The Assyrian by Nicholas Guild Page B

was
almost dancing against my breast. “And see to it that he doesn’t
teach you any of his foreign laziness. None but a fool whom the
gods have forsaken would trust the tools of his trade to a slave,
so mind you keep your own sword bright and find other things with
which to occupy the rascal. Mind, Prince.”
    His expression was so fierce, and the point
of his knife so close to my heart, that I ducked my head rapidly
and agreed to everything.
    “The gods know,” I said quickly, “that I have
little enough need of a servant, but the fellow does seem to have
some knowledge of healing wounds, so. . .”
    “Good, then. That’s settled.”
    As abruptly as if the idea had just come to
him. Tabshar Sin stood up from the table and shuttled outside to
relieve himself against the barrack wall. It was late and he would
find his bed now, and in the morning it would be as if the slave
Kephalos had been his own inspiration from the first.
    I never had the opportunity properly to thank
the Lord Sinahiusur for his gift, for I saw him little after that
day, and then only from a distance and in the awesome state of his
office, which did not allow for communications of a personal
nature. In truth, the king and his companions were as remote as
gods. For all that the Lord Sennacherib had placed his hands upon
me and called me ‘son,’ I beheld him only twice over the next two
years and heard his voice but once.
    The first of these was at a military parade
held as the king set out upon campaign. I stood at attention with
the other boys from the royal barrack as he rode by in his chariot,
resplendent in his robes of gold and silver that shone in the
sunlight like dancing fire. He looked neither to the right nor to
the left as he passed—he might have been an idol of stone. But this
is the way of kings. It is how they demonstrate their majesty.
    The second was on the occasion of his return
and, although it began well enough, will always endure in my memory
as among of the most painful nights of my life.
    There was a great banquet to celebrate the
triumph of our arms over the hill tribes who gathered like locusts
east of the Tigris River. It was held in one of the palace’s great
halls, where the walls are covered with carved stone panels showing
how Ashur’s mighty sovereign subdued his enemies. Torches dipped in
wax burned in the wall sconces and there were the sounds of many
voices and of the musicians from the earth’s four quarters whom the
king had brought as spoil to Nineveh. Women in gold and fine linen
danced, their bodies swaying to the rhythm of cymbals and drums,
and the smells of spices hung heavy in the air.
    I served as a page, for on such occasions the
Lord Sennacherib liked to have his sons about him that they might
behold his glory. I waited beside an entranceway, in the clean
uniform of a royal cadet but without my sword, since none might
carry a weapon into the king’s presence. I watched my father as he
sat at table with his two eldest sons, the Lord Sinahiusur, and
some dozen or so of his most eminent courtiers whose names I have
long since forgotten.
    I felt invisible there—in such noise and
confusion these splendid nobles, as they concen¬trated on their own
pleasures, would never notice one such as me. It was to be my
education in the character of greatness, for these, I thought, were
the men who would rule in the land of Ashur for the length of my
life.
    The king and the turtanu were blinding in
their majesty. The greatness of their power surrounded them like a
living aura and I felt as if the sight of them would burn my eyes
out. These were not flesh and blood like myself, but almost
gods.
    The marsarru Ashurnadinshum, whom I had never
seen before, I found less impressive—and this in spite of the fact
that he was already by his father’s grace king of Babylonia. He was
up from the south for his wedding, I had heard, but the prospect
seemed to give him little enough joy. He had a thin, dissatisfied
face