People of Babel (Ark Chronicles 3) Read Online Free

terns used the delta marsh. At times, the entire sky seemed to move with them. The Tigris and Euphrates Rivers inundated the delta before their waters flushed out into the sea. With nets, bone-tipped arrows and traps, the Hunters captured or slew fowls by the bushel, and thousands of eggs made their way back to Babel.
    The city thrived , and time passed, although the second year proved more harrowing than the first. They had only dealt with the Euphrates during its lower water levels. Beginning in spring, when the snows in the upstream mountains and hills melted, the river began to rise. That signaled the sowing for summer barley, ten days of grueling work. Everyone split into teams, or cooperatives, helping each other.
    Gilgamesh, against Nimrod ’s advice, was one of these, borrowing seed grain from Ham. He worked an outer field, carefully following his Great Grandfather’s instructions. First, canal water irrigated his field. “But not too high,” Ham said. Later, Gilgamesh drained the field and drove specially shod oxen over the weeds, trampling them and adding manure. With a mattock, he worked each field over twice. Afterward, he harrowed the ground smooth and ploughed, with boys breaking any remaining clods.
    Sowing meant a plough, with another man with a bag dropping seeds behind it . Afterward, he carefully cleared the furrows of any new clods.
    There would be more soakings —the first when young barley sprouts filled the furrows, the second when the barley covered the ground like a mat and lastly when the stalks reached full height.
    By the beginning of summer, floodtides threatened . The Euphrates had become a raging river, terrifying everyone. The very soil of the alluvial plain, the mud, made the matter worse. The mud was deep, soft and therefore yielding. The canals filled with fresh silt, the canal-mouths choking with it. Some canals overflowed, creating shallow lagoons and nullifying all the hard labor.
    Fortunately, the flooding only struck a few fields, outer ones —Gilgamesh’s among them. Thus, he lost the crop and owed Ham for the seed grain. He was now further behind in wealth than if he hadn’t tried to farm.
    Forestalling further tragedy, Kush ordered teams here and there, digging new canals, clearing old ones of silt and building emergency dams . That proved the most labor intensive of all the varied tasks, for the soft earth readily collapsed. Instead of supporting the shifting silt, it yielded to it, drawn along. Consequently, during the worst floods, rotating teams had to be on hand and alert to a dam’s destruction.
    F arther upstream, the riverbank broke and flooded wide sections of plain. There, reeds sprang to life. In other places, lagoons and shallow seas formed. Ducks and herons came in thousands. Carp, eels and various other fish swarmed the lagoons. With large draw nets, fishermen standing in their reed boats scooped up many of these fish. The upper edge of the draw net floated because of cork, while the lower edge sank due to stone weights. When drawn tight, hundreds of fish flopped and floundered in the nets. Bird-catchers spread similar nets over nesting places or they baited traps and waited for the fowl to nibble bait.
    Finally , the floodwaters receded, and the summer sun caused the crops to leap out of the ground. In gratitude, Kush sacrificed to the angel of the sun. The people settled into the routine of weeding, repairing canals or hoisting water with shadufs.
    Life seemed good to Ham, Kush and to most of the farmers and their wives and children. One man, however, a Hunter, grew frantic as Opis’s fifteenth birthday drew nearer.
     

5.
     
    Nimrod and the Hunters built a large mud-brick hall named the Barracks. Like all such dwellings, first a mound had been shoveled into place and allowed to dry, the theory being that such protected the house from possible flood and damp earth. Then, brick by brick, cemented with liquid clay mortar, the walls were raised. Lastly, palm