Lod the Galley Slave (Lost Civilizations) (17 page)

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 fell 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.