The Man of Bronze

by James Alan Gardner

  Since galleys were designed for speed, a trireme didn’t have much below the waterline—just the bare minimum required for stability. They had none of the amenities we usually associate with seagoing vessels: no kitchen, no infirmary, no sleeping quarters. Most nights, a trireme put into shore and the men set up camp on land. If that wasn’t possible, rowers slept in their seats while officers bunked wherever the deck had room.

  Considering this lack of space, I expected the galley’s “treasure vault” would be nothing more than a wooden chest stuffed into a cubbyhole. Any guards protecting the loot would be crammed into an area no bigger than an airplane’s washroom. Dealing with them would be like shooting fish in a barrel.

  I explained all this to Lord H. He glowered but didn’t intervene when I went to the poop-deck hatch. First things first: I drew a pistol and attached a silencer to keep noise to a minimum; Urdmann knew by now he had company, but why ruin all chance of surprise by giving away our exact position? Once I was ready, I knelt, gun in hand, and drew the hatch open.

  No flurry of arrows flew up from below—just a sharp briny smell, intense enough to be noticeable despite the general saltwater odor of the ocean. Water sloshed in the dark beneath . . . not unusual for a vessel like this. Wooden ships always leak a little; the lowest level inevitably has bilgewater, no matter how hard the crew pumps or bails. If it’s only an inch or two, the boat is doing fine.

  Cautiously, I turned on a Maglite torch I’d brought with me. The space below was as small as I’d thought: adequate for a two-person sauna, but not much else. A foot of water slopped on the floor, moving as the galley rode the waves. Beyond that, the cubbyhole was empty—not a single box or barrel and certainly no haunts or monsters. So where was the bronze leg?

  I grabbed the edge of the hatch, preparing to lower myself. Lord H. gave me a don’t-you-dare look. “It’s clear,” I said. “Honestly. Not a thing in sight.”

  “Not a thing in sight doesn’t mean clear,” he replied.

  “I’ll be careful,” I told him, then jumped down before he could say more.

  A lot of vile things can hide in a foot of dark water . . . but nothing snaked around my ankle or tried to chew my toes. The worst danger seemed to be gagging on the stale salty air—a thick unpleasant stink. I wrestled my queasy stomach under control and shone the light around to see if there was some concealed niche not visible from above.

  There was: a floor-level panel in one wall, almost hidden by the water. Two thousand years earlier, it would have been hard to detect—designed to match perfectly with the rest of the bulkhead. Time and the sea had made the panel easier to spot; the wood had bulged and the seams were no longer the exact fit they’d once been. I got a pry bar from my pack—all archaeologists carry brute force—and popped out the panel with a minimum of unladylike exertion.

  Behind was a long dark crawlway. It ran the length of the trireme, too far for my torch beam to show what lay at the other end . . . but I assumed the Carthaginians had built a secret treasure chamber at the far end of the ship. That’s where I’d find the bronze leg.

  To get there, I’d have to creep on my back or my belly, nearly submerged in seawater, breathing only the foul-smelling air at the top of the passageway—air that regularly disappeared when the wave-rocked ship rolled beyond a certain angle. Anywhere along the way, sea life in the water might make my life difficult. Even ordinary jellyfish could plague me with stings, the usual ocean predators could take a bite out of me, and if I met some kind of mutant . . .

  I sighed. At least there wasn’t space for a fire-breathing killer whale.

  “Need some help?” Lord H. called down.

  “Thank you, no. This is a one-person job.” I doubted if any of the commandos could even fit in the shaft to the vault; they were big tough men, substantially larger than the average Carthaginian circa 146 B.C. Modern nutrition made us giants compared to our ancient ancestors. Even I might find the going snug . . . and, please, no churlish comments about my personal proportions.

  I decided to travel on my back. That would make it easier to breathe: just stick my nose up into the airspace. It also meant I’d enter the treasure room faceup instead of with my eyes turned down toward the floor. I liked that idea; if anything tried to attack me, I’d see it coming.

  On the other hand, there’s a reason why babies creep on all fours rather than sliding on their backs. The human body can travel on hands and knees a lot easier than the other way up, especially in confined passageways. That was something I’d learned the hard way on spelunking expeditions, nearly getting stuck on several occasions. But the passage through the trireme’s belly wasn’t a cave formed by natural processes, with all the resulting constrictions and twists. This passage was built purposely to let priests worm their way to the treasure room; it might be claustrophobically narrow, but it still ought to be navigable. I crossed my fingers that the high priest had been some fat old man who told the shipbuilders to give him plenty of clearance.

  Bilge sloshed around me as I lowered myself to the floor. The water temperature was tolerable—this part of the Sargasso benefited from warm equatorial currents—but I was instantly soaked to the skin. Tsk. My clothes would end up with unsightly salt stains. How embarrassing.

  With pistol in one hand and Maglite in the other, pushing my little backpack ahead of me, I threaded myself into the passageway arms first. Reluctantly, I turned the light off; much as I liked to see my surroundings, the glow might alert undead guards of my approach. Better to make my way stealthily. At least I didn’t have to worry about being absolutely silent—with the creak of the ship and the splash of the sea, any noise I made would be lost in the general hubbub.

  I thrust my way into the darkness, propelling myself by leg power: the soles of my feet on the floor, pushing backward. Once I was fully inside the passage I could only bend my knees halfway, making it impossible to get a really good shove. Luckily, I didn’t need much strength. The water wasn’t deep enough to float me off the floor, but it buoyed me sufficiently to take most of my weight. Featherlight, I walked myself down the lightless tunnel, willing my brain not to think of all the things that could go wrong.

  The worst part was trying to breathe. The piercing salt stench stunk so badly, I breathed through my mouth instead of my nose . . . but with the blackness of the shaft and the rolling of the waves, I had difficulty telling when there was actually enough air to grab a good inhalation. I ended up spluttering on several occasions when I timed the ship’s movements incorrectly. Salt water in the lungs is nasty; it burns like a fist of hot coals.

  But slowly I slid toward my goal, still pushing my backpack ahead of me. Though I couldn’t see, I could gauge my progress by touch: wooden ribs ran across the shaft’s roof every foot and a half—that distance the Egyptians called a cubit. I counted sixty cubits before a change in the water echoes told me I was nearing the passage’s end. This was the bow of the boat, home to the trireme’s greatest weapon: the ship-smashing battering ram. In Carthaginian times, most such rams had been clad with bronze for strength and puncturing power . . . but it would have been normal bronze, not the arcane stuff I’d come here to fetch.

  First my backpack, then my hands slipped out into open air: the treasure vault. Time for a dramatic entrance. Never letting go of my gun or Maglite, I hooked my hands on the edge of the passage’s mouth and pulled with every ounce of muscle. I scooted out of the hole like an auto mechanic on one of those trolleys used to get under a car’s chassis . . . or perhaps more accurately, like someone zooming headfirst down the last stretch of an amusement park waterslide.

  As I popped out I flicked on the torch, holding it at arm’s length from my body just in case. That proved to be a wise precaution. Something slashed down, aiming at the light: a thick green metal blade. I let go of the torch and rolled away. Water surged around me, slowing my movement, but I managed to bring up my pistol and fire. Phut, phut—the sound of silenced bullets. My shots were so wild I missed my opponent
, but muzzle flash succeeded where my aim had failed. The flash was substantially reduced by the silencer, whose job was to decrease the speed of gases erupting from the gun; but even a stifled flash was bright to a haunt who’d spent two millennia in darkness. My opponent screamed like he’d been stabbed in the eyes and flailed out wildly with his weapon.

  He was still targeting the Maglite. It had fallen in the water and was now casting wavery beams through the bilge. Its light showed a small chamber the same size as the one at the stern—a chamber I now shared with an undead man in green-rusted helmet and breastplate. He wore nothing but the armor; any other clothes he’d possessed must have rotted centuries earlier. His body was rotting too, especially his lower legs, which were in constant contact with the sea. The flesh down there was a wet puffy white, like that of a drowning victim’s. It looked ready to burst.

  The haunt moved stiffly on those bloated legs. His weapon was a cross between an ax and a sword, a cleaver that looked able to chop me in two despite its coating of rust. The haunt never got the chance. I shot the cleaver out of his hand . . . by which I mean I shot the hand itself, which snapped off at the wrist. Two more bullets (phut, phut) into the zombie’s knees—the puffy flesh spewed ooze—and my opponent toppled into the water. It took me a few moments to find the cleaver he’d dropped . . . a few more moments to detach the undead hand from the cleaver’s handle . . . then a very unpleasant thirty seconds to cleave the guard into a sufficient number of pieces that he ceased to be a threat.

  Only then did I begin searching for the bronze leg. It wasn’t much of a search. The treasure vault was smaller than my closet—smaller than my butler’s closet, smaller than my butler’s valet’s pet basset hound’s closet—and its only feature, besides chunks of dead guard, was a water-soaked chest attached to the bulkhead. Under other circumstances, I would have teased open the lock using delicate laboratory instruments . . . but with Urdmann on his way I couldn’t waste time, so I just had a go with my pry bar.

  Final score: Pry Bar 1, Chest nil. The lid cracked open on rusted hinges, revealing a pile of . . . the usual antique glitter.

  Gold. Jewels. Engraved scroll cases. A gem-encrusted saltcellar. Two ruby scarabs, probably pilfered from a pyramid. Assorted amulets with Phoenician inscriptions, sacred to various gods.

  No bronze body parts.

  The leg’s apparent absence may have fooled a dim-witted burglar, but I was an old hand at this game. I felt around the floor of the chest, found the false bottom, and tugged it out.

  Here was the genuine treasure: reliquary boxes containing holy hunks of flesh; a mummified monkey’s paw—let’s not think about it—a bottle containing a writhing black tentacle—let’s really not think about it—and a length of greenish bronze shaped like a lower leg.

  I took out the bronze. It was heavy: dead weight. Thickly tarnished. I half expected it to glow in the dark or to give off some other hint of power.

  Nothing. No light, no special heat.

  Hmm.

  In Siberia I’d never gotten close enough to see the thigh, but Urdmann had said it was still brightly polished. He’d bragged he could see his reflection. Scoundrel though he was, Urdmann had no reason to lie about such a thing. So why was the Tunguska bronze as clean as a mirror, when this one was coated with corrosion? Could this be a decoy to throw off looters—a counterfeit made of ordinary bronze, so thieves wouldn’t search for the real thing?

  I looked around the compartment, scanning the walls carefully. Yes. Another hidden panel in the forward bulkhead. Even after two thousand years, it was almost impossible to see. I could discern it under the Maglite’s glare, but someone whose only light was a flickering torch might never locate it.

  “Tricky fellows, those priests,” I said. I shouldered my backpack and once more went to work with the pry bar.

  The panel opened into a hole through the forward bulkhead. A second panel covering the far mouth of the hole opened into the outside air.

  When I stuck out my head, I was only a few feet above the waterline—right at the bow of the ship. Beneath me, the galley’s battering ram jutted through the waves, slopping in and out of the sea as the boat rocked. The ram was covered in bronze, as was normal for its time . . . and I laughed as I realized where the priests must have hidden the real bronze leg.

  Any ships rammed by this trireme would get hit by more than they bargained for. But then, I expected the ship’s crew were under strict orders not to ram anything—the priests didn’t want to risk losing their most prized possession.

  I dragged myself out of the bulkhead hole. Maneuvering none too gracefully, I lowered myself onto the ram and straddled it like a seesaw. It moved a bit like a seesaw too, up and down, first inching above the water, then a short way below. I shinnied along the ram, gripping tight to the slick wet metal and grimacing against the sprays of salt water splashing into my eyes. The seesaw motion of the ram increased, the farther out I went . . . but I reached the end safely enough.

  “So far so good,” I muttered. “But could this be any more Freudian?”

  Clinging to the beam with my thighs, I bent over and felt around the ram’s underside. Sure enough, my groping fingers found an anomalous hunk of metal beneath the ram’s tip. The moment I touched it, I felt a spark: not electrical, but a surge of adrenaline that zinged through my veins like fire. The sensation didn’t feel dangerous; it didn’t feel, for example, like alien bronze mutagens rearranging my DNA. The best I can describe it is that I was struck with a burst of recognition—like seeing Picasso’s Guernica for the first time in person when you’ve seen it so often in photos, or catching sight of a friend’s face in some remote corner of the world where you didn’t expect to know anyone. The touch of the bronze leg was warmly familiar . . . something I’d known all my life and hadn’t realized I was missing.

  I said, “Well, that’s bloody weird, isn’t it?”

  Briefly, I wondered how I’d detach the leg from the ram. The Carthaginian priests must have fixed it in place as securely as they could; the last thing they wanted was their precious treasure falling off into the sea. I pictured myself hacking at the leg with my pry bar, trying to break through ancient solder or whatever the priests used for glue. But I’d reckoned without the bronze leg’s magic and its instinct for getting back home. When I gave an experimental pull to see how firmly the leg was attached, it came loose as easily as a plug sliding out of a socket.

  “Thank heavens,” I said, “at least that’s one thing I don’t have to fight for.”

  I should know not to say such things. With a geyser of water, the bronze leg’s most formidable guardian rose from the sea.

  Remember how I’d hoped the Carthaginian high priest had been some fat old man? Be careful what you wish for . . . especially when it might mean a fat old man—a grotesquely obese old man—who’s mutated into an eel.

  The transformation was incomplete. The priest’s torso remained recognizably human, with blubbery arms and belly. But the monster’s lower body was eel-like from the hips down—wet and yellow, smeared with slime—and his head had the look of an oversized moray: gills, beady eyes, and a mouth of stiletto teeth. Despite this metamorphosis, the eel priest still wore his sacred headdress, a tall miter reminiscent of an Egyptian pharaoh’s crown. It remained in place with a chin strap that dug deep into the flesh of the moray’s jaw. Picture the cap of an organ-grinder’s monkey . . . if the cap was wet with seaweed and the monkey was a homicidal fish.

  I shouted, “Let’s talk about this!” in Phoenician, the language of ancient Carthage . . . but the priest didn’t seem in a mood for negotiation. Guardian monsters never are. Just once I’d like a crypt thing to say, “Okay, luv, slip me a fiver and I’ll take an early coffee break, wink, wink, nudge, nudge.” Instead, the great eel hurtled toward me as fast as a torpedo. My response went phut, phut, each bullet striking home; but my shots, whether in the flabby human torso or the moraylike head, bounced off like pebbles on granite. I swear one of my slugs
phutted straight into the priest’s squinty little eye. It didn’t even make him blink.

  Nothing I hate more than bulletproof monsters . . . though cilantro comes close.

  I ran out of time before I ran out of bullets. The eel priest descended upon me, striking snake style in an attempt to bite off my head. From my seat on the ram I rolled backward, pushing up hard in a reverse somersault that reminded me of gymnastics class back at Gordonstoun Boarding School. I ended on my feet, just like in my first balance-beam routine . . . whereupon I intended to retreat, doing a tumbling run if necessary, back along the ram to the main body of the ship. With a bit of luck, I could scramble up the galley’s prow and onto the upper deck.

  But luck wasn’t mine at that moment. The eel priest’s attack missed and kept going—slapping the ocean’s surface with the force of an overweight prankster doing a cannonball off the high platform. The resulting eruption of water smacked me with bludgeoning impact, knocking me off the ram in the middle of a roaring tsunami. I plunged helplessly into the sea . . . right onto the priest’s home turf.

  Small eels writhed around me: blue-glowing millions, perhaps trying to keep their distance from the landlubber in their midst but unable to stay clear because of their brothers and sisters crowding close. They didn’t bite, as I’d feared. But their slimy bodies pushed in on me, not just cramping my movements as I tried to tread water but lighting me brightly on every side . . . all the better for the eel priest to find me. He’d vanished after his big splashdown; I half expected he’d grab me from below, like a bad remake of Jaws. But the masses of smaller eels, not just near the surface but several fathoms deep, impeded the priest as much as they did me. Perhaps, too, some part of the creature’s brain still thought like an air breather rather than a denizen of the sea. Whatever the reason, he decided to attack on the surface again. He broke from the ocean some twenty yards to my right and looked around quickly in search of me. When his eyes met mine, his toothy mouth turned up in an eelish version of a grin.