“Strong stuff!” the guard captain said admiringly.
“Engibil grant it be strong enough.” Sharur used the point of his own knife to scrape away the pitch and pry up the lid to the pot. He was used to being glad Engibil took less part in human affairs than a god like Enzuabu or, worse, Enimhursag. But when a desert demon mocked his deity, he wondered if he should have second thoughts. .
A sweet, spicy odor rose from the pot when he opened it. Beckoning for Mushezib to come with him, he walked over to demon-possessed Rukagina and squatted beside him. Seeing—and perhaps smelling—what he bore, the spirit made the donkey handler clench his jaws tight, like a two- year-old who refused to eat his mashed parsnips.
Mushezib seized Rukagina’s beard and pulled with all his formidable strength. Altogether against the demon’s will, the donkey handler’s mouth came open. Sharur poured half a potful of essence of marigold down him. Rukagina was trying to cry out at that moment, which meant the medicine all but drowned him. Instead of being able to spit it out, he coughed and choked . . . and swallowed.
He let out a cry that frightened into silence the small crawling and creeping, piping and cheeping creatures around the caravan’s campfires. His entire body convulsed, so violently that the men holding him were flung from his limbs. Something dark came forth from his mouth and nose, from his eyes and ears, and was gone before Sharur could be sure he had seen it.
Rukagina sat up and looked around. A hand went to his chin. “Who’s been pulling my beard?” he demanded. Had Mushezib yanked on Sharur’s whiskers like that, his chin would have been sore, too.
“Look at the fire,” he told the donkey handler. When Rukagina did, Sharur studied his eyes. They did not flash as they had before. “The gods be praised: we have driven the demon from you.”
“Demon?” Rukagina said. “What demon? I was sitting by the fire, eating a slice of the donkey’s liver, and, and ...” His voice trailed away. “I do not remember what happened after that.”
“As well that you do not,” Sharur said, to which the rest of the caravan crew nodded in unison, as if a single will controlled them.
“Tell me!” Rukagina said. His companions were happy enough to oblige him.
Thoughtfully, Sharur replaced the stopper in the pot of marigold essence. Among the supplies the caravan carried was a small pot of pitch: no telling when someone might need to stick something to something else. As he used a twig to daub it on and reseal the stopper so what was left of the medicine would not spill, Mushezib came up to him and said, “That is a strong medicine.”
“Yes, it is,” Sharur agreed. “Now that I can tell the Alashkurrut I saw with my own eyes how it routed a strong demon, I can charge more for it.”
“True enough,” the guard captain said. Eyeing the pot, he went on in musing tones: “If it works as well for diseases of the privates as for driving out demons, it is a very strong medicine indeed.”
“Ah,” Sharur looked down at the pot he held in his hands. He hefted it. “Do you know,” he said, “I very much doubt the Alashkurrut would want a pot that has already had half the medicine drunk from it. Why don’t you take it, Mushezib? You can dispose of it as you like.”
“The master merchant’s son is kind.” Mushezib made sure he did not seem too eager. “I shall do just that.”
2
Past the haunted desert, three cities lay between Gibil and the Yarmuk River. In neither of the first two, both ruled by ensis, did the caravan encounter any difficulty with men or gods. Sharur still wondered why Enzuabu had seemed so hostile. Even the demon of the desolation had mocked Engibil. The omen struck Sharur as worrisome. “I wonder if the demon troubled the caravan out of Imhursag,” he said to Harharu.
“I doubt it,” the donkeymaster answered. “The Imhursagut have their heads so full of their god, there’s no room in them for anything else.”
“In that case, I am glad to be empty-headed,” Sharur said, and Harharu laughed. So did Sharur, though a moment later he wondered what was funny. If Enimhursag protected his people and Engibil did not protect his, which was the stronger god?
But a city’s strength, as Sharur well knew, depended on more than the strength of its god. It was the strengths of god and men together. Engibil might be weaker than some, but Gibil, as the metal merchant knew, was by no means to be despised. Where gods were weak, the strength of men could grow, as could their ability to act for themselves. He cherished what freedom he had: cherished it and wanted more.
Instead of going through the territory of Aggasher, the city that controlled the usual crossing point for the Yarmuk, Sharur swung the caravan north through the debatable land just to the east of it. Eniaggasher, the city’s goddess, ruled it in her own right. He found dealing with men who were hardly more than mouthpieces for their city’s deity tedious at any time. Now he also feared they would try to delay him or, worse, to help the cause of the caravan from Imhursag, whose men remained similarly in the hands of their god.
“I know what you’re doing,” Harharu said when Sharur ordered the turn. “This wouldn’t work in springtime, you know.”
“We’re not in springtime,” Sharur said with a smile. “The sun is high, and the river is low.”
A couple of herdsmen and a couple of peasants stared as the caravan came down to the Yarmuk. They were folk of Aggasher. One day, Eniaggasher would chance to look through their eyes when a caravan from Gibil used this ford to avoid crossing by the city. Then there might be trouble. But it had not happened yet. Eniaggasher paid little attention to these outliers under her control, in the same way that a man, under most circumstances, paid little attention to his toenails.
A goddess dwelt in the Yarmuk, too, of course. Before venturing into the river, Sharur walked up to the bank, a gleaming bronze bracelet inset with polished jet in his hands. “For thee, Eniyarmuk, to adorn thyself and make thyself more beautiful,” he said, and dropped the bracelet into the muddy water.
The sacrifice made, he took off his sandals, pulled down his kilt, and stepped naked into the Yarmuk to test the ford. The sand and mud of the river bottom squelched up between his toes. Little fish nibbled at his legs. The cool water seemed to caress his body as he advanced. He took that for a sign the river goddess had accepted his offering.
Up to his knees he went, up to his thighs, up to his waist and beyond. If the water got much deeper, the donkeys would have trouble crossing. “Let us be able to ford in safety, Eniyarmuk, and I will give thee another bracelet, like unto the first, when we reach thy farther bank,” he said, and pressed on across the river.
Before long, his navel, and then his privates, too, came out of the water. He kept on until, wet and dripping, he emerged on the western bank of the Yarmuk. From there, he waved back at the rest of the caravan. Guards and donkey handlers got out of their clothes. Rukagina thoughtfully picked up Sharur’s kilt and sandals and carried them above his head along with his own gear. The men led the donkeys into the river. .
As Sharur had prayed they would, they made the crossing without incident: almost without incident, at any rate, for a couple of men and a couple of donkeys came out of the water with leeches clinging to their legs. They had to start a fire there by the riverbank, and use burning twigs to make the worms’ heads let go. The guards cried out in disgust. One of the donkey handlers cried out, too, when a donkey kicked him. Despite the leeches, Sharur gave Eniyarmuk the second bracelet.