Gilgamesh Immortal (Chronicles of the Nephilim) (17 page)

Gilgamesh and Enkidu awoke simultaneously in their separate bed chambers in the palace. In mere minutes, Enkidu was suited up in armor and arrived at Gilgamesh’s door.

As he was about to knock, the door opened to Gilgamesh, armored and ready to go meet their approaching nemesis. They heard the war horns of the city in the background. The army was mustering.

“
You are late,” said Enkidu.

“Excuse me,” said Gilg
amesh gesturing to his armor. “I am as ready as you are.”

“But I made it all the way to your room before you even opened the door,” said Enkidu.

Gilgamesh thought quickly, “The king does not assist his servants. His servants assist him.”
Got him,
thought Gilgamesh.

“
Would you prefer I help you with your armor next time, sire?” asked Enkidu with a touch of playful condescension.

Gilgamesh could not help but smile at his companion’s affectionate humor. But they had serious business to attend to.

“I will grant you a merit of honor before the entire city for punctuality and for being the first to gird your loins. But first, we have a city to protect, so shut up and let us get moving.”

Enkidu smiled and they bolted for the city gates.

The army of fifteen thousand strong was gathering before the gates in anticipation of commands from their king. When the city itself was under attack like this, an additional five thousand able bodied younger men and elderly joined the ranks as reserve support.

Gilgamesh ascended the rampart of the seven fold gate. No adversary, be they army or monster, would dare assault the impenetrable seven fold gates of Uruk. It was sure failure — and death.

Ninsun was there to support her son, but he sent her away to
the protection of the temple of Enki to offer a sacrifice on his behalf.

Gilgamesh and Enkidu looked out into the night surrounding the city.
They could see nothing but blackness, but they heard the thundering footsteps of a gargantuan approaching their walls.

The
mighty roar of this unseen titanic colossus resounded again. Enkidu could swear he felt the walls themselves tremble. Even Ninurta was alarmed. He stepped a protective foot closer toward Gilgamesh.

Night guards were lighting big torches along the city walls that cast an eerie orange glow for hundreds of feet out.
But nothing could be seen yet.

Enkidu turned and was jolted by the presence of Ishtar beside them. They had not heard her approach. She often liked appearing phantom-like to enhance her mystery.

“What is this intrusion that disturbs my slumber?” asked Ishtar.

Gilgamesh had been staring at the plume of black smoke that seemed to rise from the
Eanna complex like a writhing hypnotic cobra. He turned to Ishtar.

“Actually, I thought you might know,
goddess
,” said Gilgamesh.

Ishtar glanced at the smoke
and returned the biting sarcasm of his letter with her own false remorse, “It pains me greatly to report that your wonderful gifts of wooden throne and bed accidentally caught on fire in the temple. I might have saved them, had I not been distracted.”

Another mountainous roar echoed across the walls. It was closer.
Many of the warriors of Uruk soiled their kilts when they heard the sound. They were used to war, but this was something else. Something much worse.

“But now that I hear it,” said Ishtar, “I do believe I have a faint recollection of such a creature in the past.” She pretended to continue searching her memory.

Another thunderous roar ripped the air. And Ishtar’s eyes went wide with recognition.

“Ah yes,” she said. “Now I remember that sound. It was before the Flood. It was a creature I had assumed was dead, but obviously its amphibious nature saved it.”

“Well, what is it?” asked Enkidu impatiently.

“It sounds like the Bull of Heaven,” said Ishtar.

Gilgamesh and Enkidu glanced at one another with anxiety. They had heard of this mythical creature of chaos. But they would no longer need to rely on legends and folklore because the real thing just broke out of the darkness and approached the walls of Uruk.

It was immense.
And black. Which explained why it was impossible to see in the darkness. But now in the torchlight, they could get a glimpse of its mammoth features. It walked on all fours, but appeared to be able to stand on its hind legs. Almost as tall as the walls, it had a bullish looking head with horns and a huge misshapen hump on its back, covered with stony irregular armor plates. It was an ugly denizen of darkness.

Ishtar let out a sarcastic tinge, “Oh my. That one
is
immense. I guess you have finally found your peer, Gilgamesh. ‘The Mighty Bull on the Rampage’ of Uruk versus the Bull of Heaven. It is positively mythological.”

Enkidu
corrected her. “It is ‘
Wild
Bull on the Rampage,’ not ‘
mighty
bull on the rampage.’” He was hoping for some verbal victory out of this losing battle.

“Thank you,
Wild Born
,” said Ishtar. “We must get Sinleqiunninni up here. He cannot miss this opportunity to verify your accuracy and enhance his storytelling tablets.”

Gilgamesh knew she sent this monstrosity somehow, but he also knew he could never prove it if she was too
devious to admit it. He knew that nothing she did was cowardly, so this was definitely some kind of secret scheme on her part. But now was not the time for court intrigue. They had a Bull of Heaven to kill.

However,
before he could make his command, Gilgamesh and Enkidu were thrown off their feet by the fierce shaking of the wall. The Bull had rammed the wall a hundred feet down from the gate. The walls of Uruk were strong, but the Bull was stronger and a significant part of the wall crumbled before its pounding force. Its horns were stuck in the bricks, so it shook its head and jostled until they came loose, further weakening the wall’s integrity.

Down in the streets of Uruk, citizens were screaming and running for their lives
to get as far away from that wall as possible.

The Bull reared back,
and rammed again. Another part of the wall crumbled apart. It was holding well considering the humongous heavyweight attacking the structure. But it would not hold up forever. The beast snorted and roared again.

Gilgamesh yelled to his men below, “Open the gates! Attack the Bull in two flanks of a hundred apiece!”

The commanders of hundreds heard their command and led the men through each of the seven gates that were rapidly drawn for passage.

Enkidu interrupted, “ My lord, the Bull is favoring one side. I believe it is blind in one eye.”

Gilgamesh looked closely. His Nephilim eyes could see with clarity the scarred over eye at the distance. “By Enlil, you are right, Enkidu!”

Ishtar winced with anger. They had spotted the monster’s weakness before she had hoped.
It was indeed blind in one eye. Before the Flood, this Bull of Heaven was known as Behemoth. It used to guard a secret location in the east that was first inhabited by the wolf clan of Cain and then by Noah ben Lamech’s tribe. Behemoth lost its eye when it had the unfortunate experience of killing the wife of Methuselah ben Enoch. Methuselah had launched his javelin with expert precision and marked the beast for future execution. But the execution never came because Methuselah had redeemed his revenge into advantage in the War of Gods and Men. Methuselah had a contingent of archangels help him to tether Behemoth and release it on the battlefield to counter Leviathan, the secret weapon that the gods had released from the water to wreak its destruction. But the desired confrontation never occurred because the waters of the Deluge swept the plain clean before it could happen. Behemoth, with its semi-aquatic nature was able to stay alive during the Flood.

Gilgamesh blurted, “Let us kill this
blind brute!”

Gilgamesh started for the Bull, but was stopped by
Ninurta. “King, this will not go well for you. Let your army do their work.”

Gilgamesh looked down on his men as they flooded out onto the plain in
units of hundreds and approached the Bull of Heaven.

He looked to Enkidu who merely gripped his axe tighter awaiting his orders. Gilgamesh turned back to see how his men would do.

The first two flanks of a hundred men each trumpeted their war cry and attacked the monster with shields up and spears out.

The Bull turned
its good eye toward them at the sound, and stomped its front foot, ready for blood. That was when Gilgamesh and Enkidu saw that it had a third rear leg giving it extra trampling capability, and added push each time it banged its head against something. This miscreant was diabolically ugly from hind to hump and a perfect incarnation of the chaos that it wrought.

As the soldiers got within range, the Bull of Heaven lowered his head and charged.

It was pitiful. The forces did not stand a chance. They were like a blanket of red laid out for the Bull to make its rampage precise. It scooped through the forces and trampled them to death.

A side flank of a hundred men used their chance to launch their spears at the be
ast from the side.

But its hide was full of bulbous calloused armor. Most of the spears simply bounced off its skin. The few that stuck in
between plates merely added to the Bull’s rage. It turned and, using its head again, swiped away another hundred soldiers, crushing them or casting them to their deaths.

The other soldiers backed down. They were too frightened to run swift footed to their deaths.

Up above on the rampart, nobody could see the slight uptick of Ishtar’s lips as she watched the devastation she had called down upon Uruk and Gilgamesh.

Gilgamesh said to
Enkidu, “They do not stand a chance. They are like an army of ants easily stomped on.”

Enkidu was watching it all with an Anzu eye. “Yes, but a single ant or two is hard to catch with
one eye and clumsy feet.”

Gilgamesh
glanced at Enkidu, wondering what he meant.

But before he could figure it out,
Enkidu strapped his axe on his back and barked, “I have an idea! If I can get behind him, you take the head!”

Before Gilgamesh could stop him, Enkidu was already running down the rampart to meet the Bull at the top of the wall.

Because the flanks of soldiers had balked, the Bull turned again to its goal of shredding the wall. One or more hits and it would run rampant through the city of Uruk, trampling homes and people to dust. Gilgamesh had figured the smoke of Ishtar’s fire was some kind of homing beacon.

As Enkidu approached the ledge, the Bull hit the walls again with its horns. Enkidu timed it right and jumped into the air as the Bull hit, so he
would not fall victim to the tumult that shook the wall. He landed as the Bull was trying to extricate its horns from the brick rubble. He looked down and saw its gouged out eye socket blinded to his presence.

Enkidu
looked down on the wall. The top third had crumbled away. One more hit and the Bull would be inside the city.

But then he saw
the Bull raise its head to get a better sight of its damage. It was right up to the level of Enkidu. It snorted and Enkidu was blasted with a ghastly odor and a splash of nasal slime and foam that turned his stomach.

“Disgusting,” he muttered. But the Bull had
still not seen him.

So he
launched himself onto the head of the beast and grabbed its horn in a vise grip, bellowing “HO, HURRAH!” like a joyous stallion buster.

Now
, the Bull knew of Enkidu’s presence. And it was infuriated at the annoying little flea that just jumped on it and screeched in its ear. It snapped its head backward trying to fling the little thing off its horns.

But that is exactly what Enkidu expected. He released and went flying in the air to the rear of the animal
— right to its descending tail that was like a huge cedar tree. He caught it and lost his breath in the impact, but he held on.

Gilgamesh was already running toward the ledge. He and Enkidu could think like one when it came to battle. They
did not even need to verbalize their strategy. Ninurta was paces behind him by the time Gilgamesh launched off the ledge onto the Bull’s head. He caught a horn and held on for dear life as the monster jerked and swished its head.

This flea was not going to let go.

Meanwhile, Enkidu, forgotten by the Bull, pulled out his battle axe of three talents weight and raised it high for the mightiest swing he had ever made in his life.

It came down with fierce cutting wedge and buried deep into the tail end of the Bull.

The Bull roared in pain. It was only the tip of its tail, but the axe had wedged into the spinal cord of the tail and set its nerve endings on fire.

The Bull
’s attention immediately returned to Enkidu. It whipped its tail with ferocious velocity and snapped Enkidu into the air. He went flying with such velocity he would surely perish from internal injuries when he landed on the ground a thousand feet away.