With the door closed, it was gloomy and stuffy inside the hut. “Let us begin,” Munnabtu said forthrightly, and pulled her tunic off over her head. Her body, high-breasted, with a narrow waist and broad hips, had no flaw Sharur could find. She lay down and waited for him to join her.
He wasted no time in doing just that. Because he was a stranger to her, because she did not lie down beside him out of love, he expected her to be still and let him do what he would, as the Imhursaggi slave woman was in the habit of doing. But, as his hands roamed over her body, she sighed and pressed herself against him. Her mouth was eager against his.
“What Enimhursag has ordained here is sweet,” she murmured, and then he saw that, because the god had ordained it, she gave herself to it with her whole heart, as the Imhursaggi slave had on that one occasion when Sharur went into her in fulfillment of his vow.
Munnabtu sighed again when Sharur’s mouth, following his hands, moved down her belly toward the triangle of midnight hair between her legs. Presently, she gasped and arched her back and urged him on with more murmurs that were not quite words.
Her legs spread wide. He poised himself between them. When he entered her, he discovered she was truly a maiden. She stiffened and grimaced. “You hurt me,” she said, sudden fear in her eyes.
He drew back a little, though he wanted nothing so much as to go forward. “I will be gentle,” he promised, and returned to the barrier he would have to break.
Munnabtu grimaced again, and made as if to pull away from him. Then something in her face ... changed. Sharur could not have described it more precisely than that. For a moment, Enimhursag looked out at him through her eyes. In a voice not quite her own, she said, “Go on. All will be well.”
He almost pulled away then. Never had he imagined coupling with a woman in whom the god dwelt. But her thighs clasped his flanks; her legs caged him. Instead of pulling back, he did go on, and all was well. Herself again, so far as Sharur could tell, Munnabtu gasped when he fully fleshed himself in her, but she was no longer afraid. She gasped again, a little later, in a different way, and squeezed Sharur so tightly that he groaned in his pleasure and spurted forth his seed.
She was bleeding a little when he withdrew, but it did not trouble her. Pleasure suffused her features, pleasure and ... something else? Now Sharur could not be sure. “The god helped me,” she said. “Enimhursag helped me.” Was it altogether her voice? Again, Sharur could not be sure.
He agreed nonetheless: “Yes, the god helped you.” He could scarcely deny it.
She looked up at him from eyes shining under half- lowered eyelids. “And you helped me, man whom the great god ordered me to make glad. You made me glad in turn, though the god did not order you to do that. You could have taken your own pleasure without caring for mine.”
“A man has more pleasure when a woman shares it,” Sharur said. .
“Ah.” Munnabtu stretched. It was the sort of stretch that made him try to watch every part of her at once. It was intended to be that sort of stretch, for when it was done she sat up and asked, “Would you have more pleasure? Would you give more pleasure?”
Sharur’s manhood stirred. Knowing he could take her again, he said, “Are you sure? You have just had your maidenhead broken. You may take more pain than pleasure if we go again so soon.”
“I do not think that will be so, but if it is—” She shrugged. Her firm, dark-tipped breasts bounced only a little. “If it is, Enimhursag will make it right. The god watches over me.”
They began again. This time, Sharur could not tell whether or not Enimhursag aided Munnabtu. Whether the god of Imhursag aided the woman or not, she enjoyed the passage as much as he did, and he enjoyed it a great deal.
“Have I made you glad, as the god ordered me to do?” she asked, smiling up at him as they lay together covered in sweat, their bodies still joined. It was not the smile of a god. It was the smile of a woman, a woman who knew the answer before she asked the question.
“You have made me glad,” Sharur said. “You have also made me tired.” He took his weight off his elbows and flopped down limply onto her. She squawked and laughed and pushed him away.
She pulled on her tunic before he redonned his kilt. Picking up the blanket on which they had lain together, she went out of the hut. Sharur followed a moment later, as Munnabtu faced shouts from the village: “The stranger whom Enimhursag bade us make glad, is he made glad?”
“I am made glad,” Sharur said.
“He is made glad,” Munnabtu agreed, and displayed the blanket with the small bloodstain on it as proof. Everyone cheered.
Sharur would have been content—Sharur, in fact, would have been delighted—to stay for some time in the village near the border with Gibli land. That did not come to pass. After breakfast the next morning (bread, onions, beer, and wine: the peasants obeyed Enimhursag in every particular and went beyond his instructions in no particular), the god of the Imhursagut again spoke to him through Munnabtu’s father: “Gibli who warned me that Engibil runs mad in his city, you will now journey to my city, to see how I make ready to repay him for the many affronts and humiliations he has afforded me. This man whose mouth I use shall be your guide.”
“As you order, great god, so shall it be,” Sharur replied, bowing to the peasant and to the god who inhabited him. He did not want to go to Imhursag. He would have a harder time escaping Xmhursaggi soil from the central city than from regions near the border. But he dared not refuse Enimhursag.
He also wished Enimhursag had chosen a different guide; he would sooner have traveled with someone other than the father of the maiden he had deflowered the day before. But the peasant, whose name, he learned, was Aratta, still seemed content that he and Munnabtu fiad followed the god’s wishes.
When Enimhursag had withdrawn from him, Aratta said, “I will bring bread and onions. I will bring beer and wine. Thus you will be glad on the road to Imhursag.”
“Thus I will be glad on the road to Imhursag,” Sharur agreed resignedly. He had come to the conclusion that arguing with Imhursagut was pointless, especially when they were convinced they were acting as their god required them to act.
He and Aratta were far from the only travelers on the road to Imhursag. As the day wore along, more and more men joined them, so that they walked as if in the middle of a dust storm that never subsided. Some of the men carried clubs with heads of stone or, rarely, bronze. Some carried spears. Some carried bows and wore quivers on their backs. About every other man with a spear or club also bore a shield of wicker or leather.
“Imhursag arms for war,” Aratta said proudly. “Enim- hursag arms for war. How the Giblut will cower! How Engibil will tremble!”
“Imhursag arms for war,” Sharur echoed. By echoing one part of what his guide said, he let the man—and the god who might be, who probably was, listening through him—gain the impression he was echoing all parts of what Aratta said.
Gibil’s peasant levies were not much different from Imhursag’s peasant levies. Sharur did not think his people would cower. He did not think his god would tremble. He did hope Engibil would notice.
He came under the walls of Imhursag a little before noon the next day. What he saw outside the city convinced him that Engibil would indeed notice what Enimhursag purposed hurling against Gibil. Already a large encampment had sprung into being, an encampment that grew larger by the moment as men came in to it from the countryside and out to it from the city. With so many men moving busily through it, it put Sharur in mind of an anthill: a thought he carefully kept to himself.
Through Aratta, Enimhursag said, “See the might Imhursag brings to bear against the god run mad. See the might Imhursag brings to bear under the god who is the shepherd of his people.”
“I see,” Sharur said, and see he did. Not only was Enimhursag summoning the peasant levies who would, for the most part, spread over Gibil’s fields to rob and bum, he was also gathering together the men who would fight battles in fie van. Some were h
is priests, striding through the camp with bronze swords and bronze-headed axes, helmets of bronze or of bronze and leather on their shaved heads, corselets of bronze scales over leather protecting their vitals. Some were Imhursaggi nobles, also armored, who rode in four-wheeled chariots drawn by donkeys, from which they would ply the Giblut with spears and arrows.
“See the might a ruling god can bring to bear when he chooses,” Enimhursag boasted. “See the force that will blow away the Giblut as the wind blows away chaff at harvest time. See the fierce, bold warriors before whom Engibil shall tremble. See the strong, brave warriors who will course Engibil as the hounds course an antelope.”
“I see the might, great god,” Sharur said. “I see the force. I see the warriors.” He took a deep breath. “Truly it will be fine to have men who know and honor the strength and majesty of their god come into Gibil once more.”
Had Enimhursag peered into his heart at that moment to learn whether he spoke truth, all his hopes would have crashed to the ground like a mud-brick house collapsing when its roof got too heavy. But Enimhursag, as Sharur had thought he would, had b^pome convinced Sharur’s story of Gibil in disarray and Engibil mad was so because he thought that was how filings in the neighboring city should be, and no longer saw the need of examining the words of the Gibli who had come to Imhursag to bring him such wonderful news.
Through Aratta, Enimhursag said, “Come and be made known to my warriors. Let them seethe man who will rule Gibil in my name after they drive the raving Engibil from the temple his presence now profanes. Let them see the ensi through whom I shall rule as the great god of Gibil.”
“I obey,” Sharur said, which was a reply always acceptable to Enimhursag. Sharur obeyed with something less than a heart full of gladness; the more who knew him here, the more he was kept at the center of Imhursag’s army, the more difficult would his escape be.
But Aratta took his arm and led him through the milling hosts of Imhursag, crying out with Enimhursag’s authority in his voice to clear a path for the man who had caused the god to assemble his army. He urged Sharur up onto a small swell of ground and went up there with him, calling to the growing army: “Warriors, see the man who will rule Gibil in Enimhursag’s name after you drive the raving Engibil from the temple his presence now profanes. See the ensi through whom Enimhursag will rule as the great god of Gibil.’"
All the assembled warriors cheered. The peasant levies gaped at Sharur, as peasant levies throughout the land between the rivers habitually gaped on the rare occasions when they saw something new and unfamiliar. Enimhursag’s priests examined him with eyes as sharp as those of hunting hawks. And the nobles of Imhursag sized him up as a potential rival. He could see that in the calculating expressions they carefully hid—but not fast enough—when his gaze lit on them. He did a much better job of hiding his own smile. Even in Imhursag, some folk looked to their own advantage, not merely that of the god.
He knew he would have to say something, with so many men staring so expectantly. Taking a deep breath, he called out in a loud voice: “Imhursagut, may you gain what is rightfully yours in the coming war against Gibil. May Enimhursag gain all the revenge rightfully his in the coming fight against Engibil.” He suspected he and they had differing opinions on how much that was, but did not feel inclined to go into detail over the differences.
The Imhursagut took his words as he had hoped they would. The peasants cheered once more. The priests nodded in satisfaction; he took that satisfaction to mean Enimhursag was also satisfied with what he said. And the nobles looked as if they had bitten into plums not yet ripe enough to be sweet.
Through Aratta, Enimhursag cried, “We march against Gibil! We shall overthrow the Giblut! We shall cast down
Engibil! We shall liberate the city to the south from its mad god, who lets its men run wild.”
Now the cheers were loud and unending. When the god spoke, those he ruled agreed with and approved of what he said. It could hardly have been otherwise, as he helped guide them toward just such agreement and approval.
“In two days’ time, we march against Gibil!” Enimhur- sag shouted. The roar from his warriors left Sharur’s ears stunned and ringing, as if he had been caught in the center of a thunderstorm. The priests led the peasants in a hymn of praise to the might and wisdom and splendor of their god.
Giblut going off to war praised Engibil, too, and asked for his aid against their foes. But no Gibli since the time of Igigi—and probably since long before the time of Igigi— would ever have sung, as the Imhursagut sang, “With you, great god, we can do anything. Without you, great god, we can do nothing.” Giblut took too much pride—aye, and too much pleasure, too—in doing things for themselves to think they were impotent when they did not lean on their god as a feeble old man leaned on his stick.
“When we cross into Gibil, the Giblut shall flee before us,” Enimhursag said to Sharur. “When we cross into Gibil, Engibil shall not stand against us.”
“So you have said, great god,” Sharur replied.
“So I have said,” Enimhursag replied complacently. “So shall it be, for I, a god, have said it.” He took Sharur’s silence for agreement.
In two days’ time, the army of Imhursag marched on Gibil. Sharur marched at its head, still accompanied by Aratta, through whom Enimhursag had chosen to speak for the time being. Behind him came the nobles in their slow, heavy chariots and the warrior-priests with their armor and axes and swords. Behind them, eating their dust, trudged the peasant levies who made up the bulk of the army.
More peasants joined Imhursag’s army as it moved southwards. Some came in from the west, some from the east, and some, breathless with exertion, caught up with the host from behind, from out of the north. “Never have we gone to war with so great a host,” Enimhursag declared through Aratta’s lips. “Never have we gone to war with so valiant a host.”
“They are as many as the ears of barley nodding in the fields,” Sharur said, like any wise merchant quick to agree with the one in whose company he found himself. “Surely they will prove as valiant in battle as so many lions.” Aratta’s lips shaped a smile. It was not quite a man’s smile. It was the god’s smile, written on the flesh of a man. Seeing it made Sharur’s own flesh creep. Despite the effort it took, he smiled back.
He looked back over his shoulder at Imhursag’s army. Enimhursag had believed him and acted on that belief even more strongly and quickly than he had hoped. Uppermost in his mind was the question of how he would escape the army when the time came. He felt like a hare in a pot, waiting in the market to be sold as someone’s supper.
“Are they not splendid?” Enimhursag said. “Are they not magnificent? Are they not formidably armed and equipped?” The god paused, looking at Sharur through Aratta’s eyes. Such moments always made Sharur fight to hold in his fear: would Enimhursag be content to look at him, or would the god look into him as well? This time, Enimhursag was looking at him, no more. The god went on, “You, Gibli, are not formidably armed.”
“That is so.” Sharur touched the bronze knife that hung on his belt. “I have no other weapon besides this.”
“This should not be,” Enimhursag said. A moment later, one of his warriors came trotting forward and pressed intb Sharur’s hands a bronze-headed mace. Enimhursag went on, “Now you have a proper weapon with which to chastise the wild folk and mad god of your city.”
“Great god, you are generous. You are forethoughtful. You leave me in your debt.” Sharur would have preferred a sword. If Enimhursag had chosen to give him a mace, though, he would take it without complaint. It was a better weapon than he had had before.
“I do indeed leave you in my debt,” the god said. “When Gibil is mine, you shall repay me. When Gibil is mine, Gibil shall repay me. Gibil has owed me for long, for long.”
Aratta’s eyes blazed. Sharur looked down at the ground. What he felt now was awe, not fear. Seeing the power of the god in the man reminded him he was truly a wild Gibil madman to pl
ay this game.
Enimhursag’s army moved no more swiftly than its slowest soldiers. The god halted the host well before sunset, too, so that his men might encamp far enough from the border to keep the Giblut from noticing anything out of the ordinary. That was sound generalship of the most elementary sort. Sharur was disappointed to find the most elementary sound generalship from Enimhursag.
Once in camp, Imhursag’s peasant levies acted as the peasant levies of Gibil would have acted: they made themselves as comfortable as they could, got food and drink, and then either fell asleep or sat around the fires talking and singing.
The nobles slept in pavilions of wool and linen; slaves fanned them to keep them cool in the warm night. A few did not sleep, but gathered round Sharur, questioning him about the roads down toward Gibil and about the opposition they might face. “The Giblut have invented nothing new since we faced them last, have they?” one of the nobles asked anxiously. “I never did see such people for inventing new things.”
“No, they have no new weapons,”' Sharur answered truthfully. The noble let out a sigh of relief.
One of Enimhursag’s shaven-headed priests gave the fellow a reproving look. “The ingenuity of the Giblut is of no account. They are only men, toying with the things of men. We have the power of the god with us.”
“Do not sneer at the things of men,” the noble returned. “The grandfather of my grandfather died by the sword in a war against Gibil, back in the days when the Giblut had such things of men and we had them not.”
“We have them now,” the priest said. “Enimhursag has ordained that we should have them, and so we do.”
He missed the point entirely. The noble rolled his eyes, understanding that he missed the point entirely. But most of the other nobles, all the other priests, and Aratta in whom Enimhursag was dwelling nodded in approval at the priest’s words. Sharur had noted before that Imhursagut thought more slowly than Giblut, not least because their god was doing part of their thinking for them. He saw it again here.
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