Wives of the Flood

by Vaughn Heppner

  Enlil put his palm on Gilgamesh’s shoulder. “Tell Nimrod what you’ve just told me. Your passion in this will sway him to your side. He will convince Uruk to step aside for you.”

  Gilgamesh laughed bleakly. “And if Uruk shows like passion?”

  Enlil shook his head. “Uruk knows nothing of that. He thinks only of crushing, of dominating, of subduing. What stirs in your heart, my friend, will win Nimrod to your side. Then Opis will soon lie in your arms.”

  “No. I cannot risk it.”

  “The risk you’re taking now is infinitely more deadly.”

  “I know,” whispered Gilgamesh. “It’s my last hope.”

  Through his nose, Enlil drew a sharp breath, turning away. Finally, he nodded. “I’m a fool for saying this. But I’ll help you. What else can I do in my brother’s hour of need?”

  Gilgamesh gripped Enlil’s arm, before turning back into the wind, dragging his donkeys after him.

  The journey north went apace. In a week, they reached the wooded hills, unpacked their axes. All over the forest, sounds of thudding blades, cracking timber and crashing trees rebounded and echoed. Nimrod was delighted with Minos’s idea to goad other sons of Japheth into migrating to Babel. That Gilgamesh wished to join them surprised him, until Gilgamesh said that some of Minos’s cousins lusted after cheetah pelts, of which he’d brought several to trade.

  “I understand,” Nimrod said.

  Uruk learned of this, and he told Nimrod that he, too, wished to spy out the Lands of Japheth.

  “Both my captains going?” Nimrod said. “No. Besides, I don’t want to hear of the two of you quarreling and one of you knifing the other. Your desire to go seems unnatural except as a plague to Gilgamesh, and that I find deplorable.”

  “I love the girl,” said Uruk. “Perhaps it unhinges my thinking.”

  “Ah, Uruk, men misunderstand you. They see a brute, a warrior with a savage visage, and they think that love cannot beat in your breast. I know the folly of that. Yet I counsel you to win the game fairly. Let Gilgamesh acquire the goods, if he can, while you counter-offer. Anything else demeans the Hunters.”

  Uruk backed out. Later, one-eyed Obed asked to go.

  “Why?” Nimrod asked suspiciously, knowing that Obed was one of Uruk’s confidantes.

  “Thebes says there’s this girl…” Obed went into a long-winded explanation. What made his story plausible was that, years ago, during the exile to Shinar, a she-wolf had mauled him. The wolf had slipped into a temporary camp and attacked him while sleeping. Small Obed had awful facial scars and an eye-patch because of that attack, and, in spots on his head, no hair grew, but ugly scars. Since then he had looked for a wife, but with no success. If Thebes now said there was one for him in Magog Village…

  “Go,” Nimrod said. “Go with my blessing.”

  Obed thanked him profusely, saying that Zimri would join him.

  When Gilgamesh learned that Obed and Zimri planned to join, he considered the implications. He thought several nights long, twisting and turning, hardly able to sleep as prowling owls hooted in the pines. Finally, with his eyes red-rimmed and his cheeks gaunt, Gilgamesh confronted Minos on the top of a forested hill, with the thin tributary of the Euphrates far below.

  “I’m not going,” Gilgamesh said.

  “Scared, are you?” Minos asked.

  Although they were the same size, Gilgamesh poked Minos in the chest, backing him against a fir. “The difference between you and me, Singer, is that I shot Beor in the shoulder and knocked him onto his arse, while you fled from him and got pitched onto your face.”

  Minos tried to brush aside the jabbing finger.

  Gilgamesh jabbed harder. “I’m not going.”

  “Then you’ll lose Opis.”

  Gilgamesh shook his head.

  “Think about what you’re saying,” Minos said. “Semiramis offers you silver and gold, enough to outbid Uruk.”

  Gilgamesh sneered. “You’re not going to Magog Village to tease your cousins to Babel. You mock our city even as you’ve run to it for safety.”

  “Gilgamesh,” Minos said, his shifty eyes unable to look at the finger pinning him to the tree. “My mockery isn’t meant in truth. I but jest, perhaps too much, I’ll admit. I truly do go along to Magog Village to—”

  Gilgamesh jabbed his finger several more times. “Why are you bringing Obed and Zimri?”

  Minos spread his hands. “Why not?”

  Gilgamesh grabbed Minos by his tunic. “No more games, Singer. I want the truth.”

  Minos wouldn’t meet Gilgamesh’s stare. “The truth is that Thebes hates one of his cousins in Magog Village. The idea of ugly Obed playing court to her tickles his fancy.”

  “Why do you go?”

  Minos leered, at last looking up. “I’ve a cousin I miss, a very pretty and accommodating girl, if you know what I mean.”

  Gilgamesh searched his face. Minos wasn’t brave, he knew that much. “You’d better be telling the truth.”

  “I have no reason to lie to you.”

  “Humph,” Gilgamesh said, letting go. “All right. I’m sorry I had to get rough. I thought…”

  “You’re nervous. I understand. I’m sorry I said you’re scared. I know you’re not.”

  “We’ll leave tomorrow.”

  “That’s fine with me,” Minos said.

  Together they started down the hill. Minos glanced at him once, staring at him with malice.

  7.

  Nestled at the bottom of a steep valley and beside a winding mountain river stood the famed village of Magog, second son of Japheth. Tall firs grew on the mountain slopes, with bare oak and ash rising like skeletons in the valley snow. A stout wooden wall surrounded the gabled houses, lean homes with high, peaked roofs, decorated with delicate woodcarvings: swirls, suns, stars and the outlined shapes of bears, wolves and vast-horned deer. Totems carved with marching men or scenes of the storm-tossed Ark or fabled giants stood before each house. The lanes were straight, narrow and clean, devoid of pigs, hounds or manure. The pigs rooted outside in the snow, hunting for acorns, watched over by boys with sharp sticks, while the dogs were leashed or kept in wooden kennels, obediently taught to only bark at strangers.

  People wore warm woolen tunics or well-made leather jackets, with breeches sown with thread swirls and tiny silver bells. The men wore hoods, the women woolen scarves, and the children clattered about in wooden shoes. In small smithies, hammers rang on beaten bronze, while wood smoke rose from stone-made chimneys. Within the homes, women wove or carded wool or churned butter from an overabundance of milk.

  The sons of Magog were skilled axe-men and had already become famed as cattlemen. They spoke of searching for horses and spreading east to a vast plain, there to drive chariots constructed in the old Antediluvian manner. Since his coming, Beor had taught them the finer points of bronze work, and they admired his courage and listened to his warnings of far-off Babel. Most of all, they delighted in the Scouts ridding their valley of wolves and snow leopards, and how the Scouts roamed farther a-field for deadlier beasts of prey. A few of Magog’s grandsons had joined the Scouts on those forays, the leader among them named Gog, a strong-limbed lad with blond hair down to his broad shoulders.

  Hilda presently raced out of the house as a copper bell rang. She sprinted down a lane, laughing, joining others who ran with her to the center Village Square. Men and women formed a large, jostling circle. Hilda ran to her father, who stood apart with several Scouts, slender fellows leaning on spears. Beor seemed more like a son of Magog than he did a son of Canaan. He, like Magog’s sons, was barrel-built, wide, with a thick beard, rather than slender and beardless like the Scouts around him. Perhaps because of his peg leg, Beor had gained weight, becoming even more massive. He balanced easily on his peg leg, with his arms folded across his chest.

  “Where’s Gog?” Hilda asked, standing on her tiptoes. “I don’t see Gog.”

  Beor moved aside a nephew, making room for Hilda in the
inner circle. The entire village circled the main square. It was a sandpit cordoned off with embedded logs. Magog stood in the pit. He was only a year younger than Kush, a big man with a red beard and with flashing blue eyes. On either side of him, there stood a man swathed in a cloak and barefooted, even though snow patches lay on the ground. The first man was taller, a generation older and the wrestling champion of the village. He had a mashed nose. The second man— “Gog,” breathed Hilda. She waved and shouted his name.

  He looked up, grinned and waved back.

  People caught the exchange. Most smiled and nodded, wondering how long until Gog, Magog’s favored grandson, married Beor’s daughter.

  “This is a bout for supremacy,” Magog said. “To see who will represent us next year at Festival.”

  “Oh, Father,” a worried Hilda asked, “do you think Gog has a chance? His opponent is such a brute.”

  “There’s always a chance,” Beor said, “although I wouldn’t bet anything of value on him. For ten years the champion’s cunning and wicked strength has felled all comers.”

  Worrying her lower lip between her teeth, Hilda watched the sandpit. The older, taller wrestler, with an ugly face like a lump of clay, doffed his cloak, exposing heavy muscles and a thick stomach. Old welts rose on his skin and his chest was hairy like a bear’s chest. Then Gog let his woolen cloak drop from his shoulders.

  Hilda sucked in her breath.

  Gog had thick muscles, but without the fat, and on his chest and upper arms were swirls in blue woad, matching his intense blue eyes. He saluted the champion, who pounded his chest with an oak-like fist, several of the gnarled fingers once broken and badly reset.

  Magog stepped back, shouting “Let the match begin.”

  A trumpet rang out, a blast of warning from the parapet. The watchman on the wall blew twice more. When everyone looked at him, he let the horn dangle from the cord around his neck, and he cupped his hands, shouting, “Strangers approach! There are seven men bearing spears. They wear the garments of Babel.”

  8.

  Old Magog sat on a stump in a clearing outside the village. He kneaded his bristling beard, with his hairy, red eyebrows thundering together. Behind him stood many of his sons and grandsons, with axes and daggers hastily thrust through their belts and with hoods thrown over their heads. Beor stood on Magog’s right, his eyes hard on Gilgamesh, who stood to Magog’s left. Scouts and Hunters stood behind them.

  “I want no part of the quarrels of the sons of Ham,” Magog said at last. “And you, sons of Javan.” Magog shook his head. “What’s the purpose of your coming here? To bait Beor?”

  “We have no ill will towards Beor,” Gilgamesh said. He touched the scar on his neck. “We hope he feels likewise. Once, out of the shadows in the Zagros Settlement, an arrow cut me from a man who wished me dead, likely a son of Canaan. But that’s in the past and forgotten,” Gilgamesh said, looking at Beor.

  Beor shook his head. “I have no quarrel with Gilgamesh, even thought he’s a spawn of Nimrod, his right hand man, quick with a bow and with feet swift to shed blood. Gilgamesh’s methods, at least, are straight as an arrow to the shoulder.” Beor leveled a thick finger at Minos. “That one, however, that one is slippery like an eel, a snake in the grass, pretty-faced like a girl and black-hearted like a hyena. He tried to rape Hilda.”

  “That’s a lie!” Minos shouted. “The girl—”

  “Spear!” Beor roared.

  A Scout stepped forward, handing a spear to Beor, who grasped it and cocked to heave it through Minos’s heart.

  “Hold!” Magog said, standing, with his arms outstretched. His sons and grandsons snatched their weapons, ready to fall upon any that Magog indicated. “This is exactly what I mean. This is what I hate, and this is what I fear: The impulsive belligerence of the sons of Ham. They all seem like the Kush I knew as a lad, quick to anger and, as Beor said, swift to shed blood.”

  “Patriarch Magog,” Gilgamesh said. “Your father Japheth judged the case against Minos, fining him and his cousins, and their former wealth going to Beor. By your laws the matter is now closed, and it is Beor who opens old wounds, not us.”

  “Why did you come here?” Magog asked.

  “I have cheetah pelts I wish to trade,” Gilgamesh said. “And there are among us those who have heard of the loveliness of the maidens of Magog Village. Thebes has visited here before and, as a fellow Hunter, wished to guide his brothers of the spear. Knowing, however, that Beor and his Scouts lived here, Olympus and Minos thought it prudent to stand with Thebes.”

  “Brothers of the spear?” Magog asked.

  Gilgamesh dipped his head. “Nimrod the Mighty Hunter gathers fellow hunters. Perhaps there are those among you who have maligned his name, but Nimrod believes that those who hunt and risk their lives together are brothers. Whether one is a son of Ham or Japheth or even Shem is not the issue.”

  “Hmm,” Magog said. “What do you say to all this, Beor?”

  Beor had lowered his spear and nodded as Gilgamesh spoke. “Nimrod’s right hand man, I said, and now you see why. He is glib-tongued and smooth. I cannot match him word for word. This, however, I’ll say. I know them. I don’t trust them. Even more I suspect Minos the Snake, no son of Japheth he, but a child of the Serpent.”

  “Step forward, Minos,” Magog said.

  Minos warily did, as he cast worried glances at the spear in Beor’s hand.

  “You’ve heard Beor’s charge,” Magog said. “What is your answer?”

  “I come in peace,” Minos said, his smile oily. He glanced again at the spear, and words failed him.

  “Do you see?” Beor said with a snort. “In the light of day, his boasts shrivel.”

  Minos shook his head, but he’d grown pale.

  “Patriarch Magog,” Gilgamesh said, stepping beside Minos. “What man wouldn’t become nervous with famed Beor breathing death threats on him? Minos has paid his debt to Beor. We stand on your laws in that regard, and we’re certain that no foreigner, no matter how mighty, can shake or sway the righteousness of those laws.”

  “You club me with your words,” Magog said. “It is you who are trying to force me to act this way or that.”

  Gilgamesh bowed. “Patriarch Magog, Nimrod has a word for what you describe.”

  “Oh?” Magog said.

  “Duty.”

  Magog scowled. “What impertinence is this?”

  “A good man is duty-bound to stand by right,” Gilgamesh said. “The only way my words club you, as you say, is because you’re a man of honor and know that I speak rightly.”

  Magog laughed, incredulous. “You’re a bold fellow, and you speak straight to the point.”

  “May we stay in your village under your protection?” Gilgamesh asked.

  Magog eyed Gilgamesh and then Minos and finally those behind them. He turned to Beor. “Will you attack them? Will you break the peace?”

  Beor squinted. “If they stay well away from Hilda and speak no words to her and raise no threats against me, then I will avoid them as one does stepping into a steaming pile of cow manure.”

  Several of Magog’s grandsons chuckled, although Magog continued to look grave. “This is a serious issue. I want no wars here, now or in the future.” He studied Gilgamesh. “Very well, straight arrow of Nimrod, you and your brothers of the spear are welcome in Magog Village.” He turned to his sons and grandsons. “Will any put up the Hunters?”

  “We bear gifts,” Gilgamesh said.

  A tall man named Scyth with flecks of gray in his beard raised his hand. “I’ll take them in. Thebes and Olympus are sons of my wife’s brother.”

  “Then let there be peace in our village,” Magog said. “And whoever breaks the peace shall be bound and brought to my father Japheth for judging, even if it be my grandson Gog who breaks it. I have spoken.”

  9.

  Several days later, Hilda pouted at the table. She passed the peas and the platter of pork and poured water, never saying a word as the
Scouts, Beor and the wives of the Scouts related tales of what the Hunters did that day.

  “Why do they linger?” a Scout asked. “That’s what I don’t understand. Gilgamesh traded his cheetah pelts. Obed has failed in every endeavor to entice a girl and Minos and his crew have hunted the further fields. They’ve exhausted all they set out to do. Aaccording to them, Nimrod waits at the Euphrates for their return.”

  “The reason is obvious,” Beor said. “They haven’t accomplished their mission.”

  “You still believe that?” asked one of the wives. “That they came on a secret mission?”

  “Why pick Magog Village?” Beor asked. He thumped his chest. “Because I’m here.”

  “What’s their goal do you think?” a Scout asked.

  Beor shrugged.

  “Come now, Beor,” a different Scout said. “We all loathe Nimrod and his Hunters, but I think this time we may have misjudged their intent.”

  “No,” Beor said. “They have come with ill will, and that is why Minos, Thebes and Olympus joined them.”

  Hilda reached for the butter. Her elbow struck her wooden cup, spilling water so it poured onto her lap. She leapt up, crying in outrage, and she dashed to her room, slamming the door behind her as she fell crying onto her bed.

  In a few minutes, she heard the clump-clump of her father’s peg leg and then a light rap at the door. She wiped her cheeks and sat up. “Come in.”

  Beor squeezed through, pulled up a stool and sat near the bed. “I know these past few days cooped up inside have been hard on you.”

  “Oh, Father, Gog said he’d escort me wherever I went. So you needn’t worry about me.”

  “Gog is a strong lad and a keen wrestler. But with knife-work—”

  “Is that why you think they came?” Hilda asked, wide-eyed. “To pull daggers on us?”

  Beor frowned. “I don’t know why they came. All I know is that, in my bones, I feel uneasy whenever I spy Thebes or Olympus glancing at me. They look hungry, like wolves eyeing a deer. They plan mischief, those two, and Gilgamesh, for all his fine words, has no love for the sons of Canaan.”