off, shouting blessings on her forthcoming victory. Ash shot a hungry glance about him, seeking some way to follow her: a free rowing boat he could procure, perhaps, or a space on one of the boats already going back and forth between the fleet and the quay.
Chancy madness, he knew, born from his own desperation.
Easy, he said in his mind. Calm yourself.
Once more Ash made his way through the press with his bundle of weapons, and found a quieter spot against the brick wall of a warehouse. He looked out to sea, hoping for some inspiration to strike him.
Gradually the crowds dwindled, until it was mostly only those involved in the loading of the fleet who remained. The sun arced higher in the sky, its heat carried away in a breeze that was playing off the water. In ones and twos, the ships of the fleet completed the loading of their stores and set off for the open sea, pulled by their own sweeps or by rowing boats and ropes.
The flagship itself began to depart, drawn towards the harbour mouth by its own minor fleet of small vessels. Ash forced himself to remain seated.
For a while he studied the majority of vessels still at anchor, the lack of movement on many of their decks. He turned his attention to the chaos still apparent along the dockside. Tempers were running high, various captains along with their crews arguing with quartermasters as they tried to procure what supplies they still required.
At this rate, Ash pondered, many of those ships would be setting off in darkness. He leaned back, pulling his hood further down over his face. He crossed his arms and closed his eyes.
Without hurry, the autumn afternoon faded towards the onset of twilight.
There was a story told of the Great Fool, that Honshu sage of the Dao who had decried all dogmas, yet had himself become a religion after his own death. Every Rōshun apprentice was taught the story during his training.
While walking in the mountains along the source of the Perfume River, the Great Fool’s newest follower, the branded woman Miri, had asked of him: How does one remain still, great master?
In reply, the Great Fool had cast a stick into the rushing torrent, and bade his followers to watch as it floated along with the flow.
But I am not a stick of wood, Miri had replied with frustration. How can I flow with the stream so naturally?
The Great Fool had tapped her forehead once, lightly.
By allowing your mind to be still.
It was a paradox that had impressed Ash when he had first heard it as a Rōshun in training, for he’d been in great need of a saviour back then. Cast into exile with his fellow comrades, his family lost to him and with no hope of ever returning home, he had needed, desperately, something in which to tame the bleakness in his heart, and the runaway thoughts in his head that told him to end this life of his that was no longer worth living. And so he had embraced the Rōshun way of stillness, and it had saved him.
There was another story, one the Great Fool had himself used to instruct his followers, which Ash remembered too from that time.
A madman is held in a cage, with a blinded tiger as a companion.
For as long as he can remember, the madman has been walking from one side of the cage to the other, circling the tiger as it circles him, the animal snarling in hunger. For as long as he can remember, he has been leaping aside from its blind attacks, or standing silently in a corner watching it work its slow way around the bars. Never has it stopped this ranging about, so powerful are its desires.
One day, the madman finds he can no longer carry on this way. He stops his pacing. He turns his back on the tiger. He sits down and waits to die.
He falls asleep, or so he assumes – for when he opens his eyes again, all is different.
The door of the cage is hanging open. At long last, freedom beckons him.
The madman steps outside. He sees how everything is one in this place of all-consuming light. He sees how the bars of his confinement have been dividing his vision into narrow vertical slices for all this time. He looks to the tiger still prowling the cage. He sees how he has attached a name to it, and an identity, and