Turtledove, Harry - Novel 12

by Between the Rivers (v2. 1)

  “I shall do as you say, lord,” Sharur promised once more.

  Kimash nodded, turned, and went back to his place among the palace guards, who fell in around him. His retinue started down the Street of Smiths once again, the trumpeters blowing great blasts of sound from their ram’s horns, the herald announcing Kimash’s presence to everyone nearby as if the lugal were equal to Engibil when the god (or, these past couple of generations, a statue of him) paraded through the city on his great feast day.

  Harharu and Mushezib, the assistant donkey handlers and the guards, all looked at Sharur with new respect. Harharu had surely known Kimash favored Ereshguna’s clan. Mushezib probably had known it, too. The others also might well have known it. But knowing it and being reminded of it were not one and the same. Everyone in Gibil knew the lugal’s power. When he walked with ghards and trumpeters and herald, he reminded people of it.

  “Do you see, father to my father?” Sharur 'murmured.

  He’d really been talking to himself, but his grandfather’s ghost heard. “Oh, I see,” it answered. “That doesn’t mean I like it.” The ghost left. He could feel it go. He smiled to himself. His grandfather hadn’t liked much as an old man, and liked even less now that he was dead.

  Sharur didn’t suppose he could blame his grandfather’s ghost. When the last person who remembered him alive died, the ghost would no longer be able to stay on earth, but would go down to the underworld and dwell in shadows forever. No wonder he reckoned any and all change for the worse.

  One day, Sharur thought, that fate would be his, too. But he was young. Strength flowed through him. He hadn’t yet married Ningal, and had no children, let alone grandchildren. Life stretched ahead, looking long and good. He did not intend to become a ghost for many, many years.

  “Let’s go!” he said. Harharu, as he had been on the point of doing when Kimash came over to Sharur, pulled on the lead donkey’s line. The donkey stared at him with large, astonished liquid eyes: the idea of actually going anywhere had long since vanished from its mind. Harharu pulled again. The donkey’s long ears twitched. It brayed indignantly.

  “Give it a good kick,” Mushezib suggested.

  “Patience.” Harharu’s voice was mild. He tugged on the lead line again. The donkey started forward. That took up the slack on the line connecting it to the next beast, which brayed out its own protest before reluctantly following. The hideous clamor ran down the line. Here and there, a donkey balked. The handlers encouraged the animals to go, sometimes gently, sometimes by methods akin to Mushezib’s. At last, the whole caravan was moving.

  Dimgalabzu the smith, Ningal’s father, came out of his house as Sharur led the caravan past it: a tough-looking, wide-shouldered man whose bare belly bulged above the belt upholding his kilt. He was carrying a big wicker basket full of rubbish, which he flung into the street. “Going off to get more copper for us, are you, Ereshguna’s son?” he called.

  “Just so, father to my intended bride,” Sharur answered. “And, when I return, we shall talk about payment of the price for your daughter.”

  “You think so, do you?” Dimgalabzu said, not as a true threat but because he enjoyed making his prospective son-in-law squirm. “Well, we shall see, we shall see.” He waved to Sharur, winked, and went back inside.

  Mushezib chuckled. “I hope for your sake, lad, the girl takes after her mother.”

  “In looks, you mean? She does,” Sharur answered. Ningal also had a good deal of her father’s bluff, sometimes disconcerting sense of humor. Sharur said nothing about that. His fiancee’s intimate personal characteristics were not the concern of a caravan guard.

  He had turned off the Street of Smiths and was well on his way to the western gate when he led the caravan past a family who were knocking down their house. That happened every so often in Gibil. The sun-dried mud brick of which almost everything in the city save Engibil’s temple and the lugal’s palace was built was hardly the strongest stuff. Sometimes a wall would collapse under the growing weight of the roof as one season’s mud chinking went on top of another’s. Sometimes a wall would collapse at what seemed nothing more than the whim of a god or demon. Sometimes a whole house would fall down. When that happened, people often died.

  No one seemed to have been hurt here, not by the cheerful way in which the family and a couple of slaves were biting chunks out of the one wall still standing with hoes and mattocks, and spreading and pounding the crushed mud bricks to make a floor for the new house they’d soon build on the site of the old one. They’d carefully saved their poplarwood roof beams and set them in the street next to the stacks of bricks from which the new house would arise.

  The street had been narrow to begin with. Wood and bricks slimmed it further. And, of course, a crowd of people had gathered to watch the work and offer suggestions. “After you’re done with your house, why don’t you knock down mine?” somebody called.

  “Knock down your own house, Melshippak,” the man of the laboring family answered, in tones suggesting that Melshippak was a close friend or a relative. “Me, I’m going to enjoy being on a level with the street for a change, instead of taking a big step up every time I want to go out my own front door. This is the first time we’ve had to build in more than twenty years.”

  Over twenty years, a lot of people had, like Dimgalabzu, pitched their trash into the street. No wonder its level had risen in that stretch of time.

  Sharur, however, did not care how high the street was, only how wide, or rather, how narrow. “Please move aside,” he called to Melshippak and the other spectators. When they didn’t move, he shouted, “Make way!” That shifted a few of them, but not enough. He nodded to the caravan guards. They swaggered forward. Even without any weapons but fists and knives, they were large, impressive men. With them at his back, Sharur shouted, “Clear out, curse you! Stop clogging this canal!”

  People stared at him as if they hadn’t had the slightest idea he or the donkeys or the guards were anywhere nearby. Slowly, grudgingly, they gave way. One after another, the donkeys squeezed past the bottleneck. As soon as they had gone by, the crowd flowed back.

  Like the god’s temple, like the lugal’s palace, the city wall was built of baked brick, far more costly than the sun- dried variety blit far harder and more nearly permanent. In the Alashkurru Mountains, they made houses and walls out of stone, but in Kudurru that would have been even more expensive than baked brick.

  “Engibil’s goodwill and all good fortune attend you, son of Ereshguna,” one of the gate guards said. They were Kimash’s followers to a man, and so well inclined toward traders and smiths.

  Sharur led the caravan down the low hill atop which Gibil sat and onto the floodplain at the base of that hill. He had descended the hill countless times, never once thinking about it. Now he looked back and seemed to see it with new eyes. Had it always been there, a knob sticking up from the flatland all around? Or had Gibil-that-was started out on the floodplain and slowly risen, one basketful of trash, one knocked-down house, at a time, till now it stood some distance above the plain all around? If that went on for another thousand years, or two, or three, would Gibil end up sitting atop a mountain? Maybe it would, but not with him here to see it, nor even his ghost.

  The road that ran west toward the Y armuk River—a beaten track in the mud—passed any number of small farming villages. A few of the better houses in them would be made of sun-dried brick, like those of Gibil. Most, though, were built of the reeds that grew along riverbanks and, where untended, choked canals to death. Those huts resembled nothing so much as enormous baskets turned upside down.

  “I wouldn’t want to live like that,” Sharur said, pointing toward one such hut in front of which a couple of naked children played. “You couldn’t go up to the roof to sleep without rolling off on your head.”

  Mushezib’s laugh bared a fine set of strong, yellow teeth. “I grew up in a village like this one, but, after I’d gone into Gibil a few times to trade, I knew that was w
here I wanted to live out my days.”

  Harharu nodded. “My story is the same. So many people, ' though, are happy to stay in the fields all their lives.” His wave over the landscape encompassed farmers weeding the growing wheat and barley, their wives tending garden plots of beans and onions and cabbage and melons and cucumbers, a couple of men digging mud from the bank of a canal and plopping it into square frames to make bricks, a woman spanking a child that had been naughty, and a fellow spearing fish out of a stream with a sharpened reed.

  Sharur would have bet all those people would stay in their village till they died. He was lucky enough to have been born in Gibil, in a city that traded to east and west, north and south, and that boasted whole streets not only of smiths but also of potters and dyers and basketmakers and other artisans. Had he not been bom there, he knew he, too, would have found a way to make it his home.

  Then he thought again of Gibil-that-was, the town he imagined down on the valley floor rather than standing tall on its hill. In the time of his grandfather’s grandfather’s grandfather, would it not have been a village much like any of these others? He wondered what had made it grow while they stayed as they always were.

  Engibil, he thought. The god had always dwelt there. People who came to petition him would have stopped to trade and simply to gossip with one another. That alone might have been enough to push Gibil ahead of the neighboring villages. Sharur smiled nervously. He, a modem man, tried to stay out of the god’s shadow and stand in his own light as much as he could. Strange to think he might have been enabled to become a modem man because Engibil caused a city to come into being.

  That night, the caravan camped by a village still in the territory ruled by Gibil. One of the donkeys carried trinkets to trade for supplies along the way. A few necklaces strung with pottery beads, brightly colored stones, and small seashells from the Sea of Rabia (into which the Yarmuk and Diyala flowed) got Sharur enough bread and beer and sun-dried fish to feed his men. He unrolled his blanket on the ground and slept till sunup.

  “Come on,” he said as he splashed water on his face from a canal to help wake himself up. Several of the donkey handlers and guards knelt by the edge of the water with him, doing the same. Others, a little farther downstream, pissed away the beer they’d drunk the night before. Still yawning, Sharur went on, “This was the last night we’ll be able to rest without posting sentries. By tonight, we’ll be in the lands that belong to the city of Zuabu. Nobody with any sense will trust the Zuabut: they’re thieves.”

  “That’s Enzuabu’s fault,” Harharu said. “They used .to have another god there, a long time ago, but Enzuabu stole the city from him and chased him out into the desert. Of course the people take after their god.”

  “I heard it the other way round: that the city god takes after the people, I mean,” Sharur said. “I heard they were such thieves that they raised a power of thievery in their land, and that was how Enzuabu got to be stronger than the god they used to have.”

  “It may be so,” the donkeymaster answered with a shrug.

  “It’s not the tale I’d heard, but it may be so. Whether it is or it isn’t, though, you’re right—they steal.”

  The caravan came to the border between Gibil’s lands and Zuabu’s not long after noon. The two towns, the two gods, were at peace. No guards patrolled the frontier, as they did between Gibil and Imhursag to the north. A bridge of date-palm logs stretched across a canal. Once over it, Sharur went on down the road to the west through Zuabu’s land.

  Before long, Zuabut, curious as crows, came flocking to the caravan. They were as full of questions as they were of gossip, which was very full indeed. As they chattered away, they eyed the donkeys—and the bundles on the beasts’ backs—with bright, avid eyes. Mushezib and the rest of the guards all did their best to look fierce and vigilant. Sharur was mournfully certain something would turn up missing; he hoped it wouldn’t be anything too valuable or important.

  You never could tell how much attention you ought to pay to anything the Zuabut said. Sharur listened to the story of Nurili, the ensi of Zuabu, impregnating all fourteen of his wives on the same night with the amount of incredulity he thought it deserved. “The god spoke through him,” insisted the man of Zuabu telling the tale.

  “The god poked through him, you say?” Sharur returned, pretending to misunderstand the hissing Zuabi dialect. His own men laughed. After a moment, when they realized Enzuabu wasn’t offended (or, at least, hadn’t noticed), the Zuabut laughed, too. Sharur went on, “That’s what it would have taken, I think.”

  But not all the tales were tall ones. Another man of Zuabu said, “Three days ago, a caravan from Imhursag came through our land, also heading west. If you meet on the road, I hope you do not fight.”

  Zuabu was at peace with Gibil. But Zuabu was also at peace with Imhursag. Sharur said, “We will not be the first to fight. But if the Imhursagut quarrel with us, we will not be the first to leave off fighting, either.”

  “That is good. That is as it should be,” the Zuabi said, nodding. “It may be, too, that you and the Imhursagut will not meet.”

  “Yes, it may be,” Sharur agreed. “Whither are they bound?”

  “To the mountains of Alashkurru, even as you are,” the man of Zuabu replied. “Still, it may be that you and they will not meet. Three days is much time for travelers to make up on the road.”

  “This is also true,” Sharur said. He did not believe it, though, not down in his heart. Had he had a three days lead on the men of Imhursag, he would have been sure they could never catch him up. Being three days behind them, he reckoned it likely he would pass them on the road. People from towns where gods ruled directly never seemed to move quite so fast as those who did all their own thinking, all their own planning, for themselves.

  The Zuabi pointed. “Look there in the sky!” he said, his voice rising in excitement. “It is a mountain eagle, flying to the west. This is bound to be a good omen for your caravan.”

  For a moment, Sharur’s eyes did go to the sky. Then they swung back to the man of Zuabu, who was stepping rapidly toward the closest donkey. In his hand he had a little knife of chipped flint, the sort of knife everyone had used in the days before bronze. Sharur reached out and grabbed his wrist. “I do not think you would be wise to cut any bundles open. I think you would be wise to go away from this caravan and never let us see your face again.”

  “This is how you pay me back for warning you of your enemies?” the man said indignantly.

  “No. This is how I pay you back for lying to me about the omen and for trying to steal my goods.” Sharur spoke without heat. The people of Zuabu were given to thievery, and that was all there was to it. “Put away your little stone knife and go in peace. That is how I pay you back for warning me.”

  “Oh, very well,” the man of Zuabu said. “You should have been fooled.”

  “I have been through Zuabu and the lands it rules before,” Sharur answered. “I know some of your tricks—not all of them, but some.”

  The donkeys plodded on. Toward evening, they approached the city of Zuabu. Only one building was tall enough for its upper portions to be seen over the top of the city wall: the temple to Enzuabu. Sharur knew the ensi’s residence was only a small annex to the temple, not a palace in its own right, as Kimash the lugal enjoyed back in Gibil.

  “Shall we go up into the city for the night, master merchant’s son?” Harharu asked.

  Sharur shook his head. “I see no need to pay for lodgings, not when the weather is fine and we can sleep on our blankets. We have not been traveling so long that we stand in need of special comforts. On the way home, maybe we shall bed down in Zuabu, to remind ourselves of what lies just ahead.” That satisfied the donkeymaster. It also satisfied Mushe- zib, who, from everything Sharur had seen, liked going out on the road better than living soft in a city, anyhow. If the assistant donkey handlers and ordinary guards had different opinions, no one bothered to find out what they were.

>   Some time in the middle of the night, one of the guards, a burly fellow named Agum, shook Sharur awake. The moon had risen not long before, spilling soft yellow light over the land between the rivers. Sharur murmured a prayer of greeting to Nusku, then said, “What’s wrong?”

  Agum pointed toward the walls of Zuabu. “Master merchant’s son, I’m glad we’re not in that city tonight. Look— Enzuabu walks.”

  A chill went through Sharur. As gods went in the land of Kudurru, Engibil was a placid sort. Had it be£n otherwise, he should never have allowed merely human lugals to rule Gibil these past three generations. He was content, even eager, to accept the offerings the lugals gave him, and to stay in his temple to receive them. He had not gone abroad in his city since Sharur was a boy.

  But, as Engibil had once done, other gods played more active roles in the lives of their cities. And so, his eyes wide with awe, Sharur saw Enzuabu’s moonlight-washed figure, twice as tall as the walls of Zuabu, go striding through the streets. The god’s eyes would have glowed whether the moon was in the sky or not; looking at them put Sharur in mind of the yellow-hot fires the smiths used to melt bronze for casting.

  Across a couple of furlongs, those eyes met Sharur’s. To the merchant’s horror, Enzuabu paused in his peregrinations. He stared out toward the caravan as if contemplating paying it a visit. If he did, Sharur did not judge from the way his great form tensed that the visit would be a pleasant one.

  Sharur’s hand closed over the amulet he wore on his belt. “Engibil is my lord,” he said rapidly. “Engibil has no quarrel with the lord of Zuabu.”

  For a moment, he thought Enzuabu would ignore that invocation and reminder. But then the god lowered his burning gaze so that it fell within the city once more. He reached down onto, or perhaps through, the roof of one of the houses there. When he straightened, the hand with which he had reached was closed—on what or whom, Sharur could not see. He thought that just as well.