“See what I have here.” Sharur set out a row of swords on top of a wooden table. In the torchlight, the polished bronze gleamed almost as red as blood. “These are all of fine, hard metal, made strong with the tin we of Gibil bring in at great risk and great expense. They will cut notches in the blade of a copper sword until it is better used as a saw than as a weapon. Alashkurru is a land of warriors, a land of heroes. No one will want to be without such fine swords. Is it not so, Sitawandas son of Anawandas, my friend, my colleague?”
Sitawandas put Sharur in mind of an Alashkurri version of his own father—a large, solid man who knew his own mind and who was intent on wringing the most he could from any deal. He picked up one of the swords Sharur had taken from their woolen wrappings. His grip, his stance, showed he knew how to handle it.
“This is a fine blade to hold, Sharur son of Ereshguna,” he said. “I would have looked for nothing less from you.” Gently, he set down the sword * and took from his wrist a copper bracelet. “May I test the hardness of the metal, to be certain it is as you say?”
Sharur bowed again. “I am your slave. If the buyer is not pleased and satisfied in all regards, how can there be a sale?”
Sitawandas took up the sword once more, using the edge against the bracelet as if he were slicing bread. He stared at the groove he had cut in the copper and said, “Yes, man of Gibil, this bronze is as fine as any I have ever seen.”
“Many warriors will want swords like these,” Sharur said. “They will give you silver and gold for them. Do I ask silver and gold for them? No—only copper and copper ore, as you well know.”
“I know the terms on which we have dealt, yes.” Sita- . wandas put down the sword again, as carefully as he had before. “And you speak truly, Sharur son of Ereshguna: a warrior of Alashkurru would be proud to carry such a blade in his sheath.” He let out a long, deep sigh. Sharur thought he saw tears in his eyes. “Truly I am sorry, man of Gibil. It is as you say. I could gain gold and silver for such swords. I have copper and copper ore in plenty in my storehouse, to pay to the man who could give such swords to me. But it shall not be. It can not be.”
Sharur’s heart sank. “I understand the words you say, Sitawandas son of Anawandas, but not the meaning concealed within them.” He did not, he would not, let the Alashkurri merchant see his dismay.
“For myself, I would like to gain these swords,” Sitawandas said. “I am forbidden from trading with you, however. I am forbidden from trading with any man of Gibil.”
“Who forbids you? Is it Huzziyas, the mighty wanax of Tuwanas?” Sharur set a finger by the side of his nose and winked. “Let one blade, two blades, three blades come into the hands of Huzziyas for no gold, for no silver, and surely you shall be able to do as you please with the rest of them.”
Sitawandas sighed again. “Huzziyas the mighty wanax would be proud to have such blades. This cannot be denied.” The guards at the gates of Tuwanas had said the same thing. Sitawandas went, on, “But, Sharur son of Ereshguna, Huzziyas the mighty wanax is no less forbidden than I from trading with you. I pray I shall not be punished even for speaking to you as I do, though that has never been formally prohibited for us.”
“Once a sword is set in the hands of a warrior, he will not care whence it first came,” Sharur said. “Once a knife is set in a sheath on the belt of a warrior, he will not care whence it first came. Once a spearhead is mounted on a shaft, he will not care whence it first came. If you have these things, Sitawandas son of Anawandas, you can trade them to your countrymen at a profit. No one will ask, ‘Is this a blade of Gibil, Sitawandas, or is this a blade of Imhursag?’ The only question you will hear is, ‘Will this blade help me slay my enemies, Sitawandas?’ ”
The Alashkurri merchant licked his lips. “You tempt me, man of Gibil, as a honeycomb lying forgotten on a table tempts a small boy who is hungry and wants something sweet. But what happens to a small boy when he snatches up that honeycomb?”
“Nothing, often enough,” Sharur answered with a grin. “Did you never steal honeycomb when you were a boy?”
“As often as I thought I could get away with it,” Sitawandas said, also smiling. “But sometimes my father was watching, or my grandfather, or a family ghost, though I knew it not. And when that was so, I ate no honeycomb, but got a beating instead, or ate of it and got a beating afterwards. And sometimes the honeycomb lay on the table and I spied my father or my grandfather standing close by, or a family ghost spoke to me of some other thing. And when that befell, I stole no honeycomb that day, for fear of the beating I would surely earn.”
“I do not understand,” Sharur said, though he did, only too well.
Sitawandas said, “You are not a fool, Sharur son of Ereshguna. You are not a blind man.” Sharur said nothing. Sitawandas sighed. “Very well. Let it be as you wish. I shall explain for you. Huzziyas the mighty wanax stands here for my father. If I gain these blades from you, he will chastise me. The gods of Alashkurru stand here for my grandfather, or for a family ghost. If I gain these blades from you, they may see without my knowing, and they will chastise me.”
There it was. Sharur could not fail to understand that, no matter how much he might wish to do so. “Why does the wanax, mighty Huzziyas, hate me?” he cried. “Why do the gods of Alashkurru hate me?”
Sitawandas set a hand on his thigh. “I do not think mighty Huzziyas the wanax hates you, Sharur son of Ereshguna. I think he would have these things of you, if only he could. But, just as a father chastises a small boy, so also may a grandfather chastise a father.”
“You say the gods of Alashkurru will chastise Huzziyas, the mighty wanax, if he gains the swords and spearheads with which to defeat his enemies?” Sharur asked. “Do your gods then hate Huzziyas?”
“Never let that be said,” Sitawandas exclaimed, and made a sign the Alashkurrut used when a man of Kudurru would have covered the eyes of his god’s amulet to keep the deity from seeing. “But the gods fear the wanax will walk the path you men of Gibil have taken. When the gods declare a thing shall not be, the man who stands against them will not stand long.”
That was true. Sharur knew it was true. Kimash the lugal ruled in Gibil not by opposing Engibil but by appeasing him, by bribing him to look the other way and flattering him so he thought his power was as great as it had ever been. No man could directly oppose a god.
Indirectly, though—“Suppose—merely suppose, mind— I were to lose some of these swords at such-and-such a place: suppose a donkey handler were careless, for instance, so they fell off the beast. And suppose again, a few days later, that you were careless enough to lose some ingots of copper at some other place. If I chanced to find them there, I do not think I would ever tell you about it.”
“No, eh?” Sitawandas licked his lips. He knew what Sharur was saying, sure enough. Sharur made himself stand calm, stand easy, as if, since they were discussing things that might not be, those things were unimportant. Sweat sprang out on Sitawandas’s forehead. He was tempted to do business by not seeming to do business; Sharur could see as much. But at last, convulsively, the Alashkurri merchant shook his head. “I cannot do this thing, Sharur son of Ereshguna. I dare not do this thing. Should my gods take notice of the doing—No.” He shook his head again.
“However you like.” Sharur spoke carelessly. “If you do not care what might be found in out-of-the-way places—”
“I do not care?” Sitawandas broke in. “Never let that be said, either.” He let out a long, shuddering sigh. “Treating with you here, man of Gibil, I understand better and better why the gods of my people have come to fear you so.”
“Is it so?” Sharur shrugged, outwardly careless still. “Men are always wise to fear gods. I cannot see how gods, with their power, are wise to fear men.”
“There—do you see? You can speak well, when you care to. But, when you care to, you can also speak in ways that frighten men and gods alike.” Sitawandas brushed the sweat from his face with a hairy forearm. “Most frighte
ning of all is that you have no notion how frightening you are.”
“Now you speak in riddles, Sitawandas son of Anawandas.” Sharur made as if to start re wrapping the weapons he had displayed, then paused one last time. “Are you sure you will not trade with me?”
“It is not that I will not.” Sitawandas paced back and forth across the stone-enclosed chamber. “It is that I dare not.”
“Then who may?” Sharur demanded. “Has Huzziyas, mighty wanax of Tuwanas, the power to do with me as his people and mine have done with each other in peace and for common profit for generations?”
Sitawandas said, “Sharur son of Ereshguna, I do not know.”
Even being allowed to go into Huzziyas’s palace and see the wanax took longer and cost more than Sharur had expected. The longer he stayed in Tuwanas doing no real business, the more he begrudged every bangle, every broken bit of silver he paid out for nothing better than living from day to day. Paying to gain access to a man who should have been glad to see him—who had been glad to see him the year before—galled him even more.
In the end, with patience and bribery, he did obtain an audience with Huzziyas. As he strode up to the massive doorway to the palace, he reflected that that was not the ideal name for the building. Just as Tuwanas was more nearly fortress than city, so the wanax’s residence was more nearly citadel than palace. The stone^ walls were strong and thick, the only windows slits better suited to archery than vision, the roof sheathed with slates on which fire would not catch.
Many of Huzziyas’s guardsmen carried bronze swords Sharur knew they had got from him. They wore copper greaves and breastplates and caps, and had their shields faced with copper, too. Copper was softer than bronze, but easily available here in Alashkurru. Huzziyas’s men used armor far more lavishly than did Sharur’s, or even Kimash’s guards back in Gibil.
Some of the guardsmen greeted Sharur like an old friend, remembering the fine weapons he and his family had brought to Tuwanas over the years. Some would not speak to him at all, remembering the admonitions of their gods. Two of the silent ones led him through the narrow halls of the palace and up to the high seat of the wanax.
Sharur thought he would have been likelier to meet Huzziyas in a roadside ambuscade than as wanax of Tuwanas. Tuwanas’ ruler below the gods was a tough fifty-five, gray thatching his hair and shaggy beard but his arms and chest still thick with muscle. Scars seamed those arms, and the bits of leg showing between tunic hem and boot top, and his rugged, big-nosed face. One of them barely missed his left eye.
After the bows and the polite phrases required of him were done, Sharur spoke as bluntly as he dared: “Mighty wanax, what have I done to offend, that you and yours will not buy what I have to sell even when buying it works more to your advantage than mine?”
“Understand, Sharur son of Ereshguna, you have not offended me personally,” Huzziyas replied. They both used the tongue of Kudurru, in which the wanax was fluent. “Had you offended me personally, you would not be treating with me now. You would be lying dead in a ditch, the dogs and the kites and the ravens quarreling over your bones.” He sounded more like a bandit chieftain than the ruler of a city, too.
“Do I understand you rightly, mighty wanax?” Sharur asked. “Do you say I have not offended? If I have not offended, what keeps you from trading for the fine wares I have brought from the land between the rivers?”
Huzziyas’s eyes glinted. “I did not say you had not offended, man of Kudurru, man of Gibil.” He made that last into an insult. “I said you had not offended me. Were I the only one who spoke for Tuwanas, we would trade, you and I. But you and your city have ...” He paused, looking for the right words.
“Angered your gods?” Sharur suggested bitterly.
“No.” The wanax shook his head. “You and your city have done something worse. You and your city have frightened the gods of Tuwanas, the gods of Alashkurru. Unless my ears mistake me, you and your city have frightened the gods of Kudurru, the gods of the land between the Yarmuk and the Diyala.”
“The gods of my country are no concern to you, mighty wanax,” Sharur said. “And I, mortal worm that I am, I should be of no concern to the gods of Tuwanas, the gods of Alashkurru. Neither I nor my city is a foe to Tuwanas, to Alashkurru. I want only to trade in peace and to return in peace to my city.” ,
Huzziyas looked now this way, now that. Sharur could not help looking this way and that, too. He saw nothing. He wondered what Huzziyas saw, or what he looked to see. The wanax said, “For myself, I am fain to believe you. My gods still fear you lie. They fear I will become like you, a liar before the gods.” .
He glanced around again. Now Sharur understood what he was doing: he was trying to find out whether his gods were paying close attention to him at this particular moment. Sharur smiled. If Huzziyas had not yet become what the gods of Alashkurru feared, he was on the edge of it. He wanted the swords and spearheads and knives Sharur could trade to him. Unless Sharur misread him as if he were an unfamiliar sign pressed into clay, he would not be overfussy about how he got them, either.
“I am not a liar before the gods,” Sharur declared, as he had to do. As he had so often on this journey, he declared his loyalty to Engibil. The more emphatic his declarations got, the less truth they seemed to hold.
“As I say, I am fain to believe you,” Huzziyas answered. “But if my gods will not believe, what can I do? My hands are tied.” His mouth twisted. His gods still held him in the palm of their hands. He wanted to slip free, but had not found a way. So Igigi’s father must have felt—he had been ensi to Engibil, but had not managed to become lugal, to rule in his own right
Casually, as if it had just occurred to him, Sharur proposed to Huzziyas what he had proposed to Sitawandas: trading as if by accident. The wanax of Tuwanas sucked in his breath. Sharur watched the torchlight sparkle in his eyes. Sitawandas had lacked the nerve to thwart the will of the gods of Alashkurru. Huzziyas, now ...
Huzziyas twitched on the high seat. He looked surprised, then grimaced, and then, as if he had given up resisting whatever new force filled him, his face went blank and still. Only his lips moved: “Man of Gibil, what you say cannot be. Man of Gibil, what you say shall not be. The gods of Tuwanas, the gods of Alashkurru have declared the men of Tuwanas, the men of Alashkurru shall not trade with you. The men of Tuwanas, the men of Alashkurru shall heed what their gods have declared. I, Huzziyas, mighty wanax of Tuwanas, have spoken.”
But it was not Huzziyas who had spoken, or not altogether Huzziyas. The hair on Sharur’s arms and at the back of his neck prickled up in awe. The wanax had been wise to wonder whether his gods were watching him. They were, and had kept him from breaking free of their will. Back in Gibil, Engibil had been content to let Igigi and his son and grandson rule for themselves alone. The gods here intended to stay unchallenged lords of this land.
“I am sorry, mighty wanax,” Sharur said softly.
Little by little, Huzziyas came back to himself. “It cannot be, Sharur son of Ereshguna,” he said, echoing the words the god had spoken through him. “You see why it cannot be.” The gesture he began might have been one of apology. If it was, he never finished it. He looked angry: the gods were still watching what he did, what he said. He sighed. He was not a lugal, free—even if only narrowly free—to chart his own course. With the gods of his country so watchful, he would never be a lugal.
Sharur did not care about that, not for its own sake. He cared about trading. “Mighty wanax, will your gods hearken to me if I speak to them face to face, to show them my wares and to show them I am not dangerous to them?” Huzziyas cocked his head to one side, listening to the gods of Tuwanas, to the gods of the Alashkurru Mountains. Sharur felt the power in the chamber, pressing down on him as if with great weight. Then it lifted. The wanax said, “They think you brave. They think you a fool. They will hear you.” After a moment, he seemed to speak for himself rather than the gods: “They will not listen to you.”
Like the
wanax, the gods of Tuwanas, the gods of Alashkurru dwelt in what was to Sharur’s eyes a citadel: a formidable tower of gray stone. He had visited that temple on his previous journeys to Tuwanas, to offer the gods incense in thanks for successful trade. He had jio success for which to thank them now, and did not know what to offer to gain one.
Huzziyas accompanied him to the temple. The wanax looked nervous. True, the gods spoke to him and through him. But they also knew he pined for the freedom Sharur and the rest of the men of Gibil enjoyed. The priests who served the temple and the temple alone looked at Huzziyas from the comers of their eyes. What had the gods said of him to them? By those glances, nothing good.
Tuwanas had no single tutelary deity who ruled its territory as his own, as did the cities of the land between the rivers. All the Alashkurri gods were present here, though one of them, Tarsiyas, spoke with the loudest voice. His stone statue was armored in copper and held a bronze sword, making him look as much like a bandit as any of the humans who reverenced him. .
Sharur bowed before that clumsy but fierce-looking image. “Tarsiyas, great god of this town, great god of this land, hear the words of Sharur son of Ereshguna, a foreigner, a man who has traveled long to come to Tuwanas, a man who wishes the folk of this land and the gods of this land only good.”
The stone lips of the statue moved. “Say what you will, Sharur son of Ereshguna. We have said we will hear you.” The words resounded inside Sharur’s head. He did not think he was hearing them with his ears, but directly with his mind, as if the god had set them there.
He said, “You are generous, great god.” Had Tarsiyas truly been generous, Sharur would not have had to beseech him so. But Sharur assumed the god was, like most gods of his acquaintance, vain. Like all gods, Tarsiyas was powerful. That was what made him a god. He had to be handled more carefully than a poisonous serpent, for he was more deadly. Sharur pointed to the sword in Tarsiyas’s right hand. “Is that not a fine blade, great god of this town, great god of this land?”
Turtledove, Harry - Novel 12 Page 7