Against the Tide of Years (24 page)

“These foreigners—do they speak our tongue?” Working through interpreters was always an annoyance.

“A few speak it. Also, they have one of the king’s subjects with them, whom they have trained as an interpreter; a merchant, Shamash-nasir-kudduru by name, of Ur. They desire an audience with the king’s person.”

The king stroked his beard. “They speak of trade?” Trade was a good field for a king to till.

“They speak of trade, and of alliance; they bring the word of their king Yhared-Koff’in.” The bureaucrat sounded out the uncouth foreign syllables with care. “And they send gifts, that the heart of the king my lord may be made glad.”

Shuriash’s eyebrows rose. He clapped his hands together. “Let the gifts be brought forth. Let us see if these foreigners do my house honor; let us see if they are worthy of speech with the king’s person.”

Kidin-Ninurta bowed, smiling behind a grave face. “The gifts await the attention of the king my lord,” he said. “At the
karum
of Ur they wait; by the waterside they are readied for his view.”

Shuriash snorted. “Can they not be brought here?”

The bureaucrat bowed low. “O King, they are too many.”

Shuriash’s brows rose again. “This the king will see.”

 

Like something out of Kipling,
Ian Arnstein thought.
Well, some sort of mutant version of ol’ Rudyard.

The honor guard of Marines from the expeditionary force were in warm-season uniform—khaki shorts and shirts, floppy canvas hats, and cotton-drill webbing harness. The flared helmets were strapped to their packs. bayonets and bowies at their waists, flintlock rifles by their sides as they stood at parade rest. Their officers were in breastplate and helmet,
katanas
sloped back over their shoulders, sweating in the damp heat of Ur’s riverside.

Karum,
Ian reminded himself, which meant not only dockside but the association of merchants.
Sometimes I think my head is going to explode with all the things I have to remember.

A huge, chattering crowd was held at bay by royal guardsmen, their spears jabbing a little occasionally to remind the common folk to keep their distance. The people looked much like twentieth-century Iraqis. Shorter, of course—nearly everyone was, in this century—dark of hair and eye, skin a natural olive that turned a deep bronze when exposed to this pitiless sun. The men wore kilts, or knee-length tunics, or longer robes; hats were shaped like flowerpots, sometimes spangled with bright metals. Here and there a near-naked laborer in a loincloth crouched, mouth open in awe; women were less numerous and dressed in long gowns and head-covering shawls, a few veiled. The crowd was dun-colored, mostly the soft natural browns and grays of undyed wool. Noblemen or rich merchants stood out in gorgeous relief, white and blue and purple and saffron-gold, often with attendants holding parasols over their heads.

Beyond them rose the walls of Ur—
but not Ur of the Chaldees,
Ian thought. It was half a millennium before the people the Bible called Chaldeans were to enter this land.
They call themselves Men of Ur, here, or Men of Kar-Duniash, or just Akkadians—

Once this had been a Sumerian city, but that was a thousand years or more ago. They city walls were sixty feet high, surfaced in reddish-gray fired brick, a brooding, looming presence. Bronze gleamed on the towers that studded the wall every fifty yards or so, or reared on either side of the city gates, but brighter still was the ziggurat that soared above those walls, nearly three hundred feet of step-pyramid into heaven.
That
was not dun-colored; it glittered, it blazed under the fierce Mesopotamian sun, it reared itself in a skin of paint and colored brick like some fantastic serpent.

“Impressive,” Doreen said. “Even more impressive if it didn’t smell so bad.”

Ian Arnstein wrenched his mind away from a historian’s dream made flesh and nodded. The sewer reek was already pretty strong; Ghu alone knew what it would be like in high summer. He looked back at the gates. Those massive bronze leaves were swinging open, with a squeal of hinges and a thunder of trumpets—ram’s horn and brass—a pounding of kettledrums and a clash of cymbals. The royal party came in style, riding in chariots amid a blaze of spearheads, behind high-stepping horses that looked like miniature Arabians. The king’s chariot was positively encrusted with precious metals and lapis lazuli, and the scales of his corselet were gilded; a crown of gold encircled his helmet. The crowd parted in a wave, kneeling and then going to their bellies in the dust.

I feel like a complete mountebank,
Ian thought, stepping forward gravely.

In a way he welcomed the hideous embarrassment; it distracted him from the awareness that he was actually
here
, about to talk with a man whom the history he’d learned recorded as dead three thousand years and more. He’d gotten over that feeling in the other places the Islanders touched, but this was the ancient world he’d spent all his adult life studying. This city had been inhabited since men first learned to write on clay tablets.

Concentrate on not tripping on this goddam dress, you fool,
he told himself.

He was wearing what their research and local informants had concluded would be impressive to Babylonian sensibilities—an ankle-length caftan of crimson silk embroidered in gold and silver thread and a hat plumed with bird-of-paradise feathers; in his left hand he carried a staff of ivory and ebony, topped by a golden eagle. Doreen was only a degree less gorgeous; even her clip-board was of rare honey-colored wood from the forests in the kloofs of Table Mountain.

As the King of Kar-Duniash dismounted from his chariot, Ian made a sign with his hand.

“ ’Ten-
hut
!” Colonel Hollard’s voice rang out. “Shoulder . . .
arms
! Present . . .
arms
!”

The Marine platoon snapped their heels together, and the rifles came up with a single snap and slap of hands on wood and metal. The officers’ swords swept down, then up into a salute, with the hilt before the lips. Some of the king’s guards bristled at the sudden movement, but Shuriash checked only a half a pace and came on with a regal nod. The handsome, hard-faced young man beside him clapped a wary hand to the hilt of his sword, then relaxed at a murmured word from his father.

“Greetings, O King,” Ian said, halting and bowing from the waist.

Hard, cold brown eyes flicked from him to Doreen, to the great ships at anchor in the river with the sun blazing on their gilt eagle figureheads, to Shamash-nasir-kudduru flat on his belly and kissing the dirt at the king’s feet.

“You do not make your obeisance to the king’s person?” he asked. The voice was hard, and the guttural Akkadian tongue sounded menacing at the best of times.

But he’s keeping it slow,
Ian realized with relief.

“O King, live long and prosper,” he said solemnly, holding up his right hand with the fingers spread in a V.
I always
wanted
to say that,
he thought, then there was a sharp pain in his ankle as Doreen kicked him; she hadn’t believed he would actually go through with it.

“It is against our custom and the law of our god to bend the knee to any man,” he went on with slow care. Shams had said his Akkadian was accented but understandable . . . but then, Shams had a disconcerting tendency to say what he thought would please.

Shuriash nodded, showing that he understood. Ian sighed relief and continued, “I greet you as I would my own ruler, Jared Cofflin.” He
had
tried it out on the Chief, who’d almost ruptured himself laughing. “I bring the word of my ruler to the Great King, the King of Sumer and Akkad, the King of Kar-Duniash, of whose might and glory we have long heard.”

He fought down giddiness. The man looking at him was absolute ruler of several million souls—probably about as large a share of the world’s population as the United States had had in the twentieth century—and unless first impressions lied he was no fool at all. You could get yourself into very serious trouble very quickly by underestimating the locals.

“Very well,” Shuriash said. “I am glad to hear the word of my brother, Yhared-Koff’in. Does he send the son of his mother, the child of his wife, to greet me?”

Ian bowed again; by calling the Republic’s ruler “brother” the Babylonian monarch was making a considerable diplomatic concession, granting him equality with the other great kings of the ancient East. Besides the Babylonians, only the Hittites, Assyrians, and Egyptians rated it.

“I have the honor to be Jared Cofflin’s councilor for foreign affairs,” Ian said. “It grieves me to report that our ruler’s sons are not yet of a man’s age.”
And we’ll leave the matter of elective government for a later date.
“I bear his instructions; I speak with his voice.”
Oh, and I’m in contact with him by shortwave radio.

Shuriash grunted; ambassadors were common here. “And I am glad to receive his gifts,” he went on, glancing pointedly at the tarpaulin-covered heaps. “I do not doubt that they will make my heart glad.”

Ian made an imperious gesture with his staff, and the Marines tasked to the job began to uncover the treasures; at another gesture the interpreter rose and followed them.

Shuriash did an excellent job of keeping his face impassive, taking only one step backward and registering a slight start at the man-high mirror that was revealed first. But a grin of unself-conscious pleasure showed strong yellowed teeth as he examined the weapons that lay on the table beyond; a suit of silvered chain mail, an elaborately worked helmet with a tall quetzal plume, a steel long sword in a sheath of inlaid leather, with a hilt of ivory and a gold pommel set with gems.

He slid the sword free and tested the heft and balance with practiced ease; the sun broke blinding-bright off the honed edge, and he gave a hiss of respect as he pressed it with a thumb.

“These stones shine brightly,” he said, turning the weapon to catch the sunlight on its pommel. “How?”

“We call it
faceting,
” Ian said; local jewelers merely polished their gems. Doreen nudged him slightly; the Crown Prince Kashtiliash was even more delighted with the silver-hilted long sword the Island’s artisans had made for
him.

“Behold,” Ian said, moving on. “Spices from the far eastern lands for the king’s table.” Nutmeg and cinnamon were known here, but rare and unbelievably expensive. “Silver and gold for the king’s treasury.”

Shuriash picked up a gold coin the size of a dime and squinted at it, holding it at arm’s length.

“Hard to make such a thing, much less hundreds,” he said. “Why not ingots?”

“We call them
coins,
O King,” Ian said. “Each is of a standard weight and fineness, guaranteed by the inscription stamped upon them. Trade is eased by these coins, commerce is made more swift by them.”

A small exclamation escaped the lips of a plump official in the king’s train.

“Bahdi-Lim, my
wakil
of the
karum,
” Shuriash said. “He tracks a scent of profit more eagerly than a lion upon the trail of an antelope.”

Minister of commerce,
Ian thought, bowing slightly.

“Copper and tin, for the king’s artisans.”

The king’s eyes lit up, imagining spearheads and arrowshead and swords. “My brother Yhared-Koff’in is generous!”

“Jewelery, for the king’s wives and daughters,” Ian said. “Ivory and rare woods, that the king may adorn his palace and the houses of the gods his patrons.”

This time the murmur reached as far as the crowd surrounding the landing spot. The crisscross stack of ebony logs was taller than a man, and surrounded by threescore ivory tusks, all of them far larger than the Middle Eastern elephant could produce.

“Strange beasts, to make merry the heart of the king!” Ian concluded, with a sweep of his arm.

Shuriash burst into delighted laughter, and for a moment his face was a child’s. One of the cages held a chimp; another a baby giraffe; and the third a moa, staring around with blinking wonderment.

“The king’s heart is made glad by the gifts of his brother; his heart is full of happiness to see them.” Shuriash’s voice changed in the middle of the double-barreled formal sentence, suddenly didn’t seem quite as delighted as his words.

“Remember, he has to return the favor, or lose face,”
Doreen whispered in Ian’s ear. Kings here didn’t do anything so déclassé as trading; instead they exchanged royal gifts that just happened to be of roughly equivalent value.

Meanwhile Shuriash was considering the honor guard. “Your kingdom is not poor,” he said meditatively. “Nor are your craftsmen lacking in skill. I am surprised that you cannot afford armor for all your troops.” His gaze sharpened. “Are those eunuchs?”

“No, O King. Know that some among us shave their chins, even as some of your priests shave their heads.”

“Curious.”

“In all lands custom is king,” Ian said tactfully. “In every land the customs differ.”

“And are those
women
?” Kashtiliash blurted in amazement. Even with cropped hair, the light summer uniforms made that fairly obvious, once a local started
looking
.

“Yes, O son of Shagarakti-Shuriash,” Ian said, bowing again. “Such is our custom.”

The prince snorted; he kept silent under his father’s eye, but he fierce young hawk-features showed what he thought of
that
custom.

Shuriash went on: “And I see they bear fine blades, but no spear nor shield, neither bow nor javelin nor sling. Only those curious maces of wood and metal.”

Ian smiled. “Would the king my lord wish a demonstration? I will call the officer who commands the troops my ruler Jared Cofflin has sent to guard this expedition; the officer will satisfy the king’s mind. We call these weapons
rifles;
they are like a bow, like a sling, yet not like a bow or sling.”