by Devin Hanson
The trumpets struck back up again, blowing a grand fanfare before segwaying into a stomping martial beat, backed up by thundering drums and rattling snares. By crew, they about-faced and marched off the parade ground, the crew of the Belathon leading the way, then the Meremacht, then Andrew found himself near the front of the column of Caerwin's crew as they exited the parade ground.
Nobody had told Andrew what to expect, so he was pleasantly surprised to find his crew marching up the street and into a public garden that had been turned into a massive reception. The two thousand men and women making up the newly minted dragon-hunting force met the nearly five thousand nobles, retainers, merchants, servants, hangers-on, toadies, friends and family - in short, anyone who was anyone, and anyone who knew anyone, was at the reception.
Andrew marched with the column of Caerwin's crew, surrounded by cheering people. They reached the center of the park and the master-at-arms bawled commands. The crew formed up, came to attention, snapped out a crisp salute, and was dismissed to enjoy the evening.
The park grounds were familiar to Andrew, having come there on occasion with his family, but the decorations, the sculptures, the silk pennants twisting in the breeze, and the sheer number of people made everything unfamiliar. Andrew stopped trying to calculate the cost of the decorations, the food and beverages, the wait staff, the bands playing lively music seemingly around every corner. It was more wealth on display than Andrew even knew how to figure. The money his parents made in a year might cover the cost of two or three of the tables sagging under the weight of countless desserts and delicacies of every description.
Andrew wandered, enjoying the adulation his uniform drew, eating a few bites of food here or there, tasting his first glass of champagne and deciding it wasn't to his liking, and a glass from a bowl of punch that was. He gave up trying to figure out how much the reception cost, and started to just enjoy it. If this was how the heroes of the kingdom were treated, Andrew decided, he could get used to it.
Thirty minutes into the reception, Andrew heard someone calling his name, and turned just in time to get pulled down into an embrace with his mother.
For a few seconds, he was just glad to see her then a rush of embarrassment swept him. "Mother, please, I'm not-"
"Hush now," Andrew's mother held him back at arm's length for a second, before hugging him again. "You'll have to suffer your mother's love for a few more minutes. My do you look handsome in that uniform!"
Andrew flushed again. "Uh, thanks. I thought you and Pa were out of town with the caravan?"
"Your Pa had to go, but we both agreed that I should be here to see you finish. We're both so very proud of you. He'll be back by the end of the week, before your first flight. We'll be there to see you off."
Despite himself, Andrew felt a surge of gratitude. He was a man now, or near enough one, but still young enough to have missed his parents during the six weeks of boot camp and training. "I'd like that," he smiled. "It's good to see you."
Mrs. Condign brushed her hand down the front of Andrew's jacket and tugged his collar straight. "So tall. Are they feeding you enough? You're not drinking any of the booze here, are you?" She clucked, inserted her arm into Andrew's and led him toward a table groaning under the weight of pastries and a whole roast pig, asking five hundred questions without pause for a single answer.
Some time an eternity later, a bugle call from the edge of the park caught Andrew's ear, and he listened to the notes with a mixed feeling of regret and relief. "Mother, I- Mother! Listen! I have to go. They're calling my unit."
Other people in uniforms with the same flashing as Andrew's were putting down their plates and making their excuses to whoever they were with and Andrew felt another flush of embarrassment as several people he recognized threw knowing smiles his way as they headed out of the park.
"Oh dear. Well, I guess I had better let you go then." Mrs. Condign looked around. "This is quite the fine celebration, but won't be the same without you here." She pulled him back into a last hug and released him with a pat on the arm. "Bye, love. Be careful up there!"
"Thanks, Mother. I love you too." Andrew waved and turned to jog after his crewmates.
Andrew stood in formation, the air hot and sticky humid from the rain an hour earlier. The crisp starch of his uniform had faded somewhat between the sweat running down his back and the unrelenting humidity. The sun had yet to come out from behind the clouds, but the Caerwin anchored overhead on her mooring tower cast dubious shade on the assembled men and women.
The bosun paced in front of the crew, his leathery lungs bellowing loud enough to be clearly heard in the very back of the formation. "Alright, ye swabbies, tilt ‘em this way, I'm only saying this once. If I call your name, you be first watch. Fall out and report aboard for duties and assignments. If I dun call your name, you be second watch, and ye will report to the barracks for further instruction.
"Listen up now, this is the first watch! Eric Mason, Carl Ains…"
Andrew listened to the bosun rattle off names, and started when his was called. With muttered apologies, Andrew made his way to the front of the formation, and broke into a jog with the others to the base of the mooring tower.
The tower was a wooden construct, thirty feet square at the base and tapering to ten feet square at the top, with a spiral staircase running up the inner wall. A pulley elevator system in the center provided hauling for cargo and people too important to sweat their way up two hundred feet of stairs. The stairs started out wide at the bottom, but near the top narrowed to barely three feet wide and the last twenty feet up the stairs ended and were replaced by a ladder.
Walking into the bottom of the tower was like being dunked into a pool. If it was humid outside, it was doubled inside. Water dripped down the walls and pooled on the stairs, making the footing treacherous. Andrew immediately started sweating from every pore. He found himself climbing the stairs behind a man with a broad sweat stain down his back.
"Why are we separated into two watches?" Andrew asked. They had come to an unexplained stop on the stairs as some disagreement in protocol was debated somewhere above them in the tower.
The man turned and laughed at him then faced forward again without deigning to answer.
"Hey, kid," Andrew worked his way around to face the man below him on the stairs.
"Hello. Sorry, I was just curious."
"Nah, listen. It's simple enough. See, the Caerwin, she's got near three hunnert crew, but she has a fightin' weight of only eighty, and berths a quarter of that. If we was doing a short flight, like, we could squeeze maybe another thirty on deck with cutters, aye."
"And they only got victuals for one or two watches," someone else added, further down the stairs. "I was humpin' them up these stairs all day yesterday."
"Coor. See, kid, we's the first watch. Meaning, we's the only ones on crew to fight the dragons when they come. The skip, he's only gonna be up for the night then he'll come back down, take on the second watch, and we'll offload and bunk."
"Or we'll be dead," someone shouted.
"Or the dragons'll make knickers from our skins, aye."
The line of men on the stairs started moving again, and Andrew turned back to the front. "So how'd they decide who was in which watch?" he called back over his shoulder. "We must be the lucky ones!"
"Oh, aye. Lucky." The man chortled for a few steps. "Or maybe them lords in the second watch wanted to make sure the plan was sound afore joinin' this mad venture."
"Hush it, Sten," someone called up. "Let the lad sort it out. Won't be doin' you no favors speaking it loud."
Andrew climbed the stairs in silence for a while, turning over the conversation in his head. Fortunately, as they climbed, the air was cooling off and the humidity dropped down to something approaching comfortable.
"If the crew is eighty men," Andrew reasoned, as he awaited his turn to climb the ladder at the top, "and the Caerwin is assigned three hundred in two watches, what are the other hundred
and forty men going to do?" He turned enough to look over his shoulder, and caught the grim gazes of the men behind him.
"Now ye be getting the gist. Dun let it fret your head. Keep your trap closed and yer noggin down, and we'll be heroes, right boys?"
Andrew climbed the ladder, laughter chasing him upward into the light.
The rain pouring down on Andrew gradually turned to sleet and by the time he reached the gate, his face was numb, he couldn't feel his feet from the shin down, his fingernails were blue and his teeth were knocking together so hard he was afraid he'd shatter his molars.
Coming through the city gate, Andrew felt a gentle warm wash over him and he groaned from the pleasure of it. Then he lifted his gaze above the ground in front of him and shocked horror stopped him dead in his tracks. Ardhal was in ruins. Whole sectors of the once bustling city of nearly a hundred thousand were enveloped in an uncontrollable inferno. Houses, workshops, shops and warehouses had been blasted down to create firebreaks to stop the flames from spreading further, and the exhausted people working the bucket chains were focusing on mitigation rather than suppression.
A passing city guard, his tunic scorched and holed by cinders grabbed Andrew's arm. "Come on, boy. The fire ain't gon put itself out, what! Grab a bucket, there be no stoppin till the last of us collapse."
Andrew let himself be guided along and joined a bucket brigade. He caught a glimpse of himself in the shattered remains of a store window. He was marked by soot, his once crisp uniform scorched, torn, muddy and soaked with both blood and rain. It was impossible to tell that it was a uniform any more. In fact, he looked almost exactly the same as the people about him in the bucket line. Nobody had come through this night unscathed.
His broken rib burned with every bucket he passed, his feet throbbed, a headache screamed from between his temples. But he passed buckets, one at a time, until his back was a solid bar of agony from his bruised hips to his lacerated shoulders. As the night passed, he tore off the remnants of his uniform jacket to shield the torn blisters on his palms and ripped the tatters of his shirt into strips he and his fellow bucket slingers could tie about their faces to shield themselves from the smoke.
The rain poured down all the while, doing more to suppress the fires than the bucket chains. The sun rose and the rain stopped. Word came down the line: The fires were out. Or at least, the threat of the fire spreading had ceased. Ardhal wouldn't completely stop burning and smoking for days. A woman stopped by Andrew with a bucket of clean water and a ladle, and Andrew gratefully rinsed the ash from his mouth before taking a big swallow of ice cold water.
"Thank you, ma'am," Andrew said, his voice raspy from smoke inhalation.
"I should be thanking you, dear," the woman replied, "you and all those others who worked throughout the night to save our city." She pointed back down the street toward a small patch of surviving park. "Go over there. They'll give you a bite to eat and a place to sleep."
"You're an angel," Andrew replied, and hastened to follow her instructions. He didn't go more than ten steps before every ache and pain in his body made itself felt all at once. Without the immediate crisis of Ardhal burning, his body cut off the supply of adrenaline cold turkey. With a groan, he sank to his knees.
"I'll just sit here," he muttered to himself, "For a moment."
He closed his eyes.
Andrew fell. Clouds whipped past endlessly and the wind howled in his ears. His uniform, once again crisp and pristine, tugged at his limbs in the airstream. He tumbled, head over heels until he had no idea which way was down.
The slow strop of wings circled around him somewhere just beyond visibility in the clouds, and the scent of cinnamon threatened to gag him. The dragon! It was here! His fumbling fingers confirmed he had his parachute on still, and he yanked on the rip cord. It was stuck! He got two fingers through the ring and pulled with all his might.
With a rip of sundered fabric, the ring came away in his hand. The trailing threads caught in the wind and pulled away, unraveling the straps holding the parachute to his back. He clawed after the tangled skeins desperately, but his fingers slipped through without being able to find purchase and the last of the parachute drifted away.
Andrew plummeted in free fall now, his heart hammering in terror. No parachute. No hope. His uniform was rags now, his coat and shirt gone to make bandages, his pants holed and charred by cinders. The strop of wings grew closer, closer, and a downdraft of cinnamon-scented air sent him tumbling wildly through the sky.
The clouds faded away, and Andrew saw the dragon coming about again for a second pass at him. Andrew was helpless, unable to dodge, unable to move, even. His tumbling had stopped, the better to give him a stable view of his impending doom. The dragon roared and swept in, jaws opening wide, white teeth as long as swords, baked dry by the heat of the beast's breath. Andrew flinched as the jaws snapped shut-
and jerked awake, a cry of horror on his lips. The sun was shining down, already drying the cold sweat that had coated his body a second earlier. A passerby nodded his sympathy as he walked by and Andrew took a few deep, shuddering breaths.
The position of the sun told him it was almost noon. He pushed himself to his feet, stifling a cry of pain as the broken ends of his rib grated together. Standing straight was almost too much for him, and he limped toward the bit of park land in a hunchbacked hobble.
Someone had set up a few hundred pallets under the dense tree cover and most of them were occupied by sleeping people, their clothing singed and ruined by fire and water. An elderly lady saw him coming, and waved him over to a small tent to one side.
Andrew stepped in, blinking in the sudden dim light. "Uh, hello?"
A harassed-looking military medic guided him to a bench. "You just make it here? It's been hours since the last of the fires went out."
"Sorry. Fell asleep on the way." Andrew winced as the doctor prodded his chest.
"Broken rib? Deep breath. Yes indeed. Anything else broken? No. Well, the rib's bad enough. Ever broken a bone before? Don't worry. Would have been better if you had had this looked at right away, but we'll bind it up. It'll hurt for a week or so then, if you can avoid bumping it too bad, it'll be good as new."
The man rattled on, giving Andrew a thorough examination from head to toe. He wrapped Andrew's ribs, spread a salve on the rows of burst blisters across both his palms, packed a poultice on a particularly nasty burn, stitched a few bigger cuts closed and cleaned out dozens of smaller wounds. By the end of it, there wasn't much skin left uncovered by bandages.
"Ah, the resilience of youth," the doctor chuckled. "If I had half of your collection, they'd have to carry me to my bed. Go find something to eat. Sleep if you can." He clapped Andrew carefully on one shoulder, and left the tent.
Andrew eased himself off the table, and was surprised to find that his body was already feeling significantly better. He could breathe easier with his ribs bound and his left arm in a sling, and the agonizingly stiff muscles in his back had loosened up. His head still pounded, but the stabbing pain in his temples had receded.
Following the doctor's instructions, Andrew went and found himself some food. A baker whose shop had survived the fires had cooked up hundreds of rolls with little sausages inside and was passing them out to the firefighters who were awake. Andrew accepted a handful of rolls and ate the first in two hungry bites, hardly tasting the food as it went down. The second roll went slower, and he savored the buttery bread with the hearty little sausage in the middle.
Eating made him wonder how long it had been since his last meal. Let's see. He had eaten a light breakfast the morning before, and lunch, but had thrown that up once the ship was airborne. The Caerwin's steward had been handing out dry rations for dinner, but Andrew hadn't felt like eating at the time. He glanced up at the sun peeking through the trees and estimated it was an hour or so before noon. So over a full day since his last meal. No wonder he was so hungry.
The third roll followed the second and, with
his hunger sated, Andrew started thinking about something other than his immediate situation.
His parents! What must they be thinking right now? By now everyone knew the airships had been destroyed. They must think him dead. His parents were traders and kept an apartment near the south gate by a warehouse for convenience. If they were in town still, and he knew no reason why they wouldn't, they would have been there. As fast as his injuries would allow him, he headed for the south gate.
Ardhal might not still be burning, but the destruction caused by the airships crashing into the city was visible no matter where he went. Nearly everyone he passed in the streets sported burns in some degree or another, their clothing and hair singed, faces and exposed skin blackened with soot. There was little to no business going on in the city, people seemed too shocked and exhausted to do much of anything.
On the way to the south gate, Andrew passed surprisingly close to the wreckage of the Meremacht. The prevailing winds had driven the blaze away from the thoroughfare, leaving the damage to the buildings limited to the initial impact. Beyond a half-charred row of houses, the airon ribs of the ship's balloons rose like skeletal hands grasping futilely at the sky. A tight knot of men in clean clothing, unmarked by soot or cinder, stood at a gap between two houses where they had a good view of the wrecked airship. Andrew slowed as he passed. One of the men looked vaguely familiar.
"-if I had been up there."
"But of course, old chap. The strategy employed was, dare I say, criminal! Holding position over the city! Who came up with that plan?"
"I was in the meeting. Some hopped up commoner with delusions of competency was in charge. They said he was a general, but I could have told him the idea was a wash. A child in swaddling could have come up with a better plan."
"Well. I certainly hope no-one survived this debacle. I'd hate to be in their shoes when the court martials start rolling in."
"Anyone who was up in the air was responsible. Can't expect anyone on the ground to have made a difference one way or another!"