“This is enough,” Montague slapped the table. “Can we fight if we fear to lose? Can we win if we think ourselves predestined not to? Look about us, Gylain, and see the forces which you master: there are two hundred ships in the fleet, each well-made and well-manned; there are above thirty thousand soldiers with us, as well as the five thousand already sent by foot. The rebels do not have even five thousand and the French are slow to come. Why do you fear destiny and fate when all that has befallen is a result of action, and that alone?”
Gylain expired into his chair and resumed his obsession with the sea. “How many times in the history of this warrior’s world have the few defeated the many? We have numbers, perhaps, but it is strength which wins wars. When the Israelites swept through Canaan, was it by their own strength? Were their voices truly strong enough to shatter walls, and their arms to part the seas? What God will do, he will do; and damnation to the man through whom he does things. Has it not been written, ‘The king will do as he pleases, he will exalt and magnify himself above every god, and will utter blasphemies against the God of gods. He will be successful until the time of wrath is completed, for what has been determined it must take place.’ And again, ‘At the time of the end, the King of the South will engage him in battle, and the King of the North will storm out against him, with chariots and cavalry and a great fleet of ships. He will invade many countries, and sweep through them as a flood.’” Gylain moaned aloud, then continued, “Am I not the King of the South; and you, Lyndon: are you not the King of the North? And he ! Do we not know who he is? And will he not finish what he has begun?”
“Such it is,” Lyndon said slowly, “That weakness is destroyed. But who is to say that we are the weaker? If it is God whom we battle, can we not overcome him? You say the Titans destroyed Atlantis? If so, gods can be destroyed. Let us face him in open combat and put his strength to the test. The rebels cannot overcome us; neither can this God you speak of.”
“For once, I hear truth!” and Montague rose to his feet in a passion. “You have been persecuted by God, you say? And if a man slapped your cheek, would you not devour him? Or if a man poked out your eye, would you not strike off his head? Then who is God, that he is outside of justice? I say, if he has persecuted you, let us strike him double hard; and if his stake is held with the rebels we will overcome them in blood and in anguish and thus defile his name – more so than he himself can do! Woe to him who has set his heart against us!”
“And lo!” de Casanova also stood, “Does one persecute an old man, whose teeth have long since gone the way of his hair? Or does one besiege an old woman, in love or in war? No, but only those who have strength to overthrow. Is it not, then, an admission of your strength that God himself is against you? Do you not see, that you are what he fears. His only weapon is your own fear of him. Throw that yoke aside, and yours will be easy and your burden light.”
Gylain stood and paced the side of the deck, looking over the rail to the raging sea below. He groaned. His bones were as the wood of the ship. “You who has damned us with sin and evil, who has judged us before we left our mother’s womb, who has stricken us for the purpose of your own glory: let it be! You may hold their staff above their heads, that it might not fall; but, by God, I hold my sword above my own, and surely it will fall!”
Silence.
“Look, we draw near,” Montague called just then from the bow. “Thunder Bay approaches, and Lionel’s ship enters it even now. The rebel fleet opens their ranks to let them pass, but it closes again behind them. Now the Hibernian fleet approaches, now the Atiltian. The ships speed on, but will they engage them at once? Yes, they charge in a fever.” He turned to Gylain, “Now is the time for orders, my lord; now is the time for action.”
“Keep the course,” Gylain returned, and he paced to make his plans.
A few moments passed before The Barber came up to the rest of the fleet and joined their ranks. The mouth of Thunder Bay was a quarter mile wide and filled with a dozen ships, among them The King’ s Arm , the Marins, and now Lionel’s ship. Their decks were lined with a large force of archers and soldiers. Yet this was partly an illusion, for the Atiltian rebels – archers by birth – had been trained to be sailors; so, rather than a truly large force, they had men of many helmets. Behind this line spread Thunder Bay, the same in which the previous battle of the rebellion occurred. It was not more than a mile deep and had no bank or shore on either side but that facing the castle; the others were barricaded by living pikes: trees growing to the very edge of the water. The rebels forces were drawn up on a rampart abutting the shore and in the castle itself. The ships were only meant to halt Gylain’s advance and prolong their defeat until something should intervene. As The Barber joined the ranks, a file of men appeared at the far end of the plain. At first a few, they grew until a whole legion of soldiers marched forward, donning the colors of Gylain.
“It is time,” the tyrant called in his booming voice. “It is time for strength, for hate, and for victory!”
As he spoke the sky grew dark and the long accumulating clouds broke forth in rain. The battle had begun.
Chapter 82
It was growing late and the golden air was quickly dying to darkness. A large group was gathered in the glass-walled second floor of Milada’s castle, foremost among them the healthy nobleman himself: his limbs writhing and dancing and contorting themselves in pleasure. Beside him sat Alfonzo, his face drawn and his beard overflowing until it now covered his entire face. Then came Celestine, Cybele, Admiral Stuart, Meredith, Lorenzo, the Innkeeper, and the Fardy brothers.
“The counsels of war are counsels of madness,” Milada began. “Still, we hold them, even as history holds us. Yet time flees us as we cannot flee our enemy, so we had best begin.”
“Alfonzo has led in defenses and so should lead in the council,” the Admiral added. “But I do not think more can be done than what he has already begun. We can only carry out his plans.”
Alfonzo stood, holding a paper in his hands: a design of the castle, a map of the area, and a chart of Thunder Bay. Everything was drawn in careful detail – nearing the point of pedantry – as it had been Alfonzo’s only occupation during lonely nights spent at the side of the dying Milada. Alfonzo spread it on the table that had been placed in the center of their circle, where it was carefully examined by all. Its detail was enough that he did not need to speak or explain it:
The castle was a square within a circle, for the building itself was square, though both the inner and outer walls were circular; a sentinel tower rose up on every side but the north, where stood the gate. The inner gate was on the southern side. It could only be reached by passing through the outer courtyard – the space between the inner and outer walls. The latter was more a corridor than courtyard, however, for it was covered and had murder holes communicating to the inner wall along its length. On the ground floor, the castle was circled by an inner hallway, through which the murder holes were operated. Within that was the central hall, broken into a main hall, pantries, armories, and servant’s quarters. Its ceiling was flat and equal in height to the inner walls, forming a platform upon which the keep was built: the second story and the towers above.
The town surrounding the castle was not meant to be defended. A six foot wall surrounded it, but its purpose was more to stop the invading forest than invading men; at this time it was being taken down and its materials removed to the ramparts adjoining Thunder Bay, that the incoming armies would have no ready materials to form their own protections. The town itself was quickly coming apart as well, and the materials of its buildings stored within the castle; hundreds of men worked day and night on these things: every dawn found years of work swallowed by the arts of war. This included, to the supreme indignation of Oren Lorenzo, the humble church of which he was abbot; but, in the end, he acquiesced for the betterment of the cause. Nothing was built to replace the town and only the castle and the distant ramparts remained to fill the void of civilization. While hundreds of years had been spent forcing back the wilderness of Atilta, it returned full force in but a few days. It was as if no one had ever been there.