by Robin Jarvis
“You’ll do as I say,” the captain snapped back. “Let the youngsters go, we’ve had our share of life. Give them a chance.”
Mulligan’s face went pale and his paw clenched his stick more firmly than ever as he prepared to do what he must. But, before he could carry out the heinous plan his desperate brain was formulating, a wave greater than the others came crashing upon them.
The deck crunched and snapped beneath the dreadful, violent blow. Its timbers were dragged into the sea, leaving only a floundering, railless section wedged between the rocks. Twenty-three mice, rats, shrews and voles were thrown overboard and drowned in the deep and amongst their forsaken number was the captain. But upon that last, resolute fragment of the Calliope the final lifebelt was still waiting to enter the waters.
Few now were left to cling to its sides but there stood Mulligan and the others. Grimly, ashamed at the thought of what he might have been compelled to do, the Irish mouse snatched at a rope and Dimlon squeezed in behind him.
“Come on, Woodj!” Thomas said. “There’s just room enough for you an’ me.”
Together they reached for the lifebelt but their paws never touched it.
At that moment a second mighty wave thundered across the broken deck and with their terrified shrieks ringing in Mulligan’s ears, both Thomas and Woodget were dragged into the tempest-torn, froth-capped sea.
8 - At the Shrine of Virbius
Far from the treacherous, biting rocks the two quailing mice were swept—out into the thrashing tumult which wrenched and snatched at then-striving bodies. High the heaving, swollen waves lifted them, before flinging their defenceless, tumbling figures back into the deep—crashing a deluge of pounding waters over their small, gasping heads.
Unable to swim, Woodget’s arms and legs kicked and flailed helplessly in the almighty, churning sea and, as he squealed for help, the choking brine flooded into his mouth.
Retching and battling futilely against all hope, the fieldmouse’s gargling yells were seized by the devouring gale and scattered into the blaring storm.
Vainly he tried to keep his head above the water, but his limbs were tiring and his muscles ached. He no longer knew where Thomas was. At first, when the immense wave had plucked them from the shrinking deck they had endeavoured to stay together, but the thrusting push of the unyielding current proved too strong and swiftly the two friends were separated. With every blast of the violent, pummelling wind, the gulf between Woodget and Thomas widened until mountainous cliffs of rearing water and dense, impenetrable swathes of steaming spume and spray isolated them both.
From the black, clangorous heavens, livid spikes of lightning leapt and flashed, discharging into the flaring sea—illuminating in stark, blinding instants the immense, unquestionable authority of the vast encircling waters.
Woodget was lost, his tiny form no match for the ancient, peerless might of the roaring deeps. Gradually his panicky, frenetic splashings grew weaker and more often now did his head dip below the destroying waves. Sea water filled the fieldmouse’s nostrils and glugged into his balking mouth as he gulped down his final breath. The cork talisman bobbed pathetically at his breast as the tempest beat upon him and his lungs strained for air.
It was too great a trial for one small fieldmouse who had only ever waded in the stream near his home before boarding the Calliope. Then the water had merely reached his knees. It had been a delicious summer’s afternoon and he had thought himself marvellously daring to sit in the centre of that sweet, trickling brook and lie down to cool his sunburned ears and tail.
Now he was lost, engulfed in the fathomless expanse of the wide, beleaguering oceans, no more than a speck to be devoured and forgotten. It was useless to try fighting that cold, unconquerable realm, better to slide into the oblivious dark and cease the unavailing contest. There was no escape from the force of the unbeaten waters and no chance of release; he was theirs now. Woodget belonged utterly to that uncharted murk, it had claimed him and it was time to surrender.
Under the gale-driven waves his lolling head sank; the sea water rushed into his ears and closed over his head until the only sound was the amplified thump of the blood in his veins and the frantic pattering of his bursting heart.
Down Woodget spiralled, his tail whirling behind him. For a brief while a trail of silvery bubbles leaked from his lips, before failing completely when his lungs were finally spent. At last it was over; his bitter grapplings with life were done. The inviting deep had mastered him and, as he descended from the cares of the riotous world above, a prickling blackness crept over his limbs.
Only one glimmer of joy glowed in the closing windows of his mind. An image of that summer’s day when he had gazed upon Bess with the sunlight glinting in her chestnut hair and the scintillating reflections playing over her lovely face. On that glorious afternoon his heart knew he loved her and the sound of her blissful laughter echoed faintly in his flooded ears. Then, like a spent, wavering flame, the image was extinguished and Woodget’s unconscious mind flitted into the snug vanquishing void as his limp body twirled lifelessly down.
Thomas flayed his arms about him, yelling the fieldmouse’s name between his gasping breaths. Yet only the howling night answered and his worst fears soared.
The last glimpse he had seen of Woodget had been many minutes ago and then his friend had been floundering amid the crashing waves—spluttering and coughing as his little arms beat hopelessly in the water. But the storm had driven them further apart and Thomas wept as he guessed the awful fate that had befallen him.
“No,” he blurted, his tears squandered in the raging tempest. “Woodget!”
But there was no time to grieve, for his own desperate contest for survival was still being waged and his life teetered in the balance. More powerful than the fieldmouse’s arms were those of Thomas but in that fierce turmoil his labours were of little use. He knew that soon his fight too would be over, yet valiantly he battled on.
Then, just when his thoughts became as clouded as the perilous night, a miraculous chance occurred and in that desperate hour Thomas’s flagging spirits rallied and dared to hope for deliverance.
From the surrounding darkness, propelled upon a breaking, foaming white wave, a barrel torn from the ship’s hold came rolling into view.
Not wasting a moment, in case the perfidious waters whisked it away again, Thomas used the last dregs of his strength and toiled towards it.
Anxious seconds stretched by as the mouse swam, spurring himself through the clashing waves, his eyes fixed upon the reassuring bulk of the floating cask in front. About him the lightning flickered and the thunder shook the deep calm reaches of the sea but Thomas was blind and deaf to all else now.
Before his salt-stung eyes, the barrel grew ever larger and he struggled closer—then, with a trembling, quivering wrench, he dragged his arm from the waters and to his lasting joy clamped his paw upon one of the cask’s sturdy metal bands.
Sobbing in relief, he managed to haul himself from the waves then collapsed across the wooden sides—overcome by exhaustion, fear and the horrible, searing loss of his dearest friend.
“Woodget!” his whimpering voice cried. “Woodget!”
Mulligan grunted and rolled onto his back. Drifting from the aching oblivion that had stolen over him as he clung to the gale-tossed lifebelt, his senses slowly revived.
A cool, refreshing breeze was now blowing upon his grizzled, sand-crumbed face, bearing the fragrance of wild thyme and pine trees, mingled with the pungent scent of burning grasses and acrid woodsmoke.
In the distance he could hear the dim rumour of the tempest as it travelled over the sea, the faint rumblings of thunder becoming ever softer and more remote.
Groaning, the Irish mouse realised that his left arm lay twisted beneath him and the wound in his shoulder had opened again, smarting from the salt water of his sodden fur.
Gingerly he wriggled his fingers to ensure no bones were broken then slid his sprained arm from under
him and sat up, opening a bleary eye.
Above him, in a sky scoured clean and clear by the awful storm, a full moon was shining—its silver radiance flooding the world below and casting a bright path over the becalmed waters of the sea.
As one emerging from a deep, troubled sleep. Mulligan stared about him, waiting for his jangled wits to collect and order themselves.
He was sitting upon a bank of wet sand that sloped down to the water’s edge where the rippling waves meekly lapped the shore. The curving coastline was strewn with all manner of wreckage. Splintered relics of the Calliope littered the moon-bathed sands; shards of shattered timber jutted from the beach like long, deadly thorns and fragments of broken crates floated as a thick, crusting scum upon the placid waters.
Groggily turning his head. Mulligan saw that behind him the sandbank rose gently, before levelling into a grassy upland—fringed and bound with the dark, grasping shapes of gnarled, weather-twisted shrubs.
To his surprise it all looked vaguely familiar; a curious tingling crept down his spine but the answers eluded his bewildered mind.
“I know this place,” he mumbled in a daze. “I know it. Certain sure I am... I’ve been here before... and yet...”
Mulligan sighed, it was still too soon, no doubt it would become plain enough in time.
Turning back to the shore, his gaze fell upon his bag that had slipped from his shoulder and was now lying almost buried in the sand.
“My pack!” he cried, lurching forward to seize hold of his precious belongings. “Sure, it’s born lucky you were, Mulligan.” Then, even as he was congratulating himself, his face darkened—what had happened to the others?
Clumsily, the peg-leg picked himself up and scanned the sands.
Only then did he realise that not all of the wreckage consisted of the mere splintered remains of the Calliope. Here and there, sprinkled carelessly over the beach. Mulligan saw the bodies of his fellow travellers.
Upon the damp, silent shore they lay; mice, voles, stoats, hedgehogs, moles and rats. The faces of some stared up at the bright moon with glazed, unseeing eyes while others were half hidden by torn fronds of seaweed and dusted by sand.
Sadly, the Irish mouse stepped between the scattered dead, pausing beside each of them to see if it was not too late, but in this quest he held little hope.
“All gone,” he whispered. “Aye, for them the way was too harsh. Many more I reckon are at the bottom of that deceitful ocean now. To look at her, all flat and glass like, you’d never suspect. As cruel as they come she is. Takes a battered old rogue like me to come safe through her perils. But a tragic, sorry loss this night has been. Am I then the only one?”
Bereft of his stick which no doubt was floating upon the great waters somewhere, he limped morosely back along the bank, engulfed in troubled thought, then he paused and his heart beat faster. There, down by the water’s edge, within a great clump of tangled weed and broken timber he glimpsed the edge of something round, painted red and white.
Urgently, he bounded down the sands and tore the weed-twisted splinters away—then gave a loud cry.
“Dimmy!”
With his paws still clutched to the lifebelt, his legs and tail submerged in the shallow waters and the satchel marked with the letter ‘D’ twined about his body, lay Dimlon. But the pale grey mouse was sprawled motionless and his heavy lids were closed over his eyes.
Anxiously, Mulligan fell to his knees and pressed an ear to the mouse’s chest.
“By the Green’s beard!” he cried in delight. “The lad’s alive!”
Hastily, he hauled Dimlon from the water and laid him upon the sands.
“You’ll soon be spouting nonsense again,” Mulligan chuckled. “Seems we’ve both got charmed lives.”
Grinning his lop-sided smile. Mulligan thanked providence, then slowly, as if some outside influence exerted its will upon him, he raised his eyes and gazed inland once more.
Beyond the knotted shrubs, the vague outline of a dark wood crowded the foothills of a great and lofty mountain range whose sheer, limestone crags shone milk-white under the resplendent moon. Yet rising before those shadowy heights, black and dense against the shimmering heavens, was an immense plume of dark smoke.
The smile perished on Mulligan’s lips and he cursed his jumbled wits for failing to recognise it sooner.
“I do know this place,” he uttered in a hoarse gasp of disbelief. “Yonder are the White Mountains—the Lefka Ori! By all that’s wonderful, that cursed storm has washed me to the very foot of them. I’m on Crete! It’s swept me to the very spot I was headed for!”
Trembling with excitement, he stared at the immense mass of the mountains and drew a paw over his eyes. “The Shrine of Virbius! At last I’ve come to the Temple of the Twelve Maidens. The sacred pillars of the Lord’s birthplace!”
Astounded by this amazing chance, but alarmed by the climbing column of smoke in the distance. Mulligan took a last look at Dimlon and patted his head affectionately.
“Have to leave you now, matey,” he breathed. “Old Mulligan’s got important business to attend to, though it looks like I’m here too late. You ought to be safe for the meantime, sure—I’ll come back for you when I can, so I will.”
Quickly the Irish mouse trudged up the sandbank and soon the shore was left behind as he pushed through a gap in the hedge and limped his way into the meadow beyond. Through fields filled with blue anemone, yellow flax, white crocus and pale purple corydalis he went and steadily the ground began to rise until he was lost in the shaded pine woods which skirted the mountainside.
Many years had passed since Mulligan first set foot upon the soil of that hallowed country. Here, as a boy, his father had brought him and with the wide, awe-filled eyes of an infant he had glimpsed the stones of the revered shrine where the spirit of the Green was reputed to have originally risen from the barren earth.
It had always been a beautiful haven of peace, one of the dwindling number of sites where the Divine still flourished and was venerated. Nestling upon the mountain’s shoulders, the ancient temple had, through the ages, fallen into a stately decay—a graceful collection of eroded stones rearing from the verdant ground and pointing skyward. At the edge of a wide ring the pillars were arranged, girding a bowl-shaped hollow where a large altar jutted from the centre.
All his life Mulligan had loved the worn marble of its pillars and the grass-grown mosaics that covered the temple’s floor. To all outside observers it was merely another time-ground ruin but there the primal forces of life and light were worshipped. Yet the only offerings placed upon the sacrificial stone of Virbius were garlands of flowers and baskets of fruit given in gratitude of the Green’s bounty.
Behind the worn, unroofed stones of the temple, the real shrine was located, for there grew the sacred grove where, on certain nights of the year, His glorious presence could be glimpsed shimmering under the branches like the ghostly reflection of stars upon the water.
There in the thickets of evergreen oak, wherein stood a throne wrought of leaf and bough. Mulligan had first heard his father recount the history of the Dark Despoiler and the terrible legacy that had been entrusted unto their kin. Since that far off day, the images conjured in the Irish mouse’s mind as the legend unfolded had forever plagued his waking hours. Now he was embroiled even deeper inside the unending saga as it threatened to burst back into the living world.
Many times had Mulligan returned to the temple during the course of his wayfaring life and always the maidens who preserved its memory and tended the altar welcomed him, for he was the last of his line—heir to a part of the great burden which they too shared.
Now the blessed woods which had once been filled with the chanting hymns of devout pilgrims and the murmur of solemn prayers, were hushed and still. As his hobbling steps carried Mulligan beneath the high pines and cypresses, the reek of burning and destruction grew ever fiercer. Choking streams of billowing fumes coursed between the trees and through the leave
s ahead he could see the angry flicker of flaming tongues.
Sternly, he spurred himself on, crashing through the final distance, until the woods opened up around him and the green sward of the hillside stretched before him—up to the Temple of the Twelve Maidens and the Shrine of Virbius.
“No,” Mulligan gasped as his eyes beheld the terrible devastation that had been visited upon the once idyllic place. “Not here!”
Every one of the temple’s weathered pillars had been hurled to the ground and set rolling down the sloping lawns, and behind it the sacred grove itself was ablaze.
Angrily, the Irish mouse lumbered on, over the trampled grass that had been flattened and furrowed by countless razoring claws, until he stood at the very edge of the ring where the pillars had stood.
Only two of the round stones remained rooted in position, but over their weathered surface vile pictures and ghastly curses had been scrawled in a red, sticky substance.
Even as he turned from them, his nostrils impressed upon him the true horror of the night.
Borne upon the scorching fumes that polluted the cool air was a frightful stink, like the iron-tanged stench of a charnel house. The awful fetor of raw, chopped flesh and freshly-spilled blood hung thick and cloying upon the ash-drifting atmosphere, catching in the back of his throat and forming a syrupy, metallic bitterness upon his cringing tongue.
Steeling his nerves, the mouse stepped down into the temple and through the swirling clouds of hot, concealing smoke.
Suddenly Mulligan let out a cry of disgust and he reeled backwards as his tormented eyes beheld the grim spectacle at the centre of that once tranquil and hallowed place.
Upon those faded, moss-encroached mosaics, he saw them—a mass of cruelly slaughtered bodies.
There, around a large stone, engulfed in a pool of congealing gore, lay many folk of the temple—but the white robes they had worn were now stained crimson and slashed to shreds. Their carcasses had been thrown into one untidy, irreverent pile, but Mulligan’s horror at the sight spiralled when he saw that nine heads had been savagely hacked off at the neck and arranged into a serpentine, wriggling shape upon the ground. Beside this gruesome, snaking line, ugly scarlet letters had been daubed and Mulligan shivered when he read them.