People of the Tower (Ark Chronicles 4) Read online

  So they crouched, waiting, the wind, rain and thunder hammering the hut as they wondered what had happened to Opis.

  4.

  Hilda noticed that the closer they came to the northern slopes of Ararat, the better Noah became. Her father, on the other hand, worsened.

  At every stop, Beor sat as sweat beaded his face. She saw him massaging his stump. When she asked him if it hurt, he denied it, as if the question was ridiculous.

  She wondered what it must have been like being the tribe’s greatest hunter, a strong, proud, tough man, and then becoming hideously maimed. No one would have blamed Beor if had taken up a stationary role, that of a bronze smith or a tanner. He was a bronze smith, of course; perhaps the world’s best. Who else had armor like her father? But he only worked in the smithy to make weapons, tools and armor for his warrior tasks. It seemed insane for a peg-legged man to hope to be a great warrior. To attempt it took an unwavering will. That he had become a master archer was incredible. That men feared to face him weapon to weapon was a marvel, and that with his chariot he traveled over broader distances than hunters with two legs was almost a paradox. Yet…was an inflamed stump a symptom? Had his will received a blow that not even her father could endure?

  Silence became his fortress. He refused to ask anyone for help.

  Noah grew more powerful as they neared Ararat. Once they reached his farm, the difference became dramatic. A few weeks of culling snow-damaged vines, checking up on his flocks and re-training his hounds cured Noah’s cough. It saw the end of his fever and the return of his vigor. The patriarch of humanity, nearly seven hundred years old now, worked like a man of thirty. It baffled Hilda, and that bafflement replaced her grief.

  She no longer slept all the time or aimlessly wandered through snowy fields, weeping. She helped around the house, made candles, churned butter, dusted, carded and spun wool and crushed flowers, soaking the perfume into animal fat and then making it into ointment. Her father also helped Noah. Despite the inflammation of his stump, Beor worked tirelessly in the smithy. He chopped down trees, spitting them into rails. Then he dug postholes, crisscrossing the wooden rails between posts to make a fence or he hammered rocks, building small corrals for sheep.

  The weeks passed. Yorba and two others, with their wives and young ones, arrived with several oxcarts. They were all that was left of the Scouts. They too worked on Noah’s farm. They too seemed to be in limbo like her father.

  One day, Hilda took a break. She thought about the amber necklace. It had become a locus for so much evil, but she couldn’t quite bear to throw it away. She showed it to Noah.

  They sat on the porch, on rocking chairs with blankets covering their knees. On the steps, several bundled children played with kittens. The icy mountains of Ararat provided background.

  Noah turned the necklace over in his big hands. The fly caught in the middle bead seemed to capture his attention. His blue eyes took on a faraway look and he handed the necklace back.

  “Ham outdid himself,” Noah said. “It’s marvelous.”

  Hilda remembered the day that Chin, the son of Zidon, had given her the package.

  “Put it on,” Noah suggested.

  Hilda slipped the beads over her head, setting them just so on her blouse.

  Noah grinned. “You’re a pretty girl, Hilda. The amber suits you.”

  Tears welled, for she thought of Gog, that they were to have been married. “I’m sorry,” she said, wiping her eyes.

  Noah smiled, patting her hand. For a while, they rocked in silence.

  Hilda felt safe here. Despite his fearsome appearance, his legendary strength and force of will, Noah was gentle in a way that only the truly powerful seemed to be.

  Later that evening, after supper, as Hilda cleared the dishes and brought out a blueberry pie, her father brooded. Yorba and the others had already excused themselves from the table.

  “Hmm, very good, Hilda,” Noah said.

  “Yes,” her father said, mechanically. Beor shoveled down bite after bite, hardly chewing, just swallowing pie as if it were a chore to get over with.

  Noah seemed to inspect her father. Hilda watched the interplay between the two. Noah wasn’t like any man she knew. How could he be? He’d lived for almost seven hundred years! Compared to the rest of them, it practically made him immortal. He had seen so many things, had lived at the height of the Antediluvian Era. Great Grandfather Ham always seemed so knowledgeable, so filled with hidden things and experiences. Noah was much more so, a mystery wrapped in an enigma.

  At times, she wondered if Noah could read her mind. He always seemed to know what she was thinking, seemed to understand her moods better than Great Grandmother Rahab ever had. Hilda shivered. How awful if Noah were evil. She tried to imagine a world filled with powerful, long-lived men, with centuries of knowledge to draw upon and strong with youthful vigor. What if Noah should rise up, if his white hair bristled and his blue eyes blazed with wicked wrath? What terrible deeds and malevolent plots could he devise, plans they couldn’t even conceive of because they were so youthful and innocent, not stepped in centuries of experiences and hard-won understanding. The feeling passed, and he seemed to simply be old Noah again, scraping his wooden dish with his fork, pressing the tines onto the pie crumbs.

  Her father scowled. He was bigger than Noah, even though Noah was a large man. Her father glanced sidelong as the patriarch scraped his chair around to study the fire. Her father opened his mouth and then closed it.

  “Babel troubles you,” Noah said.

  Her father glanced at Noah in wonder.

  Hilda hid her grin. She had the feeling that Noah perfectly understood her father.

  “The Tower particularly disturbs you. You wonder at its purpose.”

  “If only half of how they described it is true than the Tower will take years to build,” Beor said. “The question becomes why? Why expend so much effort when there are so many other things to do?”

  “The Tower is intriguing,” Noah said. “It excites interest. Perhaps therein is the reason for its construction.”

  Beor considered that. “Clearly they wish to draw others to Babel. At Festival, didn’t Nimrod invite everyone to join them?”

  Noah sighed. “Those who rebel against Jehovah always want others to join them. They are never secure unless the world does likewise, unless the world agrees with them. Worse than the Tower, is the angel, the one that claims to control the sun.” Noah stroked his beard. “Man’s great foe moves openly once again, which is strange. I had not thought humanity ready for that. Events move faster than in Antediluvian times. How is it that we have descended so quickly?”

  Hilda wasn’t sure what Noah was talking about.

  “When you speak of man’s great foe,” Beor said. “Do you mean the Serpent?”

  “Long ago, what did he promise Eve?”

  “Eh?” Beor asked.

  “In the Garden of Eden, the devil made Eve a fantastic promise. Your eyes will be opened, and you will be like Jehovah, knowing good and evil. All Eve had to do was eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge. The crafty devil. What was better than great wisdom? With the knowledge, Eve could become like Jehovah. Perhaps she could become a god herself. Such a subtle and alluring thing was, and is, wicked. In primeval times, in Heaven itself, the devil once yearned to replace Jehovah, to become a god. It is the ultimate sin.”

  As he spoke, Noah’s eyes seemed to blaze. Or was that the fire’s light reflecting from them? “The devil loves to tempt men, using the same blasphemy that felled him. Yet the prince of evil seldom puts things so bluntly. First he tempts with the seemingly delicious thought that we can know hidden things, that through them we can become wise and powerful.”

  “What does the Tower have to do with that?” Beor asked.

  “Did you listen to them at Festival?” Noah asked. “Their great goal was and is to raise civilization. They hunger for it. The idea that they have been cheated, that they must struggle and strive to regain
that which was lost consumes them. The hint being that Jehovah has taken from them, through the Flood, what by rights they should have. Therein, I suspect, is the Tower’s allure.”

  Beor scratched his head. “You’ve gained this understanding because they desire to rebuild civilization?”

  “That and this appearance of the angel they worship,” Noah said. “I understand their twisted logic. By thanking the angel, they supposedly thank Jehovah. That is nonsense, of course. It is a ploy they use to trick the unwary and the simple.”

  “They?” Beor asked. “Who are they exactly?”

  Hilda sat up. She heard a new note in her father’s voice.

  “I speak of the plotters,” Noah said, “those at the heart of the rebellion. Nimrod, Kush—the display of Jehovah’s power frightened him. The question is: did the display frighten Kush into obedience or will he strive even harder for deep knowledge?”

  Beor plucked at his beard. “What you say makes sense.”

  “I’ve bemused you with these tales of the devil and his ancient offer of knowledge, that he uses what seems so good in order to bring about such evil.” Noah brooded. “I think a little trip is in order, for both you and Hilda.”

  Beor asked, “A trip where?”

  5.

  Icy winds howled as snow crunched underfoot. Noah wore a warm cloak and a hood, and whenever he glanced at them, the frost frozen on his eyebrows made them even whiter. Beor gasped, the white puffs of air jetting out of his mouth whipped away by the wind and hurled over the mountaintops, or so it seemed to Hilda. Her father’s peg leg made it a grueling journey as the wooden shaft sank into the drifts. Her father toiled manfully, never complaining, simply gritting his teeth and plowing headlong after Noah. She found it easier. Sometimes the drifts hardened to such a degree that with her lighter weight she climbed upon them and ran on the surface, hurrying ahead to see what lay next.

  They trekked up Mount Ararat.

  The weather bid her recall Odin, the fat fool. He had told her about his journey to the Far North and the Ice Mountains. She had met him years before at Noah’s house. Odin…back at Festival he had risen as if from out of the very ground and into their hidden camp, startling them all. Gog… “May he rest in peace,” she whispered. Gog had wrestled him, and foolish Odin, although handy with a spear, had soon found himself with the other Hunters in the cage. She furrowed her brow, only now realizing that he’d never used the bronze head of his spear, just the butt end. He hadn’t meant to kill any of them, just free his companions. She shrugged, forgetting about Odin and letting thoughts of Gog slip away.

  “It’s just a little farther,” shouted Noah, grabbing her father’s arm.

  They toiled upslope: past drifts and shrieking wind. Why had Noah taken them here? To see the Ark, he’d said. But why did that matter?

  For another hour, they plowed on, topping the slope and dragging themselves down a narrow path. Dark clouds roiled overhead, and Noah kept shouting encouragement, tugging her father along. Then her father tugged back, his features haggard, and Noah urged them under an overhang where the wind didn’t shriek and tear at their clothing. Noah passed out hunks of bread, kept from freezing because he’d carried the loaf in a sack next to his skin. After eating, Hilda stuffed snow into her mouth, letting it melt before drinking. Noah had told them that to swallow snow straight was too much of a shock to the body. “Always let it melt first,” had been a dictum Noah repeated many times.

  “Huddle together,” Noah said.

  They did, and Noah unpacked a heavy blanket and threw it over their heads. In the small confines of the blanket, with the two bearded men exhaling hot breath and rubbing their hands, Hilda gained a modicum of forgotten warmth.

  “Keep stamping your feet,” Noah said, his voice as close as if he lay his head next to hers on a pillow. “Keep rubbing your hands. Don’t stand still. Up here you can freeze to death in perfect comfort.”

  “Why bring us up here?” Beor asked past chattering teeth.

  “To hear my tale,” Noah said.

  “Couldn’t you have told us in the house?” Beor asked.

  “I’ll let you judge later,” Noah said. “For now I want you to stamp your feet and rub your hands and listen to what I have to say. It has a bearing on the question you asked before about the Tower.”

  “Now I’m sorry I ever asked it,” Beor said.

  “Alas,” Noah said. “That often seems to be the case with the best questions.”

  Noah then launched into an old tale, a story from the Antediluvian Era. It started with Cain, which was going back pretty far, thought Hilda. Cain, the firstborn son of Adam and Eve, had also been the first to start his own religion. He came to Jehovah not as Jehovah decreed, with an innocent lamb slain for his sins, but with the fruit of the field. Cain toiled in the ground cursed by Jehovah, and after stabbed by thorns and with blistered hands, he brought Jehovah his best. Cain had worked his way to Jehovah. He had taken what would forever be known as the way of Cain. He tried to purchase Jehovah’s favor through his best effort. For Cain it was with his best fruits and grains, first grown in the ground by hard labor and then harvested by the sweat of his brow. He rejected Jehovah’s revealed way. Sacrificing a lamb, ah, so bloody and crude and barbarous, and showing that man’s sinfulness required something that man himself would never be good enough to pay for—it was an insult to a proud man, and Cain was very proud.

  When Jehovah refused to accept Cain’s best—no one can work his way to Jehovah. He would have to be perfect, and no one is perfect—Cain rose up and slew his brother Abel. Abel’s sacrifice, an innocent lamb, had found favor with Jehovah. This, Noah said, showed that those who rebel against Jehovah always hate those who obey Him. Abel was also a prophet and warned his brother of his sinful path. Abel paid for his warning with his life. The event also showed a prophet’s fate. The way of Cain—a man of the world—warred against the way of the Spirit of Jehovah, against a man of the spirit. In any case, Cain gained his awful curse and went out from the presence of Jehovah. He dwelt in the land of Nod, east of Eden, and he never returned to Jehovah.

  Cain became the first apostate. He had known Jehovah, but had fled from Him. Cain also defied Jehovah’s curse. Jehovah said he would be a restless wanderer. But Cain built the first city, named Enoch after his firstborn son. With this city, Cain began a new thing. He attempted to build an artificial paradise in replacement for the one man had lost in Eden. Jehovah promised heaven to those who followed Him. Cain wanted his rewards here and now, not in some fabulous future. Cain searched for knowledge, for luxury, anything that made the world comfortable, that helped him escape endless toil.

  “Wait a moment,” interrupted Beor. “Do you mean it’s wrong to make new things, to build in order to better one’s lot?”

  “No,” Noah said. “Things are seldom wrong in and of themselves. It is the reason why one does something that is critical. By his actions, Cain said to Jehovah, Keep your paradise. I’m building my own. Thereafter, his inventions had a rebellious cast. They were efforts to replace Jehovah, to show that he was no longer in subjection to Him. You must always remember, Beor, that man was made to commune with Jehovah, to know Him and to interact with Him. To love the Creator with all your strength, heart and mind is the great purpose for each of us. To try to replace that purpose with anything else is sin, and it is also folly.”

  “I don’t understand,” Beor said.

  “Consider,” Noah said. “You were fashioned by the Great Creator to love Him, to communicate with Him, to long for His presence. To know Jehovah, Beor, that is your deepest longing. Nothing else can fill that longing, nothing else satisfies. How noble is that quest, how pure and mighty. Think of it. You and I are beings who seek the highest thing. Trifles cannot satisfy our longings. Sensual pleasures, power over our fellow man, the acquisition of things, these are babbles, toys, trifles. Our spirits yearn to know Jehovah. To place these mundane things before me as enticing items is really an insult. That i
s why I say it is folly to run after anything else other than what Jehovah has created us for.”

  Hilda was breathless, as her heart soared. She never realized humanity’s greatness before. She’d heard such things, of course. But to have Noah practically in her face telling her made the hearing more real. Imagine, knowing Jehovah…what an awesome goal. To know Him who had made all things, who knew all things, who was pure love and holiness… It awed and frightened her. She closed her eyes and prayed in her mind: Thank you, Jehovah. You are so marvelous and generous. Help me to understand better.

  Her father merely nodded, and he indicated that Noah should go on with his tale.

  “Cain, as I said, tried to defy Jehovah’s curse: that he would be a wanderer over the Earth. Cain was building a city named Enoch, but Cain never finished it. He was driven away before that.

  “Enoch finished the city built in his name. Enoch ruled there. From him descended the ungodly line of Cain. They followed the wicked way of Cain, trying to substitute their own works in lieu of obedience to the will of Jehovah. The years passed and the line of Cain, as descended from Enoch, the kings of the city, went from Irad, to Mehujael, to Methushael, to Lamech.

  “Irad, as you know, means wild ass, and that it what he was, a wild ass of a man, unruly, proud and ungovernable. In his time, they still knew about Jehovah, but like a wild ass Irad lead them further and further from the truth, delving as it were deep into the wilderness of sin. Mehujael is an odd name: blot out that Jah is Jehovah, but like all their names it was apt. During his rule, men turned their backs on Jehovah, deciding to forget about Him, to teach contrary truths to their children. Evil waxed strong and men sank into depravity. The growth of sin was so fast that it startled them, gave them pause. The next king was Methushael, his name meaning: they died inquiring. They searched in vain for answers they had already thrown away. Nod and the city of Enoch especially had become a godless realm. The rebellion begun by Cain had brought bitter fruit.