Eldin, kneeling over Anders' corpse, was deadened by sorrow.

Everything had come apart. Laurian in command of the ship; his father dead, and the windwyrm surely to follow him to the grave. He hadn't been able to save anyone, despite all his efforts. The ship would fly for another few decades, but it would be years bought with blood and betrayal. His heart felt heavy; he no longer had the strength to bear it.

Someone was shaking him. He realized it was Fenric. "--while I slip out," he was saying.

"What?"

"Damn it, El--focus! I can stop the cannons, but I need you to cover me while I slip out."

"How can you stop them?"

"I'll go to the engine room. There, I can forcibly reroute purewind energy away from the artillery decks. The cannons can't fire without purewind. But Laurian isn't going to let anyone leave the bridge right now for fear of spreading the truth of the mutiny, so I need you to keep him and his goons distracted. Can you do that?"

"Yes," Eldin heard himself say. Around them, the loyalist sailors and Laurian's crew were still focused on each other. They had only this moment for Fenric to slip away, so Eldin pushed aside his melancholy and stood up from his father's corpse. He and Fenric shook hands in their customary way--gripping each other's forearm--then, with a nod, Fenric darted for the doors, while Eldin drew a windstone from his pocket.

Fenric made it several yards before Laurian noticed. "Stop him!" he shouted, and when a sailor aimed a windstone pistol at Fenric's back, Eldin summoned a gust of purewind to fling the man aside. The mutineer accidentally fired his pistol when he was pushed, but the shot went awry, burying itself in the bulkhead near Fenric as he sprinted out into the passageway.

"Chase him!" Laurian ordered. "Don't let him get away!" Five of Laurian's men, drawing their pistols, made for the door, and Eldin began knocking them off their feet with purewind one by one. "And kill the damned Windchaser!" he heard Laurian shout, and he turned around to witness a sailor across the deck aiming a pistol directly at him.

He had no time to hurl himself away. In an instant, he produced a powerful blast of purewind and aimed it directly forward at the same moment the sailor pulled the trigger. The windstone, discharged from the pistol, was slowed by the powerful wind resistance it met, and struck Eldin in the chest with just enough force to stagger him, but not enough to pierce his flesh. Still, it hurt immensely, and the momentary stun gave a handful of the men hounding Fenric ample time to make their way out into the passageway to chase him.

Eldin took a step toward the door, intending to follow the men and keep them off Fenric's tail, but several of Laurian's crew stepped in his path, and the sound of footsteps approaching indicated the presence of several more behind him. He was surrounded, and his heart froze when he heard the sound of several pistols cocking.

Eldin looked to the loyalist sailors, seeing that none of them were armed with pistols. That was not unusual for men on duty, for beside cloudhawk hunts, there was never any reason to require them. The fact that all of Laurian's men were equipped with firearms suggested that this mutiny had been a possibility planned from the beginning. Eldin ground his teeth at the thought, but refocused on the situation at hand. The loyalists--despite outnumbering the mutineers--were disadvantaged by their enemy's greater armaments. It was a daunting situation--almost insurmountable.

However, the loyalists had Eldin--and Eldin had windstones.

In a flash, he drew five from his pocket and tossed them into the air, then used the one windstone in his other hand to produce a powerful tornado of purewind to spin the airborne windstones around in a circle. Those windstones flew at a speed that--when striking the mutineers--produced sprays of blood and cries of pain. The men weren't even able to raise their pistols before being cracked with another of the flying stones and sent sprawling to the ground. Eldin channeled his anger into even more powerful manipulation of purewind, and felt a vengeful satisfaction at their every cry of pain.

And then he felt a blinding pain, and realized he had been shot.

Fenric crashed into the engine room with a pistol and a shout. "Everybody out--it's about to get hot in here!" While dashing through the ship, he had heard the faint sounds of pursuit from a deck above, and knew that Eldin hadn't been able to stop Laurian's men from chasing him. He could only hope that his friend was safe and focus on completing his task quickly, for he knew he would be entertaining some very unsavory company soon.

The other engineers in the room wasted no time vacating the area. When he was alone, he approached the purewind diffusion regulator and located the valve that corresponded with the artillery decks. He gave it several squeaking turns to sever the energy connection. The rumble of the ship and the thunder of the cannonfire ceased at once, and he knew it had worked.

"And now to ensure it stays that way," he said to himself. It could be only moments before the arrival of Laurian's men, and he had to somehow keep them from re-engaging the artillery deck's power. He looked at the single pistol in his hand, clicked his tongue, and said, "I'm going to need more guns."

The weapons division of the engineering deck was connected to the engine room by a short passageway. Fenric hastened along it and into the room, where he found a dozen pistols in various stages of experimentation and testing. He inspected them all, gathered the eight loaded ones, then ferried them all back to the engine room. He dragged a large table to the center of the room, placed seven of his nine pistols atop it, gripped the remaining two with sweaty, anxious hands, and waited.

They didn't make him wait long.

Less than a minute later, the doors were flung open and a swarm of angry men flooded into the room. Most had pistols, the rest had sabers, but all of them shared the same bloody goal.

Fenric dropped two of them before they made it three steps inside, then flung his two pistols aside and reached for another pair. Seeing two of their fellows struck down so suddenly sent a panic through his foes, and they scrambled for cover, cursing loudly along the way. Fenric took advantage of the opportunity to shoot two more before they made it to safety. When the rest had found concealment behind a box or shelf, their confidence returned, and they began to mount a counterattack. Three men reared around their corners and fired shots at Fenric, but he evaded them with a quick dive for his own cover behind one of the tube-shaped purewind conductors, grabbing two more pistols from the table as he did so.

He was still outnumbered, but possessed one distinct advantage: He was the one who had engineered the pistols, practicing with them himself during the entire development process. The ship had only begun mass-producing them for the hunters a few months prior, so no one but he had managed to develop a good shot yet, and he intended to exploit this advantage as much as he could. He leaned out from cover to bait another man into showing his face, then quickly put a windstone bullet into it. The man toppled dead against his neighbor, who seemed to realize suddenly that he had pressing business elsewhere, and fled from the room. Fenric didn't stop him.

The remaining mutineers kept hidden for some moments, and Fenric was just about to announce that he would kindly allow them to run away as well when they all burst out of cover at once, rushing Fenric in a horde of almost half a dozen men. He yelped in surprise and dashed for his pistol table, firing a shot from the one loaded gun he had been carrying, but in his haste and surprise, he missed. Two of the five men had a loaded pistol of their own, and they both fired a desperate shot at Fenric when he appeared, but the poor aim of unpracticed men--who were also simultaneously running while aiming--resulted in two misses.

Fenric reached the table, and with swift gunmanship managed to shoot three more before the remaining two mutineers overwhelmed him, one of them knocking the table over and scattering his guns across the deck and out of his reach. This left him disadvantaged, for now he possessed no weapon at all against two men with sabers. They spread out to try flanking him from opposite sides, and it was only by backing himself into a narrow part of the room that he managed to keep them both in his sight at once--and here, the tight space forbade them from attacking simultaneously. However, he was still handicapped without a weapon. All he could do was dodge the deadly sword swipes, which soon left him weary and slow. He inevitably suffered several shallow cuts that were now staining his shirt red, and he knew worse would come soon.

He leapt backward to dodge another swing and bumped into a tool table. Desperate, he grabbed the first hard object within reach--a large, heavy wrench--and hurled it at the closest man. It struck him in the mouth, producing a miserable shriek of pain. He dropped his saber in his agony, holding his mouth with both hands and retreating, making way for his partner to advance. Fenric only barely managed to pick up the other man's dropped saber and parry the sword swing that would have otherwise cleaved his face in two.

His opponent didn't back off, taking advantage of Fenric's obvious weariness with an onslaught of strikes that tested the limits of his defense. He was barely able to parry one swing before the next came at deadly speed, and he knew that he would be done in soon. Three more clinks of parrying swords sang out and then Fenric's defense finally failed him. He took a dreadful slash in his side, the blade swung with such force that it buried itself two inches deep into flesh.

Fenric fell to his knees. His foe looked down on him, a triumphant smile dancing on his face. However, his assumption of victory would prove to be his undoing. Clearly not expecting his defeated foe to continue resisting after suffering such a greivous wound, he was too slow to react when Fenric mustered the last drop of energy his weary body possessed to raise his saber and deliver a piercing thrust into his opponent's throat.

The man's eyes grew wide as saucers, and when Fenric withdrew his blade, the mutineer held both hands to the wound, desperately trying to staunch the blood--a futile effort, for it gushed through his fingers and poured down the front of his coat. He staggered a few steps, tried to speak but only managed a sickening gurgling sound, then fell over.

With a wince, Fenric jerked the mutineer's blade from where it lay embedded in his flesh, then gave a cursory examination of the wound, deciding that he'd live as long as he could take care of it soon. Then, hand to his side, he rose to his feet, grunting as much from pain as from the effort of standing. His breaths came heavily, then stopped altogether when he heard the cocking of a pistol. He looked over to find the man he had thrown a wrench at aiming a pistol at him. The mutineer's mouth curled into a bloody grin that revealed two missing teeth.

He pulled the trigger.