The Man of Bronze (20 page)

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.

This time when he charged, I didn’t bother shooting. Treading water, I holstered my pistol and drew my commando knife from its belt sheath. It was a knife very much like the Kaybar I’d taken from the mercenaries in Warsaw. I had no idea if it could penetrate the eel priest’s hide any better than bullets, but it was worth a try. If that didn’t work, I still held the bronze leg in my other hand; maybe I could ram the chunk of metal down the eel’s throat and choke it to death. (Except, of course, that eels breathe through gills, not windpipes. I put that out of my mind as the priest bore down on me.)

Once again, the monster reared over my head before making its darting strike. Apparently, the priest preferred show over subtlety—an occupational weakness. At the instant he started his downward attack, I surged forward through the water, not trying to get away but moving in close: so close he’d have to bend double to reach me. He wasn’t quite flexible enough . . . and a moment later, I’d wrapped my arms around his eely body, well below the human portion of his anatomy.

I’ve ridden angry mustangs; I’ve ridden rodeo bulls; I’ve ridden maddened buffalos, panicked giraffes, and elephants in heat. But imagine something stronger than any three of those animals . . . then remember an eel is slippery with slime and able to dive underwater.

I pretty much had my work cut out for me.

At least I had a solid grip—not just my arms but my legs circling the priest’s slippery self. My nose was pressed tight to the monster’s skin; it stank of rotten mackerel, like Billingsgate fish market on a hot day in summer.
Euu.
I’d be doing the world a favor by sending this freak to his final reward.

But my knife wasn’t up to the task. I tried; I tried with all my strength. Hugging the eel with one arm, I stabbed as hard as I could at the greasy yellow flesh. The blade skittered off, not gouging the slightest furrow. I made several more attempts—fast jabs, slow thrusts; the knife’s tip, then its edge—but the eel had a hide like an M1 tank. No chance of gutting this fish unless I found a more vulnerable part of its anatomy: perhaps its human abdomen or its wicked tooth-filled head. If I slipped the blade through its gill slits . . . but before I could test that approach, I had to get within striking distance.

No sooner did I start to climb the eel’s body than the monster plunged underwater. It submerged fast and hard, blue fingerling eels glittering in a blur past my eyes. I had no choice but to give up my grip: the priest thing had gills and could stay down indefinitely; I had lungs and couldn’t. Letting go near the surface was better than ending up hundreds of feet below, clinging to a monster I couldn’t hurt and wondering where my next breath would come from. Still, I hesitated a fraction too long. By the time I pushed away from the priest, we’d descended far enough to get past the school of glimmerlings . . . into the dark beneath the smaller eels, where the priest had more freedom of movement.

He turned the instant I released him: his long body snaking around, a shadowy sinuous form I could barely make out by the dim light glowing above. One look at his speed told me I’d never make it back to the surface in time—he could swim far faster than any mere human. Instead of trying to get away, I jackknifed down to meet him. New strategy: jam the bronze leg between his teeth so he couldn’t bite me, then hack away with the knife ad lib.

I almost didn’t make it. The water slowed me so much, I nearly didn’t get the bronze leg between me and the eel’s snapping jaws. I’d pictured putting the leg right across the monster’s mouth, like a bit between a horse’s teeth; as it was, I only got an inch of bronze into place on one side of the gaping maw before the teeth chomped down.

Urban folklore says that when people with metal fillings bite tinfoil, you can sometimes see sparks. My mutant priest had no fancy dental work, but the flash of light when his teeth snapped the bronze was brighter than a swimsuit photo shoot. I floated there blinded, brazen afterimages dancing on my retinas. When my vision cleared, I was still nose to nose with the eel priest . . .

. . . but he wasn’t quite so eel-like as before. His moray head had shifted back to something semihuman. The jaw was shorter, the eyes larger, the gills a little like ears.

Which seemed like a positive development. And since the priest was no longer munching on the bronze leg—he’d let go in shock at the blazing flash—I cocked back my arm and swung the leg to whack him right between the eyes.

Another burst of light: bronze in color. The monster changed again in the direction of
Homo sapiens.
His long yellowed tail shriveled to half its length. His snout became a nose. His conical hat fit better.

This is brilliant,
I thought.
The bronze giveth and the bronze taketh away.

So I cudgeled him with the leg, clubbing at any target within reach. A dozen blows later, my opponent was reduced to his original self: a blubbery man, naked except for a fancy hat, unmoving in the water. I couldn’t tell if he was dead—possibly dead for twenty centuries—or just passed out from the shock of restoration. Either way, I took pity on the poor sod and dragged him behind me as I swam to the surface.

Turns out I didn’t save the priest’s life, even if he still had life in him. A split second after we reached open air, something went
crack
from the direction of the trireme. The back of the priest’s skull splattered across the water, courtesy of a high-velocity bullet. I plunged back under the ocean before something similar happened to me. Either the chaps from
Unauthorized Intervention
were getting gun happy or Lancaster Urdmann had arrived.

And if Urdmann could shoot at me from the trireme, that was bad news indeed. It meant Lord Horatio et al. had been taken out of the picture while I was fighting monsters. I didn’t know how Urdmann and his thugs for hire could defeat a crack commando team, but that didn’t matter. My companions were either dead or taken hostage, and I could guess what Urdmann wanted as ransom.