I, the Sun Read online

  A girl came, sleepy, with a sealed clay vessel and two cups. She had reddened hair and wide-set eyes and her neck was strung with copper beads which dangled down between her breasts. When she turned, her kirtled hips were sweet and my eyes went with her to the door.

  “Girl, not so fast.” She turned in the doorway, hip cocked. She was one of the reasons boys could seldom gain entrance to the Blue Ram.

  “Come here,” it was Kuwatna-ziti’s order. Eyes downcast, smiling, she did as he bid. He tugged on her tresses and whispered in her ear. She had a throaty laugh, a deep voice. On the threshold, she stared at me brazenly, licking her lips slowly with her tongue, before she took her leave.

  “And close that, door!” Kuwatna-ziti commanded.

  The door muffled the low men’s voices and tremulous pipes beyond. Kuwatna-ziti broke the jug’s seal and served us both.

  The wine was elegant. I downed it as if it were not. Loosened by the drink, I examined Kuwatna-ziti’s puffy face, his rent woolens, and felt better, about my faring with him.

  “That oath you took from me – what good is a boy’s word?”

  Kuwatna-ziti’s beard wobbled. “As good as you make it. I was not fighting a boy out there on the slope.” He rubbed his neck. “Before, I was going to ask you if you would take your majority in Arinna. Now, I am telling you.”

  “Or you will beat me again?”

  “If it is the only thing you understand. You might beat me, though I doubt it: I would rather leave out the battling and make a treaty. We have not much time. I am not your adversary.”

  I grunted at him, reached out and filled my cup with Murmurigan wine.

  He sighed. “Tasmi, I know things have not been easy with you. You are a prince of the realm. Times are unsettled. Kantuzilis –”

  I suggested that he entertain himself with a sheep.

  “Look you, princeling, you will be in the wars soon enough. Save it. You will take your majority in Arinna, in the temple of the Sun Goddess –”

  “– who regulates kingship and queenship –” I mimicked the formula. “Asmunikal chose well, with you.”

  He ignored that. “Have you chosen a tutelary god yet?” I spat wine. “Not you, too.”

  He smiled grimly. “War brings a man to his gods. A strong hand is not enough. To vanquish such enemies as have the Hatti Lands, a man needs a strong deity riding with him.”

  I squirmed to find a way to sit without resting on Kantuzilis’ work. “I am not much for gods. None have called me. I grant them the same peace.” Talk of the thousand gods of Hatti always made me uncomfortable. Though the men make much of them, and most of the decisions of kingship are made in their names, I had never had even the slightest glimpse of them, either with my eyes or my heart. Still, if only to satisfy convention, I would have to declare myself soon.

  “It would benefit a lot of people, and please me – if you come to care about that – if you would consider the Storm God of Hatti.” There are many Storm Gods. Teshub, the Storm God of Hatti, husband to the Sun Goddess of Arinna, stands upon the twin bulls Serris and Hurris. He is mighty, a warrior’s god, a god for whom every king of Hatti performs certain functions.

  “Who is my mother going to marry?” I said into his appraising stare.

  “Are you going to start swinging if I tell you?”

  “Smite the wicked before they smite you.”

  “Hassuilis, of Ziplanda.”

  Hearing the name, a tightness eased in my chest. It was necessary, by the law, for a brother of Arnuwandas to take my mother into his house. Hassuilis was a priest of the city’s Storm God, an ethereal man to whom the machinations of the court meant nothing. I had met him twice only. He seemed to me a good man, and his position in the city was one from which he could protect my mother. There is a certain autonomy dealt the holy cities; like the estates of the gods, they are exempt from tithes, existing like states within states. This condition obtained also in Arinna, which was one of the reasons my mother had arranged to send me there.

  Since Tuthaliyas had no intention of making her his wife, nor allowing her to remain Great Queen, Hassuilis was the most preferable of the remaining alternatives. I said this.

  Kuwatna-ziti narrowed his slanted eyes at me, and unlatched his cloak. “Your mother is a heroic woman. She will triumph in the end.”

  I had no answer for that. What Asmunikal wanted, she usually got. But the cost in the past had often been too great. She had laid down ruinous policies for the land through my father, whom she ruled. Her pacifist leanings had drained the treasuries and convinced our enemies that indeed we were ripe for conquest.

  I said what I thought of women mixing in government, and men who let them, and that my mother would never rule through me.

  “By Teshub’s beard, you are astute, for a street-brawler.”

  “I grew up with my ear to the floorboards. Where did you get that wound?”

  “Arziya. Kantuzilis called us up. We had no choice but to aid him. When I got back, we had to reconquer all the ground we took the whole season.” He shook his head, grim. “Tuthaliyas has the right idea. Burn them out. Deport the citizenry, use the namra, the deportees, for slave labor.”

  He refilled my cup.

  “What is it like?” I asked, and he knew I meant war with the Gasgaean enemy.

  “What is it like? Like the streets. Like this life you have been living. Most times war is polite. The Gasgaeans are not polite. They do not walk away at sundown, or go home for the winter. They do not nicely form ranks, or exchange a mannerly challenge, or set up a battle in an orderly fashion. They jump from trees, attack sleeping camps, hide behind bushes. They ride horses, dig pits, shoot flaming arrows… they keep us on our toes.”

  As he leaned forward, the deep scar on the inside of his bicep slithered. “Driving for me, you will get your fill of Gasgaeans. I send no man where I have not already gone.” He drained his cup; I did the same.

  The warm wine lulled me, eased my wrenched muscles and battered flesh.

  Kuwatna-ziti, too, seemed to feel the wine. His tone became conspiratorial. “There is a lot in this for both of us, young prince, my lord. Both on the short, and on the long.”

  “What mean you?”

  “Tomorrow, we may pick two teams from the royal stable: one for me, for taking your intractable majesty in hand; and one for you, for being a good boy and going away, and not reminding anyone that if Arnuwandas had not died when he had, you would soon be tuhkanti. There is another value, too, in this, which you may not have seen.”

  “Since I cannot think of anything at all which I value in this, then you may be right.” I slurred cautiously, and added, “but I have been thinking about all this longer than you. If there were advantage here, by now I would have sniffed it out.”

  “Perchance. Look: you are out of the way. Tuthaliyas is Tabarna. Unless he drastically changes, he will name no tuhkanti himself. They – the princes – might just kill each other off before it comes time for us to make our move.”

  I sat straight up. Kuwatna-ziti peered around him, said, “There’s no one here to overhear,” in an irritated voice. “Have wine.” I took wine.

  I rubbed my sore eye, forgetful, and regretted it. “We should go.” I said.

  “Go? Go upstairs, you mean,” and he grinned like a wolf.

  “Then let us do it,” I said, rising. I would make to him no statement about my intentions. He might speak of “we” and “our move,” but I was not sure that I was ready to be included in his “we.”

  “You know,” he said, meeting me at the door, which was jammed, “it is men that a king must master. Learning man is the school of kingship. Nations rise and fall upon just that –”

  “Like the proprietor of this place?” I growled, putting my shoulder to the door. It did not budge.

  “Let me try,” said Kuwatna-ziti, and he threw his weight against the door. Thrice he struck it, until the hinges groaned. Rubbing his shoulder, he stood back and bellowed.
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br />   I was on the table, trying the barred window, when the door burst inwards and the henna-headed girl went to her knees before us, stammering about the bolt.

  Kuwatna-ziti, wrenching her up by the hair, held her against the wall. I slid past him: the proprietor was nowhere about, the hearth banked, dawn coming in through the windows.

  “Come then, girl,” said the Shepherd, and to me explained that the nightboy had shut the bolt from without by mistake, thinking no one was within. In the large room three slumped over their tables.

  “You do not believe that?” I demanded, as Kuwatna-ziti slapped the girl’s rump and gestured that I should follow her up the stairs. “That winesot will be back with Meshedi.”

  Kuwatna-ziti, unperturbed, shepherded the girl up the stairs. “You have not been long enough in Hattusas!” I shouted after. “You will wake with your throat slit.”

  The girl’s thighs winked on the landing. “And you have been too long in Hattusas. Where go you, to your safe palace bed? Come on –” then he stopped, his eyes widening incredulously. “Unless… that is… if you’ve never…” And he grinned widely.

  I vaulted the railing after him.

  He laughed, “This one is mine, then,” and slapped the kirtle before him.

  “You are paying,” I agreed, following Kuwatna-ziti who followed the harlot down a passage and through a door.

  “What did Kantuzilis say to you?” he asked me softly, pausing in the doorway, his eyes flitting about the roughly square room before he stepped down three steps into it.

  “You should have stayed, if you wanted to know that. You could have helped him.” The floor was board. On it were spread covered piles of straw. From one rose the first harlot’s friend and I was glad Kuwatna-ziti had chosen the former; though I was so sore in need of sleep that my body grumbled, even through the good Murmurigan wine. I strode over and flopped down on the straw and let her strip me, lying still with my hands behind my head, making a valiant effort to pretend that such things happened to me every day.

  “Shepherd,” I said in Babylonian, as much to impress the girl as to keep my words secret, “what business had you with Himuili and Takkuri?” Those were the two lords with whom he had left the circle. Both were regular army, not free nobles, nor Meshedi. The girl freed her black hair and knelt between my legs.

  “If I told you that,” said he, “you would have something on me. I keep no lions on my roof.”

  I rolled onto my side, and let the harlot drink me.

  I had found something else to do with her when the flimsy door burst open.

  Kuwatna-ziti sat slowly up on the straw as three Meshedi poured into the room. His hand held the girl with reddened hair down on his belly.

  An arrow thunked dully into the sill behind his head.

  I was backed into the corner, the girl at my feet, not recollecting how I had come there. In the doorway beyond the three Meshedi were two others, both with bows nocked, though the quarters were close.

  The foremost one snarled, “My lords, tuhkanti Tuthaliyas requires your presence. Up. Move!”

  Kuwatna-ziti’s face darkened. He removed his hand from the girl, reached back without looking to pull the arrow from the wall, snapped it in two and lay the pieces on his right. The Meshedi took a step, retraced it, and growled.

  “Tasmi, what is the going price of an ear in Hattusas?”

  “What? Twelve shekels of silver,” I said, slowly reaching down for my kilt as one of the Meshedi gestured to me. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Kuwatna-ziti rise, then just a blur. Then the blade before my face retreated.

  I straightened as Kuwatna-ziti bellowed, “Do you know who I am?”

  On one knee was the foremost Meshedi, hand to the side of his head, blood streaming from between his fingers down over his clothes. By his leg lay his ear, and Kuwatna-ziti’s dirk. And even as I took that in, a shower of silver shekels clattered to the boards beside them.

  The room was absolutely silent. The girls did not weep, the maimed Meshedi did not whimper. No one among his companions moved.

  Kuwatna-ziti, sword bared, nude, strode up to the bleeding man.

  “Pick him up!” he snapped. The two other Meshedi did so. The two in the doorway followed everything with their bows.

  “Do you know who I am?” He roared into the bleeding man’s face. No one was paying any attention to me. I strapped on my dirk, since my faction seemed to be winning, and stepped over my girl.

  The Meshedi, from a fog of pain, mumbled that he did not. Kuwatna-ziti made him add “my lord.”

  Then he said: “I am the Shepherd of Arinna, man of the Storm God. With a snap of my fingers I can blot the sound of your name from the earth. Speak it!”

  The terrified man did so. Kuwatna-ziti drew names from each in turn. I have seen snakes do such things, with their prey. “Now,” he hissed, and even my skin crawled, though he hissed not at me, “not all the clay tongues in the world, nor all the black wool, nor a thousand purifications of the twelve parts of the body will aid you. Go back to Tuthaliyas and tell him that we will be with him presently. And put yourselves under arrest.”

  Now, ‘man’ is a euphemism for priest, and clay tongues and black wool are weapons used by priests and Old Women against sorcery. The twelve parts of the body must be cleansed to cure impotence. Those Meshedi fled the room as though pursued by demons.

  I realized I was staring, and busied myself with sandal straps, studying the Shepherd anew. There is a high college of priests in Arinna. I was cold. The room was cold, colder than the rock-sanctuary had been. The girl at my feet had her arms around my leg. I touched her shoulder, and the skin was risen in little bumps.

  The Shepherd fussed with his bloodied knife, wiping it in the straw. When he looked at me, I stared back into the eyes of a wolf.

  “I told you,” he said softly, “that a man needs a strong god behind him. And that learning man is the school of kingship.” He straightened, stretched.

  “And out of the holy city they sent you, to give me lessons.”

  “Something like that.” The chill had fled the air. I wondered if it had ever been there. “Let us hope I have a long temper. The rabbit should not chase the wolf, and yet it seems this audacity runs in your family. No one sends Meshedi after a Lord of Arinna!”

  “And man of the Storm God,” I tossed back as we gained the first floor landing and I squinted through the gloom toward the hazy morning brightness of an open doorway. The clay floor had been raked, a meal boiled beyond my view. I swallowed my hunger, thinking to sate it at the palace if Tuthaliyas did not have both of us thrown into the pit.

  He was reasonably sober, or reasonably drunk, as the case may be. We drove the chariot through King’s Gate, cut through the flowered court at the family quarters, took the covered hall that leads to what used to be the main garden court but would soon be the new throne room. Pillars lay on their sides, ready to be raised. A small mountain of purple marble waited in one corner, for the new King’s Road. I myself thought we would be better off strengthening our perimeter. The old audience hall was big enough for me. But not Tuthaliyas.

  Three times had different Meshedi tried to take me in hand, until Kuwatna-ziti shouted at the third party so loud that the walls shook: “Have you nothing better to do than chase children?” which made me angry but brought the high chamberlain hustling out from the King’s wing to tell us that Tuthaliyas was out at the building site.

  Slaves worked there, guards lounged. A golden bull whose mouth spouted wine had been set on a table, and the tuhkanti stood by it in a full-length, long-sleeved robe of white wool trimmed with gold, my father’s crown upon his head. Out from under the crown – round-domed, like a war cap, coming low over the ears – his wispy curls straggled. Around his belly was a cinch of jewels.

  He smacked his lips when he saw us and filled two more golden goblets and bawled, “Well, come on, come here, you little bastard. You too, wild man of Arinna.”

  I looked at Kuwatna-
ziti, whose lips twitched. The chamberlain, white-haired and tiny, hobbled over, demanding in a crackling voice that we cede our arms to him. “But you must, you must,” wheezed the ancient.

  “What’s this? What’s this?” Tuthaliyas stomped around the table, his jowls quivering with every step. One of my brothers raises boars with jowls like that, bristly and always moist. His stature was such that he had to peer up to meet my eyes. Old Hittite, looked Tuthaliyas, with a nose sharp as an evergreen and meeting brows that swept around his eyes like a permanent elbow thrown out for protection. Some said his thick lips showed the invaders’ blood in him, but he was hefty like a bull and wide as a doorway, and they do not grow men like that in the reedy wombs of Egypt.

  He and my father were two sides of a coin. I had Arnuwandas’ height, his litheness, his long aquiline nose and thin lips. In all else I was my mother’s. Only in the neck, like the trunk of a tree, and in the hands, on him too large for his stature, did Tuthaliyas and I show common blood. As I thought those things, the fact that Arnuwandas was no longer in his bed in the palace, and never would be again, was brought home to me with a snap louder than Kantuzilis’ belt on my back. The raked clay beneath my feet seemed to shift, and when I looked back at my uncle it was through eyes filled with uncertainty.

  He nodded, and took a drink from the goblet he held, and nodded again. Looking steadily at me, he said, “Kuwatna-ziti, did neither you nor anyone else think to consult me about the disposition of my nephew?”

  “We had to catch him first, my lord.”

  I stiffened.

  “And catching him necessitated slicing off one of my Meshedi’s ears?” Still, the dark, tiny eyes of the tuhkanti rested on my face. Still, he sipped his wine. His greasy hair curled over the trim of his woolen gown. Wine dripped onto its front.

  “My lord, I am not used to being dragged out of bed by bad-mannered henchmen.”

  “Next time, I will send a diplomat. Asmunikal tells me you want to take our little mountain lion off our hands.”

  “I would consider it a favor if you would let me take him.”