Merlins Godson by H. Warner Munn

Author:H. Warner Munn
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2011-10-28T16:31:31+00:00

BOOK TWO

The Ship from Atlantis

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<i%Cer!ttt’s Qodson

It was the Year of the Rabbit, hi the chronology of Aztlan, and the day-sign being fortunate a great festival was taking place a few miles above the spot where the Misconzebe, Grandfather of Rivers, mingles with the salt waters of the Gulf.

For a month the invited guests had been arriving at Fortress Tollan, which held the entrance to this broad highway to the north and the rich lands of Tlapallan. The reeds which gave that district its name were gone, trampled into the mud by thousands of feet or woven into temporary shelters by the visitors. The shore was lined with watercraft.

Hide bull-boats, birch-bark and elm canoes or those carved from a single log rocked at anchor or lay bottom up until they might be needed. Decorated hi fanciful patterns, they lay in colorful rows near the crowded city of weik-waums, wickiups and tepees which had sprung up around the palisade spined, earthen walled fortress. Few of those who had come to this mightiest of peace councils gave the fleet more than a passing glance. The novelty was beyond.

Drawn up hi the shallows, well fastened against the tugging current, lay what any Briton would have recognized as a Saxon pirate ship. In this Year of our Lord 616, they crowded the rivers and estuaries of Britain, but hi Alata (as North America was known at that time), there was only one. Built almost twenty years before of stout oak planks, caulked with pitch and bison hah“, it had been well cared for awaiting this moment.

It was seventy-seven feet in length and clinker built At the prow and stern the decks were raised. In between, considerably lower, was a partial main deck or fighting platform, but the rowers’ pit was open to the weather. Here were rowing benches, fifteen to each side, with a gangway down the center. Rows of wooden shields, emblazoned with the totems of those young Aztecs who had been chosen to wield the carven oars, were fastened to the sides to protect them from arrows-or waves.

It was a well found ship and it needed to be, for hi it the son of the King of the World’s Edge was to set forth eastward to discover the world. From the dragon’s head with golden mane at the stem post, to the tail at the stern decorated with glittering mica plates, it blazed with color. The hull was striped with red and white, fox tails hung for standards and weather vanes and a burnished copper band encircled the single mast.

The oar holes were provided with shutters to keep out the sea when under sail, as were the tiny windows in the commander’s cabin at the poop and the arsenal and stores hold just forward. To the crowd, which continually milled and shifted along the shore, the Feathered Serpent was a great wonder.

They were as motley hi appearance as their dwellings and their canoes. Many tribes and nations were represented here upon this gala day.

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