"It's the Wolfhound sir! She's flying towards us with engines burning on full!"
Lawrence made to stand, grimacing as he clutched his now bandaged wound. Archer and Talon moved to support him, helping him hobble to a position where he could better see their last remaining foe.
"Gunnery Officer!" He called out, voice hoarse from shouting orders and the muffled screams he had forced to remain in his throat as Talon had worked. "What's the status on our guns?"
"We've had worse, captain!" She cried out in response. "Three of our thirty-two pounders are buggered, and one of our puckle-guns. Our sixty-eight pounders are still intact, thank God!"
Lawrence gave her a cursory nod.
"I want all the remaining guns loaded and the engines to burn on full. The second you can get some good shots in with the sixty-eight pounders, do it. Sergeant Rickard!"
"Aye, Captain!"
"Get your men prepared in the event that we need to fight off a boarding action. If nothing else then we can buy the prince some time to-"
Whatever Lawrence was going to say next was cut off as half a dozen cannonballs sailed past the Sunbird's larboard side. Large cannonballs as well; it seemed that not only did the foe have their own large guns, they had hell of a lot more of them than the Sunbird did.
"Fuck! Talwynn, if they're in range with their guns then how the FUCK are we not in range yet?"
Lawrence was as angry as Archer had ever heard him, minus a complete cold fury. Not that the Assistant Engineer blamed him; the man was strung taut with stress and was trying to retain consciousness after having a chunk of his side blasted out, which probably wasn't conductive to a level head even for someone who appeared as stolid and stoic as Lawrence usually did.
"We've got carronades, they've got cannons!"
Archer broke in, confusion mixing with his high-running adrenaline to put him in a similar state of mind as his captain and friend. The fact that one of his closest friends of these last few months was half-dead on his shoulder probably wasn't helping.
"And what in the ever-loving fuck does that mean?"
Talwynn rolled her eyes, her normal hyperactive and bloodthirsty demeanour seeming right at home at the moment. She didn't seem to take offense to either his or Lawrence's crass words, instead spelling out exactly what he'd asked with the same patience one might give to a new hire on a job.
"What it means is that our guns have more force and pack more of a punch, but theirs have a longer range. Rule of thumb is that the effective range of a carronade is two-thirds of a cannon chambered to the same calibre. Give me another few hundred feet, and I'll have our pretty little guns firing back."
Lawrence turned to someone, Archer didn't see who since he was busy staring at the approaching enemy cruiser, and spoke in a clipped tone.
"Are those engines fired up to full burn yet?"
Whatever he heard back must have satisfied him, for he nodded with as close to a smile as he could manage on his pained face when he spoke.
"Very good. Talwynn, you will forgive me a moment's lost composure, I hope. Today is rather too stressful for me to handle, I'm afraid."
It was almost eerie, hearing someone sound so cold and composed as the world burned around them, but Lawrence had always valued what he thought he should act like be over his own thoughts. Well, mostly. God forbid this happening to Lawrence before the pass, before Talon. Ice-eyes would have bled out by now, what with the man's former compulsion to be more machine than human.
"Nah, you're all good Lawrence. If one of those bastards had got me I'd be pissed as well. Right now though we've got a shit ton of fire incoming and a set of engines burning behind us. I've also got permission to fire at will, thanks to yourself; I think that cancels out you raising your voice at me."
Archer spoke up, his throat suddenly very dry.
"I'm sorry as well. I didn't mean to snap."
Talwynn waved his apology away with a 'psh' noise.
"Don't sweat it. This is probably the first time you've stared death in the face in such a wide-reaching form; your adrenaline and emotions are gonna be pretty wild at the moment. As soon as this is over you're either going to sleep, drink, or fuck for the next eight hours. Depends on your coping mechanism. Whichever one you pick, you're probably going to be crying most of the time as well. It ain't pretty, but it's life."
Archer snorted at the matter-of-fact way she'd said that. He had little doubt that he'd be sleeping through the emotional shitstorm that awaited him as soon as the adrenaline left his system, but it was nice to know that the feeling was near-universal.
"SIXTY-EIGHT POUNDERS, PREPARE TO ENGAGE! PICK YOUR TARGETS! FORECASTLE AND CENTRE HULL RESPECTIVELY! TRY AND BLAST THE BASTARD OUT OF THE SKY ONCE AND FOR ALL! IT'S TIME THIS GHOST OF THE PASS WAS FINALLY LAID TO REST!"
Another cheer went up from the crew as Talwynn said that, but Archer felt Lawrence tense up. Judging by the ever-so-slight hitch in Talon's breath the other side of Lawrence, he'd probably tensed up as well. He'd known what Talwynn had meant, but... well, she'd meant well in her words. Given how focused she seemed on aligning the guns he doubted she'd even realised that their two friends were applying those words to themselves as a result.
Lawrence shuddered a little, though whether he was shaking himself out of whatever funk those words had sent him into or was genuinely feeling a chill Archer couldn't say. It wasn't exactly cold at the moment, but then Lawrence had lost a lot of blood. It made sense that he might be a little chilly, especially considering he was bare-chested at the moment.
Wait, Lawrence wasn't wearing anything above his waist. Archer had taken off the coat and Talon had cut the shirt.
"Talon, would you mind retrieving the captain's coat-jacket?"
The man's eyes went a little wide.
"Oh, heavens! Of course, I'll be back in less than a moment!"
Lawrence shook his head, chuckling weakly as Talon ran over to the stairs.
"You really don't need to, you know. I'll be fine."
Archer rolled his eyes.
"All due respect captain, you aren't the best judge on what constitutes 'fine'. Allow us to worry for you a little, please."
The man laughed a little, a rumbling thing that reminded Archer a little of his father. He quickly pushed that thought to the side. He needed to be focused at the moment; Lawrence had been shot and here he was making rose-tinted comparisons to his family. Honestly, there was a time and a place for such a thing.
"All right, if you insist. I've learned better than to argue with you and Talon at this point. One of you at a time I can take on, but both of you-"
"Forming a united front is too much for you to handle. Trust me, I fully intend to take advantage of that in the future, right Archer?"
Talon shot him a shaky smile as he shimmied the jacket across Lawrence's shoulder's, Archer swapping the arm he supported to let the prince get Lawrence's other arm into the sleeve.
"This is highly uncomfortable."
"Suck it up," came the voice of Corporal Owen from somewhere behind them, "I'd rather you were uncomfortable than have you dying of a chill in the midst of a battle."
Lawrence snorted again as Talon gave the corporal a smile and a thumbs up for his support in this matter, which the man returned with a cocksure grin.
"The boys are ready uncle. Captain, we're ready for whatever Greyfax throws at us! We'll fight like buggering devils as soon as a single man sets foot on our ship, on our prince's ship! Let them try what they will, we'll kill however many fucking boarding men they've got on board their pathetic excuse for a warship and show the bastards how we do things in Ewyng!"
Lawrence chuckled, the motion descending into a cough after a few seconds.
"Talwynn, status?"
"Any moment now... steady boys, steady... FIRE!"
The two sixty-eight pounders let loose once more, thunderclaps ringing across the valley. Archer stood there, when a thought came to him.
"Shouldn't the Gallic Navy realise something is happening here? Shouldn't our allies do something?"
Lawrence snorted.
"There isn't much of a Gallic Navy left anymore. They've got too much on their plate fighting the rebels on the ground to worry about the skies. Besides, if the Gauls got their hands on him they'd be more than likely to give my prince away to the rebels as a political prisoner, so they can get back a few of their own captured men. I don't trust a Gaul as far as I can throw him."
Talon stilled a little, the talk of him being traded away clearly making him more than a little anxious.
"If that will work, what if you traded me over now? Wouldn't that buy you clemency with Commodore Greyfax and get you out of here?"
Lawrence whipped around to face him, head wobbling a little as light-headedness visibly set in from the action. Archer just looked around Lawrence and at Cooke with a horrified expression. He was so baffled by the man's statement that he barely registered the words that were leaving his own mouth as he spoke.
"Why the fuck are you even considering that? I don't care if you think we'll all be granted passage or not after bloodying the Commodore's nose, but the fact remains that most of the crew would die before see you fall into the hands of the rebel scum. We aren't going to trade you away like some prized ox so that we can live out the rest of our lives knowing we sold our fucking prince."
Talon turned away, cheeks reddening from what seemed to be a mix of shame and flustering.
"Okay. Thank you, I think. Lawrence?"
There was a brief pause between Talon asking the captain his question and the man's response, but that was less due to him needing time to formulate his answer and more due to the roar of the sixty-eight pounders drowning out everything else in the world for a short moment. Lawrence moved to stand on his own, slipping his arm from around Archer's shoulders and moving a shaking hand to cup Talon's face.
"The fact you even need to ask that tells me I have failed in my aim to make sure you know how unconditional my admiration, my love, for you goes. As long as I live you will live and be happy, and hopefully long after I have passed from this world that happiness will continue to lift up the lives of so many. I will never, never, see you anywhere except where you want to be."
Talon was silent a long while, breaths hitching, and Lawrence moved his shaking hand from Talon's cheek to wipe away a tear. Talwynn broke in from the front of the ship, shouting back at their captain.
"Look, that's sweet and all and we've been waiting for something like that for literal years now, but unfortunately there's a time and a place for- bugger, get down!"
Almost without thinking Archer leapt to the deck, with Talon following whilst pulling down Lawrence. A series of cannonballs sailed overhead, one of them smashing into the captain's quarters. Archer spent half a second wondering if the ex-captain was still inside, before deciding that he'd just have to find out after. As he turned to his left from his prone position he saw the surprised expression on the face of Stefan, the first mate's body bisected at the torso by cannonfire earlier in the battle and face contorted into a twisted facsimile of surprise. Archer sighed sadly. He might not have liked the man much, but he'd been true to his word all this time. Even if he hadn't, no-one deserved this. He reached over and closed the dead man's eyes praying that he might at least find some peace in the heavens above. Rising to his feet, he turned to see Lawrence struggling to stand whilst waving away help. Ignoring the man's insistence that he could "Stand perfectly fine on his own two feet, thanks awfully." Archer hoisted him up by the shoulder once more.
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"Come on, it's not over yet. Talwynn, any hits so far?"
The woman looked over to him with an almost manic grin on her face.
"Come on Archer, who do you take me for? We slammed her forecastle right proper. Captain Lawrence, permission to maintain our position and not move to exchange broadsides? They're showing us their larboard side, meaning that they're presenting more of a target, but they can't bring all their larboard guns to bear effectively since we're too narrow a vessel for such a vast flank to target.
Lawrence nodded shakily.
"Yeah, granted. Keep aiming for her forecastle and centre. See if you can't get lucky and knock out a few of their own guns. So long as we keep ourselves narrow and distant they won't be able to bring their thirty-two pounders to bear, and seeing as they have a damn sight more than we do it's probably best to keep it that way."
Another round of shot from the largest carronades the Sunbird had to offer arced away into the night, though whether they were hitting or not Archer hadn't the foggiest idea.
"Gunnery Officer," Lawrence called out, "take my spyglass. You've got more use for it than me at the moment. Searchlights, keep that bastard in view!"
Talwynn smiled as the men at the searchlights voiced their understanding of their orders, and a midshipman scampered off to go and find the spyglass in the captain's quarters. Quite why Lawrence had insisted on keeping the captain's equipment in the captain's quarters Archer wasn't sure, especially since the man didn't live in the now-ruined captain's quarters, but it made it a damn sight quicker for the young midshipman to find the strange device than it would have if the poor kid had needed to run all the way to the engineer's quarters.
"Spyglass, Captain Lawrence sir!"
The captain nodded towards the Gunnery Officer, and the child scampered off to give the aforementioned looking device to the cackling woman.
"Whoo-hoo-hoo! Fuck, this is fun. Come on boys, lets give her another round! Send the bastards to the bottom!"
Again the sixty-eight pounder guns roared their song of destruction, and again it was answered by a hail of fire from the Wolfhound. True to Talwynn's word many of the foe's shots went wide, with the closest skimming the side of the Sunbird and utterly decimating a guardrail. Talwynn laughed maniacally again as Talon shrunk almost subconsciously behind Archer, as though the man could protect him from a sixty-eight pound cannonball being launched at speed from a hated foe. Talwynn leapt up on top of one of the thirty-two pounder carronades and began shouting out a challenge to the rebels whilst laughing madly.
"Hahaha! Come on you bastards! We're the fucking Sunbird, and we don't go down without a good fucking fight! So come on, you whores! Give us all you've got! Give us fucking everything! We're the Royal Albionic Navy, and we're here to protect our fucking prince! So you try and take us down! We won't be found wanting!"
Archer was dragged back to attention by the words of Lawrence, the man still hanging on his shoulder half-limp.
"Spotlights, I see movement! I want one of you to track the frigate that got away, make sure she isn't moving to come back around!"
Lawrence beckoned Talwynn over, temporarily asking for the spyglass back. He looked for a good long while at the little ship in the distance, grimacing as he passed his gaze over to the Wolfhound and then back again.
"My vision's a little blurry at the moment, but not bad enough to really hamper what I'm seeing. The Wolfhound is ordering her around to launch an attack run on us, but she's responding that such a course will only get her smashed to kindling. If I'm reading the semaphore correct then she wants to move out of the valley and gather reinforcements."
Lawrence handed the spyglass back to Talwynn, who nodded in response.
"They're out of range of our main batteries, Captain. We might be able to hit her with the sixty-eight pounders, but that'd mean fewer shots against the Wolfhound."
"It'll take time to find reinforcements, and in that time we'll have slipped away. Well, assuming we aren't boarded soon enough. Anyhow, she'd need to-"
Lawrence's words were cut off by a truly huge battery of fire, the man stumbling backwards and awkwardly raising a hand to cover his eyes as a hundred cannons roared to life all at once. It wasn't the sunbird that they'd targeted though; the little frigate that wanted to run was torn to pieces by the man who was supposed to be leading them to victory.
"What the hell is he doing?"
Archer's words were little more than an astonished whisper. Lawrence grimaced and grunted out his response.
"Making sure that only he can claim victory here. If they will not die for him, then they will die by him. He doesn't want them to leave, especially not when they can tell the rest of the remaining rebels on the continent that he sacrificed eight escort ships all to claim the right of being the man who captured or slew the prince. He wants the 'glory' and acclaim for himself."
Archer's lip twisted and curled into a snarl. He wasn't a fan of the rebels, but for someone to fire on their own outmatched allies out of spite was... it was evil. That was the only word he could think of for it. It was evil.
"Still, he's just revoked his own commission. There's no other ships under his command at the moment, so he's no longer a commodore. Just a captain."
"Talon, I understand the legal side of what you just said, but I don't think Greyfax will much care. Besides, it doesn't exactly change the number of guns on board the Wolfhound, does it?"
"No, but it does show us exactly the sort of man Greyfax is. I've changed my mind from earlier. I know you'd never sell me to save yourselves, but I'll be dead before I submit myself to someone like that. To kill his own men out of petty spite... God, what a vile man. And he wants to be the face of the rebels?"
Lawrence scoffed.
"Seems like a good frontman if you ask me. Power-hungry, ambitious, and vile. What more could a rebel ask for?"
A few nearby sailors and soldiers laughed at Lawrence's caustic remark, and Archer found himself smiling a little. That sounded about right for them.
"Talon, mind giving us a hand over here?"
The three of them turned to find that the wounded had been lined up neatly, led in the centre of the main deck. At the leftmost position of the line was Corporal Owen, who smiled and waved at them with blood trickling down from a nasty looking cut that ran down the length of his arm.
"I got lucky," the man chuckled, "two inches to the left and that shrapnel would have cleaved my arm in two from the hand to the shoulder. Any chance of getting stitched up so I can get back in and ready for the fight?"
Talon nodded, face set hard, whilst the rest of the line looked on with a mixture of pain and determination on their features. Some had lost fingers, hands, limbs, others had been impaled by splinters the size of a knife and jagged pieces of shrapnel, but nearly all of them wanted to get back up and help their comrades. Archer was right; seeing the prince patch up their captain who had since then returned to the fight had instilled a sense of pride in the men. They wanted to emulate their captain, they wanted to fight for their prince, and if that meant that they needed to hobble around on a stump to do so then they would bloody well do it.
They are some tough men, he thought to himself. They certainly seemed far tougher than Archer felt he was. He couldn't imagine getting a leg blown off and then chomping at the bit to make himself useful. Call him selfish, but he was of the opinion that he'd be out of commission for quite some time if that were the case. In the distance he watched as the Wolfhound slowly brought herself around, forsaking a long ranged duel so that she could close the distance between the two vessels and bring her full power to bear on the Sunbird.
"She's closing in on us, Lawrence!"
The captain snapped to attention at Archer's hurried words.
"Right. Helmsman, turn us about! Show her our starboard side, the guns are still intact there!"
Archer turned to face Lawrence, confused and concerned.
"But we've been enjoying the advantage of a narrow profile up until now! Why would we give that up?"
"Because the rebels are closing the distance anyway, and we need to hit them as hard as we can as fast as we can. We should be able to get off three volleys at close range before they're able to turn back about and fire on us again."
"But what about the forwards-facing guns, like the ones we have! Surely they'll be firing upon us the whole way?"
Lawrence smirked at him, a twinkle of mischief in his eyes.
"The Wolfhound has no guns facing forwards, Assistant Engineer. We've got free reign so long as we keep her front to our side." The wounded captain turned to face the crew. "Now load up the guns and make ready! We're not out of the storm yet!"
"You heard him! I want every unwounded gunner on the larboard side or else on the sixty-eight pounders! The Wolfhound might have many more times the guns we do, but she'll be helpless to any volleys while she's showing us her front!"
"On it, boss!" Came the cry from one of her subordinates, a man he vaguely recognised from when they'd battled the destroyer on the way to Occsa. Chris, or Crail, or something like that.
As the rebel cruiser approached the Sunbird unleashed a withering volley of fire, Talwynn directing the guns personally and helping to load the shot so that they might get off another volley or two before the Wolfhound got too close and sent in their boarders to claim the Sunbird for their own. That had to be why they hadn't swung back around to give them a full broadside; they didn't want to risk blowing their 'prize' out of the sky. Archer spat to the side. As if he'd let them take Cooke without killing every man of the crew first.
"Volley fire, on my mark! Mark!"
"Sync!"
"Fire!"
Again the Sunbird's starboard battery tore into the unprotected fore of the Wolfhound, sending splinters flying everywhere as the oak wood gave way under the force of carronade fire. Soon afterwards boarding ropes and tethers were thrown down to the Sunbird's deck, quickly being pulled taut as the hooks caught on carronades and guardrails.
"Two volleys," Lawrence whispered, "only two. I'd hoped for at least three."
Archer grimaced.
"Not much we can do about that now. Besides, she's-"
"Incoming boarders!"
The panicked voice of a deckhand broke Archer's trail of thought as dozens of scarred and armed rebels descended onto the Sunbird from the tethers that now acted as bridges between the two vessels. Lawrence's voice called out as he looked around almost frantically for the marines.
"Shit, Sergeant!"
"Already on it, Captain!" Came the man's response. "Nephew, get up! We've rebels to kill!"
The younger of the two marines nodded his response.
"And a prince to protect, make no mistake. Come on boys, let's show 'em how we like to play!"
The rebels leapt down from the makeshift rope bridges, three or four of every dozen being felled by fire as they attempted the journey, but most making it on deck. The two Owens and their marines gave a bloody good show, striking down the foe with rifle buts and bayonets, and felling many more with precise and rapid rifle-fire.
"God, am I glad for them right about now."
Archer nodded at his friend's words. Lawrence's free arm was reaching down to the pistol in his belt, shakily gripping it in case he needed it to protect himself from the combat happening not twenty paces from where they were stood. Marines were falling in the melee, but for every one who went down half a dozen of their assailants fell with them. Archer watched as Corporal Owen wrestled a rifle from the hands of one rebel and then used it as a club to bat the man over the side of the Sunbird's guardrails down to the valley floor below. Lawrence leaned heavily on Archer, raised the pistol at his side, and struck a man square in the chest as he made to slip past the melee. He threw the now empty pistol into the hands of a nearby midshipman and ordered him to reload it, since he only had the one hand free at the moment.
"Corporal, you've reopened your stitches!"
The man looked down at his arm, then sheepishly back at Talon.
"So I have, doc. Sorry about that; I'll be more careful moving forwards."
Talon rolled his eyes at the man's banter as Lawrence spoke.
"Talwynn, any chance of firing the guns again?"
"Lawrence you mad bastard, they're swarming with boarders!"
"Can you do it?"
Talwynn scoffed with a laugh as she waltzed towards the melee.
"'Can I do it?' Course I fucking can. Here, watch this!"
At a signal from her hand the starboard guns fired again, the men under her command trying their damnedest to follow orders even as the rebels clambered aboard around them.
"There you go Captain, one volley served point-blank, as ordered. Crail! Get up from there you daft bastard!"
Archer followed her vision to the man struggling on the floor as one of the boarders pushed down on a knife. Talwynn kicked the rebel hard in the side and pulled her subordinate to his feet, nonchalantly blowing the rebel's neck open with a pistol.
"Stop messing around, Crail. I want you up on that sixty-eight pounder. We should be able to get a good angle on the Wolfhound's starboard propeller at the moment. I need you to make the shot."
The man, still shaken by his brawl with the rebel, nodded and dutifully made to clamber his way towards the large guns. Setting himself up at one of them he was almost immediately shot in the shoulder by a rifle, but was still able to aim and fire the gun as ordered. Talwynn swore a little under her breath as he recoiled from the blow, but as the boom of the carronade rang out across the battlefield Archer realised that the man had been dead-on. The huge propellor that Talwynn had pointed out at the rear of the Wolfhound had been almost completely ripped off of of it's fastenings, hanging limply with most of its blades missing.
"Engines, full burn!" Screamed Lawrence. "Rickard, get those bloody ropes cut! Every man who can hold a gun or a blade, kill the bastards on board! We can get our prince out of here!"
Without hesitation Archer picked up a pistol of his own. He didn't want to use it in anger, nor did he expect himself to be any good, but if anyone came near his Captain he'd fucking kill them.
Almost immediately Archer felt the Sunbird roar back to life, slowly pulling away from the much larger vessel as the lines were cut. There were still one or two dozen rebels aboard, but they were now home free. The Wolfhound couldn't follow them, not with only one propellor, and the Sunbird was naturally a lot faster than she was anyways. They were free. Oh sure, there'd be a lot of very urgent maintenance work that he'd need to undertake over the next few days whilst the ship was still flying, but he could deal with that. The battle was finished, and Archer was resolute in the knowledge that despite being outnumbered, outgunned, and outmatched, the crew of the Sunbird had fought like lions.
Behind them the Wolfhound was raging at their escape. She was firing wildly into the night, doing her best to steam after them as she slowly descended. It was as though she were a hurt living creature, a wild animal lashing out in the last moments of her life. Archer turned away before she made to land at the bottom of the valley. It was a controlled descent rather than a full-scale disaster, but there was little chance of Greyfax giving them chase anytime soon, even if his crew didn't mutiny and depose him for the disaster this had been for him.
Archer smirked. Oh, what a shame that would be.