Enimhursag roared like a lion. He bellowed like a bull. His ichor, smelling of thunderstorms, splashed onto Sharur. It was hot, but it did not burn. Instead, it made him tingle and quiver all over. Under his helmet, his hair stood on end. It was indeed as if lightning had struck close by.
But the god of Imhursag did not topple. The god of Imhursag did not fall. Sharer was only a mortal man, and had not the strength to cut that mighty tendon through and through. The wound pained Enimhursag. It failed to cripple him.
“Let me have a try!” Dimgalabzu cried, and swung his ax as Sharur had swung his sword.
Enimhursag roared again. This time, Sharur thought he heard fear along with pain and fury. The Giblut were tiny next to the tremendous self he had chosen, but they had found a way of hurting him that might do real harm. He glared down at Sharur and Dimgalabzu, hate suffusing his face.
“Go back to your own city!” Sharur shouted. “Go back to your own city, and leave us Giblut alone!” He chopped at the god’s heel tendon again.
Had Enimhursag kept his wits about him, he could have crushed Sharur and Dimgalabzu under his foot, as he had crushed other Giblut. But he might also have crushed men of his own city—men who, like the fallen priest, still strove to protect him. And the realization that the Giblut truly might endanger him rather than being only nuisances must have struck terror into his outsized heart.
Instead of trampling the men who tormented him, the god turned and, in a few great strides, withdrew from the battlefield. Sharur sent up a cry of exultant joy: “Enimhursag flees!”
“Enimhursag flees!” Dimgalabzu echoed with a great bass shout. In a moment, all the Giblut took up the cry: “Enimhursag flees! Enimhursag flees!”
“Enimhursag flees!” The Imhursagut shouted it, too. In their voices was no exultation. Horror choked their cries. Dismay filled them. Fear made them quaver. “Enimhursag flees!” Perhaps the Imhursagut had not imagined such a disaster could befall them. When it did, they had none of the self-reliance the Giblut might have possessed with which to withstand it.
“Enimhursag flees!” The Imhursaggi line wavered as courage drained from more and more of the Imhursagut. If their god would not defeat the men of Gibil, how were they to do so without his aid? Most of them saw no answer to the riddle. Most of them ran away, too, howling their terror.
Here and there, a man or a clump of men still stood boldly. Here and there, a few brave warriors tried to stem the rout. The Giblut swarmed over them and cut them down. Even as Sharur slew a man of that forlorn rear guard, he knew a moment’s sorrow. The men who stood, the men who fought on after their god abandoned them, were the men most like those of Gibil, the men most fully themselves and least tiny reflections of Enimhursag.
He and the men of his city rolled over those partly emancipated Imhursagut and after the warriors who fled. This time, the men of Imhursag did not pause to defend their encampment. A few did snatch what they could from their tents, but only a few. More of those were nobles than Imhursaggi peasants: the nobles, of course, had more possessions over which to concern themselves.
“Forward the Giblut!” Kimash shouted as his own men swarmed into the camp the Imhursagut were abandoning. “Forward! Later will come the time to loot. Presently will come the time to plunder. Now comes the time to finish the foe. Forward the Giblut!”
Most of the men of his city obeyed him and kept on pursuing the Imhursagut. Some, however, stopped and stole whatever struck their fancy. The Giblut, for better and for worse, were their own men first, men of their city second.
Habbazu, in this regard, also proved to be his own man first. When Sharur had gone, to swing his sword against Enimhursag’s heel, he had lost track of the Zuabi master thief. Now Habbazu, catching up to him, glittered with gold and sparkled with silver, having festooned himself with necklaces and armlets and rings. Grinning at Sharur, he said, “I have made a profit on this day that any master merchant would envy.”
“See that you do not purchase this profit at the cost of your life,” Sharur answered. “If you make your arm so heavy with silver and gold that you cannot lift it either to attack or to defend, then bronze may be your end. You would wish yourself better served by it and less well by precious metals.”
Habbazu answered by swinging his own bronze sword in Sharur’s face. The blade had blood on it. “Fear not,” the thief said. “The Imhursagut will bear witness that I am not too burdened to battle. Several of them will bear witness only to those who knew them well enough in life to hear them moan and complain as ghosts.”
“Good enough, then,” Sharur replied, and slogged on after the broken army of Imhursag.
No more than the men of his city had Enimhursag lingered at the army’s encampment. The god of Imhursag fled ahead of his warriors toward the broad canal that marked the border between the territory of Gibil and the land he ruled. He crossed the canal in a couple of enormous strides; the water bore his weight as readily as land had done.
Once back on the soil his city ruled, the soil he ruled himself, he turned back toward his army and shouted in a great voice: “To me, my children! To me, my chicks! Back to our land—to the land of the pure, to the land of the good, to the land of the honest. Away from the land of Gibil— away from the land of serpents, away from the land of scorpions, away from the land of liars.”
“Away from the land of Gibil!” the Giblut jeered. “Away from the land of warriors, away from the land of heroes, away from the land of men.”
But the Imhursagut could not cross the wide canal without wetting their feet, as Enimhursag had done. They had to wade in and flounder across. Gibli archers gleefully plied them with arrows as they waded, as they floundered.
When those arrows were aimed at men who were more than halfway across the canal, and more particularly at men dragging themselves up onto land on the Imhursaggi side, many of them went wide or fell short—more than could be accounted for by bad shooting.
“Enimhursag protects them,” Ereshguna said as he came up alongside Sharur. The older man looked and sounded very tired; he was breathing in great panting gasps. But he still thought clearly. Sharur could not remember an occasion on which his father had failed to think clearly. Ereshguna went on, “Now they are on Imhursaggi land. Now they are on land Enimhursag possesses as his own. The Imhursaggi god has greater powers on land he possesses as his own.”
“And yet land Enimhursag once possessed as his own is now Gibli land,” Sharur answered. He stamped his foot on the muddy ground near the edge of the canal. “This land we stand on now is land Enimhursag once possessed as his own. He possesses it as his own no more; it is now Gibli land.” He pointed north. “If Kimash the lugal wills it, we may make more land Enimhursag once possessed as his own into Gibli land. Once more, we have beaten the god and his folk in war.”
“Once more, we have beaten them,” Ereshguna agreed. “If Kimash the lugal wills it, I shall go on into Imhursag. I shall go on into the land Enimhursag possesses as his own. But the fighting there will be harder, for it is land the god has held for long and long, land he has made his. I hope Kimash will decide routing the Imhursaggi army and humiliating the god of Imhursag are punishments enough.”
“And I.” Sharur nodded emphatically. “We have other things with which to concern ourselves.” He said no more than that. Engibil might be listening. Engibil might come to the northern border of the land of Gibil to jeer at Enimhursag over his failed invasion. Or Engibil might come to the northern border of the land of Gibil in search of the stolen Alashkurri cup. If he did come in search of the cup, he would come in wrath. Sharur wanted to do nothing that would draw his notice.