People of Babel (Ark Chronicles 3)

by Vaughn Heppner

  Gilgamesh paced in the wilds several days later. Uruk had seen Lud. They might have struck a deal, Uruk trading stolen fish-eyes. How Uruk had gotten the fish-eyes, Gilgamesh had no idea. The thought of it consumed him, and at that moment, a fever seemed to come over Gilgamesh.

  “I must change the game,” he whispered, knowing that was what what Nimrod would do.

  For the next two weeks, Gilgamesh schemed. He tracked Lud and discovered the means to a plan.

  At a certain place on a bank of the Euphrates lay prime clay, perhaps the best anywhere. Greedy, proud of his skills, Lud had told no one about the clay. Instead, on the sly, with a sack over his shoulder, he slipped there on his own. It took him out of the canals and the cultivated land. Gilgamesh studied the reed-infested area and discovered Lud’s faint path. For several days more, Gilgamesh reconnoitered. By the spoor and tracks, he found that a wild-dog pack passed through the territory.

  He fretted over the plan for days, at last talking himself into it. He built a deadfall, an animal trap, skillfully covering it with palm leaves and dirt. He made the path over it look just like Lud’s faint path. Then he waited one day, two and three. He slew a hare that fell into his deadfall and reset it. Four days, five, and finally, on the sixth day, Lud slipped out of Babel with an empty sack over his shoulder.

  Gilgamesh trailed at a distance, gripping his black elm lance. His heart pounded murder-lust and his conscience screamed, “Cain! Murderer!” He kept shaking his head, wondering if this was really the way to win Opis.

  The man-tall reeds turned into whispering grasses. A heron winged overhead, and he heard the yip of a wild dog.

  Gilgamesh’s eyes narrowed as he wiped sweat from his brow. Lud’s greed was the problem. Then Gilgamesh’s countenance fell, and so did he, to his knees. He cried out in anguish, in guilt, wanting to stop this murder but unable. He loved Opis and could never let Uruk have her.

  Time passed. He rose. Leaden steps took him toward the deadfall. Perhaps Lud hadn’t stepped on it. Maybe…he shook the black, elm lance. He was a Hunter. He knew how to set traps.

  Gilgamesh stepped out of the grasses and saw the riverbank decked with date palms rising above him. Around the bend lay—

  “Help…” drifted on the breeze. “Oh, somebody please help me.” The cries became desperate. “Help! Help! Somebody save me!”

  The urgency of the cries caused Gilgamesh to sprint. He turned a corner. Wild dogs milled around the deadfall, peering into it, growling. Some looked ready to jump in.

  “Stay away from me!” the unseen Lud shouted.

  The hounds beside Gilgamesh gave voice, and so did he.

  The wild dogs looked up, with their lips drawn back. Hackles rose, and it seemed they might stand their ground. Gilgamesh roared a battle cry. The wild dogs retreated, soon breaking into a run.

  Gilgamesh, flushed from the victory, skidded to the lip of the deadfall.

  “Oh, Gilgamesh,” Lud wept, who sat in the bottom of the hole and on his rump, with one of his legs tucked under him at an odd angle. “I’m saved.”

  For a dreadful instant, Gilgamesh envisioned driving the lance into the loathsome man, the man who refused him his daughter. Then he realized he wasn’t a cold-blooded killer. He jumped into the pit.

  “I had no idea anyone came out here,” Gilgamesh cried. “I was trying to trap wild dogs.”

  “Yes,” panted Lud, sweaty from pain. “It’s my own stupid fault. I won’t ever be so stupid again.” He yelled, because Gilgamesh dragged him out of the deadfall.

  Halfway back to Babel, as Lud hopped on one leg and rested his arm on Gilgamesh’s shoulders, the older man stopped the younger. “You’ve won the contest, Gilgamesh. Opis is yours.”

  Gilgamesh stared at Lud. “I have very little to give you in way of payment.”

  “Ha! Very little, you say. You saved my life. I think that’s a lot. You’ve won, Gilgamesh, believe me.”

  Gilgamesh nodded, feeling wretched, but deciding to say no more.

  9.

  Spring slipped upon them, the third year at Babel. Instead of a steady rising of the Euphrates, the water boiled into a raging floodtide. The canals burst, and the people toiled first to save themselves, then the city and finally to build anew. The Hunters provided mounds of venison, and caught eels, carp, ducks and heron from the new-made swamps.

  Kush prayed daily at the altar, sacrificing to the angel of the sun, imploring aid.

  “Instead of persuading the angel,” Deborah said, “you should urge more people into migrating to Babel. Many hands lighten a load.”

  They considered options. There were Canaan’s children in the Zagros Mountains and Ashkenaz the son of Gomer, who in a fit of pique had taken his clan far from Japheth Land. Kush wondered if it was time to unleash the Hunters.

  “No, no,” Deborah said. “With cunning you will gain volunteers, who will work harder than slaves.”

  Kush distrusted bringing in a clan of Japhethites, but Deborah proved persuasive and suggested how it could be done.

  Ham, Nimrod and all the Hunters found the wayward clan several weeks later in the upper reaches of the Tigris River. Ashkenaz son of Gomer welcomed them. He was a tall man with an incredibly long, red beard. In lieu of many smaller homes, the clan had built a huge log cabin to house all the families, their hounds and cats. To add space they had dug down the floor a half-level. Woven reed mats took the place of chairs and leather sacks instead of the more normal wooden chests. In the middle of the long house, logs burned in a fire-pit. The smoke curled to a hole in the ceiling. The flames illuminated the crowded throng of old and young, male and female. Ashkenaz sat beside Ham, Delilah, his oldest daughter, beside Nimrod. Young maidens refilled the Hunters’ bowls of beer, while Helga, Ashkenaz’s wife, strummed a harp.

  Ashkenaz held up his hand. The harp playing ceased. The maidens poured their last pitcher of beer. Ham cleared his throat, and to a packed and intent house, he spun his tales. Ham spoke on many things, including Nimrod’s vision of the angel. The people of Ashkenaz noted Nimrod’s lion cloak with its black mane hood, the dragon-leather shields of his Hunters and the dragon teeth dangling from many of their throats. The throng nodded when Ham spoke about the explosion of predators, how the entire world seemed full of lions, wolves and bears. What humanity needed was a zone of safety, of protection.

  “The safety provided by your Hunters?” Ashkenaz asked.

  “Not only the Hunters,” Ham said, “But with strong walls, cultivated lands and masses of good folk. Mankind working in unity can subdue the animals. But if we split into smaller and smaller increments, it’s just a matter of time before each group is overwhelmed and devoured by lurking monsters.”

  Ham told them about the leviathan and watched fear course from one whispering person to the next. So when Ham and the Hunters left, the clan of Ashkenaz deserted the long log cabin. With their sheep, goats and cattle, they marched with Nimrod and his protective Hunters.

  Babel had begun to grow.

  10.

  Opis approached her fifteenth birthday, and Gilgamesh began to anticipate having a wife.

  “When you’re married, you must take a room next to ours,” Semiramis told him in the Barracks’ feast hall. The men had cleared out, and the women cleaned up. Gilgamesh and Semiramis spoke by the hearth.

  “I own so little,” he said. “I have little to give Opis, to help make her life comfortable.”

  “Never fear,” Semiramis said, patting him on the arm. “Love conquerors all.”

  “Do you really believe so? My Grandfather Put says that is false.”

  Semiramis’s eyes seemed to shine as she graced him with a smile. “My noble Gilgamesh, I believe it with everything in me.”

  He grew uncomfortably aware of her touch and her sweet breath. Perhaps it was his imagination, but he thought the women clearing the table glanced at him and whispered over what they saw.

  He bowed, and thus artfully disengaged from Semiramis. “You’re ri
ght, of course. That’s what I’ll tell Lud.”

  “Why do you need to tell him anything?” Semiramis asked, with her plucked eyebrows arched.

  Gilgamesh had hoped to keep this secret, but he admitted, “Lud is worried that I won’t have enough to support his daughter in proper style.”

  “He said that? Are you certain?”

  Gilgamesh lowered his voice. “He’s been talking about postponing the wedding a couple of months. Opis has been feeling sick, and both her mother and father are worried about her.”

  Semiramis patted his arm. “Well, I wouldn’t worry about it. What are a few extra months, after all? You’ll have an entire lifetime together.”

  “My thoughts are more urgent.”

  “Dear Gilgamesh, you’ve become a wit. Yet with everything considered, I counsel prudence. Marriage, after all, is a heady decision.”

  He said he knew that, and he did, but as the months passed and the wedding kept being postponed, he grew suspicious. He learned that Uruk’s father had approached Lud on more than one occasion, and Enlil had overheard Uruk telling another Hunter that, “This Opis affair is far from over.” Gilgamesh therefore confronted Lud in the open-air portion of his house. The lanky potter sat at his wheel, working on a clay creation.

  “Next week,” Gilgamesh said. “That’s when we’ll marry.”

  Lud let his potter’s wheel spin to a halt. He sat back, with his eyes hooded and his long face made droopier by his frown. “No, not next week, I’m afraid.”

  “When then?”

  “I’m not certain I care for your tone of voice, young man.”

  “I wonder just how much saving your life was really worth.”

  “Did you save it?” asked Lud.

  Despite his anger, guilt washed over Gilgamesh.

  “Of course I’m grateful for what you did,” Lud said. “I will always think fondly of you for it. But would the wild dogs have jumped down and devoured me? I’m uncertain. Furthermore, I’m not sure that I can let mere heroics and brutish gratitude cloud my judgment?

  “Brutish gratitude?” Gilgamesh asked.

  Lud made a depreciative gesture. “I mean an animal feeling that anyone would have in such a situation. Brutish gratitude is a basic emotion, one almost forced out of you. I’m not certain I should be guided into making important decisions because of such an emotion.”

  “Are you saying the wedding is off?”

  “Certainly not,” Lud said. “I gave you my word. Well, I didn’t give my oath. But we came to an understanding. But as I have considered this over the months, I’ve decided that I cannot simply waive Opis’s bridal price. I’d be remiss in my fatherly duties if I did, for half the price will of course become her dowry.”

  “Such is the common practice,” admitted Gilgamesh.

  “A practice I plan to adhere to. Thus, I must insist that you pay a regular bridal fee.”

  Gilgamesh wondered if this was heavenly punishment for having plotted Lud’s death. He worked hard to keep from drawing his dagger and finishing what he had forgone that day. “You say a bridal price… I agree. But only if, on oath, you promise never to let anyone but me marry Opis.”

  “An oath?” Lud asked. “What if you die?”

  “That will void the oath.”

  Lud considered. “What if it takes you twenty years to gather the bridal price?”

  “Hopefully the fee is something within reason.”

  Lud waved his hand. “I should think the former price. The one Uruk had been willing to pay.”

  “As high as that?”

  Lud smiled. “I suspect Uruk might still be willing to pay it.”

  “Is that a threat?”

  “Of course not, my boy,” Lud said. “So you don’t have to scowl at me like a wolf about to lunge. It was a joke, admittedly one in poor taste. It’s just… Maybe it clarifies the situation for you.”

  Gilgamesh struggled to hold down the heat in his heart and finally managed to nod. “I agree to everything. Now I’d like to hear an oath—in Ramses’s presence.”

  “That smacks of an insult, young man, as if you don’t trust me.”

  Gilgamesh bowed. “Then I crave your pardon, and I’ll retire so I may find Ramses and bring him back to you. I’ll be but a moment.”

  Ramses soon returned with Gilgamesh, to find a pacing Lud. To Gilgamesh, Lud had the appearance of a fox caught in a trap. Lud seemed ready to gnaw off the snared leg and gain freedom, but he also seemed unable to gather the fortitude to do so.

  Lud gave his oath, a most solemn one, startling both youths by the high bridal price.

  “Father!” Ramses said. “That’s exorbitant.”

  “Do you think so?” Lud asked. “Yes, perhaps you’re right, but now I am bound by it because I’ve given my oath. Ah, I should have considered it more closely. I’m sorry, Gilgamesh.”

  Gilgamesh nodded tightly.

  “By Bel,” swore Lud, “I give you two years to gather this amount, upon which time the oath is dissolved. Whoever then pays the bridal price shall marry Opis.”

  11.

  The morning wind blew cold as Ham limped out of the city. He rested against the lee of a canal embankment and threw his woolen cloak over his head as he ate a breakfast of barley cakes and dried fish. Afterward, he hoed weeds. On his return to the city, he waded through a muddy canal and noticed something glittering. With a grunt—he was getting old, making noises like a man in his six hundreds—he scooped up three lumps of… Ham wiped away clay and put one of the lumps to his nose. It was sweet smelling. He clattered them in his hand. They shone a lustrous golden-yellow.

  “Amber,” he said, “I’ve found amber.”

  He slipped them into his pouch and dug like a dog, but he found no more. He decided the Euphrates must have deposited the amber during the spring flood. He’d seen such stones in Antediluvian times, in Arad, in a jeweler’s shop, where the owner had given two theories concerning amber’s origin. One school said these sweet smelling stones could be nothing else than drops of heavenly sweat from the sun. The other, the rational school, said it was a kind of juice from sunbeams. They struck the Earth in certain places with greater force and deposited a greasy slime that formed such gems. To call it sweat from the sun, said the rational school, was a prime example of anthropomorphism.

  As Ham entered the city chuckling, people glanced at his dirty clothes. He hardly noticed, bursting into his house, shouting, “Rahab, Rahab. Look at what I’ve found.”

  She looked up as she absentmindedly churned butter. “Ham, your clothes are filthy. Did you wrestle some of your great-grandsons in a pit?”

  He held out the amber lumps. “I found treasure in a canal.”

  Her eyebrows rose as she first studied the golden stones and then his face. “Why, this is wonderful.”

  He chuckled in agreement.

  “I’ve been sitting here wondering what I could do for poor Hilda. She’s become such a confused young lady. Now you enter with amber. Jehovah has indeed heard my prayers.”

  “Eh?” he asked.

  “Put away those lumps, clean up and then listen to my letter.”

  “Beor’s daughter wrote you?”

  Rahab picked up parchment sitting in her lap. “The letter came with one of Heth’s sons, who arrived with a donkey train of Zagros malachite. Now hurry, clean up and then let me read you the letter.”

  12.

  Hilda’s Letter

  I so miss you, Great Grandmother. Out of all the people in my life, you’re the one who has loved me most. Oh, I know my mother loved me. If I sit and think about it, I can recall her smile, and I can remember how she used to rock me whenever I hurt myself or felt sad, but other than a mass of curly blonde hair and a vivid smile, I hardly remember her at all. Father, too, loves me dearly, but he’s so grim these days, training his Scouts and warning anyone that will listen that evil is being hatched in the Southlands. By that, he means Babel. Oh, how I wish I could see this fabled city, the mud walls I
’m told about. How do you pile the mud so high? How do you stop the walls from dissolving during a rainstorm?

  Great Grandmother, Javan’s settlement is so unlike ours in the Zagros Mountains. Where does one begin to compare the differences? In Japheth Land, they don’t all live together, but in many scattered villages according to clan. Elders don’t make decisions, but the clan head alone does. Life is much cruder here, with colder houses and much more ugly clothing, mostly animal skins and furs that scratch your flesh. Truth be told, they envy us our soft woolens and linen garments, and I think that’s why the girls here all want to marry a son of Ham. Maybe I exaggerate a little. They have woolen garments, but they never seem as soft as the ones I remember from home. But this next fact is as certain as the rising sun: the men here are not as brave as father or his nephews from the Zagros Mountains. You’d think with their crude walls, made of branches instead of stout log fortifications, would mean that they’re relentless trackers and hunters. Nothing could be further from the truth. A son of Japheth and those of Javan particularly seem to hate walking out of the gate. Instead, they love to sit around the campfire and debate airy ideas and concepts. I can hear Great Grandfather laughing at that—Father does all the time. They think Father mad to race about on his chariot and hunt lions, wolves and other vicious beasts. And they think it scandalous that I drive the chariot for him and at times jump down and hurl javelins.

  You read correctly, Great Grandmother. I drive the chariot and run with the Scouts, and I’ve become very good at javelin throwing. Father invented me a throwing stick. It attaches to the end of the javelin, and when I snap my wrist and flick the stick in time with my javelin toss, it adds great velocity to the missile. With it, even though I’m a girl—a warrior maiden, says Father—I can heave a deadlier dart than any Japhethite.

  I see that I’ve used both sides of the parchment, Great Grandmother, so I must say farewell. I love you dearly and I miss you very much, and hope you write me back.