The Assyrian (73 page)

Tabiti laughed and threw his arm across my
shoulders as we walked to his leather tent.

“No, your instructions were not disregarded.
Your officers have treated us to every kindness, especially that
fat Ionian who dresses like a prince—what is his name?”

“Kephalos,” I answered, smiling to myself.
“He is not a soldier, but he is a cunning fellow and my
friend.”

“I, too, am a cunning fellow. This Ionian
speaks of trading for horses and gold, but since you say he is a
friend of yours I will only cheat him a little.”

“If you hope to die a rich man, I would
advise you to look elsewhere for a victim.”

“Doubtless you advise me well, for you must
know the proverb: ‘Trust a Hebrew before a Phoenician and a
Phoenician before an Ionian, but do not trust an Ionian.’ However,
I am forgetting you are half an Ionian yourself.”

We both laughed, but I was not to be so
easily deflected.

“You still have not told me,” I said, “why
you are here, in leather tents, rather than enjoying the garrison’s
hospitality.”

“I have been trying to explain, Prince
Tiglath Ashur, but you will not listen.” He sat down on a horse
blanket spread beneath the shade of his tent flap and gestured for
me to follow his example. When we were both comfortable he clapped
his hands and a small boy, doubtless another of Tabiti’s numberless
sons, brought us steaming cloths with which to clean our hands and
faces and then a pair of copper cups and a skin of the fermented
horse’s milk called saftd atesh — this last was an attention I
could easily have forgone.

“Do not expect too much trust,” he continued
finally, after he had already drained his cup and was refilling
both. “My men would think me a great fool if I came so far with so
few and then slept surrounded by armed foreigners within the high
stone walls of their stockade. I honor you as a soldier, Prince,
and could not love you more if you really were my brother, the son
by the same woman of my father, Argimpasa. But your soldiers were
only lately my enemies in battle, and a man must exercise
reasonable prudence. Do not be offended.”

I was not offended. In fact he had raised my
regard for him even higher, and I was yet more sure of the wisdom
of including him in my plans.

We sat drinking together until late into the
afternoon and, as before, the safid atesh began to taste less
disgusting after I had drunk enough of it. Tabiti and I spoke of
many things, of the gossip which had reached him from the court of
King Argistis—that monarch, it seemed, was indeed slipping into the
madness which everyone believed awaited him—of the reputed wealth
of Egypt, of the notorious perfidy of the Lydians, of everything,
in fact, except any mention of the Medes or my conflict with them.
These topics, I noticed, he avoided as scrupulously as I did
myself.

But, of course, finally one of us had to
speak.

“You are increasing the size of your
garrison,” he said at last. “You must have brought three thousand
soldiers back with you from Nineveh—and I counted twenty chariots.
You had not half such a force at the Bohtan River. I have also been
struck by the numbers of horses you have pastured in the
vicinity.”

“You have missed little, it seems.”

“A nomad lives by keeping his eyes open.”
Tabiti, headman of the Sacan, shrugged his shoulders, like a great
cat stretching in the hot sun, and grinned. “It is my impression
that you prepare for a final reckoning with the Lord Daiaukka—is
that not so? I have not been deaf to the stories about your
campaign of last summer. I think I am here because you seek allies
against the Medes.”

“And is that the reason you have come—because
such a venture would be to your taste?”

But my barbaric friend, who in sharp trading
thought himself a match for my slave Kephalos, only refilled both
our cups with his powerful, evil tasting liquor.

“I am here out of love for you,” he said,
catching my eye and smiling slightly. “War is another matter—a
practical matter, in which a leader must consider the welfare of
his people.”

“Which means—what?”

“Which means, my brother, that like a good
Scoloti, one whom my father would not be ashamed to call his son, I
am waiting to hear what bribes you will offer.”

. . . . .

It took us but a short time to strike our
bargain. By suppertime Tabiti and I had settled between us that the
Sacan would attack from the north, forcing the Mannai—a tribe of
importance less for their abilities as warriors than for their
strategic position, threatening Musasir and the headwaters of the
Lower Zab—out of Daiaukka’s confederation. My friend’s reward for
this would be as much of the rich grasslands south and east of Lake
Urmia as he could hold, and his presence would be a permanent check
on the ambitions of the Medes. The only difficulty we could foresee
was from the Urartians.

“We shall have to travel over the northern
edge of the Shaking Sea and then south,” Tabiti said, dragging his
finger through the dust to trace its outline, like a goat
stretching to steal grapes from an arbor. “We will keep well away
from Tushpa, but King Argistis still claims all those lands and
will be unlikely to let us pass unchallenged.”

“He will if he knows you will not stop—why
drive you over his borders when you are already on your way
thither? This is something which I can arrange for you.”

“You think so? You had better be sure, for if
I am to make war on the Mannai next summer, I will have to spend
all of this summer traveling. I cannot afford to be delayed—the
lands of the Urartians are a harsh place when the snows begin.”

“Trust me in this. We will come at the Medes
from the north and the west, like a pair of hands closing around
their throats.”

“It is well then, for I am tired of Shubria
and my people will be better for a season of fighting. No good
Scoloti dies in his bed—it is not dignified.”

It was well after dark before I finally rode
in through the fortress gates. At first the guards did not even
recognize me.

“We were not even sure you had come, Rab
Shaqe,” they shouted down from the barricades, once I had hailed
them and they had recognized my voice. “We were beginning to think
perhaps you had decided to stay in Nineveh forever.”

“Nothing could keep me long from Amat—is it
not the garden of the world? Open the gate, dogs, before I have you
flogged.”

They laughed, and at once I found myself
surrounded by soldiers to light the way for me—so many that my
horse almost went mad for fear of the torches. In all honesty, I
felt I was home once more, for I too was a soldier and a soldier’s
only true home is his garrison.

The fortress was now virtually completed. Its
great wall, the stones still raw from the earth, still glittering
with the marks of the cutter’s chisel, towered over the rows of
mud-brick barracks, the drill fields and stables. Everywhere
soldiers and their women sat outside to enjoy the cool, moist night
air, and their oil lamps twinkled in the surrounding dark like
stars that had fallen from heaven’s grace. There was the murmur of
numberless conversations, punctuated here and there with laughter,
and I could sometimes hear the restless snorting of horses and the
sound of their hoofs striking against the hard packed earth. The
cooking fires were almost cold now, but still the smells of meat
and millet and boiled onions reached my nostrils. Yes, I really was
home. At last I had left Nineveh, with its brick streets and its
intrigues, behind me.

The windows of the palace Kephalos had built
for me were twinkling with light—my servants, no doubt, were
wondering what had kept their master. A groom took my horse and I
mounted the great stone staircase even as the tall cedar doors
opened to receive me. The house women knelt, and the scribes in
their linen tunics bowed from the waist. The shaknu had returned,
and with him the power of the king. My moment of private homecoming
had come and passed.

“My Lord Prince, there is much of business
that—”

“And there will be no less tomorrow, Ushnu,”
I snapped, waving him aside. “So let it wait until then, eh? The
road from Nineveh is a long one, and I feel as if I had ridden
every beru of it in this one day.”

My chief scribe bowed again, seeming little
pleased with this answer, and I began stripping off my leather
breastplate as a slave pulled the sandals from my feet.

“Will the Dread Lord take some supper?” she
asked, wiping the dust from my ankles with a damp cloth. She looked
up at me and smiled uncertainly, as if afraid I might suddenly
decide to strike her. Had I sounded as impatient as that?

“No, Gamelat—I thank you.” Gently, I took the
cloth from her hand. She was one of my mother’s women, purchased
when first we had settled at Three Lions. She had known me for
years. “Just a little wine perhaps, and then I will find my
bed.”

She scrambled to her feet, like a dog that
has heard its master’s voice.

“Yes, my lord. At once.”

“And, Gamelat—where is the Lord Kephalos? I
had expected to see him here tonight.”

“He was here, my lord. He is. . . gone away.
Shall I have him summoned back?”

“No—it is not important.”

I sat there, in a hallway, drinking the wine
that Gamelat had brought me, glad to be alone but for the moment
too tired even to stumble off to my sleeping mat. For several
minutes my mind would hold to nothing and then, very gradually, the
pleasant sadness of memory filled me.

“Esharhamat.”

The name seemed to speak itself. Esharhamat.
I had only to think of nothing else, and she flooded my soul.
Esharhamat.

At any rate, she was safe for the moment.
Esarhaddon would not visit her bed that whole summer, not while she
nursed his son, and I was far enough away that the breath of
scandal could not touch her. Was she thinking of me? It would be a
pleasant thing to believe.

I got up. Enough—I would sleep.

Where was Kephalos, I wondered. It was unlike
him not to be there to greet me after a long absence. He had been
here—Gamelat had said so. What could have called him away?

But it did not matter. At least, it did not
matter tonight. Tomorrow, once more, I would belong to my scribes
and my soldiers, my friends and my enemies. Tonight I did not want
to be the Lord Tiglath Ashur, rab shaqe of the king’s army, shaknu
of the north, son of the Lord Sennacherib, and master of a fat,
rascally Greek who treated me as if I were his property instead of
the other way about. Tonight I did not want to be anyone. I wanted
to be asleep.

There was a flicker of light coming from my
chamber. Good—some thoughtful slave had left a lamp burning for me.
I was a fortunate man to be surrounded by such attention. I must
remember to do something, I thought, to make some gesture of
appreciation. But that too could wait until tomorrow.

I swept the curtain aside and my bowels
froze. There, waiting beside my sleeping mat, was Zabibe. The
flickering, yellow light on her ashen skin gave an almost demonic
cast to her beauty, as if she embodied within herself all forbidden
pleasure.

“My Lord has not forgotten me?” she asked,
smiling teasingly. She crossed her arms in front of her and with
the tips of her fingers pushed down the sleeves of her tunic to
reveal her breasts. “To have been left behind would have broken
your poor slave’s heart.”

. . . . .

“That woman, Lord, is a devil. Since she
arrived here three days ago she has taught your servants to dread
her anger—she drove me from your house with her curses on the very
night of your return, and now I am afraid to go back there.”

Even as he spoke, Kephalos stroked his beard
with trembling, agitated fingers. He glanced about as if afraid
that even here, in his own house, he was not safe from Zabibe.

“She behaves as if she were already mistress
of the shaknu’s palace,” he went on at last. “As if she stood in
Naiba’s place—or even that of your Lady Mother—and no one has the
courage to contradict her. My lord, I trust, is not such a great
fool as to have thought of covering this woman with a veil?”

“No, Kephalos—have no fear. I do not expect
ever to take a wife.”

“Yes, Lord, but the important question is
what she expects. Be warned—she is the type who throws things.”

“Throws things?”

“Yes, of course. The wine cups will crash
against the walls like hail against a tile roof.” He shrugged his
shoulders, as if astonished that I could be simpleton enough to
expect anything else. “Beat her, Lord. Remind her who is master in
the palace of a royal prince. That is the wisest thing you can do.
Take a whip of hippopotamus hide and beat her until you have flayed
the skin from her backside, for if you do not let her know her
place she will make of your life such a misery that you will long
for the quiet safety of war.”

“Yes, I will beat her. If only to please you
and restore good order among my house servants, I will beat
her.”

“See that you do, Lord.”

Gradually, consoled by my assurance of
retribution, and an abundance of his own wine, Kephalos grew
tranquil again. As we waited for his servants to prepare
breakfast—knowing that my worthy slave never left his bed until two
hours before midday, I had not yet eaten myself—he told me of all
that had happened in Amat during my absence, and particularly of
his own feats of cunning on my behalf and his own.

“This barbarian who dwells in a leather
tent,” he confided, in the manner of one with secrets to impart.
“This Tabiti—he has many fine horses, and a wealth of gold. I
wonder where he gets them.”

“By cutting the throats of unwary fools like
you,” I said, holding out my wine cup to be refilled. “Leave him in
prosperity for now—after next summer’s campaign he will have a
great deal more of which you may rob him.”