People of the Ark (Ark Chronicles 1)

by Vaughn Heppner

  “Jehovah wishes that none would perish,” Ham said slowly.

  “Why would Jehovah wish for something so softhearted?”

  “Because Jehovah is filled with mercy,” Ham said.

  “If that’s true then He surely wouldn’t destroy the world.”

  “Yes He would, because Jehovah is also holy and just.”

  “You think it is right that He wipe out everyone—you find that just, you think that is holy?”

  “What I think doesn’t matter,” Ham said. “Simply that I’m on the right side of Jehovah.”

  “That sounds like cowardice. Even if Jehovah were real, I wouldn’t bow to Him. I’d fight such a tyrant ‘til the end of time.”

  “Not me, not anymore. I believe—”

  “You’re a fanatic and a madman! By Azel, I knew I shouldn’t have come. It’s simply…can’t you see you’re throwing away a chance to be remembered forever? That you can carve a name for yourself that none will ever be able to take away?”

  “Why fight for something that’s soon not going to exist?”

  Laban sneered. “We’ll see, cousin. For your sake, this flood had better happen soon. Because once I rule Chemosh and once I conquer the clan compound… I’m not so sure I’ll let the Ark stand.”

  It dawned on Ham that the wise thing would be to stop arguing.

  Laban kept talking, bragging, boasting of things to come, until finally he said, “Very well. I’ve given you fair warning.”

  “You have,” Ham said.

  “So your mind is made up to stay?”

  “It is.”

  Laban grinned evilly. “Is there anything you want me to tell Queen Naamah?”

  Even though he knew he shouldn’t, Ham said, “Yes. Tell her… Tell her I still think about her.”

  “I will,” Laban said, marching to his shield and spear. “Perhaps you’ll see her again some day when I drag you and your father to Chemosh and throw you at her feet.”

  “Maybe so,” Ham said.

  Slipping on the shield and picking up his lance, Laban regarded Ham through the helmet. “Hail and farewell, cousin. Until we meet again.”

  9.

  Years passed. Europa’s hard work in finding her sisters wealthy husbands and finding her brothers well-connected wives paid off in a great pooling of riches and the hiring of an army of sell-swords. Europa’s oldest brother led the mercenary host, and in a brilliant campaign retook their father’s kingdom, expelling the brigands and hanging their chief. Patents of nobility went to each contributor of funds, with the oldest brother crowned king. During these grants, everyone managed to overlook Europa’s years of labor. She hadn’t clinked any shekels into the war chest, so how could she expect a reward? Thus, she waited in vain for anyone to remember her efforts.

  Europa grew morose over it, sullen and finally bitter.

  Then her brother the king heralded the birth of a son, the firstborn prince of the realm. Frankly, it was a small kingdom, as such went. And it teetered on the brink of destruction. For it held key territory on the other side of the great forest on the road to Arad. Arad was the only possible political entity with the power to stand against Queen Naamah, and thus sooner or later the small kingdom would find itself in a grim power struggle.

  These things made little impression upon Europa’s thoughts. The newborn prince, a child, a son, a baby—practically all her siblings had them. But she didn’t. Europa wept to Japheth that she was barren. Endlessly, she pointed out the terrible fate life held for her. She was empty, childless, a useless being without sense or purpose. What had she ever done that Jehovah hated her so?

  Japheth pointed out that neither Ruth nor Rahab had children. That turned Europa introspective. She pondered the implications.

  Her hands were no longer so smooth and clean. Almost all the maidservants had departed, leaving the drudgework for the three sons’ wives. Naturally, Gaea outworked all of them. Still, lye for washing clothes had burnt Europa’s hands red. Tannin, alum and gallnuts, used in leatherwork, had stained and roughened her hands. A hundred other chores like needlework, handling wool, grinding wheat and pulling weeds had built unwanted calluses. Her paternal sisters meanwhile, each with many children or at least pregnant, lived in the opulence of royalty.

  It simply wasn’t fair.

  She eyed Rahab one day sweeping the kitchen. Europa, four times as old although with still her youthful beauty, sat at the table shelling peas. Rahab, smaller, darker and considerably weaker, smiled as she swept, working a tiny pile of dust into the room’s center.

  “Can I ask you a question?” Europa asked.

  Rahab paused in mid-sweep, looking up.

  “Why are you so happy?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We work night and day, with never a break,” Europa said. “Certain doom from Chemosh awaits us each morning and we have no children.”

  Rahab turned thoughtful.

  “Now maybe you haven’t noticed it yet,” Europa said. “You’ve only been married a short while. But neither Ruth nor I have children. Doesn’t that strike you as odd?”

  Lines appeared in Rahab’s forehead.

  “You do want children, don’t you?”

  “Of course,” said Rahab.

  “That’s too bad.”

  “Why?”

  Europa laughed. “Did you just hear what I said? Ruth and I have never had babies. We’re cursed. Surely you must be too.”

  “Cursed?”

  “Certainly,” Europa said. “What other explanation is there?”

  “Who cursed us?”

  Europa drummed her fingers on the table. “That’s a good question. It can’t be Jehovah—for we’re daughters-in-law of Noah. But if it isn’t Jehovah… who has the power to make their curses stick? If it’s the enemies of Jehovah… does that mean if they can make curses stick that they can prevent the flood from happening?”

  Rahab set aside her broom and sat across from Europa. “You look tired. Why not lie down and I’ll finish shelling the peas.”

  Europa inspected her hands. Then she glanced at Rahab’s small hands. “Hold them out. Let me see them.”

  Rahab held out her fingers, with a hint of a frown building. Europa hadn’t used that commanding tone on her since… since she’d been married.

  Europa gripped Rahab’s hands, studying them. “They look the same as ever.” She frowned. “I suppose that makes sense. You were born to this sort of thing, while I…” She sighed forlornly. “I was born a king’s daughter. Now I’m a peasant.” She clenched her hands and bit her lip, fighting back tears. “Life is cruel, Rahab. No one remembers the hard work you do. The instant you relax your guard…” Europa shook her head. “Have I been a fool?”

  “No,” Rahab said. She didn’t like the peasant remark. It rankled. Maybe she should simply ignore it. “Soon the flood comes.”

  “Does it? Does it really? How do you know that?”

  “Because Noah—”

  “Noah?” Europa said. “Mad old Noah?” She laughed. “We’re fools, Rahab. We’ve been duped. But…” Europa lifted her chin. She rose. “I am a king’s daughter. I will endure as long as anyone else does.” She glanced at the peas and then at her hands. “Yes. I will lie down. I-I feel…” She massaged her forehead. “I don’t feel well.”

  As she left, Rahab picked up the broom, worried for Europa. The pressures around them intensified every day. Poor Europa. If the world didn’t end soon…

  “Trust Jehovah,” she told herself. For Jehovah had given her a second chance, a life with a strong man, a good husband and wonderful parents-in-laws. It was more than she deserved. After all, she wasn’t a king’s daughter. She was just a peasant.

  10.

  As the Ark neared completion, Methuselah and Ham enlarged the wild animal menagerie. Despite the interesting work, ancient Methuselah never got over his clan expulsion. He ate sparingly, lost weight and his silver hair thinned. Still, the novelty of building a massive menagerie f
ired the old man’s imagination. He waxed eloquent on the feeding habits of hyenas. As a boy, he had camped out at night and seen the cowardly beasts pull down a long-horned bosk. Then lions had happened by and driven the hyenas from their kill. Later in the morning, when people trudged to their fields, they saw the hyenas circling the gorged lions. Naturally, people thought the lion had been the killer and the hyenas waited to scavenge.

  Or Methuselah, who had almost lived a thousand years, brushed this hand through the air, caught a spider dangling from its nearly invisible thread and discoursed about it for hours.

  Workers hammered, dug pits and poured water at Methuselah’s directions. Beastcatchers parked creaking wagons at the entrance, with snarling leopards pacing back and forth behind wooden bars or bawling cave bears. Sharp bargaining commenced and soon thereafter another beast entered the zoo.

  A tall fence surrounded acres upon acres of cages. Paths crisscrossed everywhere, and on them ancient Methuselah shuffled, his eyes aglow as he muttered tales about the latest beast. Beside him limped Ham, listening, learning and marveling on all his great-grandfather knew.

  Some months Ham went on expeditions, sitting on bouncing wagon-boards, going with the beastcatchers as they trundled to nearby plains to net zebras or snag leaping gazelles. One time, charioteers raced a shaggy rhinoceros, roping the animal’s almost nonexistent neck. Through an amazing feat of chariotry and cool expertise, they brought the snorting rhinoceros into a wooden cage. These rough experts wrestled pythons into sacks or slithered down trees with panda cubs under their arms. Crocodile hunters joined them in an expedition down the river. Their method for snaring the reptilian beasts, the tough skin used for shields and the inner organs in certain religious rites, was extraordinary. First, they baited a bronze hook with a chine of pork, throwing it in the water while they hid along reedy banks. Then they beat a live pig, making it squeal. Splashing into the river, rushing to the squealing pig, the crocodiles encountered the baited pork and swallowed it, setting the vicious hook. The crocodile hunters then hauled the dangerous beast ashore, slinging mud into its eyes, blinding it and then in relative ease dispatching it. Their capturing of crocodiles this time instead of simple slaying was a derivative of the basic plan.

  All Methuselah’s vast wealth, accumulated over the centuries, poured out in a torrent to buy more and more beasts. Up went another shed. In came wagonloads of hay or oats. Workers trekked to them in search of employment, stayed until Noah’s preaching disgusted them, and then made room by leaving for new arrivals.

  As the menagerie neared its final size, sightseers came, paying to wander the dusty lanes, awed at the elephants, giraffes, bison, elk, aurochs, dodo birds and water buffaloes and wolves, lions and sabertooth cats. Raccoons and gophers, hawks and pigeons, and salamanders and scorpions made up section after section of the wild animal zoo of Mad Noah. All the while Methuselah, Ham and sometimes Noah and Japheth observed the beasts, studying which ones did the best in captivity and how little space the various animals could survive in.

  “We won’t ride out the Flood in luxury,” Noah told them, “and neither will the animals. It’s survival plain and simple, nothing more. So keep that in mind as you finish your tests.”

  Ham, perhaps the most inventive among them, bent his thoughts toward several key problems. How, while in the Ark, would they rid themselves of the vast quantity of manure? Since at present it looked as if only eight people would board, how would they be able to generate enough man-hours for the varied tasks? He was forever testing theories and inventing laborsaving devices and methods.

  Perhaps his greatest discovery was that nearly all the herbivores, the rhinoceroses, elephants and giraffes, could survive on the same feed as cattle.

  “That’s going to make things a lot easier,” Ham said. “Now we won’t have to stockpile all sorts of select feed for each particular beast.”

  “How can the Ark hold so much hay?” Methuselah asked. Along with Ham, he made various calculations on bulk and cargo space.

  After months of experimentation, Ham figured that one too. “The horses can get by on less hay than we at first thought. Oats is highly fibrous and can make up the majority of their diet. And if it works for horses, it will work for the others that are like them in dietary habits. Oats is denser food and takes less space than the amount of hay that would otherwise be needed.”

  Among many species, they found that some hated confinement to an intense degree or that it made them weak so they sickened and died or roared and bleated endlessly or got some other disease and wasted into nothing. But among that same species, others had greater tolerance toward being penned. Those with such tolerance they kept, the others they sold in order to buy more of that same kind until they found the good ones, at least good in terms of prolonged confinement adaptability.

  As the menagerie grew so did knowledge of it and even notoriety. That in turn brought more gawkers. More thus heard Noah’s warning to repent while there was time. While a few…

  11.

  Noah, Ham, Ikkesh, an obese ambassador from Arad, and the captain of the Red Blades strolled down the menagerie path together. Cages filled with tigers, antelopes, ibex and smaller pens of rabbits, raccoons and rattlesnakes stood under leather-stretched awnings. A variety of roars and bleats and squawks vied against the hammering of new pens and the constant axing of planks. Workers with water-buckets waddled past while others guided dogcarts filled with hay, oats or hunks of meat.

  Ham knew their guests troubled his father. Noah gave away his unease because he strolled with his gopher-wood staff and hadn’t yet preached to these two prominent men. Not since Ymir and Queen Naamah had such important people taken time to investigate the Ark.

  They paused at the crocodile pit, leaning over the low fence to gaze at the reptilian monsters sunning themselves in the mud.

  The captain of the Red Blades, a grizzled veteran with short, gray hair, cupped his hand around Ikkesh’s ear in a feminine manner. The captain indicated the crocodiles.

  Ham shivered. A glance at his father showed placid features. It was a front. Even more than himself, his father loathed the homosexuality that had taken hold of the people of Arad.

  The Red Blades were a manifestation of it. They practiced a deadly form of hand-to-hand combat. With swords little bigger than daggers and expert in their use, they closed in packs and hewed like a swarm of piranha. Whenever the Red Blades won, the defeated lay with hacked-off limbs and slashed vitals. Each Red Blade also had a warrior lover. Older men were encouraged to seek out the younger and form trysts. The theory was that no bearded veteran was liable to flee while his particular boy fought beside him, and if the boy died the veteran surely would seek revenge and thus fight all the harder.

  The Red Blades had become widely feared and distinctive in their red cloaks, heavy, square shields and dagger-swords. Because of them Arad dared stand in the path of the conquering armies of Chemosh. In the past year, the king of Arad, from the other side of the Great Forest, sought allies against Queen Naamah. This visit, apparently, had something to do with that.

  Ikkesh the Ambassador, a blubbery man with baby-fat cheeks and with a robe of purple silk, waved pudgy fingers that were adorned with rings of ruby, diamond and garnet. “That crocodile yonder must have cost a pretty sum, hmm.”

  “No more than most,” Noah said.

  “No?” Ikkesh asked. “But that is a prime monster, a specimen to excite the masses.”

  “What masses?” Noah asked.

  “Ah,” Ikkesh said, smiling. “You are wily, Noah, and so is Queen Naamah. Yet surely you do not think the king of Arad is so easily duped as that.”

  Noah glanced at Ham, who shrugged.

  Ikkesh produced a hanky, mopping his gleaming face. He seemed to sweat abnormally easily. “Are they trained?”

  “How do you mean?” Noah asked.

  Ikkesh grinned. “In Nod, in their coliseums, are exquisitely trained beasts. Wild animal shows are very popular, I hea
r.”

  Noah shrugged.

  Ikkesh mopped his face again before tucking away his hanky. “We have spies in Nod, you understand, in the capital. A story came to us of their training techniques. For we learned that even big cats like sabertooths and lions seldom seek men out, and in the glare of the coliseum with its sparkling sand and the roar of the mighty crowds, the beasts tend to slink to the sides. They tend then to avoid the condemned criminals instead of devouring them. But if they are trained… ah, then it is very interesting. This cruel training, I’m told, must begin early. Aggressive cubs are sought, the mean ones. Then—in this instance a leopard—the half-grown cub is put into a small ring. There a padded beast-trainer pretending to be nervous approaches the cub. The instant the cub swipes at the man, the trainer falls, rolling in apparent agony. To his pads are tied bits of meat. This the leopard devours and thus his training in aggressiveness toward men begins.”

  “What’s so cruel about that?” Ham asked.

  Ikkesh chuckled. “Indeed, very little, for as the cub grows the trainer continually loses these bouts and the leopard feeds and his confidence increases. At other times when he eats, the cub is only given human flesh, until he will touch no other. In Nod, in the arenas, I’m told, are wagonloads of such meats. Now, as the cub reaches maturity, slaves have their arms broken and their teeth knocked out and are only then put in the ring with the beast. At the end of his training, when the cat is utterly confident of his powers, unarmed slaves are given him. But even then, a trainer with a spear stands ready to help the cat overcome someone too powerful. These exquisitely trained sabertooths, lions, leopards, and, I suppose, crocodiles, are put into the thundering coliseums with its sparkling sand and they eagerly, to the roars of delight of the crowd, devour the condemned criminals.”