by E. C. Jarvis
“I’m one of you,” he said to the Marine, who looked at him quizzically, blood pouring from a cut beside his eye.
“You’re a pirate. You were in the brig.”
“Mistaken identity,” he said. He flung the blade at the back of a nearby pirate who was gaining the upper hand over a young Marine private nearby. The dagger turned end over end and lodged neatly between the man’s shoulder blades, sending him crashing to the ground.
“There aren’t many who can best me,” the Marine said as he stood.
Holt had already retrieved his sword and now headed back towards where he hoped Larissa would still be. He twitched nervously when he saw the bigger man following.
Holt snaked his way across the battlefield, weaving towards the burning wreckage and avoiding small, skirmishing groups as best he could. He slashed at the neck of a pirate who stumbled into his path and stepped over the flailing body as it fell at his feet. Up ahead, someone’s voice boomed over the noises of battle—someone shouting commands.
“Regroup!” The Admiral’s voice rang clear. Holt hesitated, unsure if he should attempt to join the Marines or not. Something bumped his shoulder; a body flew past his vision as he stumbled to the side. The large Marine stood battling four pirates who had thought to gang up on him. Two tried to climb up the man’s back and hack his head off with axes.
Holt sighed and back-stepped towards his new friend, sword at the ready. He drew the blade down the back of one pirate clinging to the Marine’s shoulder, a line of bright blood soaking through the mottled beige shirt in an instant. The man fell backwards into the mud, and Holt stamped on his head for good measure. He pulled the second attacker off with one swift yank, the axe in the man’s hand almost cutting Holt’s nose off in the process. As soon as the man landed with a splatter of mud, Holt jabbed the point of the sword into his neck, putting an end to one more pirate.
The Marine spun around and smiled, then clapped him on the shoulder “Ayers,” he said as he grabbed the axe from the hand of the dying pirate, blood spurting from the hole in his neck.
“Holt.” He nodded back. At least he’d convinced one person which side he was on.
“To the Admiral,” Ayers said, making a move towards the ship but in the wrong direction. Larissa was at the bow—at least, that was where he’d left her—and the Admiral was near the stern, a collection of Marines surrounding him, gathering into a formation.
Holt jogged alongside Ayers, keeping watch for pirate attackers and straining to find Larissa. When they reached Vries, a collection of at least twenty Marines had gathered to the Admiral’s call. Vries nodded to Ayres, then nodded a second time at Holt.
“I want every last pirate dead, do you hear me?” Vries yelled.
The group of Marines called, “Aye,” in unison, and Holt answered as well, forgetting his place for a moment.
“Attack,” Vries shouted. The men charged forwards together as a unit, swords and pistols ready. Holt joined the group at the edge of the formation. He pressed on, the blade of the sword splitting flesh and sending sprays of pirate blood through the air. The world descended into a ferocious heartbeat. One after another, bodies fell at his feet, and his comrades fought at his side until they finally broke down the attacking numbers, picking off the last of the bastards.
When it was over, the dots dancing around the edges of his vision grew large and merged together. Exhaustion tugged at his limbs; it seemed as though someone had tied weights to his hands. He turned back towards the burning carcass of the ship. Mud clung to his boots; each step felt like he was being dragged into a muddy pit. Through the haze in his vision, he spotted Larissa. Her blond curls, which would normally make her stand out in any setting, were brown with mud and plastered to the side of her face. Her arms were covered in a mixture of blood and mud, and she knelt amongst a plethora of bodies. Some men limped away, having been healed by her touch, while others nursed wounds and waited in line. Several were already dead.
The weakness in his body took over as soon as he saw her, and he sank to his knees. She was alive and home. He’d helped her achieve that much at least, and if he could help no further, so be it. She was strong enough to carry on. Perhaps she’d always been strong enough to survive without him. The drain took over, and he felt himself falling. No Anthonium remained to prolong the inevitable nor prevent fate from taking over. Through the mess of noises disintegrating into a garbled fuzz in his mind, he heard her screaming his name, but as his body fell forwards, face dropping towards the mud, heart slowing, mind regressed, he couldn’t find the strength to say goodbye.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The tingling in Larissa’s fingers had turned to pins and needles, which hurt with even the slightest movement. Her body drained of all energy, if an opportunity came to run away from all the madness, she probably wouldn’t manage to take two steps without passing out. Bodies lay strewn all around—a morbid collection of men, some with burns so bad they were beyond recognition, others missing limbs. She’d watched so many of them die. While working to heal one man, three others had breathed their last, and there was nothing she could do about it. As miraculous as her healing ability was, it was not perfect, nor quick, and with each person saved, the ability to save the next became harder.
She was vaguely aware of Cid nearby, working with her to try to bandage wounds and patch up people as best he could in spite of his injuries. At first, an occasional swear word escaped his lips, but he had fallen silent a while ago, and she didn’t dare turn around, knowing he would have his own macabre collection of people he’d failed to save.
Though she’d kept looking up, expecting to see Holt re-emerge from the fray, he’d not returned, and her heart sank further into despair each time. When yet another man landed—quite literally—in her lap, blood pouring from a gash on his head, she felt her lip wobble. For all her strength and experience with death, having it shoved in front of her face in such a visceral and violent manner was too much. She looked up again and instantly forgot about the poor man in her lap as she spotted Holt emerge from the crowd of Marines.
He dropped to his knees, the skin beneath the mess of mud and blood deathly pale, almost grey, a color not dissimilar to the shade of the Professor’s body when she’d found his corpse. She screamed, the sound utterly alien to her own ears. The body in her lap was pushed aside and the pain and exhaustion in her limbs forgotten as she stumbled over the pile of dead bodies to run to him.
“Stop,” Cid said as he grabbed her shoulders.
A large Marine emerged from the group of people near Holt and scooped him up in one move, throwing him over his shoulder. He stomped through the muddy bog, splashes coating everything in muck as his heavy steps disturbed the ground. He approached Larissa with a frown on his face and silently set Holt down on the ground.
“Got room for another?” the Marine said.
Larissa couldn’t answer as she fell to her knees. Holt’s skin was cold and damp, his clothing drenched with muck. With shaking fingertips, she reached out to his neck to feel for a pulse and sobbed uncontrollably when she couldn’t find one.
It didn’t matter they had come this far. She didn’t care her father had gotten away. She didn’t even care about the massive loss of life surrounding them. None of it mattered if she couldn’t have the one thing which truly did matter.
Something disconnected in her mind—time blurred into nothing more than a distant, ticking clock. After a while, she realized she had laid down, her head against his chest, fingers trapped beneath the side of his face. She had no idea how much time had passed, but the noises surrounding them had faded, the raging fire nothing more than a crackle, no more cannons or gunfire. Only a few deathly gurgles from the last of the dying men reached her ears.
Her face and lips were dry. Hair matted against her cheeks. The bloodstains on her arms had dried to form an unpleasant, crusty layer, and it felt as though her chest was empty, the heart beating inside reduced to a mechanical device performing a jo
b. She had loved too deeply and lost so fast, the tears refused to fall any longer as numbness set in.
“Larissa.” Cid’s voice was nearby. It might have been the first time he’d said her name or the hundredth, she had no idea. “If we are to evade capture, we should leave while Vries is still distracted.”
“Where do you suggest we go?” she said, her voice a croaking mess, the words barely coherent.
“Take refuge in the city. Rest. Recover.”
She felt a frown tug on her face. It sounded like Holt’s voice. Had she gone completely mad? The chest beneath her head moved, and a hand touched her hair.
“Holt?” she said softly as she dared to pull away from him and look at his face. His eyes were open. Though they looked glassy, some color returned to his skin. He was alive.
“Bloody hell, how did you do that?” Cid said.
“What?” Larissa asked, not turning to look. She couldn’t take her eyes off Holt. She wasn’t sure if she was dreaming, or hallucinating, or maybe she was dead as well.
“How did you bring him back from the dead? He was dead.”
“You’re not still underestimating her, are you, Mendle?” Holt said as he squeezed her arm, a slight smile playing on his lips.
“You were dead,” she said as her lip wobbled again. “How? How?” Her mind raced backwards in time, trying to unpick the puzzle. She had made no effort to heal him, she hadn’t even thought to try. The numbness in her heart gave way to a slight spike of excitement, one she didn’t want to acknowledge for fear of finding out this was all a dream. She gripped his shirt with hands spiked with pain, still suffering from all the healing she’d done.
“It’s not pertinent to our current situation,” Holt said as he looked around, assessing their surroundings. “Shit,” he said, thumping his head back in the mud.
Larissa finally tore her gaze away from him, her head swimming with dizzy uncertainty. As much as she wanted to simply flop forward onto his chest again and hold him close, he was right, yet again. A muddy field, surrounded by dead bodies beside the smouldering carcass of an airship with a number of Marines nearby who had orders to bring them to the President, was not the place for sentimental romance.
The battle had ended, bodies lay strewn all over the place. In the darkness, the vague outlines of other downed ships were apparent. At least the sacrifice had made some impact on the number of pirates. Vries stood with a group of men out of earshot, but with his face turned towards them—and to her surprise—she saw Colonel Kerrigan and Lieutenant Saunders marching toward them.
“I don’t think I could run if I tried.” The familiar voice of Friar Narry came from behind. “But if you intend to leave, I think the time is now.”
Larissa turned to see both Narry and Sandy sitting in the mud beside Cid. At some point, they must have come to help with the wounded. She had been so intent on saving as many people as possible, she hadn’t even noticed them. She looked back at Holt again; he hadn’t yet made any effort to move, and if running were an option, he would no doubt be on his feet by now.
“I am incapacitated,” he said with a sigh, as though he had read her mind.
“No running then. Plan B,” she said.
“What is plan B?” Cid asked as Kerrigan and Saunders reached them. Vries broke away from the pack and headed in their direction as well.
“I’ll let you know when I figure it out.”
“I’m glad to see you have survived,” Kerrigan said to Larissa.
“Likewise. Where is Sergeant Boswell…and Zeb?”
“Among the dead,” he said solemnly.
“Oh. What were you talking to Vries about?”
Kerrigan frowned, then glanced over his shoulder. Vries approached, cutting short any response Kerrigan may have given.
“It is not in my nature to let prisoners go,” the Admiral said as he stood with his arms folded, looking down at Larissa. “However, I am hardly in a position to detain you all. My entire ship is destroyed. I have no brig and not enough men to watch over you and the handful of pirates who surrendered to us, and…” He faltered in the obviously pre-planned speech he was making. His moustache bristled, and he unfolded his arms, then crouched down low, resting his elbows on his legs.
“You saved my life,” he said quietly. Larissa nodded once, unsure what to say in response. “You saved many lives of my Marines. If you had been working with the pirates, you would have been saving their lives instead. At least, that’s what logic tells me.”
“I regret so many had to die in order for me to prove that to you.”
“That is war. Many more will die when we attack Eptora, although I believe such an order may not come.” He glanced up at Kerrigan, and Larissa felt a sudden pang of panic in her chest.
“I told him the truth…about you and where we are headed. What our intentions are,” Kerrigan said.
“Oh.”
“The honest approach,” Holt grunted.
“I’m not sure what to believe. Are you the descendant of Emperor? Has the President been fixing elections for all these years? Does he deserve to be overthrown? I don’t have the time or resources to either help or hinder you, but if this Solomon Covelle is heading to the Capital with the remaining pirate ships we failed to stop, someone needs to stop him. The Capital is empty of all but a few reserves in Fort Dalet, it won’t take much to storm the palace.”
“Do you know how many ships got away?”
“At least three, including one with no canopy. You didn’t tell me there was another ship like that.”
“It wasn’t pertinent to the situation at the time,” she said, exchanging a glance with Holt. He squeezed her arm again.
“I sent a call for help to the rest of the fleet on the coast before the battle began, but I expect by the time they get here, it will be too late to receive orders from the Capital. I can do no more for you.” He extended his hand to her, the movement rigid and awkward. She shook it carefully, the tingling pins and needles racing up her arm as he gripped her hand tightly. Vries reached down to Holt and shook his hand next.
Larissa couldn’t help but feel sorry for Holt as a glimmer of disappointment ghosted across his face. Shaking the hand of an Admiral whom he clearly admired while he lay on his back in the mud was probably more embarrassing for him than he would ever admit. Vries stood and shook the hands of Kerrigan and Saunders, then finally gave a solemn nod to the remainder of their group.
“Still incapacitated?” she asked Holt when Vries had headed back to his men. “Or do you want me to ask Kerrigan to carry you?”
“I will walk,” he said with a grunt as he sat up.
“Do you have a plan yet, Captain?” Cid asked.
She looked to the city in the distance. It would be a long walk, and they had no money to rent a room in which to rest. They needed food, water, and clean clothing. As soon as she thought of her clothes, an idea struck her; there was at least one person in the whole city who owed her a favour, and it was as good a place as any to start.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
It took a frustrating amount of time for the group to trudge across the fields into the city. Larissa ached from head to toe, and her feet felt like she walked with razor blades in her shoes. The rain persisted, though it had reduced to a light drizzle. They had begun by taking a direct route across the fields but changed course when a line of steam-driven enforcement carriages and fire trucks had emerged from the city. Cid muttered a surly comment about the fact that they’d waited until the battle was over to approach the carnage, and while Larissa agreed with his sentiments, the laziness of the local law enforcement had worked to their advantage. She’d had quite enough of being locked in cells.
By the time they reached the outskirts of the city and crossed the train tracks, she began to doubt if any of them had the strength to make it all the way into the center. An upturned cart lay abandoned and half-sinking in the mud. There was still one lone steam train parked up on the track, and as they drew close, it
seemed as though the entire station was abandoned.
“Shall we rest here? It seems quiet enough,” Friar Narry said from somewhere behind.
“No,” she replied, determined to get where she was headed before the break of dawn.
“Forgive me, Miss Markus, but I must rest.”
“I feel the need for a break also,” Cid said.
She stopped and looked around at the others. They were a bedraggled bunch with bags under their eyes, caked in mud though the rain had washed some of the grime away. Holt, who had been walking silently at her side the whole way, seemed brighter than she would have imagined possible.
“Anyone who needs a break can rest here. I need to go into the city to speak with someone who may help us…who will help us, whether he wants to or not.”
“I’m going with you,” Holt said. She smiled; he finally seemed determined to stay by her side.
“I think you know my position,” Narry said as he hobbled towards the platform ledge.
“I have no desire to revisit anywhere in town. I will wait with the Friar. Maybe the buffet car on the train still has supplies.”
“Good thought, Cid,” Narry said with a cheerful laugh.
“I could use a rest too,” Sandy said. It had been the first time she had spoken all night. Larissa looked at Kerrigan and Saunders, hoping they too would stay behind and give her and Holt some much needed private time.
“I’m coming with you,” Kerrigan said to Larissa. “Lieutenant, you stay here and guard the others.”
“Yes, sir.”
“All right, then. We’ll be as quick as we can and meet you all back here. If the station comes back to life during the day, just try to keep out of the way somewhere. We’ll find you when we return,” Larissa said.
“I don’t think this place has been used in weeks,” Cid said.
“That may work to our advantage. See if you can find out why while we’re gone.”
