The Assyrian (51 page)

“No. Two days in a boat, provided you keep
the shore to your right, will bring you to Tushpa. I would give
much to see King Argistis’ face when you arrive.”

“I will not arrive. I will perish on this
watery desert. Why, by the way, is it called the Shaking Sea?”

“We have many earthquakes in these mountains,
and when they come the sea dances. But at such times a man is just
as dead if he be on land.”

“You fill me with confidence. We men of
Ashur, you know, are not sailors.”

“Here—let me show you something that may ease
your terrors.” He reached into the pocket of his coat and then
opened his hand to display a copper arrowhead. “Watch.”

He pitched the arrowhead into the water—we
were standing no more than a few strides from its edge—and it broke
the surface with a tiny pop, disappearing from sight.

“Go ahead—watch.” Tabiti grinned at me, and
his catlike eyes seemed to close completely.

I would not have believed such a thing was
possible had I not seen it with my own eyes. In a few seconds the
arrowhead rose once more to the surface, to float there like a chip
of wood.

“How can this happen?” I exclaimed. “Is it
magic? Have you cast some spell?”

“If it is magic, it is not mine. Any bit of
metal—or a man’s body—will float in these waters. Why, I know
not.”

I waded in to about the middle of my calves
and picked up the arrowhead. Some of the water dripped into the
wound on my hand, making it sting like a wasp, and I cursed
loudly.

“Perhaps it is its bitterness which makes all
manner of things float in it,” he went on, as if I had just
reminded him of the fact. “Although why this should be I do not
understand. The great sea to the west is bitter as well, but any
piece of metal thrown into it would sink to the bottom like a
stone.”

“Are you suggesting I float to Tushpa? With
an army of six hundred or more men? Horses, gear,
everything—bobbing along like corks?”

“No. Send your cavalry and supply horses
around by land—they will make better time without a mob of foot
soldiers dragging along behind them. Then hire some few dozen boats
from the salt makers who dwell an hour or so north of here. They
will ferry you and a few hundred of your men to Tushpa in less than
two days. By the time you have started dunning this king for his
twenty mina of gold, the rest of your army will have arrived at the
gates of his city to reinforce your eloquence.”

“Yes—it might do,” I answered. My hand still
smarted, but somehow it seemed less of a joke on me. “It might do
very well. Tabiti, you are a thief and a rascal, but no fool.”

He laughed and slapped his thighs, mightily
pleased with us both.

“The Lord Tiglath Ashur will someday learn
that it is only by being thieves and rascals that rulers grow
great. What is the difference between a thief and a mighty king?
The thief steals only trifles.”

That very afternoon Tabiti and I rode to the
village of the salt gatherers and sat in the elder’s hut drinking a
vile potion that tasted of fish guts and settling the terms of my
passage to Tushpa. It was a tedious process—Tabiti, who spoke the
language, haggled like a rug dealer, and the elder pulled his white
beard and lamented his poverty in words that required no
translation. I had only to listen, frown with impatience from time
to time, and try to look the part of the ruthless and willful
conqueror who could be counted on to massacre the entire settlement
if I met with more avarice than I was prepared to tolerate.

In the end the old bandit came to terms quite
amicably, showing me black stumps of teeth as he smiled his
approval. I had only to pay him and his boatmen twenty silver
shekels for four days’ work, which was doubtless a greater sum than
they would earn from a year of selling salt. I would sail the next
morning with two companies of infantry and their gear.

Our last night with the Sacan was one of wary
celebration. My soldiers had learned to mix freely with these
barbaric wanderers, but they were on their guard, drank but little,
and stayed clear of their wagons and their women, for I had made it
clear that I would put to death any man who gave pretext for the
shedding of blood. It was hard to know how far the hospitality of
these people extended and, since they were now our allies and might
be useful in the future, I wanted no further trouble with them.
Tabiti, I suspect, restrained his own men in similar fashion and
for the same reasons.

Great as was the friendship and mutual
respect that had grown up between us, I had the distinct impression
that he would not be sorry to see the last of me, nor of the army I
commanded.

In the morning, when the salt gatherers had
assembled their vessels and my soldiers, some of them already white
faced with apprehension, were loaded on board, we set sail for
Tushpa.

Chapter 19

It is said that no true man of Ashur is at
ease trusting his life to any waters wider than those of his Mother
Tigris, that the broad seas are the home of countless demons. And
truly these soldiers of mine cursed their fortune in having such a
fool for a commander that he believed the sea could be kept out by
the wooden sides of a boat, but for myself I enjoyed every hour of
this my first voyage. The water was always calm, so there were no
dangers. In two days and a half we were never out of sight of
shore, and each night we pulled our keels up upon the beach and
slept on the solid land.

Still, this was an adventure. Perhaps because
I am half Greek, my stomach never troubled me and I felt none of
that green giddiness which makes the gentlest rocking of the waves
a source of agony for so many and which no charm or incantation
seems to drive off. To me everything was new and interesting, and
the journey to Tushpa had all the tranquil charms of novelty.

I learned, among other things, that the
Shaking Sea is not quite the lifeless desert it seems. Each
evening, after we had beached our boats, the salt gatherers would
cast their round nets into the waves lapping at the shore and
within an hour or less collect enough fish, each no longer than a
man’s hand, to feed at least themselves. My soldiers without
exception refused even to look at these, contenting themselves with
bread and dried goat flesh, and in this they were wiser than their
commander, for when the leader of our little fleet brought me, as
something of a delicacy, a specimen of his catch, nicely cooked and
spread out on a bed of savory-smelling pine needles, I was fool
enough to eat it. It tasted strongly of mud and was as brackish as
the waters that had spawned it. I smiled and smacked my lips
appreciatively, but as soon as decency permitted I stepped into the
surrounding forest, jammed two fingers down my throat, and relieved
my belly of its unpleasant burden.

The salt gatherers themselves seemed to live
on a diet of little else. Their wine, as I discovered to my horror,
really was concocted of fermented fish guts, and the only vegetable
I ever saw them eat was a variety of bulb, like a wild garlic,
which they dug out of the damp forest earth. The income they
derived from the salt they distilled was spent almost exclusively
on fresh meat, but their product was not of sufficient purity to
command any great price and thus they probably would have starved
without their nets.

These people were among the most primitive I
have seen anywhere on earth. All their prosperity depended upon the
Shaking Sea—indeed, the sea itself was the chief of their gods—and
the existence they derived from it was as barren as that acrid
waste. The arts of metalworking, masonry, and carpentry were
unknown among them so, although they lived in a land where wood and
stone were plentiful, their houses were nothing more than woven
reeds over frames of bent poles. Their lives were preserved by
their poverty for, although they understood nothing of war and were
surrounded by marauding tribes, they possessed nothing worth the
trouble of taking except their women, which, after the fashion of
the Scythians, they kept hidden from the eyes of avarice.

Yet, in spite of the misery of their
circumstances, they were conspicuous for an open, generous
serenity. They looked upon us, a mob of armed soldiers, with no
symptoms of fear and seemed willing enough to share what little
they had. This voyage to Tushpa they appeared to regard as a great
lark, a holiday, a gift from their open handed gods. I found it
difficult to despise them.

It was just an hour before noon of the third
day when we made our first contact with the Urartian war
galleys—they sent four to intercept us, although why they required
such a number to deal with some twelve or thirteen little fishing
boats was a mystery I could not at first puzzle out.

Tabiti had promised the salt gatherers that I
was a mighty prince who could sweep away all before him and who
lived under the protection of a powerful god, and this assurance
had emboldened them to venture beyond their own end of the Shaking
Sea and into those waters where King Argistis’ war vessels
jealously guarded access to Tushpa. As I mounted to the prow of our
lead boat to display my uniform—since this would be our only
defense—I could only hope that the Urartians would be as
impressed.

It was a wind still morning, and the great
ships had furled their sails and were driven forward by oarsmen
hidden behind the black wooden walls that towered out of the sea
like floating cliffs. I had almost decided that the Urartians were
about to bear down on us and smash our little boats to kindling
when, at the last instant, all their oars rose out of the water in
unison and hung suspended in mid air. An officer—at least, someone
whom I took from his bearing to be an officer—leaned over the deck
railing and peered down at me as if at the corpse of some curious
and repugnant sea creature that had tangled his anchor rope. He was
a square faced man with heavy eyebrows and a wide black beard, and
I took an instant dislike to him.

“You trespass,” he said, matter of factly,
first in his own language and then, when I did not respond, in
Aramaic.

“The armies of Ashur do not trespass,” I
answered, in Akkadian. “They are at home wherever they go in the
wide world. I am here at the invitation of the Lord Lutipri, who
came to Amat to implore my aid against the Scythians within this
very month. The Scythians are conquered, and if you do not show me
more civility I will order one of my soldiers to climb aboard your
ship and cut the tongue from your head.”

He was greatly taken aback, as I had intended
he would be, and for a long time said nothing, doubtless not
knowing what to say. A moment ago he had believed himself to be all
powerful, and now he was not so sure. This was not a clever man—I
could almost watch the ideas turning over in his mind.

At last I decided to spare him the suspense
of indecision.

“These good and simple people wish to return
to their homes,” I said. “I think it would be best if you took me
and my soldiers aboard your own vessels and conveyed us the rest of
the way.”

When this suggestion did not meet with
immediate agreement, I waited through perhaps ten heartbeats—which
I could feel throbbing quite distinctly in my neck—and then allowed
myself the luxury of losing my temper.

“I said to lower your boarding ladders, you
lout! Are the men of Tushpa such fainting creatures that they fear
to be overcome by a force of less than two hundred strong? I’ll
have your head to go with the tongue if you keep me waiting another
half a quarter of a minute!”

At last it sank through even to this muddy
intellect that I could not possibly be bluffing—what could I have
gained for myself except a walk to the executioner’s block?—and the
boarding ladders were indeed lowered. My idyll had reached its end,
and I had become once more the soldier and the diplomat. I waved
goodbye to the salt gatherers, with whom I had never exchanged a
word in any language, and turned my face toward Tushpa.

By the middle of the afternoon we were within
sight of that city, which must rank as the most beautiful in the
world. Never before had I seen great buildings made entirely of
stone and never again would I see any which so dazzled the eye. The
temples and palaces of Egypt are vast, cunningly made, and very
grand, but one tires of endless rows of sand-colored columns.
Thebes and Memphis are places one quickly learns to live in without
really noticing. Tushpa, however, is a ceaseless delight, a jewel
box of color, a place of wonder. This I could see even from the
wharves, behind which rose walls composed of alternating bands of
white and black stone, as delicate and majestic as a high born
woman.

The commander of the Urartian ships—for so he
turned out to be—had divided my soldiers among his other three
vessels and kept me aboard his own, doubtless on the theory that
even an adder is harmless after its head is off. He needn’t have
worried, for I was quite content to sit in his cabin and drink his
wine, even after we had touched land and he had sent a messenger
hurrying off to report my arrival and seek instructions.

In any case, it was not a long wait. Within
the hour the cabin door opened and the Lord Lutipri himself
entered, looking no less astonished than my unwilling host, whom he
dismissed with the curtest possible gesture. He sat down, blinking
at me like an owl in that twilight darkness.

“My Lord Tiglath Ashur,” he began at last,
“it is not twenty days since. . .”

“Since we last dined together in Amat—yes, my
lord. I have come to report a great victory. The Scythians are
driven back from the banks of the Bohtan River, which are still wet
with their blood.”

This wily man narrowed his eyes as he
regarded me in silence. I grinned at him, like a boy who has just
performed some stunt, but I knew what he was thinking. Finally he
shrugged his shoulders, as if at a thing indifferent.