The Assyrian by Nicholas Guild Read Free Book Online Page B

Come.”
    He rose from his seat and we walked out to
the front of the camp commander’s house, where the Lord
Sinahiusur’s chair was waiting for him. His bearers, their naked
bodies blackened by the sun, crouched on the ground like dogs,
staring up at us with eyes that seemed to measure us only as
weight.
    “I think it possible, my friend Tiglath
Ashur, you may grow up to be of some small use to your king, whose
servants we both are. And thus I wish to be of use to you—is that
not the truest meaning of friendship? Yes, of course it is. So I
have brought you a gift. Where is he?”
    I looked about me as if the question had been
addressed to myself, but the turtanu’s eyes were fixed on his head
bearer, a huge fellow with a captive’s ring through his nose, who
used his thumb to point back toward the curtained chair.
    “Get out of there, you cursed rascal!”
    The Lord Sinahiusur’s face went suddenly
black with rage. A few quick steps took him to the chair, and he
pushed back the curtain with an impatient gesture to reveal the
cursed rascal, only just awakened from his comfortable nap. Never
had I seen such a ridiculous mixture of surprise and slinking guilt
as when the turtanu grasped him by the collar of his slave’s tunic
and pulled him out with a yank that sent him sprawling in the dust
some four or five paces distant. The bearers roared with approving
laughter at the sight, and I laughed with them. Even the fellow
himself smiled foolishly as he knelt in the dust, his hands raised
in supplication as if to ward off the beating he must have
expected.
    But the turtanu did not strike. His whip
stayed in his belt as he studied the slave with obvious
distaste.
    “You must think it a poor gift I bring you,”
he said at last. “But perhaps, Tiglath Ashur, you will find him of
more use than I ever did. He has certain talents and he is
cunning—make of him what you can.
    “And, you there, see to the boy’s back lest
you shame me utterly.”
    The slave ducked his head in eager
compliance, his hands still raised to shield his face though he
would have known he was safe enough now. The Lord Sinahiusur glared
at him, as the cat glares after the rat that has escaped his
jaws.
    He spoke no more, but held out his hand that
I might touch my forehead against it, stepped into his chair, so
recently vacated, and pulled the curtain shut. As he was carried
away, I turned to the slave who was still kneeling in the dust,
wondering what I was to do with this curious new possession.
    I regarded him with puzzlement. Finally the
slave stood up and looked about him. He was perhaps twenty-five
years of age, though he did not exhibit the bearing of a young man.
He had a fair complexion which, in our part of the world, suggested
he had spent most of his life within doors, and there was something
almost of insolence in his manner, as if he did not greatly fancy
the idea of being slave to a boy not yet ten. This in itself
irritated me greatly, for I had had enough reminders already that
day that I was still less than a man grown.
    He was waiting, it seemed, as uncertain of
his position as I was of mine.
    “I am a soldier.” I said finally. “I have no
need of a body servant and, in any case, such a thing would not be
permitted in the royal barrack. Perhaps the rab kisir can find a
use for you somewhere.”
    He registered no reaction at first, and then
the words seemed to take hold in his mind.
    “My lord, you must not judge me too harshly
from that. . .” He made a gesture toward the spot where the
turtanu’s chair had stood and let his pale, mobile face widen into
a rather doltish grin. “You will find I am an excellent servant,
and. . .”
    He had rehearsed the speech and now, it
seemed, had run out of words. The words did not come easily, for
this was a foreigner whose Akkadian rasped on the ear as coarsely
as a grinding stone on an ax blade—a stranger in the Land of Ashur.
And he had been made to look a fool. Well, I knew