The Assyrian (83 page)

“You don’t mean alone, Rab Shaqe—he’s. .
.”

“He’s harmless enough.” I smiled, trying to
be patient. “You needn’t worry about me, Lushakin. I can still
defend myself against an unarmed man who has his hands tied behind
his back.”

Reluctantly, he did as he was told, and soon
the shah-ye-shah was sitting on a log on the other side of the
fire, watching me through wary black eyes.

“I will cut your hands free if you give me
your word not to violate my hospitality,” I said. Daiaukka seemed
to consider for a moment and then nodded.

I took the dagger from my belt and severed
the leather cords around his wrists. Then I filled a wine cup and
set it down beside his right foot. Daiaukka picked up the cup and
drank it off in what could have been a single swallow. I filled it
again and he emptied it again, so I simply left the jar for him. It
was possible he had not tasted so much as a sip of water since that
morning. I sat down again.

“How much of your army is still intact
somewhere?” I asked. “A third, do you think?”

“I doubt so many—and the best are all
dead.”

Neither his face nor his toneless voice
reflected the slightest emotion. We might have been discussing the
fates of strangers for all he revealed of his feelings. It struck
me again, as it had at both our previous meetings, that this was a
remarkable man.

“And you know what will happen next,” I
continued. “In the morning I will begin receiving offers of
submission from your surviving nobles. There will be a race to see
who can most quickly throw himself at my feet, and one tribe will
blame the next for initiating this war—and all will blame you. You
have lost your gamble, Daiaukka, and the nation you dreamed of
making from these goatherds is dead.”

“For the moment, yes. But you must finally
leave here, my lord, and men will dream again.”

He lifted the wine cup to his lips once more
and drank slowly, like a man who was at peace with himself. What he
said was no more than the truth.

“I have no desire to take your life,” I said,
feeling uncomfortable, as if somehow I had been the loser today. “I
will spare it if you will pledge your submission to the king in
Nineveh. It would be better if you could accept the consequences of
this defeat and, as you say yourself, wait for better days.”

“Better for whom, Lord Tiglath Ashur?” He
smiled at me, as if amused by the simplicity of a child.

“Better for your people, whom I intend to see
never raise their heads again during my lifetime—who will find
themselves with a shah of my choosing if you refuse.”

“Will they? Yes, of course. Yes, perhaps it
would be better for them.”

“Then will you submit?”

“I will not submit tonight, my lord.” He set
the wine cup down beside his foot again and covered his face with
his hands, as if to wipe away the exhaustion. “You will have my
answer, if you wish it, in the morning, but not before then. My
life is in your power and you may take it whenever you wish, but I
will not pledge myself to anything simply because I am weary and
weak spirited.”

“Then you will have until
tomorrow—guard!”

Lushakin came rushing toward us, his sword in
his hand, as if he expected to find Daiaukka at my throat and not
sitting across the fire while we bargained like caravan drivers. I
think he was disappointed.

“You will find the shah-ye-shah a bed for the
night,” I told him. “You will see that he has every comfort.”

“Every comfort—yes, Rab Shaqe. I have a very
comfortable copper chain I will put around his neck.”

It was Daiaukka himself who laughed. The man
seemed afraid of nothing.

“Post a guard if it eases your heart,” I
answered. “But bring him to me again in the morning, when I send
for him.”

Did Daiaukka sleep that night? From what I
understood of his nature, it would not have surprised me to find
that he did. I never closed my eyes. I remained beside the
campfire, keeping my vigil beside the corpse of Tabshar Sin and
with no other company except a wine cup, until the broad light of
day.

And perhaps, if I really was drunk, the wine
fumes clouded my brain enough to allow me to think that I had
trapped Daiaukka, for I intended to butcher him myself, to make him
the first offering to the ghost of my dead friend, if he did not
submit to the might of Ashur. This I would do in full view of his
surviving nobles, that they might learn the price of defiance. I
would humble their shah before their eyes, or I would give him to
death, and this too before their eyes. All night I consoled myself
with this idea. Yet a man may think himself profoundly clever and
be a fool just the same.

The morning came. I ordered that Tabshar
Sin’s grave should be dug beyond the earthworks of our camp, on
ground which he and I and many others had won with our swords for
the greater glory of Ashur and our king. I lowered his body into
the shallow pit and with my own hands covered him with earth. In a
year, when the grass returned, no one would know his resting place.
It was to be a day for burials; Tabshar Sin was only the first of
many.

On that blackened plain I performed for my
old friend the last kindness one man can do another, and there were
many to witness the deed. The soldiers of the northern army stood
about in silence, knowing that soon they, too, would be called upon
to perform the same service for their comrades who lay dead on the
field of battle.

The conquered Medes, our prisoners now, only
yesterday our foes, watched too, doubtless wondering if they also
were about to enter into the long darkness of death. Tabiti, who
called me his brother, stood behind me—he smiled slightly, as if
already counting his spoils. Daiaukka was there as well, but I had
long since abandoned my attempts to see inside his heart.

I rose and wiped the dirt from my hands. I
had not slept in two days and nights and my head ached and the
taste in my mouth was bitter, but that was only the last dregs of
the wine jar and no more than I deserved. Still, I was quiet in my
soul and somehow all my wrath had left me. It was clear what must
follow.

“If the Medes will have it so,” I shouted,
that all might hear, “then Ashur’s war against them can end at this
hour. I invite any who will to kneel and swear his oath of
submission to the king my father, the Lord Sennacherib, king in
Ashur and Calah and Nineveh, lord of the earth’s four corners,
master of this place and all the world.”

As one man the Median nobles, the great ones
of the Aryan, knelt and swore—all of them, save one. For the Lord
Daiaukka, the shah-ye-shah, he alone whose word I cared about, he
stayed on his feet.

“You will not swear, my lord?” I asked him,
wondering why I was not disappointed. Why, I wondered, was I glad
that he would not submit? Only because he was a great man, whom
none would ever humble—yes, perhaps that was the reason.

“No.” He shook his head, crossing his arms
over his chest. “Others may, but not I. For I have sworn an oath to
live as the one shah of the Aryan, and to drive my enemies from
this my land or die in the attempt.”

“You once told me we would have our battle
and then see whom the Ahura favored. Can you not accept the
judgment of your god?”

At once, the moment the words had passed my
lips, I knew I had made a great error.

Daiaukka knew it too, and smiled thinly.

“No, my lord—for you are alive, and so am I.
The contest between your god and mine can only be settled between
the two of us, no others. You have the power to kill me now, if
that is your will, but you will have proved nothing. It must be one
against the other and in single combat, to the death.”

I could sense the tremor of excitement that
passed through all who had heard his challenge. Tabiti stepped
forward and put his hand on my arm.

“You must not do this thing,” he whispered
tensely. “Kill him now—or I will do it for you!”

“None may kill him save I alone,” I answered.
I was resigned, for I knew that it was not Daiaukka who had fallen
into a trap, but I. “He has me. He demands trial by combat, his
strength against mine—his magic, if you will, against mine. If I
refuse, and slay him like a dog, then he will never die but be king
in these mountains forever. He gives me no choice.”

Tabiti released his grasp, for he knew I was
right.

“There is a condition,” I said, speaking for
all to hear. “It will be in the god’s hands who lives or dies, but
the war must be over. If I conquer, the parsua keep their pledge
made this day to the king my father. If I die, the Lord Daiaukka
must promise that in his lifetime the border between our lands
shall not be violated.”

“So be it.” He nodded—why should he not
agree? What had he to lose? “And I ask one favor of the Lord
Tiglath Ashur, that I might have three days before we meet to
settle this between us. There will be no treachery, but I would see
my son once more.”

“So be it.”

Thus everything was arranged, a duel to the
death three days hence.

Chapter 31

I had treasured the hope that Daiaukka, once
he came into my hands, could be persuaded to sue for peace. It was
not so very unreasonable a thing to expect, since most men will
accept decent terms in exchange for their lives, but once this hope
proved vain a commander wiser than myself would have ordered the
shah-ye-shah quietly put to death, thus preserving the fiction that
he had fallen in battle. The Medes would have preferred this, for
then he could have taken the blame for a lost war and, in later
years, provided a convenient hero, a martyr, to serve as the
rallying cry when they felt themselves strong enough to challenge
us again. And, for a few years at least, it would have been to my
advantage since, being his conqueror, I would have fallen heir to
Daiaukka’s considerable prestige as a warrior. This would have been
a poor substitute for the subservient, humbled, discredited
figurehead I could have made of him alive—how, I wonder, could I
have imagined that Daiaukka would allow himself to be used for such
a purpose?—but it would have been worth something. I should have
cut his throat while it was still within my power.

Instead, I made the greatest mistake I could
have made and extended to my most implacable enemy the chance for a
public challenge which, once issued, could hardly be refused. Once
the words were spoken, I could not have ordered his execution
without looking like a coward in front of that most important of
all audiences, his own defeated and demoralized followers.

Now it would have to be single combat, my
protective sedu against the renewed magic of his name—and Daiaukka
was a man with nothing to lose. The shah-ye-shah had trapped me
because he saw with painful clarity what I, for one unaccountable
moment, had allowed myself to forget: that this was a war which
would not end with one battle or one victory; that tactics and the
weight of armies, in the end, would matter less than the legends
surrounding individual men.

And thus I had presented Daiaukka with his
opportunity to create a legend which would be treasured by his race
until their final hour.

But there would be three days before our
final meeting. I loaned Daiaukka a horse and watched him ride away
into the foothills, not knowing where he went nor caring. He would
return, which was all that concerned me. He would not oblige me by
making good his escape, for he was a man for whom death held no
terrors.

I could not say the same. A duel, where one
man must die that another may live, is more terrible than any
battle, for in battle the danger is less personal—no one of your
enemies seeks your life alone—and it is a rare day on which half
the men fighting will perish. And I am not ashamed to say that I
feared Daiaukka, for he was brave and strong and cunning and since
his earliest youth had known no life except that of warrior. The
man who would not fear him could have no eyes to see with nor mind
to think. I was not so insensible as a block of wood, so I was
filled with fear.

But at least, if this was a trouble I had
brought upon myself, I alone would suffer from it. By the army it
was viewed as a matter of great sport and the betting, so I was
told, grew heavy.

In my three days of grace I met with my
officers and made plans for our withdrawal. We would establish a
garrison at a place called Zakruti, not too far from our own
borders, and leave three thousand men there. The rest of us would
return to Amat and the garrisons in Zamua and Namri. All this would
be the same whether Daiaukka triumphed or I did, for the fortunes
of war do not rest with the life of one man.

On the night before Daiaukka’s return, the
Lord Tabiti, who called himself my brother, came to my tent,
carrying his skull cups and a skin of safid atesh under his
arm.

“The Medes have their haoma, which they drink
to make themselves wild with valor, but this is better,” he said,
filling one of the cups and holding it out to me by the eye
sockets. Here—drink. I know you do not fancy the taste of it, but
you need something and wine will leave your senses dull tomorrow.
Drink.”

“Is it so obvious then, that I am
afraid?”

“No. You carry it as well as any man, but I
do not need to be told what it is that cuts into your bowels. Who
does not fear death?”

“Daiaukka, perhaps.” I took a sip of the
safid atesh and instantly made a face—it was not a taste that
improved upon acquaintance. “I think perhaps Daiaukka does not fear
death.”

“If he does not, then he is not a man. And if
he is not a man, then you may kill him by any means without
staining your honor, for you will be ridding the world of a demon.
Tell me—have you ever known this style of combat before?”

“No.”

I thought it prudent not to mention the
incident with Esarhaddon and, indeed, the two cases could have
nothing in common.