Banished Sons Of Poseidon

by Andrew J. Peters

  The sixteen gathered in Ysalane’s Hall on the eve before their departure. The warriors had advice to give the boys. They discussed a rough plan for their route into the backcountry to intercept Calyiches, who, as best as anyone could figure, had headed to the highlands to find a legendary portal to the mountains of Mauritania. They had their last meal in the city, and they all decided to take their rest in the hall that night as one united company.

  While they were gathered around a table, finishing off their last course of fish, a weak, emaciated man hobbled into the hall. It was Markos from the below-houses. He had traveled a great distance for a man his age. Everyone at the company stared at him, wondering what news could compel him to make such a journey.

  He sputtered it out all at once to everyone at the hall. “Silenos is dead.”

  Chapter Four

  The expedition embarked on the vigorous wings of hope. They dug briskly into the darkened backcountry, and Dam marveled that Ysalane’s sixteen had come together as a formidable force. Hanhau and Ichika took the lead, scouting the way ahead. They were unfettered by supply packs and armed with hiking crooks. Those grapple-headed implements had blades as sharp as a butcher’s cleaver. They made for fine tools to scale rock and to batter aside any surprises in their path.

  Two pairs of warriors followed them, an archer team and a skirmish team who had tread-handled kopis swords. They wore light harnesses on their backs for small packs of provisions, and they were ready to maraud forward as soon as their quarry was spotted. A third pair ferried the heavier packs of supplies for their travel.

  Dam and his group followed next. Over their military shifts, they had geared up in metal mesh aprons, which were fashioned from a light but hardy silver ore. Rad had described to the smithies the traditional weapon of their country’s legionnaires: the xiphos. The smithies forged scabbards to sheathe those short stabbing blades, which the boys had strapped across their backs.

  At the warriors’ advice, they hiked in twos. Each pair was to be an unbreakable unit, sworn to look out for one another while they traversed the caves and the treacherous gorges of the underground terrain. Dam had paired with Attalos, Callios with Heron, and Rad with an amiable warrior named Blix who was short for his kind and closest to Rad’s impressive stature. With a mix of irony and pride, Blix had dubbed their group “the iron belly of the caterpillar.” As they made their way through the low-ceilinged, narrow passageways of the underworld, they did indeed seem to Dam like one long organism winding through wormholes of tiered rock. The last of their company were a pair of warriors with one-handed flails. They scouted for danger from behind.

  Their first objective was to pick up Calyiches’ trail. The traitors couldn’t have known much about the backcountry. They would have only had the knowledge that a portal to Mauritania was rumored to be somewhere in the highlands beyond the Fire Canyon. At the ledge above the vast, lava-scored gorge, Hanhau spotted their first encouraging sign. Pick-axes and pouches of ground-up niterbats were scattered on the ground. The boys must have thrown them off in order to ford the valley.

  Hanhau explained that they could take routes above and around the bed of molten rivers and fire spouts, but they were best off retracing the boys’ path to keep pace with their quarry. So they rappelled down the valley’s steep escarpment with corded leads. Hanhau and Ichika sorted out a route across the fractured islands of the lava tributaries.

  Heat slashed at their feet and legs, and a bilge of sulfurous smoke clogged their lungs. It was nearly unbearable, but the caterpillar soldiered on. They accomplished a route to the ridge at the other side of the valley. Hanhau led the party to a cleft in the ridge that had gradual footholds for ascending. From above, he called out that he had found more signs of Calyiches’ team. It was miraculous how well the warriors could penetrate the darkness.

  Blix stopped at a little shelf in the ridge and channeled his body’s luminescent energy into his hands, which shone onto the pewter-colored ground. Dam and the other boys huddled around the spot.

  They saw shreds of burnt fabric. Most likely, one of Calyiches’ crew had burned the skirting of his shift while fording the valley. The singed ends had fallen away during his climb. As Dam looked closer, he noticed dried droplets of blood on the granite shelf. More than clothes had been singed. Someone had been burned badly. A trail continued up to the shelf and onward, suggesting a direction. Once the flail bearers climbed to the top, the company plodded onward across a field of bedrock.

  Gradually, the floor scaled toward the ceiling. Their progress dragged. Dam worried that they were headed to an impasse of solid rock. A lead warrior’s phosphorescent hand sparked from the darkness up ahead, waving the company forward like a miner’s lantern. Hanhau or Ichika must have sighted a path.

  A narrow gulch was carved into a massive bulwark of rock. They had to take it single file. Dam’s heartbeat drummed in his chest, and his lungs shrunk up. They were vulnerable inside the pass. The slightest seizure would crush them, or an enemy could squeeze their line into fumbling havoc by cutting off the way forward and the way back.

  Shouts up ahead jangled Dam’s nerves even more. As he rubbed his wet brow, he noticed that it wasn’t only sweat coating his face. The air was rich with moisture. A cool drop of water plunked on the crown of his head. A few steps forward, Dam heard the chirping sound of a cascade and stepped down on slippery stone.

  Water was seeping from the ceiling. Up ahead, it spilled down in a curtain and streamed in the direction they were headed. Dam filled his chest with a full breath of air. That stream would lead out to an opening in the gulch. Each man splashed through the refreshing shower and trudged down the stream. They came to the head of a cataract that fizzed down to a sightless grotto.

  The supply carriers brought out leads, and they rappelled down to the floor of the grotto in order. Dam caught Attalos as he splashed down into the water, and the two made their way to a bank to wait for the other pairs. The boys exchanged a sportive grin. Their journey already felt like a triumph.

  Dam noticed Hanhau and Ichika investigating the bank of the grotto. When everyone had made it down from the gulch, the two warriors called the group over. Uncloaked in the glow of their palms, they saw a circlet of stones and whitened coals doused with water—a rudimentary campfire. Calyiches must have called his group to rest in the spot.

  “We’ll camp here as well,” Hanhau said. “Ichika and I will go ahead to track the next leg of their course.”

  *

  They refueled the fire pit with fresh coals and staked their wet clothes to dry. The warriors said that the grotto stream was potable, so the boys filled their flagons with water. Later, they had their first meal of salted fish. The warriors worked out sleeping and watch shifts among themselves and left the boys to take their rest.

  There were pallets to unroll around the fire and thin woven blankets to wrap up in. The broad socket of bedrock around the stream was cool and dank like a cellar. The boys sat together arced around the glowing coals. They complained that their bodies ached in funny places from all the hiking and the rappelling. They were tired, but the thrill of what they had been through kept them awake.

  “They couldn’t have made it much farther,” Rad said. “They don’t have the experience or the equipment for this terrain.”

  The others piped in to agree. None of them had traveled so deep into the backcountry either, and they were proud of what they had accomplished that day. Bloodied patches of rock around Calyiches’ campsite indicated that the party had struggled. With no way to rappel from the top of the gulch, they must have jumped down blindly. That plummet would have resulted in some twisted knees and ankles, if not broken bones. Still, Dam remembered that they had the Oomphalos, which provided a magical protection.

  “What is the Oomphalos?” Rad said.

  Dam looked at the boy. Rad was staring right at him. Everyone had been told the history of the magic stone. The Old Ones had forged it to preserve their people. Some of them had
turned ambitious and greedy—the New Ones—and revolted to wrest the stone for themselves. The Old Ones had sent the stone aboveground so the New Ones wouldn’t use it for destruction. Years later, Zazamoukh had been tricked by the New Ones to bring the Oomphalos back belowground. Their era of terror had lasted until Aerander killed the serpent queen and returned the stone to Ysalane.

  But Rad seemed to be driving for something more than that.

  “They say it’s forged from mori-mori,” Dam said. He recalled the glowing founts in Ysalane’s Hall. The blood of the earth.

  “Why can’t they make another one?” Rad said.

  “They don’t know how to work magic from mori-mori anymore,” Dam said. “They lost that knowledge when the New Ones drove them from their city, ages ago. Before Aerander killed the snake queen, they were scattered across the backcountry, just surviving, for generations.”

  Rad reclined on his elbows. “I heard the stone can give you immortality,” he mused. “Makes you understand why Calyiches would take it, doesn’t it?”

  Dam answered with some heat. “It’s not meant to be hoarded. The Old Ones used it for everyone’s benefit.”

  “But it’s the nature of man, don’t you think?” Rad said. “Always wanting a little more for ourselves.”

  “The nature of some men,” Dam said.

  Attalos pointed a question at Rad. “Weren’t you and Calyiches mates?”

  His words hung in the air for a while. They had all been wanting to ask Rad about that history, but somehow no one had brought it up until that moment. Rad had been the favorite son of House Autochthonus, and Calyiches had been the favorite of House Mneseus. Some political and athletic rivalry sprang up between the houses, but all the highborn boys sat together in the dining hall. Everyone had seen Rad and Calyiches chumming around the Honeycomb from time to time. Rad had scrounged up rocks from the quarry to practice putting, and he had given Calyiches pointers on the sport.

  Rad rustled up from his slouch. “We were mates. But if you think I volunteered to come along so I could sabotage this campaign, you’re dead wrong. I want to catch him as much as the rest of you.” His self-righteous gaze passed over each of the boys who were staring at him. “I was just trying to have a philosophical discussion. Though I suppose none of you have heard much about philosophy.”

  “We’re not stupid,” Dam said.

  “Not saying you are,” Rad said. “I’m saying it’s man’s nature to improve himself.” He looked over Attalos, Callios, and Heron. “Like all of you. You supported Aerander to gain land and an equal say in how the kingdom is run. But do you think when everyone is equal, we’ll all be happy with what we’ve got? Every one of us with our same square plots of land. How long you think it will be before someone says, ‘Your plot’s better than mine. How come he gets a grove of trees while I’ve got to dig up trenches to water my fields?’

  “And who sorts out what’s fair? If everyone gets a vote, we’re all voting for ourselves, and no one gets what he wants. Soon enough, people get smart and join up with people for mutual interest so they can vote as one block. It won’t be one man, one vote. It’ll be whoever can get the most friends behind him that gets his way. That popular vote could take your land right from under you. So much for Aerander’s ‘freedom for every man.’”

  “If that’s what you think, why didn’t you run off with Calyiches?” Dam said.

  Rad smirked. “Wasn’t much of a choice, was there? Tyranny or anarchy. I went with anarchy because I figure things will sort themselves out in the end. Our country’s system of ten kings for one kingdom worked. You need an elite class to govern the masses.”

  “It works if you’re one of the ten kings,” Dam said.

  Rad didn’t have a response for that, but he didn’t look offended. He was practical, not fanatical like Calyiches. It occurred to Dam that Rad probably spoke for most of his highborn peers. They hadn’t been inspired by Aerander’s vision for a new Atlantis. They had been resigned to it. He wondered what would really happen if they all made it above the surface.

  Another thought entered Dam’s head. It seemed so obvious all of a sudden. “Did you know what Calyiches was going to do?”

  “Not precisely. But a good lot of us suspected he was up to something.”

  How couldn’t they? The upper-houses had scarcely any privacy. People would have seen Calyiches’ crew coming home with blackened hands and faces.

  “There wasn’t anyone who wouldn’t have tried to stop what happened that night if he knew what was coming,” Rad said. “What Calyiches did was a betrayal of Poseidon’s most sacred commandment, ‘Let no son of His take up arms against another.’”

  “So that’s why you’re here? To do justice by the Poseidonidae?” Dam said.

  “That’s part of it. And I’ve got the reputation of my House to keep up. Can’t leave all the glory to the likes of you. Besides, you might have noticed there’s a whole lot of us men, and seven women to go around. Coming back in the shine of victory ought to improve my chances of getting a wife.” He glanced up to the heights of the cavern. “Unless there’s lots of women left up there, it won’t be easy to continue the family line.”

  Just then, a shriek like seaborne wind and a rumble like thunder echoed through the cavern. Dam’s four companions shot up to their feet and stared in the direction of the noise. Not that they could see anything in the dark.

  Dam smiled to himself and muttered, “The Master of Sound.” He explained to the others the folk tale about the twins. But like Hanhau had said, mysteries usually had ordinary explanations. The underworld had currents of wind, and it had probably been some distant volcanic burst that bounced around the bedrock walls and traveled to their cavern. Nonetheless, the others were rattled.

  “There’s beasts in these parts, aren’t there?” Rad asked Dam.

  “Bats, giant snails, fire scorpions. Lizards twice your size.”

  Rad shivered. “You’ve seen those things?”

  Dam considered lying. He had only seen niterbats and slug-sledges. Hanhau had told him about the other creatures. “You ought to sleep cradling your xiphos. Or maybe cozy up with Blix for the night.”

  The others chuckled. Rad gave Dam a smart-alecky scowl. “I’m to bed. The rest of you should too. A soldier’s work requires discipline, and that includes getting a full night’s sleep.”

  Rad crept back to his pallet. Dam, Attalos, Callios, and Heron stayed seated around the fire. They didn’t need to be bossed around by a military hero-in-the-making. They exchanged lopsided grins about their new, supremely self-assured companion. They talked about their adventure until their bodies felt as heavy as wet mortar and ached for sleep. Then they took to their pallets with their blankets drawn over them.

  Dam noticed that Attalos was rummaging through his traveling satchel beside his bed. He had laid out pieces of something on the ground. They were too far away from the fire’s weak light for Dam to see what he had.

  Attalos took account of Dam’s snooping, and he passed him a strip of some sort of stone as smooth as the inside of a conch shell.

  “Black glass,” Attalos explained. “I found it in the stream. I’m bringing it back for Hephad.”

  Dam handed him back the piece of glass. Hephad would like it. He could use the glass to decorate his household altar.

  Rad was counting on bringing back a name for himself from their expedition. Attalos was collecting pretty things for his sweetheart. What would Dam have to show for their adventure? He wondered about that for a while, and then sleep pressed down on him like an iron blanket.

  Chapter Five

  Dam woke to a rustle of activity around the camp. The fire had gone dark. The warriors were faint blurs of light moving around the perimeter. Attalos and Heron were shuffling around in their beds. Dam got up on his knees and fumbled through the darkness to retrieve his tunic from the stake where he had left it by the fire. The tunic was stiffly dry, and it reeked of smoke. Dam pulled it over his head.
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br />   “The iron belly rises,” Blix said to the boys as he approached them and handed the torch to Dam. “You can do your business behind those rocks over there. We’ll have drink and food by the campfire. Hanhau has news he wants everyone to hear.”

  Once Attalos, Callios, Heron, and Rad had dressed, Dam led them to the place Blix had suggested to empty their bladders. When they came back, the fire was burning vigorously, and everyone was sitting or squatting around it. Dam wondered if he and his people were a burden to the Old Ones. The warriors certainly didn’t need them to manage a camp, but they never gave them a chance to help out.

  The group passed around platters of salted fish and a flagon of water. Then Hanhau and Ichika came over. Dam watched Hanhau slyly. His forehead was tensed the same scrupulous way as when he was searching for the right words in Atlantean.

  “We charted their trail,” Hanhau said. “They followed the grotto out to a lake and beyond into a range of mountains. They camped often to rest their wounded. There are markers like this site all along the way.”

  Rad stretched into the conversation. “How soon will we overtake them?”

  Hanhau exchanged a glance with Ichika. “We can reach the foot of the mountains in one portage. It’s a farther distance than yesterday’s hike, but it will be easier terrain. We’re on pace to gain up with their party in another night or two after that.”

  Attalos, Callios, and Heron looked to one another encouragingly. Dam could not believe it. They had barely scratched into the backcountry, and they were already on the heels of their target. They might return with the Oomphalos in just five or six nights.

  Hanhau spoke out over the boys. “There’s more. That pass through the mountains straddles an active fault. There was a seizure just last night.”

  Dam recalled the echoing thunder they had heard around the campfire.

  “How bad was the damage?” Rad said.