The maul whistled out of the darkness. Keros dove, tucked and rolled. The maul smashed a pirate following hard on his heels. The pirate rode the maul into the darkness and lifted out of sight. Keros sprang to his feet, almost blind in the gloom around Gog. He heard the tread and the clank of an armored foot. He imagined it before him. Nimbly, without shield, armor or leather corselet, he leaped behind the foot. He clutched the Bolverk-forged dagger with two hands. He swung. The legendary steel, sharper than any Caphtorite blade, sliced through protective leather. It sliced through the tough skin of Gog’s back ankle. The edge cut muscles and tendons, but jarred to a halt against bone seemingly harder than iron.
Gog howled.
Keros jerked free his precious blade. He dove. He rolled head over heels. Something whistled behind him. He rolled over the oily floor. He rolled over bones and over a body. He rolled back into the torchlight.
“Gog!” roared the white-bearded Seraph.
Keros, from where he lay panting, watched Lod hurl the spear. The simple weapon—a wooden shaft and a hunk of sharp iron—flew upward. No magic had made it. No supernatural powers propelled it. It flashed. It sped true. It burst into the single, staring eye of Gog.
A howl of purified agony rent the air. The dark shadow lumbered backward. The floor trembled as Gog crashed.
“He’s down! Gog is down!”
***
The lair door swung open and a huge warrior, in iron links, stepped through. He held a long sword, a battleblade, and a shield emblazoned with a red trident symbol. Upon his wide head, he wore an iron helmet with a nasal guard. He had strange yellow eyes that shone with murder-lust. “For Gog!” he roared. He charged into the lair. Behind him followed Naaman, the attendants and the last of the warrior-priests. The howling throng raced into battle behind their half-Nephilim champion.
“We’re damned, boys,” said Scorpion, his left shoulder pouring blood. “Let’s sell ourselves dearly.”
“To Gog!” roared the half-Nephilim warrior.
“Face me, Giant!” shouted Scorpion, the Scourge of the Sea, his double-weapon attacked considered legendary. With sword and dagger, he wove a deadly web of steel.
Vidar sneered. Battle wasn’t fancy swordplay. He thrust forward his seven-layer shield. The two-weapon attack rattled harmlessly upon it. Sword and dagger drummed a pretty beat. Vidar roared. He twisted his thick waist and put his weight into the blow. He snapped his wrist at just the right moment. The battleblade whistled. It flashed in a stroke that couldn’t be parried, only dodged or met by superior strength. A delightful shock to Vidar’s shoulder told him all that he needed to know.
“Kill them all!” Vidar roared, as he wrenched his battleblade from Scorpion’s corpse.
“Attack!” shouted Lod. He had picked up another spear, another simple weapon. The wooden haft was fire-hardened, the metal-head bent. He pointed it at Vidar. “Follow me!”
The pirate remnants did.
The two clumps met like hounds, throwing themselves upon the other. Lod held his spear with two hands. He gutted attendants, and swung the spear like a quarterstaff. In his hands, the butt was as dangerous as the point. He blocked short swords. He chopped at wrists, numbing them. Teeth shattered. Naaman’s skull stove in. A priest stared in wonder as his entrails spilled onto the ground. Lod chanted. He called upon Elohim. His muscles writhed. The enemy slunk back in awe.
Vidar likewise battled with skill and raw power. His chainmail turned blows. His shield blocked swords. His battleblade pounded. He laughed, screamed and used his gift to bind any nicks and cuts. To the right and to the left, pirates toppled. Bessus the Beastmaster died under that terrible battleblade.
Keros, trading strokes with attendants, parried and cut, shifted and retreated, and darted in when he saw an opening.
Vidar howled victory.
Lod roared with rage.
Keros saw Bessus die. Vidar laughed. Their eyes met, and then, the half-Nephilim noticed the dagger, the Bolverk-forged blade.
“It’s you! The one I helped this morning.”
The Enforcer towered over him, a brute bigger than Lod.
“You planned to rape Tamar,” snarled Keros.
“I still will, boy,” and Vidar shield-bashed, a trick that One-Eye had often described. Keros pivoted, and took the edge of the shield in the side. He grunted as a rib cracked. But he curled around the shield edge, around and inside the half-Nephilim’s guard.
“Clever little gilik!” Vidar tried to bite like a beast.
Keros lowered his head. The teeth gashed into hair and skull. Keros snarled, and rammed the dagger point-first. The Bolverk-forged steel poked through armor and the padding underneath. It punched into Vidar’s guts. The half-Nephilim grunted. Keros twisted the blade. He tore it out and skipped away.
“That hurts,” said Vidar. He grinned horribly. Then, his eyelids fluttered. His face took on an ecstatic twist. The blood pumping out of the stomach grew less.
“Elohim!” roared Lod. The spear spun in those clawed hands. The butt-end smashed against the half-Nephilim’s face. Vidar staggered, slipped his arm free of his shield and grabbed his blade two-handed. Lod reversed his spear and drove the bent head through the half-Nephilim’s throat.
“Vidar’s down!”
“Gog help us!”
“At them, boys!” roared Lod. “Don’t leave anyone standing!”
The bloody melee turned into dreadful slaughter. The pirates showed no mercy, and Vidar’s attendants didn’t ask for any. Sparks flew between clashing blades. Fighting men howled, and dead men survived long enough to slay their killers. Keros flanked Lod, protecting the Seraph as he slew the last of Gog’s retainers.
Then it was over. A few warriors groaned, but only three were standing.
Lod leaned on his spear, panting. Tamar peered into the darkness. Keros’s hands were numb.
“Where’s Gog?” whispered Keros.
“Listen,” said Tamar. “Do you hear that?”
Keros cocked his head. In the distance, feet tramped and weapons rattled.
“More enemies,” she said.
“I don’t see Gog,” said the Seraph. “Where is Gog?”
“We must flee,” said Tamar. “All else is madness.”
Chapter Twenty-three
Escape
“When the booty’s won it’s time to run.”
-- A saying of Shurite Raiders
“Bessus,” Keros groaned, slowing as they fled up Gog’s secret stairs. “I led him to his death.”
“That isn’t the way of it, lad,” said Lod, pushing him. “You freed him from a degraded life. That’s worth dying for.”
“What about the pirates?” Tamar asked. “Do you think they’re glad that they followed you?”
“Better to fight on your feet than your knees, girl, but better to fight on your knees than remain a slave.”
“Maybe it’s better to stay alive,” Tamar said.
Lod shook his head. “Not under Shamgar conditions.”
The Seraph led them into the Oracle Room, where there towered the hundred-foot idols of Dagon, Anak, Moloch the Hammer and others. Most of the night-duty priests had been slain or crippled for life. None was here to ask needless questions.
In the outer chambers, they found priestly robes. They donned them, walked out the Temple entrance, and hurried down the broad steps. A canal barge was docked at the wharf. Several sailors diced the night away.
“Any word of what happened?” asked one.
“Victory,” said Lod. “Pass the word.”
“Aye, aye, Priest,” said the sailor.
“Look,” whispered Tamar. She pointed at her rat boat, taken there earlier by the night watch that had checked up on her rat story.
“Won’t the sailors think it strange that priests ride in a rat boat?” asked Keros.
“Let them think what they want,” said Lod.
They climbed aboard, and Lod shoved off. Tamar rowed them into the canal.
Sitting at the prow, Lod grinned fiercely. He held out his hand, the big, rough, deformed and heavily callused hand. Keros took it, and they solemnly shook.
“Now what will you do?” asked Keros.
Lod peered over the oily waters. “I want you to join me, lad.”
“Me?”
Lod nodded grimly. “I’d hoped more of the pirates had made it out of the dungeon….”
“More of them?” said Keros. “None of them made it!”
“That will make my task more difficult,” said Lod. “But that can’t be helped.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Lad, Gog’s death doesn’t mean the end of it. Defenders will take his place, no doubt trying to carry through his plans. They mean to conquer the entire Suttung Sea region.”
“How do you know that?” Keros asked.
“I am granted… visions.”
Keros shifted uneasily. Lod frightened him. He was… the Seraph was unlike anyone he had ever known.
“An expedition will be sent to the Sea of Nur,” said Lod.
“Your visions told you that?”
“Elohim told me, lad, or He told me enough so I know where I have to go next.”
“The Sea of Nur?” said Keros.
Lod nodded.
“For what purpose?”
“There is a beast,” said Lod.
“Like those in the dens?” Keros asked.
“No, lad, nothing so small and puny.”
“Puny?”
“Whoever rules in Shamgar will want a behemoth,” Lod said.
Keros wasn’t certain why, but his stomach knotted painfully. He didn’t like the sound of any of this. “How can you stop them from getting this creature?”
“I’ll know once I’m there,” said Lod.
Keros glanced at Tamar. She listened as she rowed. Her arms and body swayed back and forth. She was beautiful.
“To get to the Sea of Nur, you’ll have to go through the swamps,” she said.
“That’s right,” said Lod, watching her.
“Rat boat would probably be as good a way as any to get through the swamps,” she said.
“It might be,” agreed Lod.
“Would you like to hire me?” asked Tamar.
“If the price is right,” said Lod.
Keros peered into Tamar’s eyes as he said, “Yes, I’ll go with you.”
“Excellent!” said Lod. “I think first we had better take a different canal. I see some galleys headed our way.”
With sure strength, Tamar guided the rat boat toward a side canal.
Keros gazed at the stars. A heady feeling filled him. What he had done tonight, surely that equaled some of Grandfather and One-Eye’s exploits. He had slipped into the dungeon of Gog the Oracle, and freed Lod. Good men had died because of it, and he would mourn them when he had the chance. Keros nodded, and whispered up toward the heavens, “Thank you, Elohim.” He glanced at Tamar, a smile creeping onto his face. “Thank you very much indeed.”
***
Deep in the dungeon, in the dread lair, Gog wept. He hadn’t been slain. As Vidar had charged, the mighty First Born had crawled away to safety. He had drawn out the spear thrown by that hateful Seraph. Gog wept because his eye, his lone orb had been destroyed beyond healing. Gog wept at his loss, at the irreplaceable harm done him. In all his long centuries, he had never taken so grievous a wound. All that remained was his mystical sight. Otherwise, he was blind. O, but he would make the world pay. They would all pay horribly.
“Lod!” he raved. “I will find you and that Shurite, Keros, and slay you both by inches. Wherever you go, however far you flee, I will have you dragged back to Shamgar to taste my wrath. This I swear.” Then Gog the Oracle, the First Born of Magog, bound himself with dreadful oaths.
The End, Book #4
The epic adventure continues with
Behemoth
(Lost Civilizations: 5)
Read on for an exciting excerpt from the next book in Lost Civilizations.
Nyla the Knife
Look at the Behemoth, which I made along with you and which feeds on grass like an ox. What strength he has in his loins, what power in the muscles of his belly! His tail sways like a cedar; the sinews of his thighs are close-knit. His bones are like tubes of bronze, his limbs like rods of iron…. Can anyone capture him by the eyes, or trap him and pierce his nose?
-- Job 40:15-18, 24
-1-
Nyla the Knife hunted in the deepest swamp. She stalked a renegade from the Order of Gog, a killer who had gained a conscience and fled the service of his god.
She used a rat-boat, a slender vessel, sliding between damp fronds and among vast cypress trees. The giant trees ruled this nightmare world of oozing quicksand, poisonous loop-vines and black fungus ferns. Too many whiffs of the fungus spores turned one’s lungs into a thick soup, causing the victim to drown to death as he or she tried to breathe. Almost as bad, every murky pond here contained blood-sucking leeches, flesh-burrowing ticks or swarms of hungry mosquitoes.
After several days of traveling through the noisome swamp, the incessant insect drones were driving Nyla mad. She was also weary of the giant floating crocodiles that resembled logs and the vicious saw-birds ready to swoop to the attack. There were pythons, too, and treacherous tribesmen with their deadly blow-darts always lurking nearby.
Nyla hated the deep swamp and she’d grown weary of the need for constant vigilance. She did not intend to turn back, however. She had spent too many days and nights hunting her quarry. But more importantly, Gog had personally commissioned her quest. In his present mood, she dared not disappoint Shamgar’s subterranean-dwelling god.
Standing upright in the rat-boat, Nyla gripped a pole of tem wood, using it to push her craft. She wore oiled leathers from her neck to ankles, with two curved daggers at her hips. A strangling cord also dangled from her pterodactyl-skin belt. She wore her hair pulled tightly back, exposing her exotic beauty. She had intense dark eyes, black eye-shadow and black-tattooed lips. The blood of the high surged in Nyla, granting her greater than normal strength, exquisite dexterity and a honed ability with Sheba, her trained she-leopard.
The spotted beast crouched at the prow of the boat. Sheba wore a jeweled collar, was heavier than a large warrior and was a manslayer many times over. The leopard’s tail swished and her ears were perked with interest. Sheba listened, she sniffed the languid air and she peered into the damp foliage, searching for man-sign.
Nyla had undergone a nefarious rite several years ago. Because of it and a gifted ability due to her blood, she could often hear, see and smell through her leopard’s senses. It was one of the secrets to Nyla’s deadliness as an assassin. Within the sinister Order of Gog, she held Knife Rank, and the number and difficulty of her kills was great.
Today she might well face her most dangerous prey. His name was Thag, a brutish galley captain. He was a hardened reaver, a slaver and a cutthroat, and he was notoriously skilled with the blade. Thag had angered Gog, and instead of submitting to punishment, the ox-like pirate captain had taken to his galley and attempted to fight his way out of Shamgar and up the delta to the sea. An Enforcer had been waiting with barges and slayers. The fight had been bloody, and Thag had cut his way free with several companions, jumping into a punt and poling deeper into the swamp. That had been eight days ago.
Nyla pushed her pole of tem wood into a mucky bottom. She shoved the rat-boat past a clump of fungus ferns. She held her breath, and with a mental command, she bade Sheba to do likewise.
Nyla knew an assassin of the Order of Gog who dared to collect fungus spores. Later, the assassin sprinkled the spores onto a victim’s food. The death was always messy and prolonged, which sometimes was the required method of passing. It depended on the paymaster’s wishes. The trouble with the spores was uncertainty. Some victims survived lung-rot, thereby becoming a blight upon an assassin’s record.
For eight days, Nyla had trailed through this
murky underworld of giant reptiles and monstrous swamp trees. Luckily for her, Thag and his diminishing number of companions had lost their punt two days ago. Three severed heads were packed in salt, lying in the bottom of her rat-boat. Nyla preserved the heads for Gog’s inspection. The god had promised her their weight in gold.
Nyla now glanced at her beast. Sheba’s tail-tip swished, and then it froze. The leopard’s upper lip curled back to reveal her fangs.
Nyla also froze, as her stomach seethed. She scanned the leafy gloom. Ah. That asm thicket over there…one of its fronds moved the tiniest fraction.
With a creak of wood, Nyla knelt near the leopard. She deftly unhooked the leash as the rat-boat bumped against a mucky shore.
It’s time for an ambush.
Without glancing back, Sheba sprang into the heavy undergrowth, silently disappearing from sight.
With the smallest lap of water, Nyla pushed off the bank. She didn’t head directly for the asm thicket, but readied to move past it, as if she hadn’t seen the betraying frond quiver.
There was a subtle smell of sweat in the air, the fragrance of one who ingested much pork, as Thag and his crew were known to do. But it could be a Nebo savage, a well-fed cannibal.
Nyla’s back prickled as she sensed a gaze of deadly intent. The ability to feel another’s gaze was one of her secrets. She’d devoted an entire year to training with an ancient slave-hunter, refining a sense that every person possessed to some degree or another. The cagey slaver had been gifted in sensing such things. He’d also taught her patience, and luring tricks. It had been an instructive year, well worth the effort.
Nyla hunched her shoulders and coughed like a leopard. It was a strange sound coming from a human throat. It was the signal for Sheba to get ready.
Now Nyla poled harder than before, and she moved closer to the thicket. She did not move like a hunter, but like a traveler. The luring trick this time was simple. Someone trapped in the deep swamp would surely desire a rat-boat. Traversing the swamp on foot was a tribesman’s art, not something a trespasser like Thag or his men would be good at.
Gog (Lost Civilizations: 4) Page 20
