3.12 How They Handled the Aftermath
The closer their troop got to the hospital at the epicenter of the explosion, the harder it was to breathe. So much soot and ash and smoke in the air, and the smell of things burning that weren't meant to burn. Wailing rose and fell, punctuated by shouts and cries of varying emotion – anger, rage, loss, pain, fear – and every nerve in Freya's body sparked painfully at every sound, every step.
Shock, and blood, and grief. Every face that looked into her own was grimy and tear-streaked, eyes reddened and watering from fumes and airborne particles, even the faces of hardened veterans.
Freya usually hated feeling small and vulnerable. That day, though, she was glad more than once that no one looked to her for answers, or decisions.
Janada had emergency response personnel, vehicles and equipment. Blocky white trucks and people muffled in dark gray protective uniforms with neon yellow strips for visibility. Fire and rescue – she gathered they'd have jurisdiction.
Since the hospital administration had been shattered along with their building.
Since their captain had been inside the hospital when it blew.
Since it was their squad and a handful of others who survived to take orders from Janada Fire and Rescue. Put out the exterior fires, which included the canvas of their tents and troop transports. Sweep up the glass that littered the ground where they wanted to stage triage for survivors.
Other volunteers arrived with amateur first aid and colorful blankets and cannisters of tea, jugs of water and replacement tents and cots, extension cords for medical equipment and lighting.
Even with the water flung arcing over the crumpled roofs, into jaggedly-smashed windows, the massive billowing plumes of smoke rose high and wide, lingering toward the northeast as the prevailing air currents came westerly from the sea. The sun was obscured, but as time passed, Freya was aware more than once of the glow of emergency lights reflecting from billowing smoke-clouds overhead.
"Douglas," someone said through the ringing in her ears, and Freya turned from measuring rations of water from a twenty-liter jug to see Charlie, voice hoarsely unrecognizable.
Charlie swiped moisture from a grimy cheek to a grimy sleeve, rifle slung negligently over her back as all theirs were, mostly out of the way as they fought a different sort of battle.
"Second says we gotta stand down for a few hours. Looks like this could take a few days to finish up… and with the captain gone, we can't be sure what…" Charlie grimaced, teeth white against smudged lips and face; they'd found the captain's mangled body just paces inside what used to be the front door. "We're taking our cue from local authorities. Waiting to see what might come down the line, if and when we can raise George on a comm-block. But for now, we gotta eat. And rest. Before Janada F-and-R will put us back in the rotation."
One of the local volunteers, a short middle-aged man with a sparse beard and sunken eyes beneath the low edge of a stained sareq, nudged her wordlessly out of the way, taking over her water-rationing duty, since she was standing motionless.
Freya shuffled aside, noticing that her fingers and hands were trembling without the balanced weight of the great water jug. "What – where…"
"We're assembled just inside the gate, along the north wall," Charlie told her. "Second wanted to see you for a minute, though… and I still gotta find JT."
"Try behind the last truck," Freya advised tiredly. That was the last place she remembered seeing him, maybe checking to see if that vehicle, furthest from the blast, was repairable.
"Yeah – thanks." Charlie put her head down and trudged that direction.
Freya had only taken two steps from the water-tent when something deep within the building ruptured with a concussion like distant thunder, or heavy ordnance deployed a couple of kilometers away. Only a couple of newcomers startled; the rest of them were used to such secondary demolition. Could have been a generator. Could have been a row of paint cans or cleaner in the basement somewhere and the fires just reached it. Could have been another section of the building collapsing under the shifted weight of rubble.
The last dozen paces to the north wall just inside the gate seemed impossible. Flickers of memory compared to the longest, harshest, heaviest forced-march of training, uphill under a summer noon… Even though it was probably past midnight, and the darkness bent low behind the electric work-lights, few in number and strategically-placed for continuing rescue and medical work.
The row of uniformed soldiers, containing more than one sporting the smudged white of bandaging, were indistinguishable one from the next, and Freya chose the first gap for proximity, not select companionship. But collapsing fully was still a fervent unsatisfied wish when Gwaine hailed her, trotting up before she'd even finished turning toward his voice. How did he have the energy to move any faster than plodding?
"All right?" he said tersely, glancing her over to answer his own question. "Have a favor to ask you."
She was too tired even to groan.
Not noticing her reaction, he added, "Merlin."
What?
"Had to order him twice, and threaten to have him put in custody, to get him to quit," Gwaine told her, distractedly surveying the rest of the soldiers sprawled to gnaw rations or close their eyes in exhausted rest. "He knows he's our best bet, finding survivors in all this mess without passing people by or spending hours only to dig out more corpses, or doing more damage adding our weight to the top of the wreckage."
"Yes," she agreed. But-
"But he's carrying it," Gwaine said bleakly. "He's keeping it. All of it. Everyone we find – probably a lot of those we haven't yet, and you saw how he was when we took out that watchtower with the sniper. This is ten times worse. He can't – or won't – disconnect. I'm afraid it… it's gonna…" He shook his head as if he had no words for what might happen to someone who was psychic the way Merlin was.
Houses in a neighborhood, Merlin had explained to her. She wondered if the mental neighborhood now looked like this – dust and smoke and rubble – and couldn't imagine the horror of that.
"Just… he might listen to you," Gwaine ended. "I've – I've gotta…"
"No," she said, without having to hear him finish. "All the reasons you know that we have to take a few hours break means you do, too."
"I know, but-"
But the captain was dead and that meant Gwaine was the ranking officer and they had casualties but no hospital and no way, really, to pull back to base that was three days' distant.
"Second!" someone shouted from further away.
She didn't see who it was, and she didn't recognize the voice, but Gwaine lifted a hand in acknowledgement before loping away again. He'd either take the advice to eat and sleep, or… he wouldn't. Someone would make him, eventually.
Freya turned back to the wall, gritty jutting stone and dirty dust over the packed earth and scarred stone foundation of the hospital courtyard. Every muscle ached to be eased down, and then it felt like she was melting. Softest parts first, leaving bones propped awkwardly sentinel. Whoever was beside her – one of the surviving soldiers from another squad – handed her an exposed ration bar, the wrapping twisted to either side.
That seemed impossible, too, hard granola and dried fruit and unappetizing chocolate, but if she didn't bite and chew and swallow she was going to have to put it down, and the sticky nature of the thing would collect dirt and ash and that was wasteful of nutrition and kindness, both. And then someone would ask her when she'd eaten last…
She was still wearily masticating the last bite when he stumbled into her narrow sphere of attention. Gaze unfocused, helmet tipped back, one hand unconsciously gripping the strap over his chest that held the rifle slanted down his back. He didn't notice her; he didn't seem to notice any of them.
"Merlin," she said.
He diverted immediately, unhesitatingly, expressionlessly, as if he'd been seeking her all along. Repositioning the rifle behind him, he folded down into kneeling, then stretched a little further, dropping his shoulder to the ground to lay his head on her thigh, squeezing his arms over his chest.
She couldn't see past the rim of the helmet. And it was against orders and common sense to take them off, even here and now. But she slipped her hand beneath its edge – found his hair, his ear, his cheek gritty and damp with tears. Found his neck – pulse readily evident, though she wasn't professional enough to tell if there was any cause for concern in its pacing. Found his shoulder, his collarbone, his chest.
Felt him sigh out a long, shuddering breath before he went completely and quietly lax. Asleep, said his pulse and the subtle rise and fall of continued breathing.
"Here," the soldier next to her rasped, passing over another ration bar in its dingy-silver wrapper. "For when he wakes up."
"Thanks," she managed.
The noises of the rescue workers and volunteers – equipment, and voices – rubble shifting or being shifted, meant it wasn't going to get quiet, tonight. But she shifted down and around Merlin's body, getting as comfortable as was going to be possible, as long as she could.
…..*….. …..*….. …..*…..
What's the difference between a panther and an ocelot, or a monkey and an ape?
The difference between life and death.
What happens when you're sure you're being cheated, that rules are being changed and you didn't know that was possible?
Kicking and screaming and sedation. As an adult, on his own, he kept that emotion inside, rising to the bottom of his throat before he swallowed it down again.
The ground was stone-hard beneath his shoulder and hip, and swift reactive movement wasn't going to be possible, as hard as he'd pushed himself and as long as he'd been lying motionless in the uncomfortable position.
His pillow shifted beneath him, lifted him a few inches before retreating, and he did his best to wake up. Daylight bled into a colorless sky and he could still smell the smoke that drifted hazy-clear.
"Merlin. Hey. Are you all right?"
He startled badly, jerking back against the stone behind him, reading exhaustion and concern in her clear dark eyes, her skin as gray as the air. But he couldn't see her because she wasn't there – nobody was there, even though he could see other soldiers, unrecognized bodies in uniform and helmet, beginning to move next to them.
The psychic neighborhood was empty, nothing but drifting smoke there, too. Silent rooms in housing husks, and he'd felt this before, when he'd ignited the gas tank of the Essetirian cruiser bearing down on Arthur's helpless craft.
Still made him want to vomit. Like he'd float away with the lingering ash-stench, or wallow invisibly down into the dust. Every atom of his being trembled discordantly, like overexerted muscles.
"I – can't," he managed.
They'd made him quit, last night. Or this morning. Sometime. Every placement of his hand on hospital rubble, every shift beneath his boot-sole was the prick of a picture-nail, the photo of a doomed flyer shot down. Death-echoes and dying agonies, a lot of dead innocents – some survivors – some who breathed their last even as he sought them out for rescue workers.
And he hadn't finished. There had been many more in the vast sea of destruction, more lost and more holding on and praying for help to find them and some letting go of all hope to sink down-down-down…
"Can't what?" she said.
It felt like his ears were hearing her words on a half-second delay from his eyes watching her lips move. Disconcerting and bizarre, and he was too sluggish to work out how to respond, which gave him a vague feeling of unease that had nothing to do with psychic and everything to do with common sense.
The soldier on her other side climbed to his feet in stages, the first of the group to do so though others were beginning to act like they knew they should.
"This is horse manure, you know," the soldier said indiscriminately, in a conversational tone. "They call in a threat. To a hospital three days' drive from the camp."
He stretched, and Merlin and Freya blinked up at him. Plunging one hand into one of the pockets of his uniform jacket, he extracted a ration bar and tore open its wrapper. Had those supplies been unloaded yesterday, and where might the ration-crates be, if they survived the explosion? Still in the back of one of the slammed-over trucks, baking even harder in their metal coffins as the canvas and fuel blazed around?
"And then," the soldier added around his first mouthful, "they wait til we show up, and the whole thing goes boom in the first half-hour?"
Did that mean explosives were already in place when they arrived.
"Yesterday," Merlin said dumbly to Freya. And his feeling of disinclination-danger. "If I'd gone inside. If we hadn't left to scout the route…"
"Coulda been you buried at the bottom of that pile, mate," the soldier advised, moving away from the wall in the direction of the organized volunteers – fourth or fifth shift, by now?
Where was Gwaine? Today they'd have to keep moving the injured, whether to the rail-station for evacuation according to orders – or somewhere else locally because this attack had changed everything about their mission.
Two steps of the loose, cocky gait intrinsic to soldiers of a particular caliber. And Merlin didn't feel it before it happened. He didn't even feel it after it happened-
Whine-zip!
The soldier's body jerked. Splatter flew a meter and a half beyond him, and he collapsed lifeless.
The other soldiers scrambled like bees from a dropped hive.
The volunteers and rescue workers and injured that filled the rest of the hospital courtyard shrieked, scattered, ducked, shielded each other. Freya swore repetitively, clutching at him with fingers like talons.
The soldier's helmet had shifted over one eye when he hit the ground, but the other was still sightlessly open. A pool of blood spread and soaked into the dusty ground, and the ration bar in its partially-peeled wrapper slid down the limp slope of glove-covered palm.
Someone came scrambling to them, over the other soldiers along the base of the wall. Rather than protesting, they made way and pulled him close in at the same time, keeping him sheltered as he moved, and Gwaine said, in the authoritative stage-whisper of a drill instructor on night maneuvers, "Squad-ron!"
That meant something, Merlin was sure. Something he was meant to do, to respond to, and react… Nerves sparked and muscles bunched, and Gwaine's hand in the center of his chest kept him from trying to rise.
Disconcerted, he looked down at the second-sergeant's filthy gloves, nails showing grimy where the fingertips had been cut or worn off.
"Sniper," someone gasped.
"Where? How many?"
Merlin tried, he really did. But the landscape was completely empty behind him, behind the wall behind their backs. Janada had disappeared entirely.
Even though that was illogical. It was only Merlin who'd disappeared.
"I was up on the wall yesterday, Second – there's a building the next block over that looks right down into this courtyard."
Gwaine twisted away, leaning and looking like he was going to check – Merlin made a late, weak grab for him-
Like in the village, and Gwaine's arm clipped just below his rank insignia, lying bleeding out in the open, wounded-dying-bait-
But nothing happened. Gwaine re-oriented his crouch without presenting any part of himself as a target, and Merlin let his hand drop.
"Why'd they wait? Why blow up the hospital yesterday, and snipe us today?"
Rustle, rustle, mumble mumble. One's opinion as likely as the next. Enemy orders, like their own, coming unreliably from further away, superiors depending on reports from boots-on-the-ground that also might be unreliable…
Psychic, Merlin thought. What Gwaine had said that day in the village. Rumors about a new psychic in the ranks of the dustmen – pre-emptive or retaliatory - the ambush was for me. Martine, get the gren-launch…
Except all their supplies and munitions had exploded when the hospital blew sky-high.
And then the great cloud of billowing smoke had obscured several blocks of the city, and the whole sky for hours. No clear line of sight for snipers attempting to pick off members of the Camelot military.
Beyond Gwaine, the emergency workers and volunteers and wounded were jostling and crying out, scuttling and recovering. Merlin blinked, and one of the figures resolved into a stocky heavy-faced man with neon-yellow highlights on his heavy gray uniform and a helmet buckled over his sareq. He knelt leaning on the inside of the west wall of the courtyard just past the open gate and gestured exaggeratedly, cupping his hand around his mouth to holler something inarticulate at them.
Gwaine responded, "If you think we're the target, yes – get your people and the injured out!"
The man hollered something else again.
"The train station?" Freya whispered, tense against Merlin's right side, shoulder to hip. "That's not exactly a defensible location…"
"Understood!" Gwaine returned, his tone ranking the other as commander, before his head swiveled, marking the flanks of their position. "Is anyone clear to move?"
Merlin didn't watch, but Freya's flinch accentuated the whine-zip-spatter! of two more rifle-rounds demonstrating the sniper's advantage over their situation. Surrounded.
One of the soldiers beyond Gwaine swore roundly. "So we're just supposed to sit here and wait-"
"You can stick your head out and ask the shooter if-"
"Shut up, Hector!"
"What if there's more than one shooter?"
Freya said it at the same time as JT, right into Merlin's ear with quiet dread. What if there's more than one – pinning them down, and moving into secondary position, fish in a barrel…
Gwaine's arm jerked a series of commands, and Merlin understood that their flanks would be jealously guarded by those on the ends of the straggling line of remaining soldiers covering behind the crumbling north wall of the hospital courtyard.
Then he looked at Merlin.
I'm sorry. I can't. I'm not… there's nothing…
"What, are we just going to wait for dark? What if they send flares over here? We don't know the city – maybe they do – maybe they're getting back-up and we can't!"
"Shut up, Hector!"
"In a minute," Merlin said desperately to Gwaine. "In a little while. There might be something I can do…"
Gwaine's expression, between jacket-collar and helmet-rim, smudged with soot and sweat, eyes reddened with irritation and grief, relaxed into immediate acceptance.
"What you can," he said gently. "When you can. We should be safe here."
Whether it was an extension of Gwaine's thought left unsaid, or her own conclusion, or just common sense, Freya whispered, "For a while…"
…..*….. …..*….. …..*…..
Overnight in Sardegna on the coast of Italy's peninsula left Gwen with memories superimposed over those from Aravia. The heat that filled the small space of her cabin in the Ten-Via, even with the door open - across the narrow corridor Arthur's door latched open also so it wouldn't swing with the boat's movement. Arthur half-naked against the low burn of the city's lights across the harbor as he stood looking out his cabin window, leaning casually against his thoughts and careless of the loosened waistband of his trousers at his hips.
Waking into first light drowsy and thick-headed, limp sheets bunched where sleep discarded them during the hours of dark, careless herself of skin bared to any stray night breeze, please. Sprawled on a mattress little better than the padded bench of the Wrapter they'd unmoored in Paris two nights earlier, aware of him moving about in his cabin, in the corridor where he could look in and see her. Not awake enough yet to care if he looked.
Near constant level of perspiration, and avoidance of direct sunlight all day long, motoring urgently across deep-azure waves crested with brilliant shattered white. Lazily debating whether the enveloping clothing of a native Aravian was actually better for the weather than the short flouncy skirt and spaghetti-string tank of a foreign vacationer.
Cartwright talked as fast as he piloted the Ten-Via, which generated enough wind to whip clothing and scatter bow-spray and necessitate raised voices and precise pronunciation – but he asked no questions about their mission. Where they came from, or where they were going.
Gwen worried for Merlin, a little.
She'd worried for him in those first months, in the Fort Fuller cafeteria, when he returned her wave of greeting but declined with mild embarrassment to join her and Jennifer and Becca. When he showed up at the Sunrise trailing Arthur like an unclaimed puppy, when he showed up at the hospital in Britesea with the desperation of a condemned prisoner in his eyes - contrition and acceptance of fate, and the merest echo of hope. She'd worried about him, in the field with his training unit when she left for Xinyu to investigate the legit weapons manufacturer for the black-market financial contacts, and she'd worried for him and Arthur since then.
What they had, she didn't believe anyone understood. What it could be, she barely glimpsed. So much potential, she could be giddy to contemplate – but the downside of losing that was a very deep dark downside.
The breeze they were generating at a speed to cross the sea by nightfall kept her cool in her forward perch at the bow, and salt in the spray tightened the curls that escaped from the messy knot she'd tied her hair into. Heading south and east positioned the sun behind the bulk of the boat in the second half of the day, but the noise of the engine and the slap of the interrupted waves on the hull and the constant movement meant Arthur stepped into her peripheral before she realized he'd left Cartwright in the pilothouse to join her on deck.
Move-act-accomplish meant she hadn't had a chance for a proper conversation with Scout Pendragon regarding plans, really, since they'd reunited in that dilapidated flat-building beside the Seine.
In a matter of days – maybe hours, or maybe it was already done – Scout Tristan or someone else was going to cut the financial knees out from under Tosoldat and the Isyadi. The man himself was in Camelot, where things were falling apart at the highest level, and anyone could be compromised. If she was worried about Merlin, about Elyan in the navy though their father was safely retired, how must Arthur feel about his father and his sister?
Right in the thick of it, somehow.
She watched him brace weight and balance against the rise-and-drop surge of their acceleration against the waves, eyes squinted across the distance as if he could already see Alexandria – palm trees and turquoise-tinted water, and the sandstone and limestone of the buildings.
He wore light cotton trousers of the same sort of sandstone shade, the drawstring fluttering against his hip, and a light cotton shirt with some faded blue-green-tan print, only the middle three buttons fastened, the rest left to ripple against him like a living statue. Tiny white shells strung together in a not-quite-touristy necklace comfortable at the base of his throat, braided leather at his wrists instead of a time-keeper. He let her look. Let her admire the hints of bare skin – collarbones and chest-muscle, taut belly, hair-softened forearms, tendon-striped feet, as if he'd forgotten she was there. Or as if he had no idea that she'd want to look at him, and enjoy what she saw.
Finally she said, "Alexandria, and then Janada by rail. Yeah?"
"I think they've got an overnight train," he murmured, turning his head two degrees toward her without dropping his gaze from the horizon.
"Thought much about what happens when we get to Camp George?" She waited a moment, not really expecting an answer because everyone said how Pendragon was good at improvisation. He said that himself, quick and done. Just… not with relationships, she was beginning to perceive.
He swayed with the movement of the boat, strong and steady, and she couldn't help thinking again of Britesea and Urhavi, explosions and enemies shooting at them. At him.
"Native costume in Alexandria?" he said. "Lose our IDs out of Janada. Figure it'll take a day or two to make contact with anyone in George – maybe that sergeant, Gwaine, if he's still there."
"But," Gwen said, gentle but clear over the noise of the engine and the sea, "Merlin will know we're there, won't he? He'll know we're coming."
Arthur grimaced, slightly and distantly, and didn't answer.
They had no official mission, which meant they'd have to persuade Merlin to go against his own orders, and… stowaway on some vehicle or another, back to Camelot? Or commandeer a military craft and move fast enough to evade apprehension when they reached home shores?
Oh, Arthur. She sighed, watching him balance unconsciously, and in such uncharacteristic silence and stillness wait for the south shore of the sea and their destination harbor. You ask so much…
He knew it, too. He'd regret the necessity – and he'd ask anyway.
And if she knew Merlin, he was going to commit to whatever Arthur asked of him.
…..*….. …..*….. …..*…..
A solitary object waited on a vast angled expanse of smooth tabletop – a cicala lighter.
Freya found herself shivering more than once, in spite of the rising heat of the day. The part of the wall that sheltered them from the sniper they'd be foolish not to assume was still in place waiting for them to be foolish, did not provide cover from the slow arc of the sun upward to its zenith, and past. A headache thumped dully behind her temples, and her neck bobbed the heavy weight of her helmet uncomfortably; she didn't doze, but the inexplicable images that bloomed on the backs of her eyelids somehow matched the stench of burning fuel and other materials that still lingered in the air of the hospital courtyard.
Military patrol vessel churning angrily through choppy gray waters with black-clad figures on-deck, clinging to the sides of the wheelhouse as it bore down…
The Janada Fire-and-Rescue personnel heroically tested the sniper's mission and orders, hurrying volunteers and casualties alike out the gate, one by one ducking and crouching, heads covered with a variety of improvised shields and feet scuffling as fast as possible.
No shots were taken – the guards on their flanks didn't report any suspicious movement - and resolve grew bolder. Freya knew F-and-R were sticking to an evacuation route of their own, and respected them for it. Whether it was overlooked by Isyadi snipers, or not, they were trained to protect without being able to defend themselves against definite human danger, like this.
Twice they tossed bottled water or packaged rations over to her line of pinned-down soldiers. The third time, somewhat after noon, one of the volunteers attempted to sling an entire twenty-liter jug across the bare expanse of dusty courtyard ground, and that evidently called for action from the hidden marksman.
Whine-zip-boom! And the plastic jug exploded with a hollow, watery burst that panicked all the civilians anew and sent a zip of similar reaction up Freya's spine.
Yep. Still watching, still ready, finger on the trigger and another round ready to be loosed.
Water gurgled and chugged from the torn pieces of the plastic jug into the dust. Freya watched the edge of the expanding puddle cross the pool of the dead soldier's blood… and eventually tease the dried crimson into mingling.
They couldn't even fan the flies away from the body. It was a horror she'd never forget, the way he ceased to be a person just three paces away, over the minutes and hours, becoming an object of involuntarily increased degradation and revulsion.
What was his name? He was lying on the strip stenciled with his name and velcroed to his jacket's breast-pocket, and she wasn't sure she wanted to know. To remember.
"So are we just going to wait for dark, or what?"
"Shut up, Hector… he'll be ready when he's ready."
Freya met Gwaine's glance, and couldn't answer the question there. And the tension carved the lines on his face deeper with exhaustion, and the lack of water he was deferring to his soldiers.
Merlin didn't move, or open his eyes. His skin was dead-white under the grime they all bore, and she caught herself more than once watching for the pulse in his throat or the shift of his jacket in breathing.
"What are we going to do when we make a break for it?" Charlie asked Gwaine quietly. She was closest to Freya on that side, now, since the soldier who'd shared rations was dead.
Maybe Charlie had known him, Freya thought.
"Depends which way we go," Gwaine answered, like he'd already thought about it. "Northeast, unless we steal a truck, we'll have to hide-and-seek through the whole of the city to reach the rail-station-"
"We're still trying to complete the mission?" Hector interjected incredulously from Gwaine's other side. "Man, they don't want us anywhere near the hospital evacuees."
That was probably true. Gwaine's jaw tightened; she knew he didn't like leaving a job undone.
"We go south-" he pointed across the hospital courtyard – "that's right out of the city, but into the desert. With minimal supplies, next to no water, and no transportation but our own feet."
"So you want to go west," Merlin said, soft but clear. "Straight to the rail-station."
"We've scouted half that route already," Gwaine stated.
"They might expect that," Charlie pointed out.
Freya shifted her position to relieve the muscles in her legs, careful that no part of her was exposed to the sniper's downward-slant angle on them. If she had her druthers, they'd go west, whether that was gut feeling or the inclination of residual familiarity from yesterday, or something more psychic.
A little flame jumped up on the cicala lighter on the flat table in the empty room…
"Which way's the wind?" Merlin said, like he was too focused to check and figure it out for himself.
"North-northeast."
The explosion was an onslaught of sound and flame as the patrol boat plowed onward, momentum carrying it into a death-throes collision with a small sleek-cream craft which crumpled under the fiery onslaught – then combusted violently.
Freya shook the images from the corners of her eyes, and watched the current F-and-R leader supervise the last volunteer assisting the last casualty evacuating through the gate. Arm over shoulder, limping on a leg with ripped and bloodied clothing showing clean-white bandage.
Now it was just them.
Now someone could come behind their covering wall and flip a grenade over onto them without risking civilians. The bomber obviously didn't care about that – but the sniper seemed to. Different mentality? Different men? Different orders?
"Gwaine," Merlin said, enunciating carefully and softly. His eyes were still closed. "Cover, and then move. We can go west."
Probably. She bit her lips on the inadvertent mumble and no one noticed save maybe Merlin, as Gwaine leaned up into a ready-crouch and signaled the orders to either side.
Merlin's hand found hers, and curled around her fingers apologetically. He took a deep breath-
FWOOM! White-hot and clear, the skeleton of the last crippled transport truck in the opposite corner of the hospital courtyard ignited its own ghost onto her retinas, and the heat and concussive force slamming them back into the wall stole her breath. The air would be full of foul black smoke raining charred bits of detritus down on them…
Just like yesterday, when the destruction of the hospital meant the courtyard was obscured, whether someone crouched in an upper level or rooftop half a block away with a sniper's rifle waiting for sight-lines to clear, or not.
Go! Gwaine's order buffeted her eardrums through the shrill squeal of reactive damage echoing through her helmet. Go!
Without knowing if they'd all be picked off when they cleared the end of the wall and the hospital gate, west toward the rail-station. Merlin's hand was still in hers, and she was determined not to lose him in the mad scramble - four blocks west, three north, across a problematic market square.
If they were lucky.
…..*….. …..*….. …..*…..
The port of Alexandria was not so dissimilar to Marseilles, save for the feeling of sprawling leisure rather than compact industry, in the layout of the harbor and marina. Large angular buildings topped with a domed roof here and there - and the patient raggedy date-palms scattered throughout.
Gwen had just enough time to watch Arthur's mischievous-young-boy attitude toward their current mission vanish into the deadly professional intensity that was more characteristic of infiltrating Urhavi than harassing enemies in Paris. And wonder if she'd made the right choice - to accompany him instead of staying in Paris to join Tristan, or simply make her way back to Fort Fuller to report to headquarters and the newly-appointed Director-in-Chief Gregory.
Was she going to be a help, or was she going to get in his way or slow him down. For all his rumored lone-wolf tendencies, she'd never seen a hint from him that he didn't prefer her company and rely on her half of a partnership, when they were together.
And then Cartwright was maneuvering the Ten-Via into a berth at the marina, farther out and less crowded than the docks servicing smaller craft. And Arthur tied them off to the slip-cleats, fore and aft, and she tried not to let the weight of her bag tip her one way or the other off the floating dock until she recovered her land-legs. And because Arthur had to retrieve and carry his own rucksack and Cartwright was empty-handed at his own port of destination, all three of them made their way ashore together, exchanging the casual platitudes of parting fellows as they approached the marina office.
Stay out of trouble.
Take it easy.
See ya sometime… good luck.
Just before they stepped out of earshot, Cartwright commented aloud on the headline of one of the newspapers in the sales display of the stand slightly behind the shadow of the marina office's boxy shape.
"Wow – shitshow in Janada. Hey? Trains aren't running…"
Gwen stopped, and watched Arthur swing around, attentive to Cartwright's discovery. Their pilot leaned forward to snag a copy and straightened, unfolding it under the sharp eyes of an ancient news-vendor wearing a blue-striped sareq and missing several teeth.
"You pay?" he said expectantly. "You pay, yes?"
Cartwright frowned, concentrating on reading the story line by line rather than scanning for the gist, and her feet turned her back to him even as Arthur strode past to peer over Cartwright's shoulder.
"An explosion," Cartwright mentioned vaguely, since there wasn't really room for all three of them to scrutinize the small print there on the dusty path in the horizontal gold of the setting sun. "The hospital."
"The hospital?" Gwen said, surprised. "What was it, an accident?"
"Sources say," Arthur remarked grimly, "casualties include members of the army of Camelot."
"What are we doing in Janada?" Gwen asked the air between the men.
"And in fact," Cartwright added, without addressing her query, "they may have been the target of the attack." His tone mimicked the false officiousness of a reporter with grim mockery.
Damn. Gwen watched Arthur's face as he finished the article, brows drawing down and his entire being stilling from impatient activity to a marksman's focus.
"You pay," the vendor suggested, though they ignored him. "From Camelot? Two-wrists? You pay."
"Why were our troops in Janada?" Gwen repeated quietly.
"Doesn't say," Cartwright told her.
"Doesn't matter," Arthur added, with a cold sort of anger in the set of his jaw and the squint-wrinkles by his eyes. "That's three days from Camp George. Any reinforcement or extraction they could call for, any retreat they have to make…"
Yeah – three-day delay was just as good as being on their own. Or just as bad, to be more accurate. As scouts they were used to improvisation as a matter of course, but regular troops might have a harder time, especially if planned resources and routes were disrupted. Whatever their mission had been in Janada… they had casualties. Presumably, ongoing conflict with whatever elements of the Isyad had survived the collapse of their organization, armed with explosives at least and probably more.
Arthur let go of the corner of newspaper he'd pinched to spread the story for his eyes in addition to Cartwright's, and looked at her. "If we could link up with the remaining troops in Janada…"
That wouldn't necessarily mean safer transport to Camp George, for them. But she was willing, as Arthur seemed to be, to add their expertise and ability to whatever defense the retreating troop could muster for itself.
"Yeah," she said. "If we get there before they bug out."
"Maybe…" he said slowly, pivoting to Cartwright, "we can give them a secondary option. You ever sailed that stretch of coast?"
Janada was fifteen kilometers from the shore. No port, because the water was deep and the cliffs high at that point… but they wouldn't be trying to establish a town, after all. Just an amphibious rescue.
"Yeah – but not with an eye to make landfall somewhere," Cartwright retorted. "It could take some time to find a spot with access inland. To the north or south. If it's possible at all."
Arthur's jaw clenched, and he huffed a hard sigh of dissatisfaction through his nose.
Gwen tracked her mental map of the area. Maybe someone local would know, but it did seem to her that it would be safer and faster to use routes of transportation already in place. Especially if the troops really were being targeted by someone – the Isyad? Aravians generally ignored Camelot military with quiet contempt, if they weren't forced to seek medical aid or shelter or other resources of supplies from them. Rarely did encounters with local civilians turn nasty, much less violent, much less qualify for words like attack.
"What do you think?" she said to Arthur. "Pair of turf-bikes to get us there by dawn, or before? That would be fastest."
"Make sure the head-lamps are working properly," Cartwright commented sardonically. "Roads here are famous for their disrepair."
"We could return this way, though," Arthur proposed. "Alexandria's a lot closer to Janada than Camp George."
"I can refuel the Ten-Via and have her waiting," Cartwright offered.
"Pair of turf-bikes won't help troops with casualties," Arthur began, meeting her eyes with her own thought dawning in them.
She grinned, and finished, "All we'd need is a fueled engine and a passenger car. Have you ever borrowed a train?"