The Assyrian (78 page)

. . . . .

But I did bear it. My heart was dead within
me, but I bore that too. Ashur’s golden dawn saw me with three
thousand soldiers at my back, a spectacle for the people of Nineveh
to cheer. I now belonged not to Esharhamat, or our child not yet
born, or even to myself, but to the king and his army and to the
city mob that must have its hero of an hour, to shout themselves
hoarse with his name and then forget him. I was once more that dead
thing, a Great Man.

I stopped for a single night at Three Lions
and said farewell to my mother—the maxxu was right, for my tongue
had sickened of the word—and then we marched north, following the
mountain trails, which were hard but made a shorter journey and, in
any case, were good experience for the campaign ahead.

Zabibe was in a wagon somewhere in the
baggage train. I did not send for her. I waited.

At last we crested the mountains and could
see the Great Zab River, shining in the morning light like a silver
snake. When our horses drank from her waters we were not more than
two days’ march from Amat.

We slept that night near a good sized village
called Adini, where the headman came to my tent, bowed, and sought
the king’s blessing. I gave it to him and inquired if his village
had a worker in metals who could fix a cart axle for us. It
had.

“He will need to be a strong man, for it is a
heavy cart—it needs four oxen to pull it.”

“Oh, he will do very well, Lord, for he has
the strength of an ox himself.”

“Good. Then send him to me.”

The axle could have waited until we reached
Amat, but I could not. In about half an hour the metalsmith came,
and he was all I had hoped—a giant, with arms as thick as another
man’s thighs and a face and chest covered with tiny burn scars from
his furnace. He was also very ugly and in some misadventure had
even lost an eye, the empty socket of which he plugged with a
copper shekel. I watched him at his work, and when he was finished
invited him to share a jar of beer with me. We sat together
perfectly contented, as if we had known each other all our lives,
and the metalsmith scratched the matted black hair on his belly as
he drank. I was quite pleased with him.

“Tell me, Metalsmith, do you have a wife?” I
asked.

“Alas no, Lord,” he answered, grinning rather
foolishly. “I had one, but she died. Now her children have no
mother and I have no one to cook my dinner.”

“It must be a great loss to you. Was she
beautiful?”

“No, Lord. She was too skinny and her skin
was as rough as granite, but a one eyed rogue cannot expect a queen
for his sleeping mat. She had also a bitter tongue.”

“Then I assume you beat her.”

“Oh yes, Lord, I beat her—as any proper man
would. But it did not soften her.”

I desired to hear no more. I went into my
tent to fetch something I had purchased in Nineveh—a fine whip, not
much longer than a man’s arm but woven of boar’s hide that had been
soaked in salt water.

“Come with me, Metalsmith.”

We went back to the baggage train, and I
found Zabibe’s wagon, where she was lying on a carpet naked as
dawn, painting her toenails. She smiled when she saw me, but before
she could speak I took her by the wrist and pulled her down into
the dust. The Metalsmiths one eye burned with delight when he
beheld her, as well it might, for I would venture his village did
not hold another that was her equal.

“Here is a new wife for you, Metalsmith . .
.”

“No, Lord—NO!” Zabibe tried to pull free from
my grasp, but I held her tight. “Mercy, Dread Lord. . . Not this!
No!”

I did not answer her cries. In this, a matter
to be settled by men, I spoke only to the metalsmith.

“Of course, this one too has a bitter tongue,
but I promise that if you beat her hard enough, she will learn to
love you. I give you the whip as her dowry.”

With a sharp pull on her arm I sent her
reeling toward her new husband, who caught her dexterously enough.
In an instant she went for him with her nails, but he simply
laughed and struck her a playful blow that sent her sprawling in
the soft spring mud. She sat up, her eyes streaming with tears,
with a bruise on her cheek she would carry for many days.

“Master, I beg you. . .” she whimpered,
holding out her hand to me.

“Be silent, woman, for you deserve worse than
this. Did you really expect me to harbor an assassin in my
bed?”

The metalsmith grabbed her wrist and pulled
her to her feet. Zabibe, her bare legs covered in mud, was at last
quiet. Her tearstained eyes beseeched mercy, but she seemed to know
there would be none.

“I thank you, Lord—she is fine.” The
metalsmith ran a hand caressingly over her shoulder and breast, not
caring that she shuddered away from him. “She is beautiful enough
that I do not care how bitter her tongue may be.”

“Yes, but be sure to beat her. Strip the skin
from her backside,” I said, smiling with grim satisfaction,
enjoying the sight they made together. “And—a warning: unless you
have grown weary of life, always make her taste the food first
herself before you eat it. She is an Arab woman and employs some
strange spices. You would not care to die of indigestion.”

There was fire in the look she gave me as I
spoke—such fire as almost made me sorry to part with her. Yes, of
course she hated me. But what had I ever cared for her hatred?

“Take her, Metalsmith, before I change my
mind.”

The whole army could hear her cries as he led
her away. Her curses rang in the air.

“May the gods desert you, Tiglath Ashur,” she
screamed. “May you die a bitter death in the land of the Medes, and
may the dogs eat your corpse.”

So many women had heaped their curses on my
head. I wondered if the gods ever thought to listen.

Chapter 29

The crows had done their work in two years.
Except for bones held together with decaying sinews, there was not
much left of the corpses of Uksatar and the four elders of the
Miyaneh tribe. The very clothes in which they died had rotted away,
so that not even those who, like myself, had been present at their
execution could have told one from another.

My charger Ghost, a fine stallion now, a war
horse raised up to be unafraid of battle or the smell of blood,
snorted nervously and dug at the earth with his hoof as I stopped
for a moment to look at the ghastly spectacle—five skeletons, men
impaled and left as a warning, left to stare back with empty eye
sockets at the eastern mountains from which they had dared to make
war on the Land of Ashur.

Of course the warning had been to no avail.
At intervals over these two years, and particularly during the
winter just past, Median raiding parties had crossed this boundary
to plunder what they could from the surrounding villages. There was
nothing to be surprised about in this, since they knew I would be
returning in any case; why should they then curb their natural
nomadic greed?

And although it was not something to which I
could very well admit, these incursions were not unwelcome to me
since they justified the war we were about to unleash on the people
of the Ahura. After all, we were not merely cruel predators, come
for the pleasure of butchery and whatever we could carry off, but
the armed wrath of our god who will not suffer his people to be
robbed and murdered. But, more important, they showed the limits of
Daiaukka’s control over his confederation of tribes.

Daiaukka was very far from a fool, and he
knew that burning villages west of the Diyala River and driving off
their cattle would hardly blunt the attack that must inevitably
come. He knew as well that my policy of war was not without its
opponents, that the king my father’s mind had still to be won to
this undertaking, and he was wise enough to guess that every hut
set ablaze, every peasant killed, every measure of stolen barley
was reported in Nineveh and only served to reinforce my argument
that the Medes were a threat and must be crushed.

So Daiaukka knew that these border
provocations were folly, and if he did not stop them it only meant
that he could not. His word was yet something short of law among
the tribes of the Zagros, for all that he styled himself
shah-ye-shah, king of all the kings of the Aryan. So much the worse
for him.

So as I gazed up at these five of the
Miyaneh, strangled at my command, their skulls covered only here
and there with a few remaining strips of dry, curling,
sun-blackened flesh, grinning like demons now as they had leisure
to reconsider the laughable folly of their crimes, I was not sorry
that their warning had gone unheeded. I promised Ashur that the
Medes would not require another such for many years to come.

I rode back to camp, a city of tents upon the
broad plain, where the northern army was enjoying one final long
afternoon of peace before we wet our sandals in the Diyala for the
last time and crossed into the lands of the Medes.

Ghost strained at his bridle, eager to break
into a run. His long silver white mane waved in the wind, and the
muscles of his mighty body bunched and rippled beneath the skin. He
was a fine horse, powerful and swift. I was sure he would bring me
luck.

Even as I entered camp, men cheered me,
waving and shouting my name. When I saw a man whose face I knew, I
smiled and waved back, for soldiers must believe their commander
cares about them. These had entrusted their lives to me, even as I
led them against an enemy famous for courage and ferocity, and as
they wished to live and triumph they created an idol and called him
the Lord Tiglath Ashur. It is always so. One man is made great only
to serve the purposes and hopes of many.

And this year again we would carry the banner
of the blood star, waving on our standards beneath the winged disk
of Ashur, so I hoped it would not be only my own men who believed
in the myth of Mighty Sargon’s sedu.

I was not, however, trusting solely to the
magic of my own reputation. The army I was bringing into the Zagros
was twenty thousand strong, well trained and disciplined men who
knew what was expected of them. Many had campaigned before and knew
the terror of battle. If we did not prevail, the failure would be
not theirs but mine alone. But we would prevail—I was very
sure.

“When shall we break camp, Rab Shaqe?”
Lushakin asked as he held Ghost’s bridle while I dismounted.

“An hour before dawn,” I answered. “And see
to it that every soldier is ready to march at first light. I wish
the Medes to see that though we are many we know how to move.”

“You think they are watching already?”

“I know it.” I looked at him, letting my eyes
go wide as if I hardly credited he could be such a simpleton.
“Their outriders have been about five hours ahead of us even since
our third day out of Amat. You should ride in the vanguard with me,
where you could have seen the droppings left by their horses.”

Tabshar Sin laughed.

“You had best be careful, Prince, or this
simpleton will grow to believe you.

Lushakin, when he saw he had been gulled,
laughed too. I had known both men since the days of my greenest
youth, so a joke was permitted.

“Nevertheless,” I said, “they are there. They
are not fools enough to reveal themselves, but they are there. I
can feel their eyes on us.”

In my tent were maps, certainly the best maps
ever made of the lands east of the Diyala, drawn on goatskin by the
Cimmerian slaves we had rescued from bondage on our last campaign.
There was not a rock on the Zagros Steppes they did not show. At
least we would not have to stumble forward like blind men.

“We must keep to the broad plains,” I told my
officers. “An army of this size cannot maneuver to advantage in the
mountains and, besides, why should we give Daiaukka the chance to
ambush us? We have size in our favor—no matter how many riders the
Medes can field, they cannot hope to overwhelm us—and a giant
should not pick the inside of a beer jug for a battleground.”

“They might decide simply to ignore us, to
wait in their mountains until winter comes and we are forced to
withdraw.”

“Daiaukka will fight. A king is not a king
unless he can protect his people—he knows that. We shall bring such
devastation to the Zagros that he will be forced to fight.”

When the meeting was over, Lushakin and
Tabshar Sin stayed behind, and the three of us drank wine and
talked about the glory of vanished times until well past the
blackest part of the night. We all three despaired of sleep, and it
is better on such occasions not to be alone.

By the hour the sun first showed itself in
the pale gray sky, the armies of Ashur’s vengeance were already on
the move. By midday we had crossed the river and were treading the
earth our enemies called their own.

By twilight of the second day, outriders
reported having sighted the first Median village. I gave my orders
against the morning.

“Take one company of men. Destroy everything.
Every wall, every farmer’s hut—everything. Burn what you find of
the harvest and drive as many of their animals back as you
can—there is no reason why our soldiers should not have meat for
their dinner tomorrow. Slaughter the rest and throw the carcasses
down the wells. Kill any man you find in arms or who attempts to
resist. Spare all the rest. Use your whips, if you must, to drive
them out. We will fill this land with wandering beggars for
Daiaukka to feed, if he can. Let no one molest the women, for we
are not barbarians.”

The Medes build their houses of stone, but
the roofs are of wood. They were still burning the next night,
turning the southern sky an evil black red. My soldiers
rejoiced—and why should they not, since our enemies served us no
better?—but the sight made my bowels turn to ice.

For many days it was the same. Companies of
men would fan out from the main body of the army to raid and
pillage. Our grain wagons were filled to bursting, and we had
horses, cattle, and goats enough to provide for a force ten times
our own number. We found silver and gold, and these I divided out
among the raiders as booty, keeping, as was the custom, a fifth
part for my own share.