“Ah! So good of you to come,” said Eglon, his dark eyes glittering.
The beastmaster swallowed, bobbing his angular head as he tied his hair into a ponytail with a thong of soft calf-leather.
“Climb up there and get me the message tube,” said Eglon.
Young Abimelech eyed the pterodactyl, a savage, unpredictable beast, with a skeletal body and a sharp, bony beak. Accommodating itself to the galley’s roll, the pterodactyl, or slith in beastmaster terminology, folded its leathery wings and greedily examined the sailors. Its forked tongue darted out its mouth just as if it were a giant cobra.
“Are you daft, boy? Hurry up and scamper to your pet!”
“Captain,” said Abimelech, “we should lure it down to the pterodactyl post. The closer to ground level they are the more docile.”
“The post is below deck,” snapped Eglon, “lying in the ballast. There isn’t time to get it.”
Abimelech checked the inner pockets of his great furry jacket. “Captain, I forgot my iron mask and don’t dare approach the slith without it. Therefore we have time to get the post.”
Never a patient man—as a wrestler he had been known for his sudden and furious assaults—Eglon growled an oath about impertinent beastmasters and with one of his huge fists clubbed Abimelech across the mouth, knocking him onto the deck. “Fool! Do you see the storm clouds in the distance? Do you think I have time to wait for your peculiarities? Scamper up there and retrieve me the message tube!”
Dazed and blinking, Abimelech touched his bloody lips and spat out a tooth. As it lay on the deck in a glob of blood, he stared at it in amazement and growing rage. He was vain about his looks and knew for a fact that the temple prostitutes of Lilith snickered behind their backs at patrons with gap-toothed grins.
“Get up!” snarled Eglon.
Abimelech scrambled to his feet, certain the captain would trample him like a hippopotamus if he didn’t. He hadn’t really believed the crew’s warnings. The captain was mad if he thought he could lay hands on beastmasters. With blood in his mouth, he yet affected a haughty glare at the monster surely four times his weight.
“Get me the tube!”
“But my iron mask…”
Eglon raised his fist.
Abimelech backed away, vowing never to forget this outrage. He accepted from his shocked apprentice a sealskin bucket of herring, which he slung over his torso. He put gloved hands to the brackets and began to climb. The deck swayed as waves rolled in. Jagged boulders wet with sea-spray waited a quarter mile away, while far off on the oceanic horizon storm clouds gathered. More than one sailor had muttered that unless the captain found a protected bay they would shortly be draped upon those rocks as crab-food. The mast swayed, knotting Abimelech’s landlubber stomach. He grew pale, and the blow to his mouth left him dizzy and furious. As the slith watched, he hoisted himself onto the creaking yardarm.
The pitch was worse up here, magnified by the slender mast. Abimelech wrapped his legs around the yardarm and held on with his hands. He slid inch by inch toward the beast. Despite the breeze, sweat beaded his crimson features. This was ignoble, a stain to his dignity as a beastmaster: imagine, him crawling on the rigging like a sailor, like a brown-skinned Vendhyan monkey. He was terrified of falling. It was much higher up here than it looked from the deck. The beast’s forked tongue slithered out, and it lifted its head to strike.
Abimelech spoke soothingly as a beastmaster must, concentrating, trying to gain rapport with the pet of Yorgash. It galled him to have forgotten his iron mask, and its lack made focusing difficult. That was as much because donning the mask brought out his beastmaster persona and because more than one beastmaster bore facial scars or had lost an eye from a slith’s attack. The beast unfolded its long wings, opened its beak and screeched its hunger cry.
Abimelech paused.
“Quite dawdling and get me the tube!” bellowed Eglon from below.
Abimelech glanced down, seeing the monster cup his mouth with those huge, blubbery hands of his, the eight iron rings glinting in a spear of sunlight. Licking his lips—his mouth throbbed—trying to balance himself as the yardarm creaked and swayed, Abimelech reached back and fumbled for a herring. He hissed as a wave rocked the galley. Only by dropping onto his belly and clutching the yardarm did he save himself from breaking his neck on the deck below.
“I’m losing my patience, Beastmaster!” Eglon shouted.
Sick with fright and loathing, Abimelech eased upright and snatched a herring from the sealskin pouch. He flicked the fish. The slith caught and gulped it much as a pelican might. Many a wild pterodactyl cruised the ocean shores, its long bill trailing in the water as it trolled for fish. As he fed it several more herring and spoke soothing sounds, Abimelech slid closer. It would have been better to muzzle it first, but… He leaned toward the copper message tube, and grinned as he clutched and unhooked it from the leg harness. He began to slide away. Suddenly, the slith screeched practically in his face, its breath rank and fishy. It slashed its bony beak like a Jogli nomad wielding a scimitar. The bill furrowed across his cheek, ripping and causing blood to spurt. Abimelech screamed, lost his balance and plummeted to the deck.
Captain Eglon nimbly jumped out of the way. For all his bulk and although he had gone horribly to fat, he had once been a wrestler of champion rank. The screaming beastmaster crashed almost at his feet, his neck cracking and deck wood splintering. The message tube rolled out of the twitching fingers and bumped against Eglon’s finely tooled, rhinoceros-hide boot.
The pilot, a short man with a thick black beard and a blue kerchief of Larak silk wrapped around his baldness, knelt by the beastmaster. With stubby fingers, the pilot clutched Abimelech’s jaw and watched the eyes roll up until only the whites showed. A last gurgle rattled and then the once youthful body relaxed. “He’s dead,” said the pilot.
“Good riddance,” said Eglon, while unscrewing the top of the message tube. “I never liked his haughtiness. It seemed unnatural.”
“He stayed to himself,” admitted the pilot, who motioned to several soldiers. “What I wonder is how you’re going to explain this.”
Eglon stopped what he was doing the better to stare at the pilot. The soldiers froze, not daring now to approach within earshot. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“There will be an inquiry,” said the pilot.
“He fell and broke his neck. You saw it.”
“You ordered him up there.”
“Me?” said Eglon. “No! I said hurry and get the message tube. If he had brought the pterodactyl post with him he never would have had to climb the mast in the first place.”
“Didn’t he ask for the post?”
Captain Eglon squinted, his hard little eyes sneaking behind rolls of fat. “If you’re accusing me of murder why not come right out and say it.”
“No, not murder,” said the pilot.
“Then maybe you’re going to blame me for making the pterodactyl act up? No. Well, maybe you’ll decide it’s my fault he lacks sea-balance? Surely I should have soothed his fears, sat down with him and let him blather his woes to me.”
“None of those things,” said the pilot, absently scratching at the lice crawling through his beard.
“Then I ask again: What is there to report?”
“They don’t appreciate beastmasters dying.”
“That may be,” said Eglon. “But not even the Gibborim can accuse me of malice when a man falls to his own death.”
“You may be right,” said the pilot. “I’ve never been certain what the Gibborim can and can’t do.”
Eglon’s nostrils flared, which was a sure sign of his unease. “Your problem, Pilot, is that you worry too much.”
The pilot shrugged. He had placid features, with his brown eyes seemingly empty.
Eglon slid the parchment out the copper tube and noticed the seal of Yorgash stamped in red wax at the bottom, a miniature pterodactyl in flight. He handed the missive to the pilot.
“Well, what does it say?” said Eglon.
The lips continued moving. Then the pilot’s salt-lined face grew stiff. “Unless the Serpent of Thep joins the fleet in time to face Eridu and their allies we’re to be impaled in Poseidonis.”
“Impaled!” shouted Eglon.
The pilot nodded, handing the captain the parchment. “Aye, Captain. A sharpened pole will be shoved up your arse—all of ours—and we’ll be planted upright to squirm for the Master and his courtesans. He says: ‘To sing the paean of pain until our spirits vanish.’”
Eglon blanched; his oiled skin stark in comparison to the blood red ruby clipped to his turban.
“You never should have waited for the merchantman, Captain. That was a mistake.”
Eglon scowled.
“Were better for you to study the clouds,” said the pilot. “Be better for us all, seeing as how I want to avoid that stake as much as you do.”
On the horizon where sea met sky, the dark clouds billowed, pregnant with the promise of rain. This wasn’t a place for a galley, especially not a galley held together with tar and ropes and made of old rotted wood infested with worms.
“Straight across the open ocean then,” whispered Eglon. “We sail straight into those clouds.”
“Aye,” said the pilot, “although we’ll sink for sure if we do that.”
“What other choice do I have?” said Eglon.
The pilot peered at the clouds. “It will mean thirty hours of rowing, so even if we make it we’ll arrive without slaves.”
“What do I care about that?” shouted Eglon.
The pilot scratched his lice-ridden beard; he was essentially an emotionless man. “Thirty hours of rowing is going to kill the slaves all right. Not even Lod is going to survive the voyage.”
Eglon swallowed uneasily, his eyes riveted onto the dark clouds in the distance.
-2-
Whistles trilled. A drum beat. In the terrible gloom rose three hundred naked oar slaves: five men to a bench, a four-foot plank padded with wool and covered by dirty sheepskin. In the Serpent of Thep none had left the hold for over three weary months, ever since the old hulk had been pried from the crocodile-filled lagoon where it had rotted for uncounted years. The stench was vile and evil, each nude rower forced to urinate and defecate where he sat, whatever seawater seeping through the oar ports washing the mess into the bilge below.
The drum boomed and three hundred wretches rose from their planks as ankle chains clanked, one foot on the stretcher, the other lifting to set against the bench before them. The vast loom of each oar was too big for any mortal hand. So cleats had been stapled to them, now grasped by dirty, callused hands with broken fingernails and, for many, disgusting skin diseases. They pulled the huge loom, dropping back onto their plank and causing the tholepin that pivoted the oar to creak. A leather washer in the oar port was supposed to keep out seawater. Unfortunately, many washers were old and cracked. All too often cold seawater sluiced in, followed by the screeching gale. That stirred the vile odors, making sweating slaves grow green.
Three hundred slaves, three hundred desperate men were packed into this hellish pit. Above on deck, shouting sailors stumbled. Their voices were barely heard over the screaming wind. Lashing, driving rain furiously pelted the galley. All around the slaves, rotted timbers groaned and complained.
Hour after hour they had rowed. Officers now staggered down the middle aisle, stuffing wine-soaked bread into their mouths. Lips closed and a slave swallowed. Boom…boom…boom… went the beat, created by leather-wrapped mallets upon the kettledrum. Three hundred tortured creatures, three hundred animals; they were the source of power to his naval machine.
The Serpent of Thep rose upon a mountain wave and slid into a sickening trough. The sea had gotten vastly worse by the hour. A roller, a powerful force of nature, took a mighty oar and moved it contrary to human muscles. Slaves screamed, and the loom ripped from their grasp and smashed against chests and heads. Bones snapped and chains rattled as unfortunates flopped and jerked about.
Whistles blew. The rest of the slaves dragged the huge looms inward and out of the sea.
Armored soldiers clanked as they raced down the middle aisle after the officer with the keys. Shorn of its motive power, the Serpent of Thep slued about in the sea. Groaning slaves, blood seeping from torn skin, looked up like beaten dogs. A heavy lock clicked and a chain rattled as the officer pulled it from the iron manacles of each slave-ankle of that bench. Soldiers unceremoniously picked up the damaged rowers. One, hardly more than a boy, screamed, “No, no, I’m fine! Don’t take me!” A jagged rib poked out of his skin. Cruel-eyed soldiers dragged him howling from the bench. Every slave knew he would not be tended by a healer or bone-doctor, but pitched over the side. It was the fate that awaited them all.
The last extras pulled from the bilge, sick slaves shivering with ague were chained in their place. Soon the officer with keys and his soldier-guards retreated from the hold.
A whistle blew, but the three hundred slaves glared at their tormenters, refusing to row. Again the silver whistle blew. Each rower intimately understood its meaning. A slave’s first duty upon joining a Serpent of Thep oar-bench was to learn what every trill or series of pipings meant.
Word of the sullen mutiny spread like balefire and in moments Captain Eglon lumbered down the steps and into the rowing hold. Rain lashed into the hatch above him and a jagged flash of lightning starkly illuminated the scene. Amid crashing thunder, the silk-clad, ponderously fat captain shook his fist at the three hundred chained beasts in human guise. His other hand held a perfumed rag to his nose. The drummer, whip-masters and officers of the hold had each plugged their nostrils with thagweed. Nard-soaked hankies were only for nobility and captains.
“Row!” bellowed Eglon.
Snarling whip-masters lashed naked backs, the terrible scourge opening skin and making slaves cry out and writhe. Still they refused to push out the giant oars.
“Row, damn you!” shouted Eglon, “or I’ll heat irons and blind you all – and then you’ll row, by Yorgash you will!”
The captain never made idle threats and the three hundred wretches knew it. Yet still they sat sullenly, those who weren’t bleeding or crying out from the whips.
“We’ll die unless you row!” bellowed Eglon, his fear adding urgency to his voice.
Then a large slave stirred. He was a leader, the end man, of a bench. When this man rose, he pushed his handle as far aft as he could. His stroke was the longest and heaviest, his work the hardest. This slave had no fat, no symmetry to his frame. Already a big man, his muscles coiled and writhed upon his arms and on his chest and thighs. They piled one atop the other in grotesque overdevelopment. He dwarfed his mates on the bench, and his hands no longer seemed flesh and bone, but talons, claws of calluses with iron strength.
Six months in a galley killed most slave-rowers, two or three years for the toughest and most strong-willed. Yet this awful brute had rowed twenty long years; he had survived and lived where everyone else died. Pestilence and plague often wiped out entire holds. Similar storms slew thousands each rowing season. Sickness, starvation, whippings, beatings and dull resignation turned into despair and reaped a bitter harvest. But not for this slave: he was different, unique, a prodigy. A long white beard fell upon the massive chest. Long white hair, dirty and matted, framed a weather-beaten face holding two fiery blue eyes that blazed fury like some mad desert prophet.
His name was Lod. He had sworn twenty long years ago to slay Yorgash the High Slith Sorcerer for reasons none now remembered. His name among the rowing holds was legend. Yet for over five years none had heard him speak.
The giant creature of an oar slave raised his head. Lod rumbled, “Let us row.”
Chains rattled as three hundred slaves turned to peer at him.
“You will row because I order it!” shouted Eglon, “and for no other reason!”
“Out oars,” Lod said.
Despite the raging waves, the wild sea and the chances that all their chests would be caved in, the slaves slid out the oars.
“Measure the beat,” Lod told the startled drummer.
Boom!
Three hundred slaves, naked as the day they had slid out of their mothers’ wombs, rose from their benches and pulled. The slewing Serpent of Thep came under control.
With an inarticulate shout of rage, Eglon spun around and clumped from the hold.
-3-
An eternity later in slave-time the rain and lightning and ship-destroying waves ceased, but not the howling wind. It shrieked through the oar ports, whistling and mocking and stirring the wretched odors so coughing and gagging sounds mixed with clattering chains and groaning, protesting beefwood. Unable to witness such cruelty, the sun had long ago fled. Racing clouds hid the moon and stars; perhaps they too had begged off this awful sight. Only madly flickering lanterns illuminated the top deck, creating demented shadows that pranced upon the wicker lattice in the ceiling of the rowing hold. In the very gut of the galley were only two lanterns, one aft and one forward. The flames upon the oil-soaked wicks darted and danced, ducked and wove like whirling dervishes of Shurrupak. Illuminated on the benches were gaunt slave faces that grinned insanely for a moment. Heaving, sweat-slick backs writhed next. Then a whip-master lunged into view, his arm descending, the crack of leather on flesh lost amid myriad other torments.
For over twenty hours these wretches had rowed, over twenty hours of rise and fall and war against the raving sea. Some slaves no longer felt their hands, which had gone numb and frozen onto the handles. Others trembled uncontrollably. From a few oozed a greenish sort of sweat that stank worse than the bilge water. Wine-soaked pieces of bread no longer helped, although for a few merciless floggings did.
Lod the Galley Slave (Lost Civilizations) Page 6