Across The Sea (28 page)

POCK
!

Strick was smacked in the face
by a flying shard. The back of his head slammed against the ground.
A man in a dark green uniform, carrying a battle axe, fell as well,
toward him. Captain Strick, teetering on the brink of
consciousness, rolled his body to the right as the sharp end of the
axe chopped into the ground where his head had just been, and a
thundering boulder rolled over the green uniformed man, splattering
him.

* * *

On the water, ships continued to
fire cannons at one another. Aboard the HMS Glide, First Lieutenant
Kenworth had run out of ammunition. The ship was rocked.

A series of large waves was
rushing the group of islands.

Modo and Mister Wazee were
below deck, each in their own prison cell. In the dark, they both
sat on the floor and each held onto their cell’s bars to keep from
being knocked about. Modo smiled.

“They have done it,” he
announced, with the quiet jubilation of a Christian child on
Christmas morning.

“What?” Mister Wazee asked.

“The Acadae. The greatest
creation of man. They have brought it back to life.”

* * *

Captain Strick, lying on his
back, looked up at the large raindrops falling at him through the
dust. He thought of Lily then. Had she somehow found a way off the
Glide as he had suspected she would attempt? He wondered where she
was now. She seemed to be the only person here today who had a
clear mission. No one else on this island really knew what they
were fighting for. Lily, she knew. She came here to help a friend.
He wished then, with the last wish he had left, that she had found
her friend in all this confusion; or that she saw him at least for
a moment before all four islands and the ships surrounding them
were folded far into the water.

He smiled. Somehow he knew. She
had found the boy.

He did not want to die.
However, all of them – everyone here – no longer had a choice.

He heard fast, heavy footsteps.
Why is anyone even bothering?
he asked himself.

“Captain…”

He blinked to re-focus his
vision.

Lily was peering right into his
face. “Captain, please, get up.”

“Lily? Where… Please, you must
run for cover.”

“Please, stand up if you
can.”

PAFF
!
PAFF
!

“Please,” she pleaded, pulling
on his right arm.

Strick urged his body to lift
itself to his elbows. Blood dripped from a gash on his forehead
where the rock had bashed him.

“There’s a cave,” she
explained. “It’ll protect us. Francis and his brother are
there.”

“We won’t have enough time,”
the Captain said, as Lily helped him to his feet. All he could see
was dust and Lily standing before him. He lost consciousness.

Lily turned and attempted to
catch him sideways against her right shoulder and leg but Captain
Strick knocked her to the ground, falling on top of her.

“Please, Captain. Get up.”

Strick’s eyes opened. He saw
Lily’s eyes.

“We have to go,” Lily said.

The very last thing Strick
wanted was to hold Lily back. As a result, a shot of urgency raced
through him and he managed to lift himself up.

Lily was already on her feet so
Strick lunged upwards, onto the horse.

He felt Lily jump into the
saddle in front of him and hit her heels against Mica.

“Haaaa!” she yelled.

They were off.

The Captain hung onto Lily; he
had yet to seat himself properly.

PAFFF
!

Ground exploded up in front of
them. Lily swerved Mica to avoid it.

“Did those boys, at the very
least, attempt to keep you from coming here?” Strick asked.

“They did,” Lily answered. “But
I went out anyway... I don’t leave my friends behind.”

Captain Strick’s heart felt
heavy.
She risked everything. Just to come for me.

Dust and debris hung in the
air, rendering all visibility poor. Loud noises sounded all around
them.

The island has begun its
descent
, the Captain told himself.
And this cave that Lily
is dashing for, it will sink as well.

Lily raced Mica through the
battlefield. She thought she saw a few men, still alive, crawling
on the ground, but she had to keep moving. There was only time to
save herself and the Captain. Lily hated herself then but if she
stopped now, no one would be saved. Another aspect she despised was
making Mica run over dead remains, and he almost slipped a few
times, but he sturdied himself and kept on.
It’s the only way to
get back to the cave
, Lily reminded herself.

GRRRAAAAAAAAAAA
!

A boulder careened toward
them.

Lily pulled on the reins and
Mica moved off to one side, avoiding the considerable fragment.

* * *

Kenworth may have been the first
to see it. Templeton, the newly appointed captain of the HMS
Whisper which saw much gun battle today, also saw it off to his
left. And Vice-Admiral Wister, in a rowboat along with many other
rowboats heading back toward the English ships, witnessed it as
well.

The first one.

Water. Blocking out the
horizon. A wall of water. One hundred feet tall.

As the HMS Glide was carried
off, rolling, and demolished to splinters, Modo in his cell, cried
out in exaltation, “Woooooooo!” As the light in his eyes was
extinguished, his only regret, his only sadness, was that he never
got to see the actual storm... the actual desolation that the
Acadae was specifically handcrafted for.

The grand HMS Whisper, the
pride of His Majesty’s Royal Navy, was flattened on impact. As were
all other British, Spanish and Brotherhood of Blood ships.

Vice-Admiral Wister's rowboat,
along with all the other rowboats, vanished in one breath as the
first wave devoured it, smashing against the shore of Corallo.

Water washed throughout the
island as a second wave emerged, drowning the two islands before
Corallo. Lily and Strick flew onwards atop Mica as water rushed
toward them.

PO-PAFF
!

A shattering explosion erupted
from the ground before them. Mica swerved away from it.

PO-PAFF
!

Another.

PAFF
!

And another.

Mica avoided every one.

The second wave loomed higher
than the first, making all land behind them history. Lily zipped
Mica up the hill, veered around the rock wall – as the wave
swallowed the wall – and as Michael reached out to Mica’s bridle,
pulling him inside the cave, and Francis slammed a door down.

Inside, with one torch lit,
they heard the second wave crack against the ancient, brown, metal
door.

The door withstood.

Lily and Strick dismounted.

“What do we do now?” the
Captain whispered to the long haired and bearded Michael. “This
island will sink and we’ll all be trapped, inside this cave.”

“There should only be one more
of these waves,” Michael replied. “We’ll open the door afterward
and swim up to the surface.”

“And then what?”

“We look for anything that
remains afloat.”

Strick held his tongue. For the
sake of the children. However, he and Michael both knew, there was
very little the Acadae would leave afloat.

* * *

Ratwell, his frenzy inescapable,
swung his blade at Bodin who remained lying on the ground.

This man is un-killable
,
Bodin thought, thwarting the blade with his own.

Bodin kicked one foot sideways
to trip Ratwell, but Ratwell, anticipating the move, hopped and
stabbed his sword down. Bodin struck the talisman, rolled and
bounced back to his feet.

Ratwell’s blade came again, and
again Bodin blocked it.

“You’re an old man now,”
Ratwell said, hacking away. “You are not what you used to be.”

“You’re telling me,” Bodin
said, walloping his sword against Ratwell’s.

Ratwell, however, kept hewing
at him. Bodin worked frantically to stop him every time, as he,
himself, backed toward a group of royal guards, their dead bodies
discarded. He noticed their swords, glinting. Ratwell glared into
him with pure hatred in his eyes. It was the most intense emotion
Bodin had ever seen in the young man’s face.

Bodin thrashed Ratwell’s
talisman as hard as he could, but Ratwell retained his weapon.

As they reached the bodies,
Ratwell kicked up the hilt of one of the abandoned swords. The
sword flew up and Ratwell caught it in his right hand. He now had
two blades. He smiled at Bodin as he carved out the air around him
with fanatical speed and effortless grace. “Even as a boy,” Ratwell
began. “I would have never dreamed I would get to meet a real hero.
That stuff all seemed so faraway, like someone else's fantasy.
Never would I have believed that one day, I would actually get to
kill the legendary Sir Robert of Dreighton.”

Bodin, hopeless, looked on at
the incredible speed Ratwell’s swords achieved. Bodin kicked up the
hilt of an abandoned talisman, and as it flew up, Ratwell swung
hard with his right, knocking it away – as his left struck at
Bodin’s own, ejecting it from his hands.

“You’ve never met the real
Robert of Dreighton, have you?” Bodin said, in that same moment. A
split second before, Bodin had stepped hard onto the hilt of a
sword behind him, making it spring up to his waist. He caught it
now in his left hand. “Let me introduce you.” He drove the blade
straight through Ratwell’s chest.

Ratwell looked up into Bodin’s
eyes, experiencing something he had never admitted to or showed:
fear. But he still had life in him. He slashed his two swords
inward, at Bodin’s neck.

Bodin let go of his weapon and
caught both Ratwell’s wrists in his hands, stopping him. He looked
down at Ratwell. Ratwell’s gaze was dead.

Bodin flung the lifeless
carcass away.

The cave shuddered, and as more
rock fell from the walls and ceiling, Bodin scooped his own
talisman, launched into a sprint and dived into the entrance
tunnel. Inside the cramped space, he crawled toward the other
side.

The cave went dark.

Rock had fallen at both ends of
the narrow tunnel, trapping him. Bodin reached the rock blocking
the way ahead. He turned around, lay on his back and kicked at the
stone.

A piece gave way, a sliver of
light piercing through.

Bodin kicked again. More stone
fell away.

Then everything shook.

GRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
!

Bodin slipped through the hole
that he kicked through, as the tunnel behind him collapsed on
itself. Thick dust filled the main tunnel. Bodin coughed and
shielded his eyes with his right arm as he ran in the direction
away from the prison caves. There were three tunnels ahead of him.
One was still lit. He ran into it. A rock fell from the ceiling,
clipping his shoulder. He fell, but jumped up. Rock continued to
fall. He ran on, desperate, dust filling his lungs.

He saw something. Through the
dust. Through falling rock.

A boy… no more than five years
of age, wearing a white, oversized bed gown. The boy appeared
unaffected by the tunnel decomposing around him – as he stared
straight at Bodin. Bodin ran toward him. He knew this child. He ran
on, passing him as the boy stretched both arms toward him.

The boy was his son.

As Bodin ran down the tunnel,
he felt something brush against his robes.

He turned to look behind and
saw a little girl of four, also in white bedclothes, her arms
reaching out to him as well.

His little girl.

Bodin ran on.
These are just
illusions. From my memories. From the past.

He kept his eyes looking
straight ahead. There no longer was any light to guide him.

He saw her just the same. Fifty
feet ahead. Rosalie. The ground shook.

Bodin fell forward, the sharp
rock on the ground cutting his face.

He jerked his head up to
search. He strained his eyes.

He saw nothing.

Then a hem. The hem of a
nightgown. She was standing right over him. Bodin looked up. He saw
her smile. Behind him a large chunk of ceiling fell, the impact
deafening.

* * *

“The waves are gone,” Michael
announced. “But the underside of Corallo is decaying. We’ll
continue to sink along with it if we don’t escape now.”

Francis swallowed in
anticipation.

“Once we swim out,” Michael
continued, “some objects from the islands and from the ships will
rise to the surface. We can use these to help us stay afloat.”

“What about Mica?” Lily asked.
“He’s a horse. He can’t swim.”

“He can,” Michael answered,
nodding his head. “Just don’t hold onto his reins. And keep a safe
distance from him. He’ll be kicking. You don’t want his hooves to
hit you.”

Michael bent down toward the
bottom of the ancient metal door. “I’m opening the door now.”

He undid a series of small
hooks lined up along the floor, detaching them from the bottom of
the door. He pulled the retractable door up. Water poured in. He
opened the door fully.

They were still above water.
Outside, the wind howled, the rain crashed down and the water
remained choppy. The valley below was no more; only sea. All that
remained were parts of hills and mountains which still showed above
water.

The hundreds of ships had
vanished. As had all the men, alive or dead.

Bonnnggg
.

The earth beneath Corallo
continued to erode. What remained of the island slid downwards.

“Everyone!” Michael shouted
over the shrill storm. “Into the water! Now!”

Francis and Captain Strick dove
in.

“What about Mica?” Lily yelled,
as Alianna jumped into the volatile sea.

“Jump in with me,” Michael
answered, holding out a hand to her. “He’ll come in on his
own.”