People of the Flood (Ark Chronicles 2) (29 page)

Black Mane blocked out the sunlight
. And the wicked, razor-sharp point of bronze entered the beast’s chest. The butt on the ground held, kept in place by Nimrod. Black Mane roared in agony. He roared so Nimrod almost lost his grip. The claw tips hooked Nimrod’s tunic, shredding it from his body. Then both monster and hunter were aware of Gilgamesh thrusting his black elm lance from the side. Gilgamesh pulled out a reddened lance and sank it in again, again, and again, like a wasp gone insane. With a tremendous groan, the great cat sank onto the trail, dead, twitching only a moment and then lying forever still.

For several heartbeats
, neither Nimrod nor Gilgamesh moved or said a word. Each man sucked air. Then Nimrod drew the heavy spear out of the beast. He kissed the bloody shaft, put his foot upon Black Mane and shouted wildly.

18.

Several days later, Nimrod, Gilgamesh and Uruk traveled along the shady banks of the Euphrates River. Like a thin strip of forest, date palm trees lined both sides of the mighty, yellow-colored current. From the tops of some of the palms, cooing pigeons watched.

When they had first arrived in the Land between the Two Rivers, the Euphrates had been swollen from the melting snow of the hinterlands
. Then the river had been rich with silt and an even muddier brown color, and had flooded wide areas, depositing the new soil in a helter-skelter fashion. In some places, the floods formed reed-rich swamps only now drying out; in others, the rainless alluvium missed the moisture and remained sandy grassland. In this vast, treeless plain of primeval mud, the river fell a mere 112 feet in 210 miles. Accordingly, when the Euphrates flooded, it often left its riverbed and carved out new channels. Because of that tendency and the distribution of silt each year, the riverbed in many places was higher than the surrounding countryside.

As the three men traveled along the palm-lined bank, ducks quacked their way across the four-hundred-yard-wide river, while elephants on the other side dipped their trunks into the flowing waters and hosed it into their mouths
. One frisky fellow sprayed his mother until she lowered her head and nudged him.

The sun beat down on everything except whatever hid under the shade of the palm trees
. Sweat slicked the three Hunters. Uruk doffed his wolf cap and dragged a brawny forearm across his face. “I’m for a swim.”

Nimrod barely shook his head
. He scanned back and forth, seeming to search for something. Ever since reaching the Euphrates, he had refused to be alone for even a moment.

“
We could try out my new hooks,” Gilgamesh said. “Let’s wade past the reeds and toss out our lines.”

Nimrod shook his head again
. He hadn’t said much today. He kept watching, glancing around and occasionally urging them to hurry. He walked ahead and, without noticing, he walked through dried elephant manure.

“
What’s he so fired up about?” muttered Uruk.

Gilgamesh had no idea, but that Uruk even addressed him showed that the brutish Hunter also sensed Nimrod
’s unease.

Nimrod whirled around, intent, staring at both of them
. He doffed his lion hood—he wore Black Mane’s skin as a hooded cloak. “Whatever happens, don’t panic.”

“
What’s going to happen?” Gilgamesh asked.

Nimrod glanced over his shoulder, as if he saw something he didn
’t like. Gilgamesh saw nothing unusual.

“
Agree to nothing,” whispered Nimrod. “Remain silent, saying neither aye nor nay. Proffers of power or…” He glanced sharply at Gilgamesh “…of woman gained or riches to buy them…” Nimrod shook his head. “Hold your ground, too. Don’t allow yourself to be awed. Remember, about things we can’t see, we can be easily tricked or cheated.”

“
What are you talking about?” Uruk asked.

Nimrod bared his teeth
. “Follow me, and remember what I’ve just said.” He turned and marched ahead.

Gilgamesh and Uruk, both thoroughly frightened and uneasy, stuck close behind him
. They traveled for another league, two, when:

“
NIMROD!”

Nimrod skidded to a halt, his eyes wide.

Standing in the sun, or with the sun behind him, stood a shining man. The man’s garments were brilliant, blinding, causing Nimrod to throw his arm over his eyes. Uruk and Gilgamesh fell to their knees, trembling and awe-struck. Uruk groaned, dropping onto his belly to do obeisance. In a moment, Gilgamesh fell beside him.

“
O MIGHTY HUNTER,” said the shining man. “WHY HAVE YOU DISOBEYED YOUR FATHER?”

“
Who are you?” Nimrod shouted, with his legs trembling.

“
I AM BEL. I AM THE ONE YOU SEEK.”

Nimrod dared lower his arm as he squinted
. The shining man was awful to look upon, and yet beautiful. Nimrod groaned, falling to his knees. Once again, he pressed his face against his arm.

“
I AM THE ANGEL OF LIGHT, OF THE SUN. I AM HERE TO TEACH YOU THE FIRST GLIMMERINGS OF TRUTH.”

“
What truth, O Bel?”

“
THERE IS MUCH WORK TO DO BEFORE YOU CAN BE LIBERATED FROM THE BONDAGE OF HIM WHOM WE BOTH HATE.”

“
From Jehovah, O Bel?”

“
FROM THE ONE WHO WOULD MAKE ALL CRAWL LIKE WORMS BEFORE HIM. HEED WELL, MIGHTY HUNTER, AND DO THIS TASK, AND WE SHALL TAKE THEE TO OUR BOSOM THAT THOU MAY JOIN US IN OUR HOLY WAR.”

“
What about my companions?”

“
THEIR LIVES ARE FORFEIT. FOR THEY HAVE SEEN AND HEARD TOO MUCH.”

“
No!” Nimrod said.

“
YOU HAVE NO SAY IN THE MATTER. YOUR DISOBEDIENCE FROM YOUR FATHER’S INSTRUCTIONS HAS COST THEM THEIR LIVES.”

“
Then slay me, too.”

“
DO YOU, ONE SO YOUNG, ALREADY WEARY OF LIFE?”

“
Far from it. But I will not stand aside while you slaughter my companions. I am Nimrod. I am the Mighty Hunter.”

“
YOU ARE THE CHOSEN OF BEL, WHICH IS INFINITELY MORE WORTHY AND BECOMING THAN YOUR SMALL TITLES.”

Then the bright one, he named Bel, shone more fiercely
. Nimrod groaned, with his head sinking and his limbs aquiver. At that moment, he recalled that he had slain Black Mane, and that without a scratch. A prodigy shouldn’t bow. So Nimrod snarled, grinding his teeth. He strove for mastery of himself. He lifted his head, although shielding his eyes with his arm, and he struggled upright, standing as against a powerful wind.

“
YOU ARE A GNAT, A WORM OF THE EARTH. WHAT IS THIS YOU TRY TO PROVE?”

“
I am Nimrod. I am a man. Destroy me if you are able, but don’t seek to cow me. I refuse to part with my companions, just as I refuse to do your will if you slay them and let me live.”

For a heartbeat
, no word was spoken. For two, three, four heartbeats, silence reigned.

“
WE GRANT THEE THEIR LIVES, O REBEL, FOR YOU HAVE PROVEN YOURSELF A MAN AMONG MEN. SO WE BID THEE TO DARE TO REACH FOR THE GREAT PRIZE. FIRST, HOWEVER, YOU MUST BUILD THE CITY OF BABEL AND A TOWER, AND THEN YOU WILL TEACH ALL MEN TRUE WISDOM. FOR THE LIGHT-BEARER OF HEAVEN WILL GUIDE THEE, IF YOU HAVE THE STOMACH TO BE KING.”

“
I will rule,” Nimrod said. “But I refuse to be any being’s slave, not yours, nor Satan’s nor even Jehovah’s. Yet, if you help me, I will help you.”

“
WELL SPOKEN, MIGHTY HUNTER. WE ARE AGREED.”

“So be it,”
Nimrod said. “We are agreed.”

The End

The epic adventure continues with

People of Babel

Read on for an exciting excerpt from the next book in
the Ark Chronicles.

1.

Canaan and his clan remained in the Zagros Mountains. Kush, Menes, Put and the others led their families to the land of promise. In the foothills, they learned the miraculous tale of Nimrod’s meeting with an angel. Gilgamesh and Uruk attested to it. They had heard a roaring sound and seen a bright light. At the very end, they had heard the angel pronounce their doom, and they had heard, too, and gushed in the telling of how Nimrod had saved them.

In a long train of lumbering wagons and two-wheeled oxcarts, the tribe of Ham left the foothills. On the plain of Shinar, they raised dust clouds. Children walked with their parents, and there were herds of bleating sheep, goats, cattle and protective hounds. Great wealth lay in the clattering wagons, and the people chattered excitedly about the richness of the alluvial soil and the vast sea of grass.

At the Euphrates, where the angel had spoken with Nimrod, Kush built a large earthen mound. From chiseled stones taken from his wagon, Kush constructed an altar. Then he called an assembly of the people. He lifted his large hands, and his broad, seamed face was a study in seriousness.

Quiet descended as mothers hushed their children and fathers nudged teenage sons.

“Does our patriarch plant each seed for his tribe, forge each dagger and hoe?” Kush asked, in a loud voice. “No. His sons plow the fields. His grandsons blow through tubes that heat the smithy fire. His daughters sew garments and bake bread. So, too, does Jehovah delegate tasks to various angels. Some move the stars. Some cause the wind to blow, the sun to shine and snow to fall on the hinterlands that feed the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. Each of these angels serves the Holy One. Now I ask you. How does a son of Ham feel when he plows the fields if he is never recognized for it? What if I eat at my father’s house and say: ‘What a wonderful meal, thank you.’ But I never thank my sisters for their labor in the kitchen. Wouldn’t I have slighted them? In such a manner, I would have slighted my father. So, too, do we slight Jehovah by never thanking the angel of the sun for his hard work, or the angel of the moon for giving us light in the darkness. Or we slight the angels of the stars, who move them for us and thus tell us the seasons and move the constellations which represent the stories of long ago, first told by Father Adam, his son, Seth, and the venerable Enoch.”

The wind stirred nearby palm trees lined against the Euphrates. Opposite the trees in a corral of circled wagons, a cow waiting to be milked lowed in complaint.

“As a farmer who is intimate with nature,” Kush said, “which is to say with the doings of Jehovah, I will take some of my possessions and sacrifice them to the angel in thanksgiving for all of us.”

People nodded, impressed, and after the sacrifice the elders and the heads of each family met to discuss how to begin construction of the city.

The plain of Shinar was unlike anything they had seen. Few trees grew on the flat sheet that spread as far as sun shone. So no farmer needed to hew trees to clear his field or laboriously cut out stumps or clear rocks, for there were practically no stones in the land. Reeds sprouted wherever water stagnated and date palms grew thick along the river’s raised banks.

Nimrod and his Hunters had described the seasons, the chilly, rainy winter, the rising of the Euphrates in spring and, in some areas, the vast flooding, and the hot months of summer when rain seldom fell. Knowing this, the men took out shovels and pickaxes, a kind of short-handled hoe. Under the direction of either Kush or Menes, they picked and dug canals. Meanwhile, Nimrod and his Hunters supplied venison.

The Euphrates was unlike any river they had ever encountered, or that Ham had heard about in the Old World. Each year the river turned muddy-brown with silt washed down from the highlands. The churning, seething floodwaters kept the silt moving, but on the flat plain the speed of the water—the current—slowed and the silt deposited itself. Gradually, perhaps since the Deluge almost 100 years ago, this depositing silt had built-up the banks of the Euphrates. Thus, incredibly, the river flowed above the plain.

Even at the Euphrates’s low level of mid-summer, moving the water through the canals over a long distance proved easy because of the river’s beginning height. Only for their special gardens of onions, leeks, garlic, cucumbers and lettuce did they need to hoist water to higher levels. There they used a
shaduf
, a long pole with a rope and bucket on one end and a stone as counterweight on the other end, with an upright post used as a pivot or fulcrum. A man pulled the bucket against the counterweight of stone. He dipped the bucket into the lower canal and used the counterweight to help hoist the water to a higher canal. Working from dawn to dusk with a
shaduf
, a man could move 600 gallons a day.

The hot summer sun, the rich soil and the unlimited water produced heavy blades of wheat and barley with astonishing yields. Barley grew best. Oil pressed from the many-colored sesame seeds were used for cooking and were used as lamp fuel and cosmetics, while sesame seed cakes became a staple. To hold all the grain, potters fashioned large jars and plugs of clay.

Even the wild date palms gave fantastic yields, dropping, on average, one hundred pounds of fruit per tree. The stone in the fruit they crushed for cattle feed or burned into charcoal. The fruit itself was eaten fresh or pressed into thick syrup. They used the syrup instead of honey or made a potent date palm wine. The tree trunk they fashioned into doors and wagons. The ribs of the tree made beds and chairs. The leaves were bound into brooms to sweep away dust. The fibers were woven into baskets, ropes and fishnets, while the young shoots at the top of the tree made a tasty salad.

During this joyous time of initial building and new possibilities, Gilgamesh despaired. It was true that he had become a gifted tracker. He was lean and tireless, with stringy muscles suited to long runs, and he had a growing patience for hiding behind thorn bushes as he watched nervous gazelle. The sun had baked him brown, and the endless hunting gave him a serious look, giving intensity to his squint.

One day as he returned from the dusty plain, with several hounds loping beside him and a slain gazelle slung about his neck, he stopped at a shrinking lagoon. As the hounds lapped water, a man only a little older than Gilgamesh parted reeds with a net slung over his shoulder and a string of carp in his hand.

Gilgamesh often thought of Opis, and the youth before him had similar features. It was Ramses, her brother, dressed in a Hunter’s leathers.

They shook hands and commenced to walk together, congratulating each other on a good day’s bounty. Then they fell silent as Gilgamesh brooded.

“Uh,” Ramses said, glancing at him sidelong, “Opis says to say hello.”

Gilgamesh knit his brow, and with a decisive movement, he dug from under his belt a smooth black stone that seemed to suck in the sunlight.

“That’s jet,” Ramses said, appraisingly. “It’s a precious stone.”

“It’s my lucky stone. Here. Give it to Opis.”

Ramses eyed him, and perhaps it was only the sunlight, but something seemed to glimmer in those eyes. “Can I give you some advice?”

“Not if you’re going to tell me to leave your sister alone.” Gilgamesh scowled. “The thought of Uruk touching her makes me boil.”

“Indeed. But for you to save Opis from him, you must make her your wife.”

“How? I own no flocks or cultivated fields. My valor and wits are my only possessions.”

“Those won’t buy a wife,” Ramses said. “Now that piece of jet… My father adores gold, silver and precious stones. If you could add to your jet or gain a few flocks or some cultivated fields…”

Gilgamesh shook his head. “Hunters have no time for idle pursuits.”

“How does one gain wealth then?”

“Valor is the goal,” Gilgamesh said.

For a time, their tramp was the only sound.

“My point,” Ramses said, “is that if you ever do gain wealth, you must come to my father and lay half of it at his feet. Say: ‘I wish to marry Opis.’ He’ll look at your goods and say, ‘Not enough.’ Then begin to add a little more. Bargain. If you have enough and argue very hard, Opis will become yours and Uruk will have been thwarted.”

“Would your father go back on his deal with Uruk?”

“My father adores Uruk’s goods, not his personality.”

Gilgamesh grew thoughtful.

“You have a little less than two years,” Ramses said. “For on Opis’s fifteenth birthday, she will marry.”

Gilgamesh put away the jet.

Later, Ramses said, “You might sneak by sometime. If…”

“Yes?”

“If you promise on your honor that you won’t dishonor my sister,” Ramses said.

“I would do nothing to shame her.”

Ramses smiled. “Perhaps I’ll tell her you said hello. That you’ve been thinking about her.”

“Yes!” Gilgamesh blushed. “Please, do that.”