Free Lod the Galley Slave (Lost Civilizations) by Vaughn Heppner Page A

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