The Assyrian (86 page)

Kephalos drew himself up, filling his chest
with air, and thrust out his beard as if daring someone to pull
it.

“You may imagine, Lord, what I told him
then,” he said.

“No, I cannot even begin to imagine—you must
enlighten me.”

His eyes narrowed for an instant, as if
unsure whether I was perhaps not mocking at him, but them,
apparently having decided that, one way or the other, he did not
care, he extended his hand in the gesture of a king giving
judgment.

“‘And if he should not die—what then?’ I
asked him. ‘Or if he should die a month from now through want of
proper attention? I might remind you, Marduk Pashir, that the Lord
Esarhaddon is not yet king in the Land of Ashur, and that the Lord
Sennacherib loves his son and will not be behindhand in punishing
any he might suspect of conniving in his death. I leave for the
Zagros at sunrise, whether or not you see fit to provide an escort,
and if I do not return you may trust that letters reporting this
conversation will find their way to Nineveh!’

“And you may trust, master, that the escort
was waiting outside my door in the morning.”

This I believe was true, for Marduk Pashir,
whom I knew to be one of my brother’s creatures and hence did not
care to have at my back in battle, was not the man to risk a king’s
wrath.

However, what Kephalos narrated of his
subsequent adventures was too full of obvious lies to credit.
During every hour of the rest of his journey, so he seemed intent
upon convincing me, he was beset by marauding bandits and engaged
in fierce skirmishes with the remnants of Daiaukka’s forces, along
with every other variety of nonsense he could think of. And each
story, more fantastic than the last, displayed his courage and
cunning in much the same way an old soldier might show you his
battle scars. A month later, when I inquired of one of the soldiers
who had made up his escort, I was assured that nothing had
happened, that the journey had been without incident. I had known
as much even as, that first day, I lay on my cot and listened.

Yet Kephalos had come. He had made a journey
involving hardship and discomfort and, if not actual danger,
certainly the threat of it, and all for my sake. Thus I listened to
his lies without smiling, for Kephalos, although dishonest in all
other things, was my true friend.

And I believe it possible that he did save my
life, for I was still not free from attacks of fever and these
Kephalos treated with such success that I never relapsed into the
deliriums which had so threatened me during the first days after my
wounding.

Besides, it was a comfort to have him by. He
brought with him news of my mother and all the gossip of Nineveh,
and I could speak freely in front of him, for he knew each of my
secrets.

It was Kephalos who decided that I was not
fit to attempt returning to Amat that summer, and he persuaded me
to winter with the garrison at Zakruti. And so by the middle of
Tisri—for the snows fall early in those mountains—I was laid out on
a cart filled with straw and carried thither. It was a journey of
only ten or fifteen beru, but it took three days. And when at last
we arrived, and I slept within mud walls for the first time in four
months, I was weary unto death.

The boy Khshathrita remained with us as a
hostage throughout all that late autumn and winter, and between us
there slowly developed a strange intimacy. It pleased him to come
into my room of an hour and sit on a stool beside my bed for a
little talk. He seemed to bear me no ill will for his father’s
death and, beyond this, to imagine that among his captors I alone,
like himself the seed of a king and therefore summoned to
greatness, truly understood his position. He expected much of
himself, and it is no falsehood to say that he acquitted himself
like a man, but, after all, he was still but a child. It did not
require the powers of a soothsayer to divine that Daiaukka’s son
and heir was lonely.

Of his father, whom he held in vast
admiration, he spoke much. Also, and with a child’s enthusiasm, he
described to me the customs and religion of the Medes, whom he
regarded as the most virtuous of races. And in his innocence he
told me many things about Daiaukka’s plans for this new nation, the
Aryan, the Beloved of the Ahura, destined to sweep before them the
peoples of the world. It was from Khshathrita that I learned of the
few years’ grace which that dangerous man had been pleased to grant
to the Land of Ashur.

“My father spoke of you much the night before
his death,” the boy told me. “He said that if it was not the
Ahura’s design to spare his life, then it would only mean that the
Lord Tiglath, though an unbeliever, lived under the god’s
protection—this sedu of which your soldiers speak. He told me that
I was to abide in peace with you and never to lead the nation
against your king so long as you stood at his right hand. To this
he bound me by oath. He did not feel I would be greatly hindered
therein, for he said you will fall from favor in the reign of your
brother.”

“Perhaps then, my young friend, you are more
to be feared even than was your father.” I smiled, speaking in
jest, for he was so very serious a child. “Perhaps then I should
have you killed lest in later days you bring harm to the Land of
Ashur.”

“No—this would not be wise,” he said, shaking
his head. It was as if he had thought long and deeply on all
contingencies. “I too have brothers, with whom I live on terms of
affection. If I die, one of them will certainly succeed me, and
they are bound by no oath.”

“Thus it seems I must take what I can get.
But can you say truly that it is in your power to enforce this
peace upon the tribes?”

“Oh yes, for I am the shah now. It will yet
be a few years before I am able to make my will felt, but it will
be longer before any among the Aryan have much yearning for
war.”

Green though his years were, the boy had
wisdom. He had learned already that understanding of men and power
for which there is no word in my native tongue but which the Greeks
call “politics.”

We became very good friends, Khshathrita and
I. When at last I was able to leave my bed and, finally, walk about
a bit with the aid of a stick, we spent much time together
exploring the environs of Zakruti, which otherwise was as forsaken
a place as I ever hope to see. I grew quite fond of him, envying
Daiaukka so fine a son, and I hoped it might never prove necessary
to have him put to death, for it would afflict me to give the
order.

Gradually the time of my convalescence
passed. Soon I was able to attend to correspondence for a few hours
every afternoon and to conduct business. There was a hard frost the
day I assumed full command of the garrison. I felt the cold
bitterly, for it seemed to settle in my wounds—there has not been a
winter since when that old scar has not troubled me—but I was
healed and gaining strength. By the time the snow began to trickle
over the rocks, I was able to sit a horse once again and could even
go hunting.

But even before I was able to do much more
than sit in the doorway of my house with a blanket over my knees, I
was receiving delegations from the tribes, even from those who had
taken no part in the fighting, come to Zakruti to offer their
subjection. They piled the ground with treasure and bowed low, for
it appeared that by the bare act of surviving Daiaukka’s lance I
had attained something like the status of a god, an evil spirit
perhaps, but one best placated with offerings and homage. As soon
as they left me, of course, they went straight to the boy
Khshathrita and pledged their allegiance to him—he told me of this
himself and, of course, I was having him watched—but I could not
blame them for this. I was the army of Ashur within the Zagros
Mountains and my power of life and death was absolute. But the boy
was their shah and they gave their hearts to him.

When the spring came, and with it the time
approached for me to return to Amat, a delegation of the parsua
arrived to collect Khshathrita. I gave a banquet, at which these
mountain chiefs sat about uncomfortably, unsure how to behave in
the presence both of their conqueror and their sworn lord, and the
next morning, on what turned out to be his tenth birthday, the
shah-ye-shah and I parted as friends.

It was not many days after this that I
ordered the garrison at Zakruti to prepare for the march home. We
had stayed in these eastern lands long enough.

It was neither an eventful journey nor a
quick one. Except in time of war, an army of three thousand men
moves at a leisurely pace, and I was not yet so recovered that I
did not find so many hours of riding a strain. Kephalos complained
most bitterly that he had not been raised up to be a caravan
driver, and finally he developed such sores on the insides of his
thighs that he had to ride in a wagon. We reached Amat in just a
few days under one month.

Many clay tablets from Nineveh were waiting
on my desk. The first one I read was from the Lord Sennacherib:

“You will be pleased to learn that the Lady
Esharhamat has whelped another son, one whom, this time, the Lords
of Decision look upon with favor. So your brother the Lord Donkey
at last has an heir, although he does not seem greatly pleased. I
will say nothing, except that the Lady Esharhamat had honored me
with her confidence and that I have caused the child to be given
the name Ashurbanipal.”

So the child of which Esharhamat had told me
was born—our child. And the king knew.

Ashurbanipal. “Ashur has given a son as
heir”—that was what the name meant. I would not be surprised if
Esarhaddon was displeased.

But I was pleased. My son, who would one day
be king of the world. Our son, Esharhamat’s and mine.

Chapter 32

The next summer and autumn were quiet and, if
not happy, then at least contented. Each day had its business, but
the inner history of my life was largely a blank. My mother
returned to Amat and to her place as mistress of the shaknu’s
palace, and she, Kephalos, and my friends within the garrison were
almost my only society. Once in a while some visitor would arrive,
but these interruptions were brief. I preferred it thus. I did not
return to Nineveh. From time to time rumors would reach us of one
intrigue or another, but at such a distance—and in the blindness of
my heart—I found it easy to ignore them. I did my work and enjoyed
my little pleasures, and the world, for its part, left me largely
to myself.

All this was to change, abruptly and forever,
on the first day of the month of Sebat, with the arrival of a
dispatch rider from the palace garrison commander in Nineveh.

He came late at night—his horse, I heard the
next morning, dropped dead from exhaustion as soon as it was inside
the fortress walls—and his message, he told the watch officer,
could not wait. I was awakened by a frightened housemaid and gave
orders that I would receive our visitor in the palace audience
chamber.

He was a rab kisir, a young man, no doubt the
son of some great family whose people had had him appointed to the
quradu as the first step in a distinguished career. He was
handsome, personable, and graceful in his movements, and doubtless
he had never been near a real battle. That, however, was probably
no fault of his.

“Prince, my message is for yourself alone,”
he said, glancing with suspicion at the officers who had
accompanied me to the meeting. He had already been searched and
relieved of his sword, so I was in no danger of assassination. I
dismissed my officers, with a caution that they should remain
within call.

“Why had he called me ‘Prince’?” I found
myself wondering. It was a breach of military etiquette not to have
addressed me by my army rank.

As soon as we were alone he fell to one knee,
as he might have in the presence of the king.

“The Lord Sennacherib is dead,” he announced,
not lifting his eyes from the floor. Yes, of course.

“When?”

“These ten days ago.”

“Why did you wait? A good horseman can make
the ride from Nineveh in five days.”

“There were disturbances in the city. The
garrison commander thought it best. . .”

“To let the situation clarify first? I see.
Then the king is dead and there is a ‘situation’.” I struggled to
keep my face an impassive mask, but what did I really feel? Shock,
yes—but what else? I did not know.

“There was no warning? Did my father meet
with some accident?”

I knew the answer even as he raised his head
to speak. I could see it in his face.

“My Lord. . .”

“Yes—speak!”

“The lord king was murdered.”

He regained his feet. We stood facing one
another for a long moment, both silenced by the awful knowledge
that someone—for now, at least, some man with neither face nor
name—had dared to raise his hand against the Chosen One of Ashur.
The fact itself, the sheer incomprehensibility of it, left room for
nothing else. I knew neither grief nor fear nor anger. These
emotions were too narrow to hold me, no less than if the earth had
rent itself asunder at my very feet.

“How did it happen?” I asked finally,
surprised at the sound of my own voice. “Where. . ? How did it
happen?”

“He was at worship in the house of Shamash.
Someone—it is not certain who—took one of the idols of the lesser
gods and used it to club him to death.”

It was as in my dream, I thought. The future
which had been revealed to me upon Ashur’s holy mountain—and which
I had not understood. My father, crushed beneath the god’s wooden
hand.

“Unholy act. . .” It was all I could find
words for. What manner of man stood in so little fear of heaven
that he could do such a thing? “Unholy, wicked deed. . . Who? If
you know, tell me—quick!”

I had the messenger by the collar of his
tunic and was shaking him as a dog shakes a rat.