His hands remained limp, and Eve wept, but not for him and not for her children. For the first time, she wept for herself.
Like Adam, dead but still breathing.
Lukian observed the warriors, whose shoulders were bowed by the weight of the night and whose glances kept returning to the Temple drawn in silver lines atop the hill. He wondered what they thought. Do they desire the illusion of safety? Or do they simply think of their wives, mothers, and sisters?
Surely Kiile thought of Elsa, but the Fog had become more chaotic in the past day, and they knew the violence would begin soon.
Lukian fingered the metal of his hammer. The edges were cold and harsh. He looked at his sons, brothers, and nephews. Of what mold had they been formed? Of what mold had he himself been fashioned?
“Hand me some,” Kille said.
Gillian broke stale bread and handed it to his uncle. The man squashed the spongy dryness and spoke with mouth half full. “Is there much left in the storehouse?”
“Most of the grain rotted before we could make dough of it.”
Kiile’s eldest raised his voice. “I’m hungry.”
“We’re all hungry,” Gorban said.
Kiile spit chewed bread mush in his hand and waved it toward Gorban, who scowled, clutched his spear, and walked to the edge of the firelight. Kiile returned the bread to his mouth and swallowed after considerable effort, then handed the rest to his son.
“Can you eat Jinn?”
“We’ll soon have plenty to try.”
“How about Jinn stew?” Gillian chanced with a smirk.
Chuckles bounced about the circle, but Lukian bit his tongue, stood, and faced the wall. Kiile fell silent, as did the others. They fear for tomorrow, Lukian thought. Even my son joins to mock what his mind cannot accept.
Lukian wanted to walk the wall, long and far in the cover of dark, but the sound of approaching footsteps rooted him in place.
“Who is it?” Gorban dipped his spear toward the sounds.
The firelight illuminated two sets of eyes, then two brown tunics. The taller edged in front of the other. “It is I, Philo, and my brother Tuor. Will you receive us?”
Gorban sauntered toward them. Lukian watched with interest. Philo and Tuor, Calebna’s younger brothers.
“What brings such delicates to us after nightfall?”
“We want to join you.”
“Why?”
Philo lifted a small blacksmith hammer. “We want to fight.”
Gorban glanced at the hammer in Philo’s hand, then at Lukian, who approached.
“If that is your intention,” Lukian said, “you are welcomed. But know that we have no space for cowards.”
He noticed a slight shiver in the younger’s muscles. The motion drew his gaze to the hunched shoulders and baby-soft hands.
“We won’t run,” Philo said.
No, Lukian thought as he looked to the older boy, you won’t, at least. A smile edged across his face. “Why now?”
Philo paused, then said, “We have no wives. We are young and weary of waiting. We want to be useful.”
“And your family?”
“They share convictions my brother and I do not.”
“Do they know?”
Philo nodded. His younger brother’s eyes twitched toward the grass.
He’s lying. Lukian motioned to the hammer and the boy offered it to him. He felt its weight and balance. “Philo, your brother seems to have conquered his tongue. It is strange, for I seem to remember how he couldn’t stop it from wagging behind his teeth.”
Tuor stilled.
“Come here.”
Tuor’s eyes strained toward Philo, who scowled and nodded. Tuor edged forward and eyed the hammer in Lukian’s hand.
Lukian lifted it. “You think I’d strike you?”
Tuor shook his head.
“If I saw you flee from death, I wouldn’t hesitate.”
Tuor nodded.
“Speak.”
From the corner of his eye, Lukian caught the older boy’s frown and the shift of his feet.
Tuor said in a boyish tenor, “I understand.”
Lukian nodded and dangled the hammer like a toy. “Do you know what this would do to a Jinn?”
Tuor cleared his throat. “No.”
“Follow Gorban. He has real weapons for you.”
PART SIX:
WAR
We should not be like Cain, who was of the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own deeds were evil and his brother’s righteous. … We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers. Whoever does not love abides in death. Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.
—1 JOHN 3:12, 14–15 ESV
31
Gorban spat on the ground and readied his spear as bodies rushed into a hastily formed crescent, clutching wood and iron shafts with painful intensity. In one chest-thumping explosion, the Fog had ruptured a vein through their safety. The crack shifted the masonry, leaving a half-foot gap between it and the other side, and Tuor shrieked like a child waking from a nightmare and jabbed his spear at the serpent-tail vapors swirling out of the crack. Gorban cursed under his breath and yanked the boy back by the collar. “Stay.”
Tuor trembled, but nodded.
The hissing filled their ears. Another eruption and a second crack formed nearly fifteen feet to the left of the first. The isolated section tipped back, its top falling into the Fog, throwing root and soil. They had seen such displays before, but now, for the first time, they witnessed proof that the Almighty’s protection truly had vanished.
Lukian addressed the men. “Stand your ground and spear them down. Don’t break the line.”
The men shouted as the wall disappeared and the Fog rushed over them and condensed on their faces and tunics. The eleven-foot wooden shaft in Gorban’s hands was nearly wrenched from his grip as a man-sized Jinn materialized from the white and slid down its length. It was impaled through its chest and clacked slowing teeth. He kicked the thing off and shoved his spear into another’s thigh. That one swiped at him and shattered the shaft, and he smashed the splintered end into its face.
Gorban tossed the remnants of the spear, pulled a mace from his belt, slammed the beast in the temple, and pulled its head to the ground to stomp its skull till it shattered like an egg.
The half demons swarmed, their bodies as thick as a wall. They jostled for a chance at human flesh, but the men speared them down. One had three or four impaled on the same pike, their bodies standing wedged in place. Then the spears fell, and secondary weaponry glinted across the field.
Gorban swung twin maces, crushing and twisting the beasts into bloody heaps of flesh. Hands grasped at him. He broke them. Claws painted his skin, but he wasted no thought on wounds. Every faculty was applied to surviving another moment, to outmaneuvering the three or four swiping at him at any one time.
Gorban saw he was being pushed back, becoming isolated from the group. He recognized the tactic, but there were too many, and they functioned with singular purpose. It seemed he fought for hours, though he knew how exaggerated time could become amidst violence. Still the Jinn came. His eyes burned with sweat, and his throat ached with the chill of the air. Human screams mixed into the curdling beast wails, but they were now farther away. His body slowed as he tore one’s throat out, deflected another’s arm, and planted his foot in a third’s chest.
They are desperate, he thought. Never have I seen them so suicidal.
He imagined how, with each swing, he gave the men and women in the Temple another moment to live, and yet they likely sat looking out at the Fog as it poisoned their city and brought death to their beds. Did they think they could avoid the coming destruction? If the inner wall failed, did they think the Temple wouldn’t? Fools, he thought.
Gorban looked down at teeth that had sunken into his thigh, and black stones that see
med to have flames inside them, staring from deep-set sockets. He struck with his mace, but the metal stimulated its jaws to convulse, and Gorban screamed as its teeth sunk deeper, then released. It twitched on the ground as another grabbed his tunic and flattened him to the ground. He grunted as his ribs compressed with the weight, and he felt its claws grapple his shoulders and pull him close.
Gorban clutched its head and struggled to keep it from his throat. He dug his thumbs into its eyes until they burst and bled down his wrists, but the thing’s tongue snaked out to taste his chest. He screamed and pushed his fingers against the bone behind its eyes, but the head still approached.
He gazed at the cracks in its skin, powdery gray as if dusted with ash. It seemed strange how the starkest reality could feel invented. Even now, the wound on his leg hardly ached, though he felt the Jinn’s hot breath and smelled its acidic saliva.
Today is the day I die.
The first quake struck silence in the Temple. The second shot Mason to his feet. His heart skipped a beat, feeling the weight of the terrible decision he faced. It had happened too quickly, even from the beginning. Violence had come before its time, and it sped mercilessly on.
He clenched his hands into fists easily twice the size of any other man’s, and felt the sensations he had feared in himself. The same sensations he knew plagued his brothers. The same sensations his father, Cain, had lost himself to.
Some vessels for honorable use and some for dishonorable use.
Mason knelt, folded his hands together, and closed his eyes in reverence. He prayed rushed, private prayers, and felt the shaking come. His face quivered as deeply as the earth had only moments ago, because he knew that he must do what he had been born to do.
His eyes snapped open.
It is time to fight.
32
As Jacob joined his father outside the Temple doors, he wrestled with disbelief. The wall had fallen, and pooling into the City of the Almighty was the defiling Fog. It curled around the men like water over an anthill, and for the first time, the repercussions of his decision to stay grew thick in his throat.
“The earth groans,” Calebna said, as if to himself.
Jacob observed his father’s hand, the way it scratched his bearded chin. He looked at the lines on his forehead and the darkness of his eyes.
“The Almighty taught me his true name once. It is a holy thing, never to be spoken by unclean lips, never to be heard by evil ears,” Calebna said. Flakes of skin caught in his beard. “Names are important. They remind us who we are. I thought about telling you the Almighty’s true name. For many days I thought I actually would. I decided not to.”
The Fog deepened and expanded. What about this moment brought Father to speak like this? Why now, as the sons of Cain—no, as their family—fought for their lives?
Calebna folded his arms. “Are you embarrassed?”
Jacob paused, noting the foreign tone of his father’s voice. “I don’t understand.”
“Do you want to be like me when you grow old and weary of the world? Do you want to lie on your bed and think only thoughts you know I would approve?”
“Why does it matter?”
“You look like me, but you are not me, just as Lukian looks like Cain but is his own. I think those differences serve a purpose.”
“What do you mean?”
“That there are some things a man is appointed to do. Our souls fit together, each in its habitation, and none can take another’s place.”
“You speak of our choice to stay instead of fight?”
“I made a vow to the Almighty. As I bowed in worship, I said, ‘In the dust of the world, I will remember your faithfulness. In the spring of life, I will let passion spill forth. But I will always serve you. I will always follow your commands.’” Calebna rubbed his eyes. “Is it righteous to make a promise you cannot keep? Often I’ve wondered, was that my destiny or only a manufactured purpose, something I took on myself to fulfill the role demanded of me?”
“You can still fulfill your vow.”
Calebna laughed, a strange sound against the canvas of violence. “That vow stands on the Almighty’s epitaph, and one question continues to haunt me, perhaps because I know my answer is not what it should be.” He faced his son. “Am I willing to die for him?”
Jacob’s pulse quickened. Was Father questioning what they’d built their lives around, what they believed to be true and had held fast to in the threat of death? “You would. As would I.”
“Do you believe he lied to us?”
“I—” The words caught in Jacob’s throat.
“Don’t just answer with a counterfeit truth. What do you believe?”
Jacob’s stomach churned at the screams piercing the Fog, and he wondered if they were dying, or if perhaps some had died already. “Our lives cannot have been wasted.”
“Can they not?”
He nearly yelled out, “No,” but something stayed him. I knew I might die when I vowed to stay, he thought. I knew others might die as well, but seeing it happen makes it so much more difficult to justify.
So what if I joined the warriors? Wouldn’t those who have already been injured or killed have paid with their bodies without reason? And what of my family? Could I betray my own father?
Jacob swallowed. He could choose only one path, but still he hungered for a compromise, for some middle way.
Which is worse: to stand for death, or to stand for a life you know has already died?
He faced Calebna. “You said we need faith now more than before. What better test than this moment? What happened to the righteousness you taught me as a boy? Because it is for those teachings I stand today. I swore to abandon my cousins in hopes the Almighty was not dead, that he would rescue us.”
Calebna put a hand on Jacob’s shoulder, and he almost shrugged it off until he saw his father’s solemn expression. “You must understand. I need someone I can speak this to. It burns.” Calebna glanced at the Fog. “There is much I do not understand, but I know that if we survive this difficulty, the world will never be the same. Too much evil has happened. And too much evil remains ahead.”
Jacob’s thoughts seemed to settle. He saw the reason in his father’s words, the wisdom in pressing him. Was it a test? And have I passed?
He looked at his father. Truly he did want to be like Calebna, as Calebna had wanted to be like Abel. He desired that peace and strength, that gentle determination. And yet his father’s humanity struck him more intensely in that moment than ever before. All his pain and doubt, every fragile imperfection, lay exposed.
Can it be there is more to your questions than a desire to test me? Can it be you ponder abandoning the Almighty?
No. Not Calebna. Not the son of Abel.
Jacob shivered and smothered disturbing emotions. “I love you, Father.”
Calebna frowned, turned, walked up the short incline to the doorway of the Temple, grabbed the brass handle of the gold door, and swung it wide. Jacob cast one final glance toward the swirling Fog, and turned to join his father in their Temple.
They sealed the entrance.
When they thought they killed the last, more rushed from the Fog. Lukian motioned for them to focus their efforts on the center, but two more streams came on either side. They were being pushed from each other until only Lukian and his children remained surrounded by the swirling Fog. The beasts shoved their bodies between Lukian and his children, and while most were dead within seconds, they succeeded in splitting him from his children.
“Father!” Gillian called as a swarm encircled him and his brothers.
Lukian’s face reddened. A beast grabbed his weapon, but he twisted to release it, spun and swung down, bringing the bladed edge of his war hammer through its neck. Its head thumped to the ground with mouth still open, but as it fell, three more assumed its place. He slashed out five, six times. They fell, then the bodies multiplied.
He stepped left, jumped back, slid right, crippled one’s kne
es, and stumbled back, barely ducking in time to miss swiping claws inadvertently slashing another, flicking droplets of blood across his face.
Time ground on like a blade on a grindstone. Eventually another lull came, and Lukian felt the fatigue of his burning muscles. His children were too far to be seen through the Fog, but he could hear them screaming.
His feet pounded as memories from years long past overcame him. I will not fail. I will not let my children die. And when we return to the Temple, the cowards responsible will pay seven times over for the bloodshed.
The Fog spun in violent eddies growing in intensity until the wind whistled. He slowed, feeling as if he would be lifted from the ground. Droplets of blood skipped through the air. He looked down and saw his feet rooted, but felt disconnected somehow, as if he floated far above. His gaze treaded across the blood-soaked field. The dead grasses had color once more, a macabre mixture of red on brown filtered through the gray mist of the Fog. Discernable just ahead were bodies jostling each other. There were screams, but the hissing made his ears ring. He planted one foot in front of the other, clutched the hammer in both hands, and leaned into the current as his clothing whipped his limbs.
Thoughts breached his mind. It had been long since he felt such rage. And he savored it as he swung at the nearest beast and crumpled its shoulder. It gasped and hissed as Lukian lifted the hammer and smashed its head. Others turned to face him.
“Gillian!”
The hissing swallowed his voice.
“Gillian! Where are you?”
Arms reached for him. He broke them. Legs kicked at him. He crushed them. Joints popped and oozed across the sides of his weapon, and he piled flesh upon flesh as if folding dough into a bloody crust. He clambered over bodies and screamed with each swing of his hammer until his throat swelled and his eyelids crusted with gore.
Just ahead the beasts split as if making way. “Face me!” A few ran toward him. He beat them down. Others fled as he swung his path free of stragglers. He spun and searched, and the beasts backed away.
Cain: The Story of the First Murder and the Birth of an Unstoppable Evil Page 14
