for him to possess her.

He was easily pleased. When he had had his fill of her, he
dropped like a stone.

She eased herself away from his sleeping bulk. Her body was
as cold as her heart. She wrapped it in one of the coverlets and crouched in
the far corner of the bed, knees drawn up, and waited for the dawn.

o0o

With the coming of the day, Lugalbanda found the gates
open and the way clear, as the captain of guards had promised. The caravan was
drawn up, and his men were waiting. But the god of chariots was nowhere to be
seen.

Lugalbanda was not in the least surprised. He called on the
men he trusted most, who were his friends and kinsmen—five of them, armed with
bronze. With them at his back, he went hunting the god.

The temple was empty, the forge untended. Its fires were
cold. The god was gone. None of the king’s servants would answer when Lugalbanda
pressed them, and the king himself was indisposed. Still it was abundantly
clear that the king of Aratta had not honored his bargain.

The god could have gone rather far, if he had been taken
before the wedding feast. The gates were still open, the guards having had no
orders to shut them. Lugalbanda stood torn. Go or stay? Take what he could and
escape while he could, or defend the goddess against the man to whom she had
bound herself?

He knew his duty, which was to Uruk. She was a goddess; he
should trust her to look after herself. And yet it tore at his vitals to leave
her alone in this city of strangers.

He did the best he could, which was to send the men he
trusted most to stand guard over her door. They would take orders only from the
goddess, and defend her with their lives if need be. “Let her know what the
king has done,” he said to them. “Do whatever she bids you—but if she tries to
send you away, tell her that you are bound by a great oath to guard her person
until she should be safe again in Uruk.”

They bowed. They were hers as he was; they did not flinch
from the charge he laid upon them.

He had done as much as he might in Aratta. He turned his
back on it and faced the world in which, somewhere, the god of chariots might
be found.

o0o

The king slept long past sunrise. Inanna, who had not
slept at all, was up at first light. She called for a bath. When it came, she
scrubbed herself until her skin was raw. The servants carefully said nothing.

When she was dressed, as one of the servants was plaiting
her hair, a young woman slipped in among the rest and busied herself with some
small and carefully unobtrusive thing. She had bold eyes and a forthright
bearing, but she was somewhat pale. Her hands trembled as she arranged and
rearranged the pots of paint and unguents.

Inanna stopped herself on the verge of calling the girl to
her. If she had wanted to be singled out, she would have come in more openly.

It seemed a very long time before Inanna’s hair was done.
The servants lingered, offering this ornament or that, but in a fit of pique
that was only partly feigned, she sent them all away.

The young woman hung back, but Inanna had no patience to
spare for shyness—whatever its source. “Tell me,” she said.

The girl’s fingers knotted and unknotted. Just as Inanna
contemplated slapping the words out of her, she said, “Lady, before I speak,
promise me your protection.”

“No one will touch you unless I will it,” Inanna said. “What
is your trouble? Is it one of my men? Did he get you with child?”

The girl glared before she remembered to lower her eyes and
pretend to be humble. “With all due and proper respect, lady,” she said, “if my
trouble were as small as that, I would never be vexing you with it. Did you
know that there are five men of Uruk outside your door, refusing to shift for
any persuasion? Did you also know that the god of chariots has not been seen
since before your wedding?”

Inanna had not known those things. The unease that had kept
her awake had been formless; prescience had failed her. And yet, as the servant
spoke, she knew a moment of something very like relief—as if a storm that had
long been threatening had suddenly and mercifully broken. “Where have they
taken him?” she asked.

“I don’t know, lady,” the servant said. “But I do know that
most of your men went to find him. I also know—” She stopped to draw a breath.
However bold she was, this frightened her. “I know that the king means no good
to Uruk. He wants—needs—its wealth and its caravans of grain, but he would
rather own it than buy it. Now that he has you, he’ll seize the opportunity to
make a state visit to your brother the king. If he happens to come attended by
a sizable force, well then, isn’t that an escort proper to a royal embassy? And
if while he plays the guest in Uruk, your brother happens to meet an
unfortunate accident . . .”

Inanna’s hand lashed out and seized the girl by the throat. “Tell
me why I should believe you. Tell me why I should not let my men have you, to
do with as they will.”

The girl was not the sort to be struck dumb by terror. Her
eyes, lifting to meet Inanna’s, held more respect than fear. “Because, lady,
you know what a woman can hear if she sets herself to listen. The king never remembers
that women have ears. I heard him boasting to one of his cousins. He swore by
the gods of the heights that the god of chariots will never leave Aratta. But
chariots will come to Uruk, armed for war.”

However painful the truth might be, Inanna could not help
but see it. The long levels of the river country were far better suited to the
passage of swift battle-cars than these mountain valleys. They offered room for
greater armies, faster charges, more devastating invasions. Aratta’s king with
his perpetual hunger would crave what he could gain with an army of chariots.
And now he had free passage through the gates of Uruk by his marriage to its
living goddess.

She did not berate herself for a fool. Her choice had been
well enough taken. The king’s might be less so.

“You have my protection,” she said to the girl, “on one
condition. Tell me the truth. Who are you and what is your grudge against the
king?”

The girl flushed, then paled. Inanna thought she might bolt,
but she lifted her chin instead and said, “My father was lord of a hill-fort
that had been built above a mine of silver. The king sent envoys to him, who
made bargains and failed to keep them. Now my father is dead and my brothers
labor in the mines, and I was to be the king’s concubine—except that you came,
and he forgot that I existed.”

There was truth in that, a passion that Inanna could not
mistake. She laid her hand on the girl’s bowed head. The girl flinched but held
her ground. “You are mine,” she said. “Your life and honor are in my keeping.
Go now and be watchful. Bring me word of any new treachery.”

lnanna’s new servant bowed to the floor. In an instant she
was up and gone, with a brightness in her like the flash of sun on a new-forged
blade.

Inanna stood where the girl had left her. She knew what she
must do. In her heart’s wisdom she had already begun it, in making herself
beautiful for the man who came shambling through the door, ruffled and stinking
with sleep, wanting her again and with no vestige of ceremony. She suffered him
as she had before, but more gladly now. Her purpose was clearer, her duty more
immediate. In a little while, all bargains would be paid.

o0o

Lugalbanda found the god of chariots near a hill-fort a
day’s journey from Aratta. There was a mine below the fort, and a forge in it,
to which the god was chained. His guards were strong, but Lugalbanda’s were
stronger—and they had unexpected aid: the slaves in the forge rose up and
turned on their masters. The last of them died on Lugalbanda’s spear, full at
the feet of the god of chariots.

The god stood motionless in the midst of the carnage. He had
an axe in his hand and a great bear of a man sprawled at his feet. The man’s
head had fallen some little distance from his body. Lugalbanda knew him even in
livid death: he had been the captain of the king’s guard.

The god’s face was perfectly still. Only his eyes were
alive. They burned with nothing resembling love for the men who had brought him
to this captivity.

One of the freed slaves broke his chains with swift, sure
blows. He walked out of them over the bodies of the slain, refusing any arm or
shoulder that was offered. When he had passed through the gate into the open
air, he let his head fall back for a moment and drank in the sunlight.

They had brought the god’s horses, which some of Lugalbanda’s
men had reckoned madness, but Lugalbanda had trusted the urging of his heart.
He had only and deeply regretted that they could not drag or carry a chariot up
the mountain tracks. The god would have one with him, he had hoped, or would
find the means to make one.

But the god needed no chariot. He took the rein of the
nearer horse, caught a handful of mane, and pulled himself onto the broad dun
back.

The horse tossed its head and danced. The men of Uruk stood
gaping. The god swept them with his green glare. “Follow as close as you can,”
he said. With no more word than that, he wheeled the horse about and gave it
its head.

o0o

The king was dizzied, dazzled, besotted. He lolled in the
tumbled bed, reeking of wine and sweat and musk. Inanna rose above him. He
leered at her, groping for her breasts.

She drove the keen bronze blade between his ribs, thrusting
up beneath the breastbone, piercing the pulsing wall of the heart. It was a
good blade. The god had made it, her servant said when she brought it, hidden
in a bolt of linen from the caravan. It slipped through the flesh with deadly
ease.

The king did not die prettily. Inanna had not wished him to.
When his thrashing had stopped, when he had gaped and voided and died, she drew
the blade from his heart and wiped it clean on the coverlets. Still naked, still
stained with his blood, she walked out to face the people of Aratta.

o0o

The sun was setting in blood and the cold of night coming
down when the god rode through the gate of the city. His horse’s thick coat was
matted with sweat, but the beast was still fresh enough to dance and snort as
it passed beneath the arch.

The god rode from the outer gate to the inner and into the
citadel, and up to the hall. Inanna waited there, seated on the king’s throne,
with the bronze dagger on her knee, still stained with the king’s blood. His
body was her footstool.

She was wrapped in the lionskin that had been the king’s
great vaunt and the mark of his office. The king’s body was wrapped in nothing
at all. The five men of Uruk guarded them both, the living and the dead, but
there was no defiance in Aratta, not before the wrath of a goddess.

She knew that she could expect treachery—she had braced for
it, made such plans as she could against it. But the coming of the god of
chariots had shocked them all into stillness.

His wrath was the mirror of her own. The marks on him told
the cause of it. He had been taken and bound and forced to serve a mortal will.
And she had robbed him of his revenge.

She offered him no apology. She had done what she must. He
saw that: his eyes did not soften, but his head bent the merest fraction.

“The great gods bless your return,” she said to him. “Have
you seen my men? They were hunting you.”

“They found me, lady,” he said. “They set me free. I bade
them follow as quickly as they could. They’ll be here by morning.”

“So they will,” she said, “if Lugalbanda leads them.” And
tonight, she was careful not to say, she would have five men and a god to guard
her, and a city that watched and waited for the first sign of weakness.

She would hold, because she must. The king’s body at her
feet, his unquiet spirit in the hall, were more protection than an army of
living men.

She rose. She was interested to see how many of the king’s
court and council flinched, and how many watched her with keen speculation.

The god spoke before she could begin. His voice was soft,
almost gentle. He was naming names. With each, the man who belonged to it came
forward. They were young men, most of them; she remembered some of their faces
horn the field of chariots. These were his charioteers. There were a good
half-hundred of them, many of whom advanced before he could speak their names,
coming to stand beside her loyal few.

They were a fair army when they were all gathered,
surrounding her in ranks as if they were ordered for a march, with the god on
his horse in the midst of them. He smiled at her, a remarkably sweet smile, and
said, “Hail the queen of Aratta.”

“Hail,” said the men whom he had summoned to her defense. “Hail
the queen, lady and goddess, the glory of Aratta.”

o0o

“A bargain is a bargain,” Inanna said as they stood on the
field of chariots, outside the walls of Aratta. A keen wind was blowing, with a
memory of winter in it still, but spring softened it with the scent of flowers.
“Uruk still needs Aratta—and I’ve made myself queen of it. Now my brother can
trust that he will have the means to fight the Martu.”