by Meg Merriet
“Eyes!” shouted Dirk. This command told us to watch for threats. I surveyed the floor of the crevice, as I imagined they might try shooting us down. We were invading their airspace without warning.
“Mountain wall port side!” called out a crewman.
“Mountain wall starboard!” called out another.
I examined the mountain wall on my left and saw one of them. They wore grey spotted furs that camouflaged them against the snow. Once I realized this, I could see all of them clearly, hanging off the mountainside from hooks and rappelling rope. They thronged against the rock wall, more and more emerging from concealment. They were everywhere.
Twenty or more of them boarded us, wielding broadswords. They were the most emaciated warriors I had ever seen, but they were vicious. A haggard man who stood a full foot taller than me landed nearby. His long grey hair and beard were thick with frost, his eyes harsh and full of hate. He swung his hefty blade at my neck. I leaned back, just barely avoiding decapitation. The steel sang as it sliced the air. I drew my short sword and deflected his next incoming blow, which knocked me right off my feet and sent my sword flying. Down came that powerful weapon, about to cleave me in half. I rolled out of the way, so panicked I could hardly breathe.
“Stand down!” bellowed Dirk over the clinking fury of battle. “We surrender!”
I put my hands on top of my hood. The ogre of a man who had nearly killed me sheathed his blade and marched directly towards Captain Dirk. “State your purpose here,” he growled.
“We seek the rebels of Windmark. Having just slain the emperor and his son, we believe we share similar goals.”
“So it’s true?” the man grunted. “The emperor is dead?”
“Oh yes. There was hardly anything left of him.” Dirk smiled, and so did the man.
“I am Gnash,” he said. “Commander of the rebel cause here.”
“Dirk, former captain of the Wastrel.” They shook hands.
“I’ve heard of you,” said Gnash, “They say those who forgo surrender to Alexander Dirk meet the clouds. How flattering that you should yield to us so quickly.”
“I cannot afford any loss of life. I seek an alliance.”
“We are always taking in new recruits. Currently we are sending ships to raid the supply chain to Locwyn. You would be a prime candidate for this kind of work. If you are ready to kill Blue Dusk, we are ready to house your men and share what resources we have.”
“I don’t just want to kill Blue Dusk,” said Dirk. “I want to eradicate the order. I aim to sack Locwyn and retake what is rightfully mine by birth.” Dirk reached into his breast pocket and brandished a golden signet ring. Commander Gnash took one look at it and fell speechless. His gaze softened. “I was born Prince Derek Alexander Xavier von Luftberg. I became a pirate after Perceval killed my family. Having lived the life I’ve lived, I want to change this nation forever. No more Blue Dusk. No more haughty royals. A king who respects the needs of the many. You served my father once. I know your motivations for rebellion may have changed, but I swear to you, I’m the man who will save Elsace.”
Gnash nodded slowly. He turned to his crew, “People have likely told you that Lucius von Luftberg was not a great king, but a king cannot will the rains to come any better than a man. He cannot see the traitors in his midst, nor predict his weakness when his children’s lives are threatened.
“When the Blue Dusk took the castle, we led our king through a secret passage. We made it into the great library and took to the city streets. It was then we saw Perceval push this prince, his mother and sister out onto the balcony that overlooked the mob. Duskmen put swords at their necks and the people screamed for blood.
“Perceval proclaimed the king a coward and said he would kill one member of the royal family each hour until he gave himself up. Lucius did not hesitate. He told me he had a duty to his children and before I could stop him, went running into the square.”
Dirk nodded, and said, “A day I’ll never forget. The mob surrounded him, lifted him up and cut off his head.”
“Ever since that day, I’ve longed to make it right,” said Gnash. He addressed all of us. “The people mounted the king’s head on a pike and paraded it in front of the castle. That was the day the riots broke out and the shell came down and blotted out the sun.”
There was a murmur of disgust and anger.
“I was born in Locwyn and I’ll be damned if I can’t die there too!” shouted Dirk. He brought his sword high overhead. “The emperor is dead! Follow my lead and we shall take back Elsace!”
“Elsace!” Gnash roared, raising his sword. The men cried out and thrust their blades towards the sky. Their echo exploded through the mountains.
Gnash rode at the bow of the ship, one foot firmly planted up on the bowsprit. He signaled for his men to stand down and give us passage. We descended into a vast plane of snow sheltered by tall mountain walls and a flat overhang of stone.
Rebels came out to greet us, at least three hundred men. They stood in rows, formidable as stone in spite of the cold. We tossed ladders over the rails of the Eclipse and our men began to disembark, either climbing down or going through the belly of the ship to take the hatch access stairwell.
I strapped my fiddle on my back and was starting towards the rail when a huge snowball hit me in the side of the face. I brushed the frost off my shoulder and turned, ready to chastise Molly.
I was taken aback to see Baker standing a ways off with his hands plunged deep in his pockets. He stared over the edge of the stern, humming a sky shanty to himself; then he looked at me and smiled.
XVI. Hydrogen
More men arrived each day, and within the fortnight, we were a thousand strong. Dirk used the rebel unit’s ships to visit the villages surrounding Locwyn. I remained in Windmark to help train the new recruits he was enlisting. They spoke of how the city economies had collapsed. While the army and government officials had enough food to get by, everyone else had daily rations as meager as a slice of bread, leaving them no choice but to either pick up arms as Duskmen or live outside the law. Unfortunately, with our diminished supplies, we had little more to offer save for a bowl of slop and mug of our rotgut home brew. Maive’s prophecy of a skeletal army was coming to fruition. We had to make our last stand as soon as possible.
We slept underground. Our cots were buried in the mountain caverns, lined up in rows. The men didn’t bother me too much. A lot of them didn’t notice me and only knew the passing rumor that a female soldier lived amongst them. Occasionally a brute would walk by my cot and request some vulgar act, and I would bite my thumb at him. If this incurred a temper, it quickly vanished as Baker made his presence known. Oh, how I had missed my tall, terrifying friend.
He took the cot beside mine, and we slept with knives under our pillows. There were many new strangers in our company, and while we all fought for the same cause, we didn’t have to trust one another wholeheartedly until battle.
“Thank you,” I said to Baker one night as we sat kindling our fire. “You’ve always looked out for me.” We cloaked ourselves with our blankets, cold and dizzy with an all too familiar hunger. “I don’t know how you do it, Bakes, but you can appear downright frightening when you want to.”
“I used to practice staring down coyotes in the Wastes. It’s more than just looking like you want to kill a man. You have to learn to look like you’ll devour him. I had to master it. I was a Blighter, you know?”
“You never said.”
“Blighters make piracy look civilized. They steal from people with nothing and traffic anything that sells. I got caught in their webs as a hijacker, too high on ether to figure a way out. I would take small ships right off the mooring towers in Amaranthia and fly them to the Wastes to be scrapped.”
“But you stopped?”
“I did, though not for the right reasons. I crashed a stolen bird into the ship of the dangerous pirate Alexander Dirk. I thought I was a dead man, but instead of killing me, Dirk had
me join his crew to work off the debt. He initially wanted me to be a pilot, but after the incident, my hands would shake every time I took the helm.
“So instead he made me latrine swabbie, and everyone knew me as the screwy Blighter who crashed into the Wastrel. They treated me like rubbish, had no respect. First chance I got, I proved my worth, and over the years killed so many men that Dirk made me a Hawk, and everyone forgot my shameful past. Someday they’ll look at you with such esteem, remember you for your achievements.”
“I don’t think they’ll ever forget I’m a girl,” I said.
Baker shrugged and pulled his blanket tighter around his shoulders. “They’ll make assumptions about you for a while yet. Let them. When we take Locwyn and shed our blood together in the city streets, our sacred covenant of brotherhood will be restored and they’ll accept you back into the tribe. Until then, just work on your coyote-face.” We both chuckled. His counsel almost made me feel warm in the freezing cavern. “Would you play me something?” he asked.
“Of course. What do you want to hear? Wench of Amaranthia? That’s your favorite, isn’t it?”
Baker shook his head. “I’m not in the right mood. Something soft and slow, I think.”
“Hm. There is something I’ve been working on.” I held my fiddle propped just below my collarbone and played him the anthem Molly and I had composed. Some soldiers joined us around the fire to listen. As I came to about halfway through the song, I noticed our pirate princess had emerged out of hiding.
She stood at the edge of the circle, wary of stepping in until I beckoned. It had been days since I’d seen her.
“Molly,” I said. “Does Dirk know you’re here?”
She pressed her lips together and shook her head. “He’s asleep.”
“Perhaps you should get back.”
Molly chewed the nail on her thumb, and stopped upon catching herself. “I heard you playing our song.”
“Yes. For my friend here.”
“Your friend?”
“Baker,” said he, nodding to Molly. “It’s a fine tune.”
“Did she sing the lyrics I wrote?” Molly asked.
“She did not. Clikk won’t sing for anyone unless she’s blitzed.”
Molly smirked at him. “Clikk has sung for me.”
“Of course she’s done,” Baker said. “You’re a princess, after all.”
Molly rocked on the soles of her shoes, giggling.
“Molly,” I said, “Would you be so kind as to sing for Mr. Baker here?”
She nodded. “I would.”
I played close to the fingerboard. We tried to keep our volume low, but as more men gathered and listened, we were less reserved. Molly sang in high soprano, sans any vibrato or flourish. I followed her voice with my fiddle, trying to accentuate rather than lead. Our music echoed throughout the cavern, taking on an unearthly sound, a somber, haunting intonation, like the whisper of the wind through a ghost town.
I awoke to an empty sleeping hall. Hundreds of cots surrounded me, not one of them occupied. The silence throughout the cave was odd. At any given time, one could hear people murmuring in the surrounding tunnels, but tonight the hollow dark was still and quiet. I threw on my mantle and gloves, donning the hood. The winding caverns had no sound except my footsteps and the occasional water droplet. I ducked under toothy stalactites overhead, making my way to the mouth of the cave. Maive waited on the snowy cliff edge, silhouetted by a harvest moon. She smiled when she saw me.
“I’m dreaming, aren’t I?”
“Yes,” Maive affirmed.
“You have more intelligence?”
“I do, but first, I must tell you something. I did some research on that melody your mother taught you, and I discovered something of interest. The school of witches that practiced siren song has been thought extinct for decades now. Their exceptional gift takes a toll on their constitution, and many of them are infertile or die young before rearing any offspring. You might be one of the last.”
“Mother was always very frail,” I conceded. “Does this mean I will grow weak as well?”
“I’m afraid it would seem so,” said Maive. “Though historically, one of these siren witches was recorded as living to be as old as sixty, but she was so feeble, she couldn’t leave her tower. People travelled from all over the world seeking her aid.”
“It’s no matter,” I said. “I never pictured myself as having a long life anyway.”
“You are a soldier,” said Maive, nodding. “I would offer you my help in awakening your abilities. You will be affected by them either way, and it would be a shame to squander such a gift.” I was reluctant to give an answer. Maive took notice and said, “You may think on it. Nothing can be done until after Locwyn is liberated.”
“Yes,” I agreed. “Do you have intelligence for me to pass on to Dirk?”
“The capital is built like a lock, historically impregnable from the outside. All successful takeovers have happened from within, but you will find the people there are too weakened to be of much help.” On the mist behind her, I could see the droves of starved apparitions struggling against an iron gate.
“How do we get in?” I asked.
“A hero must sacrifice himself to blow open the hold. Years ago, before the advent of Skye, dirigibles got their lift from hydrogen. It was flammable and eventually rendered obsolete, but an airship using hydrogen for lift and rigged with explosives would have enough energy to break open the mechanical shell that protects the city.”
“Someone could put the ship on autopilot and base jump at the last second,” I said.
“Perhaps,” she considered.
“You could send someone to collect our man.”
“Yes. Lord Terrence could do that. Very well, Clikk. Tell Dirk he must take the city on the night of the summer solstice, and your man who flies the ship can expect to see a green stagecoach with speckled grey horses waiting beneath the clock tower.”
“Maive, we know of a secret passage that runs between the library and the castle. Once we’re in, we can use it to get directly to Rex.”
Maive nodded. “Brilliant. Then we will all convene at the library. Have Dirk send his army to wage a frontal assault while he joins us in this covert approach.” She held up her magnifying glass pendant, twisting it to reflect moonlight in a specific rhythm. “The man who flies your hydrogen ship will need to know a passcode to get beyond the first gate. They use this sequence to identify supply ships,” she explained. “Memorize this code now and share it with Dirk when you awaken.” As she finished flashing the sequence, she began again. I committed the dots and dashes to memory. My vision grew blurry as the shadows amalgamated into a pool of darkness that obscured the witch’s face. I fought to keep the dots and dashes in order and awoke with the sequence on my lips.
“Dot dot dot,” I whispered, opening my eyes. I was on my cot, the nearby fire warming my face. It was crucial I remember the code, so I continued to repeat it out loud as I searched frantically through my knapsack for a piece of charcoal.
“You all right?” asked Baker, stirring to what admittedly sounded like a feverish delusion.
“Dash dot dot dot,” I went on.
I found no quills. I went to the fire and fished out an ember with my dagger, repeating the phrase. I pulled on a thick glove and used the blackened wood to scrawl the pattern of dots and dashes onto the cavern floor.
XVII. Rally
We called ourselves Rebels of The Rising Sun, Rotters for short. Our bandanas identified us as such and would help us differentiate between allies, enemies and civilians on the battlefield. Each had a round red sun contrasted against a vivid morning sky.
The evening before the siege, the army congregated in a contained arena within the caverns of the mountain. Our hundreds of whispering voices resounded off the high ceilings with a sound like snow blowing over a heath. A fire blazed in a pit at the central stage, eating away at old logs. I went up and down the aisles until I found Baker si
tting alone, staring at that broken pocket watch of his.
I took a seat beside him. “Do you still want me to fix that jerry?” I asked.
He shrugged and put it away in his pocket. “I feel wretched, Clikk.”
“Why?”
“For the way I’ve treated you, not knowing. For all those games of Mercy when I hit your shoulder and you cried—”
“—I never cried—”
“—and for saying women were bad luck, and for giving you all those explicit details about what Mathilde and I got up to in Aixenport.”
“Relax, mate,” I said. “No hard feelings.”
He sighed, but he didn’t look any better. I couldn’t remember a time I’d ever seen him so emotionally distraught. “Clikk. I need to know… is Rex the same knight who killed your parents?”
My stomach churned. I nodded without a word and felt sick at how I ached for vengeance.
“I thought about your story of what he did to your mother, and it troubles me even more than it used to. I understand why you would hide as a man, how you must have felt to be exposed, and I hate myself for how I treated you once I knew, how I pulled away in Nelise. I know what it’s like to be abandoned. It isn’t enough to say that I’m sorry.”
“Baker…”
“I’m with you ‘til the end of this.”
“I appreciate that, but really I should be apologizing to you.”
Baker scratched his stubbly neck, frowning. “For what? Calling me a bastard? You only stated a fact.”
“Not only that, though I regret that as well. I should not have come between you and Lily.”