The Assyrian (48 page)

But I had no time to think of Gadi. I was
alone now, the floor of the car shaking beneath my feet as I reined
in the fury of two horses half mad with the frenzy of war. I
understood how they felt. I could feel it myself—I could feel
nothing else, nothing but that all consuming mingling of fear and
exultation which is a warrior’s passion. I was the god himself,
Adad the Thunderer. I would deal out death, stripping men of their
lives.

“Ashur is King!” I shouted. The cry broke
from my lips, as if of its own will. “Ashur is King! Ashur is
King!” The pounding hoofs really were like thunder—I felt as if I
might kill the world. “Ashur is King!”

A Scythian bowman slowed his horse to take
aim at me, but he waited just an instant too long. I turned in on
him and ran him down, my wheel blades leaving him and his mount
gutted on the field like a brace of pigs. Another, close behind
him, drew out from my path. Then, from the side, he began to bear
down on me, the arrow already seated in his bow, but to me he too
was already a dead man. I took the reins in one hand—I felt strong
enough for that, strong enough for anything—lifted my javelin, and
threw. My aim was certain, and the man slid out of his saddle,
trying with both hands but all in vain to pull the javelin from his
breast, even as he died.

Back and forth I tore across the field,
raising a plume of dust that might have been fire. The Scythian
horsemen could not keep to their formations—soon they were swarming
about aimlessly, clumped up together like bees, and then, as the
massed arrows from our battle squares began to take their toll,
that grassy meadow quickly turned into a killing field.

But they would not give ground. The
Scythians, their backs to the river, fighting for their livestock
and the safety of their families, charged us over and over, vainly
attempting to drive us off. They were foolish in their stubborn
valor—what chance had they?—but their valor was still a sight in
men’s eyes. The ground was covered with their dead, but they would
not stop. At close range our javelins killed them, at a distance
our flights of arrows that seemed to block out the sun. Over and
over again they would charge on our battle squares, and over and
over again they would fall like sparks from a grinding wheel, their
light dying as they dropped away. As they tried to regroup, our
chariots would scatter them—or drive them together in confused
masses, entangled like barley husks.

They would not yield. They seemed to disdain
yielding—and their disdain brought down upon them a great
slaughter.

As the sun rose toward noon, the battle,
which was now within two arrow flights of the Scythian camp,
changed its character. As a man loses the giddy excitement of youth
and enters into his sober, steady middle age, so our fight, no
longer a contest of equals, settled into the grim, joyless,
dangerous business of dealing out death. To stay alive oneself and
to kill the enemy—these were the only thoughts in anyone’s mind.
And it was a labor, a bitter toil. My horses’ sides were lathered
with sweat, and my arms ached.

“Let this end,” I thought to myself. “Let
this madness have an end.”

I drove down on the enemy, knowing no pity,
tearing men’s lives from them, that they might stop. That they
might fall back and let me show them some mercy.

And at last, when we were almost within reach
of their wagons and their cooking fires, the Scythians—some of
them—withdrew a little that they might begin the work of retreating
across the river and saving what they could. The others drove at us
all the harder, and the noise of battle grew shrill in our ears.
But it was ending—at last it was ending.

It was when I was circling around to make
ready for another charge that I chanced to glance down at the
ground and saw, lying on his back in the long grass, the corpse of
my driver. Gadi, whose mother would never look on him again, stared
up at me with glazed, unseeing eyes—I had almost forgotten his
existence.

I stopped for an instant, letting the horses
stand, their ribs wheezing in and out like the sides of a bellows,
and Gadi’s eyes seemed to hold me. “Did you not care at all?” they
seemed to say. “Did you not even notice? I am dead. I am dust, and
you have forgotten me.” I felt such remorse as if I had killed him
myself, and then a terrible, wild, mindless anger. They would pay
for this, these savages. I would have just a few more die to follow
this boy into Arallu. I lashed at the horses and the chariot
lurched forward, gathering speed as the wheels whined like
dogs.

It was then that the arrow struck me in the
back.

. . . . .

The battle ended very quickly after that.
When I saw that the Scythians were in full retreat, I gave orders
that our advance should stop. We stood on the field, which was now
ours, and watched them hurry such of their wagons and animals as
they could over the Bohtan River to safety. There was no reason to
pursue them—they had lost men and horses almost without number, and
I had no inclination to preside over a massacre.

As long as the enemy was within sight, no one
saw that I was wounded. As soon as I knew I had been hit—there was
no pain at first; all I felt was the impact, as if a friend had
clapped me on the back—I reached around and broke off the shaft,
throwing it away without even looking at it. Now even the finger’s
length of wood that stuck out from beneath my shoulder blade was
hidden underneath my cloak. Surrounded by my officers, my chariot
drawn to a halt, I watched as this victory of mine came to
completion. I said but little and stood quite still, for I could
feel the point of the arrow scraping against bone with almost every
breath I drew.

It was an agony to wait there like that—the
arrow point burned in my flesh, and I was sweating with pain. I
could feel the blood dripping down underneath my corselet. I stood
with my knees locked and one hand on the wheel of my chariot to
steady me, watching for the last Scythian rider to quit the field.
The wounding of a commander can cause panic among his men, and is
at the very least a distraction and a danger. I could wait. Let
these soldiers of Ashur have their triumph, let them joy in it at
least a little, before they knew.

“Rab Shaqe, there is blood running down your
leg. Rab Shaqe, what is. . ?

I could hardly hear him, he sounded so far
away. I turned to see who had spoken but the light seemed to die in
my eyes.

“I am not—that is. . .”

I suppose I must have fainted, for the next I
knew I was lying face down on a makeshift stretcher and being
carried back to camp. I did not relish the journey—with every step
what was left of the arrow’s point seemed to push its way deeper
into my back.

In the middle of the afternoon, lying on a
cot in my tent, I was trying very hard to become drunk while the
cook, who, one presumed, knew more about slicing meat than most
men, was heating up his knife in a brazier, preparing to cut the
arrowhead out from beneath my shoulder blade, where it seemed to be
lodged. I was not looking forward to the operation, and neither was
he.

“Just be sure that you are quick,” I told
him—he looked as if he could have used a little wine himself, but
it seemed best to wait until he was finished. “Cut deep, pluck the
thing out with your forceps, and sear the wound closed behind you.
You needn’t worry—no blame will attach to you, no matter what
happens. But please, once you begin, do not be timid.”

“Yes, Rab Shaqe, I will. . . Yes, Rab
Shaqe”

We waited quietly, he and I, watching the
iron blade, which was half buried in the coals, turn dark red.

“Look what we have found for you, Rab
Shaqe—is he not a pretty bird?”

The flap of my tent was open, and through it
sailed—and I use the word advisedly, for I do not think his feet
touched the ground until he fell over on his face—what at first I
took to be a dead body. I was very annoyed; I did not appreciate
that sort of joke. And then I saw that the man’s hands were tied
behind his back and that he was struggling to get up.

Three soldiers were standing just outside. I
recognized one of them as the ekalli Girittu, his face streaked
with dust but grinning proudly.

“We found him among the dead. He must have
fallen from his horse and knocked his head against a rock, because
he came to while we were practically standing on him—we were
engaged in a little looting, as you no doubt can understand, Rab
Shaqe. A man must have something to show for his day’s work. Look
at all the gold on him! We think he must be some sort of king.”

As if to illustrate his point, Girittu
stepped inside the tent and pulled the man upright so that he
rested on his knees and I could see the front of his heavy
coat—which was covered with round gold spangles, each sewn onto the
fabric and about the size of a child’s fist. Clearly this was
someone of importance.

“Look at the gash in his leg, Rab Shaqe. We
marched him straight up here and he never so much as stumbled. You
have to give them that—these Scythians are not women.”

Yes, his leg did have a hole in it, just
above the knee. He looked as if a javelin must have found him.
Fortunately for him—or unfortunately, depending on what I decided
to do with him—he had not bled to death, but it must have been a
painful wound. Waiting for the cook’s knife to heat up, I could
sympathize.

This was the first of the enemy I had seen up
close—or, at least, had the leisure to study, since I had been
close enough to more than just a few that day—and I was interested.
I had never seen a man who looked quite like this one. His face was
a reddish color such as one sees in the faces of those who have
been burned by the wind, only darker. But the extraordinary thing
about him was not the color of his face but its shape—his
cheekbones were high up and very pronounced, and his eyes were
slanted, hardly more than slits. It struck me at once that he
looked like nothing in the world so much as a cat, an impression
heightened by his thin beard, hardly more than a few long black
strands over his lips and chin, like a cats whiskers. I wondered
where under the sun these people could have come from that they had
such faces—what place grew men like this?

This one looked as if he might have been
between thirty and forty years old, but it is no easy matter to
guess the age of one who is of another race.

“You did well to bring him to me,” I said.
“And I will see you do not lose by it.”

The men nodded and left. I glanced at one of
my officers who happened to be standing near the prisoner.

“Cut him loose.”

“But, Rab Shaqe, is that. . .”

“I said, ‘cut him loose’—do not worry, I will
not let him bite you.”

After another moment’s hesitation the rab
kisir, a short man whose eyes were so close together in his broad
face that he always seemed worried, took the dagger from his belt.
The Scythian, for just an instant, let a flicker of something like
suspicion show in his catlike eyes—he might have imagined I had
just ordered his throat cut—but he showed us nothing more. As soon
as the bowstring about his wrists was severed he brought his hands
around to the front as if to inspect the damage.

“Rab Shaqe, the knife is ready.”

The cook did not seem pleased with his
announcement, but this was not something which could be delayed.
The wine had begun to wear off—I hoped I would not shame myself
before this barbarian.

“Then do your work,” I said. “Pretend you are
carving a joint for dinner, but hurry.”

It took but the third part of a minute to dig
the arrowhead out of my back, but I did not notice that the time
passed too quickly. I clutched the legs of the cot and clenched my
teeth, but I need not have worried that I might scream. It is easy
enough to be brave in front of an audience, and besides, I would
not have dared to draw the breath to scream, not with a burning
knife in my back. So I managed to get through the business with
tolerable credit—at least the Scythian, who watched it all with
what seemed an almost jealous interest, did not sneer at me.

When the cook was finished and the hole under
my shoulder blade had been plastered with salve, he dropped the
arrowhead into my open hand.

“This was made in Nineveh,” I said, in
Aramaic. “I should have known no Scythian arrow could have touched
me.”

The light seemed to change in our prisoners
narrow eyes, and I knew at once that he had understood me.

I sat up. It was not pleasant to move, and I
felt weak from pain and loss of blood, but a prince of Ashur does
not treat with foreigners lying on his belly.

“What is your name?”

“I am Tabiti, son of Argimpasa,” he said
finally, having apparently considered the matter and decided that
it would not involve a loss of honor to answer. “I am headman of
the Sacan tribe of the Scoloti.”

“Scoloti.” It was close enough to the
Akkadian name, which was “Ishkuzai,” that I understood to whom he
referred.

“Then Tabiti, son of Argimpasa, since you are
a man of distinction, get up off your knees and take a seat.”

I motioned to an adjutant, who brought a
stool and was unwise enough to try helping the headman of the Sacan
tribe to his feet—Tabiti shook him off with contempt, but sat down
anyway.

“Why did you attack my people?” he asked.
There was nothing like an accusation in his question. He merely
wanted to know.

“Because the river yonder marks the sovereign
territory of the god Ashur—our king was not pleased with your
intrusion.”

Tabiti, son of Argimpasa, nodded.

“We care nothing for borders,” he said.

“You would do well to care for that one.”

He did not answer—he seemed almost not to
have heard. And then I noticed that he was looking at my chest.