Authors: John Koetsier
That night, in my quarters — still, fortunately, the large, relatively luxurious, but most importantly, private space I had slept in the first night — Sargon and I spoke.
After admiring the room — a massive improvement on life in barracks, he said — and sitting on the extra bed, he told me his story.
“Like you, I am not native to Kish. I am Akkadian, from some village farther up the river. Which village, I will never know, as I floated down to Kish on the wreckage of a barge perhaps twenty years ago as a small boy.”
“I learned all this much later, growing up. A gardener took me in ... saw me floating downriver as he was tending the lugal’s flowers near the river, jumped into the water, saved me.”
“He was the only father I knew, but even at a young age I knew I would never be a gardener. Thank Enlil I was big, and strong, and fast, and when he spoke to one of the men who kept the common people out of the gardens, I was accepted into the lugal’s army.”
“Just a common foot soldier at first, as I was untrained and without family, without money. But over time I caught a few eyes, did a few stupid things that should have gotten me killed, and bashed a few skulls that were in my way. Now I am a palace guard.”
“I did not care for you at first because I am still new here, still an outsider. Being paired with another outsider — an already hated man who had killed some of our own — I thought that would reflect badly on me as well.”
“But,” he said, “Eleven on one … it’s not right.”
Then he lapsed into silence.
I looked at Sargon. Still young, a formidable fighter, but not a youth. A man with something of a chip on his shoulder, an outsider who had to fight for everything he achieved … but also a man with a conscience, and the courage to obey it. I liked him.
“I will speak to the king,” I told Sargon. “I will ask him to put you with me in the king’s own bodyguard. There we will protect the king, and we will protect each other.”
And, I breathed silently, I will start to help Sargon think of himself as a leader, not just a warrior. As someone who could, with ambition and conscience, create something new in the young world. And, I would look for a way to put him on the throne.
He smiled and thanked me — it was another step up from palace guard. Then he retired to his cot in the barracks with the other soldiers.
And I closed my eyes and dreamed of a forever sleeping Livia.
The next morning I received an entirely new uniform, custom-made during the night by some hapless tailor. It was the uniform of the king’s own bodyguard, with scarlet and purple sashes. But as I put it on, I made sure I retained all of the weapons and armor Hermes had left for me — I was certain they would be significantly better than any local, contemporary equipment.
I reported for duty to the captain of the king’s guard, and was assigned a partner who would teach me the responsibilities and passwords of a member of the king’s personal soldiers. Asking if Sargon could be added to the guard as well as me, I was met with a smile — the king had already ordered it.
That day was spent in exercise and training: combat as real as the captain could make it without losing good soldiers to severed limbs and shortened lives. I had no trouble and easily bested the most elite of the king’s men, though I took pains to avoid making it look too simple. There was already enough resentment of me around, and my rapid promotion to the most elite army unit would lessen that not in the least degree.
At night Sargon and I rested in the baths, with warm water and soothing massages easing all the kinks out of our muscles. Not as good as a s.Leep pod, but it had its points. I was certain to keep my conversation with Sargon limited to the activities of that day — there would be few better spies for the king or his servants than his lissome female slaves. But Sargon had other ideas. He leaned back and opened his mouth.
“Did you know, Geno, that we are likely to be at war next week?”
I had heard nothing of the sort, so I was surprised, and said so.
“The lugal of Uruk has been insulting our lugal by accosting our traders who go downriver to buy and sell in Eridu. And he has taken some of the surrounding farmlands of our friends in Ur. The lugal, or so I hear, has in mind to teach him a lesson.”
As the surprise died down, gratitude replaced it. This was a good development: promotion was rapid in war. Those who fought well achieved distinction and renown, and the notice and attention of the king. This would help me achieve my aims of elevating Sargon, I believed, which was half the path to putting him on the throne.
And now I knew why Hermes had brought me to precisely this time. There was nothing the gods did without reason, or so I had been told.
“Some would think it a bad time to join the army,” Sargon continued with a smile. He looked at me, trying to read my expression.
“They would not be men like me,” I said heartily, with conviction more for the slave girls who would report on our conversation than for Sargon. And there was truth in my voice as I told Sargon, and the girls, and the king, that I could not wait for the battles to begin.
Every swing of my sword would bring me one step nearer to Livia.
The next days were a frenzy of preparation and training. In fighting I had little to learn from my fellow soldiers, but in ancient Sumerian tactics and training I could certainly use more than a refresher, so I participated intently. Besides, there were more passwords and codes to learn, protocols to follow.
But there was little time to speak to Sargon at length. So I had only a few chances to dig deep into his character and history, and help him begin to see himself as more than a hired sword. And in truth it was too early for that. But ever so often I would ask a question or voice a thought about the organization of the army, the administration of justice, or the disposition of the lugal’s wealth. Nothing obvious, and nothing overtly negative, just enough to start to plant the very beginnings of a seed that there might be a better way. His way.
Within a week, we were ready to go.
The lugal rode on his chariot — more of an fancy armored cart, actually — and led his troops out of Kish on the wide avenue running the length of the city, parallel to the river. Some 10,000 troops, I estimated, with just a few of them horsed. This battle would be fought on the ground by infantry.
Sargon, I, and the rest of the king’s guard walked our horses behind his chariot, and the people of Kish lined up on both sides of the avenue, cheering and calling on their gods to grant us victory. They spread branches and flowers on the road, and horse and men crushed them beneath battle-shod feet.
At the city gate the lugal was met by the high priests of the temples of Enlil and the other gods of the city. We stopped, and they killed a lamb, and a goat, and other animals, and offered them to the gods, and read the entrails, and proclaimed that the guts of one showed we would have victory, and the other that it would not be entire, both of which proved to be true for the lugal but false for me.
I stifled a yawn, eager to be off, and caught Sargon looking at me.
“What, no faith in the priests and their gods?” he said softly, smiling crookedly. “Do you not want their blessing?”
I smiled back, just as crookedly, but inwardly my heart was racing, sensing opportunity. Soldiers might be cynical about religious rites and the stinking guts of hapless herbivores, but were notoriously superstitious.
“Well … the only time I know for sure what guts mean is when I see them on the blade of my sword. But I am not concerned about the battle in the least. In fact, I think it will be very good for both of us.”
Sargon raised an eyebrow. I continued.
“Last night I dreamed. We fought together in the battle, and the battle went very, very well — at least for us. You in particular won much renown, and the king’s special favor.”
Now he raised both eyebrows. I met his gaze, then turned to view the bloody mess on the street under the city gate. Arms red to the elbow with stinking gore, the holy men were almost finished, and we would soon be on our way. To another bloody mess, I was fairly sure, but also to the beginning of Sargon’s fame and fortune, I hoped.
“May it so be,” said Sargon softly.
I never had a chance to thank the soldier who saved my life. But then, dead men are seldom able to accept thanks. The battle raged on both sides and the front, and some member of the king’s guard whose name I would never know had just spurred forward beside me, and Sargon, and took the arrow meant for me.
Slipping from his saddle, rich dark blood from his pierced lungs already trickling from his lips, he looked uncomprehendingly at me as he fell beneath the hooves of his own war-maddened mount.
We had travelled to Ur, a journey of seven days, rested a day, then formed up the line and dared the slugs of Ur to join us in battle and meet the gods in person that day. Or so our herald had fairly colorfully put it. Then we had watched in mounting trepidation as the soldiers of Ur, and surrounding cities, and mercenaries, and Enlil knew else had swarmed out of the city and nearly surrounded us.
They outnumbered us two to one.
But the lugal had accepted the challenge nevertheless and rallied his men and begun the fight, and now battle was well and truly engaged, and would not finish until one side had won and the others were dead.
As new recruits in the king’s guard, Sargon and I fought on his left side, one half of the army on our left. His longest-serving personal guards fought on his privileged right side, with the rest of the army on their right. And there, in the middle of the melee, the action was hottest.
Even as I watched, the right side of the king’s guard collapsed under the weight of overwhelming odds, and enemy Ur soldiery closed with the king. Shouting for Sargon to follow, I savagely pulled my horse right and spurred it mercilessly into the thick of the fight.
Risking friendly fire by cutting across our own army’s path, I charged to the defense of the lugal, Sargon right behind. Time seemed to slow as the gifts of the gods manifested and all was simple and every action seemed inevitable. Ducking my left shoulder to avoid an arrow and kicking my right leg to break the face of an attacking swordsman, I sliced the tips of the three questing spears stabbed in my direction and threw my horse into a tight circle, knocking their bearers down in the mud.
To fall was to die and to die was to be forgotten so I spared them not a second thought as I continued on with Sargon and now others in my trail. Dodging a thrown spear I ripped another from one of Ur’s doomed sons’ hands, and using the spear as a flail and my impossibly sharp sword as a scythe, I charged the main mass of Ur soldiers, reaping a bloody harvest and leaving broken bodies in my wake. Arrows bounced off my breastplate but my mount was hit, and hit again, and I threw myself clear as the horse shuddered, staggered, and fell, thrashing in agony.
I rolled, and rose, surrounded by enemy. In slow motion three swords started their patient journey to my heart. Wheeling first to scan the rear, I took a couple of charging foot soldiers down with one sweep of my blade, then continued the turn to flick my sword just barely through the throat of one sword’s owner and to bury my spear in the guts of the second. The third sword I parried with my own blade, and then I punched its wielder in the face with my gloved left hand, knocking him back and probably out of the fight.
Then Sargon, unhorsed himself, crashed through, dealing death and defeat on every side. The remainder of the king’s guard and the lugal himself followed, and we charged the center of the army of Ur. Impossible odds, crazy odds, but we were men possessed and careless of cost, fighting berserkers. We ripped the army of Ur almost in half, killing all in our path until a solid core of resistance stabilized, and our charge broke on it like water.
Then I saw him.
A man in the ranks of the army of Ur, but head and shoulders above all else, as I was in the army of Kish. He caught my eye, returned my look, and we fought our way towards each other yelling challenges. He did not move like the other soldiers, and cut through our men with ease, faster and stronger than all. The Urrish soldiers around him treated him like a great champion, and I realized with almost a gasp why he had caught my eye.
He was like me.
We met at last through the wreck and reek of war, dead and dying at our feet, and he smiled, knowingly.
“Why hello, Geno,” he said, lifting his sword in mock salute.
With no further word or sign he attacked, and it was like no fight I had ever experienced before. Only the best of the best in Valhalla, the fighters in the hall of the gods, veterans of literally thousands of battles who were enhanced by all the skill of Hermes, even approached his skill. His strikes were like lightning, and it was all I could do to parry them, dodge them, and defend myself. As we fought on, I sensed silence and stillness all around, and my mysterious opponent and I separated for a moment to look around.
All had ceased fighting and were standing, watching our swordplay like it was a battle of heroes, as if the sons of the gods had come down from the heavens to fight for the sport of men.
Gathering my breath, I refocused. Fighting only the warriors of this world and this time, I had grown careless and overconfident, too used to being better, faster, stronger. Now I faced one of equal or better skill, and unless I adjusted, I would swiftly die, and fail, and never see Livia again.
Summoning all my skill and all my guile, I determined to succeed in this fight. Slowly circling, I studied my opponent, seeking any weakness and seeing none, but seeing him study me in turn, and hoping that he also would not find in me what I did not see in him.
Then it began, again.
I pounced with all the suddenness and speed I possessed, hearing a gasp from the gathered armies, reaching out my blade not to pierce his heart but to slice an arm, a hand, a leg: something, anything to cause pain, blood loss, distraction. But he leaped backward with precisely the same speed, and parried my blade, then turned defense into offense and bounded inside my guard.
His small shield came up towards my head for a stunning blow, but I was already twisting, turning, and meeting his oncoming mass with a lifting knee. A glancing blow on his hip and we were spinning apart, separating. He continued the spin and used its momentum to attack my side, slicing down and across, seeking to open the muscles and sinews of my torso just under the ribs and spill my intestines on the dirt. Instead of avoiding, parrying, or dodging, I spun faster and stepped closer, inside his blow, too close to chop, and punched him, center of mass, then spun away again.
We paused to breath and circle. Only seconds had expired, but I heard the roar of the armies on both sides as the passion of the battle transported them. We must have seemed like lightning, moving, twisting, dodging, jumping, and attacking two or three times faster than unmodified men.
“Who are you?” I asked, wanting an explanation, any information that would help me understand who he was, and therefore maybe who I was.
But there was no time for an answer or contemplation as my opponent resumed the attack, raining down blows on my protecting sword from the left and the right, high and low. Anger filled me and I pressed him back with swings threatening decapitation and fast-as-thought flicking stabs with the point. Our blades met as one full two-hander crashed into another with a horrendous crash that somehow, miraculously did not shatter the swords, but caused both to drop from our temporarily senseless fingers.
He flung his small shield at me and I ducked just in time to avoid getting my skull crushed, then he was upon me and we fought as men in the dawn of the dawn of history: fist, fingernail, foot, and fang. I met him with another knee, this one in the center of his chest, and knocked him back, gasping for breath. Without a half-second’s pause I threw myself at him, hammering him with punches and kicks, beating him down to the ground in a frenzy of adrenaline and primitive bloodlust, only to take a kick to the head and stumble back, dazed.
He jumped up, snatched a sword, and advanced, slower perhaps than before, but facing an unarmed man. Acting more dazed than I was, I timed my moment, faking a stumble towards him, right into the thirsty, waiting blade. Checking that quickly as his sword whipped by my throat, and leaping into him as the swing carried him slightly off balance. Crashing him down to the ground and scrabbling for the weapon, throwing it away, then straddling him, pinning him to the ground, fists cocked.
I just barely held myself back, caught up in the roars of the army of Kish, to demand one more time who he was. This man was like me, but not from the hall, I knew that much. And he knew me. I had to know how, and why. And I needed to know what he knew about me … and about those who I knew as gods.
Not afraid to die, he laughed, seeing the questions in my eyes and spitting in my face.
“Serve and protect, Geno. Serve and protect.”
He paused to breathe heavily, grimace.
“That was your motto, was it not? And now you have no idea who you are and what you are. You tool! You fool!
Again he stopped while I gaped at him, uncomprehending. His chest rose and fell and his face contorted with agony, hatred, and perhaps something else.
“You are the pawn of gods who are not gods! And you are betraying everything you ever knew.”
Then the men of Kish yelled and he reached up to my throat to choke me and I heard no more. My fists hammered down on both temples with all my power, crushing his skull. His hands fell limp and the light went from his eyes, and his mouth moved spasmodically. I bent to listen.
“You … will … see ... Geno,” he husked, then almost smiled, then died.
I grabbed for my sword and his, and the men of Kish surged forward, and I joined them, and we burst upon Ur like demons set free from the deepest pits of hell. I attacked with both swords, whirling like a dervish, slicing and cutting in a maelstrom of pain and death, and the enemy broke and ran, and retreat became flight, and flight became a rout, and all the soldiers of Ur dropped weapons and scattered, fleeing for the city gates.
Not all made it. Not many made it.
We chased them to the gates, just missed capturing the lugal of Ur, and had to settle for the greater part of his army. The gates closed in our faces, and arrows rained down on us from the stunned but alert rearguard, and we withdrew out of bowshot from the city wall, and shouted our victory in the faces of all Ur.
That night as Sargon and I sat by our tent, eating and drinking, a man called for me, asking me to come to the lugal. Motioning for Sargon to join me, I walked up to his pavilion. All around us men were feasting and drinking, celebrating victory and bragging about the enemy swords and shields they had spoiled. We entered the inner tent, and the lugal motioned us forward.
An arrow had pierced his side during that moment when the battle had seemed in the balance. Nothing serious, at least at first glance. Just a scratch. But his physicians had bound it up as if it was a mortal wound.
A little stiff, the lugal sat up in his chair, looked at us.
“Not a scratch on either of you!” he said wonderingly. “The gods must favor you.”
Sargon said something in reply; I did not really hear, my mind racing. Somehow I needed to engineer this situation into a turning point for Sargon. This was my chance to elevate him beyond guard, because no-one moves from king’s guard, even captain of the guard, to king. Not if he wants to be followed by the army and acclaimed by the priests and respected by the people.
Then my attention snapped back to the lugal. He was addressing me.
“You saved my life, Geno. And won the battle. How can I thank you?”
I bowed my head.
“It was not me who saved your life and won the battle, lugal. It was Sargon who saw that the king’s guard was collapsing, and Sargon who told me to turn with him and come to your defense.”
And I spun the lie, nudging Sargon to be quiet as I told the king that Sargon had feared the Urrish army would try to overwhelm one flank of the king’s guard and end the battle quickly by taking the lugal, and Sargon who had seen it, and directed me — and others who followed — to shift to the other side of the king, meet the onrushing enemy, and crush them.