People of the Tower (Ark Chronicles 4) (27 page)

13.

A grim-faced Noah and an amazed Ham entered the city through the Sheep Gate. No one stood guard and the nearby houses and homes were dark. Across from them, in the city center, the smoke of a hundred torches and various bonfires illuminated the Tower.

“
I hear the sound of battle,” Ham said.

“
No,” Noah said. “That is singing you hear, and the clash of cymbals and the mockery of pipes. Alas! I fear for my children. They are about to bring down the judgment of Jehovah.”

“
What do you mean?”

“
I am commanded to curse the Tower,” Noah said.

Ham thought of Noah
’s curse against Canaan. It hadn’t seemed to bother his youngest son. Neither Canaan nor any of Canaan’s sons were anyone’s slave—unless one counted them as Nimrod’s slaves. But then so were Shem’s sons and Japheth’s too.

“
What if Nimrod catches you?” Ham asked.

“
Say rather: What if I catch Nimrod?”

Ham glanced sharply at his father
. Kedorlaomer and his bloodthirsty sons had long ago thought to beard Noah, and had found out what the crazy old man was capable of. Nimrod, however, wasn’t Kedorlaomer. And the Mighty Men were tougher than archers of Havilah. Ham wondered if perhaps the angel with his terrible sword might aid them, as an angel had once aided Noah when he had faced down Ymir and Naamah.

His father and he
stalked through the dark city, through its winding lanes and twisted paths, all the while the sounds of revelry becoming clearer. An awful feeling of doom began to fill Ham. It constricted his chest, making breathing difficult and his stomach clenched until he groaned, leaning against a mud-brick wall.

“
What ails you?” Noah asked, a strong hand clutching Ham’s arm.

Ham licked his lips
. A drink…no, he must face his fears. He pushed off the wall. “I’m all right.”

Noah eyed him.

Then a loud unified shout, a crowd roar, caused them to peer at the Tower. They had penetrated about half the distance to it and could make out certain details.

Noah grunted.

“What is it?” Ham asked. His father’s eyesight was better.

“
A man walks up the stairs. He wears scarlet, and he moves quickly.”

A wild chant filled the night, the mob sounding like some gargantuan behemoth
. Pipes piped louder and with greater abandon while drums thudded like a beast’s heart.

“
It will be crowded there,” Ham said.

Noah stroked his beard
. Then he tapped Ham’s cudgel, one thrust through his rope belt. “Put away your bow. Use that instead.”

Ham squared his shoulders
. Tonight, he would play the part of a true son of Noah, the man Jehovah called righteous.

They trod the dusty lanes, slipping through the city like ghosts, until Ham noticed a mark on a door of a red-wined black bird.

“Wait.”

“
There is no time,” Noah said.

Ham opened the door anyway, and he wasn
’t surprised to see Rahab rocking in her chair, mumbling to herself, as a candle flickered. Praying, Ham realized. How beautiful she looked. Her skin was wrinkled and weathered and she wore a hood, while her knotted hands were clasped together in her lap.

“
Wife.”

Rahab opened her eyes
. She stared unblinking, perhaps thinking him an apparition.

“
Your husband has returned,” Ham said, grinning.

She leapt up and ran to him, hugging him
. “Oh, Ham, darling!”

“
Rahab,” he said, kissing her. How he had missed her. “Rahab, we’ve come—”

“
We?” she said, letting go. “Noah.”

“
Hello, Rahab.”

“
What are you doing here?”

“
We go to the Tower,” Ham said.

Rahab became concerned
. “The people have run amok. They…” She shook her head. “The things I saw today… You might not be safe, Father.”

N
oah became stern. “Come,” he said, “the hour of judgment grows near.”

14.

It didn’t seem possible, but the sternness on Noah’s face grew as he looked upon the revealers. Ham was appalled.

In the plaza surrounding the Tower
, people danced, fluted and guzzled wine. They twirled, shedding robes and garments, laughing and crying out in intoxicated joy. Men and women embraced, many kissing. Watching them stood two golden idols. The idols seemed to leer, to mock and to watch carefully, noting who most loved the New Order. And the Tower, like a beast it brooded, shadowing all, like a behemoth it engulfed the night by its mass. Above everything, grand torches flickered from the blue temple atop the Tower, the gateway to the stars, to the heavens, to the very glory of Jehovah, or so it seemed.

“
This is monstrous,” Rahab said, while holding onto Ham.

“
Ready your club,” Noah said.

“
They’ll mob us,” Ham said.

Noah glanced at him.

Ham dropped his gaze. He was terrified. He didn’t think it would be like this. He hefted his club nonetheless and took a deep breath, trying to calm his tripping heart. Death…the night stank of it. Destruction. Doom. “Lead, Father, and I will follow.”

Noah didn
’t smile. He was too grim-faced. Yet his eyes tightened, and he reached out to his son. Ham wrapped his fingers around his father’s thick wrist; Noah’s big hand gripped his wrist. “Live or die, we serve a mighty Jehovah,” rumbled Noah.

Death, Ham thought
. It came to every man. “You must go back,” he told Rahab.

“
No,” she said. “Where you go, I will follow.”

“
Good,” Noah said. “Let’s start.”

They waded into the drunken crowd, shoving aside revelers
. Noah wasn’t gentle with anyone that bumped him. He pushed and knocked out of the way men and women, those twirling, dancing and singing with glazed eyes.

Ham practically trod on his father
’s heels. He expected people to turn and shout with recognition. But they didn’t. They danced, consumed with their unholy passions. None thought to see, to look up at the man who sent them reeling. Ham frowned. Not everyone seemed that drunk. He saw Zidon laughing, and beside him, Put shouted in exaltation. Several of his granddaughters twirled around him, and he was shocked to see that they had disrobed from the waist up.

“
What’s wrong with them?” whispered Rahab.

“
They’re mad,” Ham said. “They’ve become possessed.”

“
Why don’t they see us?” Rahab said.

“
Perhaps folly blinds them.”

“
No,” Noah said over his shoulder. “Jehovah is with us.”

Ham debated grabbing one of the revelers and shaking him, trying to make the man see him
. Then he realized how stupid that was. For what if the man did recognize him and shouted warning to the rest? He contended himself with following his father, now and again thrusting a dancer away from Rahab lest she be crushed.

Noah grunted
. He stood at the Tower’s base.

Ham looked around, images burning into his memory.

Noah lifted his staff and struck the Tower, beginning to lay his curse.

15.

Inside the temple tiled with blue stone and with blue-green faience, Hilda wept as she sat upon the couch.

The inner room was large and circular-shaped, with candles mixed with frankincense set in silver holders providing smoky, incense-laden illumination
. She coughed from the fumes, and with her fingers, she touched her hair, glancing up. High on the ceiling had been painted the zodiac, only horribly changed from the one first created by Father Adam, Seth and Enoch. The Virgin, Virgo, the first sign, had become the Queen of Heaven, and she looked remarkably similar to Semiramis. At the end of the zodiac Leo, the great sidereal lion, had become the mighty King of Heaven, which was the sign of Nimrod and resembled the Mighty Hunter. Between Virgo and Leo, each of the other signs had also been transformed, invested with the personalities of gods or angels, the heavenly host.

The Luciferian host
! These dark gods, these fallen angels, promised occult mysteries and demonic power, anything that the mind of man might conjure. This was the Gate to Heaven, the road of working to and recapturing paradise lost. Yet to Hilda staring up at the satanic images, it seemed instead like the yawning path to the abyss. Astrology was the way of doom and destruction.

Bizarre and lurid paintings blazoned the temple
’s walls, too frightful and disgusting to stare at for more than a moment.

Hilda shuddered as she sat upon the fine couch
. She ran her palms over the rich linen, colored a deep purple. How costly and expensive this was. Beside her stood a golden table, upon which stood a pitcher of wine and two silver goblets. Otherwise, the great room was devoid of furniture. Red tiles on the floor, porphyry, cunningly fitted together, gave the room a final, sinister feel.

Hilda
wore sheer garments and had a painted face, with her hair perfumed, curled and teased into a beautiful mass. She felt like a whore, a harlot, and she hated herself for it. What would her father have thought? What would Odin think?

She wept, spoiling her beauty.

It had been a long and lonely walk up the ramp. People had cheered and saluted drunkenly. They had shouted as she walked up what they called the holy mountain. For many days, she had learned about Bel, Ishtar and the many new strange stories that went with these vile constellations.

Uncle Canaan had become strange, as had her cousins
. She feared that the worst days of the Antediluvian Age were upon her, that
bene elohim
would descend and force her to bear a Nephilim child. Yet what could she do about it? If she refused, Odin would die.

She bowed her head and wept, unhearing of a silent tread.

“Hilda, Hilda, why do you weep? This is a glorious night. One that I’ve long awaited.”

She lifted her head.

Nimrod wore red robes, with a single-horn crown on his head. His eyes shone and he grinned in his manner of old.

“
What are you doing here?” Hilda asked. “Only the chosen priestess of Ishtar and the gods may enter this night.”

“
But I
am
a god. Surely you know that.”

“
No. You said before—”

Nimrod moved to the couch, sitting beside her, taking one of her hands.

She hadn’t the strength or will to resist.

“
Surely you can’t believe that I would share you with Bel.” With his fingertips, Nimrod brushed her cheek. “You’re so desirable, Hilda. You’re beautiful beyond words.”

“
You slew my father,” she whispered.

“
That was a sad day. But Beor stood in my way. What else could I do?”

“
So now you plan to rape his daughter?”

The grin widened
. “It doesn’t have to be that way.”

She turned her head.

He, with his strong fingers on her chin, turned it back. He had magnetic eyes, powerful, compelling…majestic in a terrifying and strange way.

“
If rape is the only way I can have you, Hilda…” He smiled, and with a brush of his hand slipped a strap from a shoulder. “You’re so beautiful.”

Commotion, sound, came from the temple entrance.
Nimrod frowned, glancing around.

Hilda wondered if Bel had come to fight with Nimrod for the right of bedding her
. She turned to see, wondering what a
bene elohim
looked like.

A wild-eyed man in a hood and a coarse cloak strode into the room
. He bore a spear.

“
Odin!” she cried.

Nimrod leaped to his feet, hissing, drawing a curved dagger.

Behind Odin jogged Gilgamesh with a shield and a glittering, long-bladed knife.

“
Cut him down, Gilgamesh!” shouted Nimrod. “Kill him!”

A hard smile spread across Gilgamesh
’s face. The two warriors approached the Mighty Hunter.

Understanding filled Nimrod
. “Treachery!” he shouted. He dragged Hilda upright, maneuvering her before him like a shield, his dagger ready.

She stifled a sob as Nimrod
’s iron-strong fingers pressed into her flesh.

The king shuffled obliquely, as if to flank them
. “Strike me and she dies.”

Gilgamesh lunged
. Nimrod threw Hilda. She flailed and struck the shield, knocked aside, spinning and falling, seeing Nimrod jump to Gilgamesh’s side. The warrior shifted, but Nimrod was fast, astonishingly quick. His curved dagger flashed. Gilgamesh grunted. Nimrod leapt back, blood dripping from his blade.

Gilgamesh crumpled to the floor, the shield clanging against the tiles.

Odin roared and heaved his spear.

With her head ringing from the shield buffet and her fall, sick with certainty that
Odin would die next, she yet saw the spear fly true. Nimrod twisted. No man should move that fast, with such uncanny reflexes. Yet Odin was the Spear Slayer, a Mighty Man for a reason. The bronze head, razor-sharp, parted cloth and flesh before it flew on, clattering to the tiles, skidding, gouging porphyry.

The Mighty Hunter clenched his teeth, fury blazing from his eyes
. Hurt, wounded, dripping blood, he uttered a war cry.

Odin
drew a knife and roared likewise. Bronze blades clashed, sparks flew. Once, twice, three times the blades screeched and notched together. Then Nimrod cried out in exhalation, slashing, and his knife-edge cut Odin’s shoulder to the bone. The Spear Slayer spun away. Nimrod’s foot lashed out, kicking Odin in the head.

Odin
thudded onto the tiles, blood leaking onto the already blood-red porphyry.

Nimrod snarled
with delight.

Hilda, who had backed away during the short clash, knelt, picking up
Odin’s spear.

Nimrod must have heard her even as he stooped to slice
Odin’s throat. He spun cat-quick, yet not fast enough. The spearhead sliced his side, scraping bone, blood pouring from the cut. His hand blurred as he backhanded her.

She dropped to the floor; consciousness fleeing as Nimrod staggered to the temple entrance.