Turtledove, Harry - Novel 12

by Between the Rivers (v2. 1)

  “I know what you mean.” Sharur slapped the guard on the back. “The circle will break of itself when Shumukin brings the sun up into the sky. Then Buriash can harangue you to his heart’s content.”

  The sun rose. The caravan headed off toward the west once more. But Uncle Buriash did not return to Agum when the circle of magic was broken. Agum never heard Uncle Buriash’s voice again. All that day, and for days to come, Sharur kept looking back in the direction of the caravan from Imhursag. What he felt was something uncommonly like fear.

  The land rose and, rising, grew rough. Streams dwindled. Near them, a few farmers scratched out a meager living. The land a little farther from them could have been brought under the plow, too, had anyone dug canals out to it Not enough people lived along the streams to make the work worthwhile.

  Instead, herders drove large flocks of cattle and sheep— larger than any in crowded Kudurru—through the grass and brush that grew without irrigation. Lean, rough-looking men, they watched the caravan with hungry eyes. Guards and donkey handlers and Sharur himself always went armed. TJianks to Mushezib, the guards acted as tough and swaggering as the herdsmen, and so had no trouble with them.

  “You can’t let them think you’re afraid of ’em,” Mushezib said to Sharur one evening. “If they get that idea into their heads, they’ll jump on you like a lion on a lame donkey.”

  “Yes, I’ve seen that,” Sharur said. “The Alashkurrut are the same way.” His eyes went to the west This country blended almost seamlessly with the foothills of the Alashkurru Mountains. He sighed. “Another few days of traveling and only a few folk, the folk who make a habit of trading with us, will speak our language. The rest will use the wrords of the Alashkurrut.”

  Mushezib used a word of the Alashkurrut, a rude word. He laughed a loud, booming laugh. “A guard doesn’t need to know much more. ‘Beer.’ ‘Woman.’ ‘Bread,’ maybe. ‘How much?’ ‘No, too much.’ Those do the job.”

  “I suppose so.” Almost, Sharur wished he could live a life as simple as Mushezib’s. When all went well, the guard captain had little more to do than walk all day and, when evening came, have someone give him food and beer and silver besides, so he could buy a woman’s company for the night or whatever else he happened to want. To a peasant living in drudgery the whole year through, that would seem a fine life indeed. It had seemed so to Mushezib, who had made it real for himself, just as at the beginning of days the great gods had made the world real from the thought in their minds.

  For Sharur, though, the reality Mushezib had made from his thought was not enough. The guard captain cared about no one past himself, about nothing more than getting through one day after another. When he died, his ghost would not remain long upon the earth, for who would remember him well enough for the spirit’s voice to linger in his ears? .

  Sharur walked down to the edge of the little nameless stream (nameless to him, anyhow; whatever god or goddess dwelt in it had never drawn his notice) and scooped up a handful of muddy clay. Mushezib followed, saying, “What are you doing, master merchant’s son? Oh, I see—making a tablet. What have you found here that you need to write?”

  “I’m practicing, that’s all,” Sharur answered. “I practice with the spear, I practice with the sword, and I practice with the stylus, too.” So speaking, he took the stylus from his belt and incised on the soft clay the three complex squiggles that made up Mushezib’s name. The guard captain, who could neither read nor write, watched without comprehension.

  Hear me, all gods and demons of this land, Sharur thought. I mean no harm to the man whose name 1 erase. He crumbled the tablet in his hands, then washed them clean of mud in the running water.

  “Didn’t the writing come out the way you wanted it?” Mushezib asked.

  “It was not everything it could have been,” Sharur replied. Mushezib’s life was like that: a tablet that would crumble and weather and be gone all too soon after writing covered its surface. Sharur wanted the tablet of his life to go through the fire after it was done, to deserve to be baked hard as kiln-dried brick and so to have the writing on it preserved forever in the memories of Gibil and the Giblut.

  Mushezib had his own ideas about that, though. Laughing again, he said, “What is everything it could be?” Sharur, to his own embarrassment, found no good reply for the guard captain.

  The demon sprawled in the roadway. It looked like a large wild cat with wings. Its eyes glowed with green fire. It lashed its tail, as if to suggest it had a sting there like a scorpion’s.

  At the sight of it, Harharu had halted the caravan. He did nothing more. Doing more was not his responsibility but Sharur’s. Sharur approached until he was almost—but, he made sure, not quite—within reach of that lashing tail. Bowing, he spoke in the language of the mountains: “You are not a demon of the land of Kudurru. You are not a demon of the land between the rivers. You are a demon of Alash- kurru. You are a demon of the high country. I know you, demon of the high country.”

  “I am a demon of the high country.” The demon sprang into the air and turned a backwards somersault, for all the world like a playful kitten. “You are one of the new people, the people from afar, the people who travel, the people who bring strange things to Alashkurru.”

  “I am one of those people,” Sharur agreed. Men from Kudurru had been trading with the Alashkurrut for generations. To the demon, though, they were the new people. They would likely be the new people five hundred years hence as well. The demon showed no sign of moving aside. It lolled in the sunlight, stretching bonelessly. “Why do you block our path?” Sharur asked. “Why do you not let us travel? Why do you not let us bring our new things”—he would not call them strange things—“to Alashkurru?”

  “You are the new people,” the demon repeated. It cocked its head to one side and studied Sharur. “You are one of the new people even among the new people. You listen to your own voice. You do not listen to your god’s voice.”

  “That is not true,” Sharur replied. “Engibil is my god. Engibil is my city’s god. All in Gibil worship Engibil and set fine offerings in his temple.”

  ‘‘You play with words.” The demon’s tail sprang out, like a snake. Sharur was glad he had kept his distance from it. ‘‘Your own self is in the front of your spirit. Your god’s voice is in the back of your spirit. You are one of the new people even among the new people.” By its tone, the demon might have accused him of lying with his mother.

  ‘‘I do not understand all you say.” Sharur was lying. He knew he was lying. The demon laid the same charge against him and his fellow Giblut as Enimhursag had done. He took a deep breath, then went on, “It does not matter. We come to Alashkurru to trade. We come in peace. We have always come in peace. The wanakes, the chieftains, of Alashkurru profit by our coming. Let us pass.”

  Lash, lash, lash went the demon’s tail. “You trade more than you know, man of the new people even among the new people. When you talk with the wanakes, the chieftains, of Alashkurru, you infect them with your new ways, as an unclean whore infects a man with a disease of the private parts. There are wanakes, chieftains, of Alashkurru who have spoke with great wickedness, saying, ‘Let us put our own selves in the front of our spirits. Let us put our gods’ voices in the back of our spirits. The gods of Alashkurru grow angry at hearing such talk, at hearing such thoughts.”

  “I trade metal. I trade cloth. I trade medicine. I trade wine,” Sharur said stolidly. Under the hot sun, the sweat that ran from his armpits and down his back was cold as the snow atop the highest mountains of Alashkurru. “If I speak of Engibil to the wanakes, the chieftains, of Alashkurru, it is only to praise his greatness. Let us pass.”

  “It shall not be,” the demon said. “The gods of Alashkurru are angry. The men of Alashkurru are angry. Go back, man of the new people even among the new people. You shall do nothing here. You shall gain nothing here. Go back. Go back. Go back.”

  Sharur licked his lips. “I will not hear these words from a demon in t
he road. I will hear them from the lips of the wanakes, the chieftains, of Alashkurru.” The demon sprang into the air again, this time with a screech of rage. Sharur spoke quickly: “I will not hear these words from a demon in the road. I know you, demon of the high country. Illuyankas, I know your name.” He hated to try to compel a foreign spirit, but saw no other choice.

  The demon Illuyankas let out another screech, this one a bubbling cry of dismay. Off it flew, as fast as its wings could take it. Knowing its name, Sharur could have worked great harm on it.

  The donkey handlers and caravan guards clapped their hands and shouted in delight at the way their leader had routed the demon. ‘‘Well done, master merchant’s son,” Mushezib said. ‘‘That ugly thing will trouble us no more.” ‘‘No, I suppose not,” Sharur said absently. He noticed that Harharu seemed less jubilant than the rest of the caravan crew, and asked him, “Donkeymaster, do you not speak the language of the Alashkurrut?”

  “I do, master merchant’s son,” Harharu said. ‘‘I do not speak so elegantly as your distinguished self, but I understand and make myself understood.”

  “Then you understood what the demon Illuyankas, the demon of ill omen, and I had to say to each other,” Sharur persisted. At the donkeymaster’s nod, he went on, “The demon’s warning comes close to what the men of Imhursag told us.” Harharu nodded once more, even less happily than he had the first time. Sharur said, ‘ ‘If the men and gods of Alashkurru will not treat with us, what shall we do?’ ’ “Here I have no answer, master merchant’s son,” Harharu said. “I have never heard of the Alashkurrut refusing trade. This I will tell you:, they have never refused trade before, not in all the years Gibil has sent caravans to their country.”

  “I have not heard of their doing so, either,” Sharur said. “Perhaps it is a ploy to force us to lower our prices.”

  “Perhaps it is,” Harharu said. Neither of them sounded as if he believed it.

  * * *

  Tuwanas was the first Alashkurri mining center to which the caravan came. By that time, Sharur’s spirits had revived. The peasants on the road to Tuwanas had been friendly enough. None of them had refused to trade bread or pork—it was a good swine-raising country—or beer to him and his men. Their gods, whose little outdoor wooden shrines were nothing like the great brick temples of the gods of Kudurru, had not cried out in protest. Sharur took that as a good omen.

  He led the caravan up to Tuwanas in the midst of a rainstorm. The guards who were making their first journey into the Alashkurru Mountains looked up into the heavens with fearful eyes, muttering to themselves at what seemed the unnatural spectacle of rain in summer.

  Sharur reassured them, saying, “I have seen this before. It is the way of the gods in this part of the world. See— even though Tuwanas lies by a stream, the folk here have dug but few canals to bring water from the stream to the fields. They know they will get rain to keep their crops alive.”

  “Rain in summertime.” Agum shook his head, which made some of the summertime rain fly out from his beard, as if from a wet dog’s coat, and more drip off the end of his nose. “No stranger than anything else around these parts, I suppose.” He pointed ahead to Tuwanas. “If this isn’t the funniest-looking place I’ve ever seen, I don’t know what is.”

  There Sharur was inclined to agree with^him. By the standards of Kudurru, it was neither a village nor a proper city. The best word for it, Sharur supposed, was “fortress.” He would not have wanted to take the place, not when its wall was built of great gray blocks of stone so huge, he wondered if they had been set in place by gods, not men.

  Sighing, Harharu said, “The Alashkurrut are lucky to have so much fine stone with which to build. Mud brick would be nothing but mud in this climate.”

  “I see,” Agum said. “Even the peasants live in stone houses here. Does the straw they put on the roofs really keep out the rain?”

  “Better than you’d think,” Sharur told him. “The peasants and the potters and the leatherworkers and the smiths and such live outside the walls, as you see. They take shelter inside when the other Alashkurrut raid Tuwanas.”

  “The smiths,” Harharu murmured.

  “Yes,” Sharur said. No matter what Enimhursag and the demon Illuyankas had told him, he had hope for the smiths. In Alashkurru no less than in Kudurru, they were men of the new, full of the power control over metal gave them, a power so raw it was not yet divine.

  “Who lives inside the walls of Tuwanas, then?” Agum asked.

  “The Alashkurri gods, of course,” Sharur answered, and the caravan guard nodded. “A few merchants have their houses in there, too. But most of the space the gods don’t use goes to Huzziyas the wanax and his soldiers.”

  “Wanax.” Agum shaped the foreign word, then laughed. “It has a funny sound.”

  “It has a funny meaning, too,” Sharur said. “There is no word in our speech that means just the same thing. It’s halfway between ‘ensi’—because the Alashkurri gods do speak through the wanakes—and ‘bandit chief.’ A wanax will use his soldiers to rob his neighbors—”

  “—And his own peasants,” Harharu put in.

  “Yes, and his own peasants,” Sharur agreed. “He’ll use his soldiers, as I say, to make himself rich. Sometimes I think a wanax would sooner steal one keshlu’s weight of gold than put the same amount of trouble into getting two by honest work.”

  Agum clutched his spear more tightly. “I see why you have guards along, master merchant’s son.”

  “Huzziyas has more soldiers than you could fight,” Sharur said. “So does every other wanax. Sometimes, though, when the wanakes aren’t robbing one another, a band of soldiers will get bored and start robbing on their own. That is why I have guards in the Alashkurru Mountains.”

  As they talked, they squelched up the narrow track between thatch-roofed stone huts toward the one gate in Tu- wanas’ frowning wall. Most of the men were out in the fields—rain made weeding easy—but women and children stood in doorways and stared at the newcomers, as did artisans who labored inside their homes.

  In looks, they were most of them not far removed from the folk of Kudurru. Men here, though, did not curl their beards, but let them grow long and unkempt. Men and women put on more clothes than they would have done in Kudurru, men wearing knee-length tunics of wool or leather and the women draping themselves in lengths of cloth that reminded Sharur of nothing so much as oversized blankets.

  And, now and again, more than clothes and hairstyles reminded the caravan crew they were in a foreign land. Sharur heard one of the donkey handlers wonder aloud if a striking woman with coppery hair was truly a woman or a demon. “Don’t say that in a language she can understand,” the caravanmaster remarked, “or you’re liable to find out.”

  The guards at the gateway leading into the fortress of Tuwanas stood under the overhang to stay out of the rain. But for their wild, shaggy beards, they would have fit in well enough among Kimash the lugal’s guardsmen. Sharur recognized a couple who spoke the language of Kudurru. One of those guards recognized him at about the same time. “It is Sharur son of Ereshguna, from the city between the rivers called Gibil,” he said.

  “It is,” Sharur agreed. “It is Nenassas son of Nerikkas, of Tuwanas. I greet you, Nenassas son of Nerikkas.” Nenassas hadn’t greeted him, merely acknowledged his existence. He did not take that as a good sign.

  Nenassas still did not greet him, but asked, “What do you bring to Tuwanas, Sharur son of Ereshguna?”

  “I bring swords and knives and spearheads of finest bronze,” Sharur said, pointedly adding, “such have always delighted the heart of Huzziyas son of Wamnas, the mighty wanax of Tuwanas. I bring also wine of dates, to delight the heart of Huzziyas in a different way; strong medicines”— he gestured toward Rukagina—‘‘and many other fine things.”

  Nenassas and the other guards put their heads together and talked in low voices in their own language. Sharur caught only a couple of phrases, enough to understand they
were trying to figure out what to do with him, and with the caravan. Their attitude alone would have told him that much. He kept his face an impassive mask. Behind it, he worried. They should have been delighted to greet a caravan from Kudurru.

  He got the idea they would have been delighted to greet most caravans from Kudurru. A caravan from Gibil, however ...

  At last, Nenassas said, “What you tell me is true, Sharur son of Ereshguna. Your wares have delighted the heart of mighty Huzziyas. Still, that was in the days before our gods spoke to us of the city between the rivers called Gibil.”

  “I do not seek to trade my swords and knives and spearheads with the gods of Tuwanas,” Sharur replied. “I seek to trade them with the mighty wanax of Tuwanas, and with his clever merchants.”

  “See!” one of the other Alashkurri guards exclaimed in his own language. “This is what the gods warned us against. He cares nothing for them.”

  “That is not so,” Sharur said in the same tongue. “I respect the gods of Tuwanas, the gods of Alashkurru. But, Udas son of Ussas, they are not my gods. My god is Engibil, and after him the other gods of Kudurru.”

  Udas seemed disconcerted at being understood. The guards put their heads together again. Sharur heard one phrase that pleased him very much: “Those swords do delight the heart of the wanax.” More argument followed. A couple of times, the guards hefted the spears they were carrying, as if about to use them on one another. Finally, Nenassas said, “You and your caravan may pass into Tuwanas, Sharur son of Ereshguna. This matter is too great for us to decide. Let it be in the hands of the mighty wanax and the gods.”

  “For this I thank you, Nenassas son of Nerikkas, though it grieves me to enter this place without your greeting,” Sharur replied. But he got no greeting from Nenassas, only a brusque wave ahead. Scowling, Sharur led his men and donkeys into Tuwanas.