The Assyrian (89 page)

“You are relieved of your command over the
northern army,” he told me. “You are to enjoy the freedom of the
camp and shall retain your rank of rab shaqe—for the present—but
you are forbidden to take any part in the coming battle, even as a
common soldier. It is a victory which shall belong to the Lord
Esarhaddon alone.”

I said nothing.

“Do you agree to this?” he asked, his voice
challenging but also a trifle uncertain.

“Is my agreement required? I am the king’s
servant. It is for him to command and for me to obey.”

Sha Nabushu’s mouth curled into a smile,
almost as if he could not help himself.

“Who is to assume command?” I asked.

For a moment the little man hesitated—did he
imagine Esarhaddon might intend to keep this a secret? But it is
ever so. The servants of foolish and changeable masters are always
afraid.

“I have that honor,” he replied finally.
Yes—perhaps it was not only my brother whom he feared. “You will
inform your officers of the king’s orders and direct them to meet
me here at the fifth hour after midday.”

“They are not my officers now; and I am not
in a position to give directions to anyone.”

It seemed, for the moment, that we had
reached an impasse. Sha Nabushu opened his mouth to speak and then,
apparently, could not think of the words. I was delighted.

“Yes, of course,” I said. “I will see to the
matter.”

My officers—mine no longer—were not
pleased.

“Who is this puppy?” Lushakin asked. “Has
anyone ever heard of him? How are we to expect men to risk their
lives under the command of such a one?”

“The men will not serve. They recognize no
authority except the rab shaqe’s. We shall have desertions.”

“And we ourselves should be among the first
to desert—this is an intolerable insult!”

“It must be tolerated,” I said, as calmly as
I could, for I was moved by their loyalty but must not show it. “It
is the king’s will.”

“What is your will, Rab Shaqe?”

“That you meet with your new commander and
obey such orders as proceed from the king’s authority. That
whatever your feelings may be concerning this business, or whatever
is to follow, you will keep them to yourselves and warn your troops
to do the same, for it is an easy thing for a man to cut his own
throat with his tongue.”

“And what of you, Rab Shaqe?”

“What of me? I should think my simtu, like
every man’s, is written on the god’s tablet. Perhaps I shall learn
soon enough what it is to be.”

I parted from them then, taking each man’s
hand, for from this hour I must be as the dead. How else were they
to preserve their own lives?

And then I left. I put a bridle on Ghost and
went for a ride into the surrounding hills. Even as I left the camp
I was aware that there were two horsemen following me—I was not
trusted out of my brother’s sight.

The time of partings. Truly this was the time
of partings and, as before, I had not seen it until it was upon me.
The king my father, my mother, the army I loved as a man loves his
wife, perhaps even my own life.

And, of course, Esharhamat. I had lost her
first, yet she it was who filled my heart, even now.

I would never see her again. Now that he was
king, Esarhaddon would wall her up in his house of women and I
would never see her again. Never would she fill my eyes with her
loveliness, as if I were blind or the light had gone out of the
world. Then what else mattered, and what was there to fear in
death?

I did the god’s will, yet in my heart I
cursed the god.

Esharhamat, Esharhamat—the name itself had
all the sweetness of life. To live was to remember, and to remember
to know pain. No, I had no fear of death. And the power of the king
my brother became like a shadow. Let him do his will.

I stayed away from the encampment—it is hoped
much to the vexation of my two attendants, who kept five or six
hundred paces behind me but did not trouble to conceal
themselves—until well after darkness had fallen and the soldiers
were settled comfortably around their cooking fires. Then, when I
could be sure my tent would be once more my own, I rode back. The
soldiers I met greeted me easily enough. They knew nothing of my
fall from favor and perhaps would not care if they did, for to such
the king was almost as distant as the gods themselves.

I ate a good dinner and kicked off my sandals
to go to bed—it is wonderful how easy a man may be in his mind when
he has resigned himself to death. I could wonder how Esarhaddon
slept and I found I did not envy him.

The additional seven thousand soldiers would
not arrive from Amat for two or three more days, but already the
next morning I had only to look about me to see that, as if by
magic, the king’s forces had greatly increased in size. The stretch
of open land between our encampment and that occupied by the main
army was now filled in with makeshift tents and cooking fires.
Perhaps as many as three thousand men had appeared, seemingly from
nowhere. They were deserters from the rebels, come to make their
peace with Esarhaddon while they still could.

It was the thing reasonable men would do. For
the past few days at least, their scouts must have given the rebel
commanders notice that the northern army was drawing near, and our
intention of siding with the king must have been obvious. The
balance was then clearly tipped in Esarhaddon’s favor, and this, no
matter how they tried, my traitor brothers could not have kept from
those who had followed them into treason. And no sane man delights
to throw his life away in a lost cause.

The soldiers I saw that morning, camped like
beggars at Esarhaddon’s door, were simply the first wave of
deserters from Arad Malik’s cause. There would be more—unless I was
most seriously mistaken, there would be many more.

And Esarhaddon was not such a fool as to turn
them away. He knew that an enemy, while it grows weaker when
confronted by the corrupting hope of mercy, is only strengthened by
desperation. Therefore, while they might never stand very high in
their king’s good opinion, these deserters from the rebel cause
would be allowed to live and to serve. Esarhaddon would curse and
threaten and then forgive them—most of them—and they knew it. And
because they knew it, Arad Malik’s army would quietly bleed to
death before ever a sword was drawn against them.

So each night the sentries waited for the
muffled sounds of men creeping through the darkness, singly or in
twos and threes, officers and foot soldiers and cavalrymen on their
war horses, and each night these would be made to huddle beyond the
camp’s earthworks while they waited, squatting apprehensively on
the cold earth, for word of the Lord Esarhaddon’s clemency. All
night they might wait, with nothing behind them but the certainty
of ruin and nothing ahead but such of safety as could be purchased
by embracing my brother’s knees and begging pardon, and finally in
the gray light of morning, they would be admitted, given breakfast,
and allowed to sleep wherever they could find a place.

And they were grateful to Esarhaddon—even a
dog is grateful to be allowed to live—but as I walked among them,
seeing here and there a man whose face or even name was known to
me, I saw always the same accusation in their beaten eyes: “Look at
us, Prince Tiglath Ashur, favorite son of the Lord Sennacherib,
your father who was lord of the world and true king in the Land of
Ashur. Look at us, and see that to which we have been brought. Now
we must bend our bodies before Esarhaddon—think what future faces
us and the nation both. And for this we blame you, no one but
you.”

But at least these had a future. Some there
were who came in the night and found only death, for the king’s
mercy was not for everyone. My brother had a long memory, as not a
few were discovering who had spoken too rashly in the days of the
Lord Sennacherib.

With other officers, I was called to witness
the execution of one Zakir Nergal, who had been a rab abru in the
Nineveh garrison and was a man of whom I knew no particular evil.
Yet somehow he had offended against the king’s majesty and was to
pay the price of being roasted in chains, a traditional punishment,
honored by custom, but one I had never heard of being employed
during my father’s lifetime. It did not promise to be a pretty
spectacle.

Kephalos accompanied me, declaring his
interest to be of a medical character. I warned him, but he would
come.

“You need not concern yourself, master,” he
said, smiling as if at a child’s fears, “for a physician is
hardened to the sight of pain. I can assure you I have seen far
worse things merely attending in my father’s consulting room in
Naxos—there is no occasion to worry about me.”

We took our places around the punishment
site, nothing more than a piece of bare earth where a great fire of
logs had been burning since yesterday evening—it being a cold
morning, we were glad of the warmth, although probably Zakir Nergal
would not have agreed—and waited for the king’s arrival. His chair
was already there for him, and at last he came, glorious in his
golden robes and his turban covered with gems. He sat down and
looked about him, like the host at a banquet. If he saw me he gave
no sign.

It was the first time I had beheld my brother
in two years and, since it seemed unlikely that we would meet many
more times before he made up his mind what to do with me, I was
curious to see the change that kingship had wrought in him. He did
not give the impression of a man who knew any great pleasure in
glory.

Esarhaddon was even a little younger than I,
yet already he wore that look of anxious doubt which I had seen so
many times on our father’s face. He sat, resting his cheek on the
palm of his hand, and all the gold and jewels which were meant to
dazzle other men’s eyes could not disguise the uneasiness in his
own. It would have been better if he had been allowed to live his
life as a soldier, in accordance with the childhood ambition we had
both shared, and I think he knew as much himself.

The fire had by this time been reduced to a
bed of coals, a span or so deep and covered with a skin of ash but
glowing red as blood beneath it. This had been raked into a circle
and over it was raised a huge iron tripod, its legs wide apart and
coming together some fourteen or fifteen cubits above the ground.
At this apex there was an iron ring through which ran a long copper
chain with a hook at one end.

Esarhaddon nodded. It was time for the
entertainment to begin.

A guard of four men brought in the prisoner,
who was trailing copper chains from his hands and feet—he kept
rubbing his wrists, as if the manacles chafed him. I had known
Zakir Nergal for ten years, but had I not been told in advance who
was to suffer that morning I doubt I would have recognized him.
Such is the change that can come to a man when he has had a whole
night in which to contemplate the approach of death—especially such
a death as this. Three days ago he had been in glory, a man of high
rank around the usurper Arad Malik, and now this.

He looked dead already. His face was thin and
haggard, and his eyes, wide, lifeless, and staring, suggested he
hardly understood what was about to happen to him. And yet he was
afraid. He was half mad with terror—if the guards had released
their grip on his arms, I am sure he would have collapsed.

He said nothing. His mouth was open, but he
was only panting for breath. He looked as if he had lost the power
of speech.

We all drew ourselves up to attention as
Esarhaddon rose to speak. But the king my brother seemed also to
have been struck dumb. He looked at the condemned man and his face
flushed black with anger, but he could not find the words for this
terrible wrath that held him as fast as the copper chains around
Zakir Nergal’s wrists and ankles. At last he sat down again,
defeated, and with a distracted wave of his hand signaled that the
thing might now begin.

All this time Zakir Nergal had been staring
at the iron tripod, as if he could not comprehend what purpose it
might be there to serve. He was marched almost to the foot of the
coal bed and then forced down on his knees—it did not require much
force. The chains that bound him were linked together behind his
back, each end clamped to an iron ring. This ring in turn was hung
on the hook at the end of the chain that ran up to the tripod’s
apex. While Zakir Nergal knelt beside the burning coals, the guards
began to pull on the chain so that he was hauled up like a well
bucket.

It was then that he found his voice. His
screams of panic tortured the very air.

They did not give Zakir Nergal a quick end.
At first, as the chain pulled him up, he swung out over the bed of
coals, but that was to be no more than a first taste. The guards
quickly raised him until, dangling belly down, he was almost at the
top of the tripod, where he could feel the fires heat only a little
more sharply than we who watched.

Slowly, half a cubit at a time, they lowered
him down toward the coals. He was so hoarse now that his screams
could hardly be heard, but he was still very alive, twisting this
way and that, trying to escape—to what, one wondered, when to be
free of his chains was to fall straight to the burning death which
awaited him? But a man will struggle to escape death, and when
there is no escape he will struggle just the same.

Slowly, he came closer and closer to the
fire.

He was still alive, still conscious, when the
blisters began to rise on his face and neck—huge things, full of
water and blood. Then his hair started to smoke, and then burn, and
then his clothes. Yet he was still alive, still writhing in his
chains, when the guards decided he was close enough and anchored
their end of the chain to the ground with an iron pin.