“It amounts to the same thing in the end,” Sharur said. But Abzuwas shook his head again, sadly. “I have seen you Giblut. Whether the gods give or not, you snatch. Such was never my way. I am content. Are you?”
“Content?” Sharur had, so far as he was able, been holding in his temper in the presence of the Alashkurrut and their gods. Now, for the first time since he’d entered the mountains, it escaped him altogether. “Content?” His voice rose to a shout. “No, I am not content! I have fine goods to trade here, and no one will trade with me. I am going to face a loss, not a profit, because no one here will trade with me. Your gods have the foolish notion—your gods have the stupid notion—I have some sort of a disease of the spirit, and that I am liable to give it to you, and so they will let no one trade with me. I shall not have the bride-price for the woman I want, the woman who wants me, because no one will trade with me. And you ask if I am content? Would you be content, standing where I stand?”
He was dimly aware of the donkey handlers and caravan guards staring at him while he raged. What gossip they would have when they got back to Gibil! Most of his attention, though, centered on Abzuwas the smith, who, he had thought, was more like a Gibli than any other man of Alashkurru.
“If the gods made it plain to me they did not want me to trade, I would not trade,” Abzuwas answered. “The gods have made it plain to me they do not want me to trade, and I will not trade. Whether they are right, whether they are wrong, they are the gods. They are too strong to fight. I will not fight them.”
He was like a Gibli: he had come so far out from under the rule of his gods that he could see they might be wrong. And he was not like a Gibli: he accepted their rule nonetheless, on account of their strength, and did not seek to work around that strength with such strength as he and his fellow men possessed. Sharur did not know what to make of him, how to reckon him.
“What should I do?” Sharur asked the question at least as much of himself as of Abzuwas.
Abzuwas answered it nonetheless: “Go home to Gibil, Sharur son of Ereshguna. You cannot profit on every journey. In your heart, you must know this is so. If you do not earn the woman’s bride-price here, perhaps you will find another way of getting it. You Giblut are clever in such things, as in so many others.”
I cannot, not in this, Sharur thought. Kilt he had not fully shared his reasons for concern even with bis own father, even with Ningal his intended, and he would not take them up with a foreign smith, even with a sympathetic foreign smith.
Harharu came up to him. The donkeymaster chose his words with great and obvious care: “Master merchant’s son, if Abzuwas son of Ahhiyawas will not trade with us, no Alashkurri will trade with us. Is this the truth, or is it a lie?”
“It is the truth,” Sharur said dully.
“If none of the Alashkurrut will trade with us, do we not waste your substance, do we not waste your father’s substance, by persisting in this land where the gods hate us and the men obey the gods?”
“We do,” Sharur admitted, dully still. He let out a long sigh. “I understand your words, donkeymaster, however much my heart rebels within me at yielding to them. But you are right. Abzuwas is right, or partly right. We have failed here. We shall go home to Gibil.” He pretended not to hear the muffled cheers that rose from his followers.
The caravan had no trouble leaving the mountains. The Alashkurrut were willing enough to trade food for Sharur’s trinkets, even if they would engage in no commerce that meant anything. No bands of raiders, no wanax’s guardsmen (these two groups sometimes being difficult—sometimes being impossible—to distinguish one from the other) beset him or tried to rob him of the swords and wine and medicines for which the Alashkurri great men refused to bargain.
That puzzled Sharur as much as it relieved him. The Alashkurrut sometimes plundered caravans for the sport of it, even when their gods were not ill-inclined toward the foreign merchants in their land. If their gods hated him so, if their gods hated all men of Gibil so, why not seek to wipe him from the face of the earth?
He pondered that as day followed day and bandits continued to stay far away from his donkeys. Nor was he the only one pondering it. As the caravan encamped one evening, Mushezib came up to him and said, “Why are they leaving us alone, master merchant’s son?” He sounded aggrieved at losing the chance to fight.
By then Sharur had devised an answer that, if not provably true like a question of arithmetic, at least helped him toward understanding this strange part of the world. “Guard captain, we know the gods here hate us.”
Mushezib nodded emphatically. “All the more reason for wanting to be rid of us by hook or by crook, wouldn’t you say?” W
“They want to be rid of us, yes,” Sharur said, “but I think they fear us too much to try to slay us or despoil us. Perhaps they are afraid of what our ghosts might do if we were murdered in this country. Perhaps they are afraid of what the living men of Gibil might do if we were murdered in this country. So long as we are willing to leave their land, they seem willing to let us leave in peace.”
“Gibil is a long way off, and is only one city,” Mushezib said. “How could the living men of Gibil hope to avenge us against Alashkurri bandits?”
“Against Alashkurri bandits, I do not think they could hope to avenge us,” Sharur said. “Against Alashkurri gods, I think they might. The gods of Alashkurru fear the men of Alashkurru will slip out of their hands, as we Giblut have to some degree slipped out of the hands of Engibil.” He spoke softly as he made to his countryman the admission he would not make to the Imhursagut or Alashkurrut.
“How does that help the living men of Gibil avenge—?” Mushezib held up a hand. “Wait. I think I see. If many Giblut came here—”
Sharur nodded. “Just so, guard captain. Trading with us, talking with us, has already made many Alashkurrut much more like us than they were even a generation ago. If enough Giblut came and traded and talked, sooner or later a wanax would do what Huzziyas could not do, and would make himself into a lugal, a ruler in his own right. My guess is, the gods of the Alashkurrut believe that, if all the men of Gibil leave this land, if none has any reason to come here, Alashkurru shall remain forever as it has always been.”
Mushezib weighed that, then grunted. “Do you think they’re right?”
“What an interesting question,” Sharur said, and did not answer it. He thought the Alashkurri gods likely—almost certainly—wrong, but was not so rash as to say so where they could hear. “Shall we drink some beer, Mushezib?”
“That’s a good idea, master merchant’s son.” Mushezib always thought drinking some beer a good idea.
Two days later, in the valley dominated by the fortress-town of Danauwiyas, to the north of the valley of Zalpuwas (through which Sharur dared not go, not now), the caravan met that of the men of Imhursag, which it had left in the dust long before reaching the Alashkurru Mountains.
Sharur recognized the Imhursagut before they figured out who he was. He would have been angry at himself had it been the other way round. If a man from Gibil, a man who thought for himself, was not more alert than the Imhursagut, drunk with their god as they got drunk with wine, what point to being a Gibli?
Then he bethought himself that the caravan from Imhursag would have made a fine profit here in the mountains. He knew in his heart he would have made more even on the same shoddy Imhursaggi goods—if, that is, any of the Alashkurrut would have consented to deal with him. Since the Alashkurrut, as he had seen to his sorrow, would not deal with him under any circumstances ... what point to being a man of Gibil now?