The Assyrian (64 page)

On the seventh day since we had left the
safety of the plains we found a place of shale and limestone
cliffs, beneath which the spring waters oozed like fresh blood. A
shepherd was there with his dogs and his flock, one man alone. He
watched us with wild, fearful eyes, uncertain whether he ran the
greater risk to stay or to flee. I had seen all this before, with
my soul’s eyes, waking and dreaming. I ordered the soldiers to make
camp, for here we would stop.

I summoned Bel Itir to me, for he alone among
us understood something of the speech of these lands.

“You have questioned the shepherd?” I asked
him.

“Yes, Rab Shaqe. It seemed a wish precaution,
although he claims to know nothing. Shall I order his throat
cut?”

“No—let him go, as an offering to the god.
Does he say of what tribe he is?”

“Of the Kullumite, Rab Shaqe—great once, he
says, but now nearly gone from these mountains.”

“Does he say what place this is?”

“He calls it the Place of Bones, Rab Shaqe.
He does not know how it came by that name.”

I knew, although I did not say. And I knew
then why the sedu of my grandfather, glorious in arms, had led me
here. The Place of Bones—yes, of course. Great Sargon could have
told how it had come by that name. Nargi Adad would have looked
about him and remembered. What other name should it have had? The
old men of the Miyaneh had been right to feel afraid.

“Set up watchtowers in all the high places,”
I ordered. “Set the men to digging pit traps against the enemy
horses—no man shall rest until the work is done. I wish this place
fortified as against a siege. We will all sleep in our armor
tonight, and every night if need be. Each soldier will stand his
watch through half the hours of darkness, including the
officers.”

“You expect them here then, Rab Shaqe?” he
asked, smiling thinly, as if he thought me mad.

“They will come, Bel Itir, and we will be
ready for them. And do not fear but that we will paint the ground
red with their blood.”

“It shall be as you will, Rab Shaqe.”

No, it would be as the god willed. Mighty
Ashur, Lord of Heaven, he whose power may never be subdued, whose
light blinds like the sun, it was he who had brought us here,
through his chosen instrument, Tiglath, son and grandson of kings,
a little man whom he leads as he might a dog that knows its
master.

While the day was still with us, I sent out
riders to scout every approach. Sentries were posted along the tops
of the cliffs, where even in the black of night they would hear the
approach of an enemy force, even if their horses’ hoofs were
wrapped in linen. Our supply carts, those few that had survived the
journey, were turned on their sides and left as obstacles to impede
the charge of cavalry. The soldiers prepared their weapons against
an enemy they had never seen, for whose very existence they were
forced to take my word. No man rested. As the sun faded, we worked
by torchlight.

And at last, the thing was done. The cooks
made our supper, butchering a pair of horses that the soldiers
might have a little meat, but we were almost too weary to eat. And
there would be no more than a few hours’ rest tonight, as we
waited.

All day long the riders had come back, and
always they reported that they had seen nothing—not a single man
under arms, not even a goatherd with a stick for killing snakes.
Our enemies eluded us, although I never doubted they were close
enough to reach out their hands to us whenever they liked. These
mountains were filled with little canyons where five thousand men
could conceal themselves for days, even months, and my scouts might
pass by twenty times and never notice the narrow stone gully,
covered over with brush, that led to their hiding place. The Medes
were at home here. Why should we see even their shadows before they
were pleased to show themselves? Nevertheless, they were there.

In my tent my officers gathered. I outlined
to them my plans and my expectations, assigning each his role in
the coming battle. They listened with sullen attention, saying
nothing, for they did not half believe me. Some, I think, were
ready to relieve me of command and take me back to Nineveh tied to
a pole, but it was no small thing to raise one’s hand against the
king’s own son, so they kept their own counsel and, for now, took
my orders in silence.

When I stepped outside, the soldiers were
waiting. They, too, doubted, but they were simple men for whom the
rab shaqe’s word was law. And so, their work finished, they waited
in patience to hear that word, to weigh for themselves the purposes
that had brought them to this

place. This they would hear from the Lord
Tiglath Ashur, shaknu of the northern provinces, son and grandson
of kings. This was their right.

I climbed up on the back of a chariot and
looked into that sea of faces, a great murmuring crowd in the
wavering light of campfires and torches. What could I say that they
might understand and believe? I knew not. I opened my lips and let
the words come.

“Men of Ashur, you are the servants of a wise
god. Like the eagle, he circles wide above us but always comes back
to the same nest. He confides in no man but hugs his vengeance to
his own bosom and waits, for he is patient. He has brought us here
that we may work its fulfillment and see with our own eyes the
unconquerable might of his will.

“We stand, at this moment, on ground which he
has made holy to receive us, for here, on this high and rocky
plain, twenty years ago and more, Sargon the Great, king in the
Land of Ashur, whom the god loved above all men, perished at the
hands of his enemies. Here he fell. This flint hard soil drank his
blood. And now the King of Heaven and Earth has led us back to this
place that the death of our lord may at last be avenged!”

Their cheers broke in upon me like thunder,
echoing from the cliff faces, and I was silenced. Would they have
believed me in the cold light of morning? Did they truly believe me
then, or did they but wish to believe? I know not.

“Ashur is King!” they shouted. “Ashur is
King! Ashur is King! Ashur is King!” They made the night tremble
with the sound.

Did they believe me? I know not. I know only
that they had made my will theirs and would die for the god’s glory
at my word. In the hearts of simple men is the only truth.

I raised my arm, and at last they grew
silent.

“You all know the story of the blood star
that blazed in the eastern sky on the night of Mighty Sargon’s
death—some among you may even have seen it, since it lit the
heavens like a torch. And you all know the mark I bear on my
hand.”

I unclenched my fist that they might see, and
a murmur rose among them, for all men fear such things. And rightly
so.

“This I have carried since the hour of my
birth—the same hour in which King Sargon, my father’s father, found
his simtu on this very ground. I was born, and he died, in one
instant. And that night the blood star burned in the sky like a
wound in the god’s own flesh—and it was not for nothing that Holy
Ashur thus placed his mark upon me!”

“Ashur is King!” they shouted, their voices
like the pounding of drums. “Ashur is King! Ashur is King!”

“The enemy will come for us here!” I cried,
when at last they would hear me. “Perhaps this night, perhaps the
next, but they will come, creeping through the darkness like
jackals. You know them—they are the inheritors of those who slew
our king, who stripped him of his life and held his corpse for
ransom that his son, whose son I am, was forced to buy him back
with silver and gold before he could sleep in the earth of his
fathers. They will return here, as we have returned, thinking yet
again to accomplish great slaughter among the men of Ashur, but it
is they who will perish!”

Mighty Sargon, whom the god loved, the pride
of his nation. There was not a soldier in the king’s army who did
not hold his name and memory in reverence. Yes—they would fight,
these common men, whether they believed me or not, for they
believed in him, and in the grandeur he had made of their nation.
They would fight, to avenge his death of long ago. Or, if not for
that, for the honor of dying where he had died.

Each man took up his station that night, his
heart full. No man closed his eyes that night—no man could. We all
waited, in silence, as brothers, sons of the same ghostly father.
Our minds, our wills, were one. No word was spoken, for there was
no more place for words. We all understood, without words. In this
I was but one of many.

It was the last cold hours before dawn when I
received the whispered signal that our sentries had heard the
approach of many horses.

Of all the countless horrors of war, the
worst is the waiting. We were to absorb the full force of the
enemy’s attack—we knew not their numbers nor even their names; they
were only The Enemy, vague, faceless, a black shadow crowding in
upon us. And their onslaught would come in the dark of night, which
somehow made it more terrible. To die in the broad light of day was
bad enough, but at night. . . A man has visions of his soul
wandering blind and lost, knowing no rest, in endless torment, a
prey to demons. I was a man no different from the poorest soldier,
and I felt all these things. As we waited there, in the Place of
Bones, I felt sick with dread.

It was almost a relief when at last we heard
their war cries and felt the thunder of their horses’ hoofs. They
were upon us—the waiting was over and we would see the end now.

I gave a silent signal, and in an instant a
hundred bonfires blazed into life—we had banished the covering
darkness. Let the Medes know our numbers. Let them know they had
lost their chance for surprise.

Nevertheless, they came. Their horses bore
down upon us across the length of that rocky plain, but we held
back. We waited, watching their charge, knowing they had not seen
the traps.

Working until their hands were raw, my men
had dug a long trench across the entrance to our camp. They had
piled up the earth as a rampart, what must have looked to the enemy
horsemen like a crude defense perimeter, the sort thrown up by
soldiers who do not really expect attack—the sort a horse and rider
could climb over in an instant. They did not see the trench, which
had been covered over with reed mats and a sprinkling of dirt, not
enough to fool anyone in daylight but almost invisible at night.
Its bottom, bristling with sharpened stakes, was hidden from them.
They would only learn when it was too late.

The Medes galloped toward us. Even now, as
they shook the earth, I could hardly see them except as a dark
wave. But they were many. They must have had eight or ten thousand
riders—this was no single tribe defending its territory. We did not
fight merely the Miyaneh or the Sagarians, men loyal to their clan
and a bit of grazing land, but a mighty confederation, a nation.
This was what I had feared, all along. I could see it as their
horsemen sped across the plain, burning the earth like a blaze
through dry grass.

On command, and as one, our bowmen let fly
their arrows—dipped in pitch and flaming like torches. They lit the
air, turning the night into a weird half daylight, roofing the sky
with smoke and lurid, red black fire. The Medes would not have to
die in darkness. Yet they did die—dropping from their saddles, our
arrows still burning in their breasts. The javelin throwers, their
targets clear now, let fly, death whistling through the air like a
flight of birds. How many fell before they reached the trench, I
know not.

And at the trench . . . How can I describe
it? When the earth gave way beneath them, and their horses screamed
in terror and pain, their backs broken by the fall or their bellies
and necks pierced by the cruel stakes, was it not terrible? Even
for us, who had planned it, whose lives would be spared by this
awful trap, it was unspeakable. We stood upon the rampart and they
perished at our feet, falling into that gruesome tangle of the dead
and the dying. And those who did not die at once, we killed as they
tried to climb out. We killed them with arrows and javelins and
spattered their brains with great stones. Sometimes we killed them
with swords and cut their throats with the knives we carried in our
belts. We made a rich banquet for the Lady Ereshkigal, and our
hearts sickened within us.

When the Medes saw that we had stopped their
first rush, they withdrew their cavalry—this was not a fight which
would be won by horsemen. But a trench would not stop foot
soldiers, and these now followed in their numbers beyond counting,
swarming at us like angry bees.

Yet we were ready. Our own soldiers poured
over the ramparts and the ditch, now nearly filled in with Median
dead. And we were not a mob but a disciplined army. And we had
chariots.

At either end of the trench we had left a
little pathway clear, just enough for our war chariots, carried
over these mountains in pieces and hastily reassembled, to pass out
onto the field of battle, there to do their grim work.

I myself rode in the lead chariot, so I saw
what happened in the gray light of that last terrible hour before
dawn. It was not a battle, but a massacre. The Medes, disorganized,
frightened, their plan in ruins, deserted by even the hope of
victory, fought with futile courage and fell like grain before the
farmer’s scythe. Our army butchered them with pitiless efficiency.
They had no chance. They were as men condemned.

By the time the sun had risen over the
mountains, it was over. The few who could, or would, had fled that
killing ground, and almost none were left except the dying and the
dead. A ghastly silence descended over the face of the land.

I ordered my driver to halt and stepped down.
I wished to have a better look at the field of battle—I wished to
view my handiwork at close range, but I felt a strange mingling of
pride and disgust. Perhaps it was not so strange, for I had known
the feeling before. Perhaps it is no more than every successful
commander experiences, for the end of all a soldier’s patient work
is no more than death.