Into Eden: Pangaea - Book 1 (10 page)

“Once inside the city walls the Atlantans discovered for the first time what had happened to its inhabitants. In a rage, Herculous gave the order that none of the an-nef were to be spared. Many an-nef, weary of the long months of siege and hoping for mercy threw down their spears and bows, only to be cut down by the Atlantans. Those an-nef outside the city fared no better. At a place called, the “Cherry Orchard” the Atlantans caught up with Mizriam and his an-nef and surrounded them. Mizriam had taken the best of his legionnaires with him, and when they realized that the Atlantans were not taking prisoners they put up a fight that would be remembered through the ages. The Atlantans suffered many casualties at the Cherry Orchard, but in the end sheer numbers won out, and the legions of Eden perished to the last an-nef. It was at the Cherry Orchard that Anubis’ brother died.”

“Then my father must have fought there,” Jesse said.

“Yes, he fought there,” Enoch replied, and then went on with his story. “Despite the fierceness of the battle at the Cherry Orchard and the ring of men that the Atlantans put around their enemy to keep them from escaping, some managed to. Anubis was one of them. Mizriam was another, as well as the head of his bodyguard, a ram-head by the name of Canaan.”

“The same Canaan that now sits on the throne in New Sodom?” Jesse asked.

“The very same. Pursued by the Atlantans, this small band somehow made it over Prophet’s Pass and all the way to the Pishon before they were surrounded. It was there that Mizriam died. At this point the stories diverge. Some say that Mizriam committed suicide rather than be killed or captured by the Atlantans. Others claim that Canaan betrayed his master and killed him himself as part of a coup that brought him to power. Either way, Mizriam’s body was thrown into the Pishon for the river monsters to devour, and weeks later—after the fall of Sodom—Canaan gathered the surviving an-nef to himself and founded New Sodom. Eden’s second dynasty had begun.”

“End of the story? End of the war?” asked Jesse.

“No. But the beginning of the end. The reason that Mizriam was trapped at the Pishon is because the pontoon bridge that he had built to move his troops across the river had washed away in the spring floods. It meant his death, but it also meant that Herculous had to construct another to march on Sodom. It took him nearly a month to get his legions across, and by the time they marched on Eden’s capital word of their advance reached the city and it had been abandoned. Just the same, the Atlantans destroyed what they could. They smashed statues, tore down temples, and looted homes. They returned to Atlantis over a year after they had left with a wagon-train of plunder for the women that they had left behind. Even the fine hourglass that now sits on the mantle in your mansion began its life in the home of some wealthy an-nef in Sodom.”

Jesse was surprised at this last revelation. The thought of his father plundering the homes of wealthy an-nef in the far-away capitol of Sodom had never occurred to him. Such an act was beneath him. Or, at least, beneath the man that he would become some many years later.

“After the war,” Enoch continued, “Herculous rebuilt Mountain Shadows, and for the next hundred years kept a garrison of ten-thousand legionnaires stationed there to make sure that Eden knew that any other incursions would be met with force. There were also garrisons of one-thousand each at Whitehurst and Albion. But when the emperor died, the new emperor didn’t see the need in paying legionnaires to defend against an enemy that was beaten and shattered. He closed the garrisons at Mountain Shadows and Whitehurst and gradually reduced the number in Albion to the twenty or so men that are stationed there now. Not having legionnaires to defend them, the citizens of Mountain Shadows and Whitehurst stopped paying their taxes. What had at one time been considered the southernmost border of the empire was abandoned to fend for themselves. I tell you, it was a sad day when the Mountain Shadows garrison marched north through Albion on their way back to Atlantis, never to return. People lined the Highway and cried to see the humiliation. What the an-nef couldn’t achieve with spears and swords, the citizens of Atlantis accomplished with their lust for the good life. More stadiums and more free bread from the government’s ovens in Atlantis. There was plenty of money for that. But not enough to pay the legions that defended the empire’s borders. I tell you, Jesse, Pangaea has never seen such a thing, and never will again!”

“That’s about the whole story, Jesse,” said Enoch. “If we want to make any more miles before dark I suggest that we get moving. Did I tell you everything that you wanted to know?”

“I suspect that you told me more than you know.”

“You mean about the an-nef living in the Foothills?”

“No. I mean about my father. If my father was a general, and he fought at the Cherry Orchard, that means that he must have commanded the forces there.”

Enoch said no more, but bounded up the hill from the river and jumped up into the buckboard, ready to get back on the road.

Tamar rose early the morning that Jesse and Enoch rode off down the Southern Highway. She’d been troubled by nightmares ever since the night that the an-nef had burst in, taking the life of her husband and eldest son. In her dreams they were chasing her through the house. She was always just a foot or two in front of them, never quite able to escape.

Tamar got out of bed and dressed, then made her way down the hall to check on her youngest, Jesse. He was healing just nicely, she thought. But she didn’t want him to heal too fast. He needed to understand that Meroni was capable of mothering as well. That would bring him around. Oh, Meroni could be a little—what was the phrase—self-centered? Yes, she was a bit self-centered. But why shouldn’t she be? A girl like that needed to be doted upon, and her son Jesse was just the one to do the doting. Why, now that he was Master of the house of Nashon (Tamar loved that title) he could afford a woman with a few vain tendencies, now couldn’t he? Tamar would just make everything all right. She would have a talk with Helita, and Helita would talk with Meroni and Meroni would learn to smile more and talk less—at least until after the wedding. Jesse could be soooo stubborn, Tamar thought as she opened the door to his room. Tamar froze. Jesse’s bed was empty. The door to his wardrobe was standing open and his boots, which were always neatly tucked under the foot of his bed just like she taught him, were gone. No, that was not a good sign. She looked around the room and saw a note placed right in the middle of Jesse’s desk. Seeing her name on it she picked it up and broke the seal (her name or not, she would have broken the seal anyway). In Jesse’s handwriting was a brief note:

Dear Mother:

By the time that you read this I will be gone. I have some business that I must take care of before I return, please don’t worry and please don’t try to stop me, I’ll be fine. I won’t be gone long—a few months at most, and when I return I will tell you why that I had to leave in such haste. I will not need Meroni as a nurse as my wounds are nearly healed. Please also tell Meroni that I’m sorry that I couldn’t stay to greet her. I hope that she will understand. Please also tell her that I release her from her betrothal.

Your loving son,

Jesse

When Tamar put the note down she was shaking. Her face, usually almost ivory in complexion, was now a bright red. Then she spoke aloud, “HE releases her?! No one can release her from her betrothal besides ME!” Then she picked the note back up from the desk and ripped it to itsy, bitsy pieces and threw the scattered shreds across the room. They fluttered down on the bed like snow.

Jesse and Enoch made good progress that first day on the road. Jesse estimated that they covered between twenty-five and thirty miles. As they progressed, the landscape began to change. The road, which up until now had been as much up as down, now tended to favor long downhill grades as the wagon slowly moved out of the Foothills to the plains that the Territories were best known for. Not only that, but the foliage was changing as well. The farms that had been carved out of forests were now replaced with grassy fields with small copse of trees scattered across the landscape. Houses were less frequent as they had been during the first half of the day, but still stuck to the stucco over-granite topped off with thatched roofs. Travel on the Southern Highway had thinned out as well. Before their break for lunch they had encountered travelers every half hours or so. Some were on foot and others in wagons or oxcarts, but in the last hour they had seen no one save a boy coming up from the river with a cane pole over his shoulder and some fish tied on a string.

As the sun was setting, Jesse looked around. “Let’s camp by the river tonight,” he said.

Jesse unhitched the horse and tethered it to a tree by the river to graze and then gathered some wood for a fire while Enoch ran off and hunted rabbits. Before long Enoch was back, a rabbit drooping from his mouth. “Gaunt gum?” Enoch asked.

“It’s not polite to talk with your mouth full.”

Enoch dropped the rabbit, and then repeated himself, “Want some?”

“No thanks, Enoch,” Jesse replied, “I’ll just stick to my dried beef. Besides, if I’m reading my father’s maps correctly we’ll be able to eat at an inn tomorrow night. There’s a town about twenty-five miles further down the road. That was good news to Enoch. Where there were inns, there were leftovers. And Enoch would take leftover over rabbit any day of the week.

The both of them sat by the fire to keep warm as the cool evening air began to settle in. Before the sun went down, Jesse looked out over the fields. “I’ve been here before,” he said. “This exact spot. I remember that tree (he pointed to a willow) and that large rock in the middle of the river.”

“When were you here?” Enoch asked.

“Twenty years ago. When I was seventy. I was just a boy, but dad took me down here to show me how to hunt lions. I was scared to death, and prayed to the gods all the way down that we wouldn’t find any. ‘You have to hunt lions with a spear,’ dad said. ‘A bow and arrow won’t do. You shoot a deer with a bow and arrow and if you wound him he’ll just run off. But you shoot a lion with a bow and arrow and you wound him and he’ll charge you. You’ll never get the second arrow nocked,’ he said. ‘And one arrow is not enough to bring down a lion. You have to make him charge you. Once he’s at full run he’ll pounce and that’s when you run the point of the spear into his chest.’ Dad said that the weight of the lion is all that it will take. One thrust and the animal’s dead. Once he’s dead the others will fear you and run off. But before that all they see you as is a big, juicy steak.”

“There were no lions,” said Jesse. “They had been killed off in this part of Atlantis many years before. I think that dad knew that. He just wanted to spend some time alone with me.”

“I wish that I had taken my son lion-hunting,” said Enoch.

The two of them lay down and watched the fire in silence as the sun set over the fields across the river. And for the first time in many nights Jesse slept a deep, dreamless sleep.

Chapter 6
Castor and Pollex

When Jesse awoke the next morning the sun was already well over the horizon. He had slept too well, he thought. He left Enoch snoring by the cold ashes that had been their fire the night before, and hurried to throw his belongings in the buckboard. What he saw when he came up from the river was a sight that both amazed and bewildered him. “Enoch!” Jesse called. “Come here!” Enoch jumped up and bounded back to the wagon. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

“Nothing...I hope. What are those?” Jesse pointed to several large, dark shapes on the horizon that seemed to be moving south parallel with the road.

Enoch squinted, then stuck his nose in the air and sniffed. “Wooly mammoths,” he said. “The Atlantan legion uses them for pack animals. I’ve seen a crew of men and one stout mammoth construct a bridge in a day’s time. They make great mobile cranes.”

Jesse watched as the shapes moved slowly closer. “I guess that I never realized how close to home that they ranged. Are they dangerous?”

“Not as long as you don’t poke ‘em with that stick of yours,” Enoch replied, referring to Jesse’s spear.

Jesse ignored the jab, and then finished harnessing the horse to the wagon. “Let’s go,” he said, then headed on down the Southern Highway.

That morning was as uneventful as the previous day’s had been. Jesse kept his eyes on the increasingly boring road ahead, while Enoch napped in the back of the buckboard. Suddenly, Enoch raised his head and said, “I smell…cat.”

This time Jesse continued to drive and said, “Cat cat, or big cat?”

Enoch sniffed the air again, “Big cat, I think.”

Jesse brought the wagon to a halt, and reached behind him for the spear. “Are you sure about that?”

“Pretty sure.” Enoch replied, calmly. “The scent’s much too strong for your generic barn cat.”

“How far?”

“Hard to tell. The wind’s out of the north, and the scent is coming from the south. If I were guessing, I’d say half a mile.”

“You can smell an animal half a mile away?” Jesse replied, astonished.

“If the scent is strong enough, yes. Before I took control of the lowly beast that I now inhabit he was known to his fellow canines as, ‘Long Nose’ for his ability to sniff out prey at great distances. And there’s more bad news. I can also smell blood. Human blood. And cow-blood as well, I think.”

Jesse sat in the seat of the buckboard not knowing what to do. According to Enoch, there was a lion up ahead. One that had already killed. If he were to turn back now, Enoch would think him a coward; his mother would humiliate him in front of the servants; and Meroni would talk him to death. What to do? He was wearing his sword. He was good with a sword. When he was eighty his father had hired a master swordsman from Atlantis to come and train Perez and him in swordsmanship. “Best master swordsman in all of Atlantis,” his father had said. “Swords are a gentlemen’s weapon,” he said. He and Perez had trained and practiced until even Nashon was amazed at their abilities with a blade. “Naturals,” the master swordsman had said, “Naturals.” But you don’t kill lions with a sword.

He also had a longbow with him. All boys in the Foothills knew how to handle a longbow, and Jesse was one of the best. He could hit a target no bigger than a man’s fist at five-hundred paces. But you don’t kill lions with bow and arrow. You kill them with a spear, and Jesse had used a spear precisely once in his entire life and he was not looking forward to using it again. Suddenly, the truth of his predicament hit him and he was overcome with fear. He knew what he had to do, and he knew that he would probably die, but he was not about to turn the wagon around and run. Josiah had died like a man. He would too.

Just the same, Jesse reached for his bow and strung it. Next he hooked his quiver on the back of his seat and then he pulled the spear up close to him. With a, “Yee-hah!” he urged the horse on.

“Are you really going to go through with this?” Enoch asked.

“Yes, Big Nose,” I am. With that, he brought the horse to a trot.

A half mile down the road they came over a rise. In front of them on the road, about two hundred paces ahead, Jesse could now see what Enoch had smelled. In the middle of the road an ox-cart lay on its side. The ox that was hitched to it lay mauled and dead. Half-dozen vultures fought over the carcass. Spilling from the back of the cart was straw tumbling out from under a canvass tarp, and articles of carved ivory that were strewn across the road. The driver was nowhere to be seen. Jesse looked up the road about twenty paces and he could see a fluttering of black wings in the high hay to the right of the road. He carefully drove the horse off the road and around the ox-cart, a chore that was made difficult by the animal’s refusal to go forward. He slapped the horse with the shaft of his spear and it started ahead again, prancing nervously. Jesse had never had to do that before, he didn’t even own a whip, but it was clear that the horse smelled the same thing that Enoch did, and wanted to go no further. As they pulled around the downed ox Jesse noticed something else: paw prints in the dirt beside the carcass. Big paw prints. If there was any doubt that there was a lion on the loose it vanished from Jesse’s mind at that moment.

Jesse urged the horse on to the spot where he could see the black wings. Just as he thought, there in the hay lay the body of the driver with three vultures atop him. The lion had dragged the body for some distance before abandoning it. Like the ox, it had been badly mauled, but there was no evidence from either of them that the lion had eaten any of its prey. Jesse jumped down to get a closer look, but had to hold on to the horse’s reins to keep it from bolting.

“What are you doing?” asked Enoch, alarm in his voice.

“We can’t just leave this man here,” Jesse replied.

“Oh yes, we can! The lion is very close! I can feel his presence! We need to get moving! Get back into the wagon and let’s get out of here while we still can!”

Jesse didn’t like leaving the man beside the road like that, but he knew that Enoch was right. He hurried back to the buckboard and jumped up onto the seat, pulling the spear close. Before he could urge the animal on, the horse went down as a large lion sprang from the high hay on the other side of the road, sinking its teeth into the horse’s neck and clawing at its flesh. Jesse grabbed the spear and raised it, preparing to jump from the wagon and thrust it into the lion as it mauled the horse, but before he could dismount a second lion leaped from the hay beside the road and came down on top of him. Jesse had just enough time glance over his left shoulder, the spear moving as his body twisted when he heard Enoch shout, “Look out!”

Jesse stared down at the lion that had leaped at him. It lay unmoving just beneath him on the road, the spear thrust deep into its chest by the force of this huge beast’s own weight. Then he drew his sword as the first lion abandoned the attack on the horse and faced him. What happened next seemed as if he were in a waking dream. Beside him he could hear Enoch growling and glanced over to see the fur on Enoch standing up and Enoch bearing his teeth in a way that he had never seen before.

He looked back at the remaining living lion, which made no more attempt to advance. Suddenly Enoch began to shout, “Resist him Jesse! Resist him!” Jesse had no idea what Enoch was talking about. It was then that he realized that he could hear a voice in his head. The voice was low, but getting louder. What was it saying? It was muttering something. “Yes! I’m in! A human! I’m in...” But beyond that, he felt another presence. He fought back an urge to strike Enoch with his drawn sword and behead him. His hatred of Anubis welled up inside of him and he wanted—needed to kill him. And not just Anubis, he would kill his wives, his children, even his pets would not escape. Yes…he had an insatiable desire to kill that was fueled by a flood of hatred.

Beyond him, as if in the distance, he could hear Enoch still shouting, “Resist him! By the gods, Jesse, Resist him!” Resist what, and how? He should kill Enoch, he thought. That would shut him up. Stupid dog was always interfering with his plans, why…

Now Jesse was feeling dizzy. He grasped his head; it hurt like he had been hit with a brick. He leaned over the side of the wagon, needing to throw-up. Instead, he passed out and fell to the ground. A few seconds later, he was awake again, the headache was gone. He lay on the ground and could see not two paces from him the lion that had killed the horse. The lion was lying on the ground on his side, his feet twitching as if he were having a seizure. Enoch was yelling at Jesse, “C’on! Get up! We have to get moving! Run!”

Jesse struggled to his feet, and Enoch took off running towards the river. He started to follow after him, and then ran back to the buckboard. He picked up his sword and sheathed it, then threw his bow and quiver over his shoulders and picked up his saddlebags as well. Then he followed the dog down the bank. Enoch leaped in and swam for the opposite bank. Jesse (who was a terrible swimmer) waded in cautiously, and then started across the river in chest-deep water. Suddenly, he stepped into a drop-off and found himself sinking above his head. He struggled with all his might to reach the surface, but his feet felt like lead, and the saddlebags weighed him down. Finally, in a panic and nearly out of breath, he let the saddlebags go and was able to push himself to the surface just long enough to get a couple of gulps of air. He swam as best he could toward the opposite bank, but even though it was only five paces from bank to bank he did not think that he would make it. At the end of his strength he felt something tugging on his collar and he realized that Enoch had a hold of him and was towing him in. After a minute he could feel his feet hit the bottom and he stood and walked the remainder of the way across. Finally, he collapsed on the bank exhausted, and nearly downed.