Lod the Galley Slave (Lost Civilizations) (5 page)

“
Boy,” the Nephilim said.

Lod whipped his attention back to the one named Kron.

“What do you know of otters?” Kron asked. It was a strange question.

That narrowed Lod
’s gaze as he wondered where the trick lay in this. Yet he answered. “Some say I swim like one.”

“
Ah,” Kron said, nodding. “Yes, that silk hides a collar. You are rat bait.”

“
No more.”

“
No?”

“
I am free,” Lod said.

Many laughed, but not Kron. He dwarfed everyone here. He was massive, utterly menacing. He studied Lod so intently that the laughter soon died.

“Gog has seen you, rat bait,” Kron said.

Lod frowned.

“It was in his prophetic sight,” Kron said. “Apparently you have a gift. You are a madman.” Kron chuckled. “Well…you are a youngling muscled as a pit slave and have the feel of deadliness like a veteran knife-wielder. And you speak of freedom, a strange word for bait. Yet, Gog has seen you, and he has found your future distasteful. Thus, he has sent me to sever your head from your shoulders.”

“
Seraph,” whispered the yellowed-haired outlander, the warrior with the scarlet cloak. He made to rise. His friend—an older man—held him fast.

Kron raised a sardonic eyebrow as his gaze flickered from the warrior to Lod and back.

A sailor hissed at the warrior, “Are you mad?”

The warrior slumped back to his spot at the table.

Kron shrugged, and he gave his full attention back to Lod. “Gog has sent me for you, if you can believe that. Your future ends here today.”

Lod bared his teeth, his heart hammering. How he hated them.
“Elohim,” he said, “let me die well.”

Kron’s
features contorted with rage and perhaps too with a touch of fear. Those massive shoulders hunched, while the muscles on his neck stood out. “This is Gog’s city!” he thundered. “It is he we worship!”

“
Not me!” shouted the yellow-haired warrior. He was breathing hard, with his right hand twitching. Those nearest him leaped up, backing into shadows.

The warrior shook off his friend
’s restraining hand and leaped to his feet. He had princely features, with green eyes and an aquiline nose. Under his scarlet cloak he wore fish-scaled bronze armor and baggy breeches. At his side hung a short heavy sword.

“
So and so,” Kron said, who had recovered his poise, although his nostrils flared. “It all begins to come together. You’re an Elonite.”

Many of those who watched shook their heads. Insane valor
filled those from the plains of Elon and thereby compelled them to brave deeds.

“
You’re far from home,
charioteer
,” Kron said.

“
I’m Herrek of Teman Clan,” the Elonite proclaimed.

“
You’re mad!” a sailor cried.

“
Bow to Gog, you fool!” another shouted.

“
Admit you’re drunk,” a woman said, “and you may yet live.”

“
Lad,” the Elonite Herrek said. “Come over here.”

“
Stand aside!” Kron roared with baleful eyes.

Herrek the Elonite charioteer, swayed, blinking, and it seemed certain he would retreat. Then Herrek looked upon Lod.

Lod didn’t cringe, didn’t cower. His eyes blazed with wrath, impotent though his anger might be.

Herrek straightened, and he told the massive Nephilim.
“I claim the lad.”

Amazement marked that too-broad
face. Kron peered at Lod anew and it seemed, if just for a moment, doubt flickered across those arrogant features. Then Kron uttered a harsh word. At the signal, the two attendants stepped forward, freeing their hooked swords, flanking the Elonite.

Herrek also bore a sword, and he shouted, gliding toward the
man to his left. He didn’t await death, but tried to deal it. Herrek lunged, slid his blade over the hooked sword and into the attendant’s guts. The man dropped to his knees, clutching his ruined stomach. Herrek spun, his scarlet cloak lifting, and he caught the second henchman’s blade on his own. The ring of steel was loud in the stunned silence. Three times their blades clashed. Then Herrek twisted his leather-protected wrist and the second attendant sank to the floor with a groan.

Kron hissed through his horse-sized teeth.

With his sword, Herrek beckoned Kron. It was an absurd but brave gesture, worthy of a Western plains charioteer.

Kron drew his sword the way an iceberg might. The
blade looked puny against his bulk. Herrek roared a desperate war cry and charged.

The clash of steel, the blur of speed awed the sailors, reavers and Lod, who watched open-mouthed. Clearly, Herrek the Elonite was an artist of the blade. The clangor awoke in Lod admiration for the man. Herrek had strength and extraordinary skill. Unfortunately, he fought an element
al of destruction. The massive Nephilim met every blow, parried each trick and maneuver. He did it effortlessly, with his face and emotions seemingly blank. Herrek soon panted as sweat slicked his cheeks.

The uneven fight stoked the fires in Lod
’s soul. He knew then his reason for being. He must search the world for Nephilim and kill them.

“
Now let us fight,” Kron said. He increased the tempo. Herrek, with his lips frozen in a rigid smile, wildly twisted, ducked and parried with the clashing of sparks. His hair was lank, plastered to his sweat-dripping face.

“
Fight, little man,” Kron urged, and he beat his sword against the Elonite’s as if an anvil with a hammer. Herrek’s arm and sword swung back, leaving him exposed. Kron slashed his sword across Herrek’s chest. Sparks sprayed off the bronze armor and Herrek went stumbling backward.

Kron lumbered after him, saying,
“Let us make it your head next time.”

Lod grabbed the gutting knife hidden under his tunic, the one tied to his leg. His head swam with visions of victory and hard-given vengeance.

“None of that,” whispered a sleek vulture of a necromancer. Few had seen him enter and slip behind the rat bait. With mummy-dry fingers, the necromancer touched Lod’s arm.

Lod cried out. His knife clattered onto the wooden floor. Then those horrid fingers latched onto his shoulders and the necromancer began muttering vilely into his ear.

Herrek gave a belabored cry, clutched his sword with two hands as he desperately stove off Kron’s ringing hammer blows.

“
We serve Gog here,” Kron said, increasing the tempo yet again, forcing Herrek back. “The strong take from the weak.” Kron swung his mightiest blow yet.

Herrek met it, and the extraordinary shock of it flung him against the wall. His eyes betrayed exhaustion and terrible defeat. Panting, he let his arms sink to his sides.

Kron lumbered up, saying, “It is a good rule, a wise rule, the very law of life.”

The necromancer screamed as Lod
’s teeth sank into his pale forearm. Then Lod dashed free and across the room. Kron glanced over his shoulder. In that moment Herrek shouted wildly and struck. Kron effortlessly slid aside the blow, and he gave his full attention back to Herrek.

Lod leaped upon a table and hurled himself at Kron
’s massive back. It was like a bobcat leaping upon a bear. The braided eel-rope no longer clung to Lod’s leg. He had wrapped one end around his right fist and the other around his left. Lod crashed upon Kron. He whipped the eel-rope around the elephantine throat. He crossed his hands and yanked back with all his youthful strength. He drove his knees into the Nephilim’s back as his ropy muscles grew taut. Lod strained, heaving, trying to dig the eel-rope deeper into flesh.

The Nephilim gasped, staggering. His eyes bulged. With his huge left hand, he reached back. Lod sank bloody teeth into the Nephilim
’s palm.

Herrek beat aside Kron
’s blade. Then Herrek plunged his sword into the huge chest, twisted his blade and withdrew bloody steel as gore gushed out the horrid wound. Kron reeled drunkenly as Lod tightened his grip, choking off air.

Whatever spell had held the tavern broke.
At the terrible crime committed here, against a Nephilim, a son of Gog—pandemonium erupted. Men and women streamed for the door, clawing and fighting to get out.

“
No!” shrieked the necromancer, hate animating his normally lifeless features. From his skin-sack, he lifted a bleached skull as blood dripped from his forearm. His wormy lips twisted the air with forbidden words and flakes of bone drifted from the naked skull. Then all at once it whooshed, bone chips and fragments showering from his hands as an oily mass of vaporous evil billowed upward. The necromancer pitched his cupped hands toward Lod.

As the necromancer did this, the one-eyed man who had held a cleaver, screaming and panicked like all the rest—who had retreated deeper into the tavern and was now one of the last to flee for the exit—bumped hard against the necromancer. From his blind side, the one-eyed man crashed against the spellcaster, not even aware that
he was there. The one-eyed man didn’t stay to apologize, but deflected as he was, smashed head-on against a post and thereby dashed himself senseless, most likely saving his life.

The necromancer stumbled while in the process of flinging his spell. The swirling, oily mass above him, the vaporous, faintly shrieking cloud, catapulted not at Lod as probably intended, but toward the milling sea of humanity clawing at the entrance.

“No,” the necromancer said.

Most in the crowd fell dead, tongues swelling blackly and eyes dissolving into a gory morass. One among them was the Black Lotus, the priest-assassin. Others fought with greater zeal as fiery pain dotted their skin with erupting sores. Inanna the Beastmaster was also
caught within the spell. Outside an eagle screamed and a panther snarled, their wills freed from her formerly dominating control.

The sequence of events was swift, unnoticed by
the straining Lod, his face matching in a bizarre fashion the purple of Kron’s features. The strange roars, screeches and death cries mingled with the horrible shrieks and bellows of the crowd. Because of their depletion, more people began to gain the exit.

Meanwhile
Kron, with his eyelids fluttering, propelled himself backward, gaining speed. Lod sprang away, rolling between tables, just as the Nephilim thumped hard against a wall. Kron wheezed, and as he stumbled forward, bounced off the wall. He struggled to remain upright. His lifeblood soaked his leathers and dripped onto the sawdust-littered floor. In seconds, able to breathe again and regaining his balance, he raised his sword, although it wavered and trembled.

“
Come,” he said, in a terrible voice, while spitting black blood, “dare to engage me.”

Lod grabbed a spear. Herrek raised his blade. The second Elonite, an older man, picked up a shield and joined them. The three closed in on the Nephilim.

Then Lod caught a flicker of movement in the shadows. “Behind you!” he shouted.

Herrek whirled around. The necromancer raised a curved dagger, rushing in. A single lightning slash from Herrek sent the necromancer reeling away, his throat spraying mist.

“I will be avenged,” Kron whispered. His shaking arm dropped until the sword-tip clunked against the floor. He crashed to his knees.

“
Remember me in Sheol!” Lod shouted, as he charged.

Herrek advanced, with the shield man beside him. Moving faster than the other two, Lod drove his spear into the Nephilim
’s side.

-6-

Hours later, deep in the Temple, Gog learned the news. He brooded in darkness, knowing that a formidable enemy had just escaped his grasp. He had glimpsed the future and understood that those who served the one whose name he had never uttered called such as Lod,
seraph
.

Apparently, it meant,
“heart of fire.”

Gog
gave immediate orders to scour the swamps, but he felt certain that Lod and his two companions would win free in their stolen rat-boat. He had learned the news too late.

There would come a day of reckoning, of this Gog was certain,
and had even glimpsed that in his visions. He grunted, a sound that made the bound priests who had failed to capture Lod tremble in sick terror.

Gog was patient. He had lived countless years, even as reckoned by the sons of Adam. When the accounting came…ah yes, then the madman Lod would pay in agonies yet
to be invented. On this, Gog made a horribly binding oath.

Only then did he turn his attention to these laggards, these priests who had failed him. He picked up the first and grunted a second time. The hideous shrieks
of the fool soothed the rage boiling in Gog’s soul.

The King of Great Sloths

Not all stories from the Pre-Cataclysmic Age were about Lod. Strange powers came down with the
bene elohim
and afterward with the shining ones who made war against them. Many of those powers departed after the end of the Thousand Years War. Some remained and altered the landscape and the animals in them.