Journey to the Isles of Atlantis and Other Fanciful Excursions

by Brian Stableford

  “But can I not see one of those men who bear the burden of thought for the whole society?” I said. “Show me their works; then I’ll be able to believe you.”

  “I’d like to,” said Constantin. “I’ll take you to some of them shortly. Excuse me in advance; we’re going to visit attics in the suburbs, but it’s there that the light shines of which I speak, which illuminates the world. Cover your ears in order not to hear the false prophets. Close your eyes in order not to see their works. Seek to understand the new words murmured by men who are awake while others sleep all their lives.”

  XI. Sedition in the People

  Having descended into the street we found a marvelous effervescence there. People were arguing irritably outside every door. Workers were arming themselves with sticks, swords and arbalests. People were occupied diligently in digging up paving stones and building high barricades at intervals. The closed shops, the rarity of carriages, the war cries and the weapons ready for use all presaged a riot.

  We learned that the Parliament, on the advice of certain of its members sold to the Mainomenes, wanted to issue a decree that would disband the frontier troops. That law would deliver Atlantis to the foreigner.

  A multitude of people invaded the boulevard where we were walking. That crowd of men of all ages, ragged children and furious women was crying with one voice: “Death to the Senate!” and then resumed in chorus a terrible song full of menace.

  At the end of the avenue, the armor of hoplites suddenly gleamed, with their helmets charge with scarlet crests. They lowered their sarissas and launched themselves forward at a gallop. Already, people were fleeing. The horses, carried away, ran faster, trampling the women and children, caught up with the foremost, I saw lances raised, bending under the weight of little cadavers.

  No one remained in the square but the dead or wounded, crushed or with heads split Blood was trickling slowly into the gutters. The cavaliers continued their charge and pursued the rioters.

  Constantin and I, dragged away by the currents of the crowd, stopped several times by soldiers, renounced going home and spent the night outdoors.

  The entire city was in uproar, but the constitutional troops had the advantage everywhere. The popular mob fled in all directions. Brief battles were engaged. Toward midnight, the Government forces were almost in control of the capital.

  Then the military rebellion burst forth. A large number of soldiers refused to participate in the massacre and retired in silence to the west of the city.

  Thyamis, a renowned general, a very popular man, came to join them and harangued them. He affirmed that the hour had come for the nation to be liberated; he exhorted them to destroy the Constitution and the Parliament in order to restore the Kephalides. The refractory troops applauded him. He put himself at their head and gave the signal for combat.

  The battle changed face. The king’s guards were cut to ribbons near the river. The cavaliers paid by the Parliament opposed a longer resistance, but finally surrendered. The rest of the army fraternized with Thyamis’s infantry.

  The latter marched on the king’s palace when daylight returned. The entire people followed the victorious general. No one was found in the palace; the sovereign and his retinue had fled in order to take refuge in a citadel a few hours away from the city. Thyamis assembled his troops in order to go to lay siege to it. Beforehand, a few senators guilty of theft and treason were hanged, and three generals allied with the Mainomenes were thrown into the river with stones tied around their necks.

  A statue of Thyamis was paraded through the streets triumphantly and worshiped like those of the gods. People were shouting his name everywhere, adding to it the titles of Savior and Liberator, and demanding in a loud voice that the rebel general assume the temporary government of the nation.

  For myself, I don’t know how to excuse myself for having shared in that infantile enthusiasm. At any rate, infected by the contagion, I did not want to stay out of such a fine row. I said to Constantin: “Let’s take up arms and follow the combatants; let’s go with them in pursuit of the king. He’ll undoubtedly oppose other forces to those of the revolt. Let’s do our duty.”

  “Oh!” he cried. “How imprudent you are! Thyamis is a hero today; how do you know that his corpse won’t be lying in the gutter tomorrow? As for this great popular movement, one can’t say anything about it; this is only the beginning. Revolutions are deceptive goddesses. At birth they give hope to everyone; every ambitious man thinks he can see his career commencing; every crackpot flatters himself that his political conception is going to be realized. Scaffolds are erected facing podiums, and the victorious party, sitting in power, finds nothing to serve as a scepter but an ax, and nothing for support but the executioner’s assistants. The people, who love the horrible, applaud ever more loudly. That lasts until the revolution, like an excessively greedy beast, goes mad for having devoured everything, and is punctured bloodily, leaving in its place a government which resembles the one that was expelled closely enough to be mistaken for it.”

  “Are you a coward, then?” I said. “So I, a foreigner, want to fight, without having any interest in the affair, and you, a citizen of this land, you’re thinking of remaining in peace? Your reasoning reeks of fear. It’s indifferent to me, in sum, whether this finishes one way or the other, but it would be shameful, in my opinion, to remain stupidly tranquil when everybody is amusing themselves delivering and receiving blows.”

  “So be it,” said my friend. “I’ll fight, if that’s what you want. I didn’t know you were so bellicose. Let’s go, then. Let’s arm ourselves. Once isn’t custom. May the god of battles protect us.”

  We enlisted as volunteers. We were given swords, a helmet and a breastplate. Shortly afterwards, we quit Atlantopolis with the army to go and lay siege to the fortress of Arachnion, to which the king had withdrawn.

  XII. The Siege of Arachnion, the Royal Citadel

  The following night, at the foot of the hill, Thyamis and his men were waiting, lying face down in the damp grass and brambles. Constantin was close beside me. The moon appeared intermittently and caused breastplates to glisten like pools of water. A river ran to the right; mist had risen from it like a sinuous gray wall, as high as the trees on the banks. Bats were circling above our heads. Black clouds seemed to be cemented with incandescent gold.

  Facing us, the walls of Arachnion formed a somber mass holed by the sparkling eyes of windows. A high tower lifted its pointed roof, covered with slates, toward the sky.

  A modulated whistle, an agreed signal, told us that it was time.

  The grass stirred. Like a multitude of snakes clad in steel, all those men commenced crawling over the hillside. Some carried bows of yew-wood on their backs, capable of launching iron-tipped arrows three hundred paces; others were equipped with long double-edged swords or curved sabers from the Northern Isles, which shone in the grass like glow-worms. Some were dragging fire-hardened beams, immense stakes made for staying indoors. Some were carrying ladders destined for scaling, fitted with iron hooks.

  All were climbing slowly, hanging on to tufts of grass, advancing each limb in turn, dragging themselves on hands and knees, and stopping continually.

  A metallic friction followed by a mortal howl frightened us suddenly. A man had fallen into a pitfall trap, impaling himself on the iron spike contained therein. He could be heard coughing and gasping in his ditch.

  Immediately, a torch thrown from a tower described a luminous parabola and landed in our midst. Our weapons reddened, and the castle’s sentinels undoubtedly saw the hill glinting. Bells rang at full tilt, so that we felt our breastplates vibrate. The moon reappeared; helmets and spears shone on the walls.

  Furious, Thyamis crushed the torch, still crackling, under his heel; then, raising his sword, he cried: “Attack! Kill! Kill!”

  Everyone stood up and rushed the walls. Then we heard a splashing sound on the ground. It was raining stones and lead pellets. Several men fell.

  “T
o the ladders!” howled Thyamis; and, hitching himself to one of them, he ran at the ditch. It was wide and full of water. On the other side, the base offered no point of support.

  The leader retraced his steps. He disposed his archers in three ranks and ordered them to aim at the men they could see between the crenellations. The arrows sang, and screams resounded up above.

  Releasing the arbalesters, Thyamis set himself at the head of the hoplites and the volunteers. He searched for the citadel’s weak point—which is to say, the entrance. We had to follow a semicircle before discovering it; we finally found it.

  Under the projectiles, with the aid of a beam, the assailants started battering the portcullis on the far side of the ditch. Twenty men to the right and twenty to the left, replaced continually, activated it incessantly. The enormous spike went back and forth with the regularity of a pendulum and the force of eighty arms.

  The raised drawbridge protected the door itself, and its joists of hardened wood rang under the impacts of the battering ram like iron on an anvil. The noise reverberated under the vaults of the shaken fortress. And that went on, and on; and our warriors fell, pierced by crossbow bolts and crushed by the stones of catapults.

  The drawbridge cracked first and was split with a noise like that made by a tree in its fall. The pointed bars of the iron portcullis appeared between the broken planks. A second beam was brought into play and the two of them alternated their blows. The door yielded and the two battering ramps sank into it, furnishing the jambs of a footbridge crossing the ditch, where wounded men were howling who could not be seen. Bucklers and branches were placed on top of it. The besiegers rushed across it and arms clashed. Constantin held me back by the arm. The others were engulfed beneath the vault, howling confusedly

  But long pikes descended from the ceiling pierced with square openings, molten lead flowed, stone blocks crashed down; and another portcullis, suspended in the middle, fell upon the soldiers. It crushed several of them and separated the others into two groups.

  Defenders filled the courtyard. They drove back the first arrivals with sword-thrusts. The stones and the fire were falling so densely outside that no one was able any longer to go into the passage or to emerge from it. Our men, therefore, were prisoners under that vault, in that inferno full of fire and smoke, cries, groans, gasps and the odor of burned flesh. The survivors crouched down, covering themselves with their bucklers. One might have thought that there were frightened tortoises. But floods of boiling water came though the trapdoors, to the extent that the passage became a river in which the wretches were howling, cooked in their carapaces.

  Outside, Thyamis was stamping his feet, his eyes fixed on the furnace, understanding that no one would emerge from it. He had a third battering ram slid into the entrance in order to dismantle the last portcullis, without taking any account of the unfortunates that it crushed. The long beam went into the corridor through the debris and the cadavers, as if to mark out the blow that it was about to strike. Then, drawn backwards abruptly under the effort of the men harnessed to it, it was projected toward its target, crushing people and things like a pestle in a mortar. With a rhythmic movement, it struck and was retracted, to return again full of red human pulp. And the noise and the terror were augmented by the impacts of the battering ram, funeral creaks and a barbaric and bellicose old song that the peltasts of Phoberos had once brayed over a thousand battlefields.

  Finally, like a dyke battered by a tempest, the portcullis broke, its chains snapped, and it shattered.

  The general wanted to deliver the supreme assault; he cried: “Forward!” But among the hoplites and the volunteers, no one moved. No one wanted to perish under there, like the others, meeting an almost shameful death, like a blind man killed by wasps. For the sword, the arrows and the stones, pass, but the massacre under the vault by fire and boiling water was too much to ask. Rather end everything there, under the gaze of the stars and the moon than enter into that trap, like an oven, from which howls and flames were still emerging.

  Thyamis planted himself in front of us and folded his arms. We stood before him, eyes lowered. He cried: “Cowards! Women!” Then he spat on the ground before him, not being able to reach all the faces. No one budged.

  Then, striking the ground with heavy footfalls he went alone, sword in hand, amid the arrows, through the grass strewn with cadavers. He climbed up on to the footbridge and, turning round, he said in a scornful voice: “Go back to the city. Tell those who ask for Thyamis that you left him to take Arachnion alone.”

  Then he resumed his route, vacillating, over the unsteady beams.

  All of us, gripped by remorse, launched ourselves after him and entered the passage with him. Thanks to the abrupt reversal and perhaps to the lassitude of the besieged, the chief and many of ours passed through unharmed.

  We ran forward, swords raised, and conquered a part of the courtyard. It was square, limited to either side by the walls linking the towers. In the middle rose a building crenellated from stage to stage.

  Constantin and I never quit one another. My servant was a terrible combatant. Seeing how he fenced I regretted having called him a coward. It was me, now, who held him back. But in his turn he made me ashamed, saying: “Master, since we’re here, let’s go as brave men. Strike, by Zeus, and strike harder than that!”

  At the same time, he cleaved skulls and ran men through like leather bottles.

  The king’s archers on the towers and the walls were firing inside and out. Their arrows went astray in the uncertainty of the melee and struck at random. And under the vault, conquered henceforth, with bucklers over their heads, our friends passed at a run. In the first rank, Thyamis, his buckler aloft, was whirling his sword around his head, and breastplates burst, driving into flesh, and helmets were dented, oozing blood.

  We followed him, like binders of sheaves behind the reaper. The enemy ranks buckled and broke, undulating in the shadow. But darts were planted on the backs of the victors, who fell face down, reddening the uneven and grassy pavement.

  When dawn broke, the citadel was in our hands and its last defenders taken prisoner. But we did not find the king. He had fled through some subterranean tunnel. That unfortunate lord was obese and impotent, and we laughed wholeheartedly, in spite of our discomfiture, at the thought that he had disappeared through some kind of mouse-hole.

  In a corner we found his young and royal daughter. Why had she not gone with him? I think it was because she had a lustful desire. If that was her hope, it was not disappointed. More than twenty men violated her one after another. It was her finest night. She still talks about it with delight and often says to her husband, with a sigh: “When shall we have another revolution?”

  XIII. Mourning

  Suddenly, I perceived Constantin’s absence. I retraced my steps, calling to either side. No one replied; I searched for him among the wounded and the dead, and it was there that I found him.

  He was still breathing. With an arrow in his breast and a wound on his temple, my unfortunate friend was barely alive any longer. I laid him down in the grass, undid his garments and supported his head.

  “Thank you,” he said, faintly. “Thank you, Master. I would have liked to have died later. You’ve been very good to me, and I thank you with all my heart. I love you more than anyone, and death seems more dolorous to me because I’m leaving you alone, surrounded by enemies, and, in spite of my desires, engaged in a dangerous enterprise.”

  “No,” I cried, “you can’t die. I wouldn’t be able to live myself. You’re my friend, my brother…you can’t leave me...”

  “Go on,” he said. “I can feel my strength ebbing away. Believe me, I’m doomed. Swear to me to abandon the struggle and be careful of your life. Otherwise, I’ll die desolate…and then, if you can, Master, my good Master, leave this country quickly, if you can, or something bad will happen to you.”

  He thanked me again, and rendered his soul while embracing me.”

  XIV. Constantin’s E
ulogy

  I shall try to give the reader an idea of what my excellent friend was like. A wise man full of knowledge, he loved life devotedly, revered old wine and beautiful women, noble books, ancient monuments, cheerful table talk and, in general, everything joyful and sublime. His soul was well-equilibrated: no anger, except against hypocrites, anchorites contemptuous of all beauty, and falsifiers of every species. I have not known any man as sincere, as modest or as far from egotism.

  He laughed easily, sometimes wept but never put bile into his words. He was a man full of common sense, amour, gaiety and enthusiasm. He took pleasure in a thousand things that the vulgar do not perceive. An insect, a flower or a clear sky delighted him like a child. He never listened to the reasoning of hairy philosophers or their theoretical demonstrations regarding good and evil. He was accustomed to say that all beauty comes from the gods, and he adored all beauties. I cannot conceive of a more solid doctrine. In consequence, he preferred a sublime error to a vulgar reality. Often, in his stories, in imitation of the ancient Hellenes, he replaced history by legend.

  He did not live long, but worthily. A savant drinker, an expert gourmet, a great tucker-up of well-garnished skirts, he knew how to make life a harmonious poem. I never saw him drunk, or suffering from indigestion, or exhausted down by an excess of amour. I would swear that a thousand little Constantins are now running around the countryside; many poor simpletons are caressing today an offspring more intelligent than them, whom they owe to the liberality of my servant.

  Alas, why did a man like that have to die at twenty-five, when so many pedants are alive, in Atlantis as elsewhere? He died in all simplicity, regretting life without fearing death. His last words were for me, words of fraternal amity and apprehension in my regard.