“That has not always been so,” the man of Imhursag replied. But then, abruptly, his whole tone changed. He threw back his head and laughed. When he looked at Sharur, he seemed to look straight through him: Enimhursag was looking out through his eyes. Sharur shivered and reached for Engibil’s amulet. No assault came, though, neither against his body nor against his spirit. “Go on,” the Imhursaggi said, in a voice not quite his own. “Go on! Alashkurru is wide, you say. See if it is wide enough for you.” He laughed again, even less pleasantly than before.
As quickly as Enimhursag had taken full possession of him, the god released him once more. He staggered a little, then caught himself. Sharur wondered if he would remember what the god had said through him. He proved he did, turning to his own caravan crew and ordering them to move their donkeys to the side of the road to let Sharur and his companions pass. Men of Gibil would have argued. The Imhursagut, feeling the will of their god press on them, obeyed without a word.
To Sharur, the Imhursaggi spoke as himself once more:
“Go ahead. You Giblut are always so eager to go ahead, so eager to sniff out a keshlu’s weight of silver in the middle of a dungheap. Go ahead, and see what it profits you now.”
“What did your god tell you?” Sharur asked. “Why did he change his mind like that?”
“I do not know why,” the man of Imhursag answered. “I do not want to know why. I do not need to know why. It is not my place to know why.” He spoke with pride, where Sharur would have been furious at being kept in the dark. “As for what he told me, he told me no more than I told you.”
Was that true? Sharur wondered. But the Imhursaggi was less naive than some men from god-ruled cities with whom he’d dealt, and so he could not be sure. Muttering under his breath, Sharur went back to his own caravan. “Forward!” he told the guards and donkey handlers, adding, “I have sworn in Engibil’s name that we shall not be the first to start any fight. Be ready for trouble, but begin none yourselves, lest you leave me forsworn.”
“Do you hear that, you lugs?” Mushezib growled to the guards. He set down his spear for a moment so he could thump his chest with a big, hard fist. “Anybody who gets frisky when he shouldn’t have answers to me afterwards.” Warily, Sharur led his caravan past the one from Imhursag. The Imhursagut did not attack his men. He had not thought they would, not when Enimhursag, speaking through their leader, had agreed to let him by. They did jeer and hoot and make horrible faces: they obeyed their god, but their manner declared what they would have done had he given them leave.
Perhaps they were trying to make the Giblut lose their tempers and begin the fight. Wanting to prevent that, Sharur pointed to the Imhursagut and said, “See the trained monkeys? Aren’t they funny? Why don’t you throw them a few dates, if you’re carrying any in your belt pouches to munch on as we walk?”
As he’d hoped, the guards and donkey handlers laughed. A couple of them did toss dates to the Imhursagut. Their rivals plainly did not know whether to be glad of the food or angry at the way they received it: Enimhursag did not know, and had not told them. They were still waiting for their god to respond by the time the last of Sharur’s donkeys and the last of his men had passed them by. -
Harharu said, “That was well done, master merchant’s son. When men from a god-ruled city act in ways they have acted before, they are as quick and clever as we. Give them something new to chew on, even if it be only a date”—he and Sharur smiled at each other—“and they wave their legs in the air like a beetle on its back until their god decides what they should do.”
“I was hoping that would happen,” Sharur agreed. He raised his voice: “Well done, men. Now the Imhursagut will be breathing our dust and stepping in our donkey droppings all the way to Alashkurru. Let’s step it up for the rest of the day, so we can camp well apart from them.”
His followers cheered. They complained not at all about moving faster. The donkeys complained, but then the donkeys always complained.
Sharur picked his campsite that evening with great care. He would not be satisfied until he found a small rise the caravan crew could easily defend against an attack in the night and from which he could see a long way in all directions. “The Imhursagut won’t trouble us here,” Mushezib said, nodding vigorous approval. “They’ll be able to tell we’d give them lumps if they tried it. That’s the best way to keep someone from bothering you.”
“My thought exactly.” Sharur looked toward the east. He spied what had to be the Imhursaggi camp, fires twinkling like medium-bright stars, a surprising distance away. “We did walk them into the ground this afternoon.”
“Of course we did.” Mushezib’s massive chest inflated further. “Master merchant’s son, if we can’t outdo the Imhursagut, we aren’t worth much. You tell me if that isn’t
“Well, of course it is.” Sharur had as much pride in his comrades, the men of his city, as did the guard captain. Walking back to the rest of the guards and the donkey handlers, he asked, “Does anyone have a ghost traveling with him?” He had never thought he would wish his bad- tempered grandfather had joined him on the caravan instead of staying back in Gibil, but he did now.
Agum the guard looked up from his supper of dried fish and dates. “I do, master merchant’s son. Uncle Buriash guarded a couple of caravans himself, so he likes traveling this road.”
“That is good. That is very good,” Sharur said. He had never known Agum’s uncle, who therefore might as well not have existed as far as his senses were concerned. “I want him to go back to the camp of the Imhursagut and listen to their talk for a while, to see if he can spy out why their leader—why their god—changed his mind and decided to let us pass. He should also see if he can learn why their leader mocked our chances for good trading in Alashkurru.” Agum cocked his head to one side, listening to the dead man’s voice only he could hear. “He says he’ll be glad to do that, master merchant’s son. He doesn’t like the Imhursagut any better than we do. In one of the wars we fought with them—I don’t quite know which—they stole all his sheep.”
“Thank you, Buriash, uncle to Agum,” Sharur said. Even if he could not hear the ghost, the ghost could hear him.
“He says he is leaving now,” Agum reported. “He says he will return with the word you need.”
Sharur was just sitting down to his own supper when Harharu came wandering over to him. The donkeymaster spat out a date pit, then said, “Sending the ghost out is well done, master merchant’s son. Not many would have thought of it, and it may bring us much profit.” He grimaced and chuckled wryly. “My own ghosts, I’m just as well pleased they’re back in the city far away.”
“I was thinking the same thing about my grandfather,” Sharur answered.
Harharu nodded. Because Sharur outranked him, he chose to come round to what he had in mind by easy stages. “Would we not be wise to wonder whether what we do, others might do as well?”
“Ah,” Sharur said around a mouthful of salt fish. He saw where Harharu was heading. “You may speak frankly with me, donkeymaster. I shall not be offended, I promise.”
“Many people say that. A few even mean it.” Harharu studied him. “Yes, you may be one of those few. Very well, then: if the Imhursagut think to send a ghost to spy on us, can we trap it?”
“I suppose we can try,” Sharur answered. “After tonight, it will not matter, for we shall be too far ahead of them for one of their ghosts to catch us up. And now it will be hard for us to tell an Imhursaggi ghost from a curious ghost of the countryside, just as Buriash may well seem such a ghost to them.”