Chapter 41

Perhaps the heavens finally could not bear to witness this human tragedy, slowly guiding that mother and child into Inanna’s reach.

Inanna’s fingers brushed against a hand soaked ice-cold by the river current. Bracing her legs and putting her waist into the effort, she finally managed to pull the drifting pair beneath the boughs of the tree.

The young mother with double braids, using the leverage of Inanna’s grip, used her other hand to lift her infant—not yet a hundred days old—as high as she could. Inanna shouted hoarsely over the wailing wind, urging Saru, who stood nearby, to lean out and snatch the child.

Yet just as Saru’s fingertips brushed the flailing little hands, a massive crest of water nearly overturned the few people clinging to the branch. When Saru wiped the wet hair from his eyes and looked again, only a strip of linen wrapping remained in his palm, and the child was already vaguely visible drifting away with the surge.

The young mother let out a piercing, desolate shriek and began to struggle frantically against Inanna’s grasp. If she went after the child, it would undoubtedly mean certain death. How could Inanna let go? She could no longer tell whether the wetness on her face was river water or tears. The woman dug her nails into Inanna’s hands, yet Inanna refused to release her grip.

Inanna could no longer clearly recall the young mother’s face in the aftermath, but she could still periodically remember those desperate and persistent brown eyes.

Before she could react, the woman bit down on her hand. At first, the bite was not hard, merely an attempt to make Inanna let go. Yet Inanna did not slacken her strength in the slightest. As their eyes met, the woman could clearly read Inanna’s lips. Though her pleading words were swallowed by the roaring waves, Inanna had said to her: "I beg you, come up with me!"

Yet this mother remained utterly unmoved, biting down with increasing force until her sharp teeth nearly pierced to the bone. Izmir could no longer bear to watch. Summoning his remaining strength, he hauled Inanna back entirely, had Saru steady her, and then pried open Inanna’s fingers.

On both the inner and outer sides of Inanna’s hand were printed two semi-circular rows of tooth marks. Fresh red wounds oozed with the mud of the river. Caring little whether she felt pain, Izmir struck her sharply on the elbow. Inanna felt only a numbness shoot through her arm, and in the blink of an eye, that woman drifted far away.

Like a piece of wood, she was dragged up into the tree by the two men, staring blankly without speaking for a long time.

Izmir had been dragged down so severely that he had practically hung upside down from the tree for half anshas, and his face was now alternating between pale and flushed, dizzy and speechless for a long while. Saru was of the Phoenician royal house, and his heart was hardly softer than Izmir’s, but having just watched an infant swept right out of his hands by the churning water, a lingering wave of sorrow and emptiness weighed heavily on his chest.

For a moment, none of the three spoke; only the sounds of heavy, panting breaths remained.

When their breathing had finally leveled out, Izmir reached out and dragged Inanna to his side, letting her lean against the tree trunk. Brushing the wet hair from her face, he found her dark eyes unsettlingly hollow and heavy. He inspected her injuries closely: an asymmetric gash on her arm inflicted by an Assyrian soldier had turned pale from being soaked in river water, its edges caked with mud, while deep bite marks on her palm were still welling with fresh blood.

He then lifted Inanna’s skirt up to her waist. Her entire legs were covered in scratched, bloody gashes, the thin skin peeling back like layers of wood shavings. Yet to all of Izmir’s actions, she seemed completely numb and unresponsive, offering no resistance at all. Remembering how she had glared with resentment whenever his gaze fell upon her exposed skin the previous night, and contrasting it with her current apathy, Izmir suddenly felt a surge of irritation: What a complete fool!

Saru poked his head out from behind him, shaking it with profound pity: "Such a fine woman, how did she end up like this?"

With that, he fished a personal vial of medicine from his tunic and tossed it to Izmir. "I carry this for self-defense. Apply some to her wounds. While it can't compare to the treasures of the royal palace, it can save a life in a pinch. Once the waters recede, we shall each go our separate ways."

Izmir caught the vial, turning it over in his hand with a cold smirk at the corner of his lips. "Heaven knows which deity Assyria has offended to suffer such a catastrophe. If you return to Phoenician shores and make the proper preparations, you could reap a massive windfall. Who knows how many people have drowned in this flood, and those who survived by luck are unlikely to live long. Historically, plagues after a flood claim more lives than the drowning itself. The grain Assyria has accumulated over the years has been ruined by the water; at best it sprouts, at worst it mildews, and goodness knows how many will starve to death after autumn passes."

Saru felt that Izmir was speaking with unusual loquacity, almost as if he were trying to comfort someone. Yet at these words, the figure slumped against the tree trunk actually stirred, as though some of it had sunk in. Finding the two of them rather amusing, he chimed in, "Indeed, the world is even harsher for those who survive. If they run into an unscrupulous profiteer like me driving up prices, they might as well have died early on! As for Erhan, he will have to grovel before you and the King of Lagash for assistance when the time comes. Still, his skin is thick enough; it shouldn't be too difficult for him!"

What these two men spoke of was the brutal truth, yet voicing it so callously made it utterly repulsive. Inanna grew to loathe this world even more—a world where limbs flew in warfare and the death of human lives elicited not a shred of pity.

"Pah! There are no gods in this world. If there were, they would never show favor to such a cold-blooded era!" Water dripped from Inanna’s eyelashes. Only she knew that droplet was warm, while her dark eyes beneath those lashes were coldly terrifying. "This is clearly a disaster of human creation!"

***

Saru looked puzzled. "Who could possibly have the power to divert a river? This is clearly because Erhan imprisoned the Daughter of the Nile, provoking the wrath of the River God..."

Having already witnessed far too many inexplicable phenomena around Inanna that he himself could not fathom, Izmir treated every sarcastic remark from her with solemn seriousness. "Sukammum, watch your tongue; one must not show disrespect to the gods. But if there is truly something fishy about this, you ought to speak of it. If someone is capable of employing such tactics, would not all the nations along the shores of the Great Green Sea be in mortal peril?"

This man worried only about what befell Hatti; to him, everyone else in the world was mere dust beneath his feet. How else could he have so coldly pried open her fingers, watching helplessly as a life was snuffed out before their very eyes? Inanna’s voice was laced with irony. "Prince Izmir, this was the handiwork of the very person you hold so dear in your thoughts! Though Carol failed to escape Assyria, the time she vanished from the banquet hall was more than enough for her to locate the Egyptian troops through a spy. Thousands of Egyptian soldiers were stationed outside the city, rendered helpless only because King Menfisu was trapped. With just a single word from Carol, felling trees overnight and blocking the tributaries of the lower Tigris River to smash into the city of Assyria with a backward surge of floodwaters would be no difficult feat at all!"

She glanced sideways at the prince, her eyes brimming with undisguised contempt. "I fervently hope Prince Izmir will take her as his consort. With her 'wit and brilliance,' the dominance of Hatti will be within arm's reach."

Saru looked between the sharp-tongued Inanna and the tightly-lipped Izmir, deciding that he felt entirely like an extra wheel, and hitched his backside a little further away.

"The Daughter of the Nile holds the right of inheritance in Egypt, but waging war is a man's domain," Izmir’s voice lacked any fluctuation, as if Inanna had not provoked him at all. "Furthermore, such a tactic, while effective, is far too extreme. Conflicts between nations are fought for nothing more than land and population. Now that this prosperous city has been reduced to ruins in an instant and tens of thousands have lost their lives, a city like this, even if conquered, has no meaning whatsoever."

Izmir spoke objectively, yet the thought of that petite, stubborn maiden extinguishing so many lives in the span of a moment still pricked at his conscience. In this era, moral concepts regarding humanity were open, and states encouraged free unions between men and women for one sole purpose: population. With people, a nation had grain, individuals to forge weapons, and soldiers to take the field. Population was the lifeblood of a state.

Yet this Daughter of the Nile could, with a casual remark, obliterate generations of Assyrian toil. A population of tens of thousands could not be restored within decades. This was just as ruthless as slaughtering a city only to set a torch to it, sowing the earth with salt and the seeds of thorns—a merciless method of cutting weeds by the roots.

Not to mention that a wise monarch of this era would never employ such a mutually destructive tactic, which would only provoke fierce resistance. Hatti, as a multi-ethnic state, maintained extremely lenient laws toward defeated nations, prioritizing integration and assimilation as the supreme strategy. Carol’s actions were something Izmir opposed from the bottom of his heart.

Assyria’s fate was advantageous to neighboring Babylon and Hatti, but as a clear-headed politician, he could not help but feel the chill of foreshadowing—could Hatti not be the next Assyria?

When Menfisu led the Daughter of the Nile back to Egypt, her feat of annihilating a nation with a wave of her hand would spread across all lands. The Egyptians would revere her all the more, while the nations of the Great Green Sea would hold her in even greater awe.

If she established an unassailable image as the Daughter of God within the hearts of the people, then should Hatti ever clash with Egypt in the future, their morale would suffer a devastating blow. Izmir would never allow a widespread idol to rise among the nations of the Great Green Sea, shaking the royal family's control over the state. If the Daughter of the Nile could not be harnessed for Hatti, she had to be destroyed. Her ideas were too numerous, too terrifying, and too fickle. Izmir even felt that she was a calamity for Egypt itself.

Interrupting with a complete disregard for the mood, Saru chimed in, "Izmir, you certainly have remarkable patience. I am curious what relation Sukammum is to you, that you feel the need to explain such matters to a mere woman? I have caught wind of the battle between Hatti and Egypt—what is this, have you still not given up on the Daughter of the Nile? A woman like that is terrifying! If she ever decides to flood Phoenicia one day... well, if Phoenicia didn't have so many ships, I'd drown too!"

Izmir ignored Saru entirely. A person like the Daughter of the Nile merely needed to be kept from wreaking havoc everywhere, imprisoned until death. Women held lofty positions in Hatti; even the Sun God was female, and the primary consort of the king was no mere pretty ornament, possessing a full spectrum of privileges ranging from sacred authority to secular power. If he were to treat affairs of state as child's play like Menfisu did, a single Tawananna could tear down an entire nation. Months prior, whenever he closed his eyes at night, his dreams were often haunted by the soaring flames of war in Shaliqari and the countless deaths of his subjects.

Yet Saru had no need to know any of this. And Saru was entirely right about one thing: what right did a female slave have to question whatever Izmir chose to do?

Ceasing to mind Inanna’s hostile glares, he simply picked up the medicine vial and slowly applied the salve to Inanna’s arms and palms, before reaching down toward the hem of her skirt. Inanna found this utterly inconceivable and pressed her hand over Izmir’s. Knowing what she wanted to say, he retorted with a hint of disgust, "If the women in the harem are covered in scars, you needn't ask my opinion—Mula will drive you out directly!"

"I'll do it myself!" Yet Inanna’s hands ached so severely she could barely lift them, repeatedly failing to even poke her fingertips into the medicine bottle, until she finally had to yield and let Izmir do the work for her.

Whether because it aggravated the tender, sensitive skin of her inner thigh, Inanna was racked with such sharp pain that she covered her mouth and began to sob quietly. Izmir understood that she, too, needed an outlet. Though he believed that rescuing unrelated strangers was an act of supreme foolishness—the tree branch was already strained supporting three people, and if a large and small person had been added, it wouldn't have held; even if they were hauled up, Izmir would have kicked them right back down—Inanna was truly a strange creature. Realizing her grief was genuine, Izmir allowed her to cry, merely concluding that women were endlessly troublesome.

Not until Inanna began to find him increasingly obnoxious, replaying the moment she had been forced to let go in her mind and crying all the harder, did Izmir impatiently order her to shut up, looking as though he wanted to shove the entire bottle of medicine down her throat.

As a seasoned pimp who had traveled extensively through many lands, Saru was adept at selling cloth and no stranger to selling women. Seeing Izmir’s helplessness, he found it quite amusing. "Hey now, Izmir, she's your woman. Women need coaxing! Being so fierce, how do you expect her tears to stop? Just let her lean on your shoulder, pat her back, and murmur a few sweet words!"

Sweet words were beyond Izmir’s capability, but patting her back was something he could manage. However, he nearly patted the life out of Inanna. Having spent a few years at a police academy and worked as a junior officer for two, though she had achieved no grand exploits, the instinct to save lives and heal the wounded was carved into her very bones. Not rescuing anyone was one thing, but having actually pulled someone into her grasp only to watch them perish before her eyes—that was what caused such profound remorse and heartbreak.

***

Under Izmir’s heavy pats, Inanna choked even harder, feeling as though she had been struck with a pair of dull cudgels. After letting out a few hiccups, she vented her frustration by biting down hard on Izmir’s shoulder. The wounds Izmir had sustained earlier split open once more, blood seeping through his clothes. Yet he merely furrowed his brow as the two exchanged a cold, mutual stare, their gazes clashing like axes for several rounds. Saru could only marvel at the truly wondrous atmosphere between them.

On one hand, if one called this female slave bold, arrogant, and disdainful of everyone, she had still managed to devise a way to rescue Izmir, or else Izmir would now be nothing more than a pristine floating corpse. On the other hand, if one called Izmir harsh toward her, his words and actions bore an immense amount of tolerance—though Saru did not rule out the possibility that once Hatti’s rescue party arrived, Izmir might exact punishment in private.

Regardless of all that, though Izmir had suffered a bit of flesh wound, Inanna had indeed stopped crying.

The respite was short-lived. By dusk, as the water level gradually subsided and Izmir caught sight of a few pigeons skimming overhead, he let out a silent sigh of relief. Feeling the closed eyes of Inanna beside him, he knew that without timely care for battlefield wounds, infected injuries easily provoked high fevers. Inanna was, after all, a woman; as temperatures dropped with the coming of night and her physical condition deteriorated, it was no surprise that her cheeks burned with fever.

Saru, meanwhile, was consumed with restless anxiety. Inanna had previously struck a bargain with him; if she developed a fever and became crippled or died, where was he to find the strange weapon he had been coveting for so long?

Izmir had long since noticed Saru’s lingering, assessing gazes wandering over Inanna. Impatiently, he demanded, "What on earth are you plotting?"

Saru chuckled, "Your woman and I had an agreement. If I helped her find you, she was to undo her belt for me."

To a man who considered himself the undisputed master of the woman in question, those words carried an entirely different connotation. Izmir was surprised that Inanna would make such a bargain, but his expression remained characteristically unreadable. Lifting Inanna—whose body radiated intense heat yet shivered as if frozen to the core, causing her to curl desperately into his arms—he unfastened her belt, weighed it in his hand, and tossed it toward Saru.

"You may have it."

Overjoyed, Saru crept closer to Izmir. But before his fingers could brush the belt he had yearned for so long, Izmir added, "I have a condition as well: strip off the clothes you're wearing."

No wonder Izmir had proposed such a condition. Saru was still wearing women’s sheer robes, vibrantly colorful in the extreme. If Hittite search parties were to arrive shortly, a prince’s face would be utterly disgraced.

Saru figured the trade wasn't a total loss—after all, no one knew him here, and he had no pride to lose. Leaving himself only a loincloth, he tossed his cloaks and outer robes to Izmir, then brazenly reached out his hand for his deserved reward.

Seizing the moment when Saru’s guard was down, Izmir lashed out with a flying kick that struck him square in the nose. With a spray of blood, Saru tumbled back into the water. Since the great flood had largely passed, he faced no greater peril than being swept further away, but he paddled furiously against the current, roaring at the top of his lungs, "Izmir, you just wait for me!"

***

*Author's Note:*
*The description of the flood is objective, but what follows after the flood is even more tragic—plagues, famines, and the like... You all have your own judgments, so I won't say too much. The protagonist's subsequent encounters will trigger a transformation in her. Carol has fallen into her hands, and she will have to repay her debts; she can forget about happily going sightseeing.*

*Special thanks to Hermina, Su, Luhia, Yanqing, Cat Vegetable, and Gugu Chicken for the landmine donations. I've added a bit extra word count for you today~*

*A heavyweight character appears in the illustration below, about to make an entrance. The Babylonian dragon in the bottom right corner looks remarkably like a Chinese dragon.*

*Chapter 41 of "The Legend of Izmir [Daughter of the Nile]" has been fully updated!*