“They’ll come this morning,” Eskkar told Alexar and the other commanders.
“A whole day and a half to prepare, and they still aren’t ready to attack.” Drakis spat to show his contempt. “The longer they mill around, the weaker their will to fight. They’ve had plenty of time to think about dying.”
Eskkar grunted. The Elamites were brave soldiers accustomed to victory. They would find the strength to hurl themselves against Akkad’s soldiers.
“Perhaps you should talk to the men, Captain,” Mitrac suggested. “It might help them with their own preparations.”
“Yes, I suppose,” Eskkar said. He’d meant to do this yesterday, but hadn’t had time to prepare.
Nonetheless, he wanted to speak to the Akkadians, to rally them for the next encounter. However, before he did that, he needed some quiet place to think. Although with men coming and going, always asking questions or bringing reports, Eskkar knew he would have little time or private space to compose his mind. Then he thought of the one place where he could arrange his thoughts without distraction.
He summoned his guards, always standing nearby. “Petra, Chandra, come with me.”
With Petra and Chandra following a few steps behind, Eskkar strode through the ranks of spearmen and out into the Pass. He continued down the slope until he reached the first of the enemy dead, their bodies already stinking and starting to bloat. Flies crawled over the bodies, into the open mouths and blood-crusted wounds.
As he walked among them, he saw their sightless eyes, their hands raised up and frozen in death, lips drawn back, and their faces surrounded by pools of blood already turned black. All the familiar postures of violent death lay at his feet.
He recalled seeing the same poses after the Battle of Isin, when thousands of dead, dying, and wounded lay scattered across the long battle line. Here the corpses were close together, many piled up two and three deep, where men had died even as they tried to scramble over their fallen companions, either to continue the attack or seek safety.
The dead Elamites had already been stripped of their weapons and valuables, and all the usable arrows recovered by Eskkar’s soldiers. The dead always gave all their possessions to the victors. Swords, bows, arrows, knives, shields, anything useful had been carried back to the Akkadian lines. Only the bodies remained, along with the harsh smell of human waste, everything covered with flies.
Eskkar felt no sympathy for the enemy dead. Unlike these men, he had not gone to war seeking loot or glory. Elamites had come into his lands to wrest from Akkad everything and anything they could. Better that they died here than outside Akkad’s walls.
And here, in front of the Akkadian battle line and among the Elamite dead, Eskkar could find the privacy he wanted.
Ignoring the flies that buzzed around his head, Eskkar collected his thoughts as he paced back and forth across the killing ground. His soldiers deserved. . no, needed to know why they had been brought to this place to fight and possibly die. Until now, they’d followed orders without question, proof enough of their trust in Eskkar and his commanders. Today, before the next battle, Eskkar wanted to find the right words.
Petra and Chandra, mystified by their Captain’s behavior, trailed behind, probably wondering what thoughts were in his mind. Nevertheless their commander, walking through the enemy dead, found the silence he needed to prepare his words.
For more than a year, Eskkar had studied everything he could about the enemy’s tactics. Nothing he had gleaned from the merchants, informers, travelers, and spies suggested the Elamites possessed any exceptional or predominant fighting techniques — they relied primarily on their superior numbers, flanking maneuvers with their cavalry, and a brutal frontal attack driven home by their ruthless commanders. They preferred giving battle when they outnumbered opponents three or four to one, overwhelming any opposition by quick charges and flanking attacks.
Eskkar glanced down the slope, and allowed himself a grim smile as he watched the Elamites push and shove their men into position and ready themselves for another assault. By choosing to fight in the Pass with its high cliff walls, he had eliminated the threat of being encircled or attacked from the side.
As the first skirmish proved, his enemy had never encountered a situation where they couldn’t sweep an opponent’s flanks. Their greater numbers would prove to be less effective as long as he could match them man-to-man along the battle line.
No, only the direct frontal assault remained for the Elamites, and Eskkar’s Akkadians would have to withstand that. He and Trella had done everything they could to provide their soldiers with all the food, water, and weapons needed. Most of these men had trained for this battle for more than a year without knowing why. Now everything would be up to the few lines of infantry and archers that stood between the Elamites and the city of Akkad.
His men had another slight advantage. The enemy troops, made up from so many disparate sources, lacked the training to work together as a cohesive whole. Because Elamite soldiers lived apart and trained separately, each contingent would prefer to see another in the front ranks. After the last encounter, no one would want to lead the attack against Eskkar’s position.
That lack of unity and discipline now showed as the enemy jostled about, taking far longer than they should to form up into proper ranks. Akkad, with most of its forces raised and trained near the city, had none of those problems.
All warfare, Eskkar understood, relied to some extent on deception. And so Akkad had spread rumors about disagreements in the Land Between the Rivers, its lack of men and resources, and its quarrels between the cities, and their unwillingness to fight. Faced with such situations, the Elamites had assumed an inevitable victory. Instead, they suddenly found themselves committed to battle on Eskkar’s terms, and not their own.
Those rumors and lies had guided the Elamites for many months, and brought Lord Modran to this place. If he retreated, his campaign would be lost, no matter what happened at Sumer. Nor would he keep his command very long, or even his head, should he return to King Shirudukh without a victory.
Eskkar had offered Lord Modran the bait, setting the battle line here in the Dellen Pass. As soon as Modran encountered Akkad’s soldiers in the last place he expected them to be, Modran should have turned his army around and retreated back through the Pass. If he’d returned to Zanbil at once, he could have gathered enough shields and supplies, before re-entering the Pass. If he had done that, even if it took a month to reassemble and march back, Modran and his army would likely have prevailed.
Instead, after the encounter of two days ago, Modran now had to press ahead, whatever his casualties. He dared not retreat after such losses. He had to break the Akkadian line, or face King Shirudukh’s wrath. Today would decide whether Modran and his men had the will to overcome Akkad’s discipline and training.
Midday approached, and Eskkar smiled at the enemy’s slow preparations for the coming attack. He had expected to fight early this morning, with the sun in his eyes, but the Elamites had taken far longer to arrange their forces, and before long the sun’s bright rays would have little effect.
His own men had greeted the dawn in their battle lines, in case Lord Modran’s forces chose to attack at first light. Since then, the Akkadians remained at their posts, sitting or standing as they pleased, their weapons strewn about the rocky ground at their feet. Many soldiers moved about, stretching tense muscles, or sharpening their swords. Some of the spearmen, likely to cover their nervousness, stepped into the open space and practiced with their weapons.
Regardless, the Elamites would soon be advancing, and Eskkar decided the time had come to talk to his soldiers. He wanted them to know not only what to expect in the coming battle, but more important, the reasons why they fought. And he’d wanted to tell them at the last moment, so that no one could forget his words, or what was at stake — the very life and death of Akkad.