Enoch Primordial (Chronicles of the Nephilim) (12 page)

The city dump lay just outside the walls on the north side of the city, downwind from the sea and river breezes that jostled their way through the streets. The stinking festering pile of refuse made Enoch think of Sheol and what it would be like to be cursed.

He walked
toward some trees at the edge of the dump. How anything could grow here amazed him. The stench of the rotting garbage drew too many flies and made him gag. He shooed away a couple hyenas fighting over a cattle bone and looked around. The nearly seven cubit tall dark figure standing in the moonlit shadows of the tree foliage gestured just enough to draw Enoch’s attention. His heart raced. He wiggled his fingers in preparation to draw his dagger. Methuselah, Edna, and Lamech moved in and out of cover amidst the piles of rubbish, ready to charge at his command.

Enoch stepped up to the giant and found cover out of sight of the city watch above
on the walls.

Ohyah towered over Enoch in both size and strength.
Tattoos covered him, but he was one of the more handsome looking giants, if one could say that about such beasts.

“Are the three following you your own?” asked Ohyah, trying to keep his deep voice to a whisper.

Enoch nodded. This giant was also highly trained, highly attuned and preternatural in his senses. He could easily grab Enoch and crush him before any of them could come to his aid.

“I am grateful you came tonight. I know it was not an easy decision,” said Ohyah.

“Then make it a worthy one,” said Enoch. He would not fear this monster. He knew whom he served and did not fear death in the least.

Ohyah said, “The Nephilim you killed were not random thieves wearing stolen uniforms. They were from the deep west in Bashan by the
Western Sea. From the area around Mount Hermon.”

Enoch had heard of Mount Hermon. He knew it was the place of descent, where “the gods came down from heaven” to rule among men. It was an area shrouded in mystery, separated from their fertile crescent by hundreds of leagues of harsh arid desert. No one he knew had ever travelled there. All he had heard about it was rumors, gossip, and speculation. Nothing he cared to trust.

Ohyah continued, “After the Gigantomachy, some Rephaim escaped the Great Purges and found sanctuary in the one place that the Watchers would not consider looking for them. Their own territory of Bashan. The gods left their cosmic mountain to reside in the cities, so the criminal Rephaim and Nephilim went to hide out where the gods had left. They congregate and secret themselves like cockroaches in the nooks and crevices of the mountains and foothills. The giants you brought in were branded with the mark of Thamaq and Yahipan, Rephaim originally from Sippar.”

Ohyah did not know that Enoch
had been in Sippar during that fateful event. Enoch heard everything Ohyah told him, and knew it was all true. This earned the giant a modicum of trust. Of course, he was still a Captain of the Temple Guard of Inanna, and the best lies were mostly true. So Enoch remained guarded.

Ohyah
offered, “If you want to kill outlaws, Bashan is one of their hideouts.”

Enoch narrowed his eyes and looked suspiciously at Ohyah.

“Why are you giving me this intelligence?” Enoch asked.

Ohyah did not expect Enoch to believe him
easily. He knew he had to be vulnerable first, to reveal information that would place Ohyah himself in jeopardy. It was the only way he could earn trust.

“I have been having dreams from a god named Elohim,”
Ohyah said.

Enoch’s attention perked up. How could this dark
minion of Inanna know about Elohim? Did he know that Enoch and his band served Elohim? But how?

Ohyah, continued, “I saw the Ancient of Days, the ruler of heavens come down to earth and sit on a throne surrounded by ten thousand times ten thousand of his holy ones. He proclaimed a sentence upon all flesh and then wrote it on a tablet. The tablet was immersed in water and when it came out, all the names were washed away but eight. I fear for my life, Enoch. I want to join the forces of this god Elohim.”

How could a demonic chimera receive revelations from Elohim?
wondered Enoch. This was madness.

Ohyah said, “Elohim told me that you served him.”

He could not possibly have known Enoch’s calling except by revelation.
But what was this water judgment?

“And he said that you would be going to the land of Bashan.”

Ah, there he is wrong,
thought Enoch,
I have been called to pronounce judgment upon the Watcher gods and their progeny, but Elohim has not told me to go to Bashan. Though it would provide the most opportunity for his bounty hunting of giants
.

Ohyah said, “I have a twin brother,
Hahyah, who I believe is hiding out in that region. We have had an inseparable spiritual connection since we were born. I am sure he has had the same dreams and is most likely looking for me. I want to go with you to Bashan to find him. We will both repent and serve Elohim the Creator.”

Enoch simply could not accept this insanity.
A demonic spawn repent to worship Elohim? But was it possible that the truth was more than he understood? Could Elohim regenerate the soul of a Naphil? They were half human after all. Why could not their sin be as forgivable as his own? He wondered, if one of these could turn, could a Watcher god turn?

“No,” said Enoch, “We are not going to Bashan. If you want to find your brother, you will have to go alone.”

“It is treason to leave the side of Inanna. I will not be allowed to return. At least with you, I have a chance.”

“Why do you say that?” asked Enoch. “You are a mighty warrior.”

“But Elohim favors you,” said Ohyah.

Enoch paused and measured his words carefully. “And Inanna favors you.”

Ohyah understood the obvious implication. They served different gods. Enoch could never trust him because Inanna was a treacherous scheming demon of war and sexual perversion. He did not blame Enoch. But it dashed his hopes nonetheless.

Enoch could see Ohyah
’s crestfallen expression. A Naphil, Captain of the Guard, mighty warrior, and demigod looked as if he was a kicked cub. Maybe more truth hid in this matter than Enoch thought at first. But he had to trust his intuition, unless Elohim himself told him otherwise.

Ohyah spoke with sad respect, “May your Elohim bless you on your journey with protection and success.” With that Ohyah melted away into the shadows of the trees.

Methuselah arrived first. “What happened?”

Enoch stared into the blackness. Edna and Lamech joined them. Enoch paused thoughtfully, then finally offered, “He wanted to help us.”

“Help us?” sniffed Methuselah, “You mean betray us.”

“That may very well be,” said Enoch
. “But if so, then he fooled me.”

Methuselah, Edna, and Lamech all looked askance at Enoch and then into the dark, hoping
that Ohyah would come back and explain the impossible. But no explanation was forthcoming. Enoch said, “Let us get back to the house. I need sleep.”

Enoch’s thrashing awakened Methuselah and Edna from their sleep. When he sat up, they saw the sheen of sweat bathing him. He gasped for air. They knew it was another dream vision.

“Elohim told me to go to the land of Bashan,” said Enoch.

Methuselah and Edna could not believe their ears. Edna reached over and softly closed Methuselah’s gaping jaw.

“That is near Mount Hermon, the cosmic mountain of the pantheon,” said Methuselah. “Do you consider it wise to tread so close to the headquarters of the gods?”

Enoch said, “The Naphil guard captain told me that Thamaq and Yahipan were hiding out in Bashan.”

Methuselah took one look at Edna and said, “
We are going with father to Bashan.”

If the Rephaim of Sippar, the murderers of his beloved Edna’s parents, were still alive, if these abominations of desolation still breathed the good air of terra firma, then Methuselah had his purpose:
to hunt them down and kill them.

T
he revelation of the Naphil dreams still bothered Enoch. Elohim had told Ohyah Enoch’s charge before Elohim had told Enoch. How could this be? Should he have welcomed the giant into their company? Was that from Elohim? Or was it occultic sorcery? Was this a test? Did he fail it? It chewed into his brain. The giant knew Enoch’s destination before he did. Elohim spoke to a Naphil!

Enoch stared into the distance like a holy man in a trance. “If you are going to go with me, you had better wake the
others. We leave immediately for Mari.”

The city of Mari sat a good one hundred and thirty leagues up the Euphrates River from Nippur. As an economic trading center between Shinar in the south and Syria in the north, Mari channeled timber, stone, pottery, grains, and perishable foods up and down the Euphrates. It was also a way station to cross the vast desert to reach Bashan by the shorter and more hazardous path. The longer circuitous, and safer, route swept northward around the fertile crescent.

Enoch’s traveling band of giant killers hired
a boat to take them up to Mari. From there, they would strike out across the desert. The legendary Thamudi, primitive tribal peoples, roamed the desert, filling it with danger. They were said to skin victims alive and roll them in the sand to increase their unbearable pain.

Enoch
left the snow tribe women with Egibi as he had promised. But he took Betenos with them, as he had conceded to her.

They avoided staying in the city proper so they would not be
easily tracked by enemies. They chose a thick forest off the river’s edge. They burrowed deep into the wildwood far from civilization to rest before their westward crossing of the desert.

After clearing a camp, they started one of the first fires they had been able to burn
in a long time. They roasted wild boar on a makeshift spit and sat back, bellies full, mugs topped with beer. The women slept as Enoch, Methuselah, and Lamech sat around the fire planning the next leg of their trip.

Methuselah
interrupted the discussion. “We are being followed.” Lamech started, for he had not noticed.

“I know,” said Enoch
. “I sensed it about half way up the river, and whoever it is has trailed us into the forest.”

Lamech grabbed
his weapon, Rahab. “Should we wake the women?”

“Yes,” said Enoch. “But do not cause a commotion, because they are very near.”

Lamech lightly nudged Edna and Betenos awake. He gave them a shushed gesture of warning. They understood the danger and picked up their weapons. Edna gripped her multi-bladed weapon and she handed Betenos an axe from the wood pile. They stepped up slowly to the campfire.

“Backs against the flames, in a circle,” commanded Enoch, who pulled an arrow from his quiver and
nocked it on his bowstring. “It is time we face our stalker,” he said.

They heard the rustling of the leaves in the wind in sync with the rustling in the underbrush. Whoever
lurked there had a hunter’s skill for blending into the natural background.

Or
whatever.

They heard a soft growling
. The iridescent glow of eyes reflecting the firelight from the brush appeared. Pairs of eyes. All around them. About twenty.

The lea
d alpha male stepped out of the bush. It focused on Enoch, seeming to know his equal. It was a bizarre creature that none of them had ever seen before, a chimera, a hybrid mixture of several animals. It crept on all fours, and was about thrice the size of a man. It had the long scaly neck and head of a horned dragon, the forelegs of a feline predator, the taloned hind legs of a bird of prey, and its tail was a living snake.

The creature showed no fear of its prey. It seemed to merely be sizing up how
easily the game would be taken. It snarled.

Lamech rolled out Rahab. He could tame this thing with a whip of his sword, but twenty of them? That was another story altogether.

The alpha hissed. Its forked tongue tasted the air that carried their scent. It backed up a bit into the shadows. The eyes of the others moved slightly forward, lowering to the ground. They prepared to strike.

Suddenly, the
alpha beast yelped as its tail was jerked from behind. Something dragged the monster into the brush and out of sight. Its roar cut off in a squeal of pain.

One of the surrounding chimeras jumped out of the bushes at the humans by the fire.
A seven cubit tall Naphil leapt through the air, intercepting the chimera. It met the beast with a crunch and they rolled to the ground in a mass. Then the giant stood up, victoriously, his blade dripping with chimera blood.

He stood
stripped naked except for a loincloth, the ritual Nephilim hunting attire, holding a pearheaded mace in one hand and a battle axe in the other. Was he on their side or was he claiming them as his prey?

A
nother squeal cut through the dark. Another chimera flew out from the bush and landed in a dead heap for all to see. Its killer followed, a second leaping Naphil. He landed on the other side of the blazing fire, loincloth naked and ready to kill with a mace and sword. Two down, eighteen to go.

Enoch
suddenly recognized the second Naphil as Ohyah, the Captain of Inanna’s guard. The first Naphil stared at Ohyah with a look of surprise, like he had not anticipated Ohyah’s arrival.

Enoch had no time to
sort out what was happening. The gang of monsters pounced in unison. Most of them attacked the two Nephilim. The others went for the humans.

These hellions
fought fiercely. Methuselah thanked Elohim the Nephilim were on their side. They might not have survived without them.

Enoch
killed a couple of the chimeras with his bow With such close quarter fighting, he dropped the bow and switched to an axe.

Methuselah used his javelins as pikes, poking out eyes and throats. He
caught a quick glance of Edna, spinning and slicing more furiously than he had ever seen. But her wounded arm, though mostly healed, was a bit stiff and slow. She was tiring and getting sloppy. Killing hybrid giants was one thing, but these obscenities were five-part hounds of Sheol. Their freakish nature resulted in confusing unpredictable fighting behavior. They were flexible, agile and fast.

Betenos was not a warrior. Lamech had been working with her, and she had been catching on quickly. But this was not any kind of battle to practice in. It
was not even a battle that Lamech, with all his experience, had ever been in before. He had double duty snapping his sword Rahab and covering for Betenos behind him with their backs to the bonfire. She snatched up Enoch’s bow and arrows. She had time to aim and release from behind Lamech.

Lamech’s arm was tiring. He chopped off a snake head tail of one of the beasts and then caught the dragon head of another.
The force of it yanked his weakened arm and he lost control. The whip blade cracked just over Methuselah’s head near the fire.

“Are you still angry at me, son? I told you I like Betenos!” yelped Methuselah. Even
at such a moment, he could find the humor. He might as well. They would probably all be dead and eaten by evening’s end.

“Sorry
!” yelled Lamech. He switched hands with the flexible blade. He was not as good with his left arm. But he needed rest or he would collapse any moment.

The Nephilim worked in natural
coordination with each other. They each grabbed a monster in tandem and threw the beasts at each other with a crash, stunning them. They followed up with a synchronized double clubbing. They were highly trained guards and would be very hard to kill should Enoch’s team find themselves facing off with the giants after this ambush —
if
they made it out alive.

Enoch’s thoughts
distracted him for a moment. One of the chimeras fell upon him and pinned him to the ground, knocking the wind out of him. Saliva splattered from its jaws. He could feel the hot breath on his face. It bared its teeth to strike, its lips pulled back to reveal two rows of razor edged fangs.

Enoch
shut his eyes, waiting for his life to be torn from his body.

T
he jaws never came.

Ohyah
grabbed the dragon’s throat and ripped out its windpipe. It fell to the ground.

Enoch opened his eyes
.

Ohyah smile
d at him, for just a moment. Then a pack of three of the mongrels pounced in unison onto his back. He went down beneath a pile of fighting monsters. One of the creatures clamped its iron jaws onto Ohyah’s arm. He screamed in pain.

The other giant ripped one of the beasts off of him and flung it down onto the fire.

An explosion of flames and embers covered everyone.

Methuselah’s javelin and Edna’s
weapon pierced through the second one.

The third mutant beast with clamped jaw had its head cut off by Lamech’s Rahab.

Suddenly, unexpectedly, it was all over. Those were the last three of the chimeras. The giant killers had teamed up with their own enemy to defeat a common foe.

Everyone was near total exhaustion, lungs burning for air.

When Lamech saw that Betenos was unwounded, he hugged her for dear life.

Methuselah crawled
to Edna. He was too exhausted to say anything more than, “Pednanoonypoo.”

“Poozelahbunnybunch,” she
murmured and collapsed in his arms. They lay gasping for a moment.

“What in the world were those monstrosities?”
an incredulous Methuselah asked anyone who would answer.

No one did.

Methuselah glanced around. The second Naphil helped Enoch up to his feet. Whatever possessed this creature to help them was beyond Methuselah.

H
e saw Ohyah stand up behind Enoch. His father was sandwiched between the two giants. The hair rose on the back of Methuselah’s neck.

Ohyah raised his
ax.

Methuselah screamed.

It was too late. Ohyah delivered a mighty blow.

But it was not to Enoch.
Ohyah severed the other Naphil’s head from his body. It fell to the ground at Enoch’s feet, followed by the four hundred pound corpse.

Enoch looked up in fear at Ohyah.

Ohyah dropped the weapon and sat on the ground, his task completed.

Lamech and Methuselah ran to Enoch to protect him. They
pointed their weapons at the surviving giant. Ohyah sighed and said, “That Naphil was sent to kill you.”

“How do you know that?”
demanded Enoch.

“Because Inanna ordered me to send him,” said Ohyah. “He
did not anticipate being beaten to the task by the mushussu.” He looked at Methuselah. “That is the answer to your question. The beasts are called
mushussu
. He must have relished the challenge of gaining your trust in the fight in order to kill you in your sleep.”

“And you?” said Lamech.

“I came to stop him. He thought I was here to help him.”

“This is becoming a jumbled confusion of cross purposes,” exclaimed Methuselah. “I must be getting old.”

“It is simple, father,” said Lamech. “We are on our way to kill giants.” He pointed to the dead Naphil. “That giant was sent to kill us.” He pointed to Ohyah. “This giant came to kill that giant. But these mushussu came to kill us all. So we all teamed up and killed the mushussu.” He paused for a moment. “And now we are all wondering if we should kill this giant.” Lamech was becoming a chip off the old mud brick, with his wit. Edna smiled.

Enoch said, “Why should we trust you, giant?”

“Is it not obvious?” said Ohyah. “If I wanted you dead, I would have let the Naphil kill you.”

“But
you
are a Naphil,” protested Methuselah. “You are the Watchers’ seed.”

“But half human,” said Lamech in Ohyah’s defense.

“Elohim made me this way,” Ohyah countered.

Edna
watched Ohyah closely. She did not have the open mind that these men displayed. She cared only to protect her son and husband.

“Can Nephilim actually repent and serve Elohim?”
Methuselah’s words echoed everyone’s thoughts.

Enoch spoke up. “Ohyah means us no harm. He will be traveling with us to Bashan.”

He stared straight into Ohyah’s eyes as he said the words. Ohyah sighed with relief and smiled at him.

“Well, I never thought I’d see the day,” said Methuselah. “A repentant Naphil joining a team of giant killers.
You will have to write about that in your memoirs, father. But I anticipate you will be accused of fictional embellishment.”

The others chuckled. It was all too absurd to believe. But
they were living it.

Enoch
studied one of the dead monsters, deep in thought. He picked up one of the severed heads to look at it more closely. “Ohyah, you called these mushussu? I have never seen nor heard of them before. What are they?”

“Miscegenation of the gods,” said Ohyah.
The word referred to hybridization. Herdsmen and pastoralists had learned to crossbreed certain animals to create new ones that were blended combinations of both animals. The domesticated dog came from such breeding. Humans selected wolves from one pack that were more docile than the others and interbred them with docile members of a different pack to create a new breed of canine more friendly to humans. There were limits to hybridization that restricted such breeding to animals of the same kind. One could not “crossbreed” birds with felines and reptiles. Yet this hideous mutant clearly had been so magically bred. It was unimaginable.