“It is a way of fighting that my father has learned well,” Sargon agreed. “His men are well prepared for this fight. Now much depends on whether we can get into the Elamite lands in time.”
“When should we leave?”
“At once, Chief Bekka,” Sargon said. “The enemy appears to have moved his forces a few days earlier than we expected.”
“Then tomorrow, we will also begin our ride,” Bekka said. “At least we are well prepared with food and horses along the way. I will dispatch messengers to gather the men. We will have a long ride before we reach the lands beyond the mountains.”
“My father’s last words to me were to bid you both good hunting, Chief Bekka, and you, Chief Subutai.” Sargon rose. “Eskkar said that it may be some time before he speaks to you again, but he knows that you will strike a heavy blow. And that Akkad will not forget your help in our time of need.”
The three men knew that it was likely none of them would ever see Eskkar alive again.
After a moment of silence, Subutai turned to Sargon. “You will stand in your father’s place during our battle. Of that, I know he would approve.”
“We will begin our journey tomorrow, at dawn,” Bekka said. “The Alur Meriki and our allies ride to war together, and the Elamites will feel our wrath.”
“Then I will return to my tent and make my own preparations.” Everything Sargon needed waited there. He wanted one last evening with Tashanella. This was the first time since their marriage that he rode to war.
Chapter 14
Fifty days after Orodes and his diggers went south to clear the way to the Great Sea, Engineer Alcinor, son of Master Builder Corio, accompanied another troop of men and soldiers. This caravan also departed the city in secret, collecting men, supplies, and pack animals waiting at farms well away from Akkad. Once assembled, they headed north, toward the mouth of the Jkarian Pass, just over a hundred and eighty miles to the northeast.
The Elamite invasion loomed, but at least now the city’s inhabitants knew the name of the enemy that threatened to destroy them. Talk of war had long disturbed the peaceful lives of the people of Akkad. Fresh rumors swept through the lanes and ale houses, each story contradicting another. The Elamites would be outside the walls tomorrow. The Elamites were attacking Sumer. The Elamites were rampaging through the northern lands.
The tales spread so rapidly that few could keep up with them. One fact remained — Akkad’s soldiers trained from dawn to dusk, as they prepared for the coming invasion.
For the second time in his life, Alcinor left a troubled city and rode toward danger, when every instinct urged him to turn the horse around and run for his life. Of course Alcinor knew there was no place to flee.
The Elamites would overrun the Land Between the Rivers, and no city or village would be safe for long. Not to mention that he would be recognized wherever he went. Still, the irrational impulse kept reappearing, disrupting Alcinor’s sleep and adding to his private doubts about his mission.
Thoughts of his wives and children stiffened Alcinor’s resolve. He’d risked personal danger before, at the Battle of Isin, and survived. For his family, his city, and his own sense of honor, he would risk it again.
Alcinor had helped make the victory at Isin possible. He remembered how, at Lady Trella’s request, he’d visited Isin a year earlier, to secretly study its defenses. While examining Isin’s walls and surrounding terrain, Alcinor had conceived the idea to flood the city.
When Eskkar and his army reached Isin, with the vast Sumerian army in pursuit, Alcinor personally supervised over a thousand soldiers who dug the great ditch. The day before the battle, when Eskkar rode out to meet King Naxos under a truce, only Alcinor had accompanied him.
Alcinor had described his plans to move the river and destroy the city to Isin’s King. For a few moments, Alcinor thought that Naxos in his rage would attempt to kill both Eskkar and himself. Instead Isin’s ruler had yielded to Alcinor’s all too real threat to drown Isin, and Naxos remained neutral in the Great Battle that took place the following day.
By that stroke, Alcinor had nullified over two thousand soldiers of Isin, whose presence surely would have meant the difference between victory and defeat in the close-fought battle that destroyed Sumer’s attempt to invade Akkad’s lands. After seeing the aftermath of the bloody fighting, bodies torn asunder, the overpowering stench of blood and worse, and the wretched cries of the wounded, Alcinor felt relief that he had lessened the carnage for the soldiers of Akkad.
At Isin, Alcinor had relied on Eskkar and an entire army of soldiers to protect him. Now he rode into the Jkarian Pass with an escort of only one hundred cavalrymen. If they encountered anything larger than an Elamite scouting party, the Akkadians stood a good chance of ending up dead. Alcinor had to hope that for the next fifteen or twenty days, the soldiers of Elam continued to ignore the Jkarian Pass, until he had time to seal the passage.
Despite the danger, Alcinor looked forward to the challenge. If he succeeded, he would be the first man to move a mountain, truly an achievement worthy of Akkad’s foremost Engineer.
Now the time to make good on his boast had arrived. Alcinor was returning to the Jkarian Pass for the third time. But this expedition included an enormous pack train of supplies, as well as an assortment of artisans and laborers. The war with Elam would start in thirty or forty days, and he’d known all too well that he might need much of that time to accomplish his mission.
Instead, bad luck dogged the expedition from the start, as Alcinor’s caravan encountered one delay after another. They had started later than he wanted, waiting for the oak logs, now carefully trimmed, to dry. After only two days on the road, heavy rain held them up for three days. A day after they resumed traveling, a bout of illness, doubtless from some food supplies contaminated by the downpour, swept through half the men. That cost the cavalcade another two days.
Nine more days of slow traveling ensued before they reached the primary supply site. There, too, they encountered another setback. The same rains that had impeded Alcinor had also prevented some of the supplies he needed from arriving early. Gritting his teeth, Alcinor endured another three days of waiting before the expedition resumed its progress.
Even then, the caravan, burdened with the odd supplies he needed for this task, moved slower than Alcinor wished. Nevertheless, they finally reached their first destination, the mouth of the Jkarian Pass, which lay at the base of the Zagros Mountains. They turned east and entered the pass, beginning the gradual climb into the foothills, along the oldest known trade route to the Indus.
As soon as Alcinor’s caravan headed east, they were moving directly toward the lands of the Elamites. The enemy might easily have dispatched their own soldiers to guard the pass. In that case, Alcinor would be lucky to get back to Akkad alive, and the intricate plan he had concocted would be in ruins.
Alcinor forced himself to ignore his worries. The soldiers trusted Eskkar, and the King and his wife trusted Alcinor. It would not do to show fear or doubt in front of Commander Draelin and his men. While Alcinor might not have the courage of a soldier, to stand and face an enemy with a sword, at least he knew he had the respect of the men. Some of them held him in awe, remembering what he had done at Isin.
Draelin commanded the one hundred cavalrymen, and the presence of one of Akkad’s senior commanders indicated the importance of this mission. Eskkar obviously anticipated they might run into trouble, so Draelin’s horsemen were comprised of some of the finest cavalry in Akkad’s army.
The day they departed the city, Alcinor had stood beside Draelin when the soldier received his final orders from King Eskkar — get Alcinor to the Pass, safeguard him while he worked, and supply him with whatever physical labor he might need to accomplish his mission. The Jkarian Pass must be closed.