She looked up then, her eyes wide with astonishment. “The god has ordained it,” she exclaimed. “What the god has ordained here shall be. What the god has ordained here must be.”
When Sharur heard that, he knew he had not understood how completely Enimhursag ruled the people of Imhursag and its surrounding villages. He also knew he would cause more trouble by refusing Munnabtu than by taking her. And, if she was not quite so lovely as some of the loveliest women in Gibil, neither would taking her work a hardship on him. Far from it.
“What Enimhursag has ordained here shall be,” he agreed. Munnabtu smiled at him. So did her father. He made himself smile back. Making himself smile back proved not too hard.
The villagers cleared out one of their huts for Munnabtu and him. Several women brought in blankets and rush mats. They giggled as they went out the door and closed it behind them. That helped ease Sharur’s mind; women in Gibil would have done the same thing.
With the door closed, it was gloomy and stuffy inside the hut. “Let us begin,” Munnabtu said forthrightly, and pulled her tunic off over her head. Her body, high-breasted, with a narrow waist and broad hips, had no flaw Sharur could find. She lay down and waited for him to join her.
He wasted no time in doing just that. Because he was a stranger to her, because she did not lie down beside him out of love, he expected her to be still and let him do what he would, as the Imhursaggi slave woman was in the habit of doing. But, as his hands roamed over her body, she sighed and pressed herself against him. Her mouth was eager against his.
“What Enimhursag has ordained here is sweet,” she murmured, and then he saw that, because the god had ordained it, she gave herself to it with her whole heart, as the Imhursaggi slave had on that one occasion when Sharur went into her in fulfillment of his vow.
Munnabtu sighed again when Sharur’s mouth, following his hands, moved down her belly toward the triangle of midnight hair between her legs. Presently, she gasped and arched her back and urged him on with more murmurs that were not quite words.
Her legs spread wide. He poised himself between them. When he entered her, he discovered she was truly a maiden. She stiffened and grimaced. “You hurt me,” she said, sudden fear in her eyes.
He drew back a little, though he wanted nothing so much as to go forward. “I will be gentle,” he promised, and returned to the barrier he would have to break.
Munnabtu grimaced again, and made as if to pull away from him. Then something in her face ... changed. Sharur could not have described it more precisely than that. For a moment, Enimhursag looked out at him through her eyes. In a voice not quite her own, she said, “Go on. All will be well.”
He almost pulled away then. Never had he imagined coupling with a woman in whom the god dwelt. But her thighs clasped his flanks; her legs caged him. Instead of pulling back, he did go on, and all was well. Herself again, so far as Sharur could tell, Munnabtu gasped when he fully fleshed himself in her, but she was no longer afraid. She gasped again, a little later, in a different way, and squeezed Sharur so tightly that he groaned in his pleasure and spurted forth his seed.
She was bleeding a little when he withdrew, but it did not trouble her. Pleasure suffused her features, pleasure and ... something else? Now Sharur could not be sure. “The god helped me,” she said. “Enimhursag helped me.” Was it altogether her voice? Again, Sharur could not be sure.
He agreed nonetheless: “Yes, the god helped you.” He could scarcely deny it.
She looked up at him from eyes shining under half-lowered eyelids. “And you helped me, man whom the great god ordered me to make glad. You made me glad in turn, though the god did not order you to do that. You could have taken your own pleasure without caring for mine.”
“A man has more pleasure when a woman shares it,” Sharur said.
“Ah.” Munnabtu stretched. It was the sort of stretch that made him try to watch every part of her at once. It was intended to be that sort of stretch, for when it was done she sat up and asked, “Would you have more pleasure? Would you give more pleasure?”
Sharur’s manhood stirred. Knowing he could take her again, he said, “Are you sure? You have just had your maidenhead broken. You may take more pain than pleasure if we go again so soon.”
“I do not think that will be so, but if it is—” She shrugged. Her firm, dark-tipped breasts bounced only a little. “If it is, Enimhursag will make it right. The god watches over me.”
They began again. This time, Sharur could not tell whether or not Enimhursag aided Munnabtu. Whether the god of Imhursag aided the woman or not, she enjoyed the passage as much as he did, and he enjoyed it a great deal.
“Have I made you glad, as the god ordered me to do?” she asked, smiling up at him as they lay together covered in sweat, their bodies still joined. It was not the smile of a god. It was the smile of a woman, a woman who knew the answer before she asked the question.
“You have made me glad,” Sharur said. “You have also made me tired.” He took his weight off his elbows and flopped down limply onto her. She squawked and laughed and pushed him away.
She pulled on her tunic before he redonned his kilt. Picking up the blanket on which they had lain together, she went out of the hut. Sharur followed a moment later, as Munnabtu faced shouts from the village: “The stranger whom Enimhursag bade us make glad, is he made glad?”
“I am made glad,” Sharur said.
“He is made glad,” Munnabtu agreed, and displayed the blanket with the small bloodstain on it as proof. Everyone cheered.
Sharur would have been content—Sharur, in fact, would have been delighted—to stay for some time in the village near the border with Gibli land. That did not come to pass. After breakfast the next morning (bread, onions, beer, and wine: the peasants obeyed Enimhursag in every particular and went beyond his instructions in no particular), the god of the Imhursagut again spoke to him through Munnabtu’s father: “Gibli who warned me that Engibil runs mad in his city, you will now journey to my city, to see how I make ready to repay him for the many affronts and humiliations he has afforded me. This man whose mouth I use shall be your guide.”
“As you order, great god, so shall it be,” Sharur replied, bowing to the peasant and to the god who inhabited him. He did not want to go to Imhursag. He would have a harder time escaping Xmhursaggi soil from the central city than from regions near the border. But he dared not refuse Enimhursag.
He also wished Enimhursag had chosen a different guide; he would sooner have traveled with someone other than the father of the maiden he had deflowered the day before. But the peasant, whose name, he learned, was Aratta, still seemed content that he and Munnabtu fiad followed the god’s wishes.
When Enimhursag had withdrawn from him, Aratta said, “I will bring bread and onions. I will bring beer and wine. Thus you will be glad on the road to Imhursag.”
“Thus I will be glad on the road to Imhursag,” Sharur agreed resignedly. He had come to the conclusion that arguing with Imhursagut was pointless, especially when they were convinced they were acting as their god required them to act.
He and Aratta were far from the only travelers on the road to Imhursag. As the day wore along, more and more men joined them, so that they walked as if in the middle of a dust storm that never subsided. Some of the men carried clubs with heads of stone or, rarely, bronze. Some carried spears. Some carried bows and wore quivers on their backs. About every other man with a spear or club also bore a shield of wicker or leather.
“Imhursag arms for war,” Aratta said proudly. “Enimhursag arms for war. How the Giblut will cower! How Engibil will tremble!”