Ramsayas sent for Sharur the very next day.
Sharur bowed before the wanax of Zalpuwas as he might have done before Kimash the lugal of Gibil. “I am honored, Ramsayas son of Radas, that you deign to notice me,” he said as he straightened.
Ramsayas grunted. Actually, he put Sharur more in mind of Mushezib than of Kimash: he was a fighter, first, last, and always. He had a narrow, forward-thrusting face with a nose hooked like a hawk’s beak and almost as sharp. The way he leaned toward Sharur in the tall chair on which he sat emphasized that seeming inclination to attack.
“Oh, you are noticed, Sharur son of Ereshguna. Rest assured, you are noticed,” he said. His voice had a harsh rasp to it; too much shouting, perhaps, on too many raids against too many nearby valleys. “Now, what is this you say about my neighbors buying blades from you?”
“I said nothing about their buying such swords from me, mighty wanax,” Sharur replied, though that was the impression he had wanted to leave with Ramsayas’s servant. “I said they are acquiring them. Gibil is not the only city of Kudurru trading with the many valleys, the many fortresses, of Alashkurru, but our blades—and our other goods of all sorts, I make haste to add—are among the finest to be had. You have dealt with me; likewise, you have dealt with my father. You know these words I say to you are true.”
“I have dealt with you. Likewise, I have dealt with your father.” Ramsayas ran his tongue over his lips. “That was a splendid sword you sent me.”
Sharur bowed. “A wanax deserves nothing less than a splendid sword.”
“And yet, you are of Gibil.” Like Huzziyas before him, Ramsayas seemed of two minds. Part of him plainly wanted what Sharur had brought up to Alashkurru from the land between the rivers. That was the part Sharur and his father and other men of Gibil had always seen when they dealt with the Alashkurrut. The rest of Ramsayas, though, the rest was afraid.
“Yes, I am of Gibil,” Sharur agreed. “I was likewise of Gibil when last year I also came here to trade. You were glad to see me then, Ramsayas son of Radas. You were glad to trade with me. You were glad to buy from me.” He knew he sounded bitter. He had reason to be bitter. He was bitter.
Ramsayas’s fierce eyes went up to the timbers of the ceiling. Having so much fine timber, the men of Alashkurru often used it in what struck Sharur as profligate style. He had even seen, in some valleys deeper into the mountains than that of Zalpuwas, whole buildings made of wood. Ramsayas’s eyes flashed past Sharur to the far wall of the audience chamber. Sharur realized he had succeeded in embarrassing the wanax. That might bring him profit, or might bring only trouble if embarrassment turned to anger.
To his surprise, embarrassment turned to regret. “Yes, I was glad to see you then, Sharur son of Ereshguna,” Ram- sayas said with a sigh. “Yes, I was glad to trade with you. Yes, I was glad to buy from you.” Suddenly, the wanax looked more hunted than hunter. His hoarse voice dropped to a whisper. “As a man, I am still glad to see you. But I am more than merely a man. I am a man who obeys his gods. I may not trade with you. I may not buy from you. So my gods have ordered. My men obey me when we war against our neighbors. I obey the gods.”
“But we are not at war, you and I!” Sharur cried.
“No. This is so,” Ramsayas said. “But you Giblut, you are at war with the gods of Alashkurru, I fear. Do I understand rightly that you are at war with the gods of Kudurru as well?”
“No,” Sharur said. “I say ten times, a hundred times, a thousand times, no. Engibil is my god. I and all of Gibil worship him.”
“But he does not rule you,” Ramsayas said, and Sharur had no reply. “That is at the heart of why the gods of this town, the gods of this land, fear you and will not let you trade with us. They do not want the men of Alashkurru to become as the Giblut are.”
“So I have seen, though I tell you, mighty wanax, this fear is groundless,” Sharur said. “I worship my god. I fear my god.” That was certainly true. The merchant went on, “And I would not, I do not, try to seduce you away from—”
“No,” Ramsayas broke in. “I will not hear you.” To prove he would not hear Sharur, he stuck his forefingers into his ears, so that he looked rather like a three-year-old refusing to hear what its father told it.
Back in Tuwanas, Huzziyas had quivered with eagerness for a chance to get around his gods and trade with Sharur. He would have disobeyed them had they not forced obedience upon him. They had won this battle. Sharur did not think they would win the war in Tuwanas, not if Huzziyas stayed on as wanax there and was not overthrown. Huzziyas wanted, panted, to be a lugal, or whatever the Alashkurrut would call a lugaclass="underline" a man who ruled in his own right. He had not been able to take this chance to do it. He would surely try again. Sharur guessed he would succeed, sooner or later.
Ramsay as—unfortunately, from Sharur’s point of view— was different. Like Huzziyas, he was a rough, strong man. Like Huzziyas, he would have liked to trade with Sharur for the fine weapons the man of Gibil had brought. But unlike Huzziyas, he was not willing to risk defying or deceiving the gods to get what he wanted. He was either content with the arrangement he and his forebears had long known or simply afraid to try to change it.
Sharur held up a hand. Ramsayas asked, “Does that mean you will speak on something else?” Sharur nodded—the wanax of Zalpuwas still had his fingers in his ears. At that nod, he removed them, wiping one against the wool of his tunic. “Very well then, Sharur son of Ereshguna: Speak on something else.”
“By your leave, mighty wanax, I should like to speak to your gods.” Sharur had no great hope anything would come of that. The same gods dwelt in Zalpuwas as in Tuwanas. But Tarsiyas did not speak with the loudest voice here; that place belonged to the goddess Fasillar. If the gods of the Alashkurru Mountains knew discord—as the men of the mountains did, as the gods of Kudurru did—perhaps Sharur would find those strong here more friendly to his cause.
Ramsayas’s eyes got a faraway look, as if he were listening to someone Sharur could not hear. That was exactly what he was doing. As Huzziyas had hack in Tuwanas, he said, “They will hear you.” And, as Huzziyas had, he added, “They will not listen.”
When Huzziyas had said that, he had appeared to be speaking for himself. Ramsayas sounded more like a man delivering the words of the gods. That was not a good omen, not so far as Sharur could see. He had had few good omens since setting out from Gibil. He hardly even missed them anymore.
Had the gods been besieged in their temple, in Zalpuwas, they could have held it even longer than was so for their citadel back in Tuwanas. Sharur felt, and was no doubt meant to feel, like nothing so much as a tiny insect as he walked into the great stone pile. The weight of the stonework, and of the power indwelling there, made him want to shrink down into himself, making himself of even less account when measured against the gods of Alashkurru.
Fasillar, the Alashkurri goddess of birth, was depicted enormously pregnant. By Sharur’s standards, the statue was earnest but clumsy work; it might have been carved by the brother of the man who had shaped Tarsiyas’s image back in Tuwanas. Ninshubur, the goddess of birth in Kudurru, was also the goddess of new ideas. Sharur did not think that was so for Fasillar, as best he could tell, the Alashkurri gods actively discouraged new ideas.
Ramsayas stretched himself out at full length on the ground before the cult image of Fasillar. Sharur bowed low before it. He respected the gods of the Alashkurru Mountains (more accurately, he respected the power of the gods of the Alashkurru Mountains), but they were not his gods.
The goddess spoke: “Whom do you bring before me, Ramsayas son of Radas? Why do you bring him before me?” Did Sharur imagine it, or was that last question full of ominous overtones?