The Blood Star (80 page)

“Is Khshathrita still
shah
over the
Medes?” I asked, crouching beside him on the ground. “Or have his
people, who are as treacherous as serpents, turned against him and
left his corpse to the delicate feasting of crows?”

He made an answer, most of which I could not
understand but the import of which was that Khshathrita still lived
and ruled.

I opened my right hand and held it up before
the young Mede’s face.

“Then tell him you have met the man who
carries the mark of the blood star on his palm.”

Ten years before, this boy with his downy
beard would have been a mere child, following his mother about,
clutching at her skirt with his tiny hand. Yet he understood now
who I was. I could see it in his eyes, which were filled with more
than the terror of mere death. It seemed that I had not been
forgotten in the villages of the Zagros.

“Go now. Accept your life as a gift of the
Lord Tiglath Ashur.”

I had to help him onto his dead comrade’s
horse, for his ankle would bear no weight. As he rode away, as fast
as his wounded mount would allow, he kept glancing back over his
shoulder, as if he expected that I would turn into a pillar of
fire.

I knew the Medes would be back, if only to
collect their dead for burial according to their own barbaric
rites, and I had no desire to risk another confrontation before
Khshathrita had been made aware of my presence in his domain. Thus
I departed the scene of battle at once, camping toward sunset on a
bluff several
beru
distant, from which I would have some
notice of any approach of strangers.

I did not light a fire that night, but I had
no illusions that I could keep myself concealed for very long. It
would be just as well if tempers had a few days to cool, but in the
end I had come here to be found.

Yet for five days no one ventured near me—I
even lost the sense of being watched from a distance. I might have
been alone in this vast landscape.

I had not seen Khshathrita since he was a
boy, not since that summer, nearly ten years before, when my armies
had held him hostage while I recovered from the wounds I had
received in mortal combat against his father. We had grown to be
good friends then, but the boy was now a man and the leader of his
people, and anyone who counts on the friendship of kings to save
him has mud where his brains should be. It would be necessary to
wait upon events.

There was nothing to make me pursue one
direction over another, so I followed the hunting, which was good.
I dined on fresh meat every night, and in the morning whatever was
left on the blackened bones, plus a little cooked millet, did me
very well for breakfast. The nights were warm and I slept well. It
was a luxurious existence, made uncomfortable only by the knowledge
that it continued at the sufferance of my enemies.

Would they come swooping down one night, a
hundred strong, and butcher me in my sleep? Would I be taken alive
and staked out on the ground to have my skin peeled off? Lushakin
had been right, for the Medes are cruel to their prisoners. If it
came to the point, I resolved to die by my own hand before allowing
myself to be captured.

But even fear loses its edge with time. After
the second day I stopped thinking about death. I let my mind go
empty and achieved something like peace.

I thought of Selana and the child she carried
in her womb—it might be a son for all I knew, to be born after his
father’s death. A son is like immortality, or as good as any man
can hope for.

I thought of Esharhamat, who had borne me a
son, a child conceived in guilty love, one I could never name as my
own.

I thought of the child Nodjmanefer had not
lived to bear, and my bowels went cold. It was well that Enkidu had
remained in Nineveh to guard my family, for the world was an evil
and uncertain place.

At the end of the sixth day, near sunset, I
saw a lone rider approaching over the grassy steppes. I could not
see his face, for it was covered up to the eyes with the end of his
turban, as is the custom in that part of the world, for the dust
can be terrible, yet he was not dressed like a Mede. He carried a
bow across his back and a quiver of arrows. When he came closer I
saw a short curved dagger stuck in his belt.

At last we were no more than twenty paces
apart. He stopped his horse, and I could see from the way his eyes
narrowed to slits—they were the eyes of a cat—that he was
smiling.

Then he took down the cloth covering his face
and I knew him.

“Brother!” he exclaimed, in Aramaic, “have I
aged more than you that you stare so? It is Tabiti, son of
Argimpasa, headman of the Sacan tribe of the Scoloti.

XXXVII

“This Ahura of the Medes is not a god much
given to hospitality. Each time I visit young Khshathrita in
Ekbatana I must camp outside the city walls, for I am an unbeliever
and therefore impure. When first we contemplated this alliance, I
offered him the elder of my two daughters for a wife and he refused
her. Well, I thought, perhaps she is not to his taste, so I offered
her sister as well, and still he persisted in his refusal, for it
seems he will not risk defilement by taking women of other races to
his sleeping mat. Can you imagine such a thing? Where would the
world be if all of us were so fastidious? Clearly, the man is a
barbarian.”

We sat under the bright stars while Tabiti
stirred the fire with the point of his dagger. He had brought with
him a goatskin full of
safid atesh
, a wine the Scythians
make from horses’ milk—the name means something like “white
lightning” and is a reasonable description.

“Then this alliance cannot last long,” I
suggested, but Tabiti, ever the practical man, shook his head.

“This is not marriage but statecraft, and our
mutual distaste will not keep us apart. It serves the interests of
my people that I should join Khshathrita if he makes war against
Esarhaddon, for otherwise we will be left out of the spoils. That I
do not love him is beside the point. I love you, my friend Tiglath
Ashur, no less than if you were my own brother, yet, had I not
sworn an oath to you that day at the Bohtan River, when your
soldiers had conquered the Sacan, spilling our blood as punishment
for having entered the Land of Ashur, I would this minute be
cutting your throat.”

This struck me as a rare jest, no less
because I knew he spoke the truth, and I laughed.

“It is good to be among friends again,” I
said, and laughed still more.

“And I am glad to see you, My Lord, for I had
thought you long dead and my liver was afflicted that you should
suffer so at the hands of your own king and brother. Still, it is a
grief to me that now the Scoloti may not fall like wolves upon the
Land of Ashur. For years now visions of her plundered cities have
filled my dreams.”

We spoke no more of such matters but
remembered, as warriors will, the old days. We drank to the brave
men, his and mine, who had drenched the earth with each other’s
blood when we fought against each other beside the Bohtan River. We
lived again our war against the Medes, for memories of ancient
battles are full of sweetness.

“I still think you were a fool not to have
killed Daiaukka the moment he came into your hands,” Tabiti said.
“As it was, he nearly killed you. I do not know what it is in you,
brother, that makes you take such risks.”

“Perhaps, if I had listened to you and had
the father strangled, I would not have had to come back to this
place to make peace with the son.”

But the headman of the Sacan waved this aside
as mere giddy talk, worthy of women.

“Daiaukka was a brave man and a great leader,
but leaders are less important than you imagine and war is the
common condition of life. The Medes will fight the Assyrians until
they have poured over your borders and laid your land waste—or
until you have butchered them to the last sucking babe. It does not
depend on any of us, not on you nor me nor that ill-mannered brat
of Daiaukka’s who now calls himself `king of kings.’ It is the way
things are.”

“Then Daiaukka was right: it will never
end.”

“No, it will never end, and that is just as
well”—he nudged me with his elbow, as if telling me something in
confidence—“for you and I are warriors, My Lord, and there is no
one more to be pitied than a warrior who knows he will never again
see battle.”

“How did you know I was here, brother?”

I found I did not entirely trust Tabiti in
this reflective mood, for when a man such as he, a savage
accustomed to living each day as if it held his whole life, begins
to brood darkly over the meaning of things, it is usually a sign
that his conscience is not clear.

And I knew I was right the instant he looked
at me. The reddish color of burned brick, with narrow, catlike eyes
and only a few wisps of beard framing his mouth, Tabiti’s was not a
face to show much range of feeling, yet I knew he was holding
something back.

“I happened to be with Khshathrita when his
younger brother returned,” he answered, implying that this was a
sufficient reply.

“His brother?”

“Yes—his brother. It is well you spared his
life, yet this is still a messy business, My Lord. The two you
killed were cousins.”

He made a gesture with his hand as if it were
loose on his wrist and the wind moved it.

“At this moment the Medes are struggling
among themselves over who is to lead them,” Tabiti continued.
“Khshathrita is the true
shah
, but he is young and he has an
uncle who fancies himself a great man—you, the son of a king, will
know the sort of thing I mean. It can only end one way, for at last
Khshathrita will crush his uncle and gather all power to himself,
yet it may not end soon. Do you understand me, Lord? Your life is
threatened now, while a foolish and vain man grieves over the
deaths of his sons and perhaps has the power to demand that they be
avenged.”

“Where is Khshathrita now?”

“In a village about four days from here.”

The direction he indicated lay over a line of
rocky foothills, so I knew the sort of place he meant. The Medes
often built their villages straight into the face of a mountain,
like fortresses, with only a goat path leading down to the
plain.

“I am on my way back north.” Tabiti glanced
away, as if the admission shamed him. “There is nothing I can do to
help you, my friend, and it is better that I do not become
involved.”

“I understand your position. You must act for
your people, and it is always better not to take sides in another
family’s quarrels.”

“You are wise, brother. But take heart, and
do not imagine I will forget you. No alliance can endure forever,
so be sure that one day, should the Medes chance to strip you of
your life, I shall exact from them a fitting blood price.”

Tabiti rode away the next morning. I waited
two more days, and still the Medes did not intrude upon my
solitude.

Why? What held them back? I was an old enemy,
a trespasser in a land they held sacred to their unforgiving god,
and I had recently killed two cousins of their
shah
. Why did
they stay their revenge?

I thought perhaps I knew.

Ten years before, when I first came into the
Zagros with a vast army at my back to make war against the Medes,
their sorcerers had told them that I was the spirit of the Great
Sargon made flesh again. There had been many who still remembered
him from the days of his own campaign in their mountains, when he
had taken their first
shah
, one Ukshatar, father of Daiaukka
and grandfather of Khshathrita, a captive that he might wear out
his life under the yoke of Ashur. They fancied a resemblance, and
it had filled their hearts with terror, for they are a
superstitious people. I had used this as a weapon, invoking the
magic of my grandfather’s name and leading my army under the banner
of the blood star which had blazed in the eastern sky the night of
his death. I defeated the Medes and then, in answer to his
challenge, killed Daiaukka in single combat, nearly losing my own
life as well but greatly impressing the Medes. From that day there
had been peace.

Daiaukka, on the night before his death, had
told his son that if I prevailed against him it could only mean
that I lived under the protection of Ahura, the Median god who is
lord of all truth and power. Thus he made the boy swear an oath
that there would be no war between his people and mine as long as I
stood at my king’s right hand.

The Medes do not lie, not even to their
enemies, so Khshathrita would never have broken that oath had not
my banishment released him from it. Yet now, like the taint of some
ancient curse, I had returned to spoil his plans for an alliance
with the Scythians and an attack upon the Land of Ashur.

Ten years, however, was not a moment, and
none among the Medes except their
shah
would feel bound to
keep the peace only because an unclean foreigner had returned as if
from the dead.

Still, they would hesitate. They would
remember the fate of Daiaukka. They would remember that the man who
killed him might be something else besides a man, and they would
not be anxious to test his magic. Perhaps they would be just as
pleased if I slinked quietly away, for they were afraid—the fact
that I was still alive was testimony to their fear.

I would have to stake my life, and the
success of my mission, on that fear. My only hope lay in boldness.
If the Medes would not come to me, then I would have to force
myself upon them.

I had had enough of waiting. I mounted Ghost
and rode in the direction that Tabiti had indicated led to
Khshathrita’s headquarters.

My sense of utter isolation returned, and
with it a cold, unforgiving fear that settled in my bowels like a
piece of jagged ice. I was alone in this land where once I had
earned for myself the enmity of a conquered people—a people who
might now be watching my every movement, whose moment for revenge
had now come if only they chose to take it. They were many and I
was alone. How should I contrive to leave this place with the flesh
still on my bones?