The Assyrian (24 page)

“Yes, I—Tiglath Ashur, who stood against the
Elamites at Khalule and have killed better men than you or any of
your tribe, even though any man of Ashur could crush a maggot under
his heel and claim as much. Have you come to beg the king’s pardon?
Have you gathered up your cooking pots?”

“The land here is fertile.” The heavy one
smiled. It meant nothing; it was as unconscious with him as
sweating. “We might choose to stay, on terms. We are a mighty
people, and the king in Nineveh might welcome us as allies. .
.”

“The king, who is king here as well as in
Nineveh, welcomes you as nothing except food for the crows. Do not
speak to me of terms—you have heard his terms. The Land of Ashur
can be nothing to you except a place to lay down your bones, so pay
your tribute and depart.”

I had let my anger rise but not my voice. I
must not be a boy now. I must not dishonor land and king by losing
my temper in front of wandering thieves who knew no king and
thought of land as simply a thing to pick loose from their horses’
hoofs. But I was angry. I was angry because I was afraid, and that
because I had seen their cooking fires spread out across the plain
like flowers after the spring rain. I had come here with less than
four hundred men and, judging from the size of their encampment,
they could probably field near to a thousand. I was not wrong to be
afraid, but I spoke now with my father’s voice.

“And if we choose not to depart? What will
your king do then, mighty warrior?”

Their mighty warrior grinned back at me, the
scar in his face crinkling like old leather.

“Then he will visit upon you death and the
miseries of slavery, so that death will seem a blessing to those
who survive.”

“You threaten eloquently, hero.”

“More to the point, I do not threaten
idly.”

All at once we seemed to have nothing more to
say to one another. After a sullen silence lasting perhaps a
quarter of a minute I summoned the guard who was stationed outside
the tent entrance.

“Yes, Prince?”

My two principal inquisitors exchanged a
glance, the heavy one raising his eyebrows in surprise, but this
was not the time for formal introductions, so I gave them no
notice.

“Provide our guests with safe passage back to
their own lines—doubtless they will welcome the chance to kiss
their wives and children one last time.”

I stood at the edge of the camp with my
ekalli, who had fought with me at Khalule, watching the three
emissaries ride away over the empty plain until even the dust
raised by their horses’ hoofs had disappeared, and all the time I
kept thinking that by this time tomorrow the same earth would be
covered with dead and dying men. We turned to each other and he
shrugged his shoulders, as if to say, well, that, at least, is
done.

“They are many,” he said, gesturing with his
arm toward the horizon as if the Uqukadi were as numerous as a
horde of locusts. “And I hear tell they are not cowards either. We
will have our bread to earn tomorrow, Prince.”

“Let them be beyond counting and each as
brave as lions, but when the time comes each will fight for himself
alone. A rabble is never any match for a disciplined army,
Lushakin. Never fear—we came here to conquer, not to perish.”

I went back to my tent. The day was dying and
I wanted to be alone.

In my first great battle I fought as a common
soldier, and in my second as sole commander. I must say that my
second night before a day of death and suffering was even harder,
if such a thing is possible, than the first. I knew that if we lost
tomorrow, my corpse would surely be among those left to rot in the
sun, but what plagued me was the thought of all the others who
would lie around me, whom I would have led to destruction. To die
is terrible enough, but to fail. . . If it should fall out that
way, then I would count it a blessing that I had found my simtu
here in the land that bore me.

I did not so much as try to sleep that night.
There was no Nargi Adad this time to pour strong Babylonian beer
down my throat, so I was defenseless prey to my own thoughts and
did not even trouble to lie down. All night I fought the coming
battle over and over again in my mind, trying to see everything
from the enemy’s angle of vision that I might find that spot where
my tactics could be defeated. And all around me slept men who would
never sleep again save in the arms of death. Those hours were not
pleasant for me, and I both feared and hoped that the dawn would
never come.

But it did come. The sun, great Ashur’s
burning disk, broke out over the eastern mountains to drive away
the mist from the cold, snow patched ground, and all around me the
camp stirred into life. I could hear the clink of metal upon metal
and the muffled sound of many low voices even before I left my
tent. Men huddled around cooking fires as they finished their
breakfast or, like good workmen, made ready their tools against the
day’s toil. I have heard generals say that they despised their men,
but I have never understood such words, for soldiers, for the most
part, are brave and unpretentious souls with all the simple,
straightforward virtues of humble people who must work and struggle
to live. I loved my men that morning. Even though many or perhaps
most of them were older than I, I loved them with a father’s love
and my heart sorrowed for all that they must suffer in the hours
ahead.

My plan was very simple. Two companies of
infantry, in diamond-shaped formations that they could defend
themselves from attack from every side, would march on the enemy
camp. The Uqukadi would attack them with their full force—at least
such was my hope—for if they did not stop us on open ground, away
from their tents, their livestock, and their families, they would
lose all. When the battle was fully joined I would commit the
remaining company of infantry and also my one contingent of
cavalry, these from opposite sides, from the left and from the
right, that they might flank the enemy and harry him from many
directions at once. It was not a plan displaying much strategic
genius. I was not depending on genius. My hopes were pinned on the
new iron spears, that they would stop the Uqukadi horsemen, that
what had seemed to work on the parade ground at Nineveh would work
here, and on the discipline and bravery of my men.

I had drilled these men until they cursed my
name, until their wives and children cursed me. I could only hope
now that it had been enough. We had all fought together before, and
I knew them as soldiers and trusted them. If we failed, the blame
would lie with their commander, not with them. I would have it all
to myself.

I went back to my tent to fetch my javelin. I
would not fight beside them this time, so I would not need it, but
I felt better for holding it in my hand.

As the sun mounted, turning the pink sky
white, the companies gathered in battle ranks and my officers came
to me for their final orders. We spoke in murmurs among ourselves
and then I stood up on the tongue of a supply wagon to address the
soldiers. My heart seemed lodged in my throat like an apple
swallowed whole.

“You all know what is expected of you,” I
shouted—there was a low wind that seemed to carry my voice away
into nothing. “I will not tell you to fight with courage, for you
will do that without any orders from me. But I will tell you to
fight with care. They are many and we are few, but they will fight
like a mob where we will fight like what we are, the army of
Ashur—disciplined, moving and thinking as one man. This battle
depends not on any one of us, but on us all. So keep ranks, and
tonight it will not be our bodies strewn over the fields like
fallen leaves. Good hunting!”

I do not know if it was what they wanted to
hear, but they cheered me anyway, after the fashion of soldiers. I
only know it was not what was in my belly to say, but I could never
have said that. I would not have known where to find the words.

It is a strange thing to watch at a distance
as the battle you have set in motion unfolds. Strange, and
uncomfortable. Men whose names I knew, whose children I had seen
playing in the street, were so small and far away that I could not
tell one from another. It was all so abstract, like a game of war
played on a checkered board with soldiers carved from wood, and yet
on this hung so much—my life, the lives of my men; perhaps,
someday, even the fate of Ashur’s empire. I sat upon a camp stool
on a bluff overlooking the field, surrounded by a few officers and
the dozen or so runners who would carry my orders to the men below,
and I cursed this life I had chosen for myself as I learned what
every commander learns soon enough, that the power over life and
death does not rest well on the shoulders of mere mortals.

The two diamond shaped formations trudged
across the plain of crushed and yellow grass. I could see the dust
raised by their sandals, but at first they hardly seemed to move at
all. Their iron spears were invisible to my eye. I watched them as
the enemy watched them and tried to imagine how they must look to
them. They had crossed almost to the middle of the field before the
first Uqukadi horsemen showed themselves, their swords flashing in
the sunlight.

The men did well—many a horse pitched over on
its side like a pig slipping on ice. They did not waste their
arrows, my bowmen, but waited until they could be sure. The Uqukadi
had a sea of cavalry, but I doubt if more than half their riders
lived even to come near our lines. And those who did had a nasty
surprise waiting for them as the bristling iron spears dropped into
place. Horses reared in panic at the sight of them, trampling the
men they had carried or leaving them behind to die with a javelin
between their shoulder blades.

It was working.

Once, twice, three times the infantry raised
their spears and ran forward, never breaking formation, then
dropped the spears again so that the archers and throwers within
could rain down death upon the enemy. I saw a few uniformed bodies
lying on the ground, but not many. And the Uqukadi—those who
lived—were baffled. Their cavalry was almost useless to them,
adding only to the growing numbers of their dead. The plan was
working.

“Send in the third company.”

“And the cavalry, Prince?”

“No—hold them back. When the time comes, they
will make the final assault. They are not needed now.”

Suddenly there was nothing left for me to do
but watch the ensuing carnage.

By midday, all was over. Those enemy horsemen
who could, fled. Those who could not, and would not surrender, were
cut down. It was hardly an hour after noon when I mounted my horse
and rode into the midst of the Uqukadi encampment.

A few dogs barked, but there was no other
sound. I saw no one, but that did not mean they were not there.
Women and children and men who had been brave all their lives
cowered inside the tents, watching me as I looked about me at the
chaos of wrecked cooking fires and abandoned weapons. They knew
what awaited a beaten enemy, yet none dared raise a hand against me
or any of my soldiers.

“Round them up,” I said, leaning over my
horse’s neck to speak to Lushakin, who looked about him in
astonishment—it seemed almost too easy. “Herd them together like
cattle. Kill any who resist. Guard them, but do not make a great
point of it; we do not want to seem to be afraid of beaten men. Let
them wait for a while. Let them have time to wonder what we plan to
do with them. Collect their horses, then feed our troops and allow
them to rest. They have earned it. But maintain tight
discipline—let there be no looting. I will deal with our prisoners
after I have eaten.”

In the twelfth hour of the day, as the sun
began to turn to blood, I rode out to the barren spot where what
was left of the Uqukadi huddled in a great circle, packed together
like dates in a jug. As I approached, the whole multitude dropped
to their knees and pressed their faces into the dirt, for their
hour of judgment was upon them and they were filled with fear. I
let them wait as I kept my mount, my horse snorting and scratching
at the earth with its hoofs as if even a dumb beast could sense
what must now come.

There might have been near to two thousand
souls there, waiting for me to speak the words that for them would
mean life or death. Most of them seemed to be women. Their men were
either carrion or had fled—I would guess that something like seven
hundred of the Uqukadi warriors had fallen that day, leaving their
women and children and the old men to pay the price for their
pointless courage.

“Stand up! Hear my sentence.”

They rose from their knees, these people,
their faces gray and defeated, their eyes on the ground. The women
gathered their children behind their full skirts that I might not
see them. The men looked as if they could already feel the sword
across their necks.

“I want your leaders, your great men—all of
them. I want them here at my feet within the tenth part of an hour,
or I will burn your bodies with fire and your children will die in
chains. You will turn them over to me yourselves, and your time is
slipping away!”

They did not make me wait long. Within
minutes, twenty men in the blue tunics and black vests that were
the badges of their eminence had been forced to the front, cast out
from the circle of their followers who wanted only to avoid the
full weight of dread Ashur’s vengeance. They fell on their faces
before me, although they must have guessed that nothing could save
their lives. In an instant my soldiers were standing around them,
their swords drawn.

“You and you!” I shouted to two men from my
old company. “Run into the dog kennel these people call a camp and
find an ax and something we can use for a chopping block. Be quick
about it—it is impolite to keep such distinguished persons
waiting.”