The Dragon of the Ishtar Gate

Under a blinding sun, blazing high overhead in a brassy sky, the city of Meroê shimmered in merciless heat. Within its wall of sun-dried mud stretched a jumble of mud-brick houses. Little motion was visible, for in the heat of the day most Kushites disappeared within their walls. Here and there one might be seen, curled up asleep in a patch of shade. Somewhere a blacksmith's hammer clanged.

Outside the wall, the ground stretched away westward in a barren plain towards the Nile, invisible below its bluffs in the middle distance. To the east the country rose in a range of small, stony hills. On the south side, in the precarious shade of a giant sacred sycamore, huddled the tents of Bessas' company. They were camped outside the walls because Meroê had no inn.

Past these tents ran the road to Soba and the south. This road was merely a track in the sand, beaten by the feet of slave hunters and their victims, which ended at the Soba Gate, a large wooden door in the mud wall.

A pair of Kushite soldiers guarded this gate. The pair sat on the ground against the wall, with lean black arms encircling their legs and bushy black heads pillowed on their knees, sound asleep. Their iron-headed spears and cowhide shields, painted in gaudy patterns of red, white, and black, leaned against the wall. A bowshot away, down the road, a score of huge brown vultures tore at the carcass of an ass.

Bessas' remaining horses and mules stood under the trees in-pairs, head to tail, flicking flies. The camels, their long legs folded beneath them, chewed their cuds.

Within the encampment, hardly more motion was seen than in the sleeping city. Zayd's Arabs slept or stared blankly into the distance, not bothering to brush away the flies. Shimri, having just returned from a visit to the local smiths, hummed tunelessly while he mended a harness strap. Myron searched his garments for fleas and lice.

Bessas and Kothar emerged from the gate and strode towards the camp. "Myron!" called Bessas. Then, placing his face close to Zayd's tent, he cried: "Ya Shaykh!"

Zayd appeared blinking and yawning. "'Ahlan wa sahlan," he muttered. After the shaykh came his daughter. Bessas snarled:

"Know you what that little son of Ahriman, Barga, has been doing these ten days past?"

"What?" said Myron.

"He has been playing us like fish on a line, taking our bribes every day for promises to get us an audience on the morrow. But it turns out that Barga has no authority to arrange an audience with the king at all! This king does not give audiences. He is far too sacred for such defiling intercourse with mortals. By the Sleepless One, if Kothar had not restrained me, I had torn the rascal to pieces, as boys pull insects apart!"

"Isn't he the Royal Usher?" said Myron.

"He is, but the person with whom he should arrange audiences is the minister, General Puerma."

"Who is on campaign," said Myron.

"But who is due back today or tomorrow. He sent a runner ahead. Now Barga assures us that we shall have an audience with Puerma tomorrow."

"Let's hope it be not another chicane," said Myron.

"It had better not be," said Bessas, glowering, "or I'll lure the scoundrel outside—"

"He'll only protest that it is all a misunderstanding; that he did not fully comprehend Kothar's Egyptian," said Myron.

"I suppose so," said Bessas. "Where's Skhâ? It is time that he and Shimri took the beasts to graze."

Shimri looked up. "In this g-god-forsaken land, the grass is so sparse that the animals have to gallop from one tuft to the next."

"Skhâ went into the town," said Myron. "Here he comes now."

The short Karian trotted out the gate. "Ho, comrades! Guess what! I have found us a willing woman! Or rather," he amended, "one whose owner is willing."

Myron smiled. "At my age, my boy," said the Greek, "I find that black skins and flapping breasts fail to arouse what little lust I still have."

"Oh, but this one is young and well-formed."

"Then she will have that female circumcision that they practice here and in Egypt, which closes up their—"

"Nay; she comes of the Megabarri, who live up the Astabara and do not—"

Bessas cleared his throat, and the Karian fell silent. Bessas said: "Methinks this conversation is unfit for the ears of the young lady." He nodded toward Salimat.

"Oh, but she understands not—"

"I think she understands more Aramaic than she admits. Eh, my lady?"

A peal of laughter came from behind the blue veil. Salimat replied in broken Aramaic: "I go back in tent; leave men to talk as like."

Salimat returned to the tent, followed by Bessas' burning gaze. Bessas murmured in Greek:

"Do you know, O Myron, that next to a good horse, a good woman is the most precious possession one can have?"

Then the Bactrian shook himself, like a man coming out of a dream. His deep voice boomed out harshly in guttural Aramaic:

"The damnedest thing is that I cannot find anybody in Meroê to talk about the road to die south and the sources of the Nile. They call the Upper Nile the Astasobas, meaning 'River of Darkness,' and feign that they never heard of the course of this fell flume."

Shaykh Zayd, using Kothar as interpreter, said: "I know the reason, father of a sword. The established traders and slave hunters fear lest you invade their territories and compete with them. So they have spread the word that you are not to be helped. Count yourselves lucky if they stir not up the mob against you, saying you are foul foreign fiends and witches who would steal their children to devour. We have encountered much of that in Egypt."