Lod the Galley Slave (Lost Civilizations) (2 page)

Four triangular heads arrowed straight for him, ears laid flat and sleek, furry bodies hidden in the waters. Beady rat
eyes shone and the oily surface rippled with their passage. The black rat, dwarfing the others, swam that much faster, a champion among the creatures of the canals.

Normally Lod might have waited
, for his timing had become exquisite. Because his wrists had been tied, he turned, kicked his legs and used a crippled dog-paddle-stroke with his arms.

“
No!” the hunter hissed. “Wait for my signal.”

Lod ignored such madness as he threw a glance over his shoulder. The rats swam faster
because he tried to escape, although the wily black rat had submerged.

“
Wait!” hissed the hunter. “They’re slowing down.”

Thoughts of the black rat in the depths drove Lod
’s legs and made his dog-paddle stroke a clumsy splash. The gondola was ten feet away. The hunter crouched low, a trident in his hand, no doubt the cord attached to it around his throwing wrist.

As the other rats slowed, their noses quivering, Lod felt sharp teeth gash his foot. He shouted. The other rats squealed in rage, and hurried toward him. Pain knifed in
to Lod’s leg. He kicked hard with his other foot, striking a furry snout. Then he flutter-kicked and dog-paddled with his two wrists tied together.

The rat hunter rose and hurled a trident, with a cord trailing behind the missile. A rat squealed with pain, and two others turned on it. They were cannibalistic, eagerly ready to devour their own. For those two it was their undoing. The rat hunter flung the lead-weighted net, capturing them with their dying brother.

The great black rat surfaced, Lod’s blood staining its incisors. If his hands had been free, Lod would have raked the beast with his fingers and snarled like the mighty sabertooth cats of his homeland. Instead, he kicked, reached out and clumsily draped his bound hands over the gunwale. With a grunt, he heaved himself into the boat. The gondola rocked. The hunter cursed, and the trident in his hand splashed into the water.

Lod huffed and puffed, and he checked the slashes in his foot and leg. They were minor cuts. Under his breath, he thanked Elohim. They might
flow with pus later but they shouldn’t infect him too much.

“
Fool!” the hunter shouted.

Lod regarded the red-faced man.

“You made me drop my trident, and now the black rat is gone. He was the prize I wanted.”

“
You would have had him if my hands had been free,” Lod said.

The hunter
’s bleary eyes bulged. With a hiss, the gutting knife came out as the hunter crouched. He yanked Lod’s head back and pressed the blade against his throat.

“
You dare speak back? Do you wish me to bind your feet, too?”

Lod yearned to pummel the hunter to death. Instead, swallowing his rage, he said,
“No, master. Forgive me.”

For a wild instant, Lod was certain the hunter would slash his throat. Then the
man shouted furiously, yanked him upright and hurled him over the side.

“
Retrieve my trident, slave.”

Lod dove into the murky water
, kicking deep, and soon he groped in the muck. He touched broken glass, and almost cut his fingers. Then his hand curled around wood. The trident—it felt good in his grip. It was a weapon. He pushed off the bottom and surfaced seconds later with the trident in his hands.

“
Hurry,” the hunter said. “Give it here.”

The feel of a weapon in his hands intoxicated Lod.

“Slave!” the hunter snarled, grabbing the gunwale with one hand. He leaned out and held forth his other hand. “Give me the trident. Hurry, give it to me.”

As he treaded water, Lod thrust the prongs into the hunter
’s belly. The man howled, falling, tearing the trident out of Lod’s grasp.

Lod thrust his wrists upon the gunwale and heaved upward, kicking, wriggling his belly onto the rail as he reached for the hunter
’s knife. With a coarse hand, the man grabbed Lod’s wrists. Lod snarled and shoved the dying man’s hand aside. He grabbed the knife’s bone hilt. Then Lod flopped back into the water, taking the knife with him. He madly sawed the eel-skin leash attached to his collar and to the boat. He sawed until the rope parted. Then, with his teeth, he began to tear at the leather binding his wrists, for he could not turn the knife to cut so close to his hands. He yanked and pulled at the leather knot, working feverishly to free himself.

“
You’ll die first,” the hunter whispered.

From the water
Lod stared up, his face a mask.

The hunter clung to the gunwale, wheezing, with his features ashen. He took a painful gasp and bellowed into the fog for help.

“…what was that?” a voice asked.

“
Help!” the hunter shouted. “My rat bait has stabbed me.”

“
Hold on!” the hidden man shouted.

The hunter
grimaced at Lod. Then his eyes glazed as he collapsed.

Lod twisted and dove like an otter, kicking through the murky waters as he gnawed at the impossibly tight knot.

-2-

Like phantasmal octopi from a dreamer
’s nightmare, vaporous tendrils tightened their grip on the city’s canals and sandy channels. Fog glided from the walkways, slipped from the varied cobblestone plazas and piers. As the sun took its first tentative steps into the sky, the mists clung solely to the waterways. A maze of canals and channels threaded past slaver barracks, merchant warehouses, palaces, four-story tenements, timber-built strongholds and galley pens.

The latter two places infested the swamp city like the pox. Brigands and sea reavers used Shamgar as their base. Brutal galley law bound each compound, enforced by the chieftain
’s fist, blade or the bribes he paid in gold, wine or the flesh of women.

Above the mist and the alleyways where beggars shivered and lepers huddled, above the squalid parapets where wary sea rovers patrolled, higher even than the towers stained with seagull guano, arose a vast, blunt acropolis. It rose like a shark
’s fin over the sea of dwellings, and like a deadly Great White, it made even the blood thirstiest reaver blanch. For on the acropolis was the dread Temple of Gog. The edifice was unlike any in the city. Marble imported from afar towered twenty stories high in a cyclopean cathedral of evil. It was gargantuan, a symbol of megalomania, arrogance and will to power.

The city
’s largest canal led past the acropolis. The canal’s thickest mists vomited a lone five-oared boat ablaze with lanterns. A boy beat a warning drum, the oars moving rhythmically and fast. The instant boat-wood scraped against stone, a brute leaped out and hurried across the wharf onto the Temple plaza. He passed man-tall tripods where braziers smoked, their scented coals throwing off a dying glow. With the dawn’s light, the attending priests had departed, taking their stepladders, skull necklaces and bags of costly incense.

The brute—he wore a black jacket, black leathers and shiny black boots—hurried up broad marble steps.
Huge, massively built, he had thick simian shoulders and an elephantine neck. Only partly human, he had a long black ponytail bound by golden rings and a trident tattoo red on his forehead. The forehead was much too wide. His hands were outlandish, strangler-sized, and his baleful eyes swirled with promises of death. A notorious killer, he wore a finely tempered blade in a gruesome scabbard. He was Kron the Enforcer.

His sire had summoned him, the reason for his haste—and his fear.

None but a fool entered Gog’s presence without a twisting of innards. Gog the Oracle, Firstborn, child of Magog the Accursed. Kron’s skin crawled. Forbidding secrets surrounded that last name, horrible legends. There had been a time when the Old Ones had walked the Earth and ruled like tyrants, like gods. Their true name was
bene elohim
. Kron bared horse-sized, viciously strong teeth. Magog the Accursed was a fallen star, a rebel angel driven from the heavens and one who had dared cloak himself in flesh. Kron’s baleful eyes shone with dread. A day had come, a frightful moment when shining ones from above had dragged Magog down into Tartarus. There they had bound him in adamant chains for the day of Elohim’s wrath. So told the grimmest legends.

Kron growled a curse. Did he wish to damn himself? It was ill luck to think such thoughts. He concentrated on the present as he wiped perspiration from his tattooed brow. Why had Gog summoned him? Had his sire swept aside the mystic veil and peered yet again into the future?

Each child of the Accursed, unto the third generation, had a gift, an ability uniquely his own. Gog could peer into future paths that might be…if enough blood greased the way and the stars aligned themselves just so.

This particular gift countless people craved, countless petitioners begged Gog to grant them a favor. They seldom saw the First
Born directly. Gog lived apart in the catacombs below. Petitioners pressed parchments and rolled scrolls into the hands of his priests. For his favor, they brought gifts and promised Gog servitude or an alliance. With this prophetic power and countless favors granted, Gog had welded together a spidery empire, striking down those who might trouble him.

Rumors abounded that the king of Pildash and crafty merchants of Dishon had made the trek, as had many around the Suttung Sea eager to know the future. In the past a
giant from the Kragehul Steppes had come, and Gibborim from faraway Poseidonis. From Larak, Eridu and mighty Caphtor itself they had trickled in dark pilgrimage. Even proud sons of Cain, Jogli nomads, had begged an audience with Gog.

Kron took a deep breath, attempting calm. He strode toward the Temple entrance where awaited thirteen shaven priests bearing torches. He didn
’t fear them. They were only men. Men were animals, like jackasses or oxen, some reminded him of wolves or even panthers, but they were all still just beasts. They carried none of the blood of the high. They had no lineage to the Old Ones.

On the darkest nights
, when gloom bit his heart, he pondered his diluted blood and his sire’s pedigree. Gog was First Born. He, Kron, was merely a Nephilim, half that of his sire.

“
You’re late,” the chief priest said, his silken robe of funeral purple.

If any other
man
had spoken to Kron so, he would have smashed the leering face with a single blow, breaking the eggshell brittleness that made a human skull. Instead, Kron’s innards clenched and his dark eyes tightened.

“
You have composed yourself?” the chief priest asked.

Kron sought the calm
he needed, dipping his head.

“
Follow me,” the chief priest said, slurring his words, betraying a mind gripped by the black poppy of Poseidonis.

Only so intoxicated, realized Kron, could mere men serenely enter the inner chamber of Gog.

The thirteen priests lifted their torches, guiding him past towering marble columns. They seemed like mice in a great house. The Temple dwarfed them, dwarfed Kron, making him feel insignificant. He loathed the emotion, warred against it in the darkness of his soul. Gog, Gog the Oracle, Sire and Lord, Suzerain of his Nephilim. The Temple blackness drifted around the knot of crackling light. The swollen dark seemed like clammy fingers. Kron massaged his throat as he increased his pace, keeping among the vacant-eyed priests. He glanced often at the tiles, expecting vipers, scorpions or centipedes to slither into view. The place had that feel.

Huge bronze doors loomed before them, massive doors bigger than a giant or a great sloth. When closed
, the portal looked strong enough to halt a rampaging mastodon.

As they neared the titanic entrance, halting before it,
the place seemed as if a black pit yawned before them. It sucked the warmth from Kron and stole his courage. He began to quake.

“
Gog,” the chief priest said.

“
Gog!” the others chanted.

“
Come.” It was a single word emanating from the depths of the darkness. It rang heavily, vibrantly and terrifyingly deep.

The priests resumed their drugged march. Kron stumbled after them, entering the inner sanctum. The darkness increased its weight the farther they trod. The gloom pressed down so the flickering circle of visibility shrank. It was an awful phenomenon. Dimly, Kron perceived monstrous idols looming along the path. They were colossi of the Old Ones in bronze, iron and granite.

Now a vile stench arose, a mixture of sulfur, putrid carrion and a reek Kron couldn’t place. The radius of torchlight weakened even more, until the priests seemed like a tiny oasis in a surging sea of blackness.

Kron trembled, for he sensed a vast being before him, one who cloaked himself in darkness.
He heard a rattle of chains and a dreadful moan. Torches blazed and the swirling dark parted to reveal a gargantuan ebon altar. Blood trickled down the altar’s sides. Then—before more could be taken in—a slippery thing, like a giant eel or tentacle, slid into view as the shadows congealed and thickened.