in readiness to strike down the enemy commander. While the others yelled and flourished their blades to incite their wrath, Alfonzo did neither. He was a man of the forest, and he was the forest. If war is madness, still those who are least mad are most feared; and Alfonzo was armed with both a cold heart and a cold sword. The plumed commander did not shy from Alfonzo’s charge, but he was thrown aside a corpse. For Alfonzo had both the force of his arm and his horse, while the commander had only the latter. Alfonzo looped his blade down at a slant, while the other raised his own to defend. His sword was caught by the momentum and overtaken, dashing against his face; his dead body dashed against the ground.
Meanwhile, Lorenzo drove himself into the mass of soldiers, passing through a hole in their rank in which there were no spears. His heels were used correctly and his mule – a drooling beast with wide nostrils – rushed headlong into the forest of armored men that made up the army. The soldiers, exhausted and ill-equipped, let him pass, and Lorenzo zealously shared his sword with them as he went: first to the right, then leaning over and circling his arm over his head to the left. He did not look up in his fury and after a moment found himself in the center of the enemy, surrounded on all sides by thousands soldiers.
“The devil!” he cried, looking about for his comrades, “I am alone!”
None of the rebel soldiers were mounted, and so could not as easily follow him in his charge; and Alfonzo had pulled back after confronting the commander. He was alone in the midst of enemies. Only his wits were with him.
“Heave ho!” he yelled ferociously, “Flank the forest, men, and gird the trees!”
He shouted nonsense; for while he could think of nothing meaningful to say, neither could he keep silent. So he rode through their ranks, and they parted for the crazy man. They were so worn and their minds so spent that they could not tell he was alone, or that he made no sense. Soon he passed through the army altogether, killing many along the way. Only then did his vigor subside. When he saw what he had done he was doubly afraid. So he continued his charge toward the forest, toward the smoldering fires.
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!”
