“If you try to rob us, what you will take for yourself and your kinsmen are wounds and sorrow,” Sharur said. Mushezib strutted by then, not quite by chance, looking as if even a hundred herdsmen might not be able to pull him down.
“It could be done,” the chieftain said. Sharur gestured with one hand, casually, as if to answer, Well, what if it could? The chieftain sighed. “As you say, it would cost us dear. Strange how those who have so much fight so hard to keep those who have little from getting any more.”
“As strange how those who have little think they deserve more without working for it,” Sharur returned. The herder showed his teeth, as a desert fox might have done. Sharur kept his voice elaborately calm: “By the will of the gods, we have with us a few finer things than usual. Would you see them?”
“Only if it pleases you to show them,” the herder replied, sounding as indifferent as Sharur. That was how the game went. “If it would be too much bother, you need not trouble yourself.”
“They might amuse you,” Sharur said, and the chieftain did not say no. Sharur set out before him date wine and medicine and linen cloth—the herders did more than his own people with wool. He also set out a few, a very few, swords and knives, as if to suggest that the Alashkurrut had acquired the rest.
“True, these are not things traders show us every day,” the herder chieftain said. He looked down at the ground to » disguise the eager glow in his eyes. But, tent-dwelling nomad though he was, he was neither a blind man nor a fool. “All these things come from the land between the rivers. Nothing comes from the high country.” He pointed first east, then west. “By the will of the gods, you say, you have these things to show us. Was it the will of the gods that you not trade in the mountains?”
The herders did not know gods well, or, to put it another way, the gods hardly found the herders worth noticing. The chieftain smiled as he asked the question. But the smile disappeared when, in a, stony voice, Sharur replied, “Yes, that was the will of the gods.”
“Ah.” The herder plucked at his beard. He had dyed red streaks in it with henna. Turning away from Sharur, he entered into a whispered colloquy with some of his own people. When he turned back, his face was troubled. Slowly, he said, “It may be that you are not lucky men. It may be that any who trade with you will not be lucky men. They are fine goods.” He sighed regretfully. “They are fine goods, but, as with robbing you of them, they might cost us dear.”
He and the herders he led vanished into the night, a few at a time, until they were all gone. Mushezib said, “Well, we won’t need to worry so much about the cursed thieves this time through, anyhow. They’re as bad as the Zuabut, sometimes.”
That was the best face anyone could put on it. Sharur wrapped up the weapons and nostrums an& wine and” cloth the herders had not wanted. “I shall return to Gibil in failure,” he said. “Better I should not return at all.”
“Your father will not say this, master merchant’s son,” Harharu answered. “Your mother will not say this. Your kinsfolk will not say this. They would sooner greet you in the flesh than hear your ghost whine in their ears. In the flesh, you may yet redeem yourself, and so, no doubt, you shall.”
Harharu might not have had any doubts. Sharur was full of them. The donkeymaster had meant the words kindly, though, and so Sharur inclined his head to him and said nothing more than, “Well, we shall go on.” He nodded. That sounded right. Seeing him push the brief moment of self-pity behind himself, Harharu nodded, too.
The morning sun shone off the Yarmuk River, turning its muddy water to molten silver. As he had done on the westbound journey, Sharur brought his caravan to the Yarmuk at the little-used ford north of the city of Aggasher rather than to the usual crossing point by the city. He did not know what Eniaggasher, the goddess ruling the city, might do to him and his men, and he was not anxious to learn.
When he drew near the river, a frog leapt in from the nearby mudflat. Ripples ruffled the silver surface, then subsided. All was calm once more. Sharur brought a bracelet to the water’s edge and said, “For thee, Eniyarmuk, to adorn thyself and make thyself more beautiful.” He tossed the sacrifice into the river.
Ripples spread from the bracelet, as they had when the frog leaped into the river. Unlike those ripples, these did not subside. They grew larger instead. More appeared, more and more and more, till the surface of the Yarmuk might have been the sea in a storm. But it was not the sea, and no storm roiled it.
Something flew out of the river to land at the feet of Sharur, who had jumped back away from the water’s edge when the unnatural tumult started. Now, as it eased, he stooped and picked up the bracelet he had offered to the river goddess.
“Eniyarmuk has rejected the sacrifice!” he exclaimed, blank astonishment in his voice. “What do we do now?”
“One thing we don’t do, I reckon,” Agum the caravan guard said: “I don’t reckon we try and cross the river right now.”
Harharu said, “I don’t know how we are to return to Gibil without crossing the Yarmuk River.” He stared at the stream. “I have never heard of Eniyarmuk rejecting a crossing-offering, never in all my days.”
“Can we cross anyway?” Mushezib asked.
“I wouldn’t care to try it,” Sharur said. He thought of the storm the goddess had raised in the river, and of what such a storm—or a greater storm—would do to the men and donkeys of the caravan. “If the goddess is angry, we would be no more than toys in her hands.”
Mushezib, a true man of Gibil, growled, “The goddess is a stupid bitch.” But even he realized he had gone too far, for a moment later he hastily added, “But we can’t fight her, that’s certain sure. No man can take a goddess by force.”
“There you speak truth,” Sharur agreed. He stood on the riverbank and pondered.
“Even a woman taken by force isn’t all that much fun,” Mushezib went on, more to himself than to anyone else. “They scream and they kick and they wail and they try and bite—more trouble than they’re worth, if you ask me.” He came out of his reverie when Sharur darted back toward one of the donkeys. “What are you doing, master merchant’s son?”
“Taking a woman by force is more trouble than it’s worth, as you say,” Sharur replied. “Sometimes, though, if you go with her to a tavern and buy her wine, she will smile and be happy, and you have no need to take her by force.” He carried a sloshing jar down to the bank of the Yarmuk.
Using the point of his knife, he chipped pitch away from the stopper until he could pry it up. The rich sweetness of fermented dates filled his nostrils. He walked upstream from the ford, perhaps half a bowshot, then bowed low and, with great ceremony, poured the wine into the water. That done, he tossed a stick into the river and followed it back until it had drifted past the place where the caravan waited to cross.
When it was past the ford, he waved men and donkeys forward, saying, “Eniyarmuk has now drunk ajar of wine. If she is not too sozzled to take notice of a few mortal men, she never will be.” He slipped out of his own kilt and sandals and led the first donkey into the river.
He knew what the goddess could do if she was not too sozzled to take notice of a few mortal men. His fear grew with every step, for he believed she would do it if she was not too sozzled to take notice of him. Those thoughts did not fill his mind alone, either. Harharu and Mushezib called out to their men with quiet urgency, seeking ever greater speed. The donkey handlers and guards would have pressed ahead without those admonitions; with them, they pressed harder. Even the donkeys acted less balky than usual.