Noah (16 page)

With an effort he pulled away.

“Ila?” he said questioningly.

Her eyes were dancing. Crawling all over him.

He got the impression that she was employing all of her senses—that she was
feeding
on him. It was as if she simply couldn’t get enough of his sight, his smell, his touch, his essence.

She began to kiss him again. Between kisses she put her lips against his ear.

“It doesn’t hurt anymore,” she whispered.

“What?” Shem stammered. “Why?”

But she shushed him with another kiss.

“It’s a miracle,” she said breathlessly. “A gift. For both of us.”

And this time when she put his hand where she wanted it to be, he didn’t resist.

* * *

Standing on the ramp of the Ark, Og beside him, Noah was still looking up.

Above him, the clouds were still roiling, still churning, still darkening. They were almost as black as night now. Color was draining from the land. The trees, which edged the clearing beyond the crouching and motionless Watchers, had become nothing but a surrounding wall of shadow.

The wind was howling around Noah. He felt it pulling and plucking at his body, as if attempting to drag him into the maelstrom above. Yet still he stood motionless. He was watching and waiting for the
sign. He knew that it would come. And he knew that it would not be long in doing so.

At last, far, far above, he saw a still point appear in the blackness. A tiny speck of light, like an eye opening within the heavens. He saw it shimmer, glint. And then he saw it grow larger, little by little, as it began to fall.

He didn’t flinch. He didn’t close his eyes. This was the moment he had been waiting for.

The raindrop fell. It hurtled toward him until it was close enough to blot out the black sky above it, to fill his world.

And then…

Splash!

It exploded on his forehead, shattering like soft glass. A single raindrop. The
first
raindrop. It struck Noah’s temple, rolled down across his forehead, traced a path through the curve of bone between the bridge of his nose and his eye socket, and then trickled down his cheek like a tear.

No. Not
a
tear.
The
tear.

The tear of the Creator.

The first of many.

Weeping for the sins of Man.

W
orking in his foundry, covered in sweat and hammering lengths of metal into pikes for his ever-growing army, Tubal-cain saw a raindrop hit the anvil on which he was working. As the water sizzled on the hot metal, the warrior king looked up.

The sky was churning and boiling above him like a purple sea. It made him think of pure, unadulterated fury—struggling, and failing, to contain itself.

* * *

In the Hearth, Naameh and Japheth were lashing bags and barrels together as a seurity precaution against the coming storm.

At the sound of rain tapping on the wooden roof of the Ark above their heads, they halted briefly and looked at each other.

The drops came slowly at first, and then faster and faster.

* * *

Raindrops began to hit the shrouded corpses in the mass grave, landing in large wet splats. They gave the impression that the grave was home to a ghastly kind of pseudo-life, the gray, soiled winding sheets twitching as if the dead themselves were stirring beneath them.

Ham looked up at the sky, and at the sides of the pit turning to trickling mud where the rain hit the dirt, and he knew they could wait no longer. He took Na’el’s hand and squeezed it.

“Come on,” he said, standing up and dragging her with him. “Quickly!”

She looked at him with wide, frightened eyes. A raindrop hit her cheek. She shook her head.

“I can’t.”

“You can. I’ll help you.” He peered into her eyes. “You trust me, don’t you?”

She nodded.

“Well, then,” Ham said. “It will be all right. I promise. But we have to go—now!”

* * *

The rain falling on the roof of Tubal-cain’s royal tent sounded like a cascade of stones. He was examining a new weapon, one his chief armorer had developed only recently. It was a pipe-gun, comprising a metal tube, wider at one end than the other, into which was packed chunks of tzohar.

He hefted the weapon in his hands. It felt good, as all weapons did.

Raising his voice above the clattering of the downpour on canvas, he bellowed, “I am a man made
in your image. Why do you not converse with me?”

And then, invigorated—as always—by the promise of war, he marched outside to confront the rain.

* * *

Their naked bodies gleaming with rain, Shem and Ila rose slowly from the forest floor like strange and exotic plants. Despite the doom-laden sky and the increasingly heavy rain, both of them were smiling and happy. Holding hands, facing each other, they kissed once again, passionately, before finally, reluctantly, breaking away.

They retrieved their torn and sodden clothes and pulled them on, concealing their nakedness as the rain pattered and drummed on the canopy of leaves above and around them. It was as if Creation itself was applauding their love.

* * *

The Watchers stood in a defensive circle around the Ark, facing out into the dark line of trees, their bodies chained together. Their shoulders were touching, allowing no gaps in their ranks, their faces set, determined, immobile.

Rain poured on and around them, hissing and chattering in the undergrowth, turning their pale, stony flesh first piebald and then dark and slick.

Puddles formed under their feet, yet they remained where they were, silent and uncomplaining.

“The Creator weeps,” Samyaza muttered.

Og, who was standing next to him at the base of the ramp, nodded grimly.

* * *

All through Tubal-cain’s camp people were running, screaming. The rain had set off an escalating wave of panic. Most of the makeshift shelters had collapsed, and were nothing more than trampled heaps of canvas, wood, and animal skins strewn about the muddy ground. Most of the camp’s occupants, drenched, mud-spattered, starving, and now homeless, had gravitated—as if drawn by some long-buried instinct—toward the compound at its center. Or more specifically, toward the one man who even now they thought might be equipped to protect them.

They milled about the main gates, calling for Tubal-cain, begging for mercy, even imploring the rain itself to stop falling. There was no aggression this time, no anger. The people were all too weak and frightened for that. The soldiers at the gate watched them dispassionately, weapons drawn in case of trouble. And then finally, as if in response to some command from within, the gates were hauled open and the people streamed into the compound.

Most of Tubal-cain’s troops were gathered around the base of an outcropping of rock, the tallest of several that reared from the earth within the compound itself. On the highest point of the outcropping stood Tubal-cain, a massive, heavily armed and heavily armored figure, framed blackly against the storm-lashed sky. He looked powerful and dramatic as he glared down at his subjects, cradling one of the new weapons in his gauntleted hands. As if defying the rains, he raised his head and yelled at the sky, “I give life and I take life away. As do you. And I am like you, am I not?

“Speak to me,” he demanded.

When he received no answer but the falling water, he hefted the pipe-gun he was holding, then slammed
the back of it down on to the ground. Immediately there was an ear-splitting crack and a ball of white fire shot into the sky. The people gasped and gazed up at it, en masse. Even as the first fireball was still rising, Tubal-cain roared.

“
Speak to me!
”

When the only response remained the rain, he slammed the weapon into the ground a second time, and another blazing projectile followed the first.

The people fell silent, awed and shocked, their eyes following the twin fireballs as they sailed high into the sky before fading out. Confident that he had the attention of his people, Tubal-cain took a step forward and raised the metal tube into the air.

“It has begun!” he bellowed. “Death comes from the heavens. This rain is meant to wash us off the face of the world. But we are men! We decide if we live or die. We are men, and men united are invincible. Do you want to live?”

There was an almost hysterical roar of assent from the massed hordes. Tubal-cain bared his teeth in a savage grin. He took the weapon that he was brandishing and shook it defiantly at the heavens.

“Together we will attack,” he bellowed. “Together we kill the giants, we kill Noah—and
we take the Ark!
”

As his words rose above the crackling hiss of rain there was a roar of agreement. A sea of clenched fists punched the air.

* * *

Hand in hand, Shem and Ila burst out of the line of trees surrounding the clearing—and then pulled up short.

In front of them, blocking their way to the Ark, was an imposing wall of dark gray stone.

Then the wall moved, part of it rising, detaching itself from the rest.

“Og,” Ila gasped in relief.

Og gestured behind him, at the gap he had made in the wall of Watchers. “Go,” he grunted.

The two young people needed no further encouragement. Drenched to the skin, they ran past him, through the gap, across the rain-sodden ground toward the ramp.

Looking up, they saw that the huge door, which now covered the main hatchway, was slightly ajar. Two figures slipped through the narrow gap and hurried down the ramp toward them, taking care not to lose their footing on the rain-slippery wood.

“Shem! Ila!” Naameh called, her voice shrill with anxiety and yet full of relief. “There you are!”

Noah grabbed Shem’s shoulder, his eyes darting past him, toward the woods which loomed over the line of Watchers.

“Where is Ham? Have you seen him?”

Shem shook his head, water droplets flying from his hair.

“No, Father.”

* * *

Ham and Na’el were sprinting through the forest, bent almost double against the rain which hammered down on their backs and heads. Ham was gripping Na’el’s delicate, finely boned hand as tightly as he could without hurting her.

They splashed through puddles, slithered in mud. Around them the forest seemed to be roaring,
the trees jerking in pain as the rain pounded down. Somewhere at their backs Ham thought he could hear the bellowing battle-cries of men, the crashing and splintering of wood as if a vast army was moving relentlessly through the forest, trampling all that lay before it.

But he told himself, over and over, perhaps in the hope that he could make it true, that it was just his imagination.

They passed a cluster of boulders, shiny with rain. He recognized them. He, Shem, Ila, and Japheth had played hide and seek among them many times as children.

“We’re almost there!” he yelled, putting on an extra burst of speed, dragging Na’el after him.

All at once she screamed and halted so suddenly that Ham was jerked backward, his feet sliding out from under him. Their hands broke apart and he landed on his back on the muddy, waterlogged ground.

Sitting up, he looked back. Na’el was lying on her stomach, arm stretched out pleadingly, her wet hair plastered to a face etched with agony. It wasn’t until Ham scrambled back to his feet, however, water and mud streaming from his saturated clothes, that he realized why.

She had stepped into a metal animal trap, which had closed around her ankle like the jaws of a bear.

It must have been set by one of Tubal-cain’s men and hidden in the foliage, he realized. It sickened Ham to see where the jagged metal teeth had bitten through the girl’s delicate skin in several places. Blood was flowing freely from the wounds, though as it emerged it was instantly washed away by the rain, creating several red-tinged rivulets.

Ham rushed across to her, water spraying up around him as he dropped to his knees. He wrapped his hands around each side of the animal trap and tried to pull the slippery metal jaws apart.

He applied all his strength, grunting with the effort, his muscles standing out in tight knots on his arms, his knuckles white as bone. The jaws of the trap creaked. He managed to pry them apart by an inch. Na’el cried out as one of the jagged metal teeth slid from a puncture wound on her leg, releasing a fresh outpouring of watery blood.

Tentatively she jiggled her leg, tried to pull it free, but only succeeded in scraping it against more of the metal teeth, which cut deep, bloody scratches through her skin. She was sobbing now, frantic, crying with pain. Tendons were standing out on Ham’s neck as he pushed for all he was worth at the metal jaws of the trap.

But he was fighting a losing battle, gasping for breath, his arms trembling. Suddenly, with a wail of dismay and frustration, his strength gave out and the jaws of the trap snapped shut again.

Na’el’s scream of agony was raw and shrill and primal.

“I’m sorry.” Ham wept. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

He wrapped his hands around the metal jaws again, sobbing and yelling as he tried to force them apart. He knew he wasn’t strong enough, but he knew too that he wouldn’t give up. He would stay and drown with Na’el, rather than abandon her to her fate.

But then his head snapped up, as sounds began to rise in volume, to push their way through the constant battering barrage of rain. Wood splintering,
men shouting, the wet thunder of thousands of approaching feet. He could no longer convince himself that the din was his imagination.

Perhaps they wouldn’t drown, after all. Perhaps their deaths would come more quickly, and with altogether more violence.

Na’el’s eyes widened in panic.

“They’re coming,” she half-screeched, half-sobbed. Her voice was shrill with terror. “Get me out, Ham!
Get me out!
”

She began to claw frantically at her own leg, to push at the trap. If she had been able to, Ham had no doubt that she would have gnawed all the way through the flesh and bone of her own ankle in order to get free. He tried to help her, their hands fumbling and slipping over one another, clawing at the wet metal.