By then, Sharur had been answering questions by not answering them for so long, he had no trouble making the smiths believe he’d told them much more, and been much more encouraging, thair he actually had. But then Ningal came out of Dimgalabzu’s establishment and called to him, “Did you bring back my bride-price, Sharur?”
“I. .. will have to reckon up the accounts to make sure I have enough,” he answered. He fought for a smile, and managed to achieve one. “I hope so.”
The smile must have been better than he thought, for Ningal returned it. “I hope so, too,” she said, and went back indoors.
“You will be a lucky man, master merchant’s son,” Harharu said, “if that is your intended bride.”
“Yes,” Sharur said, hoping his voice didn’t sound too hollow. He was, in a way, glad the donkeymaster, not Mushezib, had come up to him. The guard captain would have phrased essentially the same comment in so pungent a way, Sharur might have felt he had to hit him. Had the caravan succeeded, he would have taken any and all chaffing in good part. Without Ningal’s bride-price here, he was ready to lash out at anyone and anything. Only realizing as much let him keep his temper from being even worse than it actually was.
At last, the donkeys plodded up to his own home. Standing in front of it in the narrow, muddy street were his father and his brother Tupsharru. Ereshguna folded him into an embrace, saying, “Welcome home, my eldest son. It is good to see your face once more.”
“Thank you, Father.” How would Ereshguna think it to see his face when he found out Sharur had returned to Gibil without a profit? Sharur knew he would learn that soon— too soon. For his family’s sake as well as his own, he wanted to keep the rest of Gibil from learning that too soon. He said, “Father, I should particularly like to commend the donkey handlers and caravan guards, who served better than we dared hope. Along with their last payments, which are due now, I suggest you give them bonuses in silver, to reward them for their loyalty.”
“What?” Tupsharru said. “We’ve never done anything like—Ow!” Without being too obtrusive about it, Sharur had contrived to step on his brother’s toes.
Ereshguna, fortunately, was quicker on the uptake than his younger son. If Sharur proposed an unprecedented bonus, he assumed Sharur had some good reason for proposing it. “Just as you say, so shall it be,” he said. “I had the final payments prepared and waiting inside, but I can add to them. I shall add to them.” He went back in to do just that.
Sharur addressed the caravan crew: “For your diligence, for your perseverance, for your courage, and for your discretion, you shall be rewarded over and above your final payments.”
A few muffled cheers arose. In a low voice, Mushezib told one of the guards, “That means keeping your mouth shut, you understand?”
Tupsharru noticed the most important word, too. “Why are we paying them above the usual to be discreet?” he asked, also quietly.
“Because we have reason above the usual to want them to be discreet,” Sharur replied, which was true and uninformative at the same time.
Ereshguna and a couple of the house slaves came out then. The slaves led the donkeys off the street and into the courtyard at the heart of the house. Ereshguna carried on a tray leather sacks full of scrap silver: smaller ones for the ordinary guards and donkey handlers, larger ones for Mushezib and Harharu, who had led them. On the tray also gleamed silver rings. “Every man take one over and above your final payment,” he said, “save the guard captain and donkeymaster, who are to take two.” He still asked no questions of his son. Later would be time enough for that.
And then, as the men of the caravan crew were taking their pay and their bonuses and offering up words of praise for the house of Ereshguna and for its generosity, the ghost of Sharur’s grandfather shouted in his ear: “Boy, when you led that caravan to the mountains, did you stand out in the sun too long without your hat? You’ve brought back all the stuff you set out with. No, you’ve brought back some of the stuff you set out with”—his grandfather’s ghost sniffed—“but nothing you set out to get.”
The ghost had not bothered to speak to him alone. By the way Tupsharru’s head came up in startlement, he could tell his brother had also heard the angry words. Sighing, Sharur murmured, “I will tell this tale presently, when I can tell it in more privacy.”
Some of the donkey handlers and guards were murmuring, too, as ghosts that had not left Gibil greeted those who remembered them on their return. Agum was shaking his head and talking vehemently under his breath. Sharur wondered if he was trying to explain why the ghost of his uncle had not returned with him.
He got only a moment to wonder, for his grandfather’s ghost shouted again: “Kimash the lugal will be angry at you for coming back with nothing you set out to get. He’s not so much of a much, Kimash, but for what he is, he’ll be angry at you. And Engibil—Engibil will be angry at you, too, for coming back with nothing you set out to get.”
Sharur sighed again. “Yes, I know that,” he muttered. It hadn’t crossed Tupsharru’s mind; he stared toward Sharur. Ereshguna also looked in Sharur’s direction. Whatever he thought, he kept to himself.
Only after the men of the caravan crew departed, many of them praising the generosity of the house of Ereshguna, did the head of the house turn to his elder son and say, “Come into the house. Come into the shade. Come: we will drink beer together. And you will tell the tale of your journey to the Alashkurru Mountains.”
“Father, you will not rejoice to hear it,” Sharur said.
“I rejoice that you are here. I rejoice that, being here, you may tell it,” Ereshguna said. “Set against that, nothing else has the weight even of a single barleycorn. Whatever it may be, we have the chance to set it right.” '
“It will take a good deal of setting right,”, the ghost of Sharur’s grandfather said. “For what he brought back, he might as well have stayed home. In my day, caravans that went out to trade went out to trade, if you know what I mean.”
Ereshguna ignored the ghost’s complaints. He led both his sons into the house and called for beer. A slave fetched a jar of it, and three cups. After spilling out libations, after offering thanks to the deities of barley and brewing, Ereshguna and his sons drank. Only after the first cups were empty did Ereshguna turn to Sharur and ask, “We have less of profit, then, than we had hoped?”
“We have no profit,” Sharur said. “Father, I shall not dip this news in honey, though to speak of it is to put a bitter herb in my mouth. The gods of the Alashkurrut refused to let them trade with us, save only in small things such as swapping bread and beer for trinkets. But of refined copper I have none. Of copper ore I have none. Of fine timber I have none. Of jewels I have none. Of clever carvings I have none. Of the herbs and spices and drugs of the Alashkurru Mountains I have none. I have only what I took with me from Gibil, less what I traded for food and used for bribes that failed in the course of my journey.”
Ereshguna stared at his son. “You had better tell me this whole tale,” he said.
And Sharur did, starting with Enzuabu’s menacing stare and going on through the meeting with the Imhursagut, the encounter with the demon Illuyankas, the Alashkurri gods’ preventing Huzziyas the wanax from trading with him, his failure at Zalpuwas, his inability to get even Abzuwas the smith to deal with him, Eniyarmuk’s rejection of his crossing-offering, and the Zuabi thief’s attempt to rob the caravan at the command of his city god.