Nine White Horses (20 page)

“I wonder,” she said, “how you’ll take to the training ring.”

He snorted and raised his head and stamped. And went up,
smooth and sure, all silver in the moonlight: a levade as polished as any in
the arena.

She laughed. His eye seemed to laugh with her. She had an
answer to that question at least. It was quite enough to go on with.

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Enmerkar the king stood on the walls of Uruk. The hordes
from the desert had withdrawn at last.

In their wake they had left devastation: fields and orchards
stripped of their harvest, villages burned, cattle slaughtered or stolen, and
an echo of laughter as they marched away with their spoils. He had hoped—gods,
he had prayed—that if he raised the city’s walls higher and doubled the guards
on the fields, the Martu would give way. But they had only grown bolder, the
more the city tried to resist them. Those who understood their language said
that the raiders reckoned the city folk soft and their king a coward, too weak
to put up a proper fight.

The men of Uruk were brave enough, but these savages were
relentless. Their blades of flint and their spears of fire-hardened wood killed
as thoroughly as the finest bronze. And there were so many of them. Uruk was a
great city and powerful, but it could not send out the hordes of fighting men
that these tribes bred like swarms of locusts.

Now they had gone away. A good half of the harvest was taken
and much of the rest trampled and fouled. It was too much to hope that the
Martu would not come back when the grain was tall again, as they had for year
upon year, and each year in greater numbers and with stronger weapons and more
outrageous contempt. The men of Uruk grew the grain; the men of the desert took
it, as if the gods had given it to them as a gift.

Enmerkar stood under the open sky before the eyes of his
people. He could not rend his beard in frustration, still less fling down his
royal staff and trample it. He stiffened his back and squared his shoulders and
made himself descend from the sight of a war that he could not, with all his
wealth and power, hope to win.

o0o

“We need Aratta,” the king’s sister said.

She was Inanna, the living goddess, unlike Enmerkar, who was
a mere king of men. In her divinity she could run far ahead of mortal
understanding; she was not always patient, either. She glared at the blank
faces of the king’s council, a circle of round cheeks and round eyes, with no
more wit in them than in a cairn of stones.

“Aratta,” she said as if to children, “has wood. It has
stone. It has metal. It has alliances with us from years before, oaths and
promises of trade. Aratta will help us, if we offer a caravan of grain and the
fruits of the south.”

“A caravan?” said the king. “It will be a lean winter as it
is. We can’t spare even a tithe of the harvest—and Aratta will want more than
that, if it knows how desperate we are.”

“Then let us not be desperate,” Inanna said sharply. “Let us
be allies with trade to offer. Or are we truly defeated as the Martu declare?
Are we their sheep, to be plucked of our fleece in season and led tamely to the
slaughter?”

That made some of them bristle and others close their ears
and minds against her. Lugalbanda, who had earned his place here by winning a
battle or three but who was not the best or most eloquent of speakers, found
himself unable to restrain his tongue. “I—I have heard,” he said, battling the
stammer that always beset him when he had to speak in front of people, “I have
heard a story, a rumor really, but it has a ring of truth—that there is a new
god in Aratta, a god of war.”

“That’s old news,” said the councilor who had spoken first. “The
god, if he is one at all, has been there for years.”

“Indeed,” said the king’s sister. She turned her beautiful
and terrible eyes on Lugalbanda. “Tell us what you have heard.”

His knees were weak and his wits scattered, but those eyes
compelled him. They drew words out of him, words that even made sense—and that
was a miracle worthy of her divinity. “I—I have heard that the god came from
the east, and he brought with him an art and a weapon. He forges bronze, they
say, that is stronger and brighter and keener than any in the world. His swords
are sharper, his spearheads more deadly. But even more than those, he has a
craft, a thing of power and terror. It rolls like thunder over the earth. Great
beasts draw it, swifter than the wind. Wherever it goes, armies fall like mown
grain.”

“Travelers’ tales,” said the king.

“Travelers who have been to Aratta,” his sister said. “Is
there more?”

Lugalbanda had an itch between his shoulderblades. It would
have killed his dignity to scratch it, yet it was a miserable niggling thing.

It could not drive him any madder than the sight of her
face. “There—there is a little, divine lady. They say the god rides in his
great weapon, and rules it with the terror of his will. And—and they say that
he is not alone. That he has made more of them, and taught the men of the city
to master them, and they are unconquerable in battle.”

“It is true,” said the eldest of the council, who was deaf
and nearly blind, but his wits were still as sharp as ever. “Even I hear a
thing or two, and I have heard that no enemy has threatened Aratta since
shortly after the god came to it. It’s more than the terror of his presence; he
has weapons that deter even the hordes of savages.”

Enmerkar smote his thigh with his fist. “If Aratta has such
weapons—if this is not dream and delusion—we need them. We need copper and
stone, wood and bronze. We need strength to drive back the Martu and to keep them
from coming back again and again.”

Inanna clapped her hands together. “All hail to the king of
Uruk! Yes, we need what Aratta has—and it would be best if our messenger went
soon, before winter closes the mountain passes. As it is, he’ll not come back until
spring, but maybe he’ll come to us with a hoard of god-forged weapons.”

“And maybe he’ll come back empty-handed, or never at all.”
But Enmerkar was less despondent than he had been in all this Martu-embattled
year. “It’s a risk I’m willing to take. But, lady, to send a caravan—”

‘We can’t send promises,” she said. “We’re too desperate. It
must be sacks of wheat and barley, and jars of dates and baskets of apples and
all the riches of the earth that we can possibly spare.”

“And wine,” the eldest councilor said. “Send the king a
great gift of date wine, and see he drinks a good part of it while he haggles.
That will bring him round if nothing else will.”

He grinned a toothless grin. Some of them were outraged, but
laughter ran round the rest of the circle, easing the mood remarkably. He had
won them over more truly with laughter than she had with her fierce impatience.

She was in no way contrite, though she had the grace to
acknowledge his wisdom. “We should leave as soon as may be,” she said, “with as
large a caravan as we can muster, under a strong guard. You”—she thrust her
chin toward Lugalbanda—“will command the guard. See that you choose men brave
enough, and hardy enough, for mountains.”

Lugalbanda could find no words to say. He was the youngest
and the least of this council. He was a fighting man, to be sure, and had led a
company of stalwarts from the city with some credit and a number of victories
the past few seasons. But to leave Uruk, to venture the mountains that walled
the north of the world, to walk where all the gods were strange—

“I am not—” he began.

No one heeded him. The king had heard what Inanna had tried to
hide behind the shield of Lugalbanda. “You are going? Lady, you cannot—”

“I am going,” she said with divine certainty. “My temple
will do well enough in my absence. The rest of the gods will look after the
city. No one and nothing in Uruk will suffer because I have gone from it.”

“No one but you,” her brother said bluntly. “Lady, the
journey is long and the road is hard. As great and powerful as you are, and as
divinely blessed, still you walk in flesh, and flesh can be destroyed. We can’t
risk the loss of you.”

“You can’t risk a lesser messenger,” she said. “You could
send every wise man in this council, and that would be a noble embassy, but my
heart declares that they would fail. I may not succeed, either, but the refusal
may be less swift. Men will hesitate to refuse a goddess.”

“I can’t let you go,” Enmerkar said.

She raised her chin. When she drew herself up, she was
nearly as tall as the king. She met him eye to eye and will to will. “I am not
yours to permit or deny,” she said with dangerous softness. “I belong to Uruk,
and Uruk has great need of me.”

He was not struck dumb—far from it. But before he could
burst out in speech, the eldest councilor said, “Certainly no man may oppose
the will of a goddess. But, lady, Uruk will be a sad place without you.”

“Uruk will be sadder when the Martu break down the gates,”
she said. “A god may address a god, even when kings are minded to be difficult.
I will speak as an equal to the god in Aratta, and see what I may win for Uruk.”

Even the king could hardly fail to see the sense in that. He
scowled and snarled, but he no longer tried to forbid her. She rose from her
chair of honor and shook out the flounces of her skirt. “We leave before the
moon comes to the full,” she said.

Whatever protest any of them might have uttered, she did not
hear it. She had swept out, grand as a goddess could be, in every expectation
that when she deigned to look again, all would be done exactly as she had
ordered.

o0o

Mountains went up and up, but never quite touched the sky.
Lugalbanda’s men had known no height of land but what men made with their own
hands: towers, and walls of cities. This lifting and tilting and tumbling of
the earth robbed them of breath and sense, numbed them with cold and pelted
them with stinging whiteness.

Snow, their mountain-born guides called that. They were
casually contemptuous of the flatlanders, as they called the men of Uruk—but they
were in awe of the goddess who traveled with them. Lugalbanda had deep doubts
of their trustworthiness, but their fear of the goddess had proved thus far to
be greater than either greed or malice.

He had been trudging upward since the world began, and wheezing
for breath the more, the higher he went. Some of the men had had to turn back:
they were dizzy, their heads were splitting, and when they tried to rise or
walk they collapsed in a fit of vomiting. Lugalbanda was not much happier than
they, but he had so little desire to eat that there was nothing to cast up.

There had been a raid or two, days ago; they had lost a pair
of oxen and a drover. But since they had come to the top of the world, they were
all alone but for the occasional eagle. Lugalbanda was sure by then that their
journey would have no end, that they would climb forever and never find Aratta.

Inanna, being divine, knew no such doubts or weakness. She
walked ahead of her people, beside or just behind the guides, wrapped in wool
and felt and fleece, and nothing showing from the midst of it but her great
dark eyes. She refused to ride on one of the oxen; she would not let one of the
men carry her. Her legs were sturdy and her strides long; she breathed as
easily on the summits as in the river valley in which she had been born.

Lugalbanda followed her blindly. The snow was so white, the
light so piercing, that his eyes stabbed with pain. He wrapped them in folds of
linen and followed the shadow of her, and knew little of where he went. He had
no mind left; it was all burned out of him, there beneath the roof of heaven.

Even as dazed he was, he became aware, one bitterly bright
day, that the ascent had stopped. They were going down, slowly sometimes, and
at other times precipitously.

Little by little the air warmed. The snow thinned. The sun’s
light lost its fierce edge. Lugalbanda’s eyes could open again without pain,
and his mind began to clear.

There came a morning when, having camped in a green and
pleasant valley, they descended by a steep narrow track. It surmounted a ridge
and, at midmorning, bent sharply round the knee of the mountain.

There before them was not yet another wilderness of peaks
but a wide green country rolling toward a distant dazzle and shimmer.

“The sea,” Inanna said. He had not heard or sensed her
coming, but she was beside him. The mountainside dropped away almost beneath
her feet, but she stood as calmly as if on level ground. “Look, do you see?
There is Aratta.”

He had seen it, but at that distance and out of the last of his
mountain-born befuddlement he had taken it for an outcropping of rock. It was
built on such, he saw as he peered under his hand, but its walls were deep and
high, and within them he saw the rise of towers.

It was a greater city than he had expected. It was not as
great or as noble as Uruk, but its splendors were manifold. Its walls were of
stone, its gates of massive timbers bound with bronze. Its houses and palaces
and the towers of its temples were built of wood and stone. The wealth of that,
the extravagance, were unimaginable in a world of mud brick, but here they were
commonplace.

o0o

They were three days on the road between the mountains and
the city. Lugalbanda had sent men ahead, swift runners with strong voices, to
proclaim the goddess’ coming. They performed the task well: when the caravan
came to Aratta, they found its walls hung with greenery and its processional
way strewn with flowers.

Inanna allowed herself to be carried in like a sacred image,
borne on the shoulders of the tallest and strongest of her guards. She had put
on a gown of fine linen and ornaments of gold and lapis, and set a diadem of
gold over her plaited hair, with golden ribbons streaming down her back and
shoulders. She was as bright as a flame in the cool sunlight of this country,
where everything was green, and the earth’s bones were hidden beneath a mantle
of grass and forest.