Francis Lebaron - Mercadian Masques

"And she's more maneuverable," Sisay explained. "Everybody, hang on until we've got the feel of the ship."

"Hang on, strap in, and draw a bead on that rockslide," Gerrard ordered.

"Right, Commander," came Fewsteem's and Dabis's unison reply in the tubes.

"Take us in steady, Captain, a hundred yards from the cave-in," Gerrard said. "Karn, shunt all auxiliary power to the forward guns."

Though there came no response from the engine room, sudden heat filled the footwells. Fire crawled within the manifold conduits.

Weatherlight lifted smoothly above a ruined goblin skiff and then coursed down a corridor among smoldering hulks. She slid easily into place before the landslide and shivered to a gentle halt.

"Train guns. Prepare fire."

The guns locked in on two axes. Lenses shifted within targeting sights, bringing the rubble wall into precise focus. Within the barrels, mirror arrays aligned for optimal-range targeting. Weatherlight held so steady, the crosshairs did not shift a single stone. One by one, indicators flashed, showing synchronous alignment among two… three… four guns. Manifolds blazed underfoot.

"Fire!"

Four crimson beams awoke within four barrels. They stabbed out and struck rubble. Stone melted to magma, sand to boiling glass. Liquid rock gushed downward. A hole opened in the side of the rockslide. Its edges were fused together by stellar heat.

"Cut deeper!" Gerrard ordered.

Beams shifted, stabbing farther into the mound. More rock melted and poured away. Stone seemed wax before the beaming eyes of Weatherlight. A red river flowed down from the base of the glowing corridor. Steam and smoke rolled up along the ceiling of the cavern. The red walls of the cave dripped killing drops of lava.

"Wait till the walls cool before edging in there," Gerrard shouted above the keen of the guns.

Again, range finders shifted the guns. The final stones melted away. A wave of blue smoke from the main cavern rolled inward, hissing as it passed through the glowing cave.

"Cease fire!" Gerrard ordered.

The four guns sputtered a moment and went dark, streaming their own acrid smoke. The crew gave a cheer.

The passage was wide enough to allow Weatherlight through, and the ceiling was cool enough not to drip molten rock on the deck. Through the thick haze of the passage, ship fires were visible in the cavern beyond. Fissures in the ceiling of the main hangar streamed rainwater.

"Take us through, Sisay," Gerrard called. The ship's captain could steer through the tightest spaces. Gerrard smiled ruefully, remembering how at the start of this ordeal, he had steered into the only tree on the horizon. "Once we enter the main cavern, lay in a spiral strafing run around the chamber. Let's finish off this fleet and get a little gunnery practice."

As Weatherlight edged into the hot corridor, another cheer went up, echoing from glassy walls.

Volrath heard that sound. Where he lay, his torso cloven from collarbone to right nipple, he heard. It was a taunting, exultant sound. It meant Gerrard had broken out of the hangar. It also meant that Volrath could safely move.

His rent flesh slowly knitted itself back together.

In truth, Gerrard had not wounded Volrath as horribly as he had seemed to. It was a maiming strike, yes, but not a killing one. Desperate for time to heal that wound, Volrath had used his shape-changing ability to accentuate its appearance. That same ability allowed Volrath rapidly to heal wounds that would kill other men. This laceration would take him an agonizing hour to heal, but at least it wouldn't prove fatal. Volrath had been incapacitated by this cut, and the next stroke would have killed him certainly… except that Gerrard had not delivered a next stroke.

Even now, as Volrath realigned ribs and muscles, Gerrard's scorn echoed in his mind. Hiding in someone else's skin… afraid to face me… coward…

Volrath struggled to sit up. He couldn't yet. It was just as well. His blood was still crawling back into his veins. Soon he would be able to sit, to walk, to reach his own ship. Gerrard might destroy most of the fleet, but he wouldn't find Volrath's battleship Recreant. Volrath would scrape together a crew and reach his ship and fight again.

It was not cowardly to shrink from a battle that could not be won in order to wait for one that could. That was the better part of valor… valor!

Cowardice? No-valor!

Even in his own mind, the words rang false.

Gerrard had killed him. Gerrard had stolen everything from Volrath. It was only because of cowardice that Volrath had survived. Gerrard had killed him once again.

Gerrard!

Hatred gave Volrath a spine. He formed himself up around it. He needn't worry about cowardice and valor, only about hatred. Hatred would raise him again, and hatred would make Gerrard fall.

All morning, the storm poured its dark and vengeful heart on the city. Rain fell in sheets and aerial rivers. It pounded paving stones loose and ripped mortar from walls. It saturated thatch and shoved the cold, wet stuff down into rooms below. It washed away whatever old encrustations once held stone to stone. In the grip of its fury, Mercadia came to pieces.

The revolution below performed a similar function. Tides of Ramosans flooded the streets, dragging down Mercadian guards. Merfolk tangled pearly tridents with metal ones. Rishadans sent whaling harpoons into the shoulders of raving giants. A deluge of farmers aback Jhovalls poured across markets, downing cateran enforcers and carrying off the extortion boxes they guarded. Slaves spilled from their pits and sent slavers cascading down into them. Every dry and ancient institution of Mercadian oppression washed away. The masses, who had been mortared together into vast structures that served the state, tumbled apart. No person was preeminent. All were made equal. The society of oppression was razed.

By late morning, though, the storm above and the revolution below had spent their fury. Curtains of rain thinned to misty veils. Swords ceased their slashing. Bodies ceased their bleeding. Dead Kyren littered the ground and live ones went to ground. Dead giants formed disheveled lines, laid out by kindred who had joined the revolution.

Was this justice, though? In the waning moments of the battle, it seemed the revolutionaries had only reversed the hierarchy of oppression, exalting the lowly and humbling the exalted. Such impulses initially feel like justice, but they are only vengeance. Over time, vengeance hardens into vendetta, and vendetta into tyranny.

It was a dangerous moment for the revolution. Everyone sensed it. The old vicious monster was dead, slain by a new monster who could prove twice as bad.

Heroes rose to cage the beast. Atalla rode his bounding Jhovall to the rubbish wall to stop a mass execution of Mercadian guards. Lahaime marched his rebels to the upper market to quell rampant looting. Cho-Manno sent his water wizards to save merfolk from fires that ate away block after block. Orim tended citizens beaten by their own families and friends and neighbors, who sought to settle old scores by turning revolution to riot.

In destroying their ancient oppressors, the oppressed people had ceased to be. They lost their single defining characteristic and turned upon each other. So vicious and voracious was this new monster that it ate itself away from the inside out.

Hatred is no fit spine for heroes or nations.

"Cho-Manno! We have to do something!" Orim shouted desperately where she knelt beside a dying man. The whitehaired fellow had been stabbed by his own grandson, the one he had willed everything to. Orim had done her best to cleanse and close the wound, but the old man's guts had been multiply severed. Death by sepsis was inevitable. "The people are killing each other! You must speak to them!"