Lod the Galley Slave (Lost Civilizations) Read online

  Fantasy Books by Vaughn Heppner:

  LOST CIVILIZATION SERIES

  Giants

  Leviathan

  The Tree of Life

  Gog

  Behemoth

  Lod the Warrior

  Lod the Galley Slave

  THE ARK CHRONICLES

  People of the Ark

  People of the Flood

  People of Babel

  People of the Tower

  DARK GODS SERIES

  Death Knight

  The Dragon Horn

  Assassin of the Damned

  OTHER FANTASY BOOKS

  The Assassin of Carthage

  Elves and Dragons

  Strontium-90

  Visit www.Vaughnheppner.com for more information.

  Lod the Galley Slave

  (Lost Civilizations)

  by Vaughn Heppner

  Copyright © 2014 by the author.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, without permission in writing from the author.

  The Oracle of Gog

  The legends of Lod were many, a grim hero of the Pre-Cataclysmic Age. That was long before the pyramids of Egypt rose and centuries before the ships of Crete ruled the seas. In that misty era of sabertooths, mammoths and behemoths, the demonic Nephilim walked the Earth. They were the sons of the bene elohim, who had come down from the celestial sphere and taken wives from among the daughters of men.

  Lod may have been born somewhere along the shores of the Suttung Sea. The ancient sagas first mention him as rat bait in the wicked city of Shamgar. That is where he learned his first harsh lessons of life.

  I laid at his feet ten gold bars, twenty silver sacks and slaves both comely and strong. To the one hidden in shadows I bowed, and with my dagger cut my wrist, dripping blood, binding my soul with dreadful oaths. Then did Gog speak. He beheld my future. Now my sire is dead, my uncles slain, and I am king of the land.

  - From the Testament of Zoar

  -1-

  “We’ll try the Street of Harlots today,” the rat hunter whispered. A bearded, evil-faced ruffian, he plied a gondola’s long oar.

  Lod—the rat hunter’s bait—made no reply. He had found that stillness and corresponding silence warded off the misty chill better than rubbing his shoulders or wishing for a garment or blanket.

  Lod was a mixture of gangly youth and rawboned size. His broad, whip-scarred back matched his big hands and feet. Muscles like ropes twisted across him. He had no fat because his young body devoured every scrap of goat meat and soggy turnip he could find.

  “Keep watch,” the rat hunter whispered.

  Hunched at the prow like a Nebo primitive, with tangled hair and a twist of linen around his loins, Lod squinted through the mist at the canal’s oily water.

  The thump of rowing stopped as the rat hunter scowled at Lod. Boat-wood creaked as the man stepped toward the prow where Lod crouched.

  Lifting a knout, a leather whip, the rat hunter shouted, “Answer me when I speak to you!” His knout slashed through the air.

  When the leather hit Lod’s back, it burned like fire. But Lod kept hunched at the prow, his callused hands clutching the braided eel-rope attached to his collar. He bit his lips, mastering the pain, and his strange blue eyes blazed like some desert prophet gone mad.

  “Did you hear me?” the hunter hissed.

  Lod’s knuckles whitened as he clenched the leash binding him to the gondola. The leather thongs hissed through the air again. Lod groaned as they bit into his flesh.

  “Answer me, slave.”

  Lod shuddered as his pale face drained of color, matching his abnormal white hair.

  “By Gog!” the hunter hissed, striking a third time. He used brutal strength, drawing blood. “You will answer me.”

  “I hear,” Lod said.

  “Master!” snarled the hunter. “I hear, master.”

  Lod nodded as sweat oozed and mingled with the blood on his back.

  The knout dropped onto wood as steel slid free. Gnarled fingers twined into Lod’s hair and a gutting knife touched his cheek. The words whispered into his ear reached his nostrils. They reeked of sour ale and chewed kanda-leaf.

  “Who rules here, slave?”

  “You do,” Lod said.

  “I will only ask once more.”

  “You do…master,” rumbled Lod, in a voice that belied his youth.

  The hunter let go and stepped back, sheathing his dagger. “Face me, slave.”

  Lod unfolded from his Nebo crouch, and on his hands and knees, he faced the hunter. A folded net lay in the middle of the boat. Beside it were three long tridents. The fourth was in the hunter’s rope-roughened hands, with the razor-sharp prongs aimed at Lod’s face.

  “You’ve survived where none has,” the hunter said. His teeth were stained black by years of kanda-leaf chewing. “You’ve lived where everyone else has died. What’s your secret, eh? Where do you gain this mulishness?”

  “I do not know, master,” Lod lied.

  A sneer curled the bearded lip. “Then maybe I’ll sell you to a beastmaster.”

  Something akin to fear sprouted in Lod’s heart. He hated it, but the fear gnawed into his iron-hard belly.

  “I am good bait,” he said.

  “You know how to lure the vermin,” the hunter agreed. “But if you defy me again, I will sell you to a beastmaster. I’ll knock out your teeth first and break every finger. Then the beastmaster will use you as feed for the leopards he trains to attack men.”

  Fear tasted like bile in Lod’s mouth. He dropped his head, bowing before the hunter, hiding his hatred.

  The rat hunter laughed, an ugly noise. “That’s better. Now attend to your post, bait, and keep a sharp lookout.”

  “Yes, master,” Lod whispered.

  The hunter took the long oar, the single one he swept back and forth at the end of the boat, rowing through the misty canals of Shamgar.

  The rising sun brought a bloody glint to the fog. Shadowy domes, towers and square fortresses appeared like ghosts. Morning sounds heralded the dawn: a bucket of filth heaved into a canal, a gong waking its household, the shrill cries of swamp-beasts who had grown bold during the night. Somewhere in the murk, a priest of Gog called a paean of praise from his minaret, while the crack of a whip, shouted curses and heavy clinks of chain meant a slaver drove his wares early to market.

  The mists thinned here. Lod squinted. Fifty feet out, crates bobbed in the water. Atop the biggest crate, licking an obscene claw, hunched a black canal rat the size of a rutting he-goat.

  Before Lod could signal him, the rat hunter locked the oar, crept near and whispered, “Today we’ll try something new. Turn around, stretch out your hands and put your wrists together.”

  Lod reluctantly obeyed.

  The rat hunter bound Lod’s wrists with a braided eel-rope, looping it three times and tying it with a sailor’s knot. The hunter’s rough hands, his craggy features and the skill with which he tied the knot betrayed his former station as a reaver of the Inland Sea. Whatever had brought him down to scouring Shamgar’s canals was a secret he had never shared with his bait.

  The hunter grinned, exposing his black-stained teeth. “Do you know there’s a bet on you?”

  Lod hunched dumbly like an ox, contemplating his bound wrists, afraid that if he spoke his anger might reveal itself. He had often thought of slaying his owner
, but in Shamgar, they impaled such slaves. Lod shuddered. He had witnessed impalement before. Brutish men held down the screaming slave while others hammered a sharp stake up the man’s—Lod squeezed his eyes shut, willing the memory gone. They had planted the dying slave upright so he writhed in agony and thereby provided edification for any others with similar thoughts of freedom.

  “Some say no rat will ever gut you,” the hunter was whispering. “Others predict that with me as your new master your days are sorely numbered. What has it been? Three weeks now?”

  Lod lifted his head and stared into pitiless cruelty. He understood then that a bettor had slipped silver into the hunter’s palm to weight the outcome.

  The hunter sneered, and with his powerful rope-roughened right hand he slapped Lod across the face. “Don’t stare at me, slave. Keep your eyes lowered before your master.”

  Lod dropped his gaze as he tasted coppery blood.

  Calloused fingers squeezed his shoulder. “Look at the size of you, and with muscles like brass. Who ever heard of bait like you? Gershon was right to fear his bait-boy.” The hunter struck his own chest. “But I know how to handle bait big or small, submissive or defiant. See that fat black bastard preening his claws. It’s surely a double-weight catch, well over one hundred pounds of vicious canal rat.”

  Lod choked down his hatred. “Master,” he said, “I need free hands in order to play dead. My movements now will be too jerky and I will not be convincing.”

  “You’ll play dead or I’ll make you dead, boy.”

  Lod nodded. For years, he had survived the canals, longer than any bait, first as a boy weeping himself to sleep—but with a stubborn core just the same. Then he had become a soulless youth, with every soft emotion beaten out of him. Finally, he had become a legendry animal, a thing of rat hunter lore spoken of in the lowest taverns.

  Until a week ago. A week ago the visions began: dreams with fire, blood and the breaking of teeth. The visions seared him, filling his warped soul until he yearned to howl and gnash his teeth like a slavering beast. On the fourth night, lost words had returned to him, words he had learned at his father’s knee.

  His father had been a seer, although others had named his father a shepherd. Those remembered words taught Lod that…that Elohim sent visions. On the fifth night, with a fevered shine in his blue eyes, Lod had prophesied in the dark, in the locked shed where they penned him: “Woe to the city of blood, full of lies, full of plunder, never without victims!”

  As they drifted in the canal, the hunter bent low, whispering, “I’ve watched you, bait, swimming like an otter, escaping the rats time and again. You trust yourself. Today you’ll have to trust me, and the skill of my cast. Now into the brine with you, boy,” and with his bare foot, the hunter shoved Lod hard.

  Lod tumbled into the sewage-filled waters, the forty-foot leash attached to his collar and the brass ring in the gondola playing out like a fishing line. Water shot up his nostrils as he somersaulted into the depths and kicked, but not too hard. Exploding onto the surface fooled no rat.

  He soon bobbed up with his bloody back and slowly lifted his head, sipping air, watching through narrowed eyes.

  The great black rat, as big as a he-goat, had stopped preening its webbed claws. Its nose quivered and its whiskers twitched.

  From the side of the foggy canal came a splash. Lod knew the sound intimately. A sheep-sized rat had plunged in. Then came two more splashes. The giant black monster on the crates squealed a challenging cry, and then it, too, dove into the water.

  Lod had long ago divined the nature of canal rats: greedy, territorial and savage. They were not like sharks. Rats breathed air and not underwater. Just the same, a rat often submerged and occasionally made an attack from the depths. Most often, a rat surfaced, and if the body was a corpse, it devoured the meat as fast as possible. Against a living foe, though, even the giant canal rats might balk.

  The beasts were used to the weak, the perishing or the securely bound. Lod had learned early that bared teeth and raking fingers—fighting back, in other words—gave him the seconds he needed either to escape, or for the hunter’s trident to make its strike. That was only true against a lone rat. When the beasts swarmed, they became frenzied, not because their courage increased, but because in their greed they feared that others might gain the choicest morsel before they could.

  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 into 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.