Swords & Heroes Story #9

Unbound by R. E. Diaz

Sep 17, 2024

R. E. Diaz is a very early OG contributor to my first foray into publishing. I started an online zine called Residential Aliens in July, 2007, and Rudy’s “A Measure of the Depth” appeared in the Jan-March, 2008 issue. (It’s actually still available to read for free! Click the story title link.) That tale also appeared in our very first print issue of ResAliens (Jan/Feb, 2010). Rudy returned to our print pages earlier this year with a powerful biblical fiction piece titled, “Ahavah’s Golem.” (ResAliens, Issue 11) I’m excited to present as Swords & Heroes Story #9 another mytho-poetic adventure with a Britannia-Roman setting and a sorcerous end. + Ed.

Unbound by R. E. Diaz

Lucius Deculla, centurion of the quinquereme Rhenus, stared at what was left of his advance guard. Body parts, ripped, torn, bitten through – even through armor – were strewn everywhere in the clearing just beyond the sequestered landing at the top of the cliff. While the ship’s crew secured that desolate stretch of the coast of Britannia down below, he and his eighty marini climbed the cliff wall toward the hillfort on the promontory. The eight-man advance guard had only been minutes ahead of the rest of his centuria. Yet the shouts and screams were over by the time they managed to scramble through the jagged crevice onto the rim of the broad white cliffs of Dubris.

Horror froze them to that spot until an unnatural laughter echoed off the gore-stained stone walls. A shadow, above and to their right started to move, and their training took over. Packing into the only defensive formation that could fit within that cramped passage, they edged their way toward that bloodied ground. Once there, they looked up at an impossible sight.

The creature regarding them from above tossed her hair away from her face and breasts. Rippling muscles under supple lion skin continued that motion until it converged on the massive haunches on which she sat. Her wings splayed out to frame her glory. “Who shall next attempt to answer my riddle?” She spoke in a Greek dialect that reminded Lucius of poems his Greek mother had read to him as a child.

“You are supposed to be dead, bane of Thebes,” another voice answered in the same ancient tongue.

A stranger entered the clearing from the other side. The white hair and beard suggested a man older than Lucius’ own father. But the thickness of his neck, the golden Lycian armor encompassing a massive chest, and the muscular arms and legs, crisscrossed by a multitude of battle scars, suggested something else, someone else…as out of place here as that mythical monster sitting on the boulders above their heads.

“You mean by Oedipus’ wile?” she replied through a fang-fringed smile. “I did throw myself off the mountain, nearly drowned in the Styx. But I was rescued... Only to be chained!” She snarled at the affront and then settled back again. “It appears there is no one to keep me bound anymore.” Searching her challenger’s eyes, and not finding any trace of the fear gripping the rest of the mortals below her, she asked: “Who are you?”

“Diomedes,” he replied as his hand moved slowly to the hilt of a sword he had not drawn in over half a century, “King of Argos.”

That reply, which Lucius could not have possibly understood correctly, subtly changed the monster’s stance. Her forelimbs tensed, gripping firmly the rock on which she sat. She eyed his right hand, readying herself to pounce. “Son of Tydeus, do not tempt Fate. I could have had my way with you already. You know the rules. I have a question for you.”

Diomedes shook his head at the mention of Fate. “Don’t speak to me of Fate. Long did I believe the answer to all questions rested within its inscrutable will. It made life and duty straightforward, until I learned otherwise.” Acknowledging the Roman centurion and his men, he motioned them to stand back. And he accepted the creature’s challenge: “Ask what you will.”

Drawing her shoulders back, raising her head high, the Sphinx dangled the temptation of those breasts again before his eyes, and said: “Is the good good because the gods do it or do the gods do good because it is right?”

The gods are no more, Diomedes almost replied. But that would have gained him nothing. And he could not be sure they were all gone; for here was proof again that there were plenty of monsters left in this world. Still, this one had just doomed herself. For Athena had given him the answer to that question seventeen hundred years before, when he demanded to know why his faithfulness in the fields of Troy was rewarded with a curse.

~*~

He had pounded his fist on her altar. ‘Where were you when Aphrodite turned my wife into an adulteress? Where, when she turned the people of Argos against me?’ No reply came, so he shouted at the top of his voice. ‘Where were you when she transformed my men into birds?’ The violence of his outburst cleared the temple of all mortals. But he went on, knowing that she was there. For he could see her, thanks to the gift the goddess herself had given him. ‘What good is it,’ his voice finally broke, ‘to build temples to the gods, when you treat us like this?’

Pallas Athena, clad in full armor, abided his rant in silence. Then she replied: ‘It is no good.’ Her shining eyelids extinguished stormy eyes for a heartbeat, and when she opened them again, they glistened with the sheen of tears. She rendered her verdict, turned away, and vanished to wage her final war. That was the last time he ever saw her.

~*~

“Your riddle is nonsense,” Diomedes answered the Sphinx, and then he finished with his mistress’s final words: “For the gods have never been good.”

Diomedes recognized the emotions that assailed the monster’s face at the hearing of that truth. For he had felt them too, that day. They both had been born into the same lie. “You know it is true.” He went on. “Your curse will not let you deny it. All our lives we were nothing but playthings in the hands of fickle gods.”

“No,” the monster growled.

“Yes! But we are not blameless,” he continued. “Ignoring every evidence, we never rebelled. I saw the excesses of Zeus with my own eyes…how he manipulated his children, mortal and immortal, to keep Menelaus’ war raging, delaying victory to either side…for over ten years! For what? Just to further the rivers of blood. And him we called King of Heaven?”

Lucius cringed as the Greek drew closer to the rearing monster, with arms wide open, palms up, the way one entreats a fellow man. “We can turn our backs on the lie. I am proof.” He appealed. “I left that life to wander the Earth, to seek answers to the questions I had never asked. You can choose to do the same.”

“No,” she roared, iron claws emerging from gigantic paws. For a moment, she gazed at their bloodied edges, as if she would entertain doubt. For that moment, Diomedes dared to hope. But she could not bear the truth. She had already made another choice. She pounced upon him.

He too jumped forward, but not at her. He went down on the blood-soaked ground, rolling under the monster, just as the gigantic paws landed where he had been. Sword, already drawn, he could have carved open the beast’s belly in passing. But he could see: body of lion, wings of vulture, yet woman at core.

She spun and faced him again. Her roar brought no fear to his eyes; only a flicker to his brow... A flicker of...pity? Pity! That next chest-throbbing roar toppled the Roman soldiers to the ground. Her iron-ribbed wings sliced forward at Diomedes’ head; but he leapt at her, left fist striking her jaw, followed by his right, driving the pummel of his sword into the side of her face.

“Pity? Mercy? You fool!” The woman drowned within the roiling rage. She was iron, all iron: razor sharp fangs and claws, inches from his neck. But his sword had already pierced her heart. She slumped onto his armored chest before crumbling to the ground.

“No one will ever bind you again,” he whispered, regret in his voice.

The monster at his feet, the Greek turned toward the Roman soldiers; they closed rank instinctively upon their centurion. Diomedes could see the panic in their eyes. He stood back and slowly sheathed his sword, letting Lucius push his way through to the front.

“Is it true?” Lucius paused involuntarily, as childhood memories constricted his throat. “Diomedes, King of Argos,” he finally said. “Destroyer of Troy. How can this be?”

It was a question Diomedes had pondered over seventeen centuries. “I do not know.” He replied. “Maybe I spent too much time with Pallas Athena. Maybe, the only way she could give me her sight was to give me a part of herself.”

“You could see the gods.” There was exultation in the centurion’s voice. “Minerva fought by your side. You wounded Mars and Venus. Only Jupiter’s thunderbolts could hold back your rampage.” The glorious exploits of the heroes of old were filling the centurion’s heart with a heady pride. “You are—” He almost continued and then paused awkwardly. “You are a god.” And he started to kneel.

“Never!” Diomedes seized him by the shoulders, lifted him off the ground, and dropped him on his feet. His anger brought Roman swords singing out of their scabbards.

“Stand down,” Lucius shouted at his men.

“I have no time for this, Lucius Deculla.”

“You know my name. How—?”

“Cornelius Aemilius, your former centurion, now commander of the Italian cohort at Caesarea Maritima, asked for my help. He took me in when I had no one in the Decapolis. I owe him much. So, here I am.”

“I do not understand.”

“He has been warned in dreams. He fears for Rome. And if it falls, he is sure his beloved Palestine will not be far behind.”

“I knew him to be a pious man, but an augur? What threatens Rome?” Lucius demanded.

Diomedes answered with a question: “Why are you here?”

Lucius hesitated. He could not reveal his mission.

But the Greek already knew. “I saw the fleet gathered at Gesoriacum, across the sea, and your quinquereme sent across to scout this shore. What did you find? Did you see any Britons guarding these cliffs?”

“None,” Lucius had to admit, “not a single defender anywhere along the overlooking cliffs.” What normally would have been a sign of good fortune, had filled him with a foreboding he now understood.

“Why has your emperor chosen to invade now?” Diomedes continued his challenge. “It has been almost a century since Julius Caesar forced the Britons to sue for peace. Since then, Britannia has not failed to pay customs and duties to Rome. The ebb and flow of power among the local kings is no threat to the Empire. Why invade now?”

Lucius could not answer.

“Lucius, heed my words. Your emperor is being lured to destruction.” The Greek’s tone was grave. “Caesar Augustus was similarly tempted. He entertained ambitions of godhood and bent the Senate to his will. But the Tiburtine Sybil’s rebuke was enough for him: Augustus relented. And, as with Julius Caesar, the declaration of divinity only came after his death.

“His successor, Tiberius, heeded the Sybil’s warning from the beginning of his reign, and never allowed himself to be worshipped as a living god. But this Caligula…is a different kind of man.” Their eyes met again. “I hear that he speaks to Jupiter Optimus Maximus on Capitoline Hill, sits on the lap of the statue, and even berates the god.”

Lucius could not contradict him. A reign that began soberly, even generously, had changed dramatically overnight. Excesses of every form, from the vain and absurd to the obscene, had become the norm. “It is worse,” the Roman admitted. “He has had the Palace extended to the Forum, to encompass the shrine of Castor and Pollux, so that he can stand between the divine brothers and receive the worship of their visitants. It all started—”

“After the fever that almost killed him.” The Greek finished the centurion’s thought. “Yes, fear of death is a powerful motivator…for most men.” Then he added: “What would he not dare if he were to be given godhood…unbridled power?”

Lucius shuddered at the thought.

“Why does your emperor delay?” The new voice startled them both. A gaunt man, dressed as a Druid priest, was standing on the footpath that led out of the clearing. “Tell him, my master awaits.” He started to turn around.

“Maybe,” Diomedes replied, “your master should show his face.”

Annoyed, the man glanced down at the monster’s carcass. “Whoever did this will pay.” He turned back, hurrying along the path that encircled the hillfort.

“Do not believe everything you see,” Diomedes whispered as he turned to follow. At Lucius’ command, his men started a fast march after them. But the priest had already turned past the base of the hillfort and was gone.

Shielded by twin ramparts and ditches, the fort’s walls to their right would have been hard for a legion to breach. Half a regiment of archers could have kept an army at bay from there; yet there were still no defenders anywhere to be seen. The path rounded to the northwest wall, leading to an entrance with wide open gates.

And then came the first attack.

Battle cries from the tree line below and behind them triggered a smooth pivot of the soldiers. In seconds, shields interlocked, and spears protruded, just in time to dam the human onslaught that fell upon them. Not one Roman slipped back. A dozen barbarians fell.

The remaining attacked again, the same way, with the same result. They repeated that attack, with the same mindless savagery, time and time again, until all lay dead before the Romans.

Lucius glanced up and down his line. None of his men were wounded. Over a hundred Britons lay dead in the field. He heard Diomedes mutter, “Something is wrong.”

They turned to face the gates. Within the fort, thatched houses, stables, and smithys were arranged along regimented roads as far as the eye could see. It could easily house over a thousand Britons. Several hundred of them could pour out along each of those roads to defend the gates. Yet, the only evidence of life Lucius could see in that place were the thin tendrils of smoke emanating here and there from the houses.

The battle cries started again. But the horde that poured out of the nearest road was as small as the one they had faced outside. With an eight-man rearguard behind them, the Romans fanned into a vee formation and broke through the rushing crowd. Again, it was just over a hundred Britons that attacked. And again, their slaughter was swift. Diomedes had not drawn his sword this time.

“This is not how Britons wage war.” Lucius finally understood Diomedes’ comment. But before they could confer, a new wave, just over a hundred strong, burst upon them. The Roman soldiers advanced directly at their attackers, hacking them down right and left.

“Frogs,” Diomedes said.

“What?” Lucius jumped back to his side and thrust his spear through a man that had almost reached the Greek.

“You don’t see the filthy frogs coming out of the mouths of the slain?”

His words made no sense, but the revulsion in Diomedes’ face was clear. And then Lucius understood why Homer called him the Lord of the War Cry. “Stop!” he roared. And every Roman soldier instantly obeyed.

Diomedes pointed to the large meeting hall deep within the fort, the gaunt priest standing watch before it. “There is our battle.” He started running, with Lucius and his men close behind. The few surviving barbarians just scattered away.

The sight that greeted them as they crossed the hall’s entrance froze every Roman in his tracks. Seated on a gigantic throne was a titanic figure, three times the size of an ordinary man.

“Jupiter Optimus Maximus,” muttered Lucius. And it was...exact in every detail, except that this giant was alive. But no glorious marble or golden steps led up to his throne. Instead, everything about him was decay: broken tables and chairs, drinking horns and pottery in shards, iron cooking pots upturned everywhere; their former contents hosting a buzzing, squirming carpet of flies across the ground; all insignificant detritus, dwarfed by the god’s enormous feet.

“Welcome, my children.” Its voice rumbled like thunder. Two lines of Briton warriors were standing against the walls, fifty or sixty to each side, extending from the throne toward the front of the hall, and flanking the Roman soldiers. Beyond them and further behind the throne, the rear of the hall was crowded to its limit with the rest of the Britons, including women and children; all of them bearing the same blank stare.

“Why do you not do as you were told?” The Druid priest approached, motioned with his hand, and the two lines of Britons readied their weapons.

“Always a hundred and ten,” Diomedes said, stepping forward. “Not much of an army, is it?”

The priest drew his own sword from the folds of his garment.

“Who are you?” The thunderous voice filled the hall again. “Why do you interfere?”

“For someone pretending to be Zeus, you are singularly uninformed.” Diomedes pivoted around, grabbed a Roman spear, and completed the turn by flinging it at the throne. Instead of piercing Jupiter’s chest, the spear pinned a writhing shrieking shadow into the back of the throne. In the same heartbeat, the Greek unsheathed his sword, took one more step, and sliced clean through priest’s neck. Before the body reached the floor, he snatched something out of the air and impaled it into the ground with the sword. Its dying shriek added to the howl coming from the throne.

“One hundred and nine now,” he said. Then he answered, “I am Diomedes, King of Argos, and I see you for what you are. And, as you have seen, I can kill your kind.”

Lucius came to his side, staring in unbelief as the spear was yanked out of the throne into the air, and something roared. Half the Roman soldiers still saw a raging Jupiter on that throne. The other half drew back in horror at the contradicting images before their eyes. “He is not your god,” Diomedes shouted at them. “This filth is just a baal.”

One of the Briton soldiers toppled in his place, coughing something into the air. Before that something could reach Lucius, Diomedes sliced it in mid-flight. The stench drove the Roman back, and Diomedes said, “One hundred and eight.”

“You cannot stop us all.” The shadow stepped down from the throne.

Diomedes turned to Lucius, placed his hand on his shoulder, and said, “Do you see now?”

“Y-yes.”

“Keep a hand on my shoulder, the other on your sword.” Lucius obeyed. Immediately, his second in command took his place at the Greek’s other shoulder. “Every man, do the same,” Diomedes ordered. At Lucius’ echo, all his soldiers obeyed, connecting man to man, forming a triangle of bristling swords.

Three Briton warriors dropped to the ground, releasing their spirits; and three Roman swords sliced the grotesque flying frogs out of the air before they could reach any of them.

“You want to play this game?” The shadow that stepped forward was neither bull, nor snake, nor man, and yet, all at the same time.

The rest of the line of Briton warriors dropped before them; but nothing flew at the Romans this time. Instead, seconds later, children came up through the ranks of the crowd behind the throne. They picked up the axes and knives from the dirt.

“Coward,” Lucius snarled. “Retreat,” he ordered. But before the Romans could back out in that awkward formation, the children had run around to block the way.

“Molech would be proud,” Diomedes growled, lowering his sword. “What do you want for their lives?”

“I have changed my mind.” The bull-snake-man thing approached just beyond the reach of his blade. “I did not know your kind was still around.” His shapeless hand waved in front of Diomedes’ face. “Why do I need an emperor when I can have you?”

“Let them go.” Diomedes bargained.

“Why not?”

Dropping his sword, Diomedes said, “Go, Lucius, go.”

The centurion refused to move at first, but the look in Diomedes’ eyes brooked no contradiction. At his command, his soldiers broke formation, turned, and dashed out of the hall. As Lucius looked back with the last vestiges of the Greek’s supernatural sight, he saw Diomedes’ body buffeted from every side, hideous frog things pummeling him, crossing his flesh, and burying themselves inside. In the end, the man crumbled to his knees, and the shadow gloated over him.

Diomedes’ eyes scanned the ground about him, wildly, for anything and everything sharp; anything with an edge that could carve. For the things moved: they turned and coiled inside him, straining at the skin of his belly from within, clawing their way between muscle and bone, sliding through his entrails like burning eels.

His hand found the jagged rim of a broken bowl on the ground. Driven by that irresistible urge to gouge the invading horde out, he cut into the skin of his arm. The sudden spear of pain and the blood that flowed jarred forth memories of the same: for he had met this lie before. They do not bury into the body, he told himself. They dig for the soul. Choking back the relentless nausea, he dropped the bloodied shard.

“Turn around,” the shadow commanded. “Look at them run.” It smiled. “Did you think I would keep my word?”

“No.” Diomedes stumbled up to one knee, his limbs barely obeying his will.

“I think I will have you kill them first,” it said, “and then you can come back to carve me some little children.”

“I...don’t think so.” Diomedes heaved himself to his feet. Before the shadow could step back, the ancient Greek lunged forward and wrapped his arms around its shapeless torso.

“What are you doing? You are mine!” The creature twisted and bucked like a wild horse. But the more violently the creature fought, the tighter he made his grip. And in that colossal struggle, the King of Argos staggered out of the hall, out of the hillfort, and onto the footpath outside the walls.

Like Hercules carrying Antaeus aloft, he lumbered up that path, unyielding; up to the northern edge of the defensive wall, up until he reached again the white cliffs of Dubris. “Your kind always lies. I know.” Diomedes panted through clenched teeth. “Your kind once promised to make me mortal again. It was a lie.”

The closer he got to the edge of the cliff, the wilder the writhing of the shadow thing; but he would not let go. “You…really don’t recognize me, do you? You did this to me once before. Weary of life, tired of seeing those I loved die, I let my guard down, and you enslaved me...for thirty years.”

“Release me!” the shadow roared.

Diomedes stepped to the edge of the cliff; his body drenched in sweat. “I won’t let go. You see, last time…last time it took a thousand of you to bend me to your will.” His eyes fixed on the raging sea below, drawing strength from the memories. “Yes, a thousand! But even so…even thirty years bound, I saw…I saw on the shore, across that field of tombs, the One you fear. And you could not keep me from running to him. I bowed at his feet; and he set me free.”

“No, no.” The others shrieked.

His arms and his chest burning, every muscle spasming under the strain, he still held on. “I learned something else that day. I know…there’s something else you fear.”

“Let me go!” The shadow’s desperate howl blended into the wild cacophony of screams issuing from the one hundred and five abominations still bound to it, and trapped within a prison of flesh, as they all saw what the man saw.

“The sea,” Diomedes managed to draw in one more breath. “The swine knew – by instinct. I don’t know why…but your kind hates the sea.”

Maybe – he thought – as he pushed off the rocks, because its waters speak of new life.

He held on to the monster as he jumped out into the void, down toward the raging surface below. He held on through the plunge that felt like crashing through a wall of stone. He held on as the turbulent current carried him down, pounded him against the rocks below, and dragged him out into its churning depths. He held on until the shadow writhed no more, until its body dissolved into the same nothingness that swallowed the demons’ screams. And then, he let go.

~*~

Lucius Deculla, centurion of the quinquereme Rhenus, gave the command for the ship to dock among the rest of the fleet. He oversaw the unloading of the remains of the men he had lost, and the preparations for their funeral pyres. He sent his second in command to ensure their families would be recompensed. Then he watched from the deck of his ship as his emperor led a legion of baffled soldiers into the waves, only to have them return to collect seashells from the sand, as their spoils of war.

Lucius thought about his first centurion, Cornelius, and his dream, a dream by which he sent them a man willing to sacrifice himself for strangers; and he wondered which god had had mercy on them that day. None that he knew would act thus. Someday, he would have to ask him.

As the sun started to set behind the rugged outline of Britannia, a reflected flash of light caught Lucius’ attention, from the right, north along his shore. He went as far on the prow as he could go and peered again into the distance. Indeed, it was the golden glint of Lycian armor on a man watching them from afar.

Unbound © 2024 by R. E. Diaz (4300 words) All rights reserved. You may restack this story via Substack but please do not republish elsewhere. Banner and sword illustrations by Gilead, used by permission.

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