Shadows of the Keepers: Chapter 23
Menaced by the Megalodon
“Everyone get out of the water!” Selva shouted. Even she sounded afraid. “Find planks, poles, anything useful as a weapon! Go for the eyes!”
The megalodon charged in again. Cobb grabbed the shoulder of the crewman beside him. “Left! Go left—now!” They juked sideways, the predator passing so close they brushed its skin. “Get outta here, go eat them!” He pointed towards the still-burning Arztillan triremes.
“Who the fuck chooses a megalodon when designing a new ecology?” Eric protested, keeping his eyes fixed on that deadly fin. “Like, what the fuck were they thinking?”
“It’s coming back!” Kadelius’ voice quivered. The shark turned, a dark shape under the dark night sky, heading straight for him.
“He won’t make it,” Selva said.
“Hey, hey!” Captain Vonlal beat the water, knife in his hand. He swam out to Kadelius, pushed him aside. “I always knew I’d die at sea! I promise you this, foul beast: when I die I will return and haunt these waters!” He was committed now, staring down the onrushing megalodon. “Never again shall you feed—”
Eric closed his eyes. When he opened them Vonlal was gone, replaced only with bubbling foam. He saw the megalodon begin another circle, then a jet of yellow-orange Greek fire shot forth and sprayed the sea beside it. The fin vanished.
A trireme floated near, unburned with shields along its railing. A voice from the deck shouted:
“Surrender your arms! One wrong move and we will kill the lot of you!” A rope was thrown down.
Temerin, Selva, and several others went on ahead, then Eric caught a rope and hauled himself to the railing—whereupon two burly men pulled him to the deck, and a Black Legionnaire put a knife at his throat. Another Legionnaire, the man who had shouted, stood at the bow beside the drum.
“The starmen, at last.” He touched his fingers together. “Quite remarkable, such a small group could cause such disruption in our plans.”
“They had help,” Wotoc said as he knelt with a sword at his neck. He continued, “It is customary that a captive not be made to kneel unless he is about to be executed. Is that your intention?”
The centurion waited long enough for Eric to start to worry. “As much as I wish it, no. Caesar wants you alive.” His face took on a sadistic grin. “But only alive. Bind them!”
Eric’s wrists were tied fast with a rope that burned his skin, then his boots were removed and the process repeated for his ankles. Legionnaires hauled him to his feet and dragged him, along with the others, down the ship’s keel past the ranks of rowers on their benches. At the stern was a wooden door which opened to a tiny prison space, they shoved him inside and lashed his wrist bindings to a ring in the wall. There was no space to lie down, and barely enough to sit.
“See you in a few days.” A Legionnaire chuckled, and latched the door closed.
Days passed, in that wretched space. Eric’s throat burned with thirst; ever so often a guard would come by with some vile alcohol concoction, but never gave enough. The hunger was just as bad, and their meager rations of bread made him sick.
“You must keep your spirits up,” Selva said one day as he leaned against the hull-planks, desperate for a whiff of fresh air. The steady beat of rowing drums sounded outside. “In historical instances of atrocity—Hitler’s Holocaust, Soviet gulags, Colonel Stanson’s refugee camps, it is those who retain the will to live who survive. Die in spirit, and your body will soon follow.”
They sang songs, until the guards came and beat them with whips. Then they told stories—Eric spoke to Kadelius about what life was like on starman worlds: cars, air conditioning, fresh food on every corner, and pictured he was there, walking through the streets of a Jeffersonian megacity in search of a Patriotic Burger joint. One evening, the ship was hauled ashore and remained so for a full day—drying out the timbers, Temerin said, then told them of his many archaeology expeditions to Old Terra.
After long enough, he mastered the art of sleeping while sitting against the hull, despite the pains and foul smells. He awoke to the sound of voices chattering outside, and the oarsmen paddling along slowly.
“I think we’re in a city.” Selva looked around. “Maybe even Grand Arztillus itself.”
The door unlatched and creaked open.
“On your feet!” a Black Legionnaire barked.
The fresh air was intoxicating. Eric smelled seawater, smoke, animals. The oarsmen were packing up, disembarking, the Legionnaires led their captives after them, down a gangplank and on to a stone dock. This was indeed Arztillus itself, they stood in its bustling port with a city of stucco-walled and clay-roofed buildings before them. Two hills rose in places, one topped with a Parthenon-like temple, the other bearing a palace which could only be Caesar’s. A curious craft floated overhead, like a white-hulled sailboat given six short wings, three to a side, each containing a torus which glowed with the ethereal shine of Cherenkov radiation.
“A volor,” Selva said, looking up at it. They’d seen them in satellite feeds, but not in person until now. “Amazing it still works.”
“Dulane has a fleet of such sky-vessels,” Wotoc said. “We should be glad we encountered his boats instead.”
“Get moving!” a Legionnaire struck Eric with the shaft of a spear. They walked between two columns of soldiers, led by a man who played a triumphant tune on a bugle. People filed out of houses and turned to look as they stood at shops, watching the procession of the Black Legion and the prisoners they held, starmen and Freehold sailors. As they ascended the hill to Dulane’s palace, Eric caught sight of an ovular structure like the Colosseum of ancient Rome before Terra’s rising seas drowned it. Only this one was in use, with awnings over the sides and rows of benches. He wondered what sort of awful things happened in there.
Two flights of steps brought them up ramps to the columns of the palace, and the copper-plated doors behind them. The procession halted, Arztillan citizens still watching from below, and a man came out from another door to confer with the Legion leader.
“Bring the prisoners!” he shouted. The great copper doors thumped open, and they were escorted into a column-lined throneroom. At the far end was a raised platform with marble steps leading up, and a throne atop.
Sitting on the throne was Dulane himself.
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