Lod the Galley Slave (Lost Civilizations) (25 page)

Lod backed away
even as blood flowed from the deep cut on his shoulder. That arm hung limply. As he turned to Zared, the volcano rumbled in greater noise. Did that have anything to do with the sorceress’s passing?

Lod staggered near and
knelt beside the ancient one.

“No,” Zared wheezed. “Don’t worry about me. You must flee, Lod. Her sorcery kept the volcano at bay. You heard her. Now that she is
gone, her spells begin to unravel.”

“What about Yggdrasil?”

“Lava will take care of it. Now go, Lod, flee. I’m as good as dead. I can feel my life ebbing away. I’ve lived too long, I think.”

“You lived long enough to help rid the world of an ancient evil,” Lod said.

“You are gracious.” Zared coughed. “Please, save yourself and live. Continue the good fight, my boy.”

Lod hesitated, and he asked,
“Did you love her once?”

“
Long ago…as a young and foolish man—”

A deafening blast cut short Zared’s words. Lod looked up.

“The volcano is erupting,” the old one said. “Flee, Lod. Take care of my Holon. Do this as a favor to me.”

Lod hesitated. Even as he did, Zared’s eye
lids fluttered, closed, and he died.

A second blast shook the entire golden house. Piles of coins tumbled from their perch
es. Without another thought, Lod stood, raced to the sorceress and kicked the sword of Tubal-Cain out of her charred hand. He used a cloth to pick up the hot grip. Then he raced for the door. The shoulder cut was deep, and he would bleed more, he knew. But he had survived worse.

By the time he was halfway down the
stairway, hot lava blew out of the volcano. Lod saw it spewing into the sky in fiery chunks. The ziggurat rumbled, the steps shifted, and Lod barely kept his balance. With grim determination he continued down, vowing to live through the end of the isle of the dead.

-6-

The Holon rowed while Lod steered. He wore a heavy blood-soaked bandage around his shoulder. He craned his neck as another powerful eruption shook the air. Black smoke billowed out of the volcano as red lava consumed the land, flowing against giant trees and causing others to burn. Large waves slapped against the barge and the nearby sea boiled as it grew hotter and hotter.

An
ancient age had ended today. The animated corpses of Naamah, Tubal-Cain and old Zared had gone from this Earth. With them disappeared Yggdrasil, the seedling from the Tree of Knowledge. What dark schemes would Naamah have unleashed if given the opportunity?

Lod shouted hoarsely into the hold
for the men to row harder. Then he steered the best that he was able. Despite his shoulder, Lod grinned in his beard. Fire and bloodshed and the breaking of teeth—he meant to scour the world of Nephilim evil and stamp it out with a vengeance. This was a good day, even if it heralded the passing of Zared, son of Jared. He would remember the old man.

Then
Lod put such thoughts aside as he guided the barge toward land. He had a vessel and a crew again. What’s more, he had a fateful sword, a dangerous weapon. He would put it to good use. Yes, it was time to plan, but first he bowed his head and said a prayer of gratitude to Elohim.

He was alive, and he had greater wisdom
because of this day. Somehow, he had to devise a plan, one that would slay the god of Poseidonis and rid the world of his evil presence.

The Bronze Mask

By a long and circuitous route, Lod returned to Lord Uriah and the Suttung Sea region. He brought the sword of Tubal-Cain with him, but he left it in Havilah Holding when he went to Shamgar to hunt for Irad the Arkite. He feared the sword might fall into evil hands otherwise.

The first war against Gog as told in
Giants
,
Leviathan
and
The Tree of Life
brought Lod full circle. He went to the swamps of Shamgar to do his part. The stories
Gog
and
Behemoth
tell of Lod’s fate there and beyond.

Sometime after the actions as related in
Behemoth
, Lod once again found himself in the region of the Suttung Sea. Here one named Aran tells of the beginning of the second war against Gog.

-1-

Nineteen of us remained, desperate, wet and miserable. We huddled under huge old oak trees on a hill overlooking the trade road that led to the Arkite Mountain passes. Sleet slashed against the leaves and ricocheted onto our faces. If we weren’t so damned hungry, not even Lod could have kept us waiting for the caravan.

I
preserved my saber in oiled cloth, clutched against my chest. Water had soaked the leather I wore as a hood. An icy drop leaked from it and slithered under my collar. It made me clench my teeth so I wouldn’t shiver.

Those around me had laid their sabers on wet leaves or even in the mud. They used the oiled cloth as shawls. Maybe that’s why Lod had moved apart. The point was to keep our sabers from rusting. The finely tempered swords were more precious than gold. At least that’s what Lod had said on our first raid when we’d found them in a gilded chest. If he had to remind the men of that, he might hit someone. That would be bad for morale
. The men had become whiny as if we were a pack of mangy hounds.

“Tell him, Aran. This just ain’t no good.”

I refused to look up and acknowledge the words directed at me.

“Bezel has read the omens,” Jot said behind me. “You know that. This is a cursed day. If we stay, all we’ll have is more rotten luck.”

Several of the men glanced at me. I saw the hope on their wet faces, a dog’s hope that its master won’t kick it anymore. They were afraid. We were always afraid before a raid. But it was worse today, if you could call this gloomy weather day.

“Aran—”

I shook my head.

The rain kept pouring, forming rivulets in the mud and trickling past our feet. Mine were wet, my boots soaked. Half the band went barefoot. The rest
of us would be in a few more weeks. Except for our first two raids, we had proven to be miserable outlaws. I couldn’t understand why Lod stayed with us.

“Tell him, Aran.” This time a blunt finger jabbed into my back.

Without turning around, I said, “You tell him.”

“Lod don’t listen to me.”

If I turned around that would shake water from the leather over my head so it drained under my collar. Some of that would trickle down my back and
that
would make me shiver. So I stayed still, crouched under these foully dripping leaves.

We endured and waited for the caravan to appear. Then to our left a small section of hill crumpled. It just slid down, mud, leaves and old branches. Water gushed like a waterfall, although it quickly lessened into something a giant might’ve sounded like if he took a piss. The leaves, mud and water slewed into a gully.

“That’s another omen, ain’t it, Bezel?” one of the others said.

“Could be,” Bezel said in his old man’s voice.

The others began muttering. I heard, “We ought to just slip away. Let Lod raid the caravan if he wants. I just want to be warm again.”

“And find something to eat,” another added.

I stood abruptly.

The others looked up at me, some in fear.

“Nobody’s running away,” I said. “We’re a band. We’re brothers. We all swore on that when Lod offered to help us. We swore in Elohim’s name.”

“We’re starving. We’re soaked to the skin. Maybe we’ve all been fools.”

I looked to see who had said that, but each man dropped his gaze, even old Bezel with his gray beard. We were all starting to look similar: beggars with ragged clothes.

“I’ll talk to Lod,” I said.

“Just don’t mention any names,” Jot said.

I scowled. I’d been doing some thinking. “Nobody said this would be easy,” I said. “But we’ve got reason to be here. Tam, Gog’s men butchered your stud bull, remember? Jot, the enforcer whipped you in the village square. Do you remember how they yanked down your pants, Bezel? The enforcer branded your ass before all the women. All of us have reason
for taking up weapons. Now which of you wants to go crawling back on his belly to Gog’s men?” Before anyone could answer, I added, “They’ll whip you to the bone now. They’ll kick you in the ribs until they break. They might even nail you to a tree.”

“We could slip back,” Jot said. “
Or fade into Dishon on the coast, become dockworkers there. At least we’d eat our fill.”

I tore away the oiled cloth and brandished my saber. “Nobody’s running away from his brothers, not unless Lod lets him go.” I looked around. “Which of you wants to fight me?”

I was the youngest, maybe the third strongest, not counting Lod. He was stronger than any five of us. But I was the fastest, faster even than Lod. Maybe more importantly, I hated with some of the fury that drove Lod.

“I’ll talk to him,” I said, “if you promise to wait.”

“Of course we’ll wait,” Bezel said. “We’re just talking. We’re hungry. Hungry and cold.”

Several others nodded.

I opened my jacket, wiped the blade against the driest part and wrapped the oiled cloth back around the sword. Only then did I slip and slide through the mud. This was a miserable day, too gloomy, too filled with bad luck and ill feelings. Couldn’t Lod sense it?

Our leader
stood on a boulder and stared down at the trade road. The rain lashed around him. Of course, he ignored it. He ignored everything that other men complained about. A bull of man, Lod wore a leather jerkin and breeches. He was strong, with misshapen lumps for hands and gnarled fingers. That had come from drawing the slave oar for twenty long years. What truly marked Lod were his features: long white hair and a flowing white beard, with intense blue eyes that burned with the madness of a desert prophet.

Lod
waged a one-man war against the Nephilim, against their father Gog, the First Born who claimed to be a god and now had taken over these lands, the backwoods areas between Dishon and Carthalo on the coast. Before my birth, this had been Nebo Land. They were Stone Age primitives, living a wretched existence. For reasons known only to them, the Nebo had left this region and moved closer to Shamgar, the prime lair of Gog’s expanding kingdom.

Lod knew more than we did
about the Nebo, the politics of the coastal cities and Gog, and I think sometimes he had a particular reason for being here. He was an old soldier who tried to train us. Sometimes I thought he tried to teach sheep how to be wolves. The two successful raids had each been the same. We had burst out of the forest, screaming and waving our weapons. Most of the caravan guards had run away. Lod had killed the tough ones. We others had slain those we could catch. We had been excited to see those who usually tormented us running away for their lives. It had been even better hacking them to death, although I always felt soiled afterward. I’m not sure why.

I came
to stand beside the rock Lod stood on, about to open my mouth.

“The men are edgy,” Lod said in his heavy voice. He kept looking down the road
, searching. Until then, I hadn’t even been sure he knew I was here.

I nodded, although he probably didn’t see that. “It’s the rain,” I said.

“The rain is our ally,” he said, “yes, in more ways than one. I think this is the kind of weather they’ll use to move him.”

I didn’t know what he meant by that. I didn’t really care. But
I surprised myself by saying, “Not when you’re cold and hungry the rain isn’t your ally.”

Lod looked down at me.

A week ago, his look would have shriveled my tongue. Most of the men stammered when Lod addressed them personally. In a way, he was more like the Nephilim than he was like us. He didn’t have the blood of the high in him, but he was a killer. Where the Nephilim were rabid sabertooths. Lod seemed a savage guard dog. We were the sheep. I’d lost some of my fear of Lod because he’d taught me the sword in the evenings. He barked his instructions and often punctuated them with a blow against my wooden practice blade that numbed my hand.

“What does being cold and hungry have to do with anything?” he asked.

According to what he had told us before, Lod had endured twenty long years at the oar. Some of the men didn’t believe it, but I did. Lod didn’t feel pain the way others did. Or if he did feel the aches, the hunger pangs, he submerged them with his blazing hatred of the Nephilim and Gog.

“Some of the men are thinking about running
away,” I said.

Lod jumped off the rock. Mud squelched at his landing. Some spattered against my breeches. He put a leathery hand on my shoulder
and squeezed with his powerful fingers.

“I’ll tell you a secret, lad. Ten dedicated men can do more than a hundred indifferent scoundrels. One man filled with holy zeal is better than ten dedicated warriors. You have the fire, Aran.”