Lod the Galley Slave (Lost Civilizations) (14 page)

There was no mockery twinkling in her eyes, no sneer upon her blood-red lips. She seemed glazed, drugged and her mouth twitched.
“You are…” She frowned, and then understanding lit her eyes. “Head due west, and make haste. Time…” Her shoulders trembled. “We have little time left.”

“
He summons the kraken?” Eglon asked.

Her eyes widened. Then a touch of her old haughtiness returned.
“Do not question me, hog. Obey. That is your only concern. Take this galley and head due west.”

Schooled in the Master
’s court, Captain Eglon simply dipped his head.

With an even more leaden step than before, the harlot returned to the captain
’s cabin, disappearing within, the door closing with a
snick
.

“
Kraken?” whispered the pilot.

“
Captain!” shouted a barefoot sailor. The small man ran the length of the galley to them, panting as he said, “There’s a vessel dead ahead, Captain. One of ours, I think, wallowing in the sea.”

Eglon grabbed the small Vendhyan, making the man wince.
“Show me! Hurry, go!”

The sailor scampered ahead with Captain Eglon lumbering behind. Archers at the prow hastily moved out of the way. Eglon squeezed between several newly placed catapults and peered where the sailor pointed. The long shadows and sinking sun made it difficult to see
, but Eglon made out the almost submerged galley. Some men splashed about it in the waters. Some stood upright upon the deck awash with waves. Others clung to the mast. The wretches shouted and waved, their voices drifting over the darkening sea.

“
Do we pick them up?” the pilot asked.

Eglon jerked around.
“Pick them up? Are you mad? Lord Lamassu has ordered us west?”

“
Then they’re dead men,” the pilot said.

Eglon gaped at him.
“Yes! They’re already dead. But we’re not.”

“
Seems obvious,” muttered the pilot.

“
Don’t you see?” Eglon cringed, his great blubbery shoulders hunching as he eyed the captain’s cabin. Then he yanked the pilot to him and began to whisper fiercely into his ear. Eglon planned to deceive the Gibborim by traveling in a miles long circle instead of heading west. One way or another, he intended on surviving.

-10-

The stars shone overhead as a cold wind blew across the Gulf of Ammon. Choppy waves slapped against the
Serpent of Thep
as the giant oars continued to dip.

With an eerie creak
, the cabin door opened. Out stepped the harlot with a woolen cloak draped over her shoulders and an octopus-shaped lantern swinging from her hand. The flame showed her lascivious features to be as haughty as when she had first boarded ship. She had repainted her face, and now she shouted, “Bow before Lord Lamassu! Abase yourselves and stare not at his glory.”

Archers, soldiers, sailors, everyone vied with Eglon to be first as they threw themselves prostrate. The rattle of the harlot
’s lantern was soon the only noise except for the wind humming between taut ropes. Even the rowing-hold kettledrum had fallen silent, all the oars drawn in and the slaves at rest.

“
Captain,” whispered Lord Lamassu, his voice as poisonous as ever.

Eglon groveled full-length upon the planking, his heart laboring hard and his breath a wheezing sound. He hadn
’t heard the Gibborim’s approach. At times they moved as soft as a cobra slithering upon a sleeping man.

“
You will assist my pet, Captain.”

Eglon heaved himself upright, sick with fright that Lord Lamassu would pierce his disobedience, that the Gibborim would discover his artifice. Fortunately, his time spent in the Master
’s court now kept Eglon from collapsing in terror. Only one of iron nerves and constitution could long survive in the Master’s company. The evil corrupted, leeching one’s humanity. But a person who could cavort and comment wittily while under the Master’s pitiless gaze could function while terror squeezed his heart.

“
Come,” said the harlot.

Eglon followed her into his cabin
. She pointed at a large bronze brazier, her gesture clear. Grunting as he picked it up. The bronze was warm, and oily ashes stained the center. He lugged the massive bowl to where Lord Lamassu stood frowning out to sea. At this Eglon’s scrotum shriveled. He set down the bowl and hurried after the commanding harlot. At her orders, he picked up a bronze-limbed tripod as she gingerly lifted a necklace strung through three human skulls. Eglon almost dropped the tripod when a distant scream, one of terrible agony, seemed to thread through his mind. It seemed as if the scream originated from one of the skulls and was not truly an audible sound, but an ethereal wail of despair.

Trembling anew, but this time with a sick fear of the supernatural, he staggered after the harlot, recalling hushed whispers spoken in a lonely tavern in Mangalore. There a broken old beggar had horrified him with tales of necromancy. Hideous torture, exquisitely
dispensed by the most skilled of practitioners, allowed the necromancer to flay portions of a human soul and invest it into a skull as a banker deposits coins into an account. The necromancer later used this soul investment to conjure with, a sinister and wicked power, evil and demonically twisted and highly dangerous.

Eglon set the tripod near Lord Lamassu
. At the harlot’s orders, he hefted the heavy bronze brazier upon it.

“
What is that I see in the distance?” the Gibborim whispered.

Eglon spoke despite the parchedness to his mouth and the
painful thuds of his racing heart. “Lord, it is a galley.”

“
Men swarm upon its watery deck,” whispered Lord Lamassu. “Sharks circle it.”

Eglon could no longer see the galley, but he wasn
’t surprised that the Gibborim could. Yorgash’s children saw in the dark much better than a man could, akin to bats in their ability. As the silence lengthened, Eglon’s heart fluttered and agony lanced his chest. Did Lord Lamassu realize that instead of heading due west they had been widely circling the galley for hours? Eglon wheezed, with his face turning white and weakness dragging his arms. Oh, it hurt to breathe. His heart raced and his eyes seemed to bulge outward.

“
The galley is sunken,” whispered Lord Lamassu.

Eglon blinked rapidly, trying to regain his wits, trying to explain.

Lord Lamassu turned toward him.

“
Excellency,” whispered Eglon, “g-galleys are mostly wood. It will only truly sink once it smashes upon rocks or a storm breaks it apart.”

“
No,” whispered the Gibborim, “there is a third alternative.” A strange smile stretched those thin lips, a smile that made the nape hairs stir on Eglon’s neck.

Lord Lamassu turned to the harlot and took the skull necklace from her hands, and with a clattering of bones he draped it over his head.

Unbelieving at the success of his plot, Eglon stepped back. In a daze he watched Lord Lamassu stroke the skulls, hissing to them in sibilant speech.

Suddenly the Gibborim flinched as if a whip had struck him. His mouth gaped and he shivered in something near ecstasy. Lord Lamassu seemed to expand, to swell and grow in vibrancy. He raised his arms, and it
appeared to Eglon that ghostly, silently shrieking forms swirled out of the skulls and whirled around and around the taut necromancer. Lord Lamassu laughed as a god might in jest at the schemes of puny humanity. He scooped hot coals from a box at his feet, holding them in his marble-white hands. They radiated an eerie glow, illuminating his face, making his black eyes blaze with madness. With an imperious gesture he flung the coals into the brazier. They exploded with sparks, and puffs of greasy smoke whooshed upward.

Eglon staggered from the stench, viler than any in the rowing hold.

Lord Lamassu began to scream a chant. Awful and weird it rose, diabolic in its undulating rhythms. With arms outstretched and head flung back, the Gibborim wove a web of fierce enchantments. A terrible, dreadful feeling of evil radiated from him like heat. A sickening thing, it induced terror as if the dead rose and walked among them.

Men groaned and wept all around the chanting Gibborim. Many clapped their hands over their ears. A few
, with wild eyes, foamed at the mouth as they leapt overboard. They swam with frantic strokes but were struck from underneath, disappearing in a swirl of teeth and blood, dragged down into the inky depths.

How long this chant continued was impossible to tell. On and on it went, reducing the crew to a pitiful state and exalting Lord Lamassu to necromantic heights. The dark majesty of his evil became unbearable. Men groveled in abject terror as if one of the
bene elohim
descended from the celestial sphere and walked among them.

Then a hideous cry almost beneath human hearing issued from the darkness. Lord Lamassu laughed victoriously.

Eglon, from where he clutched the mast, squinted into the starlit night.

Strange, awful sounds came from where he had last seen the wallowing galley. A vast, colossal shape darker than the starlit night seemed to rise out of the depths. Eglon blinked and squinted harder, and he moaned. Was it his imagination or did he see huge tentacles that reached higher than the ship
’s mast? From the submerged galley came horrified shouts of terror, gibbering men calling upon their gods and wailing desperately. It availed them naught. There came sounds of explosively splintering wood, shrieks and heavy things slapping the water with terrific force.

“
O Kraken!” chanted Lord Lamassu. “Heed me, monster of the Deep! Follow me this night to a feast of blood!”

M
ore hideous sounds emanated from lost seamen, and the galley’s destruction in a smashing of wood. It was a terrible and dreadful noise to listen to in the middle of the Gulf of Ammon.

Then Eglon
became aware of the harlot at his elbow. Her fingers dug into his flesh as she hissed, “As you value your life, man, turn this galley around.”

He stared at her dull-eyed and uncomprehending.

“Fool! This is our one chance. Lord Lamassu is in disgrace. He was to sacrifice himself and thereby bring the kraken nearer for others more gifted to call. But your hog cunning has aided him, as he knew it would. Oh, do not be misled, man. He knew that you would deceitfully circle the half-sunken galley, hoping to sacrifice it instead of yourself. But what do you think he will tell the Nobles Ones if they ask him what occurred?”

Understanding filled Eglon and the horror of his position. Had he saved himself from a relatively clean death at the kraken
’s tentacles in order to end up in prolonged agony on a necromancer’s flaying table?

The harlot laughed. It was an ugly sound.
“Someone will surely feast on you, hog, for you are doomed. But if you would scheme another night we must stay ahead of the kraken while we are able.”

Eglon jumped as if branded by a hot iron. He lumbered to the rowing hatch, bellowing orders into the hold as he crashed down the steps.

A moment later whistles trilled and out slid the giant oars.

-11-

As the other slaves cowered and curled around the giant oars, clinging to them as the Gibborim screamed-chanted his evil, Lod’s lips writhed with a snarl and his blue eyes blazed. He knew that the necromancer opened forbidden gates. This Lord Lamassu used unholy deviltry and drew up into the world things better left hidden in the depths.

With all his being Lod loathed and hated the children of Yorgash. They were the offspring of
those called First Born, themselves the product of a union between the daughters of men and the
bene elohim
, the “sons” of the Most High, fallen angels from Heaven who had taken on the guise of flesh in order to rule and wreck this world. At the very dawn of time Father Adam and Mother Eve had fallen to the seduction of Lucifer, and so humanity had been hurled from paradise. Fallen angels and their ilk ever plagued mankind, tempting, scheming, lying and cheating in order to draw humanity deeper into sin so they too would suffer in the fires of eternal Sheol. Not content with their deserved fate, the evil ones forever sought the destruction of others.

So Lod had long ago learned. But there had been a girl, a dark-haired beauty with a laughing mouth, a vivacious pretty with soft hands and eyes that had melted his
frozen heart. He had wooed her in the days he had been captain of the Guard of Caphtor. He had been a bold swordsman, the greatest in the Nine Walled City. He had bidden her to become his wife, and he was certain that she would have agreed. But her father sickened, and she went to the Temple of Elohim, there to pray for his healing. He worsened and she grew bitter. The family was not of Caphtor, but from the eastern shores of the Suttung Sea to the north, from the city of Pildash. There men worshiped Gog the Oracle, a First Born son of Magog. Secretly, her father begged her go to Gog, to pay the First Born to gaze into his future and tell him if there was hope or if he must soon die.