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

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.
    Whip-masters prowled the middle aisle, raised a little higher than the benches where the wretches sat. When a slave slumped over the loom, often screeching and more than once vomiting blood, the leather-vested ruffians rushed near and wildly beat the exposed back, crisscrossing the flesh with welts and bloody gouges. Sometimes the slave revived. Sometimes the officer with his dreaded keys unlocked the ankle manacle and soldiers dragged the unconscious slave to a watery oblivion.
    At last Captain Eglon staggered again into the hold. His haunted eyes roved over the thinned ranks of animals. “No! No!” he roared. “Look how few are left. Who will row after they’re gone?”
    The one-eyed key officer with his stiff gray hair