The Lod Saga (Lost Civilizations: 6) Read online

  “Kulik will crush your spirit,” Jehu told Lod. “He will make you his plaything. Afterward, I will let my pet have its way with you. You have no idea of the degradation awaiting you.”

  Lod let the spittle drip down his face. He would survive the mines of Tartarus because he had survived the Stadium of Sword. He had survived the canals of Shamgar. He would survive these guards and their abominable cave hyenas.

  Maybe Jehu saw the determination in Lod’s eyes. He lifted his arm to strike again.

  Like a dumb brute, Lod waited, never flinching.

  “…No,” Jehu said. He lowered his arm and stepped back. He let his whip-hand drop onto the giant cave hyena’s wedge-shaped head. “I’m going to watch you die by degrees, slave. My pet will watch.”

  Lod scowled. He clenched his big hands into fists. Slowly, he turned his back on Jehu. Lod happened to glance at the huge sphinx then. The giant statue seemed to watch him. It seemed to promise something much worse than cave hyenas and this Kulik. The moment passed, and the sphinx was just another relic from a distant era.

  Who had built such a thing?

  Lod shrugged as he sat. The other slaves avoided his glance. Lod stared at the dung fire, at the dancing flames. His cheek throbbed where Jehu had struck him.

  Jehu, his beast and the others withdrew to their fires. The moon appeared and bathed the wasteland with a strange light.

  The silver mines of Tartarus—what awaited Lod there? He wasn’t eager to know, but he did want to rid himself of these chains and the iron collar.

  Lod bared his teeth. The mines of Tartarus, it was likely hell on Earth. There, the will of Moloch held sway. He would have to survive both. How, Lod didn’t know.

  Tartarus….

  -4-

  Sheol from beneath is excited over you to meet you when you come; it arouses for you the spirits of the dead.

  -- Isaiah 14:9

  Lod panted in the starlight. He had cracked lips and a swollen tongue, and he lay chained upon the rock of Tartarus.

  A clack against the rock interrupted Lod’s misery. He moved his neck like a rusted trap and noticed two pieces of wood that rose up higher than his head. It was the top of a ladder.

  Wood groaned, leather armor creaked and a radius of light advanced. Then Kulik the Bear regarded Lod in glaring lantern-light. Kulik was massive, standing eight feet tall, with heavy bones. His too-wide face had a yellowish cast with purple patches dotted on his cheeks. They were small veins that had burst under the skin. In Kulik was the blood of the bene elohim, the gods who had fled Heaven and intermingled with women. He was of the third generation, a half-Nephilim. His blood was severely diluted compared to the First Born Moloch, his grandfather.

  Kulik panted and a stale, beery odor wafted upon Lod. He noticed Kulik’s bloodshot eyes. The half-Nephilim had been drinking again.

  Kulik’s dulled gaze swept across him, and it lingered on a bloody wrist. Lod had worked that manacled wrist for hours. He’d tried to rip out the spike buried in stone that was welded to his manacle.

  “You’re a stubborn bastard,” Kulik rumbled in a voice no human could match. “But then, that’s why you’re here. That’s why Moloch wishes you dead.”

  Lod curled a cracked lip at the mention of the First Born’s name.

  Perhaps in response, Kulik lifted an axe. It had a gigantic curved blade etched with runes.

  “Tell me, slave. Do you desire life?”

  Lod stared into those drunken eyes. Despite the alcoholic haze, Lod sensed the power in Kulik, the demonic evil.

  Kulik laughed cruelly, revealing horse-sized teeth. “What a beast you are. I suppose given the chance, you’d gnaw off your wrist so you could slink free for another few hours. Unfortunately, you’re a dead man. Moloch has decreed it. You’re to die on this rock, baked to death in your own juices and your bones scattered for hyenas to gnaw.”

  Lod glared hatred.

  Kulik’s features hardened. He lowered the axe until the razor-sharp blade touched Lod’s genitals.

  “Perhaps castration is in order,” Kulik said. “I’ll send your manhood to Moloch as a gift. That might cause him to relent and release me from this hellhole.”

  Outrage thundered in Lod’s head. He croaked in a rough voice, “Be warned. Elohim sees all.”

  A fierce emotion swept through Kulik’s drunken features. He set the flat of the axe on Lod’s belly and he backhanded Lod with his knuckles. It split Lod’s lip so blood spurted.

  “Let him see that,” Kulik snarled. “Let him watch you suffer.”

  Lod said no more.

  Muttering, Kulik climbed down the ladder, taking the lantern-light with him.

  Lod was left alone on the rock. It was thirty feet high and flattish on top, with brittle bones encrusting its base. The bones were human femurs, ribcages and skulls. Lod had lain on the rock two blistering days and now the middle of the third night.

  With his swollen tongue, Lod touched his lip. Then, when he thought Kulik had left the rock’s vicinity, he continued to jerk and twist his bloodied wrist.

  Unfortunately, daylight found Lod no nearer success. From around him came the sounds of shuffled feet, the crack of whips, the clink of chains and the angry shouts of slave drivers. Another bitter day at the silver mines had begun.

  Lod’s skin was horribly sunburned from the previous days. Before being chained to the rock, he’d toiled in the mines for months and had become pale like a slug.

  Sometime during the heat of the day, the ladder creaked again. Kulik reappeared. He used the blade of his axe to shade Lod’s eyes.

  Lod croaked a maddened laugh, and his blue eyes shined strangely. “I see your death,” he intoned. “You shall fly—”

  Crack! Once more, Kulik’s knuckles struck. Lod’s eyelids fluttered as he strove to remain conscious.

  “Listen to me, you donkey,” Kulik snarled. “I can leave you here to shrivel and die as a eunuch or I can give you another day of life, perhaps another week.”

  Lod tried to focus. There was ringing in his ears.

  “We’ve hit the richest vein of ore yet,” Kulik said. “It’s in a deep tunnel, a foul place. Poisoned fumes slew my best hammer-men. You’re strong, maybe the strongest slave I’ve seen in years. Moloch wants silver and yet he wants you to die on the rock. That’s not my problem, however. My problem is we’re behind on our quota. Do you understand? I’m making you an offer.”

  With his tongue, Lod tested a loose tooth in his bruised jaw.

  Kulik twined thick fingers in Lod’s hair, and he banged the back of Lod’s head against the rock.

  “Listen for once,” Kulik said, his face inches away, his breath meaty like a bear’s. It meant he was sober. “I’m offering you life, another week of it, anyway. I’ll give you wine, meat, and then you must hammer the ore. I must make my quota. Dig for me in the deepest tunnels and I’ll leave you your manhood.”

  The ringing had lessened and Kulik came into focus, and then Lod understood the grim bargain. A few days, maybe another week of life—

  “Beast?” Kulik said. “Do you hear me? Do you still have your wits?”

  “I will dig,” Lod croaked.

  Kulik’s eyes swirled with evil mockery. Lod had the awful impression then that this was a trick. He expected the half-Nephilim to laugh, to spit in his face and climb down the ladder, leaving him to die.

  Kulik raised his axe and brought it down with a crash. He shattered an iron link, and the rune-blade chipped stone. One chip gashed Lod’s right cheek, and that arm fell free. Kulik raised his axe again…

  -5-

  The silver mines lay amid bleak hills. These hills were far south of the land of Nod, well past the shallow inland sea. Grasslands to the west, east and south surrounded them. The lack of moisture meant the treeless hills abounded in scrub brush, sage grass, black gneiss and shale.

  From above, the mines of Tartarus resembled a cluster of stone corrals where donkeys patiently endured the relentless sun. Stone huts
held supplies. Wooden barracks bleached by the sun housed the brutish guards. The strangest construction was a tall wooden derrick. It had a giant spindle, with a heavy rope dangling into a hole in the earth. Donkeys hitched to ropes trudged in a circle lowering or raising cages that descended into the hellish depths or rose up into the open air.

  Kulik kept his promise. Lod feasted on roasted mule deer and chugged a flagon of a foul wine with the thickness of blood. He slept fitfully afterward until a guard shook him awake. Instead of invigorating him, the sleep had drained the last of his reserves. It had left dark circles around his eyes. Lod had a terrible thirst and his mouth tasted like a mouse’s nest. Perhaps as bad, he felt numb, as if he viewed his actions from a distance. He had to concentrate to hear sounds, and even then, the voices were tinny. There had been a nightmare, but all Lod could remember was blackness and a dread fear. He only slowly grew aware that he rode the cage into the depths.

  Someone had wound a rag around his bloodied wrist. Ah. He wore leather shoes, a leather apron and a cap. These were a deep-miner’s garments. The former caravan leader, Jehu, rode with him. Jehu sneered, which curled the black tattoos on his cheeks. The huge cave hyena with its spiked collar sat beside them. The spotted beast easily outweighed Lod and eyed him as if he were meat. It whined in a weird fashion.

  His own languid indifference angered Lod. He loathed the carrion beasts more than ever. He remembered Jehu’s boasts and threats. And that Jehu had struck him several times across the face.

  Lod stared into the hyena’s luminous orbs.

  “Lower your eyes, slave,” Jehu warned.

  The voice seemed distant, hardly aimed at him. Just the same, Lod yearned to beat down Jehu, draw the guard’s scimitar and gut the hyena. He remembered now that guardsmen with drawn swords had marched him to the cage.

  The hyena cackled a laughing cry. With a start, Lod realized his thoughts had drifted. The beast poked its blunt nose toward him, touched his skin.

  Lod balled his fingers into fists.

  The beast drew back and whined in an offended manner.

  Jehu brought up a whip, reversing it. He jabbed the handle into Lod’s side.

  “I told you to look down.”

  Lod grunted, but he hardly felt the blow. It almost seemed to be happening to someone else. Even so, in the small confines of the cage, Lod slid around Jehu. There was no one to help the guard now. Lod interposed Jehu between himself and the cave hyena. Jehu tried to jab the handle in earnest now. Lod caught the wrist. He tightened his grip. Jehu’s wrist-bones ground together. The guard cried out in pain.

  That brought a lazy smile to Lod’s lips. With an effort, he slurred, “Don’t touch me. Don’t talk to me, and keep your pet away from me.” Then he shoved Jehu against the hyena.

  The beast whined evilly, until Jehu cuffed it. “Silence!” Jehu snarled. The huge beast wilted and lowered its ugly head, although it watched its master with low cunning.

  The cage continued to lurch lower into Tartarus. Soon the air became rank with a sweaty stench, the combined effluvia of hundreds of unwashed slaves. Sounds grew. There was the clink of a hammer against a chisel and the sounds of iron striking rock. There was scraping. There were tired grunts and the infernal crack of whips. Ladders appeared, and from narrow galleries candlelight flickered. A young boy with the agility of a monkey hurried down a ladder. An ore-bag hung from his scrawny back, with a band around his forehead to help steady it. Dust caked the lad’s skin.

  With a thud, the cage touched rock. A guard appeared and inserted a key. Tumblers clicked. The man swung open the door and ordered Lod to hurry. Without a word to Jehu or his pet, Lod stepped among waiting soldiers. Several held swords and crackling torches. They flanked Lod as he shuffled past sheds and piles of ore.

  A burly guard led the way into a tunnel with the letters “VI” painted in red at the entrance. The burly guard, a mace-man with straps crisscrossing his hairy torso, shoved slaves out of the way. The sweaty slaves carried ore-sacks. Several stumbled and fell. Immediately, whips cracked. One old man cringed as a whip slashed him. The cringing enticed the whip master. He slashed lines of blood across the old slave’s squirming legs.

  Lod turned toward the old slave. The burly guard, the mace-man—he had a long-handled mace, with dreadful spikes on the heavy ball—shoved Lod with the weapon’s handle. Lod staggered and then stared at the mace-man. The soldier hefted his weapon and leered suggestively. The whip master slashing the old slave turned to watch. It gave the old slave time to lever himself onto his feet and stagger for the waiting ore piles. Noticing that, Lod turned away and continued to shuffle into the depths.

  “He chose wisely,” the mace-man told the others.

  Lod’s upper lip curled, but he dismissed the mace-man from his thoughts.

  Mining silver was hard work, and the deeper one went the stronger a slave needed to be to extract the precious ore.

  The usual method called for a slave to bang a chisel into stone, creating flakes and dust. Others raked the flakes into a basket and hauled it to a carrying boy. Sometimes men lit a fire against a rock wall. Once the fire burned out, men dashed vinegar against the heated wall, causing it to crack, making it easier to chisel. The difficulties were many. Far below the earth, temperatures soared and became unbearably hot. Sometimes foul air slew miners. Sulfur or alum fumes could billow up to slay guards and slaves alike. Sometimes in the deepest tunnels, the air became foul because too many men breathed the goodness out of it. The laboriousness of chiseling stone meant that many of the deepest galleries were narrow shelves barely high enough for a slave to crawl through. Sometimes, slaves had to hammer rock from on their sides. In the end, the truism was this: the deeper the shaft, the stronger a man it took to mine it.

  A wooden boom and platform lowered Lod and the guards deeper into the earth. Soon they descended ladders, marched down a steep grade and climbed down another set of ladders. The heat had become oppressive. Sweat slicked Lod and his lungs labored for air. Added to his numbness was a growing fear of being buried alive. He’d dug rubble out of a collapsed tunnel before and had pulled out crushed miners. Even after months in the mines, the fear remained.

  “Go,” said the guard-captain.

  Lod shuffled around, looking with incomprehension at the soldiers.

  The guard-captain was a tall, bearded, helmeted soldier, with the golden sash of the officer across the temples of his helmet. He cracked a whip that bit into Lod’s shoulder and snaked around to his back. The whip had embedded shards of metal and cut Lod’s skin.

  With a snarl, Lod lurched toward the guard-captain. The mace-man and those holding swords stepped between Lod and the captain.

  “You’re to go on alone,” the guard-captain said.

  Slowly, Lod turned from them and began to climb down a long ladder. He left the guards’ torchlight and soon entered the tinier radius of lamplight. New guards awaited him. They were sweaty men with clubs. Two held small terracotta lamps, each with a wick floating in olive oil. The air was too close here for the greater, oxygen-consuming torches.

  “That way,” muttered a guard, pointing into one of two tunnels.

  Lod shuffled with his shoulders hunched and head ducked down. He soon came to an area where he could raise his head. Kulik waited for him, seated on a rock. In the weak lamplight, the massive half-Nephilim indeed seemed like a bear. Sweat slicked Kulik’s too wide face, and his eyes—

  Uneasy, swaying on his feet, Lod glanced away.

  Kulik laughed. It was a grim sound. “You live as long as you can chisel, beast. If you think to cheat me, or to cheat Moloch, you’re poorly mistaken. I’ve crawled into yonder gallery.” Kulik pointed at a low tunnel. “The ore back there is amazing. You’d be sweating to death on the rock if it were otherwise.”

  Lod wiped sweat out of his eyes. The heat here was oppressive, although different from the blistering rock of Tartarus. The closeness of the air down here—

  “Take these,” Kulik said
.

  Lod accepted a heavy stone mallet, perhaps ten pounds in weight. It almost fell out of his grasp before he tightened his grip. He also accepted a gad, an iron chisel.

  “If you work,” Kulik said, “you’ll eat. I want you strong, beast. I want that silver.”

  “Water,” Lod mumbled.

  “First you must work.”

  Lod stared at his feet. Something was wrong with him. He needed water. By the stars, he was thirsty. He hefted the stone mallet. This was a poor place to fight to the death, yet… He glanced up and saw that Kulik watched him.

  The half-Nephilim grinned maliciously. “It’s not even a gamble, slave. You cannot defeat me.”

  “No?”

  “You’re a man, a beast.” Kulik thumped his chest. “I’ve the blood of the divine.”

  Lod filled his lungs with the stuffy air. He wanted a drink, needed water.

  “Men live at our whim. You above all beasts should know that.” Kulik chuckled. “Life is a matter of perspective, eh? To the starving man, a crust of bread is heavenly. To one dying on the rock of Tartarus, hammering in the deepest mine should be a glorious reprieve. Thus, I give you joy unspeakable here in the deepest pit of Tartarus. Am I not the most generous of masters?”

  The half-Nephilim watched him too closely. This… Lod scowled. In some manner, this was a trick. Could Kulik have worked a spell upon him?

  Lod raised the mallet, croaked a cry and shuffled at Kulik. He swung. Kulik easily caught his wrist and shoved. Lod crashed against a wall.

  “I’ll-kill-you,” Lod muttered in a slur.

  “Beasts making boasts,” Kulik said. “I’m amused. Now crawl to your task, slave, before I forget my generosity and beat you to death with my fists.”

  Lod almost shuffled forward to attack anew. There was a trick here. He didn’t know what. He was so exhausted. His limbs felt leaden. Then a new sense intruded upon his sluggish thoughts. He peered at the tunnel, surprised. Like a distant horn, he heard… something. It called. It tightened his chest.