“Irmitti could be worse,” Sharur said. “Some forget they owe us anything, not how much they owe us. Then the lugal’s men have to remind them.”
“Oh, yes, I know that, and you are right,” Ereshguna said. “But when he talks about sickles edged with stone, from where does he think the stone came? It did not come from the land of Kudurru. Here between the rivers we have water and mud and the things that grow from them, not much else. Merchants brought the stone here, as we bring in ores today. But he does not want to think of that, and so he does not.”
“If he wishes for things to be as they were in the time of his great-grandmother...” Tupsharru let that hang, for what he meant was unquestionably something like, He would wish• Engibil ruled the city in his own right once more. Saying such things aloud was dangerous. The god might be listening. If he was, he might choose to punish the speaker in any number of unpleasant ways. Or he might even decide to overthrow the line of lugals and resume his direct rule. That was the last thing Sharur and his family wanted; they had gained too much from the changes over the past couple of generations.
Engibil might also be listening to Tupsharru’s thoughts. If the god chose to do so, he could go through a man’s mind as Sharur had gone through the basket of tablets looking for what he wanted. Engibil had no particular reason to be listening to Tupsharru’s thoughts, but that did not mean he wasn’t.
Sharur took from his belt the amulet with which he’d routed the fever demon. He covered Engibil’s eyes with his own two thumbs for a moment, symbolically masking from the god what was passing in this house. His father and brother imitated the gesture. Each of them looked nervous. They did not know for certain whether the charm bound the god, or merely distracted him, or in fact did nothing to restrain him. They did not want to find out.
Ereshguna said, “Sometimes I feel like an ant in a line of ants crawling up a wall inside a house. We think we are doing something fine and grand. But one day the kitchen slave will notice us crawling there and smash us with her hand or sweep us away with a broom.”
“We are ants who know copper and tin,” Sharur said. As his brother had before, he spoke with great care. One of the things for which metal was better than stone was making weapons. But he had not spoken of fighting the gods, nor even come close. “We are ants who write down the way to the dates in the larder. Even if the kitchen slave smashes us, our brothers will know where they are.”
“We are still ants,” Ereshguna said. “We would do well to remember it.”
For the late meal, Sharur, a hungry ant, ate locusts. The cook, a slave woman captured from the nearby city of Imhursag, had roasted them with coriander and garlic and now served them up on wooden skewers along with thin sheets of barley bread, onions, melons, and dates preserved in sesame oil.
Sharur’s mother, Betsilim, was not in a good mood as the kitchen slave brought in another tray loaded with sliced onions and melons and set it on a stool. “We should have had beans, too,” she grumbled. “I told her three different times to put them in the pot, but she forgot.”
“I’ll whip her, if you like,” Ereshguna said. “Will that make her remember?’ ’
“If I thought it would, I would tell you to do it,” Betsilim answered. “But I do not think she is lazy. I think she is stupid.”
‘ ‘Remember, Mother, she is without the voice of her god in her ear, too,” Sharur said. “Enimhursag rules his city himself. He has no lugal, he has no ensi. He watches over all his people all the time.”
“He can’t do that in Gibil!” said Nanadirat, Sharur’s younger sister.
“No, he can’t, and he never will,” Sharur said. Now, instead of trying to conceal his thoughts from Engibil, he wanted the god to know he was glad Engibil still protected Gibil even if he no longer directly ruled it. Gibil and Imhursag were neighbors and rivals in Kudurru. Engibil and Enimhursag were also rivals. Each god wanted more land and more worshipers. Over the years, Engibil had succeeded at Enimhursag’s expense. Sharur knew how jealous the other town’s god had to be, and how angry.
Ereshguna said, “Imhursag would be more dangerous to us if the town god let his people be freer. They would soon think of ways to fill our canals with sand.”
“Yes, but Enimhursag fears they would think of ways to fill his canal with sand, too,” Tupsharru said.
Giving his brother a reproachful look, Sharur took out his amulet again and covered Engibil’s eyes. Ereshguna did the same. A moment later, so did Tupsharru himself. He put on a shamefaced expression. If Enimhursag’s people might trouble him on being given more freedom, what of Engibil’s people, who had gained more? Would they now trouble their god as a result? Those were not the sort of thoughts any man who valued such freedom as he possessed wanted the city god having.
“Let us drink some wine,” Betsilim said hastily, and clapped her hands. “Slave, bring us the wine and cups and a strainer.”
The kitchen slave—she had no name, not in Gibil; it was left behind in Imhursag—carried in the jar and the cups and the bronze strainer. “Ha!” Tupsharru said, pointing to it. “I’d like to see Irmitti make a strainer out of stone.”
“What did they used to be before they were made of metal?” Ereshguna asked the air. No family ghosts answered. They were all off doing something else. That gave supper an unusual feeling of privacy.
Timidly, the slave said, “In Imhursag, the strainers are made of clay and baked like pots and dishes.”
“Ah. Well, there you are,” Ereshguna said. The slave poured the thick fermented juice of dates through the strainer into the cups. Twice she had to rinse the strainer in a bowl of water to clear the sticky dregs from it.
Like anyone well enough off not to have to make do with water, Sharur drank beer with almost every meal. Date wine was for more special occasions. After pouring out a small libation to Putishu god of dates and to Ikribabu’s cousin Aglibabu, who made the dates into wine, Sharur sipped. The wine was very sweet and strong and made his heart merry.
He and his family drank the jar dry. The kitchen slave cleared away the bowls and pots in which supper had been served. As she carried them out of the dining room, she hummed a little hymn to Enimhursag. Sharur did not think she even knew she was doing it; no doubt she had been doing it all her life. It would not help her, not in this city where the people worshiped Engibil. Hum, speak, scream: her god would not hear her prayer.
“When will you be leading the trade caravan to the mountains?” Nanadirat asked Sharur.
“A few more days,” he answered. “I was seeing about donkeys today, before I came home and saw Irmitti. Why? Do you want me to bring you back something special?”
“A ring or a bracelet with the blue stones they have there,” his sister said at once. “They’re pretty. I like them.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” Sharur told her. “They know we like those stones, and they want a lot for them.” Betsilim said, “I’m going up on the roof.”
“I’ll come with you,” Ereshguna said. Nanadirat nodded and got to her feet, too. After supper, most families in Gibil, as in the other cities between the Yarmuk and the Diyala, went onto their roofs to escape the heat that lingered indoors. Most of them slept up there, tqo. Sharur’s blanket was there waiting for him. He would lie on it, not under it.
He and Tupsharru rose at about the same time. Sharur was about to follow his parents and sister when Tupsharru touched him on the arm. Sharur stopped and lifted one eyebrow, a gesture he shared with his father. Tupsharru asked, “Were you going to have the kitchen slave tonight?” “Ah.” As the older brother, Sharur could take her ahead of Tupsharru, just as Ereshguna, if he felt like putting up with Betsilim’s complaints, could take her ahead of him. “No—go ahead if you want to,” Sharur said. “I’ve taken her once or twice, but I don’t think she’s anything special.”
“I don’t think she’s anything special, either,” Tupsharru said, “but she’s here and I feel like it, and this way I don’t have to go out and
find a harlot and pay her something. So if you’re not going to, I will.”
With purposeful stride, he headed off toward the kitchen. Sharur went up the stairs and onto the roof. Twilight was fading. As he watched, more and more stars appeared in the darkening bowl of the sky. He murmured prayers of greeting to the tiny gods who peered out through them. Most of those gods were content to stay in one place in the sky day after day, year after year, accepting the absentminded reverence people gave them.
A handful, more enterprising, moved through the heavens, some quickly, some more slowly. They were tricksters, and had to be propitiated. Sharur, who was going to move over the land, reminded himself to offer to them before he set out.
Ereshguna had carried a lamp up with him, and used it to light a couple of torches. More torches and lamps and thin, guttering tapers burned on other roofs in Gibil, making an earthly field of stars as counterpoint to that up in the heavens. Somewhere not far away, a man was playing a harp and singing a song in praise of Engibil. Sharur nodded. The god, who was vain, would like that.
Catching himself in a yawn, Sharur shook out his blanket to make sure he would not be sharing it with any spiders or scorpions. He took off his sandals, shifted his kilt so he could piss in the old pot the family kept up there for that purpose, and lay down.
He was just about asleep when Tupsharru came up onto the roof. His brother whistled a happy tune. As Sharur had done, he shook out his blanket, eased himself, and lay down, a man happy with the world and with his place in it.
Down below, in her sweltering little cubicle, the kitchen slave, like the rest of the slaves Ereshguna owned, would also be going to sleep. What she thought, what she felt, never entered Sharur’s mind as he began to snore.
A line of donkeys, each but the leader roped to the one in front of it, stood braying in the Street of Smiths. Sharur went methodically down the line, checking the packs and jars tied to the animals’ backs against the list written on two clay tablets he held in his hand.
“Linen cloth dyed red, four bolts,” he muttered to himself. He counted the bolts. ‘ ‘One, two, three, four... very good.” He used a stylus to draw a little star by the item on the list. The clay was dry but not baked, so he could incise the mark if he bore down a little. “Wool cloth dyed blue with woad, seven bolts.” He counted, then frowned. “Har- haru! I see only five bolts here.”
If a donkeymaster was a good one, he knew where everything in the caravan was stored. Harharu, a stocky, middle- aged man, was the best donkeymaster in Gibil; Ereshguna would have settled for no one less. He said, “You’re talking about the wool dyed blue, master merchant’s son? The other two bolts are on this beast three farther back.”
And so they were. “I thank you, Harharu,” Sharur said, bowing. He set the star beside the item. On he went, making sure he was in fact taking all the date wine, all the fine pots, all the little flasks of the rock-oil that seeped out of the ground near Gibil, all the medicines and perfumes, all the knives and swords and axes and spearheads, and all the other things on his list.
“Always strikes me funny, taking nietak things up to the mountains when that’s where we get our copper from,” Harharu remarked.
“The Alashkurrut have plenty of copper,” Sharur said, “but they have no tin. Our bronze is harder and tougher than any metal they can make for themselves, so they are happy to get it. They give five times the weight of copper or fifteen times the weight of ore for good swords.”
Harharu grunted. “And sometimes, when they feel like it, they use their good swords to take whatever a caravan brings, and they give nothing for it but death or wounds.”
“We are not going by ourselves, you and I.” Sitting in the shade of a wall, talking or dozing while they waited for the caravan to get moving, were a dozen stalwart young men who had proved themselves with spear and sword and bow in the latest war with Imhursag. Along with trade goods for the men of the mountains of Alashkurru, the donkeys carried their weapons, their shields of wickerwork and leather, and their linen helmets with bronze plates sewn in. When the caravan left the land of Kudurru, the guards would carry their gear themselves.
Seeing Sharur’s eyes on him, the leader of the guard contingent asked, “How much longer, master merchant’s son?” Mushezib might have been carved from stone, so sharply chiseled were the muscles rippling under his skin. The scar on his cheek above the line of his beard and the bigger scar that furrowed the right side of his chest might have been slips of the sculptor’s tools.
“It will be soon now,” Sharur answered. His bow and spear were packed on a donkey, too. He had never yet had to fight up in Alashkurru, but that he never had did not mean he never would.
When he’d satisfied himself nothing was missing from the caravan, he nodded to Mushezib. The chief guard growled something to his men. They got to their feet and swaggered over to take their places on either side of the donkeys. There were caravans where the guards ended up running the show, they being both armed and used to fighting. That had never happened to any caravan Sharur led. He was determined it wouldn’t happen this time, either.
“All right, let’s go,” he said. “May Engibil give us a profitable journey.” Several of the guards took out their amulets to help ensure that the city god heard and heeded the prayer. So did Harharu and a couple of the assistant donkey handlers.
Sharur gave Harharu the lead rope for the first donkey, committing the caravan into the donkey master’s hands. But before Harharu could take the first step, ram’s-hom trumpets rang out on the Street of Smiths. In a great voice, a herald cried, “Behold! Forth comes Kimash, lugal of Gibil! Bow before Kimash the mighty, the powerful, the valiant, beloved of Engibil his patron! Forth comes Kimash, lugal of Gibil! Behold!’’
The trumpets blared again. Drums thundered. Surrounding the lugal were warriors who made the men Sharur had hired seem striplings beside them. Even Mushezib looked less formidable when set against their thick-thewed bulk.
Sharur’s grandfather’s ghost spoke in his ear: “All this folderol over a mere man is a pack of nonsense, if anybody wants to know, The lugal in my day, Kimash’s grandfather Igigi, didn’t put on half so much show, and the ensi before him didn’t put on any at all, to speak of.”
“Yes, father to my father,” Sharur answered, wishing the garrulous spirit would shut up. His grandfather’s ghost often started chattering at the most inconvenient times.
Besides, the ghost wasn’t so smart as it thought it was. The ensis who had ruled Gibil before Igigi had had no need for fancy displays of power, not with Engibil speaking directly through them. The lugals, on the other hand, were faced with the problem of getting people to obey them even though they spoke for no one but themselves. No wonder they made themselves as awesome as they could.
Sharur bowed low as Kimash’s retinue came past the caravan. He was not altogether surprised when the procession stopped. Kimash favored smiths and merchants and scribes. They brought new powers into Gibil, powers that might be manipulated against Engibil’s long-entrenched strength.
kimash’s guards stood aside to let the lugal advance. He was a man in his early forties, not far from Ereshguna’s age, still vigorous even though gray was beginning to frost his hair and beard. He wore gold earrings, and bound his hair in a bun at the back of his neck with gold wire rather than a simple ribbon. The hilt of his dagger was wrapped in gold wire, too, and gold buckles sparkled on his belt and sandals.
“You may look on me,” he told Sharur, who obediently straightened. The merchant reached out and set his hand on Kimash’s thigh for a moment in token of submission. The lugal covered it with his own hand, then released it. He said, “May Engibil and the other gods, the great gods, favor your journey to the mountains, Sharur son of Ereshguna.”
“I thank the lugal, the lord of Gibil,” Sharur replied.
‘ ‘May you be fortunate in bringing back ingots of shining copper; may your donkeys’ panniers be laden with heavy sacks of ore,” Kimash said.
/>
“May it be so indeed,” Sharur said.
Abruptly, Kimash abandoned the formal diction he used when speaking as lugal—the diction handed down for rulers since the days when the lords of Gibil were ensis through whom Engibil spoke—and addressed Sharur as one man to another: “I want that copper. We cannot have too much of it. Imhursag is stirring against us once more, and some of the towns with gods on top of them may send men and weapons to help in the next war.”
“If I can get it for you, lord, I will,” Sharur said. “I wouldn’t be heading off to the Alashkurrut if I didn’t think they would trade it to me.”
“I know. I understand,” the lugal answered. Eor all his power, for all his vigor, he was a worried man. “Bring back curiosities, too, things never seen in the land of Kudurru. Let me lay them on the altar in Engibil’s temple to amuse the god and give him enjoyment.”
“Lord, I will do as you say,” Sharur promised. “The god of the city deserves the rich presents you lavish upon him.”
He and Kimash looked at each other in mutual understanding. Neither of them smiled, in case the god was keeping an eye on Kimash. But they both knew how venal Engibil was. Igigi had been the first to discover that, if he heaped enough offerings on Engibil’s altar, the god would let him act as he thought best, not merely as Engibil’s mouthpiece. Kimash followed the same principle as had his grandfather. The god remained vastly stronger than the lugal, but Engibil was distracted and Kimash was not.
“I shall have Engibil’s priests pray that you enjoy a safe and successful journey,” Kimash said. Sharur bowed. Some of the priests, no doubt, resented the lugal for ruling, but, with the god content to suffer it, what could they do? And some, the younger men, served Engibil, aye, but served Kimash, too. The lugal said, ‘‘My prayers will go with theirs.”
Sharur bowed again. ‘‘I thank the lugal, the lord of Gibil.”
‘‘One thing more,” Kimash said with sudden abruptness. “Whatever word of Enimhursag’s doings you hear in the wider world, bring it back to me and to Engibil. That god hates this city, for we beat Imhursag and we prosper though men rule us.”
Turtledove, Harry - Novel 12 Page 2