Turtledove, Harry - Novel 12

by Between the Rivers (v2. 1)

  “Perhaps,” Sharur said, “you would be wise, Hab... ah, Burrapi, not to make your return to this encampment widely known. You might do best to stick close to our fire here.”

  “Now this is good advice, prudent advice, and I shall take it,” Habbazu said. “A thief oftentimes needs to move in secret. A thief frequently needs to hide himself in plain sight.”

  “What if the men of Kimash the lugal come searching for you again?” asked Tupsharru, who was inclined to worry and to borrow trouble.

  “I am now forewarned against the men of Kimash the lugal,” Habbazu said. “Let them come searching for me again. Again, they shall not find me.”

  “The master thief does not presume to tell us how to get the best price for an ingot of bronze or a pot of date wine of high-medium grade,” Ereshguna said to Tupsharru. “I, for my part, shall not presume to instruct him how best to manage his own affairs.”

  “I understand, Father,” Sharur’s younger brother said, and hung his head.

  “Has Engibil been active here along the border since Burrapi and I went down to the city of Gibil?” Sharur asked hopefully: the more active along the border the god was, the less interest he would have had in looking into his temple when Habbazu robbed it, and the less interest he would have had in looking into it after Habbazu robbed it as well.

  Ereshguna and Tupsharru both nodded, which brought a smile not only to Sharur’s face but also to Habbazu’s. Ereshguna said, “Engibil has been active indeed. Yesterday morning, he and Enimhursag began screaming insults at each other. They were both so loud and fierce, we thought they would come to blows themselves rather than leaving it to the men of their cities to fight it out. In the end, though, they took it no further than screams, and I am just as well pleased at that.”

  “Why?” Sharur said. “If Engibil slew Enimhursag, we would not have to endure wars with the Imhursagut every generation.”

  “If that happened, you would be right,” Ereshguna agreed. “But what if Enimhursag slew Engibil? We do not know what would happen if the two gods did battle each other, and I am satisfied to remain ignorant.”

  Sharur wondered if Gibil might not be better off were Engibil to be slain. Could a city go on with only a lugal and no indwelling god at all? No city in the land between the rivers had ever done such a thing. No city or town or fortress anywhere in the world had ever done such a thing, so far as Sharur knew. Maybe no one anywhere in the world had ever imagined such a thing before.

  Of itself, his right hand slid down to cover the eyes of the amulet to Engibil. The god probably would not pick this moment to examine his thoughts. But he wanted to make as sure of that as he could. Having Engibil learn what he was thinking now would be ... disastrous wasn’t nearly a strong enough word.

  “On this matter, I am also just as well pleased not to know,” Habbazu said. “Too much power, too much danger, were god to fight god straight up.”

  Tupsharru said, “Maybe that’s why gods made men in the first place—to give them tools with which they could challenge each other without meeting face to face.”

  “No one knows why the gods made men in the first place,” Ereshguna said. “Priests do not know. Sages do not know. Scribes do not know. Merchants do not know. I have heard it said that even the gods do not know, or do not remember. Whether this be so or not”—his craggy features crinkled into a smile—“I do not know.”

  “My brother’s idea makes as much sense as any I have heard,” Sharur said. “It makes more sense than most I have heard.”

  “This does not prove it is true.” Ereshguna and Habbazu spoke together. Master merchant and master thief looked at each other in some surprise, then started to laugh.

  Ereshguna said, “Here we are, two older men, trying to restrain the enthusiasm of younger men. When we were younger men, the older men would try to restrain us.”

  “Even so,” Habbazu said. “And when your two fine sons are older men, they, too, will try to restrain the enthusiasms of the young.”

  He and Ereshguna laughed again. Sharur and Tupsharru exchanged indignant glances. Sharur did not think that,

  when he grew older, he would try to hold back those younger than himself. He wondered if his father, when a young man, had also doubted he would do any such thing. Looking over at Ereshguna, Sharur thought he probably had had those doubts. Despite them, Ereshguna had changed. Maybe that meant Sharur would change, too. He hoped not, but maybe it did.

  Brazen trumpets roused the Giblut the next morning. Ram’s-horn trumpets roused the Imhursagut—a different sort of braying. Along with those harsh blasts from the Imhursaggi camp came the cries of Enimhursag himself, easily audible across the space between the two encampments: “Rouse, men of Imhursag! Today I lead you to victory over the liars and cheats of Gibil!”

  Sharur smiled to hear the outrage in the god of Imhursag’s voice. Much of that outrage, he knew, was aimed straight at him. He had lied to Enimhursag, saying Engibil had run mad and the Giblut wanted a new divine overlord. He had cheated Enimhursag, getting him to invade the land of Gibil on those false pretenses.

  Engibil’s voice was nowhere to be heard. Kimash’s bronze-lunged heralds cried out the lugal’s orders: “Smiths and scribes and merchants to the front! As we fought before, so shall we fight again.”

  On went the armor of bronze scales over leather. On went the helmet, of similar design. Wearing both, Sharur felt as if he had been thrown into one of Etimgalabzu’s furnaces. Sweat poured off him, a river of sweat, a river that seemed to flow as powerfully as the Yarmuk. ,

  “Forward the Giblut!” Kimash shouted. The army he led echoed his war cry: “Forward the Giblut!”

  “Enimhursag!” the warriors of Imhursag shouted back. “Enimhursag!” As he had done on the first day of the fighting, the god of the Imhursagut towered over his men, huge, menacing—and, Sharur thought, less dangerous than he appeared. Along with the rest of the Giblut, he jeered at Enimhursag and reviled him.

  Axles squealing, the donkey-drawn chariots of the Giblut began to maneuver against those of Imhursag. Kimash had more chariots with him than did the Imhursagut. Before long, Sharur was sure, the elite archers of his home city would overpower their foes and pour shafts into the opposing army from the flank. If it had happened so in the earlier battle, it was likely to happen again in this one.

  But, he soon discovered, even Enimhursag, the champion of the old in all ways, did not always precisely repeat himself. The god of Imhursag could not advance beyond the frontmost line of his warriors. But that did not mean, as it had meant in the earlier battle, that he could exert no power beyond the frontmost line of his warriors.

  Enimhursag stooped alongside a tiny canal only a couple of cubits wide. When he rose, his enormous hands were full of mud. As a small boy might have done, he shaped the mud into a ball—but this ball was more than half as big around as a man was tall. The god flung it at a Gibli chariot.

  It hit the donkeys and knocked them kicking. The chariot itself flipped over, spilling the archers out into the dirt. Enimhursag stooped, rose, and shaped another ball of mud. He aimed and let fly.

  This time, the mudball squarely struck a chariot. The car shattered. The donkeys ran wild, braying their terror. One of the men who had been in the chariot somehow staggered to his feet. The others did not move.

  The Imhursagut cheered themselves hoarse. Enimhursag methodically began to form still another ball of mud. Advancing beside Sharur, Ereshguna said, “The god of the Imhursagut has found something dangerous to do. But he has not found out how to do it in the most dangerous way.”

  As if thinking along with Ereshguna, Kimash cried, “Close with them! Let us meet the Imhursagut sword to sword, mace to mace, body to body! Close with them! Forward the Giblut!”

  Forward the Giblut went, at a trot. Enimhursag threw at another chariot and missed. His curses were enormous. He threw again, and smashed a car to kindling. No Giblut staggered from that wreck.

  Enimhursag needed lon
ger to realize he was making a mistake than had either Ereshguna or Kimash the lugal. The Gibli army had almost closed with the Imhursaggi force before the god threw the first mudball into that crowded mass of men. It bowled over a dozen, maybe more, not far from Sharur. Some of them could still scream. Some would be forever silent. The men who were not hurt ran on, toward the Imhursagut.

  Enimhursag let fly with yet another missile. smashed down another double handful of men. By then, though, the front ranks of the Giblut, Sharur among them, crashed into the armored nobles and priests and traders at the head of the Imhursaggi force. All the Giblut hurled themselves forward with desperate energy—the sooner they mingled with the Imhursagut, the sooner the god of Imhursag would have to leave off throwing balls of mud at them for fear of hitting his own men.

  An Imhursaggi priest, crying out his god’s name, swung his ax at Sharur as if he intended chopping down a date palm. Sharur had to skip back; he had no hope of beating that stroke aside. “Enimhursag is my protector!” the priest shouted, drawing back the ax to strike again.

  Before he could swing it a second time, Sharur slashed at him. The priest’s armor turned the first swordstroke. The next, which was aimed at his neck, he had to block with the handle of his ax.

  Then a wounded Imhursaggi stumbled into him from the side, throwing him off balance. Sharur’s blade bit deep. Blood filled the priest’s beard. He toppled with a groan, the ax falling from nerveless fingers. “Enimhursag does not protect you well enough,” Sharur said. “Enimhursag does not protect Imhursag or the Imhursagut well enough.”

  If Engibil was on the battlefield, if Engibil was even watching the battlefield, he gave no sign of it. If anyone was going to protect the men of Gibil, they themselves had to do it. And so they did, crying out Kimash’s name—and also Engibil’s—as they smashed into and through the Imhursagut.

  Many men from Sharur’s city—smiths and scribes and merchants—instead of fleeing from Enimhursag, made straight for him. They stabbed and slashed at his feet and hacked away at his ankles with axes. Ichor poured from the wounds they made.

  The god of Imhursag bellowed in rage and pain. He stomped several Giblut into the dirt. In so doing, though, he also stomped into the dirt several of his own priests. His most devoted followers did their best to place their own bodies between the god they loved and the ferocious Giblut. Destroying the priests in that way seemed to wound Enimhursag as sorely as anything the men of Gibil could do to him.

  Sharur, too, fought his way toward Enimhursag. He knew the stroke he wanted to deliver against the god who ruled the city rival to his own. “The back of the heel,” he muttered. If he could cut through the tendon there, Enimhursag would fall, no matter how large he was. He would fall the harder, indeed, for being so large.

  An Imhursaggi stood close by Enimhursag’s ankle. He blocked the way against Sharur—or he did until Dimgalabzu’s ax slammed through his armor and his ribs and crumpled him to the ground. “I thank you, father of my intended,” Sharur shouted, and hewed at the tendon that went up the back of Enimhursag’s enormous leg.

  Enimhursag roared like a lion. He bellowed like a bull. His ichor, smelling of thunderstorms, splashed onto Sharur. It was hot, but it did not bum. Instead, it made him tingle and quiver all over. Under his helmet, his hair stood on end. It was indeed as if lightning had struck close by.

  But the god of Imhursag did not topple. The god of Imhursag did not fall. Sharer was only a mortal man, and had not the strength to cut that mighty tendon through and through. The wound pained Enimhursag. It failed to cripple him.

  “Let me have a try!” Dimgalabzu cried, and swung his ax as Sharur had swung his sword.

  Enimhursag roared again. This time, Sharur thought he heard fear along with pain and fury. The Giblut were tiny next to the tremendous self he had chosen, but they had found a way of hurting him that might do real harm. He glared down at Sharur and Dimgalabzu, hate suffusing his face.

  “Go back to your own city!” Sharur shouted. “Go back to your own city, and leave us Giblut alone!” He chopped at the god’s heel tendon again.

  Had Enimhursag kept his wits about him, he could have crushed Sharur and Dimgalabzu under his foot, as he had crushed other Giblut. But he might also have crushed men of his own city—men who, like the fallen priest, still strove to protect him. And the realization that the Giblut truly might endanger him rather than being only nuisances must have struck terror into his outsized heart.

  Instead of trampling the men who tormented him, the god turned and, in a few great strides, withdrew from the battlefield. Sharur sent up a cry of exultant joy: “Enimhursag flees!”

  “Enimhursag flees!” Dimgalabzu echoed with a great bass shout. In a moment, all the Giblut took up the cry: “Enimhursag flees! Enimhursag flees!”

  “Enimhursag flees!” The Imhursagut shouted it, too. In their voices was no exultation. Horror choked their cries. . Dismay filled them. Fear made them quaver. “Enimhursag flees!” Perhaps the Imhursagut had not imagined such a disaster could befall them. When it did, they had none of the self-reliance the Giblut might have possessed with which to withstand it. ,

  “Enimhursag flees!” The Imhursaggi line wavered as courage drained from more and more of the Imhursagut. If their god would not defeat the men of Gibil, how were they to do so without his aid? Most of them saw no answer to the riddle. Most of them ran away, too, howling their terror.

  Here and there, a man or a clump of men still stood boldly. Here and there, a few brave warriors tried to stem the rout. The Giblut swarmed over them and cut them down. Even as Sharur slew a man of that forlorn rear guard, he knew a moment’s sorrow. The men who stood, the men who fought on after their god abandoned them, were the men most like those of Gibil, the men most fully themselves and least tiny reflections of Enimhursag.

  He and the men of his city rolled over those partly emancipated Imhursagut and after the warriors who fled. This time, the men of Imhursag did not pause to defend their encampment. A few did snatch what they could from their tents, but only a few. More of those were nobles than Imhursaggi peasants: the nobles, of course, had more possessions over which to concern themselves.

  “Forward the Giblut!” Kimash shouted as his own men swarmed into the camp the Imhursagut were abandoning. “Forward! Later will come the time to loot. Presently will come the time to plunder. Now comes the time to finish the foe. Forward the Giblut!”

  Most of the men of his city obeyed him and kept on pursuing the Imhursagut. Some, however, stopped and stole whatever struck their fancy. The Giblut, for better and for worse, were their own men first, men of their city second.

  Habbazu, in this regard, also proved to be his own man first. When Sharur had gone, to swing his sword against Enimhursag’s heel, he had lost track of the Zuabi master thief. Now Habbazu, catching up to him, glittered with gold and sparkled with silver, having festooned himself with necklaces and armlets and rings. Grinning at Sharur, he said, “I have made a profit on this day that any master merchant would envy.”

  “See that you do not purchase this profit at the cost of your life,” Sharur answered. “If you make your arm so heavy with silver and gold that you cannot lift it either to attack or to defend, then bronze may be your end. You would wish yourself better served by it and less well by precious metals.”

  Habbazu answered by swinging his own bronze sword in

  Sharur’s face. The blade had blood on it. “Fear not,” the thief said. “The Imhursagut will bear witness that I am not too burdened to battle. Several of them will bear witness only to those who knew them well enough in life to hear them moan and complain as ghosts.”

  “Good enough, then,” Sharur replied, and slogged on after the broken army of Imhursag.

  No more than the men of his city had Enimhursag lingered at the army’s encampment. The god of Imhursag fled ahead of his warriors toward the broad canal that marked the border between the territory of Gibil and the land he ruled. He crossed the canal in
a couple of enormous strides; the water bore his weight as readily as land had done.

  Once back on the soil his city ruled, the soil he ruled himself, he turned back toward his army and shouted in a great voice: “To me, my children! To me, my chicks! Back to our land—to the land of the pure, to the land of the good, to the land of the honest. Away from the land of Gibil— away from the land of serpents, away from the land of scorpions, away from the land of liars.”

  “Away from the land of Gibil!” the Giblut jeered. “Away from the land of warriors, away from the land of heroes, away from the land of men.”

  But the Imhursagut could not cross the wide canal without wetting their feet, as Enimhursag had done. They had to wade in and flounder across. Gibli archers gleefully plied them with arrows as they waded, as they floundered.

  When those arrows were aimed at men who were more than halfway across the canal, and more particularly at men dragging themselves up onto land on the Imhursaggi side, many of them went wide or fell short—more than could be accounted for by bad shooting.

  “Enimhursag protects them,” Ereshguna said as he came up alongside Sharur. The older man looked and sounded very tired; he was breathing in great panting gasps. But he still thought clearly. Sharur could not remember an occasion on which his father had failed to think clearly. Ereshguna went on, “Now they are on Imhursaggi land. Now they are on land Enimhursag possesses as his own. The Imhursaggi god has greater powers on land he possesses as his own.”

  “And yet land Enimhursag once possessed as his own is now Gibli land,” Sharur answered. He stamped his foot on the muddy ground near the edge of the canal. “This land we stand on now is land Enimhursag once possessed as his own. He possesses it as his own no more; it is now Gibli land.” He pointed north. “If Kimash the lugal wills it, we may make more land Enimhursag once possessed as his own into Gibli land. Once more, we have beaten the god and his folk in war.” .