The horizon is the only sanctuary left
The ten-year silence of Carimpluni is shattered by the drums of the rising tide. As the first plumes of smoke rise over the mountain pass, the hidden fleet is thrust into the light. Messo must now join the very exodus he once prophesied, leading a thousands away from the only home they have ever known and leaving others who would not be saved to their fate.
“I am staying to fight,” a former soldier shouted. “This is my home. I have a family. We are comfortable here. Who will stay with me?”
Hundreds cheered in response.
“No one is going to force you to leave,” Messo said. “Once the ships are provisioned, we will help you build defenses. The ships will be boarded the moment we see signs of Telimicas approaching.”
“We will be grouped in seven clusters of ten ships,” Catenum explained to those preparing to depart. “Each cluster must provision with tools and seeds to start a new settlement.”
It took weeks to provision the ships. Families loaded cargo through endless longboat trips, sometimes towing barges stacked with tools. Crews pushed themselves from dawn until the last usable light.
True to Messo’s word, once the ships were stocked, settlers and defenders worked together to dig ditches and raise a wooden stockade. Catenum kept his armory running day and night, forging weapons for those who would stay behind. The clang of hammers carried across the bay, a steady reminder of what waited in the hills.
“Telimicas is coming!” a scout shouted one humid morning. “His forces are only days away.”
“Board the ships!” Catenum ordered.
Every longboat was launched, filling as quickly as people could be moved. As soon as a ship was full, it left the harbor towing its longboat behind. By the third day, only fourteen ships remained.
Then Telimicas’s army crested the hills.
They lacked formal uniforms, but they matched one another in brutality. Their bodies were streaked with charcoal and sweat. They all wore loincloths of bloodied linen or rough hide. They were armed with bows and arrows, swords and spears. Their war cry, visceral growls, rolled across the hillside, vibrating the humid air.
“Bring the ships closer!” Catenum shouted urgently. “Everyone to the beach who is coming with us.”
Captains anchored within fifty yards of the shore. Longboats churned back and forth ferrying passengers. Those waiting whispered hurried goodbyes to defenders bracing behind the stockade.
The fighting began before the second round of boats reached the ships.
Defenders fired volleys that dropped attackers hundreds of yards from the stockade. Return volleys wounded several defenders who had not reached cover in time.
Telimicas’s forces fanned out, vanishing behind trees and stones. Once they reached the stockade, the defenders’ advantage disappeared. Attackers hacked at the timber with crude axes while others dug at its base. A few hung back, firing into any gap where a head or shoulder appeared. The thud of blades striking wood mixed with the sharp snap of arrows, forming a driving rhythm as the wall weakened.
The last two longboats reached their ships as the attackers broke through.
Looking back, Messo saw chaos spill across the village. For every defender cut down, several attackers fell, yet the attackers pushed forward without hesitation. They slaughtered fighters, women, and children alike. Messo had to be dragged onto his ship as the anchor began to rise.
A squad of archers reached the beach when his vessel had barely gained a hundred yards. Several settlers who had remained in the village panicked and leapt into the water, trying to swim toward the departing ships. The captains could not turn back.
The archers loosed without pause.
They shot the swimmers until the water darkened and frothed around them. Messo covered his mouth, choking on the iron-heavy reek rising from the bay.
The defenders were gone. The village was gone. Only a few squads of Telimicas’s soldiers still stood on the sand, enough to finish the last resistance.
By the time the ships had sailed three hundred yards, Messo was sobbing openly, grieving for the dead he had left behind. The archers released one final volley. A few arrows clattered against the rails.
One struck flesh nearby.
Messo heard a dull, awful thud beside him. He turned, expecting a wounded sailor. Instead, Holiana lay bleeding at his feet. The arrow had pierced her chest cleanly, killing her before she hit the deck. The light in her eyes dimmed. Her fingers twitched once, then went still, her hope extinguished in an instant. She had been carrying their first child.
“No!” Messo cried. “We did everything we were supposed to do. Why her and not me?”
The last ship cleared the mouth of the bay before Telimicas’s remaining squads could reach its opening. At the rally point, beneath a gray, sinking sky, a shattered Messo slid the bodies of his wife and unborn child into the sea to join the others killed by the final volley. The swell rose and swallowed them, carrying them into the deep as the fleet turned toward the open ocean.
What record will you examine next?
