Chapter 8
The captain spun on his heels. “Crew of the Wind's Oath, fire at will! Fire to kill! For Barak-Torin!”
“Grungni’s breath!” Camron yelled as he levelled his rifle. That was brilliant! A smile was plastered on his face at how the captain orchestrated that deal. Camron sighted a khinerai’s chest and pulled the trigger. His rifle bucked as it shot. The khinerai screamed. He’d missed the chest but managed to hit her wing, tearing right through it. The aelf plummeted to the cave floor.
Next to him, Yedrun heaved a mine towards the Khazak door and then fired on it with his rifle. The explosion burned through several aelves and their screams rang out through the cave.
Camron’s eyebrows shot up. “Nice shot!” he said. Yedrun grunted and the two of them kept firing.
Though the duardin were outnumbered, the Khinerai had clearly assumed the crew of the Wind’s Oath were not a threat and had ignored them. The aelves were taken by surprise and half of them were down before they’d even realized they were being attacked from a new direction.
Camron braced his body with a wide stance and fired his rifle, loosing off several shots as rapidly as he could. Although he missed all of the targets he was aiming at, the aelves were so clumped together around the khazak door that he managed to hit an aelf with each shot.
The other Rifleheads were on deck firing, the Captain had out his volley pistol, Malaida and endrineer Borson were each firing their some sort of odd tool, and all of the deck hands had their pistols out and were adding their weight of fire to the mix.
Within heartbeats, all of the aelves were dead or dying. A few wails came up from the cavern floor as aelves slowly bled to death.
Camron panted as his blood slowly started to simmer down. He spun and scanned the skies through the cave mouth to see if there were any stragglers. He didn’t see any, but the fact that some of the more eagle-eyed among the crew kept firing shots accompanied by the occasional scream told him that there were at least a few more. Though he didn’t see any more aelves, he did see the sky. And it was starting to clear.
When it seemed like the last aelf in the cave was definitely a corpse, Tungevin limped out from behind his cannon. Kicking over a corpse or two off the dock as he slowly and painstakingly hobbled over to the other sky cannon. When he reached a pile of aelf bodies, he seemed to switch gears. Whereas before he seemed to be in no hurry, now it seemed as if he would explode if it took a second longer. He dug into the pack of corpses with a frenetic focus, grabbing aelf corpses and heaving them single-handedly off the pile and the dock. Eventually, he cleared enough corpses that a duardin body was visible underneath.
He shook the body. Yelled things. Whispered things. Even raised his fist and gave the duardin’s helmet a hammer blow.
It didn’t stir.
After a few moments, he got up and walked woodenly over to the Wind's Oath.
As unfair as the Barak-Mhornar duardin had been earlier, Camron would hadn’t wished such grief on them. Particularly not at the hands of aelves.
“Thank you captain for your intervention. It wasn’t soon enough for my comrade Embis, but I appreciate it nonetheless.”
Captain Bondson bowed his head briefly. “May his soul find refuge with Grungni.”
“Thank you captain, I appreciate that,” he said. Then he stood up straight and surveyed the scene. The broken cannon and slain compatriot. The scratched iron door. The damage to his own cannon. “I have something else I must raise. We’ve suffered serious damage. Under artycle 16.4.1(a) of the Code, ships in port are expected to help pay for the damage with a tithe of their cargo.” He looked defiantly at Captain Bondson, daring him to challenge him. “Rounding up,” he added.
Camron’s grief evaporated, replaced with a red hot rage firing through his veins. They would refuse to honour their deal to return the cargo? The Eagle’s Oath would make no profit after all?
He leveled his rifle at the Barak-Mhornar duardin and stomped forward. “You will NOT go back on your word.”
Sergeant Nesbred sputtered but wasn’t quite fast enough to stop Camron.
Captain Bondson’s raised hand did that for her. “Enough Camron. Your concern is noted. But this is by the code.”
“He promised to return our cargo and now he will not!”
“Well,” the captain said with a sideways glance at the Barak-Mhornar, “I’m sure he would argue that he’s returning the cargo but that we now owe it back to him. He’s right about artycle 16.4.1(a). It may be meant for skyport under attack with many ships in port, not for a Khazak with one ship in port. Nor for a ship with only one piece of cargo. Either way, we will not break the rule of the code, no matter that the spirit may be broken.”
The Barak-Mhornar duardin sputtered before stomping his foot. “I don’t appreciate your assertion that I’m breaking the spirit of the code.”
“And I don’t appreciate you taking my cargo after you promised it in payment for MY services.”
The Barak-Mhornar duardin grunted. He turned to go back to his khazak, but he stopped when the captain cleared his throat.
“That’s not all that artycle 16.4.1(a) says. It actually says: ‘A skyport may tithe the cargo of ships in port during an attack upon which the skyport itself is damaged.’ And of course this goes along with subparagraph (b) which declares that an outpost khazak,” the captain paused to sweep his arms around gesturing towards the cave, the dock, the cannons, and the clawed doorway, “such as this, is considered an extension of the skyport.”
The captain paused for breath and the Barak-Mhornar duardin just stood there and regarded the captain. It was impossible to read faces through ancestor masks, but he reminded Camron of a rat that seemed sure the cat was around a corner.
“Which means of course that in order to tithe our cargo, you must do it on behalf of Barak-Mhornar itself. You’re prepared to do that and provide a notarized copy of your rune-signature?”
Camron let out a slow breath as he watched the situation. His earlier rage was still there, but it had stepped to the side to make way for his curiosity. He knew the captain was setting something up but couldn’t figure out what. Judging by his silence, Tungevin had the same thought.
Eventually, the Barak-Mhornar duardin slowly nodded. “Yes, I can do that.”
The next few moments passed quickly. The paperwork was finalized. The crew of the Wind's Oath prepared her for sailing. And then they set off, leaving the outpost behind them.
Wind chopped the ship up and down. The air smelled like mercury rain was coming. But it was leagues better sailing than it had been before.
The Rifleheads just reloaded their weapons and stayed put on the deck, staying out of the crews’ way and keeping their eyes trained on the horizon.
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