People of the Inner Sea (The Age of Bronze) (29 page)

The Great King Tudqáliya's troops began to desert him in droves, returning to their various native dependencies, with news of their overlord's plight.  The kingdoms of Assúwa's western coast welcomed home their scattered warriors.  Once there, rather than turning them over to the emperor as traitors, the former soldiers found that their own, lesser, Assúwan kings had other demands to make on them.  Far from sending these men east, once more, these vassal kings wrote to Tudqáliya most importunately.  The emperor was urged in the most forceful language to march his own, larger army westward, to protect his loyal vassals from the troublesome, new Great King of Ak’áiwiya ensconced at Millewánda.

"Deal with this Great Nuisance of Aqiyawa, or whatever the upstart’s name is," wrote the besieged and harried, vassal lords of Míra, Lúkiya, and Kuwalíya.  "Direct your army and your fleet to the Inner Sea and end the forays of his evil people on our sea.  Heed our request and come to our aid, O Great Father, for if you fail to do this, we will no longer be your vassals!"

Forced to turn his attention away from Ashúr in the southeast, Tudqáliya made a final, desperate attempt to solve his Ak'áyan problem before the summer ended.  Communicating through king Madduwátta on his western frontier, the emperor concluded a solemn treaty with Odushéyu, taking at face value the It'ákan's claim of the status of Great King.  The piratical leader signed the document in due course, pressing a stolen thumb ring of shining gold into a rectangular cake of damp clay, beneath a hundred neat rows of cuneiform script in the presence of Náshiyan and Lúkiyan diplomats.  The ceremony was sanctified by the shedding of blood, with the sacrifice and subsequent burning of no less than ninety oxen, sixty rams, and thirty horses.  Every god and goddess whose name was known to Ak’áyan or Assúwan was harangued by the priests and priestesses in attendance, in addition, he continued his raids through the summer and into the rainless autumn that followed.

The vassal king of Alásiya, taking advantage of the unrest on the empire's borders, requested the return of his ships from the great fleet, citing a need to protect his island from marauders from the southeastern mainland.  When Tudqáliya did not respond, the Alásiyans rose up under their youthful king and drove all the resident Náshiyans from their formerly wealthy isle.  Having already suffered the double loss of the western tin route and the southeastern mountains of black bronze, the Náshiyan emperor could not afford to allow Alásiya's rich copper deposits to get away, also.  Tudqáliya was forced to abandon his western dependencies in Assúwa as indefensible and turn his attention south.  As a consequence, before the autumn was well begun, one by one, the coastal kingdoms broke with the empire.

By the time the autumn grain was sown, even the southern land of Kizzuwátna rebelled.  Despite the queen mother's efforts to maintain the loyalty of what was, after all, her own homeland, Kizzuwátna withdrew its navy from Emperor Tudqáliya's command.  The newly independent state aligned itself, instead, with the island of Alásiya, sitting just south of its shores, a severe blow to the beleaguered Náshiyan empire.  Without Kizzuwátna's help, Tudqáliya knew that he would be unable to retake the vital copper isle.

To further safeguard his new status, the island's king claimed sovereignty over the Náshiyan cities of Kanaqán, requiring treaties to be signed by the governors of those fortresses designating them as his own vassals.  As his restored ships posed a threat to the petty monarchs of the rich ports, the young king of Alásiya effectively cut the emperor off from the entire coast of Kanaqán, creating a miniature empire of his own.  Náshiya had never been a great sea power.  Now it was completely dependent on its far eastern colonies in Kanaqán for shipments of grain and metal and pressed them hard not to yield to the king of the island, threatening retaliation by land if they did so.  The governor of the citadel of Ugarít on the frontier was caught between two sovereigns, both more powerful than he.  Forced to provide ships to Emperor Tudqáliya to maintain the embargo on Ashúriyan trade, Ugarít's ruler turned to Alásiya, pleading for protection for his own small realm.

aaa

In Tíruns, Diwoméde sat in a tub in his tiled bath chamber, watching his serving woman with half-closed eyes.  Dáuniya bent over him, energetically scrubbing his relaxed limbs with a linen cloth.  He said nothing as she worked, making no sound even when her attention turned to his wounded shoulder.  Her hands moved more gently around the half-healed injury, although the young man could not help wincing when the woman's cloths touched the center of the wound, which was still open and draining.

When she was satisfied that he was clean, Dáuniya dried the man's hair and combed both it and his beard free of tangles.  Only when she was behind him did his eyes leave her face.  When he could not see her, Diwoméde still did not speak.  He stared glumly at the painted, plaster rim of his tub, his eyes unfocused as memories of another room as small as this came to him, unbidden.

Dáuniya finished with his hair, at length, and opened the door to the little chamber.  "T'érsite, he is ready to come out," she announced cheerfully to the burly, kilted man reclining on a bench outside.

T'érsite rose immediately at the summons and entered the bath chamber.  The young man in the tub, lost in his unhappy reverie, did not look up.  "Qasiléyu," the laborer called quietly, bending low to see the other man's face.

When the bather still did not respond, Dáuniya lightly caressed his cheek with the back of her hand.  "Diwoméde, stand up.  It is time to come out."

He started at her touch, and stared at her without recognition for a moment.  Taking a deep breath, he shook off the thoughts that had bound him and reached for T'érsite's outstretched hands.  The laborer helped the young man stand in the tub and Dáuniya draped drying cloths over his body.  Leaning on T'érsite's shoulder, Diwoméde let himself be lifted over the side of the tub to stand on his one good foot on the tile.  Holding onto T'érsite for balance, the qasiléyu waited silently as Dáuniya dried him and rubbed his limbs with oil.  "Take me to bed," Diwoméde told his man, quietly, without spirit.  Obediently, T'érsite again lifted the young man on his shoulder, with a grunt, as Dáuniya hurried ahead to arrange the sheepskins.

When the laborer had laid his qasiléyu on the bed and the serving woman had covered him with linen cloth, Dáuniya grasped T'érsite's elbow.  "I need help with the bandages for his foot," she said, indicating the door with her head.  The laborer followed her out of the room, where the two spoke in low voices.

"His shoulder is improving faster now," Dáuniya announced.  "It should heal completely before winter begins, although he will always have a scar there.  His foot was much worse than his arm, in the beginning.  But it is doing well now, too."

"That is good," the laborer answered, nodding.  "You know, he told me that only two toes were black.  But Menést'eyu removed all of them but the big one and a good bit of the side of his foot, too.  Ai, that Attikan dog must have been cutting for pleasure!  I would like to take my wife's fishing trident to him."

"Do not talk so loud," Dáuniya scolded, "or Diwoméde will hear you.  As for that Attikan, if he had removed only what had turned black, our qasiléyu would not have lived.  By cutting off more of the flesh around the rotting part, Menést'eyu saved his life."

T'érsite snorted.  "If he did, it was an accident."

"No," Dáuniya insisted, "Menést'eyu knew what he was doing.  He sometimes assisted his fellow countryman, Mak'áwon during the war, you know.  That was where he must have learned the healing arts.  I am telling you, if his only intent had been to cause pain, he would have cut off Diwoméde's big toe, too.  But he did not.  So, our qasiléyu will walk again some day.  Not well – he will always limp, of course, but he will walk."

The laborer grunted, unable to argue the point.  "But, now, what about his heart, Dáuniya?  He is still grieving for Agamémnon.  What can we do about that?"

"Nothing," the woman answered matter-of-factly.  "But grief is not fatal.  If it were, you soldiers could never take us women home, as captives in war."

The low-born man grimaced and turned away, his own heart suddenly sore.  "Ai, go, bandage his foot, girl!  He is waiting."

In the room, Diwoméde again followed his captive woman with his eyes, as she wrapped his injured foot in clean strips of sun-bleached linen.  "How long were you with Mak'áwon, at Tróya?" the qasiléyu whispered.

"Six months," she answered without emotion, tying the ends of the bandage.

Looking at her morosely, Diwoméde sighed, "You probably wish you had stayed with him, now."

"Certainly not!" Dáuniya responded, surprised.  She came to kneel beside his head, stroking his beard with a work-worn hand.  "He did not care for women, you see.  He preferred to lie with half-grown boys."

"He would not have forced you to lie with him," Diwoméde noted unhappily.

"That is true," Dáuniya agreed, taking on a gentler manner.  "But I wanted to have a child some day.  If I had stayed with him, I might never have gotten one.  I would have faced a long, lonely time, serving for the rest of my life without ever being loved."

Still not satisfied, the qasiléyu suggested, "Then you should have gone to Púrwo.  He is younger than me and has higher rank."

The serving woman frowned.  "I wanted a young man, not a little boy, especially not such a bad-tempered, poorly mannered one as he was!  No, Diwoméde, I have no regrets."  She sat gazing on his sorrowful features for some time, unable to think what else to say to comfort him.

"Did you really choose me?" Diwoméde whispered, raising his uninjured arm to touch her dark hair.

"I did.  Now, listen to me, beloved, if I did not want you anymore, I could very easily have run away while you were in Attika.  All of Argo was in an uproar, during that time, and there was no one truly in control.  It would have been a simple matter to slip out of the palace and into the countryside."

Diwoméde began to object.  "But T'érsite…"

"Ai, T'érsite!" Dáuniya scoffed, laughing merrily.  "He has not even been able to get his pigeons back, since he returned from the war!  How would he chase down a runaway captive?  I can run twice as fast as he can, and I am at least six times more clever!"

The qasiléyu could not hold back his smile at that.  Dáuniya drew him into her arms, being careful of his wounded shoulder.  "Beloved," she said as she kissed him, "You are still the best man in all of Ak'áiwiya.  I would not trade you for anyone."

aaa

The winter in Assúwa was unexpectedly harsh, even for the newly ensconced rulers of Millewánda.  Food was exceedingly scarce, and lawlessness growing in the surrounding countryside.  Even so, Idómeneyu was determined to remain in the port, despite increasing pressure from his fellow leaders to move on.  The exiles continued their squabbling well into the spring of the following year.  As harvest time rapidly approached, and with it, increasing restlessness among the commoners, the various leaders held another assembly in Millewánda's ill-kept palace.  They no longer bothered with the staff that signaled each man's turn to speak.  Seated in ramshackle, wooden chairs, they drank sour wine and aired their already well-known views.

"As long as we bring in enough booty to trade for barley from Alásiya, the commoners will not drive us out of here," the Kep'túriyan told his companions.  "When the drought finally ends, we will find ourselves ruling a land that is much richer in farmland, better for raising horses, and better placed for commerce than any in the whole of Ak'áiwiya.  I do not know how many times I have to tell all of you these things.  When will you listen to me?  Just hold on here another year.  I swear that you will all see that I am right.  You will not regret it."

"It was exactly that kind of muddled thinking that cost you the Kep'túriyan throne!" Odushéyu spluttered.  "The vital point is that we do not know how long this drought will last.  It has been three years, at least, since the rains came in full strength.  It could easily be just as many more before they come again in sufficient strength to yield a decent harvest.  In the meantime, what do we have to show for our efforts?  Assúwa's coast was already picked over by the Lúkiyans before we even got here," the It'ákan complained.  "I tell you, we are no better off than when we first pulled our longboats up on these shores!"

Ainyáh added with equal displeasure, "What little plunder we gain each summer does not stay in our hands for so much as a single year.  Every ingot, every miserable signet ring ends up in the houses of those execrable Alásiyan merchants in exchange for overpriced grain that we are not even going to eat!"