People of the Flood (Ark Chronicles 2) Page 24

  Before he could answer, a loud roar erupted in the darkness, near and to their left. The roar promised death by mutilation or bone crushing.

  Semiramis rolled behind him, handing Nimrod his spear. The roar sounded again, closer. It was between them and camp. In the distance, the Hunters cried out, ram’s horns blew and dogs barked.

  Nimrod crouched, scanning the darkness. A cool breeze blew, waving the grass. Stars twinkled, and the moon was hidden behind a cloud.

  Then Nimrod saw a shadowy shape less than fifty feet distant. His eyes widened. The beast was practically the size of an auroch bull, the biggest lion he’d ever seen, with a dark mane of kingly bearing. It was a cave lion of the dawn era, fully as ferocious as the sabertooth cat, perhaps mightier and deadlier. The Hunters had stayed clear of these lions, a pride of magnificent beasts that had crossed their path only twice before. Cave bears and dragons were solitary creatures. Dire wolves had proven dangerous, and they, too, were pack animals, but these cave lions—Nimrod thought digging pits and luring them to their deaths one by one might be the wisest course. He, along with the others, had seen these lions pull down a fully-grown elephant, a titanic battle that the Hunters had talked about for weeks. The black-maned male, the pride master, which Nimrod was certain this was, led the others intelligently and had been the chief factor in bringing down the elephant. His lionesses would each be the equal of Beor’s great sloth. Their intelligence, vast size and unity made these cave lions the most dangerous beasts Nimrod and his Hunters had yet come upon.

  “Rise up and slay him,” Semiramis whispered.

  The shadowy beast, the cave lion, halted abruptly.

  Nimrod’s chest clenched, and he gripped his spear with numbing strength. Oh, to meet this monster during daylight, surrounded by his Hunters. Then to dart in and grab Black Mane’s tail, that would be a feat. He was certain one or more of the Hunters would die during the battle, for surely the other lions would join the fray. That was another reason he favored using pits to rid himself of these predators. He needed all his Hunters alive. To lose even one…yet, eventually, he had to kill Black Mane. To let such a terrifying monster survive and winnow the herds once the tribe of Ham came would wreck his position as the mighty hunter.

  Black Mane roared. It was a deep and deadly sound, and it went all the way to Nimrod’s toes. For a moment, he couldn’t move. Then a goat bleated. The massive lion sprang. The goat cried out once, and then the cave lion trotted away in the darkness, the milk-goat dangling from his massive jaws.

  “That’s the second of our goats they’ve slain,” Semiramis whispered.

  “Gather the blanket,” he said. “Then stick close behind me. There may be more of them lurking near.”

  15.

  The next day, Gilgamesh squatted over a pile of fresh antelope bones. With a flint carver, he cut out fishhooks from bone. It was delicate work, and he brooded about Opis, had been brooding about her the entire trip.

  They camped on trampled grass, had dug down an area for the fire-pit and put up animal-skin awnings on slender sticks. The goats were tethered to the side, while two dogs trotted through camp. Most of the men hunted with Nimrod, with only two others on guard duty to protect the supplies.

  The half-grown cheetah cub preceded Semiramis, who sat beside Gilgamesh. The Hunter looked up and then absorbed himself with the fishhooks.

  “Am I bothering you?” she asked.

  “No,” he said, without looking up again.

  “How about now?” she asked.

  Gilgamesh sighed, set down the unfinished hook and fidgeted with the flint carver as he beheld her beauty.

  She smiled. He didn’t return it. If anything, he seemed more uncomfortable.

  “Is anything the matter?” she asked.

  Gilgamesh twisted his lips to the side, as he sometimes did when he pondered a problem.

  “Do I make you uncomfortable?” she asked.

  He shook his head.

  “Why do you lie?” she said.

  “I don’t.”

  “I’m not going to hurt you.”

  He seemed to debate with himself. “Do you ever notice how Nimrod stares at a man who looks at you too long?”

  “I might have noticed that.” She brushed hair out of her eyes, an artful gesture, heightening her beauty.

  “Then maybe you can understand my unease,” he said.

  “But that isn’t really fair. My loyalty to Nimrod is unbounded. I love him.”

  “There is no one like him,” agreed Gilgamesh.

  “You love him, too, don’t you?”

  “I’d follow him anywhere,” Gilgamesh said.

  “Why is that?”

  “I thought you said you loved him.”

  “Oh, I’m not asking for myself or any other woman. Perhaps I’m curious about his magnetism concerning men.”

  “You see what I see,” he said.

  She glanced about before lowering her voice. “If you really want the truth, I’m worried about him. That’s what I want to talk to you about.”

  “How are you worried?” he asked, relieved.

  “Do you promise not to tell anyone what I’m about to say?”

  “Everyone but Nimrod,” he said.

  “Him most of all you can’t tell.”

  “Then you’d better keep silent,” he said. “I’m not about to keep a secret from him, especially one that his wife told me.”

  She studied him, soon smiling again. “How loyal you are, Gilgamesh. I feel safe telling you this—and I’ll leave it to your judgment whether you should tell Nimrod or not.” She moistened her lips. “He has secret plans that not even his father would approve of. If not done right, these plans might have repercussions on those nearest him.”

  “Meaning yourself?”

  “And you, too, Gilgamesh. Oh, don’t give me that look. You know as well as I do that you’ve hitched your wagon to his. At times, your cunning sees him out of a mess. I respect you for that, especially for having the wisdom that caused him to spare Beor’s life. That was very wily of you. So, as two intelligent people in a similar position, I thought it wise that we join forces.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Nimrod can wield Hunters, he can lead youthful men. But if he’s to act contrary to his father, he must be able to sway others as well. What I’m suggesting is that we help him find this key to mastery. Nimrod is cunning and ambitious. Yet no man can be all things. I can help him in certain areas, and so can you, Gilgamesh. What I’m suggesting is that we work together, you and I. That we talk and compare ideas from time to time.”

  He shrugged.

  She set a hand on his wrist.

  He leapt to his feet, glancing to see if the other Hunters had witnessed her action.

  “You see,” she said. “You care so much for Nimrod that you’re afraid of the slightest hint of disloyalty. But don’t worry, my dear Gilgamesh. I won’t try to seduce you.”

  He blushed, and he remained standing, trying to think about Opis. Oh, why did he have such bad luck concerning women?

  Semiramis rose, the level of her eyes just a little higher than his. “Help build him up, and I’ll see that he helps you.” She smiled with dazzling beauty.

  He swallowed uneasily.

  “Return to your fishhooks,” she said. “And don’t worry about gossip.” She turned and left him to his thoughts.

  16.

  News from Shem arrived in the settlement in the form of four young men in rugged garments and with bows and hounds and long, dark hair. The maidens gave them garlands and eyed them with interest. They asked directions to Ham’s house.

  Soon, Ham greeted each in turn, and they bowed and gave greetings from Shem. Rahab kissed them on the cheek and offered them the customary bread, salt and water.

  “This is for you,” said Eber, the leader, a man with intense eyes.

  Ham accepted a rolled-up parchment.

  “Read it!” shouted those who watched.

 
In front of his house, Ham held it aloft. “At the feast tonight I will. Now, you young men must be tired. Each of you will go to one of my sons’ homes to bathe and refresh yourself for tonight. You four,” Ham said, pointing out four girls. “Take Eber to Kush, while Menes, Put and Canaan will entertain his friends. No dallying now, and make sure the rest of the maidens don’t mob them.”

  Laughter rose from the people.

  Ham went inside and sat at the kitchen table. Rahab set hot buns and butter before him. He broke open the wax seal and unrolled the parchment. They had long ago run out of papyrus. And even if they could find papyrus reeds, the art of turning them into white sheets had belonged to a small clan of Antediluvian swamp dwellers. A little experimentation might reveal the secret, but of course, the famed papyrus was nowhere to be found. Parchment such as he now held had taken its place. It came primarily from sheepskin, although calfskin proved best. A special process of cleaning, stretching and smoothing the skins had made writing on them possible. Unfortunately, the ink of cuttlefish and octopuses had also run out, and none of them lived near a sea where they could catch more. The juice of berries had been used before, but water obliterated such ink. Ham touched Shem’s letters. Soot and charcoal mixed with gum from trees… vinegar to give it a binding property, but he wasn’t sure what fluid had been used to bind them. He’d have to ask Eber later.

  “What does he say?” Rahab asked.

  Ham took a bite out of a bun and began to scan the actual words.

  Ashkenaz’s sons went on a thousand-mile journey and beyond. They went north, to the far north, to a land of ice and snow and glaciers. There, monstrous animals roam the plains. Our world is not the Old World, my brother. Harsh elements, rugged terrain and teeming hordes of beasts have replaced cultivated civilization. Several of my grandsons scouted east, to even wider plains, and then to mountains that stagger the imagination. They, too, told of dangerous beasts.

  Ham, I’m certain Jehovah tests our resolve to obey Him. He has let the world be overrun by beasts. Yet you and I know that Jehovah told us to fill the world, to subdue it. We cannot do it while in our clan holdings. We must split our tribes, all of us, and spread out into this sea of beasts, trusting Jehovah to protect us.

  He read that section aloud. Then he set down the scroll, shaking his head. “Our people would never agree to that.”

  “What about you,” Rahab said. “Do you agree?”

  Ham shrugged, reading further.

  Ruth sends greetings to Rahab and asks she attend the next Festival. Remember on the Ark, the rabbits with their litters?

  Rahab laughed when Ham read her that.

  “What is that about?” he asked.

  “Keep reading.”

  Well, Ruth finally saw it happen with Delilah, wife of Abner. She bore triplets, three beautiful girls. The one with brown eyes they named Rahab. Ham lowered the scroll. “What about the rabbits?”

  “I’ll tell you later. Keep reading.”

  Ham did. And that night at the feast, he read again, to a transfixed audience.

  They gathered outside around a massive bonfire, using logs as benches, and piled strong tables full of bread, roast beef, fruits and wine and barley beer. People wore festive clothing and colored cloaks, putting on copper pins in the shapes of bees and beetles and bronze bracelets. The older men carried walking sticks with carved heads. Ham stick was the most elaborate, with an ivory dragon head.

  Ham stood on a block of wood, and a hush fell on the assembly as he read, the crackling flames and occasional popping wood and a fly of sparks his only competition. At some portions of the letter reading, Eber rose and expounded in detail. The part of splitting into family groups and spreading in all directions met with frowns and nervous rustling.

  “Tell them about our Hunters.” Ramses shouted. “How we, too, search.”

  Kush glanced at his brother, Menes. Menes rose and motioned his grandson, Ramses, to sit down.

  Later, after he had finished reading, Ham noted the negative reaction and Kush motioning to him. “Would you like to speak, my son?”

  Kush rose, looking more like the patriarch with his white beard and dour bearing than Ham. Kush suggested that Jehovah had given them reasoning ability for a purpose: to wit, that they use it. Spreading out in all directions only made sense when there were more people. Now, humanity struggled simply to survive.

  As he said more in that vein, Rahab leaned near. “I wonder how our Hunters are doing.”

  “Hmm,” Ham said. He sipped wine, his throat parched after all that reading, and he had become half hypnotized by watching the dancing flames.

  “I hope they’re all right,” Rahab said.

  Ham blinked himself into awareness, smiling at her worry. “I’m sure they are.”

  “Well, I just hope they’re not up to anything foolish.”

  17.

  Nimrod and Gilgamesh headed north through a plain of rolling grass, a veritable sea of green. Gilgamesh loped smoothly. Nimrod, a much bigger man with larger bones and heavier muscles, ran more like a tiger than a wolf.

  Unlike Nimrod, who carried a heavy spear, Gilgamesh wielded a lance. He had developed and fashioned it to suit his lighter weight, to dodge and dart like a wolf that lunges in and leaps back again. It was flexible and light, used for thrusting. Gilgamesh could be as delicate with his lance as a man with a dagger. The lance was black, cut from a young elm tree. The shaft could be bent almost double before breaking—Gilgamesh had tested that with similar elm-wood lances. A loose loop of leather was wound twice around his fist. With its thin blade of razor-sharp bronze, the elm lance was a deadly weapon.

  At noon, they rested under a palm tree near a brackish pool of water. In the distance, a mother cheetah led two cubs across the plain. Further away, a herd of gazelles eyed the cheetahs.

  Gilgamesh stirred.

  “What’s wrong?” Nimrod asked.

  Gilgamesh leaped up, grabbing his lance.

  Nimrod stood and saw a snake, a poisonous asp, slither from a declivity near the waterhole.

  Gilgamesh poised his lance for a death-thrust.

  “Wait.”

  “It’s poisonous,” Gilgamesh said.

  “I know it is. Yet look how it moves.”

  They watched it slither in that unique snake locomotion, unlike any other animal, seeming almost like a magic trick. Its forked tongue darted in and out of the triangular-shaped head.

  “It’s hideous,” Gilgamesh said.

  “Hideous?” Nimrod asked. “Does a worm move so swiftly, with such cunning?”

  Gilgamesh appeared puzzled.

  “The snake has no legs, yet it moves faster than many animals. Doesn’t that speak to you of cleverness?”

  “I hate snakes,” Gilgamesh said. “I hate asps most of all. Let me kill it before it gets away.”

  “Wait,” Nimrod said, as the asp slithered for the thicker grass upslope.

  “You’re sparing it?” Gilgamesh asked.

  “Yes.”

  Gilgamesh shrugged, lowering his lance. “It may sink its fangs into our heel later, poisoning one of us, perhaps causing our death.”

  Nimrod squatted as he had before, finishing his joint of meat, washing it down with water from his skin. Soon, Gilgamesh squatted likewise.

  “Have you ever wondered whether the tales we’ve been taught are really the truth?” Nimrod asked.

  “Which tales?”

  “Before our world? Before the Flood particularly?”

  Gilgamesh shook his head.

  “I’ve wondered about the serpent,” Nimrod said.

  “All of them, or a certain one?” asked Gilgamesh.

  “The serpent.”

  “Do you mean the one in the Garden of Eden?”

  “Exactly,” Nimrod said. “The one who spoke to Eve. The one said to have deceived her.”

  “Didn’t it deceive her?” Gilgamesh asked.

  “What did he say? Or, more accurately, what have we been told the
serpent said?”

  Gilgamesh rubbed his chin. “Well… That if Eve ate from the Tree of Knowledge, she would be like Jehovah. That her eyes would be opened and she would know good and evil.”

  “Isn’t that what happened?” Nimrod asked. “Weren’t her eyes opened?”

  “I suppose. But they were driven out of Eden because they disobeyed Jehovah. They lost paradise and gained pain and death. That’s an unequal bargain, in my opinion.”

  Nimrod sneered. “Say rather that they struggled for freedom and weren’t strong enough to grasp it. But don’t chastise them for daring. And, in any case, maybe they didn’t lose as much as one thinks.”

  “How can you say that?”

  “Didn’t the serpent say Eve would never die?” Nimrod asked.

  “Yes. An obvious lie,” Gilgamesh said.

  “Is it?”

  “Of course it is. Everyone dies.”

  “Hmm. Eve’s eyes were opened. So she did become like Jehovah. She knew good and evil, and Jehovah, I think, became jealous.”

  Gilgamesh looked troubled.

  “Consider the evidence. Eve gained knowledge, and Jehovah drove the first man and woman out of Eden because of it. Later, Adam and Eve died. My question is this: Did their spirits go elsewhere? And if their spirits did, then have they really died, or merely taken up existence in another place? If they are still alive, then, in a sense, the serpent spoke the truth about even that.”

  Gilgamesh knit his brows.

  “We’ve been told certain facts,” Nimrod said. “But only from one side. Isn’t it the case that when two friends argue bitterly, one goes off and tells others what happened. If you listen to the one friend, soon you’re nodding, agreeing with him that the other fellow is indeed a great cretin. You nod because you hear only one set of facts. But if you wander off, come across the other friend and listen to him, soon you’re nodding and agreeing with that one. Then you start to believe that the first fellow was the real fool.”

  Gilgamesh chuckled.

  “The reason that happens is that the injured person gives you his version of the story. That is why an elder listens to both sides in the presence of each person. Often they cry out ‘liar!’ at each other, but when the two stories are given together, the truth is hashed out.”