《The God Kings of Helos: New Stories of Civilization》


 Saladin of Ard: I

    Light years from Earth, a space ship called the Euphrates comes to life after decades of slumber. It wakes its passengers: clones of the greatest leaders of Earth¡¯s history, genetically modified to never age. They look out their windows on the star Helos, and the hundreds of planets, inhabited by simple hunter-gatherers, that circle it. Armed only with their wits and a database of knowledge about human history, they will set forth to rebuild civilization, and perhaps this time avoid the dark fate of Earth. Danger and glory await them in their 10,000-year quest to create the greatest worlds in the galaxy. They are¡­THE GOD KINGS OF HELOS


    Saladin of Ard, as he would come to be called, did not, could not, remember the fight for Jerusalem that happened on Earth a thousand years before he was born. Cloning doesn¡¯t work that way, no matter what the fiction from Earth suggested. His genitor¡ªthe historical figure whose DNA he carried¡ªwas no more than a name in a database to him.


    But somewhere in Saladin¡¯s DNA was the seed of that fight, the fortitude that carried his genitor, An-Nasir Salah ad-Din Yusuf ibn Ayyub¡ªSaladin for short¡ªto glory against the Crusader Kingdom that the Europeans had created in Earth¡¯s Middle East region. In each of his cells, there was something that called Saladin to reclaim what is holy, to reject the rule of the invading barbarians, no matter how long they had been in power. This he knew, this he would remember.


    Saladin of Ard knew of Islam from the Encycle, the database of Earth¡¯s history. He knew its adherents greeted each other by saying ¡°peace be with you.¡± He also knew his genitor rarely saw peace in his lifetime.


    And on the day he would depart the Euphrates, the star ship that had been both his home and his only parent for the first sixteen years of his life, as he looked from the ship¡¯s launching bay onto the single massive super-continent of planet H-19¡ªand then to his left and right at the seven other clones whose eyes danced across the territory greedily¡ªhe suspected he himself would not see much peace in the hundred lifetimes to come either.


    He was right.


    The Euphrates¡¯ landing pods wisely set the eight of them thousands of miles apart on the surface of H-19. Saladin found himself in territory his genitor would have felt right at home in: fertile floodplains on the shores of a mighty river, at the edge of a lonely desert.


    He could have taught himself to farm from the Encycle and spread the knowledge to the desert nomads, entreating them to settle in one place with the promise of steady food. But the story of Jerusalem stayed with him. He did not want to build a civilization that simply fed the body. He dreamed of a world that fed the soul.


    Saladin joined a desert tribe as a holy man. They taught him to survive and thrive while wandering the desert, a subject the Encycle had no entries on; he taught them to sing, and to pray. When they found food, he led them in giving thanks to the land. When the sandstorms came, he showed them how to ask forgiveness from the sky.


    He did not believe that the land needed their gratitude nor that the sky needed their apologies. But he knew the nomads needed to express the feelings that were too big to keep inside, a way to make peace with the things that were beyond their control. And he knew that they would come back to him if he gave them the means to do so.


    There were at first many gods in the world that he taught them to call Ard (a name he thought a bit more inspiring than H-19). The sky, the earth, the river, Helos itself¡ªeach had its own spirit, he told them. It was easier, at first, for the nomads to understand and worship the things they could see. Many years passed before Saladin decided they were ready to see how the holy could be unseen, everywhere, all powerful.


    When he brought them the message of the One True God, the one who would have no others before Himself, he also brought them a gift from their new God. He had labored in secret for months, spending weeks at a time wandering the desert alone on ¡°vision quests.¡±The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.


    From Moses, he borrowed the message on the mountain top. But instead of descending with stone tablets, Saladin brought down the bronze axe. Conveniently, the mountain he had brought the tribe to for this seminal event could be mined for the necessary minerals. They settled in the mountain¡¯s evening shadow.


    The mountain he named Sinai; the settlement, Mecca.


    In the beginning, the holy axe, and the new ones he taught the settlers to make, were only tools; he would teach them the other use of the axe soon enough. The sparse forests to the south of the settlement fell quickly, and the first buildings of Mecca were built with the lumber. First among these was a temple. Saladin knew it would be temporary, though: stone would eventually be needed to build a lasting monument to the One True God.


    Until then, God needed a house so that people could come visit Him.


    The nomads came to visit, and they stayed in Mecca to be near Him. But only so much fish could be taken from the river, and without the forests to forage, food became scarce in the dry season. Saladin called for the forges to stop making axes and start making scythes and plows. The people of Mecca had the tools to feed thousands before they had even learned to plant seeds.


    Despite the technological advantage he brought them, Saladin struggled to promulgate agriculture for decades. To describe his vision of fields of the same plant, pastures filled with just one animal, towers filled with a single kind of grain, to the simplest of hunter-gatherers¡­well, he may as well have told them about the spaceship he¡¯d arrived on.


    But each year the fields stretched farther, and the food supplies grew a bit. Each year, Mecca had more to give away to the nomads who came to visit the temple of the One True God. And each year, a few more believed the harvest would come again, and stayed.


    Of course, some started to come just for the free food, and went on their way again. The One True God didn¡¯t speak to everyone. But they took tales of Mecca with them. Throughout the flood plains, for hundreds of miles in every direction, the stories spread of a place where animals walked passively to slaughter, where there were huts filled not with people but with food.


    Saladin liked to believe it was not a religious pilgrim who planned the first raid on Mecca. He hoped the stories had spread to barbarians who had never visited the holy city. He wanted to believe no one could look on Mecca in peace and not care whether it lived or died. But he would never know for sure.


    The raiders came in the night with wooden spears and clubs. The poor shepherd whose goats were taken escaped with just a gash below one eye from a thrown rock. He had been knocked unconscious, and the raiders left him unharmed.


    Hungry cowards, Saladin thought, but not killers. Still, a message would have to be sent.


    It was time teach a new use for the bronze axe.


    Saladin idly wondered in the months to come which entry from the Encycle applied to the Axemen he trained and armored: Police, Posse, perhaps Militia. They had once been farmers and shepherds, and perhaps would be again. They were devout followers of the One True God. They didn¡¯t protect the citizenry exactly, for the line between a resident of Mecca and a visitor was as blurry as the boundaries of the settlement itself. They enforced only one holy law, no matter the perpetrator or victim: Thou Shalt Not Steal.


    Their first captain was a former shepherd with a scar under one eye.


    Saladin himself cut off the hand off the first thief they caught, on the steps of the great temple of the One True God. They had killed the first group of raiders, splitting skulls with the bronze axe just as they split the turtles of the great river to roast. Saladin quickly realized, however, that a dead thief was just one less thief. A thief with one hand, though¡ªthat was a message. That was a deterrent. That turned others away from the very idea of theft.


    On the steps of the temple of the One True God, Saladin raised the Axe of the Covenant, as they had come to call it, over his head when pronouncing the sentence to the gathered crowd. Cleave away that which offends thee, he said, quoting the scripture he himself had written, before bringing the Axe down. The man screamed. Saladin told the priests of the temple not to wash the blood away from the steps for three days.


    It was brutal, and it was the first day Saladin ruled not just as the messenger of the One True God¡¯s love, but also as the hand of His wrath. Saladin looked forward to a day he could set aside corporal and capital punishment to keep his land safe. But the first costs of peace are always paid in blood.

 Saladin of Ard: II

    The first scouts came from the east nearly a thousand years after Saladin had descended to the surface of Ard. Saladin had accomplished much in that time, given that the people he had found in the desert were little more than hairless apes fresh off the trees. Mecca thrived in the shadow of mighty Sinai. The armories were full of shining axes and armor, and the wealthy elites of the city gaudied themselves in bronze jewelry twisted into stylish shapes.


    The non-elites started having just a shitload of children because they realized kids were the cheapest labor they could get for their growing farms.


    The scouts that came from the east spoke not of a king, not of a council, not of a god, but of a man they called the First Warrior. The First Warrior is coming, they said. He ruled not by divine right, not by wisdom, not the consent of the governed, but by right of conquest. The lands of the east belonged to him, they said, because he had taken them. There were no more tribes to conquer in the east, so west he would come, and his Horde with him.


    The First Warrior of the Horde, they called him. The First, sometimes. Never a name. He speaks his own name, they said, but it belongs to him alone. He kills any other man that would dare place it in his mouth.


    The captain of Saladin¡¯s guard befriended one of the scouts after besting him in single combat (proving, to the delight of the scouting party, that the people of Mecca were fierce enough to be worthy of conquest). Covered in each other¡¯s blood, the two walked into a tavern, arms around each other¡¯s shoulders like old friends, and demolished a cask of grain alcohol. And late in the night, in a dark corner of the tavern, in a whisper that could barely be heard above the other drunk soldiers, the scout spoke the unspeakable name of the First Warrior of the Horde as love and terror battled for control across his face¡­.


    Khan.


    Saladin considered killing or capturing the scouts. It would do little good, though. More would come, and they would not be so bold as this party, fighting, drinking and whoring while boasting of the conquests of the Horde. Anyone could slip into the city unnoticed if they tried. Travelers came in and out of Mecca all the time, and the Axemen couldn¡¯t screen them all to find spies. Saladin sent the scouts off with a fine bronze helm as a gift to their leader, and an open invitation to visit the holy city of the One True God in peace.


    Saladin learned from the Encycle that Genghis Khan¡¯s was the first DNA sample to be reconstructed by the Cradle Coalition, the international effort that built the Euphrates as a last, desperate hope to save human civilization from the fall of Earth. Khan¡¯s DNA was relatively easy to reconstruct, apparently, because one out of every two hundred men on Earth was a direct descendant of his. Khan of Earth raped his way across that planet¡¯s largest continent while conquering it and building an empire spanning half the world¡¯s population.


    It seemed somewhat unlikely to Saladin that Khan of Helos would visit Saladin¡¯s holy city in peace. Or in chastity, for that matter.


    A messenger came from the east not long after the scouts departed. Saladin was somewhat surprised to see that the messenger carried an actual handwritten letter. The Horde may have been barbarians, but they were literate barbarians. Khan was already cultivating the practices that would help him manage his growing empire.


    To His Holiness, the ¡°Sultan¡± of Mecca:


    Greetings from Khan, the First Warrior of the Horde. My scouts report to me the beauty of your fine river village and the martial skill of your shepherd militia. Congratulations on what I am sure was a pleasurable millennium of eating the grasses I feed to my horse and bowing down before an invisible man.


    You may have heard of our many conquests, but you need not fear. Many slaves of the Horde are worshippers of the One True God, or at least were before we enslaved them. It is not in the Horde¡¯s interest to sack a holy city and spark a slave rebellion. We are, after all, running out places to put dead slaves¡¯ bodies.


    The First thanks you for the extraordinary bronze helm you have given in tribute. All we ask in return for continued peace is 9,999 more just like it, and axes to match.


    Your god may keep his little village, if you render unto Khan that which is Khan¡¯s.


    Saladin responded the very same day:


    Dearest Khan, your messenger carries with him all that which is Khan¡¯s in the city of the One True God.


    Saladin¡¯s Axemen stripped the messenger naked, carved the message into his back, and sent him stumbling out of the city eastward, still bleeding.


    Mecca watched its eastern borders carefully in the months to come.


    The intelligence gathered from escaped slaves of the Horde and others suggested Mecca could expect to see tens of thousands of screaming warriors on the eastern horizon. They would come in the night. Archers would rain down arrows on the first men to respond to any alarms. Then the Horde would pour through the streets of the city killing, raping, and eating the populace, in that order.You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.


    The Horde would eat anyone that took up arms against them within the city. This was not worshipful of human flesh, nor about consuming the ¡°power¡± of others. It was desecration. The Horde¡¯s final insult to any who would dare oppose them was to turn them into shit.


    Ten thousand soldiers don¡¯t just appear out of nowhere, though. The vanguard came first and set up two encampments, lightly fortified, within a day¡¯s march of Mecca. Raiding parties collected food and slaves from the countryside nearby, though they became a bit shier about harrying local farmers when they found small platoons of Axemen guarding certain farms. As was their practice with any other thieves, the Axemen Saladin had stationed at the outlying farms cut off the Hordesmen¡¯s right hands and sent them on their way.


    Saladin received a burlap bag full of left hands from Khan. And again, a handwritten note.


    Dearest Saladin, you may keep these as well. Their owners have no use for them, because I have no use for a soldier that can be captured alive.


    I am disappointed your Axemen lack the resolve to kill. I had hoped at least a few of my lesser soldiers would die while sacking your city, to add to the glory of our conquest and sharpen our ranks, but it seems the few true warriors among you are squeamish about taking life.


    Perhaps when I take your city, I will cut off the cocks of every Axeman¡¯s father for the crime of siring such a weak-willed son.


    The Horde column soon started its march from the east to the encampments. Saladin¡¯s spies reported the archers were well equipped. Their bodies were warped and asymmetric from a lifetime of training with their powerful bows, and their slaves carried hundreds of arrows. It was one of the highest stations a Horde slave could attain to stand at the side of an archer in battle, knocking arrows to be fired one after another by his master.


    The Horde infantry¡¯s main weapon was fear. Fear of their overwhelming numbers. Fear of their battle cries. Fear of their brutality. Fear of their war crimes. But their actual weapons were little more than heavy rocks and pointy sticks, their armor merely animal hides.


    To Saladin¡¯s surprise and relief, there were no cavalry. Khan surely knew of his genitor¡¯s famed horse archers. Perhaps he had not yet had success domesticating the animals. Perhaps he had, and they were deployed elsewhere. Either way, Mecca was the better for it.


    Open conflict, Saladin reasoned, would have been glorious but brief. Mecca¡¯s fortifications were light, having never had to face an organized army before. No time to improve them before the masses descended.


    Saladin believed in his Axemen¡¯s superior arms and training, but they numbered little more than two thousand. They could perhaps hold off the Horde infantry, who outnumbered them a paltry three-to-one. But without the means to defend themselves from archers, they would drown in the rain of arrows.


    Saladin gambled Mecca¡¯s future on the only hope he had. On the day of reckoning, he went to the top of Sinai alone, to pray.


    The Horde column approached, ten men wide and a thousand ranks long, stretching over a mile. They began their split, three thousand infantry and two thousand archers each, to the two vanguard encampments to the north and south of Sinai, on the eastern outskirts of Mecca. As they did, the war call began: ten thousand fists beat against ten thousand chests. Ten thousand voices thundered a HO sound, in perfect rhythm and unison to their steps. It was said afterward that in Mecca, a still pot of water would ripple from the sound.


    Perhaps some of the Hordesmen, as they grunted and beat their chests, noticed the fire lit atop the mountain, from the sacred space where Saladin the Holy was said to have spoken to the burning bush. But they would not know what that fire meant until it was too late.


    As the first bloom of smoke floated into the sky, Saladin¡¯s Axemen charged forth from their hiding places far to the east of the city, a thousand to each encampment. Saladin himself had stood atop the mount with a torch, and waited until the infantry had begun making camp to give the signal. Khan¡¯s archers, positioned strategically to the rear for the approach to Mecca, were left unprotected from the flanking maneuver.


    The Meccan Axemen washed them away like the springtime floods of the mighty river.


    Saladin had emptied the city of Axemen. Had Khan chosen to approach the city directly instead of making camp for the night, he would not have found a single soldier defending it.


    Attacking from the rear, the Axemen began their slaughter of the Horde archers nearly a half mile from each of the Horde¡¯s encampments. A few archers took aim where they could, but they would surely hit as many of their own comrades as they would the Meccan defenders if they fired.


    By the time word reached the Horde camps of what was happening in the back of the column, it was far too late, and caused more harm than good. The panicking, bloodthirsty Horde infantry trampled many of the archers on their way to meet the Axemen. The few that managed to make it to the back of the column straggled up nearly single file. They had winded themselves running over a thousand yards after a full day of marching, and were easy pickings for the Axemen.


    When the Axemen had swept through the majority of the Horde archers, Saladin signaled their planned retreat, dumping straw into the signal fire to make black smoke.


    The Axemen saw the signal, stopped their slaughter where they stood, rallied to their standards, and marched double-time back to Mecca as if they had just finished a physical training exercise. The Horde infantry gave chase, but couldn¡¯t keep up with the well-fed, well-rested, well-trained troops.


    Mecca had lost less than a hundred men and killed over three thousand Horde archers.


    The Axemen waited at the city limits for the Horde charge that night, but it never came. The remainder of Khan¡¯s troops began to march east the very next day. The column was much shorter this time.


    A small party of Axemen was sent to each abandoned Horde encampment to search for any supplies, or guerrillas, that Khan might have left. Saladin was summoned to see what they found in the northern encampment.


    It was a pile of human shit, and a note. In Khan¡¯s handwriting.


    Dearest Saladin, here lie the remains of your fallen Axemen. They were sinewy and few, but invigorating. We will be back for seconds.


    I have underestimated you once. It will not happen again. When we return, we will pile your digested remains in Mecca until they bury the temple of that god you imagined, and on the peak of that pile I will shit out the turd that was once your heart.


    Until then, please keep your body healthy for me. I am trying to watch my cholesterol.


    Saladin ordered the mound of excrement to be covered over with rocks, and swore the Axemen to secrecy about what they had seen.


    Later, he consecrated the site. It would thereafter be called the Holy Sepulcher of the Unknown Solider.