“It is not that I will not.” Sitawandas paced back and forth across the stone-enclosed chamber. “It is that I dare not.”
“Then who may?” Sharur demanded. “Has Huzziyas, mighty wanax of Tuwanas, the power to do with me as his people and mine have done with each other in peace and for common profit for generations?”
Sitawandas said, “Sharur son of Ereshguna, I do not know.”
Even being allowed to go into Huzziyas’s palace and see the wanax took longer and cost more than Sharur had expected. The longer he stayed in Tuwanas doing no real business, the more he begrudged every bangle, every broken bit of silver he paid out for nothing better than living from day to day. Paying to gain access to a man who should have been glad to see him—who had been glad to see him the year before—galled him even more.
In the end, with patience and bribery, he did obtain an audience with Huzziyas. As he strode up to the massive doorway to the palace, he reflected that that was not the ideal name for the building. Just as Tuwanas was more nearly fortress than city, so the wanax’s residence was more nearly citadel than palace. The stone^ walls were strong and thick, the only windows slits better suited to archery than vision, the roof sheathed with slates on which fire would not catch.
Many of Huzziyas’s guardsmen carried bronze swords Sharur knew they had got from him. They wore copper greaves and breastplates and caps, and had their shields faced with copper, too. Copper was softer than bronze, but easily available here in Alashkurru. Huzziyas’s men used armor far more lavishly than did Sharur’s, or even Kimash’s guards back in Gibil.
Some of the guardsmen greeted Sharur like an old friend, remembering the fine weapons he and his family had brought to Tuwanas over the years. Some would not speak to him at all, remembering the admonitions of their gods. Two of the silent ones led him through the narrow halls of the palace and up to the high seat of the wanax.
Sharur thought he would have been likelier to meet Huzziyas in a roadside ambuscade than as wanax of Tuwanas. Tuwanas’ ruler below the gods was a tough fifty-five, gray thatching his hair and shaggy beard but his arms and chest still thick with muscle. Scars seamed those arms, and the bits of leg showing between tunic hem and boot top, and his rugged, big-nosed face. One of them barely missed his left eye.
After the bows and the polite phrases required of him were done, Sharur spoke as bluntly as he dared: “Mighty wanax, what have I done to offend, that you and yours will not buy what I have to sell even when buying it works more to your advantage than mine?”
“Understand, Sharur son of Ereshguna, you have not offended me personally,” Huzziyas replied. They both used the tongue of Kudurru, in which the wanax was fluent. “Had you offended me personally, you would not be treating with me now. You would be lying dead in a ditch, the dogs and the kites and the ravens quarreling over your bones.” He sounded more like a bandit chieftain than the ruler of a city, too.
“Do I understand you rightly, mighty wanax?” Sharur asked. “Do you say I have not offended? If I have not offended, what keeps you from trading for the fine wares I have brought from the land between the rivers?”
Huzziyas’s eyes glinted. “I did not say you had not offended, man of Kudurru, man of Gibil.” He made that last into an insult. “I said you had not offended me. Were I the only one who spoke for Tuwanas, we would trade, you and I. But you and your city have ...” He paused, looking for the right words.
“Angered your gods?” Sharur suggested bitterly.
“No.” The wanax shook his head. “You and your city have done something worse. You and your city have frightened the gods of Tuwanas, the gods of Alashkurru. Unless my ears mistake me, you and your city have frightened the gods of Kudurru, the gods of the land between the Yarmuk and the Diyala.”
“The gods of my country are no concern to you, mighty wanax,” Sharur said. “And I, mortal worm that I am, I should be of no concern to the gods of Tuwanas, the gods of Alashkurru. Neither I nor my city is a foe to Tuwanas, to Alashkurru. I want only to trade in peace and to return in peace to my city.” ,
Huzziyas looked now this way, now that. Sharur could not help looking this way and that, too. He saw nothing. He wondered what Huzziyas saw, or what he looked to see. The wanax said, “For myself, I am fain to believe you. My gods still fear you lie. They fear I will become like you, a liar before the gods.” .
He glanced around again. Now Sharur understood what he was doing: he was trying to find out whether his gods were paying close attention to him at this particular moment. Sharur smiled. If Huzziyas had not yet become what the gods of Alashkurru feared, he was on the edge of it. He wanted the swords and spearheads and knives Sharur could trade to him. Unless Sharur misread him as if he were an unfamiliar sign pressed into clay, he would not be overfussy about how he got them, either.
“I am not a liar before the gods,” Sharur declared, as he had to do. As he had so often on this journey, he declared his loyalty to Engibil. The more emphatic his declarations got, the less truth they seemed to hold.
“As I say, I am fain to believe you,” Huzziyas answered. “But if my gods will not believe, what can I do? My hands are tied.” His mouth twisted. His gods still held him in the palm of their hands. He wanted to slip free, but had not found a way. So Igigi’s father must have felt—he had been ensi to Engibil, but had not managed to become lugal, to rule in his own right
Casually, as if it had just occurred to him, Sharur proposed to Huzziyas what he had proposed to Sitawandas: trading as if by accident. The wanax of Tuwanas sucked in his breath. Sharur watched the torchlight sparkle in his eyes. Sitawandas had lacked the nerve to thwart the will of the gods of Alashkurru. Huzziyas, now ...
Huzziyas twitched on the high seat. He looked surprised, then grimaced, and then, as if he had given up resisting whatever new force filled him, his face went blank and still. Only his lips moved: “Man of Gibil, what you say cannot be. Man of Gibil, what you say shall not be. The gods of Tuwanas, the gods of Alashkurru have declared the men of Tuwanas, the men of Alashkurru shall not trade with you. The men of Tuwanas, the men of Alashkurru shall heed what their gods have declared. I, Huzziyas, mighty wanax of Tuwanas, have spoken.”
But it was not Huzziyas who had spoken, or not altogether Huzziyas. The hair on Sharur’s arms and at the back of his neck prickled up in awe. The wanax had been wise to wonder whether his gods were watching him. They were, and had kept him from breaking free of their will. Back in Gibil, Engibil had been content to let Igigi and his son and grandson rule for themselves alone. The gods here intended to stay unchallenged lords of this land.
“I am sorry, mighty wanax,” Sharur said softly.
Little by little, Huzziyas came back to himself. “It cannot be, Sharur son of Ereshguna,” he said, echoing the words the god had spoken through him. “You see why it cannot be.” The gesture he began might have been one of apology. If it was, he never finished it. He looked angry: the gods were still watching what he did, what he said. He sighed. He was not a lugal, free—even if only narrowly free—to chart his own course. With the gods of his country so watchful, he would never be a lugal.
Sharur did not care about that, not for its own sake. He cared about trading. “Mighty wanax, will your gods hearken to me if I speak to them face to face, to show them my wares and to show them I am not dangerous to them?” Huzziyas cocked his head to one side, listening to the gods of Tuwanas, to the gods of the Alashkurru Mountains. Sharur felt the power in the chamber, pressing down on him as if with great weight. Then it lifted. The wanax said, “They think you brave. They think you a fool. They will hear you.” After a moment, he seemed to speak for himself rather than the gods: “They will not listen to you.”