Enoch Primordial (Chronicles of the Nephilim) (7 page)

Enoch’s caravan had covered five leagues to the Tigris River by morning. He had pushed them. They were running for their lives, but this was all the distance they could make with women, children, and elderly.

A
small river tribe with boats lived along the banks which could easily have taken them downriver. Unfortunately, their destination did not lie downriver in the heart of Shinar. They needed to travel
upriver
into the mountains of Aratta.

But there were no tribespeople in sight. Had they all hidden? Were they out on a hunt?

Enoch looked back along their path. The morning light revealed a pack of Nephilim already on their trail. Some women screamed. Enoch tried to calm them. Their backs were to the river. The Nephilim were riding down upon them. They had nowhere to go.

Methuselah held Edna tightly and gripped his mace even tighter, Enoch fell to his knees and cried out to Elohim, this god he barely knew and hardly trusted. But what could he lose now? They were all going to die. And this poor innocent river tribe
, when they showed themselves, would be caught in the cross blades of slaughter. They had not done anything to deserve this. None of Enoch’s clan had done anything to deserve this.

The palace Nephilim
had closed the distance to an arrow’s flight, but they would use no arrows on their quarry. Nephilim preferred close quarter combat. They preferred to tear the limbs off their prey rather than pierce them dead from a distance. Close combat satisfied their bloodlust better. They were monsters, fast monsters. They did not need animals for transportation. for they ran faster without them.

Methuselah counted
ten of them.
Talk about overkill
, he thought.
One alone could kill us all
.

The tribe huddled close to each other. The
men stepped out with their few useless weapons in a pathetic attempt at a vain last stand. They felt the call of moral obligation to act courageously. They did not have a chance. They were all going to die.

Certain death
did not matter to Methuselah and Edna. They were actually hoping that they would be able to take down one together as a badge of honor before they perished. They had done well against the Rephaim. Their victim was probably suffering a humiliating permanent limp somewhere out in the hinterlands.

Yet, even at that moment, Methuselah
felt compelled to make light of circumstances to Edna. He stared out at the approaching predators, at the trail of dust rising in the air, and said under his breath, “Well, here we are again, facing certain death.”

She
glared at him expectantly.

Methuselah
surprised her, “This is where you admit again that you have
always
loved me.” He said the word
always
with relish. It was quite revealing when she had first said it, and now she felt like a silly little fool.

She punched his arm hard.

“Ow!” he yelped. He was the stronger vessel, but he had also taught her how to maximize her impact. He sighed and smiled softly at her. “It is true, Edna. I do love you. And if we do get out of this alive, I will declare my intentions to the world.”

Edna
glanced back at the advancing Nephilim. She could now see their skin and faces. Their entire bodies were covered in occultic tattoos, displaying their new allegiance to the gods. She had not realized Nephilim could be any scarier than they already were.

“
That is not fair,” she said. “You know we are
really
dead this time. Even so, I am praying for a miracle.”

She glanced around, looking for that miracle.
She noticed two river people in cloaks come out of their tents. So there were a couple unlucky tribesmen here after all.

T
he two cloaked men stood in front of Enoch and his people. The lead one spoke clearly for all to hear, “Fear not! Trust in the Lord and he will deliver you!”

Enoch recognized that voice.

The two men turned toward the Nephilim. The giants were within fifty cubits of the clan and about to pounce. In unison, mysterious pair threw off their cloaks.

Gabriel and Uriel
, the archangels, stood guard before the clan. They brandished the strange weapons Enoch had seen before. Uriel had two of the long blades in his hands called
swords
. The archangels raised their weapons and yelled, “A sword for the Lord and for Enoch!” Then they bolted into the fray of approaching giants.

The archangels cut through the Nephilim like barley. Trained and angry giants were cut down by these two mighty warriors in less time than it took for Enoch to urinate in his pants from the terror mere cubits away.

T
he stronger of the two, Gabriel, fought three at a time like a hungry lion. But Uriel made up for his diminished size with cunning strategy and unorthodox moves. They worked well in tandem.

Gabriel
disarmed one and yelled out to Uriel, who spun around and cut him down. They swapped positions and opponents in a flash, confusing the Nephilim. But it took effort. The archangels had to work hard for their results.

Three Nephilim managed to strike Gabriel’s sword at once
. It flew out of his hand. Uriel threw Gabriel one of his two swords until Gabriel could pick up his own and get back on track.

The last four Nephilim
surrounded Uriel. Gabriel fought with the leader of the pack. The four monsters tightened their circle on Uriel, lashing, swinging, and jabbing their weapons. Uriel appeared to be weakening.

He had
only been drawing them in closer. He stretched out his two swords like windmill blades. He spun like a whirlwind in this strange position. His shearing blades took out the circle of the enemy surrounding him. It was awe inspiring.

Not one Naphil got past these mighty warriors of Elohim.

Enoch found himself thinking that it was a good thing he
had changed allegiance to this distant god of his fathers. His servants were just. And they shared the same enemy. This was good. This was very good.

The archangels walked toward Enoch.

Methuselah and Edna drew near
to listen in.

The angels
were exhausted. These warriors fought like gods, but they were still finite created beings with flesh. They suffered the burdens of that flesh. They were drenched in sweat and breathing hard. Nephilim were not easy to kill.

As they
approached the astonished Enoch and his family, they muttered under their breath to each other. “Six kills to your four. Would you like me to teach you some tactics?” said Uriel.

“Five to five,” countered Gabriel. “That one we did together.”

“You mean the one
I killed
,” said Uriel.

“After
I
disarmed
him,” retorted Gabriel.

“Was that before or after you dropped your sword?” said Uriel.

“I did not ‘drop’ my sword,” said Gabriel. “Three of them hit me at once.”

“Okay, okay,
they
disarmed
you
,” said Uriel with a grin. Then he added, “But then, if we both killed him, then that would make it five and a half to four and a half.”

They arrived at the humans, and snapped out of their bickering.

“I am famished. Let us eat something,” said Uriel.

Enoch stepped backward fearfully. Uriel paused, then laughed, “Fret not, Enoch, we are not going to eat you. Truth be told, we would not even eat those Nephilim.”

Edna scrunched her face in disgust. This archangel was rather profane. She wondered if his god Elohim had that kind of sick sense of humor.

Gabriel
soothed their anxiety. “Elohim sent us to help you. We brought these boats for you to take the Tigris and Diyala rivers up into the Zagros where you can follow the rest of your trip on foot in relatively safe passage.”

Enoch
protested, “But the rivers flow south. We do not know how to sail, and we do not have the strength to man the oars to get upstream.”

“Are you sure?” asked Gabriel.

“Yes, I am sure,” Enoch shot back. “Unless this Elohim of yours would like to perform another miracle and change the course of the rivers from south to north.” His sarcasm dripped a bit heavily after having just been delivered by this servant of Elohim.

Uriel raised his hand and gestured with his finger
for Enoch to follow him.

Enoch
trailed behind him to the bank of the river. The others of the clan shadowed them. Enoch looked out onto the river and lost his breath.

It was
flowing north. The river actually flowed in the opposite direction than it had been from the beginning of time.

“
It is a miracle,” exclaimed Enoch, his eyes and mouth wide open.

Gabriel smiled
. “You will learn to be more grateful. It comes with experience.”

Uriel leaned in close to Enoch and
murmured, “And you also need to stop allowing your mouth to gape open when you are in awe. It is unflattering.”

Enoch snapped his mouth closed.

Methuselah spoke softly into his father’s ear, “Well, we better not disappoint Elohim, father.”

“Board the boats,” Enoch said to the tribe.

“Wait a minute,” interrupted Edna.

Everyone stopped and looked at her.
Enoch thought the little pipsqueak was bold. She stared straight at Methuselah with her teasing eyes. It made him wary. She normally pulled that expression on him when she occasionally beat him in a game or prank.

She proudly proclaimed, “Methuselah has a promise to fulfill.”

He sighed. Then a big fat grin burst across his face, and he yelled out to the entire tribe, “Edna has
always
loved me!”

She opened her mouth in shock and slapped him. “I cannot believe you, Methuselah ben Enoch!”

Methuselah stopped laughing. He looked right into the eyes of his precious Pedlums and laughter turned to love. “Edna bar Azrial, I want all the world to know that I love you more than life, more than the heavens and the earth!”

Everyone moaned with romantic longing.

Methuselah was not done. “And if this Elohim does not drown us in the river, freeze us in the mountains or burn us in volcanic ash on our trip to Sahandria, will you marry me?”

She squealed, jumped into his arms, and gave his big fat grin his first big fat kiss. “Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!” she rattled off, smothering him with kisses
. He heartily returned then.

Enoch
stood silent, watching them. He had made known his displeasure with Methuselah’s interest in the girl, so this display was a bit off-putting to him. But he could see the happiness in his son’s whole body. It reminded him of his own happiness when he had realized he was in love with his own precious Edna so many years ago.

Methuselah set Edna down and she apologized for her inappropriate display of public affection.
Everyone laughed and applauded her. She gave an impish glance at Enoch, her future father-in-law.

Enoch
could see that they were two of a kind. Even he could not stay disagreeable. He smiled. But deep in his heart, he longed for his beloved, the only true thing on this earth. And she was now gone forever.

A deep yearning came over Methuselah that he never experienced before.
His soul hungered for union with her soul, his body hungering to become one with hers.

They had better get to Sahandria quickly.

It took Enoch’s family about two weeks to navigate the Tigris to the Diyala river about 80 leagues up into the Zagros. Their trip was uneventful
. Enoch prayed that Utu had more important things to do than track down a single apkallu sage and his family, who would probably be dead in the wilderness anyway. He knew Utu well enough to know that the god would not waste his energy micromanaging such minuscule issues. What was one less puny human to worry about?

The missing Nephilim
sent after them were a different matter. They would be missed eventually. Enoch hoped that when they failed to return, Utu would believe them to be rogue outlaws who took their chance to run to the hills when freed from the confines of the city. It would be a reasonable explanation for their disappearance. It had already happened with many Nephilim.

Enoch’s party left their boats at the river’s end.
They had all forgotten the miracle of the changed river course within hours of steering upstream. After a few days, they had begun wondering if their memories had failed them and the river had always flowed north. But as soon as they ran their boats aground, the current suddenly turned back south.

Enoch fell to the ground weeping in repentance.

Methuselah noticed Enoch had been doing a lot of weeping lately, usually for his lost Edna. He wept mostly at night, when everyone else slept. He also prayed much more. Too much. It seemed to Methuselah that his father sought escape by plunging even further into his spirituality in order to avoid facing the pain of this earth. Methuselah felt that pain was more reliable and real than the hope and promises of the heavenlies. After so deep a betrayal by the gods, how could he shift his allegiance to this new god Elohim without question? Elohim’s emissaries had saved them, it was true, but for whose sake? Methuselah felt more like a pawn in an invisible spiritual game of wrestling powers. He did not feel as if he had much of a choice in the matter. The worst thing about the situation was all the secrets and mystery. It made trust seem so uncertain.

Methuselah trusted
the experience of his senses. The strength of a belly full of food, the contact of a handheld mace with an enemy’s skull, and the touch of his beautiful betrothed Edna. These things he could know with resounding certainty. He found it more difficult to trust the vagaries and uncertainties of invisible gods, disappearing angels, and unanswered prayers and petitions. This Elohim would have to prove himself trustworthy with a bit more rigorous confirmation to get Methuselah’s attention.

Edna
more willingly believed in Elohim’s beneficence. When the river had returned to its natural southward current, she wondered how many other miracles they would take for granted with such lack of gratitude. The provision of food to fill their bellies? More salvation from the enemy’s mace? The devoted love of a man with a woman? The conception of a new human life? The birth of a child? It seemed everything kept pointing back to Methuselah in her heart. She watched him lead the group with authority. She thought of him tenderly soothing her fears, dreamed of his strength and humor. She simply wanted to make him happy and build a home together.

Methuselah kept thinking about doing
only one thing with Edna, and it was not building a home.

• • • • •

They traveled a
nother thirty leagues through the valley of Havilah and the Mannean plain until they finally stood upon the volcanic fields of Mount Sahand.

Enoch felt humbled by the majesty
. Everyone stared across the stark expanse in silence. The snow-covered dome of the Sahand volcano stood about eight thousand cubits, the highest peak in the region. The mountain range included a dozen other volcanic heads along the ridges. It looked like a fortress wall of rock with volcanic guard towers. Lake Urimiya spread sparkling to the west.

Enoch’s soul
moved deep within him, knowing that on the far side of Mount Sahand lay the valley of the Garden of Eden, that no man dare approach. This would be the closest anyone could ever come to the legendary paradise. A tribe of Cherubim guarded its perimeter, to keep the descendants of Adam away.

T
hey stood before a vast terrain of igneous rock. Not a soul in sight. A dead wasteland. Enoch wondered where the Adamites were, those forgotten people and their patriarch that they were supposed to find? Did Elohim have his directions correct? Obviously not. There was not a sign of life for leagues around. Tribes of any size always left
traces of their presence, and they could see no trace of any human presence in the area but their own.

They would have
set up camp and begin their survey of the area first thing in the morning. Enoch hoped that he had not wasted his and everyone’s time after all.

They pitched camp a third of a league onto the barren landscape to avoid surprise by any approaching enemies. There was nowhere to sneak up on them in a three hundred and sixty degree arc. Anyone who tried to crawl their way toward the camp would shred their clothes and flesh right off their bodies from the sharp porous bedrock and rubble strewn about.

Enoch
limited the nightwatch to two details of three guards. He made sure to keep Methuselah on the far edge of the men’s camp for his watch detail. It would keep his son from the tempting position of easy access to Edna in the women’s camp. Methuselah was an honorable young man, but at his age passionate urges could be so strong that even honorable young men could go temporarily mad and make decisions they would regret when cooler heads prevailed.

The midnight hour came, and Methuselah could not sleep. His thoughts burned of Edna, piercing his brain with a hammer-like pounding. At least it kept him awake for his watch duty. Unfortunately, it also distracted his attention.

H
e did not catch the first soft sound of scraping in the rocks near him. But the second time the sound flew by, he heard it. He looked up. A full moon lit the landscape. There was nothing out there. Still, he was uneasy. He reached down and picked up his mace, intending to practice some moves with it.

W
hen he brought it up, he stopped in silent shock.

Just seconds before,
the horizon had shown no life for miles around. Now the shadows of a hundred dark figures surrounded the camp. The shapes stood upright like men, but had antlers and horns like wild animals. They formed a living fence of shadow-like spectres roundabout. Where had they come from? It was as if they materialized out of the rocks themselves. Were they phantasms, shades of Sheol? Or worse,
shedim
, demons?

Before Methuselah could
shout a warning, all the figures held up branches with pots on them and smashed the pots with their weapons. The resounding echo woke everyone up in terror. Women screamed, men grabbed their weapons. A frightening ring of fire surrounded them and they became disoriented. The figures had carried torches hidden in pots. The camp was taken entirely by surprise and now Enoch’s company was completely vulnerable, like a man asleep with a blade at his throat.