The Singer and Her Song Page 3

  She lay there, eyes wide, for a long time, trying to still the clattering of her mind. At some point, she heard Tatasshe come inside and bolt the door then trudge up the stairs. Finally Uqnitum drifted into sleep.

  CHAPTER 2

  Uqnitum became conscious only gradually of the noise. It had made itself so much a part of the background of their days that she scarcely registered it at the beginning, only sensing it as a dull, rhythmic thudding embedded in her dream—a great drum, booming accompaniment to the song she and her family were performing for King Wasashatta. She seemed to be a little girl, yet Ar-tesshub and Tatasshe and the boys were there, too.

  The dream unraveled, but the booming went on. Uqnitum sat up and clawed her way to consciousness, struggling hazily to make sense of a distant roar that she identified only after a moment as the sound of shouting.

  Suddenly, a neighbor’s shrill voice rose in panic from very near outside, cutting through her grogginess. “The Assyrians! They’ve gotten inside!”

  Shutters and doors banged. Footsteps pounded as people went running into the street. From all sides came screams and sobs. The roar in the distance grew louder. The booming went on and on, like the beating heart of some malevolent beast.

  Ar-tesshub snapped upright at her side. It was still dark, but Uqnitum could see the whites of his eyes, round with sudden, awful comprehension.

  “Sharrumma have mercy! What do we do now?” he cried.

  “Up, my dear.” She was already swinging her feet to the floor. “Get the children up. We have to hide.”

  “But they’ll burn the city.”

  “We don’t know that.” Her heart was pounding, her breath shuddering. What should they do? She had no idea, but she had to stay calm. The others looked to her. She needed to see to Wullu. If he’d heard the noise, he would be frightened. She ran out onto the landing and collided with Tatasshe.

  “Nera? What’s happening?” The girl’s voice was high-pitched with fright.

  Uqnitum could hear Ar-tesshub sliding out of bed and jamming on his sandals. She pushed Tatasshe toward the childhood room the girl had returned to after the death of Ennamati. “Get dressed if you’re not already, shala. The Assyrians are here.”

  The booming went on and on. They were ramming the gate in the dark. The fact that they were doing it at night was unnatural, demonic.

  Uqnitum groped her way down the steps, Tatasshe in her wake. She could hear her daughter’s tremulous breathing. Suddenly, there was an immense, dull roar, and the house lurched. Her heart in her throat, Uqnitum clung to the stair rail and felt Tatasshe fall on top of her with a little scream, fumbling for balance.

  Below, Wullu began to cry in a slow wail, “Nera! Nera! Mama!”

  “Are you all right, my love?” came Ar-tesshub’s voice from above, cracked with terror.

  The house shifted again. There were shrieks from the street: “They’ve mined the wall! The wall is falling!” The sounds of running feet. Breathless orders shouted.

  Uqnitum assisted her daughter to the floor from the tilting staircase. “Help your father,” she panted. “I’m going to see about Little Wullu.”

  From outside, there were crashes, thuds, the rumbling cataract of stones and mud bricks falling. Screams of defenders dropping into the darkness as their ramparts collapsed. The air within the house was unbreathable with dust. A beam overhead broke with a shriek, and part of the ceiling fell away and hung just a finger’s length above Uqnitum’s scalp, dribbling dried clay and pieces of reed.

  “Ar-tesshub?” she cried, fearful that he hadn’t made it down the stairs before the floor came apart. She heard him coughing at the foot of the sagging steps.

  Tatasshe called, “Over here, Attani. This way.”

  Uqnitum groped her way toward the wailing voice of her youngest son, covering her mouth with her arm. “Wullu, my rabbit, Nera is coming. Don’t be frightened.”

  But he was frightened, and so was she. He knew only that something strange was happening in the claustrophobic darkness, while she dreaded to think what the future held and could imagine it only too well.

  She found Wullu swaying in the open door of his alcove. He clung to her, whimpering, big enough to impede her movements. She tried to tell him not to talk—“It will make breathing harder if you open your mouth”—but he was too panicked to understand. She forced herself to stay calm and keep her voice under control. That interminable pounding unnerved her.

  Ar-tesshub bumped into her, and Tatasshe followed. They had to escape the house before it collapsed. The mining of the city wall had destabilized everything.

  “What do we do?” Ar-tesshub gasped and coughed into his sleeve.

  “We have to get out before the house comes down.” So much for hiding.

  Their musical instruments were inside, including Ar-tesshub’s priceless silver-headed bull lyre. Their clothes, their jewelry, their gold—their whole lives were inside that falling building, and they would have to flee without it all. There was another ominous crack overhead, but Uqnitum had found the door and fumbled aside the bar, and they burst into the street.

  The moon was still up, and the city had the look of something carved from silver and bitumen. Their neighbors were milling about uncertainly in the pallid, unnatural light, their faces ghostly masks, huddled together away from the sagging façades of their houses, a gulf of shadow at their feet like the edge of a black river that threatened to suck them into its waters. Above the flat roofs, only a street away, stretched a big piece of night sky where once they had beheld the ramparts of the city wall—the only thing between them and slavery or death. Now the unfeeling eyes of ten thousand stars stared down upon them. Uqnitum’s hair rose on the back of her neck.

  A crunching, screeching, splintering crescendo—and all at once the booming stopped. The roar of many deep voices arose. Clashes. Screams. The neighbors ran, some toward the commotion, some away, clutching their wailing babies and a few of their possessions. There went the priest’s wife from next door, she who was always so full of unctuous protestations: “If there’s ever anything we can do for you...” But no one so much as looked at Uqnitum and her family. Each person’s universe had shrunk to the hope of his or her own escape.

  Uqnitum and Ar-tesshub and their children stood trembling for an instant, unsure of what to do next, while Wullu moaned over and over, “Nera. Nera,” swinging his mother’s hand back and forth in a frenzied rhythm. Uqnitum turned to her husband. “They’ve breached the gate. Let’s see if we can get over the wall while they’re busy down there.”

  They stumbled to the corner, clattering into one another, and pounded breathlessly toward what had once been the city wall. The street had partially caved in over the sappers’ tunnel, and they had to dodge around the gaping ditch and the ruins of collapsed houses. Their familiar neighborhood had metamorphosed into an alien and unearthly landscape in the white moonlight. By the pale illumination, Uqnitum saw a horde of soldiers picking their way over the rubble of the wall, torches bobbing in their hands. With the dust rising and settling around them, they looked like demons emerging from the smoke of some terrible underworld.

  Assyrians. No one was there to oppose them. The Mitannian soldiers would all be clustered at the gate, if any were left alive.

  Her heart thundering, Uqnitum turned to run the other way, dragging Wullu by the hand. Ar-tesshub and Tatasshe lurched after her. Over their shoulders, a long streamer of fire hissed and then another and another, as if the stars were falling. The Assyrians had begun to shoot incendiary arrows into the city. Ahead, flames roared up as a rooftop arbor ignited. Elsewhere, a house completed its fall with a crash that sent plumes of dust and sparks upward. Screams and the cries of children arose, the sound of battle echoing among the houses in the shadows of the narrow streets. Uqnitum’s heart hammered as loudly as her footsteps. She looked back and saw the wild, glittering eyes of Tatasshe and Ar-tesshub in her wake. Wullu was hanging on her, making every movement as thick and slow as if sh
e were wading through the river.

  “Where can we go, Nera?” panted her daughter, her eyes anguished pits lit with the reflected fires. Her hand clutched her father’s, still the hand of a dust-whitened ghost.

  “Just get away from here, back into the dark,” Uqnitum gasped. They veered left around the corner, their steps thudding on the dry earth. Fires were springing up here and there. Higher flames rose into the sky from the citadel. The temple of Tesshub and Sharrumma was ablaze—and even the brand-new temple of Addad. Impious bastards! Uqnitum’s terror began to harden into fury.

  Ahead of them, a burning beam toppled across the street, setting fire to someone’s door. They skidded to a stop and began to retrace their steps, dodging the growing blaze, Uqnitum in the lead. They passed a woman and child crouched facedown on the dirt, sobbing. There were sharp reports as storage vessels split open in the heat of the flames. The temple granary, with its chaff-laden atmosphere, exploded into the sky in a geyser of fire and sparks.

  Up from the shadows of the street ahead bobbed a cluster of torches, glinting off metal in rhythmic movement—soldiers wading toward them, their armor clanking to the pace of their footsteps, forming a cordon across the road. They were Assyrians, armed to the teeth, with fire and death in hand—fire for Kahat, death for its people. An old man with a bald, bloody head huddled in the street, spellbound, with his crutch beside him, watching their approach. They flowed over him without a word, an implacable flood of death. Uqnitum jerked around as if to flee, but to her rear, she could see the blazing remnants of a building cascade into the street. Beside her, Ar-tesshub batted at a shower of burning sparks.

  They were trapped.

  Everything seemed suddenly robbed of sound, as if it were happening in a nightmare. Images of her family flashed before Uqnitum’s eyes in an instant. The ghost-white face of Ar-tesshub, mouth open in a silent cry of horror as he realized they were surrounded. The terrified eyes of Tatasshe, like those of a little hare at the mercy of wolves. Wullu’s mouth gaping in a soundless wail, his thick tongue lolling. All these images flashed before Uqnitum’s eyes in an instant. Her loved ones were relying on her to save them, but what could she do?

  She said to Ar-tesshub, “Let me do the talking.”

  And the soldiers were upon them.

  Someone raised a sword, but Uqnitum threw herself in front of her family. “Musicians! Musicians!” she cried, falling on her knees in the dirt. “La taqtala niati! No kill us!” She scrabbled in her memory for a few words of Akkadian from her childhood. She sang a measure, strumming the air as if it were a lyre. “Anaku asitu! Asitu! Me singer!” She pointed at Ar-tesshub, who was gaping at her. “Belumi kinarruhuli! My husband’s a lyre player!” Her hand indicated Tatasshe. “Shi asitu! She’s a singer, too!” She warbled a line as if to describe what singers did. “Asitum sharrim, kinnaruhuli sharrim—singers for your king, a lyre player for your king.”

  The soldiers looked at one another, confused and skeptical, swords still lifted. The men were caked with dust, gore splattered, their hair in sweaty strings under their conical helmets. Firelight gleamed on their thick, sweat-polished arms and on legs cased in high-laced boots and coarse, colored leggings. All eyes turned to a big fellow with a baton thrust through his belt. He had to be the officer. He curled out his lip dubiously, but he did keep his narrowed eyes upon her as if he were considering.

  Uqnitum pulsed as if strong beer were fizzing through her veins. She felt incandescent and all-powerful as though preparing for an important performance, energy flowing from her, persuasive power. Her husband and daughter goggled at her. Crackling with urgency, she willed the soldiers to understand her and back down.

  Uqnitum repeated her few words of Akkadian, mimed playing the lyre, addressing herself directly to the officer, smiling engagingly, staring him in the eye, shivering with intensity. What god had sent her these words in the language of the Assyrians? She hadn’t used it—the diplomatic tongue of courts everywhere—since her childhood at the palace of King Wasashatta twenty-eight years before.

  At last, the officer growled something she couldn’t make out, but one of the soldiers sheathed his sword and stepped forward with a length of rope. He jerked Uqnitum toward him, pulled her arms forward, and bound them before her body. If they take us prisoner, surely they don’t plan to kill us outright, she thought with hammering heart. Another attached Ar-tesshub and Tatasshe to the same length of rope. Wullu pulled away from him and screeched, wild-eyed, clinging to his mother, stamping his feet in nervous terror.

  Uqnitum’s sense of power evaporated, and the consciousness of her vulnerability flooded over her once more. “Hush, Little Wullu,” she murmured, trying to conceal the fear in her voice. Let the nice man tie you to Nera. See? It’s a game.”

  Ar-tesshub took the boy’s shoulder and steadied him but could not make a sound. His pharynx rose and fell below his collar of beard as he swallowed. Tatasshe stroked her brother’s face with her bound hands, murmuring encouragement, her eyes enormous with terror. The officer snarled something in a disgusted tone and pushed the boy after his parents, he alone unbound of them all. The four of them staggered forward, unbalanced, nearly stumbling, but—miraculously—allowed to live.

  They were hustled through the line of soldiers and found themselves part of a crowd of fellow citizens, some tied, some yoked, some shackled by the ankles, shuffling along in a block, surrounded by sword-wielding enemy soldiers. Such a pitiful assembly—people dragged out of their beds or caught fleeing their burning houses, mostly half-dressed women and children but some older men as well. No young men, Uqnitum saw with catching breath. The Assyrians had killed the men of military age, as they always did. Thank the Lord Sharrumma her boys had left. She prayed Wullu would keep his mouth shut, although no one would take him for sixteen.

  The stench of charcoal and roasted flesh blown toward them by a spiraling gust of wind caught in her throat. The soldiers herded the prisoners into an about-face—they could proceed no farther through the collapsed and burning buildings that confronted them. Instead, they stumbled at spear point toward the gate of the city—the gate that was no longer a gate. Ahead in the moonlight yawned a gaping blackness where the vast bronze-hinged doors had once stood between Kahat and slavery. The burned and splintered leaves hung at an angle from their forced hardware. There lay the pile of stones the men of the city had begun to heap up against the rear of the doors in case they were breached. The doors had simply broken over them.

  Bodies lay sprawled across the stones and all over the space before the gate, so thick the captives couldn’t pass without stepping on their fellow countrymen. Blood, black in the moonlight, stained the rocks and the packed earth of the street and splattered the walls. It reeked of copper and offal. It was like an abattoir. Uqnitum hoped Wullu had no idea what he was looking at. She heard Ar-tesshub gag—these were the men he had worked beside for weeks. Some few wore the scale armor of the king’s soldiers, but most were just townspeople who had tried to protect their homes and families—merchants, blacksmiths, potters—once the king had withdrawn his troops to Taite to defend the capital.

  They and their country were no more. Mitanni was no more. Life as they had known it was forever over. Life was over. Over.

  Uqnitum fought back the despair that swept through her. Her family lived still; her pleas had worked. They would be taken to the enemy king to sing for him. As long as they were alive, there was a chance of escaping. They would get away and become free again. They would make a new life for themselves somewhere. Things would be good again.

  Still, she wondered if the Uqnitum who emerged from this day would be the same person who had borne her face before the attack. Ar-tesshub was even less likely than she to escape unmarred. Tatasshe was young, but... the baby. Dear Lady Hepat, Uqnitum prayed desperately, let the baby be born alive and healthy after all this. That would be Tatasshe’s salvation—to have a child, a piece of Ennamati, to comfort her. The girl had seven months to go. If she
lost this baby, too, it might be more than she could endure... Uqnitum didn’t want to think about it. It was enough just to concentrate on not slipping in the blood as they were made to climb over the stones and the remains of their fellow citizens and were herded out the gate.

  Goodbye, Kahat, the home of my happiest years. Goodbye, Ennamati, my son-in-law.

  In the darkness, they edged past the huge bulk of the leather-covered “horse” on wheels that carried the battering ram. Why even bother to take down the gate when the whole wall has been mined? Maybe it had just been a diversion. Off to the side, the rotting bodies of the impaled hung upon tall stakes—ghastly scarecrows to strike fear into the hearts of the town’s defenders. Perhaps the dead were the lucky ones.

  The road down from the gate was steep and dry, full of loose cobbles. Ar-tesshub nearly skidded to his knee, but he caught himself. She wasn’t sure her own knees would have been up to it; they trembled with the descent. The prisoners were being hustled too rapidly, so closely packed together that they were stepping on one another’s heels. Wullu was still hanging on her so that she expected her tunic to tear under his weight, but he wasn’t making a scene. Thank the gods that the three of them had slept in their clothes. Tatasshe had chosen the right day to do the laundry.

  The moon was setting in these hours before the chill spring dawn, and Uqnitum’s arms broke into gooseflesh. Before them stretched darkness, sparkling below with the light of ten thousand torches—the camp of the Assyrians, reinforced, no doubt, by soldiers from fallen Taite. Walking toward it was like stepping off into the night sky.

  Behind them, the flames of their burning city arched into the blackness, casting twisting shadows ahead of the captives as they stumbled down the descending road, the spears of their captors prodding them if they fell behind. Uqnitum heard occasional little sobs and shudders and a mother’s desperate “Ssshhh!” as a frightened child began to cry. No one wanted to call attention to herself.