He spun around dizzily, then collapsed on the ground.
“You think you have killed me,” he said, staring up at Telly. “But you have not. It was fatal destiny that claimed me.”
Telly looked around at Ivan and Blake and the Schenker war party. Then beyond them at the invading warriors, who now were turning their attention to the bloodshed in their rear.
A mighty roar of shouting voices rose from the workshops, as the defenders there suddenly burst forth from their makeshift fortifications. Telly could sense the sea change as the battle turned against the enemy. They fell back, shattered, disintegrating, demoralized by the loss of their commander.
The ranks of both sides swept past Telly and the bloody tableau on the ground, leaving him to collapse in nervous exhaustion, first falling to his knees, then to all fours, as Blake’s war party circled around them for defense.
The defeat of the invaders was surprisingly swift and complete.
Once they had lost their leader and begun to retreat, they were broken. The larger numbers of the men from Schenker Float, angry and efficient warriors themselves once mobilized and armed, swamped the disorganized enemy. They captured the war canoes and slaughtered those who continued to resist.
In the end, about two dozen survivors surrendered, huddling together on the shore of Landfall Bay, surrounded by ten times their number, their backs to the water and their wounds running with blood.
For the next few hours, Telly was occupied by the grisly task of caring for the wounded and dead of Schenker Float. It was hard work both physically and emotionally.
The war parties quickly switched functions to search parties. They trudged through forest and fern looking for survivors of the attack who had sought shelter far from the rationals and workshops.
The unconscious ones were easiest to deal with, once Telly learned to handle the initial shock of discovery. Litter bearers were assigned to carry them to the makeshift hospital set up in the center of Workshop Village.
The ambulatory wounded were harder to take care of. Many were in shock, oblivious to their injuries. Some babbled on about what had happened to them, or to their loved ones. Telly didn’t want to talk and couldn’t even if he wanted to. He watched as older men applied first aid, lending what little help he could when asked.
Eventually his turn came to carry a litter, and he was relieved at the chance to escape the scene of so much destruction. The relief was short-lived.
“Telly! Telly McMahon!”
Pastor Kline called to him as he entered the village center. The pastor hurried to his side and took hold of the litter in his hand.
Telly was too numb to ask Kline what he wanted and too tired to wonder. But when they reached the hospital and set down their load, the pastor put a hand on Telly’s shoulder.
“I’m sorry, my son, but I have bad news,” he said.
Telly blinked and waited. His body ached and his tongue felt like a block of wood. “Yes?” he said, twisting the word out of his mouth.
“Your mother and father are dead,” Kline said. “Along with your Aunt Cassie and her husband. The fighting went straight through your rational. The children are all right, but everyone else was hurt—or worse.”
A man behind the pastor spoke up. Telly thought he looked familiar, but he couldn’t recognize him through the smoke and grime that covered his face. “I saw the whole thing,” he said. “Your folks fought hard, but there was just too many of them. They got your dogs too.”
That was all it took to break through the heavy void that separated Telly from the suffering around him. The image of the poor helpless dogs lying dead on the ground somewhere, was too much.
He didn’t feel the sobs that wracked his chest, nor the tears that ran down his face. He didn’t feel much of anything for a long, long time.
Seven
For four side-years, our forefathers have struggled to survive on the face of the limitless waters. When their rations were expended, they found new foods among the flora and fauna of Okeanos. When their Earth-tech machines began to fail, they developed new technologies of wind and wood, plastics and polymers.
But having won their battle against nature, they lost their battle against the loss of their souls. For they never sought the meaning of their struggle. They never found a purpose for their victory.
And the penalty we see all around us in the countless forms of madness that afflict the lost souls of a race of castaways.
The ragged woods that sprouted at random from Kronos Float looked empty from the sea, but that did little to dispel the sense of menace that filled Telly’s heart as the Hotspur approached on a strong southwest wind.
The ship was loaded with warriors, ready to deal with whatever the invaders had left behind. But before putting the landing party ashore, they circumnavigated the home of the renegades. Blake’s careful plotting and close inspection with the long glass revealed that it was not a normal float. It was less than half the size of Schenker.
“But it used to be full size,” he said, explaining his findings to Henry Adorno, the council leader, who was now acting as master of the Hotspur and commander of the landing party. Telly stood beside him and listened.
“Are you sure?” Adorno asked.
“Absolutely. There’s hardwoods and other vegetation on the lee side that come from the heart of a mature float. And you can see places where the original pontoons separated—here and here.” He pointed to his crude but detailed map on a whiteboard. “It looks recent.”
“I guess we’ll have to learn why when we get ashore.”
Adorno ordered the landing party into small boats. Blake and Telly waited until they had grounded and the signal came that it was safe to proceed before going over.
They came ashore on a young pontoon, maybe eight or nine side-years old. The vegetation was lush, with featherduster and pigtail ferns thick from water to wood. There were a few stands of spider trees, and the painful-looking spikes of aging spar trees linked together at the heart of the pontoon. The place should have been thick with tree crabs and phibs, but Telly saw no sign of them, something he thought odd.
The first sign of human habitation came at the far side of the pontoon, a mile from the sea. There were poorly kept huts surrounding yards littered with trash. Though empty, they looked recently occupied. And they looked old to Telly, as if they had been there long before falling into disrepair.
A gray-haired woman sitting in front of the last hut gave them directions to the float’s central village, and the two dozen men of the war party pressed on.
“I knew they wouldn’t be a’coming back,” she said as Telly passed her by. She didn’t appear to be talking to anyone in particular, just expressing an opinion. “I knew it—sooner or later.”
They found the village on the far side of the float, its back against the open sea. This was where the pontoons had separated. Telly looked over the torn edge of ground to see roots and pumice and peat and soil exposed raw to the elements. Waves broke against the foot of a bluff a few meters below.
They found some of the survivors of Kronos in the village, mostly women and children, all looking hungry and lean. There were a lot of children, but most seemed passive and subdued. Telly thought they should have been more excited and playful, but they were fussy and squalling. Babies cried and clung to their mothers.
And Telly noticed that there were no dogs in the village.
But there were men there—some Downies, a few old men, and a handful of adult males who had been left behind because they couldn’t be counted on to fight. One of them came forward, introduced himself as Thomas Nym, and told the story of Kronos.