CHAPTER TWO

GILGAMESH

I lay on my back on the muddy riverbank with two soldiers of Kish standing over me. One of them had a hard boot on my throat, and the other was prodding at the gaps in my armour with the nasty end of a spear. The warm rain fell, fat droplets of it, straight into my eyes and gasping mouth.

“I thought he’d be bigger,” throat man said, pressing down harder on my windpipe. He had to shout over the roaring of the river.

“Gill-garrr-mehsh,” the other man bellowed down at me, his spear piercing the skin on my belly. “Such a big name, for such a sorry creature.”

“We could kill him and keep his armour. He’s almost dead anyway.”

“The king did want him alive.”

“But who would ever know?”

At this they looked at each other, one hard and meaningful glance. And for the briefest moment, they did not have their eyes on me.

I immediately rolled with some violence to my left.

Straight into the raging Tigris.

*   *   *

For two or three long minutes I had cause to regret my decision.

First, it is hard to swim in bronze armour, and in a skirt sewn all over with pieces of thin-beaten copper. I hit the riverbed with force and was tumbled helpless along the rocky bottom.

Second, without the boot on my neck, I gulped for air, but found myself breathing water.

Moments into my newfound freedom, I was drowning.

My helmet hit something shatter-hard. Pain ricocheted through my skull. My neck was snapped backwards by my chin strap.

White bubbles, grey rock; a glimmer of heavy cloud through silver-capped water; rock again.

For a moment my face was in the air, but my lungs were full of water, and then I was hurtling along the river bottom face down and with my feet upriver.

Another moment, and I would have been lost to the Tigris, and no one would know the name Gilgamesh. But then I sensed something long and dark in the water and on a reflex, my left hand went out for it. My hand closed tight on rough, twisted wood, and at once every sinew in my body was working to keep a hold of it. In my panic I had inhuman strength, and as my body swung around with the river, I got my right hand onto the stick.

Legs, a man’s legs.

Harga.

Of course, Harga.

The next moment he had his hands upon me, and he was dragging me up onto rough, wet sand. There I vomited up river water with shocking force.

My heart was hammering so hard I thought it might break from my chest.

When the vomiting had finally subsided, and I was breathing air again, I looked up, my vision clearing, to Harga’s black curls, and creased, brown face.

“My lord Gilgamesh, we should hurry,” he said, his voice raised over the noise of the river. “They are close behind. We would be wise not to linger.”

I pushed myself onto all fours, but I had to stay there awhile, both hands flat on the sand, before I could find the strength to do more.

“How sorry I am to keep you waiting, Harga,” I began to say, only to be convulsed by a fit of coughing, with yet more water streaming from my mouth and nose.

Harga pulled me up to my feet, and although I swayed from side to side, I found I could stand.

The great Tigris was to my back, a league wide and wildly powerful. All around us in the rain and mist lay thick bush and the reek of rotting vegetation. It was impossible to see more than a few cords from where we stood, but to my immediate left stood our two mules, looking thoroughly wet and miserable. To my right, upriver, I thought I could hear voices over the noise of the river and the rain.

“We should leave, my lord,” Harga shouted.

“Let’s kill them first,” I tried to say, but my voice was not much more than a croak.

Harga tucked his wet hair behind his ears. “My lord, the whole of Akka’s army will soon be upon us. There are times when it is wise to stand and fight, but this is not one of them.”

I could happily have punched him at that m