The Blood Star (86 page)

I watched the two drive off together and
then, as I turned to leave, saw that another pair of eyes had been
watching me. Esarhaddon stepped out of the shadow of a doorway,
grinning. I bowed to him.

“Stop that, Tiglath,” he said, punctuating
the command with an irritated wave of his hand. “There is no one
about to be impressed, and you know you only do it to annoy me.
What are you doing here, anyway? Come to get away from the smell of
milk and excrement?”

He grinned, as if he had said something
enormously clever.

“No. I have been looking into the
future.”

“Ah, the boys.” The Ruler of the Wide World
shrugged his shoulders, as if to indicate that his concern for the
future did not stretch so far as into the next generation.
“Ashurbanipal would make a better scribe than a king. He despises
me for a dull hunk of brown clay, so that sometimes I wonder if he
doesn’t suspect. . . But Shamash Shumukin will make a very proper
soldier—I have plans for him. They are great friends, you know.
They are like we were at their age.”

“Like us, you say? Then one can only wonder
which of them, in the end, will first betray the other.”

I still remember how the light changed in
Esarhaddon’s eyes.

Egypt. All that summer, I hardly heard of
anything else. Was there a soul in Calah, or in the world beyond
it, who escaped knowing that the king of Ashur was planning a
second attack on Egypt?

“The tribes are crawling around the northern
borders like flies over a dead horse, and you want to take an army
to Egypt?” I asked him, for I thought the whole idea mad. “You will
need at least a hundred and fifty thousand men, and if you succeed
you will need to leave half that number behind to garrison the
country. What is there in Egypt that is worth stripping our
defenses naked in order to get?”

“You have settled with the northern tribes,
Tiglath—or had you forgotten? As long as you are alive, there will
be no war with the Medes, and none of the others count.”

“I could be thrown from a horse tomorrow, or
your mother might finally find a way to have me poisoned. You hang
a great deal on the life of one man.”

“My soothsayers tell me you will live into
extreme old age. So we are all safe enough.”

Esarhaddon grinned, as if the last possible
doubt had been answered.

“What is your real objection to this
venture?” he asked me, quite as if he thought he was being excluded
from some secret. “I will not make the same mistake as before—this
time we shall attack from the east, where they are not so well
guarded.”

“What do you know of Egypt?” I asked him in
turn.

“That it is rich.” He shrugged his shoulders
in disdain. “You seem to forget that I have already seen one season
of campaigning in the Delta—the place is not unknown to me.”

“But that was the Delta, as you say. You saw
garrison duty in the west during our father’s reign. How close did
you ever come to her eastern borders?”

“I was stationed in the Land of Bashan.”
Esarhaddon laughed. “You remember Leah, the woman I brought home
from there, who had a ring put through her nose because there was
no other way to keep her in order? It was there I. . .”

“Egypt, brother!”

“Yes, Egypt—after Sidon was destroyed, we
went as far south as the Great Salt Sea in which nothing lives,
into the lands of the Hebrews.”

“But did you know that between there and
Egypt there is a great desert?”

“What of it?” he asked, as if he had seen
something of the sort on a map and was not impressed.

“To take an army across that desert will be a
fearful thing.”

“Why should it be? A desert is merely a patch
of waste ground—we are not women, you know.”

What could I do but shake my head at such
ignorant folly?

“I have crossed that desert, brother. It is a
place more terrible than anything you can imagine. I am lucky that
my bones are not still there.”

“You have been to the western desert?”
Esarhaddon’s face shone like a lamp, and he reached across the
table where we were having breakfast to put his arm about my neck
and pull me to him. “You have truly been there? Tiglath my brother,
I knew I was right to bring you home!”

“By the merciful gods. . !”

For I had sealed my own fate—now he would
insist that I come with him on this mad adventure.

Yet mine was probably the only voice
Esarhaddon heard that did not encourage him in his Egyptian
enterprise. It is always the same when a new campaign is proposed;
everyone sees in it some road to personal advancement. The
soldiers, who were weary of garrison life and excited by the
prospect of plunder, spoke to him of the conqueror’s glory; and the
courtiers, who dreamed of power and place and a chance to undo
their rivals, worked hard to smooth away every doubt and at the
same time whispered into the king’s ear how Pharaoh was stirring
rebellion among the western vassal states—which was true, but had
been just as true every day since the reign of our
great-grandfather.

The whole of Calah seemed united in
conspiracy, and even Naq’ia, although she said nothing directly to
her son, let it be known that this Egyptian scheme had her
approval—why should she not approve, when every day that Esarhaddon
was away from his capital strengthened her own hold, both on the
present government and on the heirs to the next?

“Suppose then that you succeed,” I told him.
“You have driven Pharaoh’s armies into the desert, where they will
have nothing to eat except the grave offerings left for their
ancestors. The Nile Valley is yours, from the Delta to the gates of
Karnak. What will you do then?”

“I will sack Memphis, which you claim is such
a prize. I will strip the temples of their gold. I will rape the
women and carry away the best. I will put an iron ring around
Pharaoh’s neck and drag him back to Calah behind my chariot.”

“And then what?”

Esarhaddon stared at me as if he did not
understand the question, so I repeated it.

“And then what will you do?”

“Do? What else
is
there to do?”

“A conquered nation must be governed, and
Egypt is like an anthill. If you kick it to pieces you will have a
hard time putting it back together again.”

But the King of the Earth’s Four Corners
dismissed that difficulty with a contemptuous lifting of his
eyebrows.

“What does it matter then? I will put the
double crown on the brow of some local idiot, and my garrison
commanders will rule in his name.”

He grinned with mischief.

“Or perhaps I will make you Pharaoh, and you
can shave your face and put on a little false beard made of
lacquered wood. Think of how surprised all your old friends would
be.”

At last I gave up and let Esarhaddon have his
way, reconciling myself to it with the thought that, by
accompanying him, I might be able to open his eyes before it was
too late. I should have known then that it was already too
late.

“When will you go?” Selana asked. We sat
together on the floor of our bedroom, which was now covered with a
thick reed mat, watching our son, who was five months old, display
his latest accomplishment— sitting up with no other support than
his mother’s steadying hand on his backside. He seemed almost as
pleased as his parents at this new ability and smiled broadly,
showing two glistening slivers of front tooth that had recently
broken through the gum.

“Not until after the end of next year’s
floods,” I answered, as young Theseus stealthily guided my finger
into his mouth and then bit down hard enough to make me wonder if
he would relish the taste of blood. “Nothing on such a scale can be
done in haste.”

“And how long will you be gone?”

“Six months, or perhaps eight.” The finger,
as I was glad to discover when I got it back again, was deeply
indented but intact. “It depends most on what we will find in
Egypt. Esarhaddon expects a quick campaign, but I fear he will be
disappointed.”

Whether weary of the effort involved in
holding himself straight or annoyed at a conversation not directed
at him, my son made a loud, inarticulate sound and raised his arms
to indicate that he wanted to be picked up. I obliged him, and he
expressed his appreciation by reaching across my face and putting
his thumb in my eye. Selana remained silent, looking down at her
hands in her lap.

“I will be perfectly safe,” I said. “This
will be nothing like Sicily—I will go as a
rab shaqe
in an
army numbering at least a hundred thousand men. Soldiers die in
battle, but commanders generally perish in their beds.”

This seemed to ease her mind a little, yet I
continued to suspect that she regarded the whole venture as a
fool’s errand. I refrained from telling her how closely I agreed
with her assessment.

“Little Theseus must be fed,” she announced
tonelessly, reaching out to take him from me. She opened her tunic
to expose a breast, rubbing the nipple with her thumb.

“Soon you will have to give that up,” I told
her. “He is not yet old enough to eat meat.”

She smiled a tight, brief smile and dropped
her head to kiss the child that milked her—things had not been well
between us of late, although she had said nothing.

I got up to leave.

“Will you be sorry to be gone so long?”

I had almost reached the doorway. I turned
around to answer, and the sight of her there, with our boy in her
arms, made my voice catch in my throat. I left without
speaking.

Shamash Shumukin was much to be pitied. His
mother had never cared for him, giving him up to the care of nurses
from the hour of his birth, and his father was that remote and
awful being the king of Ashur. He had the companionship of his
brother, but at that age a boy needs something more. I had had my
uncle the Lord Sinahiusur, who had treated me with kindness when I
was a youth and had made me his heir, and Tabshar Sin, the old
soldier who had taught me to be a man. They had given me the
guidance I needed, along with the sense of being approved. And
thus, when in his loneliness Esarhaddon’s forsaken son attached
himself to me, I remembered the debt I owed to others and tried to
be his friend.

And, more than anything in this life, Shamash
Shumukin wanted to take part in the Egyptian campaign. Thinking
this might not be the worst thing, I promised him I would raise the
matter with the king.

“Ashurbanipal, of course, cannot go,” I said
to Esarhaddon. “He will be the
marsarru
in a year or two
and, in any case, he is too young; but Shamash Shumukin is a
different matter. Eight months on campaign would be worth three
years in the royal barrack. Only think, brother, what you or I at
his age would have given for such a chance.”

But the king of Ashur was hardly listening.
His face was flushed and he glared at me with exhausted rage. There
were broken clay tablets all over the floor of his study and his
scribes were nowhere about. Apparently I had only just missed a
scene.

“I am the victim of my servants,” Esarhaddon
declared, stamping his sandaled foot against the floor. “The Land
of Ashur is not ruled by her king but by eunuchs who scratch lies
into mud as soft as their own flabby bellies. They know nothing of
war—all they ever think of is money.”

He sat down behind a table half covered with
the contents of a spilled wine cup, looked at another tablet, and
then abruptly threw it too to the floor. Then he refilled the wine
cup and looked up at me as if he were trying to remember why I was
in the room.

“Now—what is this about Shamash
Shumukin?”

“He wants to join the expedition to Egypt. I
think it would be a good thing.”

“That is impossible. He will be in Babylon by
then.”

“And why by the god’s mercy would you send
him to Babylon?”

“To be viceroy. And the Babylonians had
better grow accustomed to him, because after I die he will be their
king.”

The announcement was made in a flat,
passionless voice, but I must own I would not have been more amazed
if I had found it written across the sky in letters of fire. It
took my breath away. Esarhaddon, I knew, was not the wisest head
ever to wear the crown of Ashur, but I never would have credited
even him with such a monstrous piece of folly.

“Whom else have you told of this?” I
asked.

“No one else.” He grinned at me savagely.
“You are the first whom I have honored with my confidence.”

“Then all is well. Just forget all about it,
and we will take Shamash Shumukin with us to Egypt.”

But Esarhaddon only stared at me with a
dangerous look in his eyes.

“You cannot bear it, can you,” he said at
last. “You could not be king yourself, so everything must go to
Ashurbanipal.”

He rose abruptly and started pacing about the
room. As he walked, the wine in his cup splashed over his fingers
and onto the floor.

“I will make my son a king!” he shouted. “It
is not enough that you have rutted upon my wife, that the god has
put your bastard next to the throne of Ashur, but you must rob me
of everything. You are not my friend, Tiglath. You do not love me
at all.”

The wine jar was still on the table. I picked
it up and found that it was still half full. There was no second
cup, so Esarhaddon handed me his.

“I did not remember that you were so jealous
of Esharhamat’s affections,” I said coldly—really, there were times
when I had no patience with my brother.

“I am not jealous.” He stopped pacing long
enough to take back the cup, drink it off, and handed it back to
me. “I have always been openhanded with you. When have I ever said,
‘This one among my women I prize so much that I will not share her
with my brother Tiglath’? And as for Esharhamat, I have grown fond
of her over the years—in a friendly way, you know—but I never made
so much of her as you did. I never cared what you did with
her!”