He could lie once more—he felt that—but he spoke the truth there. If Habbazu stole the cup from the house of Dimgalabzu, Sharur would sooner have seen it in Engibil’s hands than in Enzuabu’s.
Now Tupsharru and Ereshguna said, “So may it be.” No matter how reliable Habbazu had shown himself to be, trusting a Zuabi came hard.
Sharur said, “I hope Kimash the mighty lugal will soon permit us to return to Gibil. Now that we have forced Enimhursag to flee, now that we have plundered the Imhursaggi camp, we have no great reason to linger near the border with Imhursag. We who dwell in the city can return to our homes. We can return to our trades. The peasant levies who fought alongside us can return to their villages. They can return to their fields. We can be assured we shall have a good harvest, and food for all.”
“That would be good,” Ereshguna agreed. “That would—”
Before he could say anything more, Engibil reappeared. “You!” the god said, and pointed straight at Sharur.
“I serve you, great god.” Sharur dropped to his knees and then to his belly, though he doubted whether the forms of respect would do him any good. Engibil had to have learned something to return to the encampment of the Gibli army. Sharur resolved to give the god as little as he could, knowing how little such resolve was liable to mean.
Engibil said, “You were outside my temple when the thing that was stolen disappeared. You were outside my house when the thief dared rob it.”
“Great god, I had gone down into Gibil to put a prisoner into the hands of Ushurikti the slave dealer,” Sharur said. “Mighty god, while I was there, I put on an entertainment for the people left behind in the city, and especially for the priests who serve your house on earth.” Unless Engibil forced it from him, he would not admit he knew exactly when the cup disappeared from the god’s temple.
“It was during this entertainment that the thing that was stolen was raped away,” Engibil said. “What do you know of this? Tell me the truth.”
Sharur had to obey. “Here is the truth that I know, great god,” he said. “I know that, while the entertainment was under way, I never once set foot inside your temple. I never entered your house on earth. Your own priests, your own servants, saw me in the open space outside your temple. They will say as much. I never saw any thief enter your temple. I never saw any thief leave your house on earth. When I left the open space outside your temple, the entertainment was still going on.”
Every word of that was the truth. Every word was as misleading as he could make it. Engibil frowned, again not receiving the answer he had expected or hoped for. “Do you wonder, son of Ereshguna,” he said gruffly, “that I ask these questions of you when you had seen a Zuabi thief and when you were close by my temple when the vile thief struck?”
“You are a god,” Sharur said. “How can a man wonder at anything a god may choose to do?”
“You can not,” Engibil said. “You must not.” And then he was gone once more.
“I am glad you told the god the truth that you knew,” Ereshguna said. “I am glad you were able to tell the truth with such ... precision.”
“So am I, Father,” Sharur replied, still shaking a little. “So am I. Has that beer pot yet gone dry?”
Kimash the lugal made the Gibli army’s return to the city of Gibil into a triumphal procession. At every village along the road south from the Imhursaggi border, men dropped out to return to their usual labor in the fields. At every village, Kimash made a speech praising the warriors, praising the people of Gibil as a whole, and praising himself.
At every crossroads along the road south from the Imhursaggi border, men turned off to the right or left to go back to their villages. At every crossroads, Kimash halted the whole army so he could make another speech. Again, he extolled the warriors, the Giblut, and himself.
The speeches were not quite identical, one to another, but they were similar. After a while, Sharur stopped paying close attention to them. “I wonder if he can find anything new to say when we finally get to Gibil,” he remarked as the army started moving after yet another halt.
“More likely, he’ll simply run all of these speeches together, for the men and women of Gibil will not have heard them,” Tupsharru said.
“And then, once he has done that, he will go into the south and make all these speeches yet again,” Ereshguna said. “He is not a god like Enimhursag, to speak into the ears of all his people at once. Naturally, he wants all the folk of Gibil to know he has driven back the Imhursagut. If he wants them to know, he must tell them himself.”
“And tell them, and tell them, and tell them,” Sharur said with exaggerated weariness. Ereshguna tried to send a reproving look his way, but broke down and laughed before the expression was well formed.
Although the lugal’s endless bombastic oratory made the march down from the Imhursaggi border seem to take forever, the baked-brick walls of Gibil, and Engibil’s temple and Kimash’s palace towering above them, at last came into sight. Kimash halted the army outside the north gate to the city and ordered the warriors who had armor to don it and those who had only weapons to carry them.
“He does indeed wish to make the bravest show he can,” Sharur said.
“Only one sort of show is worse than no show at all,” his father said, “and that is a poor show.”
Kimash left himself in no danger of making a poor show. As his fighting men entered Gibil through the north gate, a great-voiced herald cried, “Behold! Mighty Kimash returns in triumph, having made Enimhursag flee!” Riding in the chariot all adorned with gold, Kimash waved to the men and women lining the narrow, winding streets of the city.
And the people cheered. Not all o£them, no doubt, loved Kimash. Some surely longed for the dayS when Engibil did much of their thinking for them. But no one in the city of Gibil could possibly have longed for Enimhursag to do much of their thinking for them. The rivalry between their city and that of the vanquished god was too deep and went back too far for any of them to have hoped he won. Beating Enimhursag was the best way Kimash could have chosen to make the Giblut think well of him.
Into the market square marched the warriors of Gibil. The men and women who had not fought crowded in with and after them. Servants brought a platform from the lugal’s palace. Kimash climbed up onto it and looked out over the crowd. He was wise in the ways of men, and proved wise enough not to do as Tupsharru had said he would. Instead of stringing together all his earlier speeches, he kept things short and to the point: “Warriors of Gibil residing in the city, I release you to your families and friends for the praise you so richly deserve. Warriors of Gibil dwelling south of the city, I bid you stay this day before resuming your homeward journey. Let this day be a day of feasting, a day of drinking, a day of revelry, a day of celebration. I, Kimash, lugal of Gibil, have spoken. I, Kimash, lugal of this city, have declared my will.”
Again, the people of Gibil were glad to follow where the lugal led. Those who had gone to fight and those who had stayed behind all shouted and clapped their hands. Warriors embraced their fathers, their brothers, their wives, their mothers, their sisters, their children. Some headed for taverns. Some headed for brothels.
Sharur headed for home, along with Ereshguna and Tupsharru. They had not gone far when they met Betsilim and Nanadirat. Sharur hugged his mother and younger sister. He looked around hopefully, to see if Ningal was sofnewhere nearby. On a day of revelry, a day of celebration, he might with propriety hug his intended, too. But, to his disappointment, he did not spy her.
He also looked around for Habbazu. He did not see the Zuabi thief, either. He did not know what that meant, or whether he should worry. When Habbazu chose not to be seen, he was not seen. But he also might have fallen into the hands of Engibil, or those of Engibil’s priests, or those of Kimash’s servitors. He might even have escaped to Zuabu in spite of Engibil’s watching the border.