As they neared the halfway mark between crow’s deck and bridge, Bar saw them in the ghostly light, dozens of men beyond the crisscrossing beams, apparently chained to the hull’s superstructure. It must have been every Glenfinner and northman onboard, cuffed one to the next—nearly two dozen in total—by thick iron chains. They stared out through the shadows as Stowe and Bar negotiated the narrow catwalk leading to the platform that had come to serve as their makeshift prison. Near the front sat Gryph, who even now refused to look Bar in the eyes.
He must know by now that I’ve sided with him, mulled the ensign bitterly. Bar may not have come to the small pilot’s aid when it mattered, but in the end, he’d chosen his side, just like he’d been urged, and now the least Gryph could do was acknowledge that fact.
“I never thought I’d live to see the day you’d betrayed your honor,” accused Chief Engineer Max Watell, as the new arrivals stepped onto the suspended balcony where the prisoners sat gathered on the roughhewn decking. “But a crowny’s always a crowny first, aye, Bazzon?”
Unbelievable! Can’t these fools see Stowe’s gun is plainly in my back, and yet they still think me a villain…? “Is that what you think I’ve done, Max—”
“Keep that forked-tongue in your mouth. Its waggling offends me.” Max sneered as he folded his arms over his coveralls and hunkered down cantankerously on his haunches. “Gryph’s already filled us in on your treachery, so no use making yourself look the fool as well. You’re just as vile as Stowe.”
“Enough talk,” rumbled the master-at-arms.
“Or else what, you disloyal mistdrake?” Max spat on the floor next to his chains, “I can almost forgive this crowny whelp for siding against us, but you, Stowe, you’ve betrayed your own motherland, and you’d have shamed that clan of yours too, were they not a horde of notorious turncoats to begin with.”
“Taken from a Watell, I’d call that a compliment,” sneered Stowe.
The burly engineer rubbed at the course stubble of his auburn beard, before scoffing. “And that’s not the worst of it either. Let’s take your own family for example—”
“Watch yourself,” threatened the Chief Master as he shoved Bar aside and stepped towards the prone mechanic with his teeth bared and clenched in snarl.
The other man just sat bow-legged and indifferent. “Touched a sore spot, have I, Chief Master? Perhaps feeling a bit defensive…what with your wife being a crowny who—”
Stowe thrust out with the butt of his clatterbolt, catching Chief Watell full in the face. The man grunted as blood sprayed from his nose and a shattered tooth dripped out between his lips.
And then a Glenfinner jumped from the floor in the next instant, seizing hold of the master-at-arms’ gun-arm. Forcing the weapon upwards it discharged with a clattering roar into the rafters above just as another man came leaping up from the left, and others from the right, then more, and more. It seemed half the Glenfinners had sprang to foot, and as for their bonds, the chains that once tethered them, clattered uselessly to the ground.
How? Bar wondered, but the clatterbolt interrupted any further investigations as it coughed again over the throng, bullets chewed into the wooden joists overhead raining down splinters. Ducking, Bar staggered back from the chaos, putting as much distance between himself and the fighting, even as Stowe struggled to fight off the men piling atop him, so many they got in their own way. The few Glenfinners along the periphery then turned their murderous eyes on the hapless ensign. Bar searched for escape, but the catwalk back to the ladderway stood blocked by three stout deckhands, each every bit—if not more—brawny than he.
“I got no quarrel with you,” he tried to reason, but that only seemed to spur the mad-pack into lunging. Throwing out a fist, Bar struck one in the face while the others swooped in and tackled him. Kicking and punching, he tried to fend them off as they rolled in a heap across the floor, snarling as they went. The bedlam of combat echoed through the vast chamber, punctuated by the Chief Master’s clatterbolt. Bar saw more men coming to subdue him, but he slipped away from the tussle and skittered back on his elbows, finding the platform’s edge suddenly beneath him. A Glenfinner grabbed for his feet and he kicked the man’s teeth in. Another swung a heavy chain down, crashing against the boards beside his head, but Bar rolled away, catching sight of the interwoven joists a couple meters down, and pitched himself over.
Falling, his legs struck off one beam, sending him summersaulting backwards, then off another, setting him to barrel-rolling as well. Umph! Bar struck a joist with his back, Ugh! Another with his shoulder, further and further he descended like a ragdoll tossed down a well, bouncing off the sides until he struck one with his gut. Gasping for breath, he clung fast, wrapping his arms tightly around the thick wooden shaft for safety, even as his legs dangled out in the open. Battered, bruised, Bar heaved and pulled himself onto the narrow cross-section, where he planted himself on his butt and took a moment to stare out in a daze at his surroundings. There was no way to tell how far he’d fallen, his body told him a long way, but the airbladder’s reinforced superstructure revealed nothing. Instead it just stretched over, under, and around him like a thick web, making him the fly caught in its middle.
Overhead the men could still be heard yelling and cursing, even as the clatterbolt continued blasting away, interrupting the core’s constant blue haze with bursts of its own volatile white light. And then came the noise that Bar feared, boots, and scores of them. He could just make out the ladder off to his right now, quivering under the combined weight of their stampede.
The Glenfinners will make for the bridge, he reasoned, climbing up to his feet to balance on the narrow beam he found himself on. As Bar teetered towards the well, he pondered whether that outcome would be for the best. If the Glenfinners take the bridge they’ll most likely set a course to help that beleaguered transport, and certainly a noble act, but afterwards, then what? Bar didn’t think they’d just fold themselves back into the Royal Air Navy—not whilst a man lived who could tell what had happened aboard the Chimera. Will they kill everyone else—could they—to ensure silence before they put into Ragnarok. But Bar knew for certain that no man in the Admiralty could be expected to believe—at face value—that every Kinglander just happened to be killed on patrol. So the most likely outcome was desertion for the Glenfinners, Back to Glenfindale, perhaps join the pirates in their Guild? Still then, what happens to the rest of us should that come to be? His mind spiraled back towards death, but these men…he’d served with quite a few of them for decades. Could they…would they…? I’m not their enemy, he tried to tell himself as he neared the ladderwell just ahead of the mutineers, I understand their plight, joined in protest even…but this open mutiny changes everything. It’s a far more serious affair then simply refusing to follow orders under conscientious objection. No court will hold leniency for any man who’s lifted up arms against his commanding officers or fellow aeronauts. Every one of those men must realize it now, and the things they’ll do to survive… Bar had to reach the bridge first and barricade it; if nothing more than to protect the ship and her inhabitants until some sort of truce could be struck.
Down the ladder, through the ghostly light housing, Bar descended ahead of the Finny mob, reaching the bridge landing before the rest. Trying the latch, he found the door locked. No doubt the machinegun fire had tipped off the bridge crew and they’d barricaded the way. From the other side of the sturdy iron door, Bar heard a gruff voice call out in challenge, “Identify yourself!” But Bar thought better of it. As far as Moore was concerned he was just a turncoat on the loose now, so instead he decided to make for the galley first, perhaps to find Alabrahm and inform him of the events in the airbladder housing. If any man could broker a truce now, it was the wizened old cook. No man could hold a grudge against him.
Bar reached the galley, just as he heard the Glenfinners reach the bridge door one level above. They hammered against the metal, shouting curses and threats, and then he heard metal groan
and Max’s voice rose above the din. “You got to set that lever lower if you aim to pry her open…and the rest of you other lot, get to the main deck…should a crowny show his face you blacken it straight away till we can sort out who we can trust. Now move!”
They’re coming. Bar pushed his way through the galley door, only to find it teeming with anxious crewmen. “Bazzon!” yelled Cecil almost immediately, and in a flash he came shoving through the gathered southerners huddled in the mess. “Captain’s issued an all hands, said we got snowploggers wreaking havoc on the ship. Told us to fight them off using any means necessary.”
“Bar, you young sprig!” He heard Al’s deep voice say before it became lost in a tide of panicked murmuring.
“Is that them I’m hearing,” hollered a flyer. “What’s our orders?” asked a wide-eyed boy.
“What’s going on, lad,” the cook cut above them all, “you can see the men are on edge…could use some light shed on this situation before it spirals out of control—”
But it was too late. The first Glenfinner, a brute by the name of Tavish; a decent enough fellow, if you were on his good side, but with wits to rival a bull’s; came bursting through the door behind him. The brute paused in the entry, only for a moment to catch his bearings, but it was long enough for an impetuous Kinglander to crack a stein across his forehead. With blood running down along his eyebrows, Tavish roared and blindly thrust a hammer-blow into the nearest Kinglander; a young skyman by the name of Thomas. The boy crumpled in a heap, and then all hell broke loose. Using Tavish as a plow, the rest of the Glenfinners came swarming in from behind, and after that, the chaos turned rampant almost instantly.
Dizzied, Bar tried not to get caught up in the violence, but instead staggered back making for Al, but the melee swirled in around him, and suddenly he was being jostled and knocked about. Fists flew past him, one even striking him in the kidney, and then another came glancing off the side of his face. The table at the center of the room screeched over the decking and slammed into the wall. Several windows shattered. Bar hadn’t wanted to fight back for fear of escalating the violence, but the moment stirred his blood into a frenzy, and he thrust out his coiled fist as readily as the next man. It didn’t matter who got in his way after that, he just punched at them all the same, until someone tackled him through the galley’s forward window. Glass exploded and Bar flailed backwards. In a daze he slammed down onto the main deck with a Glenfinner wrapped around his torso, so he brought an elbow down on the man’s spine, stilling him instantly.
How could it come to this? Bar thought vaguely as he lay on his back, looking up in shock at the Chimera’s glimmering core poking out from the airbladder overhead. Then a tide of men came washing out around him like a stirred up nest of ants. He shoved his prone attacker aside and climbed back to his feet to avoid the worst of it, when he spotted Captain Moore up on the quarterdeck. He was moving in Bar’s direction, backwards down the ladder to the main deck, while his marine guard formed a protective wall, holding back the angry mob with swinging rifles. A second wave of Glenfinners appeared after that, swarming in from the portside outdeck.
All semblance of cohesion toppled after that, mixing into a chaotic maelstrom of intra-kingdom warfare. Bar tried to find an oasis near the rails, but the turbulent crowds swept him up and forced him deeper to the fight. That’s when Moore rose up as a pillar of rage at the main deck’s center, just below the core, with a crashing wave of snarling Finnies converged towards him, and all of them wrapped in atmium blue. Then the captain’s gun appeared—instantly belching fire and smoke, but that only spurred the mob to greater violence, and suddenly the ship’s master fell beneath the tide.
Pushing through flailing bodies, Bazzon reached the site where Moore had last stood and found it empty. Only a pool of smeared blood remained, and a greasy drag-mark that led to the starboard railing. He searched the melee for any sign of the captain, but Bar easily speculated what had probably happened. The loathed master of the Chimera, no doubt, had been pitched over the side and into the embrace of the Shrouded Abyss.
Cecil appeared after that with his fists smeared in blood and a savage grin worn across his face. “Us Kinglanders are making for the bridge, sir, we’re banding together to retake this ship from this Finny uprising. Godsdamn snowploggering traitors! By the gods, we’ll put them right back in their place!”
“This is ridiculous,” roared Bar, pushing the man out of his way, “This ain’t the Kingdoms War…this is just self-inflicted lunacy rung out by fear and fueled by this violence! We’ve got to calm the men, Temberly… So stand down!”
But the truth was the Unity was fractured, the strains of war had seen to that. Whatever fragile bond glued the shattered pieces of the kingdoms back together after the civil war was crumbling away. Island loyalty once again rose to trump loyalty to the crown. Bar was a fool to think otherwise. Each man tasted the end of the UKA in the gunpowder billowing from the Iron Empire’s guns, in the constant stream of reports proclaiming the Empire was drawing nearer and nearer, in the rumors of abandonment. So why follow Kinglanders or Finnies when each cared nothing for the other? Why follow either of those bitter rivals when the Unified Kingdoms was near defeat anyway?
“And you call yourself a Kinglander?” spat Cecil in disgust before disappearing back into the battle.
“That’s an order!” Bar called after him impotently.
Rat-tat-tat-tat. Glass and wood rained down on the crowds. Rat-tat-tat-tat. The combatants ceased their fighting and shuffled in unison back towards the forecastle at the bow. Bar turned a wild eye up to the bridge where Stowe appeared, standing alone on the quarterdeck with his smoking clatterbolt pointing down into the hesitant crowds. Somehow the master-at-arms had survived the airbladder, but his face was a bloodied mess because of it. His nose looked to be bashed to a pulp, and one eye hung swollen shut. The sagging walrus mustache dripped blood along the hanging ends, and yet his one good eye gleamed with that indelible malice he was so infamous for. And he levelled his weapon on the crew to prove it.
“Stowe!” bellowed Bar Bazzon, “Turn away your gun! We need to take this opportunity to restore order now!” But the master-at-arms just locked his one good eye on the subordinate officer; on a man who only minutes ago was his prisoner; and when their eyes meant—golden yellow against burning hazel—there was a moment of grim satisfaction. Bar held up his hands and stepped back towards the pressing crowd behind him. Stowe’s gun followed.
“He means to shoot us all down!” someone yelled in a panic and that whipped the men back into a frenzy.
Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat. Men fell in droves as bullets chewed up the wooden decking in sweeping lines—rat-tat-tat-tat-tat—first up and then back down. Bar rolled away to avoid the fire, but what happened after was lost in a hazy cloud of unconsciousness as something hard impacted the side of his head. Rat-tat-tat-tat. Rat-tat-tat-tat. The sound of that horrible weapon followed him into the turbulent seas of his dreams.
Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat. Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat.
Chapter 7: Take up Your Burden
Bar’s father pounded each nail into the board in one or two precise and deliberate swings of his hammer. He made it look so easy. That’s what it was like in his father’s dusty workshop, with the light filtering through the floating motes, and the heavy scent of spruce and pitch permeating the senses. It always looked so easy. Bar tried to swing his father’s hammer, but found that his child-hands were too small and too weak to wield it. Instead he bent the first three nails and then smashed his thumb on the forth. He threw the hammer away as tears filled his eyes and he sucked on his throbbing thumb. It felt hot and swollen, and near to bursting in his mouth. At the table, his father took up the hammer and continued to drive the nails, but he smiled sympathetic at his son as he did so.
Rat-tat-tat. Rat-tat-tat.
“You just got to mean it when you do it, son,” he urged the boy, pausing so he could look directly into his son’s eyes. This was a lesson he mea
nt to stick. “You hesitated, looked away, but you can’t do that when you’re swinging a hammer. You got to keep your focus, push out the distractions—like thinking about what has happened, or what might happen. It’s either set in stone in the past or it’s something for the future to decide. But for you, you got the present to worry about. We’re creatures of the present you know, blessed with the ability to look back and speculate ahead, but it’s always best to pay extra special attention to where we are—to the now.
“But, Da, It’s too heavy. I just can’t do it,” Bar protested, speaking around the throbbing thumb crammed in his mouth. Where he stood, he was at eye-level with the surface of the table, and could just make out the profile of what his father was working on. Was it a wheel?
“Too heavy…? Can’t do it?” His father’s hearty laugh filled the warm room with a glow that seemed to intensify the colors. “That’s bloody nonsense and you know it, boy! Gods, you’re a grown man after all—should be nothing for you to swing a hammer.”
“A grown man?” protested Bar feebly, his young voice cracking under the strain of indignation. “I’m not a grown man.” And yet as he said it, he realized his voice had deepened, and now he was looking down on the table instead of up at it… and it was a wheel his father was working on, a ship’s wheel.
“Aye, and a bigger man than I was in life, I’ll wager.”
Rat-tat-tat. Rat-tat-tat.
“I’m dreaming, Da, aren’t I?”
Aye, that you are, my son.” His father smiled, causing the creases in his stubbly cheeks to fold, yet that smile quickly slipped away when his world-weary eyes filled with something like sadness. “But it’s time to wake up, and it’s time to swing that hammer like you mean it. And here, son.” Cuthbert turned to the table, and heaved his work up with a labored groan. “This…I made this for you.”
Aethosphere Chronicles: Winds of Duty Page 6