Agmannon, if he was anything, was a gracious host; and their journey was not so vain as they had feared.
Chapter 72
For the beauty of contrast, there was never a more wondrous place than the coastal forests of Atilta. On the one side a citadel of nature, a great forest cut like rock against the sky; on the other the cup of the gods, overflowing with the biting ocean waters. On the one side stood trees mighty and majestic, their canopies outstretched in a communal celebration; on the other side water, a plasmid plain reflecting the trees and bringing out their true nature in the distortion. On one side were wooden towers, crisp and real; on the other their phantoms wavered this way and rippled that.
In this whirlwind of contrast lived a small rowboat, carved from a single log and floating in the shaded waters. It was late afternoon and the air hung lazily over the sea. A man sat in the boat, newly fifty with his hair still colored brown, though the center of his head had long ago gone nude. His nose was short and stout – much as his person – and his eyebrows were weeping willows that shaded his hardwood eyes.
“Those Fardy brothers!” he said to himself, “Let them confess to me later, and I will give them rosaries enough to test their patience. ‘We will be back,’ they says, ‘And you will not have missed us at all!’ Mortal pride of self, it must be, for I do not miss them more than the Lenten feasts.” He paused and, sighing, “Still, I wish they were here.”
He sat up and collected his limbs on the bench that occupied the stern of the boat, looking into the trees. There, hidden among the thick foliage, was a platform attached to the highest branches of the canopy. None but the sharpest eyes could have spied it, and those only if they cared to study the scene for several minutes. Atiltian trees were not deciduous and in the winter the platform was as invisible as in the height of summer. A man stood on the edge of the Treeway and waved his arms at Erwin Meredith.
“Why do you disturb my prayers, Koon?” and he drew himself up as if returning wearily to the land of mere mortals. “Wait, do not answer from there, but come down instead. I need a moment to wipe the blood from my face before I can grant you my attention.” He knelt and splashed water onto his face. In a moment the man reappeared, but on the ground. He was young, no more than thirty, and had a theological beard. His face was handsome. Though his beard and baldness gave him the airs of a wise old man, his bearing gave him the breeze of youth. He was disarming and unarmed, but for his rapier eyes and his hurricane laugh.
“What is it now, Koon?”
“Ships, sir, from the northeast.”
Meredith lowered himself to conceal his interest. “Of what kind?”
“Timbers.”
“Timbers? A chaotic time for a cruise,” and Meredith looked at him closely. “Koon, your beard remains, though I ordered all officers below captain be clean-shaven, for discipline. I favor you, perhaps, but I will still be obeyed.”
“Sir, it is against my conscience.”
“How so?”
“The spiritual ratio, sir!”
“Good God, are you Gylain now?”
“Not at all, but I have been studying as you commanded, and have seen that nature represents God in the ratio of its purity to its unblemished natural face. So I, too, must have a natural face. If I were to shave, I would be removing the ratio that connects nature to its creator.”
“In matters of theology, the atheist’s razor is as much to be feared as the pedant’s beard,” Meredith sighed.
Koon’s rapier eyes gave a quick riposte, “But better a hairy face than a bloody one,” and his hoarse laugh sent the air into a whirlwind.
Meredith leaned back in his boat and shook his droopy eyebrows. “Very well, then, there can be only one solution.” He paused, “Captain Koon, you will captain my ship – which I, as the commodore, should not command directly.”
“Thank you, Commodore,” the genius Koon bowed lowly, “Now, the Timbers.”
“Ready the men for action and beat to quarters; but do not reveal the fleet unless you are seen first.”
Meredith took to the oars and rowed to shore. There was an impermeable shield of trees along the coast, with no sign of any openings. Yet he rowed toward them without slowing. Then, the instant it seemed he would run against the shore, he passed through the trees and found himself inside a wide channel. It opened on either side, a valley between the mountains, and ran into the forest two hundred yards; then it turned and emptied into a small harbor nestled into the trees. The trees themselves had not been cut down, but the water was raised above their trunks and the ships were moored to their upper branches. The Treeway that led to the harbor jutted out once there, forming docks for the cleverly concealed ships.
The partisan monk rowed along the channel, flanked on either side by sentinel trees, in which stood unseen rebel look-outs. The Treeway also extended along either side of the channel and was busy with those repairing the ships, a task just then being completed. As Meredith’s boat swung around into the harbor, he came face-to-face with a triple-masted galleon. A wide loch was filled beneath the forest, and in it was the rebel fleet: seven magnificent vessels, made from the best materials and by the best craftsmen in the maritime capital of the world, Atilta. Their backbones were of Atiltian wood, their rigging of its fibers, and their sails of
“Heave away there, old timer!” cried a man from the deck of
“Indeed, and you are rowing me wrongly, as well. You called me here a moment ago, so cut to the hunt and slice your rigmarole like so much buttered venison.”
“Venison, venison, venison – first a meal and then a sun!” cried a wanton sailor.
“Fool!” Meredith was angry, feigned or not, “It is impolite to keep a man in suspense, even if he is of holy persuasion.”
“They have returned, sir!” Koon tossed his lips aside and a rolling, unending laugh strolled from his tongue.
“Who?”
“The Fardy brothers!” and Koon’s laugh continued.
Meredith dropped the oars.
“And with them, their Marins!” and he still laughed in pleasure.
Meredith crossed himself feverishly, grabbed the oars, and spun the boat around like a Floatings merchant. His arms rampaged, the little boat shot forward, the trees on either side running beside him. In a moment, he reached the end of the channel.
“Oh, my devil!” he cried, piously refraining from blasphemy, “Oh, my devil – Beelzebub, Baal, and all princes and powers of the air! What the heaven is this?”
Unsatisfied with merely reaching the shoreline, he pushed the boat forward at a tremendous speed. He was a man of the forest before a man of the water, and began to kick his heels into the floor as if he were riding a horse.
“Faster, girl, faster!” he cried, and his feet pounded the floor with an unconscious fury.
He sped like lightning that fearfully flees its own thunder. In another moment he reached the first Timber, behind which a Marin was towed. He passed the first and stopped at the second. As he came against the Marin’s docking platform, his boat was beginning to sink from the holes he had driven into the floor. Water covered the lower portion of the craft. Meredith grabbed his sword and dashed onto the Marin, his eyebrows bobbing around him in pure monastic action. He turned to examine his sinking boat. As he did, the door creaked open behind him. He spun to face it and stretched his arms out to embrace the newcomer, assuming it to be one of his dear friends, the Fardy brothers.
“I see how seriously monks regard their orders, here in Atilta,” a foggy, feminine voice said, “That they throw open their arms at the first sign of a woman.”
“My devil, my devil! Oh, my bloody devil!” Meredith cried, and he fell back until he teetered on the edge of the
