Jonathan Dunn - The Forgotten King

It was a midnight noon and the sun a lesser moon. The rain came in like the tide. Streams were forming by which it traveled steadily to the lower ground until it finally congregated around the castle – the lowest spot on the plain. Yet along with the light, the rain also drowned the fires; now only scattered pieces remained, flickering like candles through the darkness. Everything on Atilta was ancient and majestic, and as the thundering rain came, all was baptized and converted to darkness. Baptized with water, baptized with fire.

Lorenzo retained both his speed and his fear as he entered Hades. Smoke went up where the rain came down. The air was a cloud. The ground was bare and charred, littered with burnt carrion. They covered the ground like dirt and the mule could not avoid them. Smothered by the scene, Lorenzo was sober: pressed by the fear and the evidence of death.

“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” he whispered faintly. “That is the curse of God.”

He was silent until he came to the edge of the forest, where he dismounted. The ground was covered by a crop of the dead, sprouting from every crevice or imperfection in the ground, in which they had stumbled in their flight. Some moaned, others were silent. But each was dead or soon to be. He left his mule and wandered around the graveyard in a reverie, broken only by a familiar face.

“Blaine! Osbert! What has been done?” and he wept for the first. For the dead are merely dead, merely dirt; it is only in the contrast between the living and the dead that sadness is known.

“Oren Lorenzo?” a voice called from the lofty canopy.

He slowly lifted his head and returned, “It is I.”

“We will drop a ladder: you must climb up to us, since it is still dangerous below. Will you come?”

“Yes,” he mourned, “I will come.”

With that, a rope ladder dropped down beside him. He hesitated a moment, then removed his cloak and placed it over the bodies of his two comrades. Then he began the long ascent into the canopy, the Treeway that sat blissfully above the battle. The rain did not reach the platforms, for it only came down in waterfalls and those the rebels redirected. As Lorenzo reached the top, the ladder was brought up again.

The battle, meanwhile, had not fled with Oren Lorenzo.

Alfonzo dismounted his horse after dispatching the commander, and sent it away from the battle with a whistle. Then, on foot, he joined his men in the battle.

“Where is Lorenzo?” and he raised his sword to deflect that of an enemy soldier, twisting it to turn it back on the man. The soldier’s blade fell back and his chest was exposed, giving Alfonzo the opening to finish him.

“He rode on, through the army,” the other rebel replied, his words spoken to the rhythm of his sword.

“Has he gone mad?” Pause. “His fate is his own, and God’s.”

The battle waxed and waned within a moment, for Gylain’s soldiers’ had no strength left to fight with. They fell back in a general confusion. Alfonzo pushed his men forward, pressing the enemy into a full retreat. Still, they pushed harder, for their position along Thunder Bay was guarded only by the sea wind.

“We must press on!” Alfonzo called to his officers as they reigned in their men. “We must route them completely, for the fleet has arrived and we must battle them as well. Let us finish off the first to face the second!” He raised his sword and rushed into the violence.

As the Admiral held back the fleet, Alfonzo pushed back the army. Soon the retreating forces found themselves in the smoking graveyard they had so recently fled. It was then that it began. One of the troops gave a shrill scream, the sound of concentrated suffering, and then another. It spread among them and then ended abruptly in silence: they fell to the ground, unable to move themselves from exhaustion. They were alive, perhaps, but there was not enough life left to show itself. Even as they fled and fought they fell to the ground and to sleep. The dead and the living slept together.

“Do we finish them?” asked an officer.

Alfonzo was once more a man, no longer a soldier. “These are brave men, though mistaken; and their bravery is used against them. These are men who have suffered for a man to whom suffering is a pleasure and have been through fire, foe, and fear for the sake of the fatherland. These are men who carry battle in their hearts and will fight until they can no longer animate their bodies. Should we slay them in their weakness? That is not the question, my friends, but this: should we return evil for evil?”

Silence mingled with the rain and smoke.

“No, we will not slay them,” Alfonzo continued, relieved and reassured by the return of his heart, “We will comfort them. Percival, take a hundred men and find those who still live. Take them to the shelter of the forest and see that they are cared for, then return to the battle. Clarence, take a hundred men with you and gather supplies for the wounded, that they may nourish themselves; then, return to the battle.” Alfonzo turned and whistled for his horse. It came sprinting across the plain. He mounted as it arrived.

As he began to ride away, Percival called out to him. “Sir, have we not spent ourselves to destroy these men, and they us? And by giving them mercy, do we not defile those who have fallen for freedom and peace?”

“What is our purpose?” Alfonzo returned. “If it is freedom and peace, as you say, how can we hope to gain our own by stealing that of another? For while they stood between us and liberty, they were our enemies; and while they bore arms to prevent our success, they were our foes. But now, in defeat, they have reverted to men, and we must treat them as such.” He paused. “Look about you: what have we gained and what have we lost? If we fight for freedom and war for peace, we have already been defeated.”

He turned his horse and galloped to the front. Yet as he arrived a shrill horn cut the air and pierced the thundering rain: the horn of the Admiral. The rebel fleet had fallen.

Chapter 86

“No, friends, the Marins are yours and under your command,” the Admiral told the Fardy brothers. “I am a man of ship and sea.”

“But we are three and the ships two,” the blond Fardy answered. “We are patient – no one would deny that – but it is too much for us to be separated in the cold water and the hot battle. So, if not you, then another must command the second Marin. We will sail and fight together.”

“Together and inseparable,” the brown Fardy added, “Like the sea, the ship, and the barnacles beneath!”

“The barnacles beneath? That is too much, my brown haired brother, for I fear that you demean yourself to be a barnacle. So I must stand and protect your honor and insist that I be considered the nefarious hanger-on.”

“It will not be so! By God above, I am the barnacle beneath!”

“So be it,” the Admiral interrupted, afraid lest the brothers grow boisterous. “Barnes, you will command the Marin.”

“Yes, sir,” the young man said, dutiful more than pleased.

“Meredith,” the Admiral called to the monk, who was sitting atop the mast, examining the horizon for the expected fleets: friend and foe. “Meredith, what is it that I see at twelve mark one hundred and twelve degrees?”

“Let me look a moment, sir,” came back. A minute passed, then it was followed by, “The devil’s doorway, and Satan’s stair! Beelzebub’s back from who-knows-where!”

“Hold your tongue and tell us what it is about,” the Admiral rebuked.

A wine-skin scalp appeared over the sail. “What is it about? It is about the largest fleet I have ever seen.”

“Indeed?” and the Admiral leapt to the rail, holding himself up by the yard arms to gain a clearer view. “What fleet and what size?”