His injuries weren't too bad, luckily. Lawrence and Archer had taken their shirts off for Talon to be able to look them over properly, and luckily the worst that Archer seemed to have come out of it with was some bruising around his ribs and a dull throbbing pain in his chest. Some ointment had been prepared for him and applied, and he'd not even had anything that needed bandaging. The blow he'd taken when he'd initially grabbed for the cord and struck the railing must have hit him harder than he'd thought, though thankfully nothing seemed to be fractured or broken, just tender. His shirt had been left off so as to let the ointment act without the fabric rubbing it off or impeding it at all, and while he normally would have been red in the face at sitting shirtless in public, and if he was honest he was a little embarrassed, he'd been through so much today that he didn't really give a shit whether or not his cheeks were red to be perfectly honest.
Cooke's injuries had been next, the cuts to his hand extensive and raw but luckily not too deep. Water had been brought to boil, the wounds cleaned out and bandages applied. If the man had been stifling tears at the stinging sensation as his sore hands were disinfected, well, no-one apart from the three of them ever had to know about it.
"Alright then, I'm alright. Thank you. Your turn now, Lawrie."
Cooke turned to the last one of the three of them, Lawrence, and made to start looking him over for injuries. Though he kept his thoughts to himself, given everyone's assumption that the two of them must at the very least have some level of interest in the other Archer had really expected either Lawrence or Cooke to act awkwardly, or at least blush a little, but it seemed both of them were perfectly comfortable with this sort of thing. Maybe this was not the first time that one of them had patched each other up?
"What have I told you about that nickname?"
Lawrence's words may have been disparaging, but there was no bite to them. Even if Archer hadn't been sure, the smile on his mentor's face and the kind eyes he was directing towards Talon meant that there was little worry of offence.
"Respectfully, Lawrie, I think Archer's earned the right to hear me call you that. Besides, you don't really mind it anyways."
Lawrence chuckled.
"Sometimes I wonder when you got that observant."
Cooke smiled back as he cut off another length of bandage.
"You taught me after the Pass, silly. I was all but useless at reading people back then."
Lawrence hissed as Cooke turned the mans hands between his own.
"Sorry, sorry. They're pretty badly cut. Were you not wearing your gloves for the job?"
Lawrence shook his head, looking almost guilty.
"No, I... don't like how they feel on my hands. They make me feel... I don't know, scratchy, I guess. Like dress uniforms, or bright lights."
Archer didn't know what the man was on about, but Talon seemed to understand something that he didn't.
"Alright. I understand, promise. Here, let's get them cleaned up."
If Talon's hands had seemed bad, then Lawrence's were something else entirely. Not only had Lawrence also gripped the cord with his bare hands, just as Talon had, but he'd also scrambled to try and pull himself up initially, and then desperately clawed his way up onto the walkway afterwards. His hands were a bloodied mess, and Archer felt a little guilty that he was glad it hadn't happened to him.
"Does it hurt?"
Lawrence hesitated for a moment, then shook his head.
"I don't know."
"You don't know?"
Lawrence shook his head at Archer, wincing a little.
"It feels like it should, and I'm flinching as though it does, but I feel like one giant bruise, so I suppose I'm just not noticing it."
Archer nodded. That made a little more sense to him than the initial response of "I don't know", so he just took what he could get.
"Lawrie? Could you turn around and show us your back?"
Lawrence nodded, swivelling himself so that his back was to Cooke and Archer. Cooke let out a little gasp and Archer winced when he saw the state that Lawrence's back was in. The man can't have been kidding, he thought to himself, it really does look like one bloody bruise.
Lawrence's entire back, from his coccyx to his navel and all the way up to his shoulder blades, was a patchwork of purple, blue, and black. That fall must really have taken it out of him.
"Well, thank God Archer saved you when he did."
Lawrence nodded, though added his own comment onto the end.
"You saved me as well, Cooke. Whilst I must thank Archer immensely for saving my life, you should not downplay your own part in this. You, and Archer will agree with me on this, were just as important in saving my life."
Talon turned to Archer, who nodded once with as much unspoken finality as he could muster in the expression. Cooke turned away, voice thick with emotion.
"Okay."
When they lulled in their conversation, Archer broke in with his own appreciations.
"I also wish to thank you both."
"Archer?"
The man carried on, undaunted.
"You have thanked me for saving you, but I wish to thank the both of you for becoming such cornerstones of this new life I've found for myself. If you'd have told me four months ago that the dream I'd been nurturing for nearly a decade would fall into place so wonderfully, despite all the hardships, I wouldn't have believed you. But it has. This life aboard the Sunbird, it's finally allowed me to embrace the wanderlust I've felt since I was a child, cooped up in a manor house classroom. So thank you. Both of you."
Cooke's eyes were watering, sap that he was, and Lawrence just smiled at him.
"It's no bother. It's been nice to have some company."
Cooke eyed Lawrence with a pout.
"What he's trying to say is," Cooke reprimanded, "that we're thankful you're here with us as well. Whether you'd saved one of us or both of us or neither of us, we'd say the same thing. We're glad your here."
Archer's chest felt flooded with warmth, a far nicer sensation than that of the bruising, and he allowed himself to relax. Every night for nearly ten years he'd dreamed of flying, and now he was here with a circle of friends that had somehow managed to worm their ways into his life in such a short number of weeks. They were alive, and he was happy.
----------------------------------------
"Lord... you really-"
"Yes."
"And it was only thanks to these two that-"
"Indeed."
Corporal Owen looked away a little shaking his head.
"God almighty. That explains the bandaging. I can't believe we came that close to losing you."
Lawrence gave a dry chuckle at that.
"I can hardly believe it either. Three days have passed, and yet I still dream of falling. I think I will for some time now. It's a bloody miracle our captain has elected to trawl slower and pay closer attention to what directions he calls since then."
The corporal grimaced.
"You call it a miracle, I call it the least he could do. He's been a fool before, but this..."
There was silence for a few seconds at the table. Talwynn broke it, shaking her head whilst speaking softly.
"God, what a mess."
Archer grimaced a little himself, doing his best to ignore the conversation and concentrate on his cards. These last few days had seen the once jovial meetings of the officers turn into quiet and subdued affairs. They still provided ample opportunity to unwind after a long day, but there was an elephant in the room that none of them were mentioning. It wasn't the events of three days ago, that had been discussed to death at this point in his opinion, but the notion of Captain Crowle remaining in his position. Despite the fact that no, there hadn't been another dangerous incident since then, Archer had since learned that Lawrence, Cooke and himself were not the only three who had sustained injuries on that day; a dozen men had sustained injuries as a result of the initial crash, and two crew members had gone missing, presumed dead having fallen overboard. Nor was Archer under the illusion that this was the first such incident in the captaincy of Crowle. A good man his father may have been, according to those that remembered him anyways, but Crowle was not his father. His insistence that they all continue through the Mortuary rather than turn about and head for safer passages had begun whittle away at his prior popularity, and the heat and humidity of the Thornbush Mortuary was beginning to get to those all aboard the Sunbird. They were humid, tense, and waiting. Now Archer wasn't exactly sure what it was they were waiting for, but he could feel it all the same; the sense of alertness written across everyone's features, the increasingly tired countenances of his peers after nights of little sleep, the worried eyes glancing over every time a door opened a little too forcefully. Everything pointed towards the fact that they were all waiting for something to happen, even if they weren't quite sure what. Eventually he felt he had to say something about it, if only to try and pass some of the anxiety-inducing thoughts out of his mind.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
"It's getting tenser. People are beginning to eye each other up before getting too close."
His voice was quiet, not quite a whisper but all the same ensuring that there would be no-one listening in. Talwynn nodded at no-one in particular, adding on to what he'd said with a grimaced smile.
"I noticed. Twice today I've had to split apart my assistants to stop them from fighting each other. Control is beginning to slip, I think."
Corporal Owen tacked his own observations on to the end.
"Myself and my uncle have been all but entirely focused on making sure the marines keep discipline internally, to stop them from getting involved with the fracturing of the crew. So far it's been fine, but if things continue as they are then it's only a matter of time before someone tries to steal a rifle for themself. At that point there'll be bloodshed, with little we can do to stop it."
Lawrence, ever sat to Archer's right, closed his eyes and sighed. Archer looked away so as not to catch a glimpse of the cards the man held in his hand. Hey, they may have been having a serious discussion but he wasn't going to take advantage of it and cheat by observing the man's hand! That would be most ungentlemanly and not at all good sportsmanship.
"Control is slipping, yes. We've got another three weeks of megaflora to get through before we reach clear skies again, and if this is the mood of the crew after half a week I don't think we'll get through without violence on board the old bird."
The table returned to silence for half a minute after that. Archer knew that they were all thinking the same thing, he was thinking it as well, but no-one wanted to be the first ones to speak the words aloud. Mutiny was in the air.
"I ran checks on storerooms C to H yesterday. We're beginning to run low on almost every technical part and spare we might conceivably need, leaving us with only the more mundane supplies. Canvas, thread, screws, nails, bolts. These we have in abundance, but everything else is beginning to run dry. I haven't heard any word on the fuel and oil report I asked for, so I can only assume it hasn't been carried out, and as a result I don't even know how much further the Sunbird can go before relying entirely on the winds to guide her. If we get caught like that in the Mortuary, well..."
The man breathed out and opened his eyes again.
"I think I've said enough. None of you need any help imagining what will happen if that comes to pass."
"Enough of that. No more talk of these things for the rest of the night. Someone grab us a bottle of gin and a set of glasses, and lets just play this damned game before we say or do something we might regret."
Archer snorted at Talwynn's lack of filter, finding himself agreeing with her words.
"Agreed. I could do with a drink right about now. Lawrence, Rickard, Rickard? How about you three?"
The men all grunted their affirmations, so Archer waved over one of the serving-boys in the mess.
"Gin and glasses, please."
"Tonic as well, so please you."
Archer held back a laugh as Lawrence added that on. It was no secret that he wasn't that good at holding his drink, so a mixer for him was a smart enough idea. Not that Archer would be touching it; he'd tried tonic water before, and he'd hated the stuff. He had no intention of spoiling a perfectly good glass of gin with that filth.
Well, maybe perfectly good was an exaggeration. The gin wasn't good, but it was passable. It made sense, he supposed. There was no sense wasting money on the high-quality stuff when it would all be drunk by a bunch of already tipsy officers who wouldn't be able to tell beer from water at this point.
"Certainly, sir!"
Sergeant Owen let out a guffaw as the kid scampered away to the kitchens, consistently amused by the apparent inability of Lawrence to get anyone to stop calling him 'sir'. Lawrence, for his part, just rolled his eyes and huffed, saying nothing.
"Come on then, hands down whilst we wait. Lawrence?"
"No, I'm folding."
Corporal Owen smiled.
"Poor hand, eh?"
Lawrence locked eyes with the man.
"Something like that. I'm just aware of the cards we've already gone through so far, and as a result I know it is highly likely I have one of the worst hands out of all of us."
Talwynn groaned and put her head in her hands.
"You know, this game is a lot less fun when I remember you can somehow keep track of every card played."
Lawrence shrugged at her.
"It's hardly my fault that I have an eye for details, Ms Trenholm. Perhaps if you spent a little less time watching the pretty explosions and more time watching people, you might fare a little better in our matches."
"Fuck you, I'll watch all the pretty explosions I want!"
Her words, though an insult, held no bite to them. Well, he corrected himself, no more bite than was usual for her.
A round of smiles graced the faces of those sat at the table thanks to her comment, and Archer was glad to have even this short respite from the intensities of the world. It was a nice break from the games of the last few days, dominated by knowing stares and silent conversations. Conversations that had never needed a single word to articulate treason, no matter how early it may have seemed. The mood of the crew had not yet soured enough to ensure their support, and similarly the popularity of the captain had not ebbed as low as they might have liked, and so the five officers sat at the table said nothing and admitted nothing about any sort of mutinous thoughts. Still, they were beginning to boil over, and once it did it would be all they could do to try and come out on top by the end.
"Mr Haywood? Mr Haywood, hello?"
"Hmm? Sorry, Mr Walker, I was lost in thought a moment. Would you remind repeating yourself?"
The man nodded.
"Your hand, Mr Haywood. Will you raise or fold?"
He weighed his options for a moment before shaking his head.
"I'll fold. I can't see this hand coming out on top."
"Well, then that just leaves Mr Rickard and Mr Rickard in the running. Sergeant, if you'd be so kind?"
"Certainly. Four of a kind, sixes."
Archer let out a long whistle at that, genuinely impressed. That explained where the other two sixes had gone. Corporal Owen turned to the side and swore.
"Bugger."
"Language, nephew. Your hand?"
"Two pairs, sixes and kings."
The sergeant smiled and took the proffered chips from his nephew.
"Well, that's better than you usually manage. Still, you should know better than to bet against me. My brother was much the same; in the decade he served alongside me I don't think your father managed to beat me more than a dozen times."
The younger of the two men laughed at his uncle's words.
"Yeah, that sounds about right for him. He still tells me to tell you that he used to beat you every night, since it'll rile you up."
There was another round of light laughter as the serving boy returned with the drinks and glasses, pouring out each of the drinks in this round with what seemed like practiced ease. Gradually drinks loosened tongues, and the banter flowed freely once more. If he closed his eyes and just listened, it was as though nothing had happened this last week, and they were all happily discussing the minutiae of the day. Alas, he knew such a respite could only be temporary.
----------------------------------------
He'd been right. By the end of that week even Lawrence couldn't tell the loyalty of most of the crewmen, so fractured had their loyalties become. Archer wouldn't have been surprised if half the crew jumped ship when they reached Three-Streams. They'd just passed through a strangely barren stretch of land in the centre of the Mortuary, a place called the Dry Meadow. An original name, he'd thought to himself as he'd looked out over the miles of cracked earth, but it had been pretty telling that no-one had decided this clearing was in need of a more interesting name than the one it held; the Dry Meadow was certainly everything it had claimed to be. Dry, arid, barren and empty. It seemed almost the opposite of the Thornbush Mortuary it was contained within, save perhaps the sweltering heat, which oppressed him at all hours of the day. The crew certainly seemed to have noticed it as well; with the heat of the Dry Meadow starting to hit most peoples moods were beginning to flare, and every cutthroat that formed the Sunbird's crew seemed to be eyeing up particularly hated comrades and rivals, white knuckles gripping the pommels of belt-knives as they walked past their peers. The entire ship was a tinderbox, and not just because of the heat.
Crowle, as seemed to be par for the course these last few days, saw nothing wrong with what was happening. As ever the man had turned to Lawrence and the rest of his officers for advice, and as ever he continued to ignore whatever they had to say. Something surely has to give soon, Archer thought. In what seemed to be the most tumultuous time in his career to date, he had wisely elected to pretty much constantly stay by the side of Lawrence, trusting the advice the man had given him:
"Keep your head down and stick with me. Only the newer hands 'll try anything with the head engineer, the rest know I'm too valuable to hurt. Stick around me and you'll be fine. Head to the kitchens if you can't find me and things get tense."
It was good advice; Cooke would always look after him if needs be and Lawrence was unavailable. A part of Archer was indignant at the idea that he, a grown man, would need looking after, but he'd seen how much larger, how much tenser, a great many of the crew had seemed. The officers had been right last week; the men had known what this part of the journey had entailed, and they were all tired, tense, and potentially worst of all, beginning to gather in small groups by themselves.
Now, that by itself didn't seem too bad, but the officers had seen it all before. Yes, of course the men were allowed to gather in whatever groups they wished, but now they only met in those select groups, coalescing along almost tribal boundaries. The ship was rapidly turning into a tinderbox of unofficial gangs and mobs, each of which in an uneasy state of coexistence with the others. Unless something was done soon, someone was going to take a threat too far and kill someone, then there would be all-out chaos as revenge killings and gang brawls would break out. Sergeant Rickard, and his nephew, had promised the rest of them that the marines were being kept out of it, and that they were prepared, but the marines were growing tense as well. Michael had confided in him that they'd been stockpiling rations and munitions in their barracks, and that they'd practiced barricading the door half a dozen times each day these last three days. It was all well and good for the marines, but Archer had an lockless door that slid open; if ever chaos did break out and someone decided to come for him, he was as good as dead.
That was why Lawrence had told him to stick with them. But today Lawrence had been called into the captain's quarters along with Talwynn and the weaselly-faced man that Archer didn't think he'd seen once since his first day aboard, thank God, and so Archer had been planning to while away the hours with Cooke in the mess. However, as luck would have it, fate had different ideas, as it ever did. After perhaps two hours a pair of deckhands had come running into the room looking panicked about what they swore to be 'a buggered propellor' and asking for the engineer, only to be told that Lawrence was meeting with the captain and not to be disturbed under any circumstances. Plucking up his courage, Archer had announced his presence as the assistant to the engineer, and told them he could look at it and see if he could do anything, or if it really did need Lawrence's attention immediately. Lawrence would understand if Archer needed to pull him away from a meeting, after all.
Cooke hadn't been exactly ecstatic with this decision, especially since Lawrence had told Archer to stick with him when the engineer couldn't be around, but there really wasn't anything else for it. The two deckhands seemed pleased that someone was going to check it out, and so he went down to check over the rear-starboard turbine whilst Lawrence finished up whatever meeting he'd been having with the captain. Archer didn't envy the man, not after knowing what he now did, but if anyone could deal with so self-centred a man, it would be Lawrence. Having Talwynn by his side was just useful backup to deal with the weasel of a man who would no doubt be sneering down at the both of them from behind the captain. Archer wasn't sure what the captain had wanted to call Lawrence in for, and if he was perfectly honest with himself then he was more than a little worried that the captain might try something stupid, but he'd seen how strong Lawrence could be, so that worry had been quashed down and pushed from his mind until he was sure it was all but gone. He swore he wouldn't allow himself to dwell on that 'what-if', trying his best to heed the advice given to him by both Lawrence and Talon. If the two of them thought it was for the best, well, who was Archer to argue with that? Besides, he had a job to do.
And so he had walked to the turbine, content in his ability to do his job and ask for help when he was out of his depth. It should have been routine; he would look over the turbine, note down everything that seemed irregular, or at risk of becoming irregular, consult what he knew to see if he could fix it, and if possible, do so. So, that was what he had done. Well, that's what he would have done, but he was in a little spot of bother at the moment. It had taken him longer than he would like to admit for the realisation to sink in, but eventually it had. He was now by himself with two deckhands on an empty section of the ship.
And there was a knife being held to his back.