Turtledove, Harry - Novel 12

by Between the Rivers (v2. 1)

  Sharur had to obey. “Here is the truth that I know, great god,” he said. “I know that, while the entertainment was under way, I never once set foot inside your temple. I never entered your house on earth. Your own priests, your own servants, saw me in the open space outside your temple. They will say as much. I never saw any thief enter your temple. I never saw any thief leave your house on earth. When I left the open space outside your temple, the entertainment was still going on.”

  Every word of that was the truth. Every word was as misleading as he could make it. Engibil frowned, again not receiving the answer he had expected or hoped for. “Do you wonder, son of Ereshguna,” he said gruffly, “that I ask these questions of you when you had seen a Zuabi thief and when you were close by my temple when the vile thief struck?”

  “You are a god,” Sharur said. “How can a man wonder at anything a god may choose to do?”

  “You can not,” Engibil said. “You must not.” And then he was gone once more.

  “I am glad you told the god the truth that you knew,” Ereshguna said. “I am glad you were able to tell the truth with such ... precision.”

  “So am I, Father,” Sharur replied, still shaking a little. “So am I. Has that beer pot yet gone dry?”

  Kimash the lugal made the Gibli army’s return to the city of Gibil into a triumphal procession. At every village along the road south from the Imhursaggi border, men dropped out to return to their usual labor in the fields. At every village, Kimash made a speech praising the warriors, praising the people of Gibil as a whole, and praising himself.

  At every crossroads along the road south from the Imhursaggi border, men turned off to the right or left to go back to their villages. At every crossroads, Kimash halted the whole army so he could make another speech. Again, he extolled the warriors, the Giblut, and himself.

  The speeches were not quite identical, one to another, but they were similar. After a while, Sharur stopped paying close attention to them. “I wonder if he can find anything new to say when we finally get to Gibil,” he remarked as the army started moving after yet another halt.

  “More likely, he’ll simply run all of these speeches together, for the men and women of Gibil will not have heard them,” Tupsharru said.

  “And then, once he has done that, he will go into the south and make all these speeches yet again,” Ereshguna said. “He is not a god like Enimhursag, to speak into the ears of all his people at once. Naturally, he wants all the folk of Gibil to know he has driven back the Imhursagut. If he wants them to know, he must tell them himself.”

  “And tell them, and tell them, and tell them,” Sharur said with exaggerated weariness. Ereshguna tried to send a reproving look his way, but broke down and laughed before the expression was well formed.

  Although the lugal’s endless bombastic oratory made the march down from the Imhursaggi border seem to take forever, the baked-brick walls of Gibil, and Engibil’s temple and Kimash’s palace towering above them, at last came into sight. Kimash halted the army outside the north gate to the city and ordered the warriors who had armor to don it and those who had only weapons to carry them.

  “He does indeed wish to make the bravest show he can,” Sharur said.

  “Only one sort of show is worse than no show at all,” his father said, “and that is a poor show.”

  Kimash left himself in no danger of making a poor show. As his fighting men entered Gibil through the north gate, a great-voiced herald cried, “Behold! Mighty Kimash returns in triumph, having made Enimhursag flee!” Riding in the chariot all adorned with gold, Kimash waved to the men and women lining the narrow, winding streets of the city.

  And the people cheered. Not all o£them, no doubt, loved Kimash. Some surely longed for the dayS when Engibil did much of their thinking for them. But no one in the city of Gibil could possibly have longed for Enimhursag to do much of their thinking for them. The rivalry between their city and that of the vanquished god was too deep and went back too far for any of them to have hoped he won. Beating Enimhursag was the best way Kimash could have chosen to make the Giblut think well of him.

  Into the market square marched the warriors of Gibil. The men and women who had not fought crowded in with and after them. Servants brought a platform from the lugal’s palace. Kimash climbed up onto it and looked out over the crowd. He was wise in the ways of men, and proved wise enough not to do as Tupsharru had said he would. Instead of stringing together all his earlier speeches, he kept things short and to the point: “Warriors of Gibil residing in the city, I release you to your families and friends for the praise you so richly deserve. Warriors of Gibil dwelling south of the city, I bid you stay this day before resuming your homeward journey. Let this day be a day of feasting, a day of drinking, a day of revelry, a day of celebration. I, Kimash, lugal of Gibil, have spoken. I, Kimash, lugal of this city, have declared my will.”

  Again, the people of Gibil were glad to follow where the lugal led. Those who had gone to fight and those who had stayed behind all shouted and clapped their hands. Warriors embraced their fathers, their brothers, their wives, their mothers, their sisters, their children. Some headed for taverns. Some headed for brothels.

  Sharur headed for home, along with Ereshguna and Tupsharru. They had not gone far when they met Betsilim and Nanadirat. Sharur hugged his mother and younger sister. He looked around hopefully, to see if Ningal was sofnewhere nearby. On a day of revelry, a day of celebration, he might with propriety hug his intended, too. But, to his disappointment, he did not spy her.

  He also looked around for Habbazu. He did not see the Zuabi thief, either. He did not know what that meant, or whether he should worry. When Habbazu chose not to be seen, he was not seen. But he also might have fallen into the hands of Engibil, or those of Engibil’s priests, or those of Kimash’s servitors. He might even have escaped to Zuabu in spite of Engibil’s watching the border.

  Ereshguna and Tupsharru were also looking this way and that. Ereshguna smiled sheepishly when his eyes met Sharur’s. He said, “I suppose it does not matter,” and

  Sharur had a very good notion of what it was.

  “I suppose the same thing,” Sharur answered. “I truly hope it does not matter.”

  “What are the two of you talking about?” Betsilim demanded.

  “Nothing very important,” Sharur answered. He could not remember the last time he had lied to his mother, but he lied now without hesitation. He did not think he had ever lied to his mother in his father’s presence. Ereshguna heard him lie, and let it go without contradiction.

  While Betsilim and Nanadirat went out, the Imhursaggi slave woman had labored in the kitchen. The returning men of the house of Ereshguna sat down to a feast: roast mutton, roast duck, a salad of onions and lettuce and radishes, fresh-baked bread with honey for dipping, and wine and beer to wash everything down. Sharur ate till just this side of bursting.

  So did Tupsharru. Despite that, though, he eyed the slave woman in a marked manner. After a while, he and the slave disappeared. “He is intent on conquering Imhursag again,” Ereshguna said dryly.

  Sharur laughed. Nanadirat giggled. Betsilim gave her husband a look that said she didn’t think the joke was funny, or maybe just that he had better not try to reconquer Imhursag in that particular way.

  Presently, Nanadirat and Betsilim, both a little wobbly on their legs, went up to the roof to sleep. Tupsharru had not come back. He’d teased Sharur for taking the slave woman twice after coming home from his trading journey to the mountains of Alashkurru. Now, coming home from the war, Tupsharru seemed to be imitating his brother.

  When Sharur got to his feet to go upstairs, too, Ereshguna held up a hand. “Wait,” he said. “The thing you left behind ... when do you plan to get it back from where you left it?”

  He picked his words with obvious—and necessary—care, not wishing to draw Engibil’s attention to them in any way. Sharur answered with similar caution: “My father, I do not know. As I have said, and
said truly, I do not know just where that thing is now. I will have to go to the person to whom I entrusted it to get it back.”

  “I understand,” Ereshguna said. “That may not be so easy, not when others have returned to the house. But I hope you will do it as soon as you may. If we do not take it back into our hands, others may take it into theirs.”

  “I shall attend to it,” Sharur promised. He yawned. “But not tonight.”

  “No, not tonight,” Ereshguna agreed. He and Sharur both got to their feet and went up to the roof to sleep.

  11

  Sharur’s dreams were strange. He realized that he had not known anything nearly so peculiar since the delirium through which he had drifted after the fever demon breathed its foul breath into his mouth. He wondered if he was delirious again. He did not think so, nor had he been so very drunk when he went up to the roof and lay down on his sleeping mat.

  Voices called to him from a vast distance, their words echoing and indistinct. Some were male, some female; some might have been either, or both at once ... or neither. He did not think they were speaking the language of Kudurru, but it was a language he understood, or should have understood. Maybe that was because he dreamt. Maybe ...

  He needed a while, but finally recognized the tongue that dinned inside his head: it was the speech of the Alashkurru Mountains. With that recognition, he heard the voices more distinctly, as if the men and women using that speech had suddenly come closer.

  Men and women? Not all the voices had fit into either category. Up until he realized what language they were speaking, Sharur had seen only blurry flashes of light and color, like a distant landscape fitfully illuminated with lightning bolts.

  Now those flashes and colors came closer and closer, too. They and the voices surrounded Sharur, who seemed to be looking up from the bottom of a great bowl at shapes that slowly congealed into faces and bodies. The faces peered down at him as he peered up at them.

  “He knows us,” one of them said: a woman—no, a goddess. As she spoke, her entire form became more plain to Sharur. She was nude, with enormously bulging breasts and, below them, an even more enormously bulging belly. Sharur did indeed know Fasillar; he had had dealings with the Alashkurri goddess of birth in the town of Zalpuwas. Now she went on, “He knows who we are.”

  “You are the gods and goddesses of the Alashkurrut,” Sharur said, or thought he said—in a dream, how could he be sure?

  “We are the gods and goddesses of the Alashkurrut.” The speaker this time had a man’s voice, a deep man’s voice. He wore copper armpr and carried a bronze sword. Tarsiyas, the war god with whom Sharur had had dealings in the town of Tuwanas, spoke with touchy pride: “We are the great gods and goddesses of the Alashkurrut.”

  Sharur bowed low to him and to Fasillar and to the other deities, whom he still perceived less clearly. “I greet you, great gods and goddesses of the Alashkurrut,” he said; even in a dream, politeness to gods was a good idea. “What do you want with me?” Being in a dream, he could at least feign ignorance.

  “You have something of ours,” Fasillar said.

  “You have something of ours,” Tarsiyas agreed. “The thing of ours that you have, you have secreted away in a dreadful place.”

  “In a dreadful place you have secreted away the thing of ours that you have,” Fasillar echoed. “We tried to send a dream your way before. We could not send a dream your way before. We had not the power to send a dream your way before, not from out of that dreadful place. You were too far from us. Even now, when you are so close, we can barely send a dream your way.”

  Tarsiyas nodded his fierce head. “You have met us face to face. Only because you have met us face to face can we send a dream your way at all. We have cried out to Engibihl, but Engibil hears us not. He is a god. He sleeps not. He has no dreams in which to hear us.”

  “He has not met us face to face, as you have,” Fasillar said. “He is deaf to us. He hears us not.”

  Hiding the Alashkurri cup in the house of Dimgalabzu had truly proved a good idea. The power of the gods was at a low ebb along the Street of Smiths, and lowest in the smithies. Though he knew he was but dreaming, Sharur did not smile. Instead, he asked his own question once more: “What do you want with me, great gods and goddesses of the Alashkurrut?”

  “Give back the thing of ours that you have.” Fasillar and Tarsiyas spoke together, echoed by the rest of the great gods and goddesses of the Alashkurrut.

  “Give back the thing of ours that you have, and we shall reward you,” Fasillar said.

  “Fail to give back the thing of ours that you have, and we shall punish you,” Tarsiyas added, his grim features growing grimmer.

  “What will you do to reward me?” Sharur asked. “What can you do to punish me? I am in Gibil. You are in the Alashkurru Mountains.”

  “One day, you shall come again to the Alashkurru Mountains,” Fasillar answered. “Would you sooner be rewarded or punished when you do?’ ’

  “I would sooner be rewarded, great goddess,” Sharur answered. “I would sooner not be punished, mighty goddess.”

  “There, you see?” Tarsiyas rumbled. “I knew this was a wise mortal. I knew this mortal would be able to tell where he would have bread and meat to eat, where he would have had only crumbs and bones.”

  When last Sharur had seen and spoken with Tarsiyas, the Alashkurri war god had not praised him. Tarsiyas had reviled him for seeking to seduce Huzziyas the wanax away from the path of obedience to the gods. Belligerence had fit Tarsiyas’s nature. Conciliation did not. A conciliatory Tarsiyas put Sharur in mind of a lion sitting down to a meal of bread and lettuce and dates.

  Sharur realized he was thinking more clearly than he was used to doing in dreams. In his ordinary dreams, though, he did not talk with the great gods of the Alashkurrut. “Give back the thing of ours that you have,” Fasillar repeated. “Give it back, and all the women you bed shall bear you many sons and shall come through the pangs of childbirth safe and unharmed.”

  “Give back the thing of ours that you have,” the rest of the Alashkurri gods said in blurry chorus. “Give it back, and all...” The chorus broke down, presumably because each god or goddess was making a different promise, one set in a domain over which that deity held power.

  “What are your promises worth to me?” Sharur asked. “You are great gods. You are mighty gods. But you are the gods of the Alashkurrut. You are the gods of the Alashkurru Mountains. You are not the gods of the men who live between the rivers. You are not the gods of Kudurru. Your power rests in the mountains. You have no power here between the rivers.”

  Tarsiyas glared at him. Now the Alashkurri war god looked and sounded fierce once more. “You are a mortal. You are only a mortal. Soon you will be a whining, carping ghost. Soon you will be gone, gone from this world, gone from memory in this world. Speak no words of who has power and who has not.”

  “What you say is true, great god,” Sharur answered politely. “What you say is the way of the world, mighty god.” He had to keep on being polite. Any man who openly opposed a god was liable to come to grief. That, too, was the way of the world. But, though Sharur was only a mortal, where power lay here was not so obvious. He had the thing the great gods of the Alashkurrut wanted, and they were not the gods of this land. They would have to satisfy him before he even thought of satisfying them.

  Fasillar must have recognized that, for she said, “What other boons might we grant you, man of Kudurru? What other favors might we give you, man of Gibil?”

  Had Sharur chosen to ask the Alashkurri gods to lift their ban against his city’s merchants, he was sure they would have promised to do it. He wondered, though, whether he might not have at his disposal another way to lift the ban. All he said was, “I do not know”—a merchant’s canny answer.

  “Send the thing of ours that you have back to the Alashkurru Mountains, and we shall grant you all the good fortune lying in our power,” Fasillar promised. “You shall be rich, you shall be bel
oved, you shall be healthy, your days in this world shall be long.”

  “Keep the thing of ours that you have, send it not back to the Alashkurru Mountains, and we shall inflict on you all the ill fortune in our power,” Tarsiyas vowed. “You shall be poor, you shall be despised, you shall be sickly and puling, your days in this world shall be short and filled with torment.”

  Had Tarsiyas not threatened him, Sharur’s dream self would have held its peace. As things were, though, he grew angry, as he would have grown angry while awake. He said, “Suppose, great gods of the Alashkurrut, that I do not send the thing of yours that I have back to the Alashkurru Mountains. Suppose, mighty gods of the Alashkurrut, that I do not keep the thing of yours that I have. Suppose, great gods, mighty gods, that I break the thing of yours that I have. What then?”

  Tarsiyas gasped. Fasillar gasped. In the background, all the great gods of the Alashkurrut gasped. All the mighty gods of the Alashkurrut gasped.

  Sharur gasped—and found himself awake on the roof of the house of Ereshguna, staring up at the stars. Unlike his fever dreams, this dream he would not forget, not to his dying day.

  When morning came, Sharur intended to go straight to the house of Dimgalabzu to recover the cup he had left with Ningal. Before he finished his breakfast porridge of barley and salt fish, though, and before he finished the cup of beer he was drinking with it, Inadapa the steward of Kimash the lugal strode into the house of Ereshguna.

  “I greet you, steward to the mighty Kimash,” Sharur said, rising from his stool to bow to Inadapa. “Will you eat porridge of barley and salt fish with me? Will you drink a cup of beer with me? While you eat, while you drink, will you tell me what brings you to the house of Ereshguna so early in the day?”

  “I greet you, Sharur son of Ereshguna,” Inadapa said. “I have eaten, thank you. I breakfasted at first light of dawn, the better to serve the mighty Kimash through the whole of the day. But I will gladly drink a cup of beer with you, and I will tell you what brings me to the house of Ereshguna so early in the day, for it concerns you.”