The Line of Seth

Grant and Yuya had plenty of time to catch up, over the next few days. The Cainite convoy had arrived early, and the harvest was behind schedule. Prince Abutai had offered his warriors’ help with some of the grunt work, to make up the lost time. So long as they left with pay at twice the rate of the clan’s free workers, as well as Cain’s tribute.

So it was that the two men of Earth spoke, grain flails in hand on a threshing floor, of how they had found themselves on Nod.

“So,” Yuya said, pausing every few words to catch his breath, “if I caught some freak illness, and you dropped your pistol, that pretty much confirms we both came here by dying. I don't know about you, but this is not what I expected my next life to be like. Do you suppose there are more of us here? People from Earth? Or is this entire world some unique torment reserved for us two specifically?”

“I wouldn't assume we're alone, or at least that no one has come before us. The locals, the shamans in particular, seem to be familiar with people like us– people from Earth who show up here with a mark on their skin. Penitents, they call us. The Cainites told me they could sense the presence of unusually many of us in their world at one time. Unusually many compared to what, they never said. But, considering their leader seems to be one, sticking with them might be our best bet for finding out more.”

Yuya looked up at that, the rhythm of his flail interrupted. “What have you found out about their leader?”

“Well, he's Cain. Like, the Cain, as far as I can tell.”

“I know that name… did I hear it before coming here?”

That's right, Grant remembered, that story wouldn't hold the same importance in Japan as in most other places. “In the Abrahamic religions, Christianity and Judaism and Islam, there's a story about the sons of Adam, the first man. Now, since Adam had already been kicked out of paradise before they were born, they have to figure out ways of feeding themselves. Cain, the oldest, tills the earth and becomes the first farmer, while his younger brother Abel tames wild beasts and pioneers animal husbandry. One day, the brothers each decide to make an offering to God. Cain gives produce from his harvest, and Abel meat from his flock. Now, I guess God ain't a vegetarian, because He shows favor to Abel for his offering, but doesn’t seem to much care for Cain’s. Cain is awful bitter about this, and he stews and festers, ‘til one day he gets Abel to follow him out into the fields, and kills him. When God confronts him about it, he denies the crime flippantly, and gets himself cursed. No longer could he grow anything in the ground, now that it had tasted his brother's blood, and he’s doomed forever to wander. Cain’s terrified that this means he could very easily, in turn, be killed, so God softens the blow by promising he would always be avenged seven times over, and putting a mark on his skin, so that everyone would know him on sight, and fear to hurt him. Then he goes into exile in the land of Nod, where he builds great cities for his descendants to dwell in. The next major story in Scripture is the Great Flood. In it, the Earth is washed clean of mankind except for the family of Noah, the heir of Cain and Abel’s younger brother Seth. Despite that, there are some traditions that say Cain is still out there, wandering somewhere, with even the Angel of Death afraid to touch him.”

“And you’re… reasonably sure this is the same Cain?”

“They call him The Second Man, say he’s the granddaddy of all humans on this planet. Moon. Whatever.”

“...and they call it Nod, of all things. Grant, you’re smarter than I gave you credit for.”

“Why, thank you. I’ve always said, better to promise ‘em beans and feed ‘em cake, then to promise ‘em cake and feed ‘em beans.”

“So I’d assume you have a good plan to get me out of here?”

“Not so much a single plan as a few different bargaining chips to choose from.” He and Yuya discussed what Grant had looted from the Bekhites, and what he had brought with him from Earth. The kid shared some valuable observations about the level of technology on Nod.

Grant had made it known to Abutai that he had business with the Akbel patriarch, and later that day, he was brought as the Bayut prince’s plus-one to lunch in the keep.

“I hardly know the decorum for dining with nobles, your lordship.” Grant had said when invited.

The prince’s stoic countenance cracked into a smile at that. “The sons of khans and the heads of frontier clans both prefer direct dealings to empty formalities, Grant. Come. I need a bodyguard, at the table of a cretin like this.”

The landlord, it seemed from the smell, had picked up the nomads’ habit of cutting their pipe tobacco with somewhere between twenty and fifty percent cannabis or opium. Well, all three of those plants could be found growing wild somewhere in or near the northern steppes, so Grant couldn't blame the Cainites for generally choosing them for intoxicants over airag, a drink of fermented mare’s milk that was the only alcohol their lifestyle let them produce. Still, he was glad now to have access to unadulterated tobacco and the thick– if only weakly alcoholic– Jalabartan ale that tasted like rye bread.

“Sir,” Grant said after roasted lamb had been served, “I had an ulterior motive for coming here with my commanding officer. A business proposition. I want to buy out the contract of one of your servants.”

“We may be outside the Crown’s reach here, Cainite, but we still honor Jalabartan contract law. I can't sell you some girl from my fields to be your concubine. Their indentures are only good for manual labor.”

“The hell are you…” Grant took a deep breath. “You're under the wrong impression. There's a boy I want to releas from his contract, and invite to ride with us. Got here something like three, four weeks ago. Yamamoto Yuya.”

“Was that the one with the harelip, or…”

“Messy black hair, sallow complexion, slim build. Should have a year and then some left to go.”

The master snapped his fingers, then dug for a tablet in the mess that had been shoved to one end of the table for the meal. “Got his contract right here. Came with an obligation to bring him back from death’s door. He was found in the desert after a botched impalement. Or was it a crucifixion? Point is, he wasn’t exactly a cheap investment.”

“I have two horses more than Yuya and I will need to ride out on.” He had sold only one at an outpost they had visited before this.

“Your steppe ponies? Not terrible plowbeasts, but I have plenty of better ones. Anything else?”

The arms and armor had been more in-demand at the last place, and he only had gear he’d intended as backups for himself to give to Yuya: a sword, somewhat short for a Bekhite saber, a simple domed helmet, and a dark gambeson of thickly-layered linen, reinforced with a bit of boiled leather stitched over the chest and shoulders.

“I’ll throw in my wages from all the work I’ve done here, and everything I’m going to do over the next few days.”

“That doesn’t even come out to three bars of pewter. I paid a bar and a half of silver for this contract. Is that all you have?”

Grant had learned at the last outpost about the segmented ingots minted in Lugo and some of its tributary kingdoms, and the rudimentary coinage they could be easily cut up into. He did get some of these coins from selling his loot, but he wasn’t sure the amount would get this guy to budge. The metallic currency called something else he had to mind.

He slid a bundle from his back, a long object wrapped in a dead Bekhite’s cloak. He unfurled it in his lap, and held up his rifle. “This is a projectile weapon from my homeland. I have run out of ammunition for it, and I do not think I will be able to find or make any more except in the unlikely event I return there. However, it is made of materials I don’t think any Cainite, Jalabartan, or even Lugo refiner would be able to replicate. The broken device mounted on top can be scavenged for glass lenses of the finest quality, which would surely fetch a high price among astrologers.” That pitch had been Yuya’s idea. “The tube is a soft metal that can be melted and cast superbly easily, as can the pliable, shock-absorbent brown material down here, and most of the metal here,” he tapped the rifle’s bolt handle and ran his hand down the barrel, “is a steel alloy so hard, your outpost’s blacksmith won’t know what to do with it. A nigh-impenetrable cuirass, a sword that will never so much as flex, the possibilities are endless.” He knew enough about metallurgy, as a mechanic, to know the steel in the gun’s barrel might be too hard for a sword, that if it couldn't flex, a thin blade might shatter under a hard blow. But the pitch sounded cool, and that's what mattered right now. “I would like your blacksmith to make me three dozen armor-piercing arrowheads from the hardest of the steel. In exchange for that service, and for Yuya's contract, you may have the rest.”

In offering less, Grant hoped he was promising more. Wanting to keep at least a little of the metal for his own use in a life-or-death situation suggested he wasn't bullshitting, though the manor blacksmith would be able to verify that by simply taking a grindstone to the barrel and seeing what color of sparks came off.

The man stroked his wild beard.

At dawn three days later, Grant rode out beside wains laden with grain, two dozen new bodkin-point arrows in his quiver. Ahead of him, Abutai was grumbling something about harvests getting worse and worse each year, while Yuya struggled to stay in the saddle as his mount galloped behind Grant's. Iona, farther back, was cackling, at once at Yuya and with him. As he passed through the outpost gate, Grant threw a clay tablet against the palisade, and hooves beneath Yuya trampled it into the dust.