Exiled gods of Eridu

Dark Vibrations

Children should never cry. They had never known the River, and they didn't seem to understand that tears were for healing and comfort. Instead, they made noises of distress - clearly expecting the adults around them to make them feel better - and ignored their tears as they fell. A couple of the adults opened their mouths to offer the child what she asked for – no, demanded – but Adenki silenced each of them with a sharp hand signal. He looked over to where Nin was standing quietly at the back of the crowd, and saw her subtle nod of gratitude for the fact that he was preventing her from having to interfere. She had hidden herself away for a few hours after the meeting, to give people a chance to talk without the conflict of upsetting her, but there was too much to be done for her to remain apart for long.

"Can she go out with two fighters?" one of the men suggested.

"Perhaps, but not today," Adenki replied. "The fighters are all out searching for Maleya's killer."

That made the girl's protests fall quiet. Perhaps the Primitives were not so cruel when they made up stories to frighten their children into obedience – it was kinder than seeing them frightened by the truth. However, the girl's fear was overshadowed in the next instant by a sound they had all been expecting, but still were not ready for. It was the deep rumble of a horn carved by a master musician, and sounded by whoever was on Watch, and it reached into Adenki's chest like it was trying to smother him with its echoes and dark vibrations.

Frenzied action erupted all around. The girl was snatched into the nearest pair of arms and a protective ring of at least twelve tribe members surrounded her as they hurried for the tower. Adenki leapt up onto a table and danced his way across the room so fast that he even beat Nin to the side door. Together they ran to the stairs that led up to the part of the wall that had sounded the warning. The eastern Watch, unsurprisingly.

Neither of them spoke as they pounded their way up the carved steps; they had both heard the message plainly enough. Another blast from the horn had their legs pumping even faster as they listened to the details. Mid-pitch held for two heartbeats, then dropped a half-tone, and then lifted and raised volume for another single beat before a trill so fine that so far none of the Primitives they had made friends with had even been able to distinguish it. There were more variations in timbre and volume, as the woman on Watch spoke to them all in an intricate musical language that had been perfected over thousands of years. By the time Adenki bounced Nin up onto the highest section of the wall with a well-practised acrobatic partnership, the whole tribe knew that there was a group of eighteen Primitives, armed with bows and spears and leading three skinny ponies. They also knew that there were no women or children with them – a bad sign – and that the leader of the group was a heavy-set man with a grey beard and a deep scar across his left shoulder. Adenki reflected as Nin hauled him up, that for an instrument made from such primitive materials, the horn really was quite a useful one.

Once he was up, the two of them ran lightly along the wall towards the woman on Watch, Nin calling to her even as the last echoes of the horn were still fading. "These are the same people Anata and I met with yesterday. They must have left the other members of their tribe by the river," Nin told her. "Twelve women and seven more men. Six children, four are old enough to walk."

The horn blared again as the Watcher relayed Nin's information to everyone else while those of them on the wall followed the steady progression of the party below. At the rate the group were travelling, they would arrive at the gates around mid-afternoon. Every few steps one of the strangers would look up in awe at the tower. Had such a structure ever been built in this world before? Was the tower the reason they had come?

From across the valley, another horn sounded - a little shrill, and hurried. The news was not reassuring. The fighting party had been quietly observing the camp and counting numbers - all the women and children were still there, but only four of the seven men. That left three men unaccounted for. Adenki closed his eyes for a second, trying to banish his emotional tiredness and enervating fear. Why must these Primitives always be so deceitful?