Turtledove, Harry - Novel 12

by Between the Rivers (v2. 1)

  “It is a fine blade,” Tarsiyas agreed. “It is better than the blade I bore before. Huzziyas the wanax gave it to me.” The stone eyes of the statue fixed Huzziyas with a stare Sharur was glad to see aimed at someone other than himself.

  “I delight in giving the gods rich presents,” Huzziyas said. Sharur almost burst out laughing. The wanax sounded like Kimash the lugal, and no doubt wished his hypocrisy were as successful as Kimash’s.

  “Tarsiyas, great god of this town, great god of this land, do you know whence this sword first came?” Sharur asked.

  “I do not, nor care,” the god replied. “Huzziyas gained it; Huzziyas gave it. It is enough. I am well pleased.”

  Again, Sharur fought to keep his face straight. Tarsiyas and the other gods of the Alashkurru Mountains might work to keep the men of Alashkurru under their rule, but they were no less greedy about receiving presents from those men than was Engibil, back in the land between the rivers. Sharur said, “Great god of this town, great god of this land, the sword with which you are well pleased, with which I am glad you are well pleased, is a sword the smiths of the city of Gibil have made, a sword the men of Gibil traded to Huzziyas the mighty wanax. And now you say—”

  He got no further than that. His head filled with a roar as of a thousand wild beasts of a hundred different kinds all bellowing at once. The din in Huzziyas’s head must have been worse; he groaned and clapped his hands to his ears. At last, the god’s cry of rage boiled back down to words the two mortals could understand: ‘‘Wretch! Fool! You gave me a gift from the hands of men who set their gods at naught?”

  “We do not set our gods at naught,” Sharur insisted stubbornly.

  And Huzziyas added, “Tarsiyas, great god of this town, great god of this land, my master, when I gave you this sword, you had not said you did not want such work. No other god said he did not want such work. No other goddess said she did not want such work. The work being proper for giving, I gave with both hands. I did not stint. I gave of the finest I had.”

  Tarsiyas’s voice swelled to an unintelligible shout of fury once more. The god clasped the sword in both stone hands and, in a motion too quick for Sharur’s eyes to follow, broke it over his stone knee. He hurled both pieces of the blade away from him; they clanged off stone with bell-like notes.

  ‘‘I reject this!” he cried, as those clatterings drew priests who stared in wonder and terror at his unwonted activity.

  “I reject all gifts from Gibil. Let them be taken from my treasury. Let those of metal be melted. Let those not of metal be broken. I have spoken. As I have spoken, it shall be. I, a god, will it.”

  This was worse than anything Sharur had imagined. He wished he had never come to the temple. “Tarsiyas, great god of this town, great god of this land, may I speak?” he asked.

  “Speak,” the god said, an earthquake rumble of doom in his voice. “Tell your lies.”

  “I tell no lies, great god of this town, great god of this land,” Sharur said. “The gift Huzziyas the mighty wanax set in your hand pleased you. If the gift be good, how can the giver who gave it with both hands, who gave it with open heart, be wicked? How can the smiths who made it with clever eye, with skilled fingers, be wicked?”

  “They made it of themselves, with no thought for the gods,” Tarsiyas replied.

  “Smithery has no god, not yet; it is too young,” Sharur said. “This is so in Kudurru, and it is so here.”

  Huzziyas gave him a horrible look. After a moment, he understood why: the gods of Alashkurru were liable to try to forbid their men from working in metal at all. But that did not seem to be Tarsiyas’s most urgent concern. The god said, “You take no thought for the gods your land does have.”

  “That is not so,” Sharur insisted. “The weavers of fine cloth reverence the goddess of the loom and the god of dyeing. The winemakers worship Aglibabu, who makes dates become a brew to gladden the heart. The—”

  “They are the small gods,” Tarsiyas said. Scorn filled the divine voice. “Even here, they have let themselves become men’s servants as much as men’s masters. But you men of Gibil would reduce your great gods to small gods, your small gods to demons, your demons to ghosts that chitter and flitter and are in a generation forgotten. The riches you gain in this world tempt you to forget the other world. You shall lead no one here astray. You shall lead no one here away from the path of the gods. As I have spoken, it shall be. I, a god, will it.”

  “But—” Sharur began.

  Huzziyas took him by the arm and pulled him away from Tarsiyas’s image. “Come,” the wanax said. “You have made trouble enough already.” Trouble for himself, his glare said he meant. With his gods watching him so closely, how could he escape them, as the men of Gibil had begun to do? But Sharur had troubles of his own. Without the profits from this caravan, how was he to pay NingaTs bride-price?

  3

  Donkeys brayed and complained. They’d got used to the soft life of the stables of Tuwanas, with nothing to do but eat and sleep. Now they had packs on their backs once more, and handlers making them go places. The world seemed as unjust to them as it did to Sharur.

  “We go on,” he insisted. Bowing to his will, the caravan headed west along the narrow, winding path toward the next fortresslike town of Alashkurru.

  Harharu coughed. “Master merchant’s son, what you do now is brave. What you do now is bold. What you do now—is it not also foolish? You have said the god of this place told you that you would get nothing in Alashkurru. The god of this place told you that we would get nothing in Alashkurru. Would you openly fight the god?”

  “Donkeymaster, I would not,” Sharur said. “I am not a fool: if all the gods of this place oppose us, we have no hope of profit here.” And I have scant hope of making Ningal my wife. But that was not Harharu’s concern. Aloud, Sharur continued, “The hand of every town in Alashkurru, though, is raised against every other. If it were not so, they would not build as they do here. Where the men are in discord, will the gods agree?”

  “Ah,” Harharu said, and bowed. “Now I see what is in your mind. You think that, while we gain nothing in Tuwanas, while Huzziyas will not treat with us, while Tarsiyas speaks harshly against us, some other town, some other wanax, some other god may prove more hospitable?”

  “That is what is in my mind, yes,” Sharur agreed.

  “Truly you are your father’s son,” Harharu said, and now Sharur bowed to him.

  As they made their slow way up to the top of the hills separating the valley Tuwanas dominated from the next one deeper into the mountain country, they met a party of eight or ten Alashkurrut coming the other way. The men of Alash- kurru were armed and armored like Huzziyas’s guards. They led a few donkeys themselves, all the animals far more heavily burdened than those of Sharur’s caravan.

  At Mushezib’s sharp orders, the caravan guards rushed forward to show the Alashkurrut they were ready to fight at need. Because they were ready to fight, they did not have to fight. The... bandits, Sharur supposed, did nothing but nod and tramp on past them.

  Seen from the hills, the fortified town of Zalpuwas looked even more formidable than Tuwanas had. As the caravan approached the fortress, peasants came running from the fields to stare and point and jabber. They found the men of Kudurru, who wore clothes different from theirs and curled their beards, as funny as a troupe of mountebanks with trained dogs and monkeys.

  Looking to sow goodwill, Sharur passed out bracelets and bangles. He also opened a small jar of date wine and let that pass from hand to hand among the peasants. Everyone who got it took a small swig before passing it on to whoever stood next to him till it was empty. Sharur had been sure it would happen so. In Gibil, someone would have been greedy and gulped down half the jar. He was sure of that, too.

  In Gibil, men thought more of themselves and less of the gods than they did here. Sharur chose not to dwell on that point.

  The woman who did finally empty the jar returned it to him, saying with a smile, �
��We have never seen a caravan- master so generous before.” Her stance and the sparkle in her eye suggested that, did he choose to be a little more generous, she might give him something in return.

  “We trade with all,” Sharur declared loudly, and many of the peasants exclaimed to hear him speak in their language. “We trade great for great; we also trade small for small.” None of the gods of Alashkurru had forbidden their people from trading food and donkey fodder for his trinkets, for which he was duly grateful.

  Surrounded by an excited crowd of peasants, the caravan passed through the stone huts ringing the stout walls of Zalpuwas and up to the gateway into the fortress. One of the guards said, “Is it Sharur son of Ereshguna, out of Gibil in the land between the rivers?” His voice broke in surprise, . as if he were a youth rather than a solid warrior with the first threads of gray in his beard.

  “Yes, it is I, Malatyas son of Lukkas,” Sharur replied. “I pray that your mighty wanax, Ramsayas son of Radas, flourishes like the wheat in your fields. I pray that he flourishes like the apple trees in your orchards. I have many fine things to trade with him, or with the merchants who are his servants: swords and spearheads and knives and medicines and—”

  He broke off. Malatyas was paying no attention to his polished sales pitch. The gate guard burst out, “Are you not come from Tuwanas, Sharur son of Ereshguna?”

  “Yes,” Sharur admitted.

  “And when you were there,” Malatyas persisted, “the gods did not warn you to come no farther into the mountains of Alashkurru?”

  “They did not,” he said truthfully. Tarsiyas had warned him of many things, but not of that Perhaps the god and his fellows had assumed Sharur would be so downhearted, he would not continue. They were not his gods. They did not know him well. In reasonable tones, he went on, “Had the gods forbidden it, how could I be here now?”

  “It is a puzzlement.” To prove how great a puzzlement it was, Malatyas scratched his bushy head. “We were certain that—”

  “Since I am here, since I have goods the mighty wanax Ramsayas will surely covet, may I enter great Zalpuwas?” Sharur broke in.

  As had the guards back at Tuwanas, Malatyas and his comrades plainly wanted to forbid the caravan from going into their town. As had those guards, these found themselves unable. “The mighty wanax will attend to you according to his wishes,’’ Malatyas said, which sounded more like warning than welcome. But he stood aside and let Sharur and his companions pass into Zalpuwas.

  Being deeper in among the mountains than Tuwanas, Zalpuwas received visitors less often, and was not so well prepared to accommodate them. The couple of inns were small and dingy and dark, with sour straw in the stables. Their sole virtue, in Sharur’s eyes, was that their proprietors made no fuss about accepting beads and bangles and broken bits of silver to house the caravan.

  “The Alashkurri gods may be against us,” Mushezib said, sipping beer made bitter with the flowering head of some plant that grew in the valley, “but the innkeepers aren’t so fussy.”

  “Are you surprised?” Sharur answered. “When have you ever heard of a god who would bother taking notice of an innkeeper?” Mushezib’s laugh sprayed beer over the top of the table where, the two men of Kudurru sat.

  But Sharur’s joke soon turned as bitter as the local beer to him, for none of the copper merchants of Zalpuwas took notice of him or of his caravan. When he went to greet men with whom he had traded on previous journeys, their doors were closed against him as if they had never heard his name. He sent word to Ramsayas son of Radas, requesting an audience. No word came back from the wanax.

  Finally, in growing desperation, Sharur sent Ramsayas not word but a sword, one of the finest swords he had brought from Gibil. Where nothing else had, that did prompt the wanax to send a servant to seek out Sharur. Sharur bowed to the servant as he might have to the master, saying, “Tell the mighty wanax I am honored that he deigns to notice me.”

  “Ramsayas son of Radas, mighty wanax of Zalpuwas, notices everything and everyone that passes inside these walls,” the servant answered.

  “Of this I am truly glad,” Sharur said. ‘‘Does he likewise notice everything that passes outside the walls of his fortress?” '

  “No, he does not claim that,” the servant said. ‘‘He is not a god, to have so wide a purview, only a servant of the gods.”

  “I thought as much,” Sharur replied. “He should know that I sent him the sword in token of what he does not see: other wanakes in other valleys arming themselves and their retainers with such weapons. If he would not be left behind his neighbors, he might think on the wisdom of gaining more such blades.” . .

  The servant’s mouth fell open. “I cannot believe other wanakes would—” He checked himself. “But who knows into what depravity men of other valleys might sink?’ ’ After coughing a couple of times, he went on, “I shall take what you say to Ramsayas son of Radas. Let his judgment, not mine, rule here.”

  Ramsayas sent for Sharur the very next day.

  Sharur bowed before the wanax of Zalpuwas as he might have done before Kimash the lugal of Gibil. “I am honored, Ramsayas son of Radas, that you deign to notice me,” he said as he straightened.

  Ramsayas grunted. Actually, he put Sharur more in mind of Mushezib than of Kimash: he was a fighter, first, last, and always. He had a narrow, forward-thrusting face with a nose hooked like a hawk’s beak and almost as sharp. The way he leaned toward Sharur in the tall chair on which he sat emphasized that seeming inclination to attack.

  ‘‘Oh, you are noticed, Sharur son of Ereshguna. Rest assured, you are noticed,” he said. His voice had a harsh rasp to it; too much shouting, perhaps, on too many raids against too many nearby valleys. “Now, what is this you say about my neighbors buying blades from you?”

  “I said nothing about their buying such swords from me, mighty wanax,” Sharur replied, though that was the impression he had wanted to leave with Ramsayas’s servant. “I said they are acquiring them. Gibil is not the only city of Kudurru trading with the many valleys, the many fortresses, of Alashkurru, but our blades—and our other goods of all sorts, I make haste to add—are among the finest to be had. You have dealt with me; likewise, you have dealt with my father. You know these words I say to you are true.”

  “I have dealt with you. Likewise, I have dealt with your father.” Ramsayas ran his tongue over his lips. “That was a splendid sword you sent me.”

  Sharur bowed. “A wanax deserves nothing less than a splendid sword.”

  “And yet, you are of Gibil.” Like Huzziyas before him, Ramsayas seemed of two minds. Part of him plainly wanted what Sharur had brought up to Alashkurru from the land between the rivers. That was the part Sharur and his father and other men of Gibil had always seen when they dealt with the Alashkurrut. The rest of Ramsayas, though, the rest was afraid.

  “Yes, I am of Gibil,” Sharur agreed. “I was likewise of Gibil when last year I also came here to trade. You were glad to see me then, Ramsayas son of Radas. You were glad to trade with me. You were glad to buy from me.” He knew he sounded bitter. He had reason to be bitter. He was bitter.

  Ramsayas’s fierce eyes went up to the timbers of the ceiling. Having so much fine timber, the men of Alashkurru often used it in what struck Sharur as profligate style. He had even seen, in some valleys deeper into the mountains than that of Zalpuwas, whole buildings made of wood. Ramsayas’s eyes flashed past Sharur to the far wall of the audience chamber. Sharur realized he had succeeded in embarrassing the wanax. That might bring him profit, or might bring only trouble if embarrassment turned to anger.

  To his surprise, embarrassment turned to regret. “Yes, I was glad to see you then, Sharur son of Ereshguna,” Ram- sayas said with a sigh. “Yes, I was glad to trade with you. Yes, I was glad to buy from you.” Suddenly, the wanax looked more hunted than hunter. His hoarse voice dropped to a whisper. “As a man, I am still glad to see you. But I am more than merely a man. I am a man who obeys his gods. I may not tra
de with you. I may not buy from you. So my gods have ordered. My men obey me when we war against our neighbors. I obey the gods.’ ’

  “But we “are not at war, you and I!” Sharur cried.

  “No. This is so,” Ramsayas said. “But you Giblut, you are at war with the gods of Alashkurru, I fear. Do I understand rightly that you are at war with the gods of Kudurru as well?”

  “No,” Sharur said. “I say ten times, a hundred times, a thousand times, no. Engibil is my god. I and all of Gibil worship him.”

  “But he does not rule you,” Ramsayas said, and Sharur had no reply. “That is at the heart of why the gods of this town, the gods of this land, fear you and will not let you trade with us. They do not want the men of Alashkurru to become as the Giblut are.”

  “So I have seen, though I tell you, mighty wanax, this fear is groundless,” Sharur said. “I worship my god. I fear my god.” That was certainly true. The merchant went on, “And I would not, I do not, try to seduce you away from—”

  “No,” Ramsayas broke in. “I will not hear you.” To prove he would not hear Sharur, he stuck his forefingers into his ears, so that he looked rather like a three-year-old refusing to hear what its father told it.

  Back in Tuwanas, Huzziyas had quivered with eagerness for a chance to get around his gods and trade with Sharur. He would have disobeyed them had they not forced obedience upon him. They had won this battle. Sharur did not think they would win the war in Tuwanas, not if Huzziyas stayed on as wanax there and was not overthrown. Huzziyas wanted, panted, to be a lugal, or whatever the Alashkurrut would call a lugal: a man who ruled in his own right. He had not been able to take this chance to do it. He would surely try again. Sharur guessed he would succeed, sooner or later.

  Ramsay as—unfortunately, from Sharur’s point of view— was different. Like Huzziyas, he was a rough, strong man. Like Huzziyas, he would have liked to trade with Sharur for the fine weapons the man of Gibil had brought. But unlike Huzziyas, he was not willing to risk defying or deceiving the gods to get what he wanted. He was either content with the arrangement he and his forebears had long known or simply afraid to try to change it.