shakenandlimp | Twenty-seventh evolution of sail

From:

You woke in the night, not quite sure why-- a sound wrong, a vibration wrong, and you so attuned to the ways of a ship that even sleeping you knew it. Then-- a gunshot, and you know for certain something isn't right. Your sword is next to you and you snatch it up, dashing out into the cramped tweendecks.

The ship is a riot of fighting: the Spanish prisoners you were sailing back to English waters have broken free, a woman at their head-- it was the women who engineered this escape, and with their newly freed husbands they are mercilessly cutting down your crew.

You burst onto the deck, gather a small group of men, rouse them to fight against this surprise attack, to reclaim the ship-- but the men flag and you fight alone and mad with fury as you are beaten with every blunt object that the prisoners could lay their hands on, sliced and cut with stolen swords, and you stagger, and finally you fall.

You lie among the dead, too weak to stand, caught between consciousness and unconsciousness, dizzy and only half understanding as another sail appears alongside the Renown-- the ships come together with a terrible grinding sound, side to side, and British sailors are suddenly pouring over the rails, Lieutenant Hornblower at their head.

These fresh reinforcements beat back the Spaniards-- the tide of battle turns, pulsing back and forth, but at last-- at last, you know your ship is safe.

You need to get up. You are the first Lieuenant , you must get up and do a thousand things, but you don't even have the strength to raise your head.

Then someone calls out -- and Hornblower is at your side.

"Bush! Bush, speak to me!"

He turns you onto your back-- you barely notice the pain-- and clasps your face in his elegant, competent hands. Speaking would take more effort than you can manage now, so you smile at him, and sag back into his grip as the dawn goes all dark.

From:

shakenandlimp

Darkness and confusion and pain: it's all you know.

There is a dutiful, logical part of your brain that knows that you have just lost a battle at sea, your ship surrendered, and you are in prison-- the rest of your brain washes around, seeing blurry monsters and phantoms everywhere.

It hurts-- by god, your leg.

The dutiful and logical part of your mind also knows that a cannonball struck you-- shattered your ankle, struck your foot off like a splinter of wood.

But you can feel that foot still, and it is in the most agonizing pain. You can feel it there, and there is a queasy lurch whenever you look again and see the blanket folded over. You smell like death.

Argument, somewhere around you. A spaniard with a saw.

Dutifully, logically, you know that the shattered limb must be amputated -- you have seen this before, the surgeon has had to perform this office for other men--

But you see only a monster.

Liutenant Gerard, his face pale and hard, gives you a belt and explains in words you only half hear what you have already understood. You are lifted to a table-- you set your teeth into the belt and howl through the agony of it.

It seems to go on forever, even when it is over-- you are still biting back screams even when the bandages are put on-- when Gerard tries to give you water, you vomit and fall back into a whirlpool of blood and nightmares.

From:

shakenandlimp

You took the boats up the river with the tide, rowing with muffled oars, a hundred fifty strong.

It is silent; so silent, no man speaking except to breathe. You must come upon the French barges unaware, for you are badly outnumbered-- but those big powder barges will defeat themselves, if you can lay charges and get away. At least fifty tons of powder, probably a hundred, to feed French artillery.

If this siege train reaches Le Havre, the town will be lost, and Commodore Hornblower and all the crew of the little fleet in the worst danger.

You give your muted orders as the light of the encampment comes into sight-- come up around the barges, keep a few boats back to watch out and look for reinforcements. You pour up onto the decks, with only the clink of grappling hooks and ropes-- and despite your wooden leg, you are strong enough to take yourself hand over hand alongside your men. Then you are seen, and the fight begins in earnest.

You must take the barges, you must lay charges, you must get away -- and you must be careful.

It is a strange and breathless fight, for your men and the frenchmen all know that you are warring and scrapping over a hold full of death. That one flame will shatter these river barges apart, that one careless spark will kill you all.

And you all know it, when you hear the muffled gunshot from belowdecks. You are too logical to think of premonitions, but--

You made sure to tell the Commodore 'good bye' when you left.

There is no time for screams; the world blooms into hellish light, and then crushing noise, and then nothing.

From:

walkthedarkpath

Vergil had been dead to the world when the dream started. When the flash happened he knew how that ended... He had blown someone up before and just getting caught in the crossfire with his own advanced healing had been a horror show. It was the bits of uniform, the feeling of it all that made him realize what he had just drempt.

"Innamorata, wake up."

A while later a sharp knock hits Bush's door. He doesn't know the other navel officers after talking to Sylvanas Vergil had quickly thrown himself together in a light blue silk dress shirt and black slacks. He skipped shoes so he had on black socks when he knocks his hair sweapt back as he waits. In one hand is the reason he is here, the melted cutlass.

From:

shakenandlimp

Bush has been awake for a few minutes-- he has been sleeping worse these past few nights than he can recall doing in his life. He had a dream of hell, earlier, barely back asleep from that before he had a vivid dream of that night up the Seine. He scrubs his eyes and pulls on trousers over his nightshirt before he opens the door.

"Mister Sparda?" He frowns. "Is everything well?"

From:

walkthedarkpath

Vergil was not used to caring, caring opened one up for pain but this man was important to the woman he had opened him self too. And his talk with William in Amsterdam had been pleasant enough.

"I can not answer that yet, Captain Bush. I have a question I feel only you can answer as the only Military man I know here. Were you ever in an explosion?"

From:

shakenandlimp

"Only once." Not impossible that Vergil should have heard of it-- he used to make freer of his death, before Lieutenant Hornblower came aboard and he immediately began to censor himself more for the younger man's comfort.

"Shortly before I came here, in fact." His face shows he is being ironic. "Very shortly. Why?"
-are you asking this at four in the morning? he does not add.

From:

walkthedarkpath

Vergil was not exactly a social butterfly. So he knows very little about the others on this ship. This man was important because he is important to her. Vergil's answer came not frombworda but from him lifting the melted cutlass up. He said nothing simply held the sword up in a ready stance like he was born to hold a blade.

From:

shakenandlimp

"Where in the world did you get that?" Sleep-fogged, Bush squints at it. "That looks like it might have been navy issue, once. I was only just dreaming about-- well, never mind. That's obviously seen better days, how did you come by it-?"

From:

walkthedarkpath

"I woke up with it in my grasp. After dreaming of a man, likely of navel service trying to stop a shipment. It ended in an explosion and this."

A bit of his bangs feel before one eye. "A gut instinct tells me this belongs to you." When he could trust nothing else he could trust his insticts.

From:

shakenandlimp

"Had he a wooden leg, this man-?"

Bush is only now beginning to suspect what Vergil has already realized. He takes the sword, feeling-- odd, as he looks at this shattered thing. What state must his body have been in, in a blast that did this to steel?

He feels, for a moment, caught between life and death, and shakes his head.

"Not the first broken sword I have seen tonight."

From:

walkthedarkpath

"That he did." His eyes cast without invite to Bush's legs. Had he missed something that big? Sure he didn't pay mind to most humans but damn.

He relinquished the sword watching Bush with it.

"Quite omnious that must be. The same sword?" He asked genuinely curious.

From:

shakenandlimp

Bush reaches to draw up the left leg of his hastily thrown-on trousers, revealing a metal joint where an ankle would be be, lines of metal and plastic curving up. "A fellow warden made me a gift of this better one when I came aboard-- it has been some time since I've been on a peg."

He lets the hem of his trouser drop.

"I didn't dream of the same sword, no. It was an odd flat-bladed one. Iris has two like it, but I forget the name of the style-- I was bad wounded but I had gone to fight a ... an angel, I think, a great three-eyed angel, and he shattered the sword in my hand." Unpleasant, strange, painful dream.

Twenty-seventh evolution of sail - a host of shipwrecks

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