The Blood Star (79 page)

“Ti—Ti—?” The first syllable of my name came
out of his mouth as little more than a clicking sound. I cannot
remember when I have ever seen anyone’s eyes open so wide.

He did not try to speak again but pulled his
horse around with a jerk and galloped back through the fortress
gate as if a demon had risen up before him in broad day—perhaps he
thought one had.

Five minutes later he came back, on foot,
bringing the garrison commander with him. Now it was my turn to be
surprised, for the
rab abru
, who almost dragged me down from
my horse that he might throw his arms around me in welcome, was my
old comrade-in-arms Lushakin.

“Prince, is it really you?” he exclaimed,
when his voice came back to him. “So you are not dead, and the king
found you at last—may the gods be thanked!”

An army is like a family, and men who have
suffered the hazards of battle together grow closer than brothers.
Lushakin had been my
ekalli
in my first battle and had
fought at my side against the Uqukadi, the Babylonians, the
Scythians, and the Medes. When first I had come to Amat to take
command of the garrison as
shaknu
of the northern provinces,
Lushakin had been in my bodyguard. We embraced and wept.

As we walked across the parade ground
together, crowds of old soldiers, men who had been with me in the
wars against the northern tribes, crowded around us. I looked upon
them, men whose faces I had not seen in seven years, and their
names sprang of their own accord to my lips. They had not forgotten
me, nor I them. I was home again and among my own.

That night Lushakin and I, sitting together
in the garden of the commander’s residence, broke open many a jar
of good soldier’s beer and grew pleasantly drunk.

“I was surprised to find you in command
here,” I said and then, thinking how such words must sound, “I
mean, I did not expect that the officers of the northern army would
prosper much after Khanirabbat.”

“You mistake your brother then, Prince. No
man suffered for having served under you. Indeed, we have been much
preferred, and many went on his western campaign with him—I, alas,
had to stay behind to keep the tribesmen in good order and thus
missed the fun.”

“Then you will be pleased to hear that the
king proposes to make war against the Shuprians this autumn. We
will join him in three months.”

“Is that why you have returned, Prince?” he
asked, grasping my arm in his eagerness. “Will you assume command
again? Oh, it will be like the old days!”

“I will be there, Lushakin, but I do not
think I will command the northern armies—I am not here for that.
The king wishes me to secure his back against attack from the east.
I am to pacify the Scythians and the Medes, who threaten to form an
alliance.”

My old
ekalli
seemed to consider the
matter for a time, and his face began to grow dark with anger.
Finally he picked up an empty beer jar and threw it against the
flagstones with such violence that it seemed to shatter into
dust.

“This is madness!” he declared hotly. “The
last time it took us two years of campaigning to render the Medes
harmless, and we needed an army three times the size of the force I
have presently under my command, together with the Scythians as
allies—and, as you doubtless remember, it was a very close thing.
Now, with the Scythians allied to the Medes, the king expects us to
do the same work in two months? My Lord Prince, you have been sent
upon a fool’s errand!”

“I know all this, my friend. That is why I
will not lead the garrison at Amat into the steppes of the Zagros.
I would only be throwing away the lives of your soldiers to no
purpose, and perhaps supplying the Medes with just the provocation
they have been seeking.”

“Then what will you do? If the king. . .”

“The king commands that I pacify the
tribes—nothing else. This I believe I can best achieve on my
own.”

Lushakin stared at me in disbelief.

“My Lord Tiglath Ashur is a madman,” he said
at last, in the tone of one making a profound discovery. “I have
seen you do many foolish things, Prince, and always your
sedu
, which all men know is mighty, has protected you from
your own folly. But do not tempt the god’s favor too far. Do not
even think about venturing into the Zagros without an army at your
back, or you will never come out again.”

I smiled, for I would not have Lushakin
imagine that I feared death.

“Then only one will be dead, instead of
many,” I said. “A man’s
simtu
is written on the day of his
birth—he cannot evade it. And the king will not leave the murder of
a royal prince unavenged. Perhaps it will not be a bad thing if we
have our final reckoning with the Medes now rather than twenty or
forty or sixty years hence.”

The commander of the Amat garrison broke the
seal on another beer jar and drained off the contents almost in one
swallow. Then he set the jar back down on the flagstones, very
gently. I knew he was about to say something dangerous.

“Prince, you know I am loyal to the king,” he
began, holding up a hand to prevent any interruption. “All the
officers of the king’s army reverence him, for he is the god’s
choice to rule over the Land of Ashur. Yet things are said when men
feel themselves in the company of friends—the truth will always
find a voice. I have spoken to many who have served under your
brother in his campaigns, officers whose judgment I respect, and
the king, while an able soldier, is by no means brilliant. He
imagines everything can be achieved by brute force and the
stubbornness of his own will. He has neither your cold clarity of
thought nor your genius for the unexpected. He is not the man to
trust against an enemy as wily as the Medes. If he had been in
command ten years ago, we would all have laid down our bones in the
tall grass and Daiaukka would today be reigning in Nineveh.”

“Lushakin, I must tell you that what you say
is very close to treason.”

“It is no less true for being so.”

“Then I think it best we all pray that I come
back from Media alive.”

Lushakin, when he discovered that I could not
be turned from my purpose, insisted on accompanying me with a force
of three hundred men at least as far as our eastern
borderstone.

“You are a great fool, Prince,” he said to me
as we parted beside the stile my grandfather had put up to mark the
limit of his empire and to warn away barbarians. “Think again what
the Medes do to enemies unlucky enough to fall into their hands
alive.”

“I think of it constantly—I hardly think of
anything else. Yet there is no turning back.”

I smiled, perhaps a little foolishly, and
Lushakin offered me a final salute, even as he shook his head in
disgust.

“You are a fool, My Lord Tiglath Ashur, but
no man living has the right to call you a coward. May the god be
with you.”

He turned his horse and rode back the way we
had come, his three companies of cavalry behind him. I waited there
a long time beneath the frowning stone image of the Great Sargon,
until I could see nothing except the dust raised by my departing
bodyguard, and then I struck out for the foothills of the Zagros
Mountains and whatever fate awaited me in the wilderness of the
east. I cannot remember a time when I was ever so conscious of
being alone.

Besides Ghost, I had a pack horse bearing
provisions for a month. This was good country for hunting, so I
knew I would not starve, even after three months. The hazard lay
elsewhere.

I reached the steppes after six days. The sun
was fierce, burning yellow grass that reached sometimes as high as
my chest. In all that time I never saw a living man, yet I knew I
was being watched. Now and then I would see horse droppings that
could not have been more than a few hours old and, besides, an old
soldier develops a sense for these things. Sometimes I could almost
feel their gaze upon me.

The Zagros are a wild place. In the
mountains, which from a distance seem all sharp stone, lifeless as
any desert, there are valleys astonishing in their lushness and
canyons, hidden to the eyes of strangers, where a thousand men
could hide while an army passed by outside. I kept to the plains,
for this was not my home and I did not care to be ambushed.

On the eleventh day, just at noon, I saw
three horsemen at the crest of a foothill. They were perhaps half
an hour’s ride distant, but I had no difficulty making them out.
They intended to be seen.

I stopped and, as if that were the signal for
which they had been waiting, they started down the hill towards me.
From their dress I knew them to be Medes.

The ground just there was fairly clear, which
was a blessing. I dismounted and, since I did not yet know how
Ghost would stand the shock of battle, tethered the horses where
they would have good grazing and be out of the way. I took my sword
and a quiver with some eight or ten javelins in it and found myself
a good spot to wait. The three riders thus far had kept their
horses to a walk, but if they urged them to a gallop I knew I would
have a fight on my hands.

At first they kept bunched together, but
gradually, keeping abreast, they began to spread out in a line.
This I took for a bad sign, since horsemen know to keep clear of
one another in a charge. I took out a javelin, tested its bronze
point against my thumb, and decided this was as good a day as any
for men to die in combat.

They did not disappoint me. When they were
some hundred paces distant they began to gather speed. First one
drew his sword and then another—I could see the blades flashing in
the sunlight.

Any sudden attempt to turn a horse at full
gallop is an enterprise full of danger, so in battle a cavalryman
has no more control over his destiny than if he were riding a
comet. Thus the first Mede was a dead man long before his corpse
hit the ground—I had only to measure the distance, compensate for
his speed, and throw. My javelin arched through the air and fell on
him like a clap of thunder.

My second throw was not so elegant, for I had
little time. I killed the horse instead of the rider, but the dying
animal pitched him over its neck and when he went down he did not
get up again, so I thought perhaps the fall had done for him. I was
not really at leisure to consider the matter.

The last Mede was almost upon me now. There
was no time for a throw—the only use I could make of my javelin was
to parry the slash of his long curved sword. My javelin splintered
under the blow and the impact dashed me to the ground, but at least
my head was still on my shoulders.

He pulled his horse to a gradual stop and
turned to look back at me. It was almost insulting, as if he
thought he had the rest of his life to kill me at his convenience.
I drew two more javelins from my quiver, stuck one of them
point-first in the ground and balanced the other in my hand, ready
for any mistake my opponent thought fit to make.

Suddenly he charged. Perhaps he imagined the
range was too short to allow me another throw, and he was almost
right. There was no time even to aim. My javelin followed a low arc
and bounced off his horse’s shoulder, leaving an ugly, blood-soaked
tear behind it. Yet even this was enough. The horse screamed with
pain and terror and stopped. The Mede struck it cruelly on the
flank with the flat of his sword, but the horse would not go
forward. For the moment at least, it would have no more of
fighting.

“Get down,” I said, reaching back ten years
to the few words of Farsi I had learned while making war against
these people. “Get down, and fight or die like a man.”

I drew my sword. The Mede considered the
matter for a moment and then smiled—why should he not smile, when
his sword was easily two handspans longer than mine? He was young,
with a beautifully curled black beard, and he knew no better. He
threw his leg over the horse’s neck and slid to the ground as
carelessly as if he were crawling out of bed. I knew I had him.

The javelin and the bow were my weapons, in
the management of which I had few rivals, but by the standards of
the Nineveh barrack I was not much of a swordsman. Esarhaddon was
much better. But this Mede was not Esarhaddon and had never been
closer to the Nineveh barrack than a twenty day’s journey. I did
not care if his sword was long enough to stir the stars with.

Cavalrymen only know how to slash, and this
he did with terrifying energy. Yet I only had to keep out of his
way and wait until he tired enough to grow careless and overreach
himself. This he did and very quickly. He cut at me with too wide a
swing. I parried, throwing his blade even farther out of reach, and
stepped inside its arc. One quick thrust up under his rib cage
finished him. He did not even have time to cry out, for he
discovered his error and died in the same instant.

I cleaned the blood from my sword with the
skirt of his tunic and sat down beside the corpse to rest for a
moment. I did not look at his face, for I had learned long ago that
there was no sense of triumph in contemplating one’s dead enemies.
At that moment all I could think of was how much I would have given
for a few sips of beer.

The dead Mede’s horse was grazing nearby and
seemed to have forgotten all about the wound in its shoulder, which
was already closing under a heavy scab of dried blood. I had no
trouble catching its reins, and it was willing enough to be led
provided I did not urge it above a walk.

The second Mede, whose horse was lying dead
beside him, was alive after all. The fall had knocked him out, but
he came to himself quickly enough and had suffered nothing worse
than a broken ankle. He was only a boy, hardly more than fifteen.
He watched me with large, frightened eyes—I fancied there was
something familiar about his face, but I could not have said what
it was. I had been myself just fifteen the first time I went to
war. I found I did not have it in my bowels to kill him.