“A ring or a bracelet with the blue stones they have there,” his sister said at once. “They’re pretty. I like them.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” Sharur told her. “They know we like those stones, and they want a lot for them.” Betsilim said, “I’m going up on the roof.”
“I’ll come with you,” Ereshguna said. Nanadirat nodded and got to her feet, too. After supper, most families in Gibil, as in the other cities between the Yarmuk and the Diyala, went onto their roofs to escape the heat that lingered indoors. Most of them slept up there, too. Sharur’s blanket was there waiting for him. He would lie on it, not under it.
He and Tupsharru rose at about the same time. Sharur was about to follow his parents and sister when Tupsharru touched him on the arm. Sharur stopped and lifted one eyebrow, a gesture he shared with his father. Tupsharru asked, “Were you going to have the kitchen slave tonight?”
“Ah.” As the older brother, Sharur could take her ahead of Tupsharru, just as Ereshguna, if he felt like putting up with Betsilim’s complaints, could take her ahead of him. “No—go ahead if you want to,” Sharur said. “I’ve taken her once or twice, but I don’t think she’s anything special.”
“I don’t think she’s anything special, either,” Tupsharru said, “but she’s here and I feel like it, and this way I don’t have to go out and find a harlot and pay her something. So if you’re not going to, I will.”
With purposeful stride, he headed off toward the kitchen. Sharur went up the stairs and onto the roof. Twilight was fading. As he watched, more and more stars appeared in the darkening bowl of the sky. He murmured prayers of greeting to the tiny gods who peered out through them. Most of those gods were content to stay in one place in the sky day after day, year after year, accepting the absentminded reverence people gave them.
A handful, more enterprising, moved through the heavens, some quickly, some more slowly. They were tricksters, and had to be propitiated. Sharur, who was going to move over the land, reminded himself to offer to them before he set out.
Ereshguna had carried a lamp up with him, and used it to light a couple of torches. More torches and lamps and thin, guttering tapers burned on other roofs in Gibil, making an earthly field of stars as counterpoint to that up in the heavens. Somewhere not far away, a man was playing a harp and singing a song in praise of Engibil. Sharur nodded. The god, who was vain, would like that.
Catching himself in a yawn, Sharur shook out his blanket to make sure he would not be sharing it with any spiders or scorpions. He took off his sandals, shifted his kilt so he could piss in the old pot the family kept up there for that purpose, and lay down.
He was just about asleep when Tupsharru came up onto the roof. His brother whistled a happy tune. As Sharur had done, he shook out his blanket, eased himself, and lay down, a man happy with the world and with his place in it.
Down below, in her sweltering little cubicle, the kitchen slave, like the rest of the slaves Ereshguna owned, would also be going to sleep. What she thought, what she felt, never entered Sharur’s mind as he began to snore.
A line of donkeys, each but the leader roped to the one in front of it, stood braying in the Street of Smiths. Sharur went methodically down the line, checking the packs and jars tied to the animals’ backs against the list written on two clay tablets he held in his hand.
“Linen cloth dyed red, four bolts,” he muttered to himself. He counted the bolts. ‘ ‘One, two, three, four... very good.” He used a stylus to draw a little star by the item on the list. The clay was dry but not baked, so he could incise the mark if he bore down a little. “Wool cloth dyed blue with woad, seven bolts.” He counted, then frowned. “Harharu! I see only five bolts here.”
If a donkeymaster was a good one, he knew where everything in the caravan was stored. Harharu, a stocky, middle-aged man, was the best donkeymaster in Gibil; Ereshguna would have settled for no one less. He said, “You’re talking about the wool dyed blue, master merchant’s son? The other two bolts are on this beast three farther back.”
And so they were. “I thank you, Harharu,” Sharur said, bowing. He set the star beside the item. On he went, making sure he was in fact taking all the date wine, all the fine pots, all the little flasks of the rock-oil that seeped out of the ground near Gibil, all the medicines and perfumes, all the knives and swords and axes and spearheads, and all the other things on his list.
“Always strikes me funny, taking nietak things up to the mountains when that’s where we get our copper from,” Harharu remarked.
“The Alashkurrut have plenty of copper,” Sharur said, “but they have no tin. Our bronze is harder and tougher than any metal they can make for themselves, so they are happy to get it. They give five times the weight of copper or fifteen times the weight of ore for good swords.”
Harharu grunted. “And sometimes, when they feel like it, they use their good swords to take whatever a caravan brings, and they give nothing for it but death or wounds.”
“We are not going by ourselves, you and I.” Sitting in the shade of a wall, talking or dozing while they waited for the caravan to get moving, were a dozen stalwart young men who had proved themselves with spear and sword and bow in the latest war with Imhursag. Along with trade goods for the men of the mountains of Alashkurru, the donkeys carried their weapons, their shields of wickerwork and leather, and their linen helmets with bronze plates sewn in. When the caravan left the land of Kudurru, the guards would carry their gear themselves.
Seeing Sharur’s eyes on him, the leader of the guard contingent asked, “How much longer, master merchant’s son?” Mushezib might have been carved from stone, so sharply chiseled were the muscles rippling under his skin. The scar on his cheek above the line of his beard and the bigger scar that furrowed the right side of his chest might have been slips of the sculptor’s tools.
“It will be soon now,” Sharur answered. His bow and spear were packed on a donkey, too. He had never yet had to fight up in Alashkurru, but that he never had did not mean he never would.
When he’d satisfied himself nothing was missing from the caravan, he nodded to Mushezib. The chief guard growled something to his men. They got to their feet and swaggered over to take their places on either side of the donkeys. There were caravans where the guards ended up running the show, they being both armed and used to fighting. That had never happened to any caravan Sharur led. He was determined it wouldn’t happen this time, either.
“All right, let’s go,” he said. “May Engibil give us a profitable journey.” Several of the guards took out their amulets to help ensure that the city god heard and heeded the prayer. So did Harharu and a couple of the assistant donkey handlers.
Sharur gave Harharu the lead rope for the first donkey, committing the caravan into the donkey master’s hands. But before Harharu could take the first step, ram’s-horn trumpets rang out on the Street of Smiths. In a great voice, a herald cried, “Behold! Forth comes Kimash, lugal of Gibil! Bow before Kimash the mighty, the powerful, the valiant, beloved of Engibil his patron! Forth comes Kimash, lugal of Gibil! Behold!”
The trumpets blared again. Drums thundered. Surrounding the lugal were warriors who made the men Sharur had hired seem striplings beside them. Even Mushezib looked less formidable when set against their thick-thewed bulk.
Sharur’s grandfather’s ghost spoke in his ear: “All this folderol over a mere man is a pack of nonsense, if anybody wants to know, The lugal in my day, Kimash’s grandfather Igigi, didn’t put on half so much show, and the ensi before him didn’t put on any at all, to speak of.”