Gehenna

Chapter 1: Disembarkment

We're almost there. Gehenna.

"Raise the sails!"

Men scuttled around the ship with the knowledge of exactly what their task was. They danced like ants, performing their duties like clockwork.

The sails flew up with a hiss, catching the gales of the sea.

"Gáv."

Gabriel turned to the man standing next to him and nodded.

The man gave a signal and four men rushed to the capstan in order to drop the anchor. Within seconds the anchor was lodged deep into the sands of the cursed isle.

"Those damned missionaries. The King ordered them to build a dock, but not only is that not accomplished, they do not even have the decency to come greet us."

"They must be preoccupied with cleansing the island of the monsters," Gabriel quipped.

"Hah, monsters you say," the captain turned around and picked up a young boy scrubbing the deck, "This look like a monster to you?".

Gabriel winced, and the captain flung the boy off the ship. "Filth, is what they are. Infidels to the faith. We do not need to fear them, brother."

The men of the ship got to work setting up the ladder to disembark. Gabriel stared out into the distance, when his eyes were suddenly captured by plumes of smoke.

That's just how it is. He tells himself. It's not their fault.

"Ya coming?" The voice of the captain broke Gabriel out of his trance. He turned towards the beckoning voice, and noticed the captain holding onto the rope ladder as he waited. Gabriel grinned weakly and walked towards the ladder.

*

They set foot upon the new world they were to inhabit. The same monsoon winds that had carried them across the Tartaran Sea now blessed the isles within with rain and storm.

The scent of petrichor assaulted their senses the nearer they got to the mudlands. Their boots sank into the mud as they tramped. A dense sea of green caught their eyes, and behind it rose a menacing mount, a veritable Olympus of the Orient, its heights discordant with its surroundings, by how near it seemed despite the distance between.

A second vessel berthed in the distance; the entire retinue had now arrived. A pang of isolation gripped Gabriel's heart. Although he looked forward to new beginnings, he had never once stepped foot off the Continent. His companion, on the other hand, a man who knows no fear, had been sailing the High Seas ever since he breathed his first breath.

The ebony tabards that they donned did very little to protect them from the elements, and shivers already spread through Gabriel's body.

A smattering of men wearing gabardines of ashen black emerged noiselessly from the verdant thickets in the distance. It seemed their hosts did remember them.

"Our new home," the captain inhaled the petrichor-infused air of the isle, "Twas worth every drop of blood we spilled to earn it."

Was it? Gabriel wondered. The countless Tartessian lives spent wresting these isles from the Moors and the Gauls, were their sacrifices just? The bleak desolation before him deigned a silent reply. He stared again at the smoke and flames that rose in the far distance, the black of his pupils distant and forlorn.