Lod the Galley Slave (Lost Civilizations)

by Heppner, Vaughn

  “Save us! Save us!” shrieked chained slaves. Seawater lapped upon them. A cruel death by drowning awaited them.

  Freed slaves fought against the torrent of water gushing into the Serpent of Thep. A man was swept off his feet and smashed against a bench, lying with his head at an odd ankle. Three men held hands, coming from the side, water sloshing above their knees. The first man grasped the jagged edge of the hole and drew the other two beside him. Then he grasped the edge with both hands and struggled and fought through the torrent and onto the other side.

  With that success as evidence, a crowd of slaves rushed the hole.

  “I need arrows! Where are more arrows?” shouted an archer above.

  Lod shoved the keys into a slave’s hands and told another with a shield to guard him. The pair rushed the aisle, and the man with keys felt under the swirling water, unlocking another bench.

  “Keep your shield high,” Lod growled at Zeiros. They still stood in the shadows. Lod lifted an axe that had been kept in a tool trough beside the oar master’s stool. He thudded it into rotten, worm-infested wood. He rained a flurry of blows, wood chips flying.

  Hiss, thwack, an arrow quivered in Zeiros’ shield. A second arrow struck an inch from Lod’s latest axe blow.

  “Keep the shield up!” snarled Lod. He hammered the axe as three more arrows hissed into Zeiros’ shield.

  “I thought they were out of arrows,” shouted the usurer.

  “Here they come!” said a slave.

  Spearmen thundered down the stairs, jabbing, hurrying this time, and splashing into the hold. Water lapped at their thighs.

  Lod smashed through the wall and a terrible grin split his face. He rained more blows as sweat ran in runnels down his face. Expertly he widened the hole to the foggy gloom outside.

  “They’re pointing at us,” Zeiros said.

  Maddened slaves rose up against the soldiers splashing in the hold, flesh versus steel. Skin versus armor. Slaves swung chains, flinging them into the ordered squad.

  “Get ready, Moneyman,” Lod said. He hacked three more times and then embedded the axe blade into the wall of the ship. He grasped both sides of the hole and heaved up into it, wriggling through as splinters dug into his flesh.

  The Serpent of Thep rode dangerously low in the water, sinking. Lod squirmed free and plunged into the cold Gulf of Ammon at the same instant a soldier at the railing thrust a spear at him. Sharp steel bloodied his side.

  “The axe, Zeiros, hand me the axe.”

  A hand shot through the hole and pitched the axe to the floundering Lod. Lod snatched it as he treaded water. The spearman glared at him from the ship.

  Lod grinned. “Do you care to die, boy?”

  Zeiros popped his head out and began to wriggle free.

  That startled the spearman standing above him.

  “Hurry, Zeiros,” Lod said, as he floated out of the spearman’s reach.

  The spearman hesitated. Lod laughed at him. The soldier snarled and thrust at Zeiros. From the water, Lod hurled the axe. It was a clumsy cast, but powerfully thrown. The top of the axe hit the spearman in the face, dropping him from view.

  Zeiros fell into the water, kicking beside Lod.

  “What do we do now?” the usurer asked.

  Lod shivered with dread as something vast passed below them, a hideous feeling. It felt bigger than a shark, something the size of a whale. Zeiros must have felt it, too, for he turned pale.

  “The kraken,” whispered Lod. “Lord Lamassu…” He knit his brows.

  “Lod—”

  “Shhh,” Lod said. “Listen.”

  On the other side of the Serpent of Thep grapnels struck wood. Shouted orders roared above the mayhem of butchery. An unseen Captain Eglon bellowed for men to lash the two galleys together.

  “Follow me,” Lod said. “And get ready to hold your breath.”

  -18-

  From the deck of the captured galley, Eglon shouted orders. Soldiers ran with collected arrows, thudding over the gangplank and onto the floundering Serpent of Thep. The vessel listed dangerously. Sailors lashed the two ships together, using the other galley to keep the Serpent of Thep from rolling onto its side or sliding under the waves.

  Lord Lamassu waited beside the brazier. He kneaded his forehead as his harlot plied the brazier with coals. Around them but unseen, flutes and cymbals played and enemy sailors shouted within the fog. They seemed farther away than earlier, perhaps fleeing the kraken-infested waters.

  “There!” said Eglon, pointing at the sea.

  Archers drew their bowstrings and fired, hissing shafts, drilling swimming slaves.

  The pilot approached as he scratched his black beard. It seemed nothing daunted him, although Eglon noted that the small man had wisely switched to the more seaworthy vessel.

  “You let them get out,” said Eglon, meaning the slaves.

  “Not me,” said the pilot. “They fled through the ram hole.” He grew thoughtful. “The archers lacked arrows. Their commander said too many had been used against this galley.”

  “We’ll have to bring everyone aboard this galley,” said Eglon, “and my treasures, too.”

  “They’re in his quarters,” said the pilot.

  “I know very well where they are,” Eglon said with a scowl. He studied the conjured fog.

  “A stiff breeze and we’ll be exposed to the fire ships,” the pilot said. He glanced at Lord Lamassu aboard the Serpent of Thep. “We ought to bring the brazier onto this ship. I’m surprised it’s still standing on that canted deck.”

  “And who will carry a hot brazier?” Eglon asked. “You?”

  “Gibborim worry about such things?” asked the pilot.

  At that moment Lord Lamassu threw his arms into the air.

  The archers prowling both decks, searching the waters for slaves, the swordsmen protecting them and Vendhyan sailors all paused in their tasks. From every corner of both ships men cast fearful glances at the Gibborim.

  Lord Lamassu opened his mouth. Before he uttered a word, however, the waters around them churned. The sea boiled with activity and the Serpent of Thep and the Larak galley lurched, their lashed sides crunching together.

  Eglon stumbled against the pilot. Men everywhere shouted in surprise and terror. The few surviving slaves swimming in the water screamed.

  Out of the depths wriggled vast tentacles. Black as night, wet and rubbery, they rose higher than the masts ever had, surrounding both galleys. The ships lurched again as planks groaned. Timbers splintered and cordage creaked horribly. A gross bulk of monster broke the surface. The kraken loomed larger than the two ships combined, with evil eyes and a hideous mouth with a great parrot beak.

  Wetly, like falling trees, tentacles slapped upon the doomed ships. Railings crackled and splintered. Men in the path of those rubbery limbs were hurled like flotsam, some into each other and a few into the sea.

  Lord Lamassu, who was perhaps ready for such horror, howled unearthly speech. With his stark white fingers he plucked a skull from his necklace. Brazier light flickered from the emeralds embedded in the eye sockets. The bleached white skull seemed alive, knowledgeable with wicked counsel.

  Men crouched with their hands pressed against their ears.

  Eglon, farther away than most, groaned in dread.

  The kraken, the monster of the depths, fixed a terrible eye upon Lord Lamassu. One twitch from those tentacles must destroy the galleys. One convulsive jerk and the lashed-together ships would splinter into junk and wreckage. Before that occurred, Lord Lamassu lifted high the emerald-eyed skull.

  It was impossible that such an ignorant monster could know the importance of such an action, but to Eglon it seemed that the terrible eye of the kraken watched the bleached bone, or perhaps it watched the necromancer’s hands.

  Lord Lamassu chanted in the screaming speech, and his fingers moved like a baker kneading dough. The skull crumbled. It didn’t break as bone should. It dissolved in the Gibborim’s hands. Crumbs fel
l at Lord Lamassu’s feet. Crumbs fell in a sprinkle and strange wispy currents swirled around the necromancer’s hands. The wisps shrieked, a wicked sound. The wisps spun faster and faster, and for a moment, a sick instant, it seemed to Eglon that faces, screaming, tortured souls howled in agony.

  Lord Lamassu pointed at the kraken.

  The wisps tore like arrows at the beast. They darted down the parrot beak and entered the monster.

  A wretched, subsonic screech emanated from the kraken. The tentacles peeled off the galleys and the entire bulk of the beast stiffened as it began to slide out of sight.

  Eglon gaped. His eyeballs protruded outward. Speech was impossible. Unreality stamped the moment. Then it became insanity. He wanted to howl with mirth at what he saw.

  A massive, white-haired brute, a naked man with a spear, charged past cringing soldiers. Archers with their hands clamped over their ears paid him no heed. Others stared wide-eyed at the beast of the deep. Even the harlot remained immobile, near the glowing brazier with coals in her hands.

  As if in a dream, Lord Lamassu turned. He stood at a tilt because of the canted deck. The naked slave, the one called Lod, his blue eyes ablaze with monomania, shouted to Elohim for aid. Then Lod swung the butt end of his spear. It connected with a skull dangling around Lord Lamassu’s throat. The skull exploded in a spray of bone, and shrieking wisps swirled into the air. Lord Lamassu staggered backward. The hair stood up on Lod’s head and his white beard bristled. The naked oar slave struck again, smashing a second skull. This time Lord Lamassu shrieked in tune to the wisps dissipated into the sky. Much worse for the Gibborim, with impossible control a tentacle reached down. Its tip wrapped around Lord Lamassu even as he awoke to his danger. Lord Lamassu wriggled his shoulders, perhaps in an attempt to free his arms. Yet even his inhuman strength was unequal to this monster of the depths. The kraken lifted a squirming, demanding Gibborim high into the air, higher than a mast would have reached.

  “In the name of Yorgash,” shouted Lord Lamassu, “I command you to set me down.”

  The great, rubbery tentacle, the black, mast-sized limb, whistled in its descent. It slapped the water an awful blow, and broke the child of Yorgash in its grip.

  Lod turned and ran. The mammoth man sprinted, dropping his spear as he dove overboard. Others stared in dread upon the beast. Eglon blinked, wondering when the nightmare would end.

  The kraken screeched a final time in that sick, subsonic sound. Then tentacles began to rain upon the galleys. They smote with fury and splintered the ships, smashing planks as if they were sticks.

  Thus ended the Serpent of Thep.

  -19-

  Lod and Zeiros held onto a plank, bobbing in the gloomy sea. The kraken had departed. Around them, impossible to tell at what distance, the fleets of Eridu and Larak engaged that of Yorgash. Screams drifted around them and the clangor of battle rose above the crash of rams and the beat of drums. Had the city’s galleys rowed around the fog? How many fire ships had survived the kraken’s embrace?

  “Who will win?” asked Zeiros.

  Lod shrugged moodily. It had been some time since the kraken had slain Lord Lamassu.

  “Your vision didn’t tell you the victor?” the moneylender asked.

  Two rats sat atop a half-submerged water casket. Rope drifted like seaweeds. Lod scanned the wreckage floating around them. He pointed at something farther away.

  Zeiros glanced there and shook his head.

  “I see fins,” Lod said.

  Zeiros frowned with incomprehension.

  “Sharks,” Lod said.

  Zeiros looked again. He paled, and turned Lod a sick face. “We escaped the Serpent of Thep and the kraken and now this. It isn’t fair.”

  “No,” Lod said. He clambered onto the plank, lifting himself higher as it sank. A smile touched his lips and he slipped back beside Zeiros. “Can you swim a little farther?”

  “To what purpose?” Zeiros asked. “If we survive the sharks the fog will part and pterodactyls will find us.”

  Lod searched his face impassively.

  That stirred something in the moneylender. “What?” he said.

  “A thousand slaves have told me that they will survive the oar. If I could, they could. So I have heard for twenty long years. Each time I saw the spirit dwindle in their eyes. Then their spirit died, and soon so did they. What of you, Usurer? Will you give up now?”

  Zeiros peered up into the gloom. “I hope you’re not planning to swim all the way to Larak.”

  “If I must,” rumbled Lod.

  Zeiros shook his head, but he said, “Very well, lead on.”

  Lod released the plank, and the two men struggled through the choppy sea.

  “Where are we going?” panted Zeiros, seawater spilling into his mouth.

  “Save your breath,” suggested Lod.

  They swam, and in time neared a wider plank than before. Upon it draped a sodden, weary Captain Eglon. Perhaps he heard their splashing. He lifted a puffy face, and at the sight of them he scrambled to his knees. He lacked a sword, but drew a knife.

  “Keep away,” warned Eglon.

  Lod and Zeiros kept swimming until they bobbed ten feet from the raft. It looked big enough to comfortably hold all three of them, to keep them out of the shark-infested waters.

  “I’ll kill you,” Eglon said.

  “Wait here,” Lod told Zeiros. He circled around the raft, swimming strongly, until Zeiros bobbed on one side and Lod the other.

  Eglon had shifted so he always faced Lod, although he kept casting nervous glances at Zeiros.

  “Put down the knife,” Lod said.

  Captain Eglon laughed harshly.

  “Let us deal,” suggested Zeiros.

  Eglon glanced at the moneylender.

  “If Yorgash wins we are your prisoners,” Zeiros said. “If Larak wins you are my prisoner.”

  “And that improves my position how?” mocked Eglon.

  “We might win our way onto the raft and kill you,” Zeiros said.

  “I hold the knife,” Eglon said, “so I deem your threat a weak one.”

  “Tread a little closer,” shouted Lod. He closed the distance to nine feet, eight, seven and then six.

  Eglon struggled to his feet. He had a blood-crusted gash in his right leg.

  “You’re wounded,” Lod said.

  Eglon snarled silently. His eyes seemed hot, perhaps he was feverish.

  “We will outwait you,” Lod said.

  Eglon shook his head. “Not with sharks in the water.” He exposed his teeth. “It will be a pleasure watching you die.”

  Lod bellowed and swam for the raft. Yelling, he clutched the edge.

  Eglon dropped to a knee and slashed.

  Lod shoved himself backward into the water.

  The slash missed, and on the other side of the raft, Zeiros heaved up against the edge.

  Eglon struggled to keep his balance.

  “Climb onto the raft!” shouted Lod.

  Eglon fought for balance and twisted his head to see what Zeiros did.

  Lod struck for the raft. Eglon stabbed. Lod took the blade in his forearm. His other arm darted up, clutched a silky sleeve and yanked. Eglon shouted and toppled into the water.

  Lod slid past the wrestler and scrambled onto the raft. Zeiros climbed up on the other side.

  “Your arm,” Zeiros said.

  Blood dripped from Lod’s forearm, trickling to his wrist and onto the raft. He ignored it, facing Eglon.

  From in the sea, the wrestler frowned.

  “Pitch me the knife and I’ll let you climb aboard,” Lod said.

  “Why would you do that?” said Eglon, “to torture me?”

  Lod shook his head.

  “I cut you, at least,” said Eglon. “It was a clumsy stab, but then I’ve been wounded myself.” He sighed wearily, staring out to sea.

  “The sharks will come,” Lod said.

  Eglon peered at him. “You want me to come aboard. Why?”

>   A fierce light burned in Lod’s eyes. “I’ve had a vision. You…you will help me.”

  Eglon gave a barking, mocking laugh.

  “You will guide my ship to Poseidonis,” Lod said.

  Eglon stared at him, finally saying, “You’re mad.”

  “Perhaps,” Lod said, “but my madness will save your life.”

  “What ship?” Eglon asked, “The plank you stand upon?”

  Lod used his good arm and clapped Zeiros on the shoulder. “The usurer owes me one thousand gold shekels. With it I will buy or build a seaworthy ship and man it with vengeance-driven warriors. Then let Yorgash beware.”

  “Why do you need me for that?” Eglon asked.

  “You have been to Poseidonis,” Lod said. “You will be my pilot and help me chart the path there.”

  Eglon heaved a weary sigh. He was having trouble treading water. “I dropped the knife,” he said, “and it’s no doubt sinking to the bottom of the sea. But I accept your offer.” He floundered toward the raft.

  The other two stepped back as the huge captain struggled aboard.

  Then Lod stepped smartly forward and clouted Eglon a terrific buffet on the back of his head. It took two blows before huge Eglon sagged unconscious.

  “You lied to him?” asked Zeiros.

  Lod shook his head as he began to strip the wrestler. He found the knife and said, “I trust him like a viper.” He cut up the rich Caphtorite cloak. With the silk strips he had Zeiros bind the knife wound on his forearm. Then the two naked slaves clothed themselves at Eglon’s expense.

  “Are you serious about building that ship?” Zeiros asked later.

  “Were you about giving me one thousand shekels if I helped you escape?” asked Lod.

  The moneylender grinned. “You are not like other men, but at least you’re human. Yes, my word is good. As I said before: I am the House of Commorion.”

  Lod finished binding Eglon. Then he dove off the plank, returning with pieces of wood, throwing them onto the raft. “These will be our oars, Usurer, and today this is my ship. Now let us see if we can reach Larak before those pterodactyls you spoke about find us.”