Our Little Gods 0.1: ATACHEREL, the Other Side of the Coin.

CHAPTER XXIX

Mornings were a slow and subtle affair at the bottom of the deep bay. The towering trees standing still in the grey haze of the last of the night, it is as if they wait for the birds to awake. The Village slept soundly, without noise but those of the oversized forest that surrounded it. Later in the day, the toil of the shipbuilders will echo all around them and the rhythmical beating of the sailmakers crushing the hemp fiber will drone on as a galley drum. Here they were far from the pass and the war, here they were under the almost continuous rains that had fed the trees to become the giants they were. Here they were building the fleet to take them back to the gate between worlds and maybe back home.

Atacherel sat at a small desk table on the deck of the hut they had made for him. The Village was larger than a lot of towns he had known, but the name had stuck. It separated their camp from the defensive forts of the pass and the base camp built where the dense canopy of trees ended on the steep slope of the Terum Mountains. This one was larger than the Village, organized according to battalions and army functionalities, their other settlements were the farming ones, built on the site of a recent landslide that had stripped the trees and the forest from the slope of one of the last hills on the way to the bay. There they had been able to plant directly without having to clear the land first. The yield had been impressive, the Veviensis praised. The cattle pens were in the Village by the bay for hunters were reaping a boon of birds, foals, and game from the dense woods where it seems, no men had set foot before.

This ancient forest was providing all they wished for and more. Timber, for ships and houses, fibers for the ropes and hemp for the sails; one of the tree bled a thick sticky sap that replaced tar in calking perfectly and near the landslide, copper ore was found ready for the taking. Some called it luck, others the blessing of the Emissary. Atacherel would concede that the continuous rain was a little much and that he would have given many of the succulent birds he was fed by his cooks for a few days like they had had in the drylands on the other side of the mountains. 

He had seen the Natabs the day before, Their enemies had received reinforcements yet again, the pass couldn't be held for much longer if they decided to attack en force. The Lodestar took his eyes to the brand new ships floating idly on the dull waters of the bay. Their rigging scintillated in the faint light covered as they were with raindrops and dew; on their decks, under a shelter of woven palm leaf were barrels of supplies and neatly rolled sails awaiting the day they would take off from this providential cove into the setting sun. Almost all the Balà population was working in the improvised yards, they were outdoing themselves one ship at a time; as if to show him, to show the others, that their worth had not been diminished by the dire event of Artago. The admiral reflected that one could not call these ships fast-sails, for not only the design was different in subtle but deep ranging ways, but the nature of the material had forced the masters to adapt their hull design to the particulars of the wood found here. The gigantic trees had offered long stout masts that had proven too heavy for the fan-like sails of Balà design, the density of the fibers and lack of knots had made the shaping and carving easier but the wood was also heavier and less buoyant. This had called for much larger ships than were ever built back in Rabatea and because they had to sail a vast unknown ocean they had raised the prow and the poops high above the waterline in long rather elegant curves. The walls of the ships too were higher and hid several covered decks where much stock could be stacked and cabins organized for the many people they had to take along. When the first ship had been ready Atacherel had taken it to the entrance of the bay where many teeth like islands dotted the sea from one end of the opening to the other. Beyond the white-topped rocks where wind-traders roosted, he could see the deeply curved breakers that had been pushed by the wind over an endless stretch of water. The day was one of the fairest and yet they shook their white mane of lather like furious ghosts hungering for the souls of those who would dare infringe on their wilderness. The ship was good and behaved well but sailing out of the bay was going to be much trickier than previously thought.

On his return, he ordered a smaller ship to be built. Something that could be used for coastal exploration and manned by a handful of men. No creature comfort, nothing fancy and the sooner the better. They had given him a racing yacht of unsurpassed elegance and prowess. The towering masts carried long rectangles of sails of woven hemp, the slender flanks and adorned rails, the long sharp shaft at the prow and the front curving prow protecting the tiller and the captain from the spray cleared the space for a comfortable cabin equipped with the necessities and more for several days of exploration far from the fleet. He tried to hide the emotion that gripped him when he first saw it when he climbed on board and saw the care and the detail of the craft, their offering for him. This ship was a personal gift, the Balà people to their Lodestar; it was a way to show they were sorry for what had happened in Artago and that they would follow him to whatever end he would care to lead them. He took it and sailed it against the wild waters beyond the bay. He was gone for six days, two of which turned bad enough for the sheltered bay to be covered in testy waves and great wind gusts to rake at the tall canopy of trees. On the sixth day, he sailed back into the bay and they all found that they had been holding their breath for his return. When he docked they had the sensation that it was the whole of the land under their feet that had moved to rejoin him and not his ship that had returned. They called it Spirit of Sillaribes and he smiled at this.