Against the Tide of Years (61 page)

“ There is no time,” he groaned.

“ Then we’ll make time,” she said, her voice low and throaty.

 

Boring isn’t the
word
for it,
Kenneth Hollard thought.

The Islander officers were just behind the Arnsteins; they were behind a rank of King Shuriash’s relatives; behind Hollard and the others were dignitaries, officials, priests, and God-knew-what. In the great courtyard of E-sag-ila, the Temple that Raises Its Head, the Palace of Heaven and Earth, the Seat of Kingship. It was impressive, in its way, although not as much as the ziggurat that raised its head across the street to the north—E-temen-an-ki, the Temple Foundation of Heaven and Earth, soaring in seven steps three hundred and twenty feet into the darkening evening sky. A great staircase ascended the southern side, and from there ramps spiraled around each square step, up to the blue-enameled shrine at the top. There, he’d heard, was a table of gold and a large bed . . . and a woman known as the Bride of Marduk.

He glanced ahead. King Shagarakti-Shuriash would play the part of Marduk later in the festivities, enacting the Sacred Marriage that brought fertility to the land.
Lucky bastard,
he thought—it had been a long time. . .

Right now the king was pacing forward, looking like an image himself in crown and robes, the mace of sovereignty in his hands. He was reciting a hymn to Marduk, seemingly a verse for every step across the huge stone-paved courtyard toward the temple gates.

Like parts of the king’s palace, the Temple of Marduk had artificial palm trees before the towering sixty-foot gates. Unlike the ones in the palace, these were of solid silver and leafed with gold. The cedarwood of the gates was covered in silver as well, and the walls themselves were colored brick and bone-white gypsum. Within, the
sheshgallu,
the high priest, would have risen before dawn to cleanse himself with Tigris water and then spent all day before the image of the god, reciting from the
Enuma Elish,
the epic depicted on the gates.

Out here, the acres of courtyard were crowded with an orderly throng. Great banks of
kalu
—ritual singers—broke into choral song every time the king’s recitation stopped, amid the tinkle and rattle of cistrum and cimbalomlike instruments. Incense smoked into the sky from censers of golden fretwork swung by the priests.

It was all stately beyond words; the problem was that with chants, songs, ritual gestures, it was going to take the rest of the afternoon to reach the temple, at which point the ceremony would actually begin. The dignitaries honored with an invitation had to go at the same pace. Colonel Hollard glanced aside at the crowd filling the open spaces of the courtyard and shivered slightly. Their faces were rapt, open, an abandonment of self beyond anything he could imagine.

Eventually they crossed the temenos, the sacred enclosure. The gates swung wide, and Kenneth Hollard missed his stride.
Jesus!

Most of these Babylonian buildings were dim-lit inside; it made the bigger ones impressive, in a mysterious, smoky way. Esagila wasn’t. The inside of the great hall
glowed,
light caught and reflected back and forth by the gold leaf that covered walls and the giant beams of the ceiling, sparkling from emerald and nacre and lapis. Hollard blinked, stunned for an instant. Then they were through the hall and into the sanctum itself, only the king and his most trusted guests there as witnesses. Hollard’s eyes went up and up, past the man-high golden footstool, past the colossal foot and robe, to the golden, bearded face of the god that seemed to hover beneath the lofty roof, full-lipped and beak-nosed, the embodiment of power, telling all beholders to make peace with their mortality.

He shook himself mentally.
Come off it, that’s just a statue.
Just a goddam big solid-gold statue.
No wonder the locals find it impressive, though.

King Shuriash halted before the image of the god, one hand before his face and the other raised. The elderly
sheshgallu
came forward in his archaic wrap and relieved him of the symbols of his sovereignty—the tall crown of gold and jewels, the mace, the circle, all placed on a smaller chair before Marduk’s. Then the high priest took him by the ear and made as if to force him to his knees. As a man rather than a king, Shuriash prostrated himself before Marduk and then rose only to his knees to proclaim:

Hollard found himself nodding. Shuriash actually meant it; for a monarch of the ancient Orient, he really was a pretty good sort. The priest slapped him sharply on both cheeks as the rite required, until tears came to his eyes; the king went on his belly once more, and then was lifted up, the high priest intoning:

One by one, the symbols he had laid down were returned to Shuriash. The chorus of singing priests burst out again, and within the confines of the temple their song was a wave of pure sound.

Hollard glanced aside at Raupasha, watching the intent sparkle of her dark-gray eyes. She was wearing what Doreen had dreamed up as the new Mitannian national costume, an open jacket of crimson silk embroidered with dragons in gold thread over a long, simple gown of indigo blue set with bullion medallions along the hem.

Looks damn fine,
he thought.
She’s filled out a little with proper food and exercise. Down boy!

Then her eyes went wide, and her hand darted inside the jacket. Time seemed to slow as the slim hand came out with the bulk of a brand-new .40 Python in it, pointing ahead . . . toward King Shuriash. Toward his undefended back, bare to the allies he trusted.

Jesus, she’s gone nuts!
he thought. His hand lifted—and halted.

Instead, he pivoted himself, his own right hand clawing at the holster on his waist. The shot was not far from his ear, deafeningly loud. There were screams, cries of anger and rage; Shuriash was pivoting, features slack with amazement as he saw the priest leaping toward him with upraised knife. Raupasha’s shot clipped a fingernail’s width of skin from the man’s nose. The priest’s face was twisted in an ecstacy of hatred, amok with fanaticism. The wound snapped his head around for an instant, and slowed his rush.

“Die, blasphemer!” he screamed.

Prince Kashtiliash’s actions had the smooth economy of an expert. His sword slashed out and up, through the assassin’s wrist. The priest
did
shriek then, although Kenneth couldn’t tell if it was with pain or frustration. The sound cut off . . . literally, as the prince’s second stroke chopped halfway through his neck.

Then the two Hollards, the prince, and some of the nobles were crowding around Shuriash, weapons poised and eyes glaring, putting their bodies between him and any further danger, while priests and onlookers scattered in terror. Hollard noticed that one of the few exceptions was Ian Arnstein, who’d seized his wife in a crouching hug that put
his
body between her and danger. Time froze, for long instants. The priest-assassin gave a final bubbling rattle, kicked heels, voided, then died. His blood flowed out impossibly red in the light of the shrine, creeping around the feet of those surrounding the king.

“ Let me by,” Shuriash snapped.

Reluctantly, his protectors spread apart, moving outward to make their circle wider. Shuriash looked down at the priest.

“My thanks,” he said to Kashtiliash, and nudged the body. “But it would have been good to ask this one questions—hard questions, in a hard way.”

He caught Raupasha’s eye and inclined his head. “My lady of Mitanni, I seem to owe you a life. I shall not forget.”

Then he looked around. “ Where is the
sheshgallu
of Marduk? ”

The chief priest came forward, looking shrunken and old in his gorgeous robe and ziggurat hat. “My lord king, may you live forever—”

“If I do, it will be no thanks to your incompetence!” Shuriash snapped.

“O Ensi of Marduk, there are so many priests in Babylon for the
akitu
. . .”

Shuriash nodded. “ That is true. You, you—” he pointed to guardsmen. “Take the corpse of this dead dog and put it where it may be examined later. You, go speak to the people in the temenos; tell them that the king has been spared by the grace of Marduk and the other great gods assembled here in Babylon. Now,
sheshgallu,
it is time for me to take the hand of the great god my lord, Bel-Marduk.”

The high priest gaped at him. “ You . . . you wish to go on with the ceremony, King of the Four Quarters? ”

Shuriash snorted. “Of course! If there was any aim to this plot besides killing me, it was to interrupt the
akitu,
that doubt might be thrown on my right to rule as vice-regent of the great Bel-Marduk. This shall not be! The ceremony shall continue!”

 

There was a slight commotion at the doorway; it was a breach of decorum for anyone to enter the feasting-hall after the monarch. King Shuriash turned, his shaggy brows rising when Justin Clemens pushed past the guards. He smiled, though, despite the breach of protocol. The guards had known he would; the man who had saved the king’s darling would not be denied audience even if his reasons were frivolous. Not for the first few times, at least.

Nobody thought his reasons were, once they saw his face. He came up to the table at the king’s side and bowed.

“O King,” he said. “I have grave news.” He glanced around. “For your ears, and your heir’s, and these officers of my people.”

Shuriash looked at him keenly for a moment, then nodded. “ Leave us,” he said. There were murmurs from some of the ministers and generals. “ Leave us, I said!” When the audience chamber was empty save for himself and his son and the Islander commanders, he went on: “ I have given offense to powerful men. There had better be a good reason for this.”

“O King, there is. There is
mutanu
in your city.”

Shuriash’s tanned skin went gray; so did his son’s.
Mutanu
translated literally as “certain death.” A better rendering into English would have been “plague.”

“Are you sure?” the king said, grasping at a small image of Shamash that hung at his belt, a rare gesture for him.

“ I am sure. It is. . .” He paused, groping for a word. “ I do not know if you have a word for this
mutanu.
It starts with fever and a reddish rash, and then red sores erupt upon the body. If the victims live, they may be scarred. We call it
smallpox.
”

Shuriash shook his head. “ No, I do not know of this
mutanu.
” His gaze sharpened. “ You do? Have you brought this thing to the land of Kar-Duniash? ”

Clemens licked his lips.
God, I wish I was sure,
he thought. “I do not think so,” he said. “We have not suffered from this disease for a very long time. We have a means of making a person safe from it.”

“Ah,” Shuriash said. “ That is well; that is very well.”

Clemens shook his head. “Lord King, we have such a means at home in Nantucket, not here. Not our best means.” In English, to the appalled faces of Kenneth Hollard and the other Islanders: “We’ve got enough vaccine on hand to immunize a couple of hundred people, no more.”

“ Is there another way, then? ” Shuriash asked.

“ Yes.” Clemens hesitated, and the Babylonian made an imperious gesture. The doctor licked his lips again, tasting the salt of fear.

“Lord King, we can protect you and your family by the best method, for we have some of that medicine.”

He winced internally. Still, there was no choice—they
couldn’t
vaccinate the population at large, and if they were going to pick a few hundred, then it would have to be—coldly—based on who was most essential to the Republic’s purposes.

“And my people? ” Shuriash asked quietly.

“ There is another way. It, too, protects against the disease, but . . . there are drawbacks.”

Colonel Hollard snorted. “Spit it out, Lieutenant,” he said.

“Lord King, the other method involves—”
How the hell do I say “attenuated virus” in Akkadian, goddammit?
He took another breath and began again. “It involves giving the healthy a weak form of the disease. In most cases, they recover with little harm and are henceforth immune.”

Kashtiliash leaned forward, his brown eyes narrowed. “Most? That is a word as slippery as a fish dipped in sesame oil,” he said.

Clemens nodded. “Of every fifty so treated, one will develop the strong form of the disease. Of those, one in two will die.”

Shuriash seemed to swell where he sat. “You would kill”—he paused to calculate; Babylonian arithmetic used an eight-base system—“one in every hundred of my people? ”

“King, if we do not, at least two in every
ten
will die! And that is . . . to rely on the favor of the gods.” It wasn’t easy to say “probability” in Akkadian either. “ If this is truly the first time that this
mutanu
has visited your lands, then as many as
nine
in ten or more may die. And I think it is the first time; your
asu
Azzu-ena knows nothing of it, and her knowledge of your healing arts is very complete.”

“Oh,
shit,
” Hollard said, into the echoing silence that followed Clemens’ words. “ Why didn’t I stay on Nantucket, where they don’t
have
emergencies? ”