The Pillars of Hercules (44 page)

“Better get busy,” she said.

“Can’t we just get below?” said Matthias.

“At some point we’re going to need that gun,” she said. Lugorix wasn’t even arguing, was already strapping himself to the cannon—and as he did the same for Matthias, they saw the Carthaginian ships come over the summit of the crest behind them, start plowing down toward them. The catamaran and those two ironclads weren’t too far behind. Eurydice kept on screaming instructions down to Barsine—the ship turned at a sharp enough angle that it almost capsized, but instead continued to pick up speed as the slope it was running down kept on getting steeper.

“What the fuck are we
in?”
yelled Matthias.

“And what are
those?”
said Lugorix.

They were cliffs. Vast ragged cliffs, looming out of the clouds on either side of them. The
Xerxes
turned again, tacking back the other way as it steered between two of the chunks of rock. The ship was pitching up and down so heavily Lugorix saw no point in even trying to fire the cannon. Besides, the elements were doing a far better job then he ever could: as he watched, two of the Carthaginian ships smashed straight into rock, crumpling up like so much paper. Lugorix could barely see the rearmost ships now—just the very faint outline of the catamaran.

But then it lit up as though it had been struck by lightning.

Eumenes saw too late where the gun on the catamaran was: just as he realized that one of the compound ship’s prows had slid away to reveal a wicked-looking maw, there was a flash and another gobbet of flame roared in toward him. He froze like a mouse before a snake; the burning mass shot past him and smashed into his second ironclad, sending its turret spinning into the air while what remained of the ship detonated from the inside out. Flying metal banged against the hull of Eumenes’ ironclad.

“Must have set off the ammunition,” said Kalyana calmly.

“No kidding!”
screamed Eumenes. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d lost his cool; he consoled himself with the thought that it was likely to be the last. And then, to his crew—
“hard to starboard! Fire torpedoes!”
He and Kalyana were knocked sprawling as the ship did just that—Eumenes found himself unceremoniously dumped on top of the seer, the wind knocked from him as the ship pitched up and down in the ever-growing shitstorm.

“We die standing,” declared Kalyana.

Even now, Eumenes was enough of a diplomat to see that was a polite way of saying
get your ass off me.
Eumenes pulled himself painfully to his feet, helped Kalyana up as he stared out into the intensifying maelstrom. There were only three Carthaginian ships left now, one of them decidedly larger than the others—presumably the flagship. It had at least twelve decks and was steering easily past the cliff on which its brethren had just shattered. The Persian ship was nowhere to be seen amidst sheets of water. Eumenes could barely tell rain from ocean now. The catamaran veered, exposing its flame-gun again—levelling it directly at its Macedonian rival. Eumenes stared right at it. He saw his own death.

And then his torpedoes hit.

Afterward, Ptolemy would thank the gods he’d been in the the catamaran’s rightward vessel. The leftward one was instantly holed in two places below the waterline even as the firegun mounted on it discharged into the ocean, which surged in on the rowers, engulfing most of them before they could even begin to scramble for the upper decks. Ptolemy caught a glimpse of sailors streaming out of the gaping holes like beans pouring from a sack. The firegun rolled forward and plunged over the side, vanishing into the water, flame still streaming from it. The catamaran began to lean dangerously, though it was hard to tell how pronounced the list was because the downward rush was so great. Ptolemy staggered through into the bridge where the helmsman was struggling with the tiller. Obviously he wasn’t receiving much help from the other side.

“What’s the situation?” said Ptolemy.

“We’re out of control,” said the helmsman.

“So let me drive,” said the bastard son of Philip—he grabbed the helmsman and hurled him screaming from the ship. Then, turning to the stunned officers—“Give me someone with balls! Someone who can steer this thing! Get that fucking sail down, by the gods! Get some men out on the hull and cut that fucking deadweight
loose!”
He sounded like a madman. He wondered if that was what he’d become. He half-expected those officers to hurl him from the ship too. But the instinct to obey ran too deep. They were Macedonians first. Only second were they men. The catamaran just missed a cliff and then hurtled onto the side of the biggest wave Ptolemy had ever seen. And only the royal blood that ran through his veins prevented him from shitting in his pants at what lay at the bottom of it.

“Nothing,”
said Lugorix.

As the clouds ahead of him cleared, he could see the water pouring in sheets off the edge of everything, thundering down into abyss. It was the waterfall to end all waterfalls—and yet with Eurydice navigating and Barsine at the helm, the
Xerxes
was hurtling in toward it at just the right angle, making straight for the one place where the water ran down what looked like a gigantic ramp. All Lugorix could hear was the roar of the falls and the sound of Matthias praying. Next moment they were on that ramp and on either side was…
not a thing
—except for two of the Carthaginian ships, turning over and over as they tumbled into oblivion. But their flagship was a little faster—it skated right along the edge of the waterfall and then veered onto the ramp behind them.

“They went that way,” yelled Eumenes, sighting with the farseeker. The rain was so intense he couldn’t even make out what had happened to the Persian craft—all he could see was that the Carthaginian flagship had followed it, and he knew whoever was piloting that ship was no idiot. Also, both boats seemed to
slide
from view, while the ones that went over the waterfall everywhere else lurched forward sickeningly before plunging out of sight. That was all Eumenes needed to know about where his only chance for survival lay. And as they hurtled in toward it, they saw all that lay beyond…

“The world is
fucking flat,
” said Kalyana as he went down on both knees.

“Let’s make sure we stay on it,” muttered Eumenes.

The ironclad surged onto the ramp, began hurtling down it.

The ramp was the only way that offered even the slightest hope of living. That much was clear. As was why no one dared to venture too far beyond the Pillars. The crazy stories that sailors told about how the ocean frayed and the world ended were all
true
. But Ptolemy had to admire his new helmsman’s pragmatism: the man seemed to be beyond fear as he expertly compensated for the intensifying deadweight represented by the left-hand side of the boat. It wouldn’t work for long. Then again, it didn’t have to. The crippled catamaran roared onto the ramp, charged down into the unknown.

They were picking up speed. As they accelerated away from the lip of ocean, the full extent of the waterfall pouring from the world’s edge became apparent, stretching off on either side of the ramp until it was swallowed up by mist. But up ahead, that mist was dissipating; Lugorix could see pinpricks of light glimmering through it—

“Stars,” said Eurydice.

Lugorix nodded. He drew his blade, slashed away the rope, began to crawl along the hull of the
Xerxes,
dragging himself toward the turret. Eurydice was so intent on those stars that she only noticed him as he pulled himself up next to her—she glanced round at him in surprise.

“What are you
doing?”
she asked.

“Look out,”
he said, pointing past her. She looked back in front of her and then screamed a warning to Barsine, who threw the rudder over, just barely keeping pace with how sharply that unearthly ramp turned to the right. The
Xerxes
smashed into the side of the ramp as it struggled to navigate the bend—and then it was through, rumbling down the second part of the ramp which curled back beneath the first. Lugorix could see the massive support struts and beams that sprouted out from the side of what seemed to be a gigantic rocky wall—the ramp ended in a tunnel set into that wall. They roared in toward it while Lugorix climbed down the ladder into the cabin of the
Xerxes
.

Barsine was sitting at the controls, silently weeping. He put one enormous arm around her shoulder.

“It’s alright,” he said.

“I wish that were true,” she replied.

They surged into the tunnel.

“Shall we fire, sir?”

Eumenes could understand the temptation. That damn Carthaginian twelve-decker was only about two hundred meters ahead, and firing the torpedoes down this ramp would be akin to a turkey shoot. Which was the problem. The last thing they needed was a piece of flaming junk right in their path. And that was assuming the explosions didn’t bring down the ramp itself. But now the Carthaginian ship was veering to the side as it negotiated a steep turn in the ramp which curved on itself, back toward the edge of the Earth. It lurched sharply; several of the siege-engines on its deck slid over the side and fell into abyss. And then the Carthaginian ship was onto the ramp’s lower section, passing beneath Eumenes’ ship as it headed in toward the cliff. Next moment, Eumenes’ ship was negotiating the same turn; he heard a clanking as his steersmen shifted gears, switching the propellors into reverse, slowing down the ship just enough to prevent it from going over the edge as the rush of water carried it around the bend and in toward a tunnel set in the rocky wall of Earth. But Eumenes wasn’t even really looking at it. His eyes were focused on the curve his ship had just traversed—at what was about to try to follow him—

“This ought to be fun,” he said.

Ptolemy’s eyes went wide as he saw what the hamstrung catamaran was heading for. He gripped the edge of the beam in front of him, muttered a prayer to the gods, the irony of the gesture all too palpable to him: as though the gods would take pity on anyone mad enough to sail a giant catamaran off the end of the ocean. As they hit the turn on the ramp, there was a terrible grinding
crack,
followed by the even worse noise of wood tearing asunder. The floor bucked under their feet as the rightward boat lurched to the side, remained on the ramp while the leftward one sheared off entirely, smashed over the edge, disintegrating into pieces falling away into nothingness, men turning over and over as they tumbled. Ptolemy caught a glimpse of stars above his head—stars all around—and then the halved-catamaran was rumbling after the other ships, closing in on the maw that led into the bowels of the Earth.

“It’s not truly Atlantis, is it?” said Lugorix.

“It’s been called that,” Barsine replied.

Lugorix shook his head. It was all he needed to hear to understand how totally he’d been deceived. For his own good? For hers? For the world’s? He didn’t know. The tunnel roof had closed in over their heads. The
Xerxes
was sailing down into the darkness. Barsine switched off the engines. Eurydice was no longer calling out any directions. She couldn’t see where they were going. None of them could.

“Shouldn’t we be getting some torches up on the deck?” asked Lugorix.

“We don’t want to draw attention to ourselves,” replied Barsine.

There was something in the way she said it that made it sound like she was more concerned about what was in front of them rather than what was pursuing them. The craft was picking up speed now, the angle of their descent steepening. If there was any kind of barrier or obstacle ahead, the first they were going to know about it was when they smashed into it. But that didn’t seem to be worrying Barsine.

“I told you before we even got to the Pillars that Atlantis was just one word for it,” she said. “But it’s got many others. And nearly all of them are romantic myths. Anything to avoid having to face what really lies at the end of West. Because that’s the one thing people can’t deal with.”

And now Lugorix started to see something out there—the glimmers of phosphorescence very far away, as though he was looking up at an enormous bowl. Other lights burnt on top of what might have been a distant mountain peak—or maybe it was a tower—but those lights were strange: they seemed a little like torches, but unlike torchlight they didn’t waver. And if they were fire, then they were an odd color: not so much orange-red as yellow-white. Lugorix had never wanted to be somewhere less.

“What can’t people deal with,” he heard himself say.

“The thing the Greeks call Hades,” she replied.

Chapter Eighteen

T
he decisive moment was approaching.

The bridge was less than a quarter mile to completion—just out of range of the Athenian siege-engines, mounted on the hills around the beach. The crews of all those catapults and ballisatae and trebuchets had fired enough rocks across the last few days to have their range calibrated perfectly—they knew exactly where each missile was going to land and they couldn’t wait for the workers atop that bridge to extend it another fifty meters. Nor could the several hundred ships of the Athenian navy that surrounded that bridge on three sides. They kept a wary distance to be sure, held at bay by siege-engines positioned along the length of the bridge—but they had their own machines aboard and were obviously preparing to assault the great structure from all sides in a combined offensive.

Watching the scene from a cave in one of the hills, Agathocles figured it was going to be an interesting fight. That’s when he noticed Athenian riders tearing ass into the main camp. Shortly thereafter, his spies brought word that a frenzied argument was underway in the Athenian command tent. Apparently the just-arrived viceroy of Syracuse—one of the archons himself—had commanded that the troops be withdrawn from the beach. And some of those troops were objecting in no uncertain terms.