III
Under the hand of the young Lucius, the family business prospered greatly. By the time he was twenty years of age, he had been managing the family and its business for almost two years. His youngest brother and younger sister both looked up to him as an example of what a Roman man should be – his sister, of course, was more concerned with finding a husband that acted like her dear brother than emulating him herself. His eldest younger brother, Manius Varius Evodius, had been constantly jealous of Lucius, and so had never showed any interest in him or the business whatsoever. It was a cruel twist of fate that would cause the shipping company to land in his less than competent hands.
Lucius’ mother had finally fallen to her consumption after a brave struggle two weeks before his nineteenth birthday, leaving no one to assist the still-unmarried Lucius around the home. More slaves had to be brought in to maintain the household, and Lucius had begun to look about for a fine Roman woman to become engaged to.
But alas, it was not to be, for two months after his twentieth birthday a call to war went up. The situation in Sicily had become unbearable for the Romans. More than twenty years past, a group of Campanian mercenaries, known as the Mamertines, had seized control of the Sicilian city of Messana. Over the following years, the unemployed Mamertines went wild and consolidated this control, killing the city's men and raping the women. The mercenaries began to expand their new “empire,” burning and destroying the countryside around it, until they met the forces of King Hiero II, dread lord of Syracuse. A battle took place at the Sicilian river Longanus, and the Mamertines were driven back to Messana, from which they appealed both to Rome and Carthage for help.
Unfortunately for the Romans, the Carthaginians chose to answer the call, garrisoning their own troops in Messana alongside the Mamertines. But a second complaint from the Mamertines was soon heard in the Roman Senate, during the infancy of Lucius Varius Magnus’ lifetime, pleading now for help against the Carthaginians in Messana. They were not treating their Mamertine allies kindly, and rumours of dark magicks and a powerful sorcerer were afoot.
A long, protracted debate resulted in Rome accepting the Mamertine’s plea for help, and Appius Claudius Caudex led the first Roman expedition to Sicily and Messana, beginning the land campaign there.
But it was not to this engagement that Lucius was called, for his expertise lay not on the land, but on the sea. Lucius' own call came several years after the first, to combat the approaching Carthaginian navy. The Sicilian campaign had gone well for the Romans, but their victories had come at a price: they had awoken the dragon. As its influence in Sicily fell, Carthage reared its head and sent in its navy to retake the island. The Roman Senate could not allow this to happen; to do so would have spelt the end of Roma herself.
And so a second call was sent out. Unlike his younger brother Evodius, Lucius heeded the call and reported to duty. As an equestrian, Lucius was entitled to the rank of military officer, and to his surprise landed a spot commanding one of the few Roman warships in existence. Lucius had never been on a warship before, and he would never forget the first time he was able to step onto one. Its size, scale, and sheer power awed him, and it took him several minutes to descend back to Earth from the heavens, and to clear his mind of the resurgence of his childhood imagination.
As Lucius prepared for war, the family business naturally passed into the hands of his brother, Manus Varius Evodius, who did not have the skills his brother did. Evodius cared little for the business, and indeed, it collapsed completely after only two years of his administration, undoing decades of work in a heartbeat. He used the fortunes acquired through the industry to fuel his own hedonistic lifestyle, and by the time his income had vanished he had been abandoned by both his sister and younger brother. His life ended a year later, when he was no better than a beggar on the street, dead of the same disease that had brought down his mother.
But none of this dark future weighed on Lucius’ mind – the thrill of finally being on the open sea held the young man’s entire attention, and he forgot almost completely about the family business, and any possibility of finding a suitable woman to marry. No, Lucius Varius Magnus was meant to be a seaman, and so a seaman he would be.
Shortly after his call, the fleet departed for Sicily under the command of Quintus Valerius Burrus, to attempt to halt the threatening Carthaginian navy. Any sane man would have realized that it was a doomed expedition, for the land-based Roman Empire had no experience in naval warfare, whereas the massive Carthaginian Empire extended all around the Western Mediterranean, ruling the seas as much as they did the land. The tiny Roman fleet, consisting of a mere nine warships, stood no chance against the gargantuan navy of mighty Carthage.
Nevertheless, they went forth, sailing to Syracuse quickly, for the weather was good and the winds were with them. Lucius and his men were in good spirits on board the Hercules; the journey was good, the experience wonderful, and defeat seemed impossible.
Would that it had been so for Lucius and his men. As it was, the men of the first Roman offensive fleet would have preferred any other kind of death to the one that they would receive in less than a day, for the way that they died had no honor in it.
It was the night before the coast of Sicily was to come into view that Lucius Varius Magnus saw the dread black vessel for the third time. Only three men in Lucius’ crew of thirty-five were awake, and one of them was belowdecks. The ship was easily thirty meters in length, and those who were on the top deck were scattered all about it.
Lucius was near the steering device and anchor when he turned his attention to the south, towards Sicily. He had expected to see nothing but the stars and open water, but there was something else out there. A cold fear ran down his back as he saw the phantasm from his past before him again, for the third time in his life, and this time he knew for certain that it was real.
The ghost vessel floated eerily above the water, with no crew visible, and as it approached, the terrible twin towers behind its bow-spike began to slowly lower. The Hercules was the closest to the oncoming ship, and it was for the Hercules that it made its course. Lucius ran belowdecks and awoke all the men, who hurriedly donned what fighting gear they could and rushed to the main deck. Once there, they stood in place, looking extremely confused, but not questioning the orders of their captain.
It was only a few minutes more before the terrible ship reached the fleet. The anchors on Lucius' vessel were being drawn up, but not quickly enough to save them. Remembering his earlier sightings of the ship, Lucius expected it to pass through the Hercules, but it did not. Instead, its twin towers, now horizontal so as to appear like walkways, loomed over the deck of the Hercules, and the black ship stopped impossibly quickly, its movement suddenly halted.
No one moved for a moment and the two ships sat there, doing nothing. Then Lucius saw a movement near the top of the mighty warship as the hooked walkways descended downwards, until they reached down from the deck of the black vessel to the deck of the Hercules. Then the things began to come down the ramps.
The sight of those things was another image that would never leave Lucius’ mind – part spider, part human, and part something indescribable and unnamable scurried down that ramp, their twisted skeletal torsos seated atop gaunt spidery bodies, their hands replaced by wicked claws, like those of a lobster or crab.
Lucius could not control his fear then, and as warmth ran down his leg he screamed in terror. The other men on the vessel looked at their captain as if he was mad, and Lucius pointed at the things descending from above, shouting at his crew to kill them. For his part, Lucius struggled to regain control of his emotions and drew his blade, pointing it at the things. There were at least a dozen of them, hideously scuttling down towards the Hercules. His hand shook, and he again told his men to attack – and yet no man did as they were told.
Then they began to fall.
The fastest of the spider-things quickly reached the deck of the Roman ship, and neatly used its claw to decapitate the
nearest man. Screams of surprise and fear began to come from the men on the ship, but they did not move to fight the spider-things. More and more of the horrible denizens of that black vessel descended onto the deck, and Lucius’ men began to fall like flies, none of them making any remotely successful attempt to fend off the spiders. The last few survivors flailed about wildly, waving their swords at random, but the spider-things easily avoided their blows and dispatched them.
The things began to approach Lucius then, but he refused to suffer the same fate as his comrades. Abandoning what little dignity and décor remained to him, he dropped his weapon, turned, and ran to the edge of the vessel. He paused for scarcely a moment before leaping off the edge in full armour, hitting the water with a painful thud and a loud splash. He did not dare look back up, for fear that he would see the things following him. His armour dragged him down, and Lucius struggled to free himself from its oppressive weight.
The Roman equestrian captain had nearly passed out by the time he had escaped, and the current had carried him a good ways away… and down. He swam frantically for the surface, his fear of drowning overcoming his fear of what lay above, but his vision faded before he reached the water's surface.
IIII
By some miracle, Lucius Varius Magnus was discovered by a Roman scout, washed up on the shores of Sicily. He was quickly brought to the Roman camp and nursed back to health, being berated all the while for his near-drowning experience.
He was brought before the commander of the legion, who had served under Appius Claudius Caudex himself, and was ordered to tell his story. Lucius did so as best he could, but the disbelieving stares of the war council discouraged him greatly. In the end, he attributed the whole experience to some kind of delusion – likely he was ill and a Carthaginian attack had pushed him over the edge. He garnered slightly more sympathy after that, and was sent back to Roma on the next available ship.
Upon his arrival, he did not even check in with the struggling business of his brother, but instead devoted himself to deep thought. He heard, over the next few months, many tales of ragtag Roman navies being handily defeated by the Carthaginians at sea. The Romans were no good at naval warfare – the Roman army had always been a land-based one, and they had never had any need for a navy.
News of the demise of Lucius’ fleet’s defeat spread rapidly, and as the sole “mad” survivor, the young equestrian was avoided by his fellow citizens and blamed for the whole mess. He lived his life in misery and solitude, thinking about the futility of war and trying to drive that terrible black vessel and its spider-people out of his head. But he never could succeed, and the images never left him.
Another year passed before Lucius decided it was his duty to return to the fight – though perhaps he was no longer fit to act as captain. He was on his way to inform the war leaders of his decision when the idea struck him. Other than the black vessel, what had been running through Lucius’ heads were thoughts of the Romans' inability to win at sea. But on that black ship, that terrible vessel that had come from nowhere to destroy the first Roman navy, there was a solution to their problems. Lucius hurried to the council chambers with greater speed, and hastily presented his idea to the council.
For his inspiration, Lucius claimed not the black vessel, but instead convinced the council that he had seen this on a beached Carthaginian warship on Sicily. Of course, this was not true in the slightest, but he thought it better to lie than tell the truth. He had come up with a way, he claimed, for the Roman infantry to have a place at sea.
He called it the corvus, or raven’s claw, for that was what its tip reminded him of. That terrible ship that brought death with it had had two of them: those twin towers that, when lowered, allowed for things – in the case of Lucius’ theory, Roman soldiers, and in the case of the black vessel, spider-monsters – to cross from one ship to another. This would allow the Romans' superior infantry to outshine Carthage’s navy.
His idea was extremely well received, and he was forgiven for his shortcomings and failure in the eyes of the Roman people. Immediately afterwards, we was placed at the head of the new construction effort to build a navy worthy of Roma.
He and his team worked remarkably quickly, and a fleet of fivescore quinqueremes and singlescore triremes was built in about a year. Lucius was not, at his own request, to lead the navy, or even a single ship – he would act merely as a scientific observer on the rear flagship, making sure that the individual vessels remained in one piece.
He and the rear naval commander, one Gaius Duilius, were not present at the first real naval battle against Carthage at the Lipari Islands, but when news of the Roman defeat reached Lucius’ ears he was greatly discouraged. He spent the next few days moping about his cabin until Gaius Duilius got him out of it by encouraging him with words of victory. The new system just had to be mastered, Duilius said, and it would be the two of them who would do it, for Gnaeus Cornelius Scipio Asina, the commander of the entire navy, had been captured at the Lipari Islands. This left Duilius the command of the fleet. Lucius was relieved to hear that no black vessel had been sighted – although he would have been less relieved to hear of several of the vessels’ crews being found dead of strange, unexplained wounds while nowhere near the main combat.
V
Gaius Duilius was correct in his belief that victory was imminent – for it was, although Lucius was destined never to know of it. It was to occur off the coast of Mylae, and it was to be Gaius Duilius’ rise to glory.
Lucius transferred vessels at this juncture, for it was not desirable for the man of craft and nautical science to be at the forefront of the fleet, which was where the flagship, of course, would be. Instead, Lucius stayed with the reserves, in one of the last vessels that would go forth. He was content to sit back and watch the battle from afar. He held no fear of any black vessels sliding across the sea, for the sun was bright, and he believed that no harm would come to him while there was daylight. If only he had remembered that the dreaded vessel had appeared to him the first two times in the middle of the day, when the sun was high.
Hannibal Gisco was Duilius’ opponent on that day, and the battle was to be relatively swift. Lucius watched with pleasure as his vessels – and his corvi – went into action, hooking onto the Carthaginian ships and allowing the Roman legions to finally fight at sea. So enthralled was Lucius – and the ship's captain – by the sight that neither man noticed that their ship was slowly drifting away from the other rear vessels of the fleet.
It was just as the two men realized just how far they had moved that the black vessel came, this time surprising Lucius even more than before with its swiftness. One moment there was nothing, and the next there was the vessel. It no longer towered above the quinquereme; in fact, the black vessel was considerably smaller, being itself a three-decked ship. Despite the terrible fear running down Lucius’ spine, he allowed himself to grin – the ship’s corvi were too short to reach up to the decks of the mighty quinquereme.
Would it have been that he were not mistaken. Lucius regretted his thought an instant later as he saw the corvi’s claws begin to stretch, the wood of the ship moving and bending as the very surfaces of the corvi began to stretch and expand, moving upwards, towards the deck of Lucius’ vessel.
Lucius caught the attention of the captain and pointed out the vessel below him, but the captain said he saw nothing. The boatmaker’s heart dropped into his stomach as the terrible claws of the corvi reached the deck of the ship, resting themselves lightly on the rail, and he saw movement down below. He could not bring himself to look at the spider-people, and instead began to shiver. The captain told him to go down below and take a rest, but Lucius remained unmoving.
Thoroughly confused and exasperated, the captain shook his head and turned his attention back to Mylae, even as Lucius’ nerve finally broke and he ran screaming from the black vessel. The captain turned around to see what Lucius had been running from, and a filthy claw was thrust through his abdomen. When the
claw opened, the captain’s upper torso flew from his body, landing with a sickening thud upon the deck.
To all but the fleeing Lucius, it appeared as if the captain had been cut in half without any cause. The men all shouted for help and gathered their arms, rushing up to their slain captain, and as they ran forward, they were all cut down mercilessly by foes they could not see.
By the time the crew had all been dispatched, Lucius was curled up in a shaking mass at the bow of the ship, not believing what was before him. These things did not deserve to walk under the light of day – they were creatures of the night, of man’s darkest nightmare. They had no business existing beneath the sun.
Lucius was unable to move any part of his body as the things scuttled rapidly down towards him – he couldn’t even will himself to jump off. The things surrounded him, some even crawling over the edge to stand behind him, but made no move to hurt him. A strange hissing was traded between the members of the spider-thing pack, and after a minute or so of this hideous discourse, the thing directly in front of Lucius reached forward with an open claw, and the light slid from the Roman’s eyes as he unfurled upon the deck.
He came to his senses only minutes later, chained to a damp wall in the black bowels of a filthy vessel. The shackles around his wrists and ankles were too tight, and they chafed him badly. Lucius grimaced and looked around him, but could find no features other than the high ceiling and curving floor to tell him where he was. All he knew was that he was belowdecks in some foreign boat. But whose boat?
He then remembered what had happened to him when he still dwelt in the light of day, and he lost his senses again as he lapsed back into unconsciousness, his mind not able to come to terms with what was happening. Like any good Roman, he was religious and made sacrifices to the gods and attended all of the appropriate rituals – but never before had he heard of terrible things such as these spider-beings, who travelled the waters in dread black vessels, taking the lives of innocent Roman men. What gods would allow such things to exist?
He regained consciousness again nearly an hour later, and found that things had changed. There was more light, for two torches had been placed in front of him, set at the top of tall iron stands. Between those torches was an ornate chair covered with titanic rubies, sapphires, and diamonds that glittered eerily in the dim light. White silk cushions rested atop the glimmering chair, and upon those cushions sat an old man with calloused and wrinkled skin, filthy black hair, and a skin complexion that was impossible to define – somehow both black and white, and yet neither as well. Upon seeing Lucius awaken, the man opened his mouth in a hideous smile, revealing his five remaining teeth, all but one decayed so badly that nothing could ever have brought them back.
The man’s eyes were glazed over, cataracts having taken hold of them in their entirety. Yet for all that, he seemed able to see, and his eyes seemed to move up and down Lucius’ body, his head remaining still. In his right hand he clutched a gnarled staff, and it took Lucius a moment to realize that the shimmering at its top was in fact a curved blade.
It was then that the man spoke in clear Latin to Lucius, his voice wheezy and gasping. “How is it that you have come to possess the ghost-sight, child?”
Lucius was still too petrified to move, and so made no response.
“I see how it is. All of the others are the same.” The man waved his left hand, and the flames atop the torches grew brighter and taller, allowing Lucius to see, for the first time, what was around him.
Immediately, Lucius wished that he couldn't. Chained to the wall all around him and above him, on all sides of the massive chamber – which appeared to take up all three decks of the trireme – were other humans, some appearing to be almost apes. Their heads hung down in despair and defeat, their clothes having long since rotted away, leaving their naked bodies open to the musty air. All ages, races, and genders were represented: young and old, Oriental and Arab, Caucasian and African, Aborigine and Persian, Mesoamerican and Indian, male and female.
“They all went silent, too, when I took them. A rare gift you have, being able to see my vessel. Of course, I don’t much come to the waking world – not much for me here except when a little extra coin is to be made.” The man chuckled, and the noise that came out of his mouth was the most hideous thing that Lucius had ever heard. “Much as I enjoy posing as a Carthaginian sorcerer, my pay is now enough and it is time, I believe, to return to the underworld. Now that I have you, there is nothing more for me here.”
The man leapt to his feet and clapped his hands together, his staff remaining upright beside him. “But of course, rules are rules! Do you happen to have any coins on you?”
Lucius still could not move, let alone speak, for he was still petrified. The old man hobbled forward when Lucius gave no response, and began to feel all around his tunic, causing the Roman to faint again. When he next awoke, the chair was gone, but the torches and the man were still there.
“No coins. My apologies, Roman, but you’re going to have to stay with me until you can pay the ferryman.” The man’s rotting smile broke free again. “I believe that you may be staying with me for a very long time. But you’ll have the company of the other dead who cannot cross over. Please enjoy your stay.”
The man turned and began to shuffle away, and then turned around. “Oh, I forget my manners, how silly of me. If you ever decide to speak to me, I must tell you my name. I am called Caethagus, but to you Romans and your friends the Greeks I am known as Kharon, to the Etruscans I am called Charun, to the Maya I am called Lacandon, to the Celts I am Balor, and to the Egyptians I am named Anubis. Take your pick; I will answer to all.”
Then the man Caethagus closed his hand and the flames went out, leaving Lucius trapped in the dark silence of Kharon’s vessel, destined to forever be alone among many. Never was he again to see the light of day or feel the sun on his face, for Kharon would never let him go – after all, he was dead, and he could not pay the ferryman.