Sharur came up onto the dry land—well, the muddy land—of the eastern bank of the Yarmuk. A great sigh of relief gusted from his lungs. He hauled on the lead line to bring the first donkey out of the water. The others, and the rest of the caravan crew, followed in rapid succession.
“Come on,” Sharur told them. “We’re not done yet. Let’s get away from the river, as far as we can, before we get into our clothes and set everything to rights.”
“Good thinking, master merchant’s son,” Mushezib said. “Don’t want to be close by when the river goddess sobers up, no I don’t. You get a woman drunk and have your way with her, she’s liable to be angry in the morning, yes she is.”
“Just so,” Sharur agreed. Naked still, he pushed the pace, begrudging the time he would need to pause and belt on his kilt. The sun quickly dried the Yarmuk’s water on his body. The drier; the better, he thought: less lingering contact between himself and Eniyarmuk’s domain.
He chanced to be looking back over his shoulder when the river goddess realized he had muddled her wits and deceived her. The surface of the Yarmuk suddenly boiled and frothed. Water leapt into the air, then splashed down. In unmistakable fury, the river began to pursue the caravan. Men and donkeys cried out in alarm together and hurried eastward as fast as they could go.
So long as the questing tentacle of river remained in the bed the Yarmuk occupied during full flood, it came on after them more swiftly than their best pace. Beyond the riverbed, though, the fierce flow faltered: outside her domain, Eniyarmuk’s power was much diminished. At last, sullenly, the waters drew back toward their proper channel.
Panting, sweating, Sharur held up a hand. “We have escaped the anger of the river goddess,” he said. “Let us give thanks and rejoice, hymning Engibil’s praises.”
The hymn rang out, loud and triumphant. Only when it was through, only after he had covered his nakedness, did Sharur think to wonder about the propriety of praising one god for having escaped (no, for having beaten, the defiant part of his mind thought, though he dared not say that aloud) another.
“Master merchant’s son, your cleverness let us get by no small problem there,” Harharu said. “Had we not got past Eniyarmuk, we might have had to go down to the regular ford, and then we would have had to go under the eye of Eniaggasher. That likely would have been worse. Your father will be proud of you.”
“No doubt,” Sharur said. “He will be proud of me for going up into the mountains of Alashkurru and coming back down with the same goods I took up. He will be proud of me for coming back without copper, without copper ore. He will be proud of me for coming back down without rich things, strange things, unusual things, to lay on the altar of Engibil.” Ningal will be proud of me for coming back without her bride-price.
Quietly, the donkeymaster said, “He will be proud of you for doing as well as you could, for doing as well as you did, in harsh circumstances not of your making.”
“Were those circumstances not partly of my making?” Sharur asked. “Did I not go up into the mountains of Alashkurru before? Did I not speak with the Alashkurrut? Did I not show them what we men of Gibli are, by my words, by my deeds? Did I not help make some of them want to be like us Giblut? Did I not help frighten their gods because some of them wanted to be like us Giblut?”
Harharu bowed his head. “If you are determined to be angry at yourself, master merchant’s son, I cannot stop you. If you are determined to cast scorn upon yourself, I cannot prevent it.” He strode off to check on the donkeys, which, while stubborn, knew not bitterness nor worry ahead of time.
Sharur strode on, alone no matter how close the rest of the caravan might be. What would his father say, what would his father do, when he came home from the mountains without having been able to trade the goods the Alashkurrut were known to crave? Caravans had come back to Gibil with less profit than they might have (though never one headed by a man of his clan). Caravans, sometimes, had failed to come back to Gibil at all, having met with robbers in the mountains or the desert. But never, so far as Sharur knew, had a caravan returned without doing business.
And what would Kimash the lugal say? Kimash had relied on him to bring rich things, strange things, unusual things back to Gibil to lay on the altar of Engibil. The lugal had said as much, when the caravan was just departing his father’s house. Sharur had failed Kimash, too, and in failing Kimash had failed the men of Gibil. For if Engibil grew discontented with Kimash’s rule of the city—if Engibil grew discontented with the way Kimash praised and rewarded him—the god might yet rise up and, instead of resting comfortably and lazily in his temple, as he had been wont to do for three generations of men, might walk through Gibil as Enzuabu walked through Zuabu. He might seize men’s spirits, as Enimhursag seized the spirits of the Imhursagut. And the little freedom the men of Gibil had known would die.
Grim though that prospect was, it was not the prospect uppermost in Sharur’s mind. What would Ningal say, when he came home from the mountains without the bride-price to pay to Dimgalabzu her father? Sharur had sworn a great oath to Engibil to earn that bride-price with the profit from. this caravan. Now he came home without profit, a forsworn man. Would Dimgalabzu give her to another? Sharur kicked at the dirt. The smith would be within his rights.
“But he can’t!” Sharur exclaimed.
“Who can’t, master merchant’s son?” Harharu asked. “And what can’t he do?”
“Never mind.” Sharur’s ears went hot at having let others see into his thoughts. The trouble was, Dimgalabzu could. And, if he decided to, Sharur would not be able to do anything about it. Muttering curses that surely would not bite on the gods of the Alashkurrut, he trudged east toward Gibil.
When the caravan entered the territory ruled by Zuabu, Sharur felt he might as well be home. After so long among so many stranger peoples, the Zuabut^seemed as familiar to him as his next-door neighbors along the Street of Smiths. His comrades must have felt the same, for almost to a man they were grinning and laughing among themselves as they automatically took the precautions they needed to keep the Zuabut from stealing them blind.
“Keep your eyes open, boys,” Mushezib called to the caravan guards under him. “We all know the stories about the caravans that came into the land of Zuabu with a profit and went out with a loss, even though they hadn’t done any trading while they were there. That isn’t going to happen to us... What are you making horrible faces about, Agum? Donkey stepping on your—? Oh.”
Mushezib shut up, several sentences too late. Sharur, also intent on making sure the Zuabut could have no fun with their light fingers, pretended he had not heard the guard captain. This caravan could hardly see its profit disappear in Zuabu, for it had no profit. Making a loss worse somehow seemed much less important, even if the value vanishing from the caravan was the same in either case.
As had been true when he was setting out for the Alashkurru Mountains, Sharur could have taken the caravan into the city of Zuabu to spend a night. As he had then, he camped away from the city. Then, he had begrudged what he would have to pay for food and lodging. He still did, but he had more pressing reasons for avoiding the city now. He did not want to, he did not dare to, enter into Enzuabu’s center on earth, not after the city god had sent such a menacing stare his way on his westbound journey, and most especially not after everything that had happened since.