Against the Tide of Years (55 page)

“Uh-oh.”

“Uh-oh, is right. That damned war with Assyria took too long for comfort; the passes over the Taurus into Anatolia will be closed soon. We’ve got to get in contact with Hattusas, and then we’ve got to hit the enemy next spring.”

“ Yes, sir!”

“ Which brings us back to Princess Raupasha . . .”

Colonel Kenneth Hollard was still mulling over the conversation when he walked into his quarters and heard a whine. He looked down. The wicker basket was overset and the hound puppy nowhere in sight. Until he looked in his footlocker, slightly open.

“Hell,” he said, looking down. “Oh, well, I didn’t like that belt anyway, or those slippers. Come here, you damned set of teeth and paws.”

He clamped the puppy firmly in his arms, avoiding most of the attempts to lick his face, and took it back to the office. The beast was from the royal hunting pack’s kennels; nobles here kept hunting animals, despite the general Babylonian dislike of dogs.

Of course, the king isn’t a Babylonian, strictly speaking,
he thought.

The royal family and a lot of the nobility here were Kassites who’d come down from the mountains during the breakup of Hammurabi’s empire centuries before and seized power. They’d been pretty well assimilated by now, but they kept up some contact with the old homeland; Prince Kashtiliash had been fostered there for a couple of years, for instance.

“C’mon, pooch,” he muttered to it, and the puppy went into wiggling ecstasy at the attention. “Got a nice girl I’d like to set you up with.”

 

“ That makes no sense!” Raupasha daughter of Shuttarna said.

The physician’s apprentice Azzu-ena sighed. “I agree,” she said, tapping the paper on the table between them. “But it is the way the Nantukhtar language is.”

Raupasha looked down. She’d learned the
alphabet
quickly; it was childishly simple compared to the Akkadian cuneiform. The language it was designed to write was another matter. Azzu-ena knew more of it than she; of course, she was a learned woman, and
old
—perhaps even thirty. It was good to have her come and help with the studies; it made the house less of a silent prison. And it gave her someone to complain to when the irritation grew too much to bear.

“ But the form of the words is exactly the same!” the Mitannian girl said. “
House dog
and
dog house
. Shouldn’t it be
dog’s house,
with that possessive ending? ”

Azzu-ena frowned herself, scratching her big hooked nose. “You would think so . . . but in the English, most of the time, it is the
order
of the words that determines their meaning, not the declension and inflection as it is in Akkadian. Is it so in Hurrian? ”

“Yes, and any other language I’ve ever heard of,” Raupasha said. She sighed, and her lips firmed with determination. “ I
will
learn this tongue! Quickly!”

“ Why are you in such a hurry? ” Azzu-ena asked. “ I have been, because the knowledge I seek is in this tongue. Why do
you
drive yourself so? ”

“Because . . .” Raupasha hesitated.
But there is no reason she should not know.
And it was good to have someone to talk to. “Because I must understand them, too. I would not always be their client and pensioner, well though they have treated me.”

The maid padded in with a tray of the small round sweet cakes and a pot of cocoa.
Cookies,
she reminded herself. Or
biscuits
. Cocoa had a flavor like nothing on earth, soft and rich and dark and sweet all at once; she found herself craving it often and restrained herself sternly. She was not going to disgrace her blood before these strangers.

“And to have someone to talk to,” she went on aloud. “ You are not here at Ur Base all of the time, and the house slaves are so stupid!”

“Not stupid—they’re peasants and far from home and ignorant,” Azzu-ena corrected her, a smile taking any sting out of her words. “And please! Do not call them slaves. They are
employees
who receive a wage. The Eagle People hate the very word ‘slave’; they are strange in that manner.”

“They are strange in all manners,” Raupasha said, pouring a little date syrup into the cups of cocoa and stirring them with a whisk. “So many weird taboos and laws of ritual purity—the way all excrement must be carried away out of sight, for instance, and all rubbish buried or burned, and even laborers made to
wash
every day as if for a ritual in a House of Exclusion.”

“ They have reason for that; they think that filth causes disease, and they may well be right. Likewise their hatred of insects.”

“Oh!” Raupasha said. “Still, they are very strange indeed. I asked Lord Kenn’et the other day what his rank was in Nan-tuck-et, and he said he was a
citizen
. What means this word? ”

“I am not sure,” Azzu-ena said thoughtfully. “I
think
it means something like an
awelum,
a free man of a city.”

“ But he said something about the
citizens
choosing the king,” Raupasha said. “Surely that means high nobles, generals, ministers, chief priests? ”

“I haven’t asked much of how they are governed,” Azzu-ena said. “ Though of course you would, coming of a high family.” She looked around. “And so they treat you, I see.”

Raupasha nodded. The house here in the Nantukhtar base was smaller than her foster father’s manor, but more comfortable than anything she had ever known. There were no frescoes on the walls, but there were framed pictures unbelievably lifelike, and windows of glass clear as solid air. Those were open now, and slatted screens of woven reed let in air without the glare of the afternoon sun. The tile floors were covered in fine rugs, for the Nantukhtar put them on the floor, rather than hanging them on the walls—an extravagance that gave her a guilty pleasure every time her toes worked into them. The furniture was beautifully made, much of it Babylonian—and that of the finest. And there was a kitchen and a
bitrimki,
a bathhouse, as fine as those of a king’s palace in a great city like Nineveh or Dur-Kurigalzu.

“That is partly the lord Arnstein and his lady,” Raupasha said shrewdly. “ They think I may be of some use to them . . . I do not know what. If my family were still rulers, they might seek to make an advantageous marriage-alliance through me, but I have neither gold nor power to bring. Isn’t it so odd that Lord Arnstein’s wife is also his right-hand man . . . ah, you know what I mean!”

“ Yes.” A smile, turning the homely face of the female physician almost comely for an instant. “ That is a strange custom to which I have no objection at all. Nor do you object that you are treated as suits your birth, rather than your wealth!”

Raupasha nodded. “ But part of it is Lord Kenn’et, I think. He is an odd man—a great warrior, a slaughterer of Assyrians, yet his heart is moved to compassion, as if I were his kin.” She scowled slightly. “As if I were a small child of his own kin, sometimes.”

“ That is the way of the Eagle People,” Azzu-ena replied. “ It is . . . contradictory. Their weapons slay like the hand of the plague-gods, and then they bind up the wounds of those they threw down.” She paused and smiled slyly. “ I have seen Lord Kenn’et only a few times. As you say, a great warrior . . . a man of great beauty, too. Tall as a palm tree and ruddy, strong and sturdy.”

“ Yes.” Raupasha flushed, then coughed. “ There is a thing I would ask you, Lady Azzu-ena.”

“Ask.” The Babylonian’s face changed from happy gossiper to the impersonal attentiveness of a professional.

“I am troubled by my dreams. You are a person of learning, and I thought perhaps . . .”

“I am sorry, I am a physician, not a
baru
-diviner,” Azzu-ena said sympathetically. “ I can recommend a good one.”

“ No . . . it is not that my dreams are an omen, I think. It is only . . . I awaken, and before I am fully awake I see again the faces of my foster father and foster mother. They are smiling, and I am a child again and happy, but then . . . they change. I do not know why they should trouble me; their blood is avenged! Yet sometimes I fear to sleep because of it.”

“ That
is
perhaps an omen, or a fate laid on you . . .”

A knock came at the door. The maid went to it and then opened it quickly, falling to her knees.

“Don’t
do
that,” Colonel Kenneth Hollard snapped. The maid bounced up again, flustered. “Hello, Princess. Ms. Azzu-ena. May I come in? ”

“My house is yours,” Raupasha said.
If it is mine, really,
she thought.

Hollard was carrying a dog in his arms; a puppy, rather, flop-eared and spotted. Azzu-ena looked at it and raised her brows.

“Lord Kenn’et,” she said. “I thought your people had a horror of touching dogs, even more than ours.”

“Only unclean dogs,” he said.

“Unclean? ” she asked, baffled.

“Dogs that are left to run around towns and villages, untended and eating filth.”

“Oh. You mean that dogs such as nobles keep for hunting, or shepherds, are
not
unclean.”

“Ah . . . approximately, yes.” He turned to the Mitannian girl, smiling. “I think you told me that dogs are not a pollution to your folk, either? ”

“No,” Raupasha said, shaking her head and stifling a giggle. The puppy was making a determined effort to lick the Nantukhtar commander’s face, and then chewing at the leather strap across his chest that supported his belt and sword.
He is so grave and dignified, and it is worrying him like a piece of rawhide,
she thought.

“We honor them,” she went on solemnly aloud, “For we say that they neither break faith nor lie. My foster father kept a kennel of hunting hounds, and we had mastiffs to protect the sheep.”

“Well, this one’s from King Shuriash’s kennels,” he said. “I thought you might like to have it.”

Raupasha nodded and reached out eagerly. The puppy came to her with the indiscriminate love of its kind, and she
did
giggle when it licked her chin.

“I shall call him Sabala,” Raupasha said. At his look, “It means ‘Spotted One,’ ” she said, and looked a little baffled when he laughed.

She put the wiggling bundle of young dog down, pushing it away gently with a foot when it tried to chew on her ankle. It chewed the table leg for a while instead and then collapsed into sleep with its head on her foot.

Azzu-ena rose. “I must go,” she said. “The time of my studies at the house of healing is come.” She looked at her wrist, which bore one of the tiny timekeepers; Raupasha shook off a certain unease at seeing time divided so . . . relentlessly.

“ Will you stay, Lord Kenn’et, and drink the cocoa with me? ” Raupasha said, and then caught herself.
Do not be forward.
Her foster parents had warned her that the outer world was not so relaxed as their own manor.

The Nantukhtar hesitated. “For a short while,” he said, looking at the mass of papers on the table. “I brought you a book.”

“Ah . . . thank you, but I do not read your language well enough yet,” Raupasha said with a sigh.

“ This is something our
printing shop
made up for locals . . . for the people of the land,” he said.

I do not think
local
means exactly that,
Raupasha thought with a little resentment.
I think it means “backward,” as one might speak of a hill tribe or the Aramaeans.

She took the book eagerly anyway. The first page held a wonder that made her gasp, a drawing of a donkey so lifelike that she had to laugh—it was planting its feet and braying, pulling back against the hands that hauled on its bridle.

“
‘A’ is for
Ass,” she read—there was an explanation in Akkadian in the upper right corner. A frown. “I thought that meant . . .” She tapped her rump.

“Ah . . . well, the word has two meanings—soldier’s talk is sometimes a little . . . uncouth,” Lord Kenn’et said. “I hope you like the book.”

“Oh, yes! Only . . .”

“Only? ”

“ Well, I have been reading much. In my home, I had work—seeing to the spinners and weavers, and sometimes we would hunt gazelle. I hope you don’t think that was unseemly; my foster father sometimes treated me like the son my father hoped to have.”

Hollard laughed, and she blushed, remembering their customs.
Of course he doesn’t think it’s unseemly!
Raupasha scolded herself.

“ Well, perhaps you could get out more here,” he said.

“Is it allowed?” she said, her eyes drifting to the door. A warrior armed with a thunder-thrower . . . a
rifle
. . . was stationed there.

“Well, of course!” Hollard shook his head. “Yes, you can travel around. The guard’s for your protection.” He paused, knitting his brows in thought.

What a strange man,
Raupasha thought.
He speaks to me as if I were his favorite sister, or sometimes as if I was a man.
It was strange, yes, but not unpleasing, most of the time. Sometimes it felt . . . insulting.

“How’s this?” he said. “Would you like to learn to ride horses, as we do? ”

“Oh,
yes
!”

 

“God damn it!” Walker shouted. “God damn it to fucking
hell,
I wanted them both alive!”

The officers were uneasy; they always were when their lord spoke in his birth-tongue. Most of them—the Achaeans among them, anyway—tried to forget that he had not been born among them. English was the tongue of sorcery, too.

The horses stamped and curvetted, blowing; they weren’t tired by the gallop, only excited by the run and the belling of the hounds. The dogs milled about, uncertain, looking at the bloodied body on the ground and the man who stood at bay beyond it, his back to the crag. This pack was not used to hunting men.

Walker swung out of the saddle. The mountain soil crunched beneath his boots, and he was acutely conscious of the nervousness of the men confronting Agamemnon. The king’s face was nearly purple; he’d run far and fast for a man his age and weight, after the chariot crashed. It was a warm late-spring day, but they were high enough now that it was a little cooler; Walker felt the mountain wind cuffing at his sweat-damp hair. Somewhere not too far away a goat bell tinkled.