“Then if you don’t mind, I intend to go back to sleep. You and Naxos can ride to war and glory.” Orodes, weary and drained from his efforts, no longer cared who won the battle or lost it. He was going to start for home in the morning. If the Elamites reached Akkad’s walls, he would worry about that when it happened.
Muttering a belated prayer to Carsindar, the god of miners and diggers, Orodes slumped down along the rock, threw his dirty blanket over his chest, closed his eyes, and dropped back into the exhausted rest he’d so recently left.
Chapter 19
The next morning, Daro glanced up, and saw that the sun had climbed high in the blue sky. Mid day approached, as he, King Naxos, and Hathor emerged from the last of the hills and strode onto the grassy dunes that bordered the beach. The commanders left their men and horses back in the hills, hopefully out of sight and out of earshot of anyone on the sandy shore.
The expedition’s long journey through the foothills had ended, only six or seven days later than planned. For better or worse, the first part of Eskkar’s plan to save the City of Sumer from the Elamites had begun.
A few hundred paces away, the low waves rolled gently onto the white sandy shore, broken here and there by a scattering of black rocks spattered with bird droppings. Daro led the way toward two large boulders that marked the end of the hill country. Luka stood there, waiting for them. The slinger had just returned from his second scouting mission. Now the time had arrived for King Naxos and Hathor, as leaders of the expedition, to see and hear for themselves what lay before them.
The four men clambered to the top of the westernmost boulder. While not very high, it overlooked the tall grass, and they could see a mile or more of the shore in either direction. Both the shoreline and the gently rolling sea remained empty of life, except for the noisy gray and white sea birds that circled raucously overhead searching for food, swooping and gliding over the land.
The intoxicating sea smells washed over the four men, a blessing after the baking sun and horse stink that had accompanied their slow journey through the mountains.
Daro nodded to Luka. The two men, thrown together for the last two months, had become friends. The taciturn Orodes, in charge of breaking through the mountains, had kept to himself. Without a backward glance or a word of goodbye, let alone mention of good luck in their coming battle, Orodes and his men had departed just after midmorning. They would retrace their steps through the mountains and hopefully reach Akkad before the Elamites could lay siege to the city.
“What did you see?” King Naxos’s gruff voice cut short Luka’s greeting.
“The cove where the Elamites landed is a little less than three miles to the west, right where Yavtar said it would be.” Luka pointed with his arm. “The beach here was empty yesterday afternoon, so I waited until dark and then went along the coast. The Elamite camp was easy to see. I counted four or five campfires, so it must be big. I didn’t try to get too close. But I could see that supplies are piled up all over the beach.”
“Did you see any ships?” Daro, unlike Hathor, King Naxos, and their horsemen, had a very different mission.
“Not last night. I couldn’t be sure from the light of the fires. But this morning when I went back, I counted eight or nine boats beached on the sand, just above the water line. They look big, too, bigger than what we usually see on the Tigris. Each vessel had at least one tall mast. But no ships have passed this way today.”
Many of the boats that plied the Tigris and Euphrates boasted a small sail, but those that sailed over the Great Sea often relied on taller and stronger masts to harness the wind.
“So many boats!” Daro couldn’t keep the surprise out of his voice.
“I thought that would interest you,” Luka said.
Boats that made the journey along the coast line of the Great Sea had to be bigger and more rugged than the river boats that plied the relatively tame waters of the Tigris, Euphrates, or the other countless streams that crossed the land. More than a few river sailors had drowned until they recognized the fact that waves on the Great Sea could swamp the smaller boats.
That necessitated constructing larger and sturdier boats, which carried heavier cargoes and manned by larger crews, probably ten or twelve men to each ship. Even so, the boats hugged the shore as much as possible.
When Daro had first heard the term, “hugging the shore,” Yavtar had explained that meant riding the sea anywhere from a half mile to two miles off the beach, to avoid the low lying rocks and powerful breakers. Not to mention the shallows near the shoreline where waves might roll a vessel over.
“If we can capture those boats,” Daro said, “we can help cut the Elamite supply line.”
“You know we won’t be able to come back for you if you get into trouble.” Hathor made it a simple statement, not a warning.
Daro grinned at that. “You’ll likely find more trouble than I will.”
“What about the Elamite forces at the camp?” Naxos, impatient as ever, ignored Daro and kept his gaze on Luka.
Daro knew the boats meant nothing to Naxos, nor did the King have much interest in Daro’s plan for them. Still, Daro felt some sympathy for Naxos. The man had a daunting task of his own to deal with, and it had nothing to do with ships. The King of Isin had to worry about the twelve thousand or more enemy soldiers who might already have captured Sumer. Or if the Akkadians had been betrayed or detected, the Elamites might be just out of sight beyond the cove, waiting for Naxos and his soldiers to appear.
With luck, however, the enemy would believe their spies’ latest reports, and think that King Naxos and his horsemen had departed toward the west, to attack the city of Lagash.
“From the campfires, King Naxos,” Luka repeated, “I think they have less than three hundred men at most. Probably more than half of them sailors.”
King Naxos, in charge of the cavalry, had brought twenty-six hundred riders with him, nearly every mounted fighter he and his city could muster. Hathor and Akkad had contributed fifteen hundred more, almost half of all the Akkadian horse fighters. Another eight hundred horsemen came from Sumer, dispatched to the northern lands in small groups long before the enemy arrived.
All together, close to five thousand cavalry lay hidden in the hills behind the Akkadian leaders. If Eskkar’s luck still held, the Elamites knew nothing about this unseen force at their rear.
It also meant that these Elamites guarding the beach must be overwhelmed before they could send warning to their companions of the Akkadian presence.
Daro knew that for Naxos to have any chance of success, he needed to catch the enemy by surprise. The Elamite army, now encamped around Sumer’s walls, far outnumbered Naxos’s fighters. The cavalry he led might be behind the invaders, but should the Elamites discover this danger lurking in their rear, they would whirl around fast enough, and then Naxos would be the one with the sea at his back.
If that happened, it wouldn’t take much misfortune for the combined horsemen of Akkad and Isin to be trapped against the seacoast and destroyed.
Naxos stared at the empty windswept beach. As the moments passed, Daro wondered whether the King of Isin wished he and his men had remained safe behind their city’s walls. Even now, he might be considering turning around and retracing his steps through the foothills. Hathor and the Akkadians would stay, of course, and probably the Sumerians.
Hathor finally broke the silence. “The soldiers guarding the ships matter little. If we can finish them off before they can send a warning, the Elamites won’t know we’re here.”
Naxos shook off whatever gloomy thoughts had troubled him. “You’re right. We need the food and water anyway. At least we’ll be finished with these damned hills. We’ll move out as soon as the men are ready.”