Into Eden: Pangaea - Book 1 (7 page)

After a moment another volley of arrows struck, and one sunk deeply into Hezron’s wooden shield with a, “thud!” He then hobbled to his feet, threw his shield over his shoulder and yelled, “To the wall!”

Twenty paces is a marathon when from behind the enemy is lobbing arrows all around you and your leg pains you so bad that you feel like you’ll lose consciousness with every hobble. Hezron heard another arrow thud into his shield, but he did not look back and he did not slow down. Ahead of him he could see men scrambling over the stone wall and disappearing over the other side. A couple of his horsemen rode their steeds over the wall, and then forced the animals to lay down behind its protection. When Hezron finally reached the wall, he threw his shield over ahead of him and flipped himself over, snapping off the arrow in his leg in the process. The pain was so intense that he did pass out for a minute, but one of his men brought him back by splashing a little water from a water-skin on his face.

Hezron lay there for a minute as another of the men removed what was left of the arrow and stopped the bleeding by wrapping it with strips from a cloak from one of his fallen comrade’s saddle bags. When they were done tending to his wound he ordered the men to stay put until he gave the order to move. They all thought that was the best order he had issued all night.

War, in its most basic form, comes down to the mathematical sciences. Hezron thought of that as he lay behind the rock wall calculating his odds of defeating his opponent. Ahead of him were ten to twelve heavily armed an-nef. With him were twelve trained Atlantan legionnaires capable of fighting. The rest had either been killed by the ambush or were too badly wounded to participate in an assault. With them were ten farmers that had not fled. The rest had obeyed his orders to fall back and never stopped falling. As for the farmers, they were no more than arrow-fodder. Some of them could use a bow, true, but they didn’t have any bows. So by doing a little addition and subtraction Hezron calculated that the sides were roughly even. But there was more mathematics to apply. Between the natural granite fortress that the an-nef now occupied and the stonewall the he and his men now cowered behind lay roughly two-hundred paces of open field. Two-hundred paces of killing field. And what of geometry? The an-nef occupied a position perhaps twenty paces atop a steep grade of roughly forty-five degrees—a formidable climb for men not laden down with armor and who had not just rushed across a field dodging arrows. Yes, geometry definitely had to be factored in here.

But the most pressing mathematical science at work here was that of probability. What were the odds, Hezron pondered, that he and his exhausted and wounded men could defeat the rested jackal-heads on the hill if they were fortunate enough to survive the charge? Yes, war was definitely a matter of mathematics, and Hezron was very good at math. Hezron rolled over on his side and was about to shout a retreat when one of his men came running over in a crouched position, “General!”

“Yes?”

“The enemy is retreating.”

Hezron couldn’t believe his ears. He sat up and peered over the stone wall. The sun was now well above Horse-head Rock and he could see beyond it down the Southern Highway the an-nef riders racing at full gallop and pulling their wounded commander in the buckboard behind them. And why shouldn’t they? They had done what they intended to do. They had made Hezron pay heavily in blood for his pursuit. Hezron now had wounded to attend to and they knew that he would think twice before engaging them again. Hezron began to laugh aloud. When word reached Atlantis of his ill-fated campaign they might well recall him to stand trial, but this morning he was still alive—and gods willing—no more would die needlessly today.

“General,” the legionnaire spoke to him again.

“What is it?”

“Should I order a pursuit?”

“Attend to the wounded,” Hezron replied. “We’re going home.”

Chapter 5
The Southern Highway

The afternoon sun was coming in through Jesse’s bedroom window when he awakened. He looked around and saw a servant girl who immediately jumped up from her chair and ran down the hall shouting, “Tamar! Tamar! Your son is awake! Your son is awake!”

Perez sat beside him in a chair with Enoch curled up by his side.

“How long have I been out?” he asked of no one in particular.

It was Perez who replied, “A day and a half. Doc Paron said that you might sleep a lot. Said that you had lost a lot of blood. Also said that you might never wake up.”

Enoch stood up, yawned, stretched, and then began to scratch.

“Got fleas, again, Enoch?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s what you get for chasing rabbits.”

“Jesse,” Enoch began, “what’s the last thing that you remember?”

“Getting shot by one of those jackal-heads.”

“A lot’s happened in the past day and a half,” Enoch continued. “Your mother will fill you in.”

“On no. You can’t say a thing like that and then tell me nothing. What’s going on?”

“Your mother will be here shortly,” was all that Enoch would say.

Perez then spoke up, “How do you feel, Jesse? Can I get you anything?”

“Both my arms and my left side hurt like crazy. And I’m real thirsty. Can you get me some wine?”

“Not a good idea,” Enoch interjected.

“How ‘bout some water then?” Perez asked.

“Yeah. I suppose that will have to do.”

Perez got Jesse a glass of water, but when Jesse went to reach for it he drew back in pain.

“It hurts REALLY bad to move my arm. Can you just give me a sip?”

“Sure,” Perez replied, and then lifted the glass to Jesse’s lips so he could get a drink. Just then Jesse’s mother entered the room and threw herself on the bed, crying and thanking the gods for Jesse’s recovery.

“C’on,” Enoch told Perez. “They need to be alone.”

The two then left Jesse with his mother. When they had gone Tamar’s weeping escalated to wailing as she cried out over and again, “He’s gone, Jesse! He’s GONE!”

“Ssshh. That’s okay mom. Dad was an old man. He lived nearly a millennia. You can’t ask for more than that.”

“Oh Jesse,” his mother replied through the tears, “didn’t they tell you? Josiah’s dead, too. Killed by those dreadful an-nef! My boy’s dead! Dead! And at such a young age!”

Jesse was stunned by the news. “But when, how?” he began.

Tamar filled her son in on the events of the day before, and the ambush that led up to Josiah’s death. She concluded by telling him, “You are now Master of the house of Nashon.”

This last statement also stunned him. Barely thirty-six hours ago he was sure that Josiah would soon have him leave the estate and exile him to some farm in the Territories. There he would live out the rest of his life with a girl of his mother’s choosing and be perfectly miserable. Now, he found himself a wealthy man, Master of the house of Nashon, but his sudden ascension to power had been paid for with the deaths of his father, brother, and best-friend’s father. There was no joy in that. Nothing to celebrate, and even as his mother wept on his bed he swore to the gods that he would avenge them all. Someone had to pay for these murders. Someone
would
pay for these murders, and if Hezron had failed in bringing the criminal to justice, then Jesse would just have to do it himself.

After a while Tamar composed herself and told Jesse, “I’ll have one of the serving girls bring you something to eat. You must be famished!”

Come to think of it, he was awfully hungry. “Mom,” he said, “they’ll need to stay to feed me. I can’t move my arms much because of the pain.”

“Why of course, dear. I’ll let them know.”

“And Mom…one more thing: can someone find Enoch? I’d like to speak to him.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll get him. You just get better.”

In a few minutes a girl was in his room with a platter heaped with food. That was Mom. Always afraid that he’d lose his strength if he didn’t eat twice as much as he could hold. Before he was done eating Enoch had arrived, and he waited patiently for the girl to stuff as much food in Jesse as Jesse would allow.

“That’s enough,” Jesse said at last. “I can’t hold any more.”

“But your mother said that I wasn’t to leave until you had eaten every bite.”

“I’ve had enough.”

“I’m afraid that she might have me beaten.”

“My mother has never had anyone beaten. Now just leave it on the floor for a few minutes and Enoch will finish the rest. Mom will never know. You can come back and pick up the plate later.”

“Okay,” the girl said tentatively. “If you’re sure that she won’t find out.”

“She won’t. I promise.”

The girl laid the plate on the floor and Enoch raced over, gobbling down the entire remains.

“Enoch…”

The dog ignored him.

“Enoch.”

Enoch finished up the leftover meal and then proceeded to lick the plate clean.

“Enoch.”

“Thanks for the leftovers, Jesse. My compliments to the chef.”

“Enoch.”

“Yes?

“I’m going to kill the jackal-head that did this to me and murdered my father, brother, and Asa.”

“You’d better think that one over.”

“I’ve thought it over enough. And as sure as fog kills, he’s a dead jackal-head.”

“That’s easier said than done.”

“I’ll find a way. There’s got to be a way. There’s always a way.”

“Jesse, why are you telling me this?”

“Because I want you to help me. My father was your brother. You’ve got a stake in this, too.”

“What you are talking about is murder.”

“Not murder. Revenge. An ear for an ear.”

“I think that you’d better get some more rest.”

“Enoch?”

“What is it?

“Did you know the jackal-head? The one that Mom called ‘Anubis’?”

Enoch waited a long time before he answered, then he finally replied, “Yes. But it was a long time ago. We fought against him during the An-nef War.”

“Who’s ‘we’?”

“Your father and I. And Hezron.”

“So why did he want to kill my father?”

“Your father killed his brother.”

“I know that. Mom told me. But many people die in war. Their survivors don’t usually hunt down their killers. I’ve heard that even enemies in war can become friends in peace. Why did Anubis hate my father so much that he would hold that hatred for five-hundred years?”

Enoch said nothing.

“You know, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Then why won’t you tell me?”

The dog said no more, but turned and trotted out the door.

The next week was particularly hard on Jesse. He was allowed to leave the bed only to use the commode, and that was a major undertaking that required the assistance of one of the servants. Jesse was not happy when he discovered that the girl that his mother assigned to take care of him was also given that chore. “You’re being silly,” his mother told him when he protested, but a man needed his privacy. Problem was, at ninety his mother still did not see him as a man, and the fact that he was now owner of his ancestral estate did nothing to change that. Being injured was no fun. He was bored, but used his idol hours plotting the death of the jackal-head that had put him in this sickbed. Plotting that was difficult because of the many unknowns. Jesse had never been further than twenty-five miles south of the estate, and Eden’s capital of New Sodom was some two-thousand miles south. Just getting there was a challenge. He would have to travel for days by horse, take a boat downriver for several days more, then go over the Fog Mountains and then cross another river—a vast river that reportedly made the Elmer look like a brook. How he would cross it he had no idea, but when he did he would have to then make his way through a jungle that stretched out for a thousand miles to reach Eden’s capital. Once he arrived in New Sodom, what then? How could he find this, “Anubis” without being detected? Was Anubis even still alive? This last question was problematic considering the bad shape that Doc Paron told Jesse that he had left him in. It was entirely possible that Anubis would not survive the trip home himself. If so, his entire journey would be for naught. That was a chance that he would just have to take.

The bright spot of each day were visits by Abijah and Enoch. He hoped that Perez would come by and see him, but after that first afternoon Perez was nowhere to be found. Perez told his mother that he was going to visit some friends in Albion, but no one in the town had seen him. This was not unusual for Perez, and nobody but his mother worried over his absence. A year ago he had left on horseback to visit a cousin in Whitehurst, and then rode all the way to Mountain Shadows. He hadn’t been seen for almost a year, and then returned a few weeks back telling stories of dragons and an-nef of every kind.

Abijah and Enoch were loyal homebodies, though. No adventures for them. Abijah and Jesse consoled each other in their mutual losses while Enoch listened patiently and awaited the leftovers from the meals that the servant-girl brought. While the spirit of his uncle lived in the dog, part of him was still a dog none-the-less. Enoch never mentioned their conversation the night that Jesse had regained consciousness. Perhaps Enoch thought that Jesse had been rambling with fever, but his fever had long broken and he was more determined than ever to avenge his father. Each day brought more refinements to his plan. With mid-summer now past, he might have to wait until spring to embark on his journey, but he could wait that long. After all, Anubis had waited almost five-hundred years. He was willing to stay put for the time being, at least that was his plan until his mother’s visit at the end of his first week in bed.