THE SACRIFICE
A true story of the nephilim.
The man cowered in my shadow, and clutched the leg I had splinted. I backed away, afraid that he would hurt himself trying to hurt me. I made a crisp demonstration of my civilized manners by scrubbing my hands in the soapy washing basin then passed them through the rinsing basin. I removed from the medicine chest a tangy resinous ball of opium and hash. I tucked it into the bowl of the clay pipe, the gift from Modok which was as long as the battle trumpets of Qadesh. I took a punk from the tiny fire, touched it to the bowl, and puffed until the ball glowed cherry red. I presented the stem of the pipe to the man so that he should take it. He had bleated in pain all the way to my mountain, but now he was making an effort to collect himself and be brave. I thought he seemed like a soldier. If he was, he was remembering the soldier’s advice to keep one’s dignity if you find yourself in the enemy’s hands, so that they see you as a man and treat you as one.
He waved the pipe stem aside, and babbled in one of the ugliest languages that I have ever heard men speak. I was not surprised that I did not understand him. I have been around men so little, and I cannot say how long it has been since the last time I spoke with one. In another age I puzzled out the gabble of Mycenean shipbuilders. I have counted a thousand turns of the seasons since I left the world of men. That is, I counted that many before it no longer seemed important to do so, and I lost track. Perhaps another thousand or two, and I saw no men. But the way men chatter, they must have spread an awful profusion of languages throughout the earth since I last spoke with their kind. I doubted he understood any of the human languages that I could remember. Perhaps Greek might be familiar, I thought and tried to speak. I found myself shouting, though I do not know why:
“Turtle man! When did you grow shells, silly man? Why are you in my hills?” His clothing and arms were strange to me. He had a domed helm and had only a small plate of armor strapped to his chest. He wore a green and grey checked tunic. This was ripped at the groin and caked black with blood and dust. He clutched an oddly shaped short black staff but had no other weapon. He did not look like the men I remembered. He was pink and plump as a piglet, healthy but soft as a baby. I remembered the mortal terror that tends to possess humans when they first encounter one of our kind. They make a stink which crinkles the nostrils and tickles the back of the throat.
He was ridiculous and a little loathsome. I have never been quite comfortable around humans, mostly because of their smell. Some of my people had thought them worthy, and some even took them to bed. Not everyone agrees they smell bad. Of course I never slept with one, but I did enjoy their strange company from time to time. This man was out of his mind with fear. There would be no taking him to bed even if I wanted to do such a thing.
He made me feel very primal though. I wanted to grab him and shake him until his head flew off his shoulders. I wanted to roar in his face until he went deaf. I was stopped only by the muddled memory of the Syniac oath, and my promise to never harm them- for all the good our gentle stewardship did when the angels came roaring down out of heaven at us.
I heard mother call out and the man jumped in terror at the new voice.
“Gobee… Gobee! You’re playing with those things aren’t you? While your mother is so ill, with no broth, no resin… Oh why could I have not been stranded here with any of my other children, instead of the selfish and thoughtless Gobee.”
Once the laments started there would be no escaping them. Not until I brought the resin. Even her cries for broth or fruit or a milk bath were only masked cries for the pipe. She would carry on so until she had the sticky ball smoldering in her pipe, and then the wailing would be replaced by wet snores for several hours until she woke to new hunger. I left the man with his pain, and took the pipe to my mother instead. She fumed like a dragon until her breathing slowed. A string of drool stretch from her wispy chin to the floor of our cave. I thought again of those stories of a mountain with a belly full of fire. I wanted to find one, walk in, and never come out.
I should not have brought the human back. I let my curiosity get the better of me and went over the mountain to see the black fly. It buzzed close to me and I tried to swat it away for fear it would sting me. It listed into a stone and crumpled, then orange innards blossomed outward and the corpse smoked. I had never seen such a beast, so I went closer. Among the strewn innards of the fly I saw people who must have been stuffed in its gullet. These were dead except for one, and he would have died if I left him where I found him. If he survived he might have been found by his people. I took him though, goaded by what imp I do not know.
The man by the hearth had glazed eyes. The bone did not break the skin so he would likely not fester but he had withdrawn into himself. He had been swallowed up by an angry metal hornet and vomited over a mountain side. His companions were as well, but he was the sole survivor. Then he is whisked away by one of the last living giants. I had a terrible, reckless impulse, I suppose because I have only my mother for company and she can only cry out in opium hunger. Who am I to blame her though, when she saw all of her family die, how the angels pierced them with diamond arrows and bashed them with maces made from the hearts of stars. She did not need to remind me how I feasted in Atlantis while the others were slaughtered, but she would do so at every opportunity.
I left the man and went to my workshop. There I looked at the polished silver plate, a gift from Vunya when their nation still hovered above the waves. My watery black eyes were barely visible through my matted hair, whose red flame cooled to tarnished copper. I had forgotten how my nose took up the better part of my face, and would rather not be reminded anymore. The Atlantean peltast needed to be painted, I thought. She was the last piece of the honor guard and had waited patiently for me to gather turquoise and lapis for her shield and breastplate, and an eagle’s feathers for her headdress. I still had no idea how I would capture the flowing liquid marvel of their argent ship. It was the last to sail into the heavens before the waves swallowed the capital, and I could see it plainly as if it hovered above the mountain. It was not fair for me to wish for their rescue, which would bring the angels’ wrath on them. But how I had longed for it, ever since I saw their vessel disappear into the sky.
I could not become motivated to work on anything, so I berated myself instead. “You will play nursemaid for two instead of one, now. When he feels better will you tramp through the meadows together? Will you feed each other strawberries, and learn each other’s tongues?”
It was pointless. Even now the angels would be shivering in rage, knowing that I had in hand some of their stock. Grown on this world to hone their malice. We should have wiped them out when we had the chance, Syniac oath or not. Who knows what worlds we damned when we did not?
I checked on the man. A constant groan vibrated in his throat. I again offered him the smoldering resin. I did a dumb show of puffing on the pipe then drifting asleep to illustrate my intentions. He finally accepted the pipe and fell into a fearful, mumbling sleep. I quickly set his leg. This produced several minutes of crying until he drank some more from the pipe and drifted off once more. Then I bathed and covered him with a clean blanket.
The next day I went to the river for the packet of resin that the people of the valley left for me. There was a huge pan of lentils as well. Long ago I learned a trick. I would show myself to people in a remote valley. I would appear silhouetted on the same ridge everyday at dusk for a week. Often the people will leave behind offerings to entice me to come back. The people had been quite generous and I had been relying on them for opium resin for perhaps a hundred years or more.
I thought I might be able to leave the soldier here where the people came to make offerings. How would they take such a sign? He might tell them of my good treatment and strengthen my cult or tell them what a hideous beast I was. In the back of my mind I already knew I could only idly mull this decision about what to do with the man.
When I came to the riverbank I was not surprised to find the angel Gabriel waiting for me. I knew it was Gabriel, the one most full of rage for our kind and our unions with men, though I had never before seen the monster. It was a tangle of tusks and stalked eyes rolling in all directions. A feathered halo rotated around it and it hovered over the stony river bed. The voice came from a yawning orifice, fleshy like a cock’s wattle and wet as a peach.
“You have one of our stock in your cave.” It was not a question.
“I gave aid to a wounded man. There can be no crime on my part.”
“No crime. And yet he must die.”
“I see.” I tried to act as if I did not really care. In reality my heart pounded. I was terrified as I had never been. This was the nightmare I had only heard about between my mother’s sobs. I refused to show it, for awe only made the angel gleam brighter. The one thing I knew for certain about the beasts was that there was no arguing with their whims which they called the voice of their Lord God.
“Well, you are welcome to take him off of my hands and chastise him.” I offered, with the unrealistic hope that we might be left unmolested.
“You will bring him to me. Bring him to the riverside and make a pyre so you may sacrifice him to the Lord God.”
“Am I your altar servant now?” I roared defiantly, a nephilim roar that would be heard like a thunderclap across the earth. Gabriel snuffled with laughter. It had absorbed the fear and rage of many prophets and was of course unmoved by my outburst.
It would make me break the Syniac oath.
What could I do?
I brought the man, deep in a stupor, to the riverside. I built the altar of dry yew as I knew the angel required. I placed the man on it, bound at wrists and ankles and mumbling. He had fever despite my earlier hope that he would not. I removed the spearhead from its soft goatskin sheath; a gift from Ulruhil, whose daughter I would have married if she had not been cut down by the host. Gabriel watched as I raised the blade, greedy for the blood of this man.
It had forgotten the speed of the nephilim. Even before the angel could know my blade was through the soft hole, twisting and searching for some weakness that I knew was not there. There came a squeal of rage like the peals of all the trumpets of every nation on earth then a dozen tusks plunged in my iron flesh. Gabriel’s furious slashes only brought us closer in our embrace. I thought of my mother who finally slept so deeply that she would not wake up with pangs of hunger for the resin. I thought of the man on the altar whose breathing slowed as the tarry wad melted in his cheek and ran down his throat, who I would see again in the hell this Lord God had prepared for us, where no one would be able to call me oathbreaker. I thought I saw, in the corner of my eye, as the light failed, a silver teardrop.
I was amused to think, “At last they come for me, but they are too late.”