The First Heroes Read online

  Even as strong as she endeavored to be, when the king’s maids led her out to her wedding, it was all she could do to keep her head high and her shoulders straight. If she could have turned and run, she would have done it.

  The king was waiting in his hall, naked but for the skin of a forest lion. She in linen and fine white wool, with her hair elaborately plaited and her face bravely painted, felt herself diminished by the raw power of this mortal beast.

  She was a goddess, a daughter of heaven. She must not falter, even at the sight of Lugalbanda among the king’s men with the rest of the guards from Uruk. She must not think of what it meant that Lugalbanda had disobeyed her command, or that the men about him had the look of men guarding a captive—or most disturbing of all, that the god of chariots was nowhere to be seen.

  The chief of Aratta’s priests set her hand in the king’s and spoke the words that made her his wife. Her heart was small and cold and remote. She felt nothing, not even fear.

  The king had joy enough for both of them. He took her as if she had been a great gift—and so she was, the greatest that had ever been given in this city. He neither noticed nor cared that she was silent. His delight was entirely his own.

  The wedding feast was long and boisterous, but all too soon it ended. The women led Inanna away while the men were still carousing over date wine and barley beer. They had prepared the bridal chamber, hung it with fragrant boughs and adorned it with hangings of richly woven wool. The bed was heaped high with furs and soft coverlets, and scented with unguents from the south.

  They took away her wedding garments but left the ornaments, and set her in the midst of the bed. They shook her hair out of all its plaits and combed the shining waves of it. Then they anointed her with sweet oils and bowed low before her and left her there, alone, to wait for the coming of the king.

  She had hoped as a coward might, that he would lose himself in the pleasures of food and drink and lively company. But he had not forgotten why he celebrated the feast. He came as soon as he reasonably could. The sun had barely left the sky; it was still light beyond the walls. The king’s men would carry on until dawn, but he had come to take what he had bargained for.

  He was clean—that much she could grant him. He took no care for her pleasure, but neither did he cause her pain. He seemed not to notice that she lay still, unresponsive, while he kissed and fondled her. It was enough for him to possess her.

  He was easily pleased. When he had had his fill of her, he dropped like a stone.

  She eased herself away from his sleeping bulk. Her body was as cold as her heart. She wrapped it in one of the coverlets and crouched in the far corner of the bed, knees drawn up, and waited for the dawn.

  With the coming of the day, Lugalbanda found the gates open and the way clear, as the captain of guards had promised. The caravan was drawn up, and his men were waiting. But the god of chariots was nowhere to be seen.

  Lugalbanda was not in the least surprised. He called on the men he trusted most, who were his friends and kinsmen—five of them, armed with bronze. With them at his back, he went hunting the god.

  The temple was empty, the forge untended. Its fires were cold. The god was gone. None of the king’s servants would answer when Lugalbanda pressed them, and the king himself was indisposed. Still it was abundantly clear that the king of Aratta had not honored his bargain.

  The god could have gone rather far, if he had been taken before the wedding feast. The gates were still open, the guards having had no orders to shut them. Lugalbanda stood torn. Go or stay? Take what he could and escape while he could, or defend the goddess against the man to whom she had bound herself?

  He knew his duty, which was to Uruk. She was a goddess; he should trust her to look after herself. And yet it tore at his vitals to leave her alone in this city of strangers.

  He did the best he could, which was to send the men he trusted most to stand guard over her door. They would take orders only from the goddess, and defend her with their lives if need be. “Let her know what the king has done,” he said to them. “Do whatever she bids you—but if she tries to send you away, tell her that you are bound by a great oath to guard her person until she should be safe again in Uruk.”

  They bowed. They were hers as he was; they did not flinch from the charge he laid upon them.

  He had done as much as he might in Aratta. He turned his back on it and faced the world in which, somewhere, the god of chariots might be found.

  The king slept long past sunrise. Inanna, who had not slept at all, was up at first light. She called for a bath. When it came, she scrubbed herself until her skin was raw. The servants carefully said nothing.

  When she was dressed, as one of the servants was plaiting her hair, a young woman slipped in among the rest and busied herself with some small and carefully unobtrusive thing. She had bold eyes and a forthright bearing, but she was somewhat pale. Her hands trembled as she arranged and rearranged the pots of paint and unguents.

  Inanna stopped herself on the verge of calling the girl to her. If she had wanted to be singled out, she would have come in more openly.

  It seemed a very long time before Inanna’s hair was done. The servants lingered, offering this ornament or that, but in a fit of pique that was only partly feigned, she sent them all away.

  The young woman hung back, but Inanna had no patience to spare for shyness—whatever its source. “Tell me,” she said.

  The girl’s fingers knotted and unknotted. Just as Inanna contemplated slapping the words out of her, she said, “Lady, before I speak, promise me your protection.”

  “No one will touch you unless I will it,” Inanna said. “What is your trouble? Is it one of my men? Did he get you with child?”

  The girl glared before she remembered to lower her eyes and pretend to be humble. “With all due and proper respect, lady,” she said, “if my trouble were as small as that, I would never be vexing you with it. Did you know that there are five men of Uruk outside your door, refusing to shift for any persuasion? Did you also know that the god of chariots has not been seen since before your wedding?”

  Inanna had not known those things. The unease that had kept her awake had been formless; prescience had failed her. And yet, as the servant spoke, she knew a moment of something very like relief—as if a storm that had long been threatening had suddenly and mercifully broken. “Where have they taken him?” she asked.

  “I don’t know, lady,” the servant said. “But I do know that most of your men went to find him. I also know—” She stopped to draw a breath. However bold she was, this frightened her. “I know that the king means no good to Uruk. He wants—needs—its wealth and its caravans of grain, but he would rather own it than buy it. Now that he has you, he’ll seize the opportunity to make a state visit to your brother the king. If he happens to come attended by a sizable force, well then, isn’t that an escort proper to a royal embassy? And if while he plays the guest in Uruk, your brother happens to meet an unfortunate accident . . .”

  Inanna’s hand lashed out and seized the girl by the throat. “Tell me why I should believe you. Tell me why I should not let my men have you, to do with as they will.”

  The girl was not the sort to be struck dumb by terror. Her eyes, lifting to meet Inanna’s, held more respect than fear. “Because, lady, you know what a woman can hear if she sets herself to listen. The king never remembers that women have ears. I heard him boasting to one of his cousins. He swore by the gods of the heights that the god of chariots will never leave Aratta. But chariots will come to Uruk, armed for war.”

  However painful the truth might be, Inanna could not help but see it. The long levels of the river country were far better suited to the passage of swift battle-cars than these mountain valleys. They offered room for greater armies, faster charges, more devastating invasions. Aratta’s king with his perpetual hunger would crave what he could gain with an army of chariots. And now he had free passage through the gates of Uruk by his marriage
to its living goddess.

  She did not berate herself for a fool. Her choice had been well enough taken. The king’s might be less so.

  “You have my protection,” she said to the girl, “on one condition. Tell me the truth. Who are you and what is your grudge against the king?”

  The girl flushed, then paled. Inanna thought she might bolt, but she lifted her chin instead and said, “My father was lord of a hill-fort that had been built above a mine of silver. The king sent envoys to him, who made bargains and failed to keep them. Now my father is dead and my brothers labor in the mines, and I was to be the king’s concubine—except that you came, and he forgot that I existed.”

  There was truth in that, a passion that Inanna could not mistake. She laid her hand on the girl’s bowed head. The girl flinched but held her ground. “You are mine,” she said. “Your life and honor are in my keeping. Go now and be watchful. Bring me word of any new treachery.”

  Inanna’s new servant bowed to the floor. In an instant she was up and gone, with a brightness in her like the flash of sun on a new-forged blade.

  Inanna stood where the girl had left her. She knew what she must do. In her heart’s wisdom she had already begun it, in making herself beautiful for the man who came shambling through the door, ruffled and stinking with sleep, wanting her again and with no vestige of ceremony. She suffered him as she had before, but more gladly now. Her purpose was clearer, her duty more immediate. In a little while, all bargains would be paid.

  Lugalbanda found the god of chariots near a hill-fort a day’s journey from Aratta. There was a mine below the fort, and a forge in it, to which the god was chained. His guards were strong, but Lugalbanda’s were stronger—and they had unexpected aid: the slaves in the forge rose up and turned on their masters. The last of them died on Lugalbanda’s spear, full at the feet of the god of chariots.

  The god stood motionless in the midst of the carnage. He had an axe in his hand and a great bear of a man sprawled at his feet. The man’s head had fallen some little distance from his body. Lugalbanda knew him even in livid death: he had been the captain of the king’s guard.

  The god’s face was perfectly still. Only his eyes were alive. They burned with nothing resembling love for the men who had brought him to this captivity.

  One of the freed slaves broke his chains with swift, sure blows. He walked out of them over the bodies of the slain, refusing any arm or shoulder that was offered. When he had passed through the gate into the open air, he let his head fall back for a moment and drank in the sunlight.

  They had brought the god’s horses, which some of Lugalbanda’s men had reckoned madness, but Lugalbanda had trusted the urging of his heart. He had only and deeply regretted that they could not drag or carry a chariot up the mountain tracks. The god would have one with him, he had hoped, or would find the means to make one.

  But the god needed no chariot. He took the rein of the nearer horse, caught a handful of mane, and pulled himself onto the broad dun back.

  The horse tossed its head and danced. The men of Uruk stood gaping. The god swept them with his green glare. “Follow as close as you can,” he said. With no more word than that, he wheeled the horse about and gave it its head.

  The king was dizzied, dazzled, besotted. He lolled in the tumbled bed, reeking of wine and sweat and musk. Inanna rose above him. He leered at her, groping for her breasts.

  She drove the keen bronze blade between his ribs, thrusting up beneath the breastbone, piercing the pulsing wall of the heart. It was a good blade. The god had made it, her servant said when she brought it, hidden in a bolt of linen from the caravan. It slipped through the flesh with deadly ease.

  The king did not die prettily. Inanna had not wished him to. When his thrashing had stopped, when he had gaped and voided and died, she drew the blade from his heart and wiped it clean on the coverlets. Still naked, still stained with his blood, she walked out to face the people of Aratta.

  The sun was setting in blood and the cold of night coming down, when the god rode through the gate of the city. His horse’s thick coat was matted with sweat, but the beast was still fresh enough to dance and snort as it passed beneath the arch.

  The god rode from the outer gate to the inner and into the citadel, and up to the hall. Inanna waited there, seated on the king’s throne, with the bronze dagger on her knee, still stained with the king’s blood. His body was her footstool.

  She was wrapped in the lionskin that had been the king’s great vaunt and the mark of his office. The king’s body was wrapped in nothing at all. The five men of Uruk guarded them both, the living and the dead, but there was no defiance in Aratta, not before the wrath of a goddess.

  She knew that she could expect treachery—she had braced for it, made such plans as she could against it. But the coming of the god of chariots had shocked them all into stillness.

  His wrath was the mirror of her own. The marks on him told the cause of it. He had been taken and bound and forced to serve a mortal will. And she had robbed him of his revenge.

  She offered him no apology. She had done what she must. He saw that: his eyes did not soften, but his head bent the merest fraction.

  “The great gods bless your return,” she said to him. “Have you seen my men? They were hunting you.”

  “They found me, lady,” he said. “They set me free. I bade them follow as quickly as they could. They’ll be here by morning.”

  “So they will,” she said, “if Lugalbanda leads them.” And tonight, she was careful not to say, she would have six men and a god to guard her, and a city that watched and waited for the first sign of weakness.

  She would hold, because she must. The king’s body at her feet, his unquiet spirit in the hall, were more protection than an army of living men.

  She rose. She was interested to see how many of the king’s court and council flinched, and how many watched her with keen speculation.

  The god spoke before she could begin. His voice was soft, almost gentle. He was naming names. With each, the man who belonged to it came forward. They were young men, most of them; she remembered some of their faces from the field of chariots. These were his charioteers. There were a good half-hundred of them, many of whom advanced before he could speak their names, coming to stand beside her loyal few.

  They were a fair army when they were all gathered, surrounding her in ranks as if they were ordered for a march, with the god on his horse in the midst of them. He smiled at her, a remarkably sweet smile, and said, “Hail the queen of Aratta.”

  “Hail,” said the men whom he had summoned to her defense. “Hail the queen, lady and goddess, the glory of Aratta.”

  “A bargain is a bargain,” Inanna said as they stood on the field of chariots, outside the walls of Aratta. A keen wind was blowing, with a memory of winter in it still, but spring softened it with the scent of flowers. “Uruk still needs Aratta—and I’ve made myself queen of it. Now my brother can trust that he will have the means to fight the Martu.”

  “But—” said Lugalbanda, knowing even as he said it that he could not win this battle.

  “There are no buts,” Inanna said. “I’ve won this city by marriage and by conquest. I dare not leave it to the next man who may be minded to seize it. It is mine—and its charioteers will serve me, because their god has bound them to it.”

  Lugalbanda let the rest of his protests sink into silence. She was not to be moved. She would stay and be queen, and teach these people to honor their bargains. The god would go, because he had promised.

  “There will be a great emptiness in Uruk,” said Lugalbanda, “now that you are gone from it.”

  “You’ve lost a goddess,” she said, “but gained a god. It seems a fair exchange.”

  So it was, he supposed, if one regarded it with a cold eye. But his heart knew otherwise.

  He bowed low before her, and kept the rest of his grief to himself. Winter was gone; the passes were open. He could bring the god of chariots over the moun
tains to Uruk. Then when the Martu came again, they would find a new weapon, and new strength among the soft folk of the city.

  When he straightened, she had already forgotten him. Her eyes were on the god of chariots, and his on her, and such a light between them that Lugalbanda raised his hand to shield his face.

  “I will be in Uruk,” the god said, “for as long as I am needed. But when that need is past, look for me.”

  “You would come back?” she asked him. “You would suffer again the shadows of trees, and mountains that close in the sky?”

  “Trees are not so ill,” he said, “in the heat of summer, and mountains are the favored abode of gods.”

  “There are no mountains in Uruk,” she said.

  “Just so,” said the god of chariots. He bowed before her as Lugalbanda had, but with markedly more grace. “Fare you well, my lady of the high places.”

  “And you, my lord,” she said. “May the light of heaven shine upon your road.”

  He mounted his horse. The caravan was ranked and waiting, with a score of chariots before and behind. The new queen of Aratta was far more generous than the king had been: she was sending a rich gift to her brother, a strong force for the defense of Uruk.

  She remained in the field, alone in the crowd of her servants, until the caravan was far away. Lugalbanda, walking last of all, looked back just before the road bent round a hill. She was still there, crowned with gold, bright as a flame amid the new green grass.

  He took that memory away with him, held close in his heart. Long after he had left the city behind, as the mountains rose to meet the sky, he remembered her beauty and her bravery and her sacrifice. She would have her reward when the Martu were driven away: when the god of chariots came back to her. He would rule beside her in Aratta, and forge bronze for her, and defend her with chariots.

  It was right and proper that it should be so. Even Lugalbanda, who loved her without hope of return, could admit it. A goddess should mate with a god. So the world was made. So it would always be.