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Dammit, the fight was not over! The battle itself, a mere two feet away, was hazy and unclear, but never the less even he could tell it was not decided. Each precious moment that slipped away might have been the decisive one- his inaction could damn the Renown to life as a Spanish prize. The fury of such a possibility stirred him enough to open his eyes, but little else. ‘Why can’t I move?’ Bush agonized, as despite his attempts to put his feet underneath himself, his body was only content to stir.
He wasn’t quite sure when exactly his body had given up, but he was slumped over on the quarterdeck, his mind soon becoming equally unresponsive to his desire to fight. He lay there, each moment of hazed confusion dragging on to an eternity. The only thing grounding him to this world and this ship were his hand threaded through Joanna’s fur. Coarse, almost sharp at the end, he ran his fingers back and forth until it was neither. It became wet and clumpy, and with detached amusement, Bush realized it was soaked in blood. He must’ve killed a great many people for them both to be so soaked. His shirt was damp and sticky as if he had weathered a blustering Atlantic gale; he became annoyed with himself, that he had come on deck forgetting both coat and oilskin to protect him from the wind and rain.
That couldn’t be right- the sun was far too bright for a storm, too bright for him to open his eyes beyond a squint, and the ship swayed too gently. ‘But the sound of something roars in my ears,’ thought Bush, ‘and it may as well be the wind.’
And so his mind meandered, entirely unaware of anything beyond his little corner of the quarterdeck, until a great cry, and the resounding chorus of yells, stirred him to some level of consciousness you could call awake.
It was Hornblower! Of course, the man in his brilliance had noticed something was happening on the Renown, had come alongside and boarded her. A great number of sailors from the Gaditana, and surely from the other ships as well, for it was not likely that Hornblower would bring so many men aboard Renown and leave the prize abandoned, swarmed the deck. They clashed with the Spanish prisoners, who were already exhausted and unprepared to meet the fresh fighters, and were quickly routed them to the stairs, to below decks. In a few moments, or what seemed mere moments to Bush, the quarter deck was entirely abandoned by the battle, in a state where only the dead and dying were left to remain.
And in his addled state, Bush had no room in his mind for any thoughts of rank, or superiority, only an instinctual admiration for the brilliant man who had once again showed himself to be a calibre of only the most capable, the most courageous.
The din of battle was far below decks now, and might have ceased for all Bush noticed. The momentary action that had drawn him aware, helped him cling to consciousness, was gone now, and he once again drifted slowly back into the depths of sleep. He knew there was something he should be doing at the moment, but it was far beyond the clumsy attempts of his brain to remember what it was.
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The battle had been fought and won, but the work was far from over. The prisoners must be secured, the ship must return to some semblance of a working state, and the dead must be counted and sorted. Hornblower was spared from much of the responsibility when they found Acting-Captain Buckland, neither wounded nor dead, which would have been a much kinder fate. Hornblower worked his way through the ship and up the stairs, where the cool fresh Caribbean air was welcomed by a man who had spent the last half-hour picking his way through sweltering decks reeking of blood and sweat.
A quick cursory glance over the deck showed the wounded and their dæmons, the latter of which distinguished the former from the similar looking dead. The intimate connection between the two meant that whatever injuries suffered by the one was felt by the other acutely. Ghastly injuries on one Spaniard manifested in his lynx dæmon, who seized and twisted in agony despite showing no marks on her pelt. Hornblower was unfortunate to witness the final moments of the man; he had laid motionless for sometime, before the lynx slumped over in defeat and disintegrated into dust. A sailor who had witnessed it was clearly unsettled, and held his own gull close, but Hornblower had little time for those who it was too late to save.
A dreadful pit had settled in his stomach, now that the immediate threat was gone. Buckland, freed from his cabin; Sawyer, dead; Smith, struck down in battle; and himself were all accounted for- no thought spared for Roberts, who had died days before- but Mr. Bush had yet to surface. It was so contrarian to the man he knew him as, a man who made his presence known even on the deck of the ship under fire, whose bellowing voice rivaled the sound of cannon fire, who would have surely have appeared by now if he was alive and well. Indeed, Hornblower’s mind had contemplated the scenario over and over, the horrid pit in his stomach slowly sinking deeper and deeper as he travelled through the ship, far before he had the liberty to fully dedicate his thoughts to it. Mr. Bush could simply be on another part of the ship, some distant corner that he hadn’t walked by yet. He could be injured- he must be on the boards somewhere, as he wasn’t at sickbay. Hornblower had already inquired with the suddenly overworked Dr. Clive.
The far more likely scenario he refused to acknowledge; at least not with words, for the twist inside his stomach could not so easily be conquered by sheer willpower alone. Only one thing would solve that: finding Mr. Bush, in whatever state the night’s event had left him as.
The quarter deck was no longer blissfully cool, but as hot and sweltering as the rest of the ship now. He turned over another dead man only to discover it was not who he dreaded it might be, but he still had to coordinate sailors to move the body with the rest. He wiped away the sweat on his brow and wondered when he might finally get a single moment’s rest-
“He’s here! Mr. Bush is here, quick!” Called out a voice that was wholly foreign to the quarterdeck, a voice whose rare comments had disappeared almost entirely on the cursed voyage of the Renown, one that might’ve given Hornblower pause had not simultaneous relief and dread began a torturous game in his chest, playing tug-of-war with his heart as he ran quickly to where Haemos’ voice had called out from.
Mr. Bush was hidden beside a cannon, laying on his side with his head stacked on one arm, with the other resting by his stomach. Hornblower had passed the spot a few times earlier, in the fight to retake the Renown, without pausing for a second, without even a momentary chance to notice his friend bleeding out.
His friend? Could he say that, was it true? To a man such as Hornblower, who had spent his entirely by his lonesome, the concept in and of itself was not absurd per se- rather he lacked the necessary experience to determine whether labelling the connection between him and Mr. Bush as friendship would be absurd. There was no easy moment that he could identify where he had begun to think of Bush as his friend. Perhaps that was true of all friendships, but it might equally be true that it was not. The great fear was that if he voiced these thoughts aloud, he should be laughed out of the room by Mr. Bush, far more experienced in life and friendship who may only think of him as a tolerable coworker.
No- the great fear was that these worries should soon be irrelevant, that Mr. Bush was struck down dead in the fight with the Spanish before Hornblower had even a chance to arrive at the Renown.
Where was Joanna? The thought hit him with the force of a cannon’s recoil, but he was quickly relieved to find that she was simply pressed close to her human, hidden in the shadow that Bush’s body made. His hand rested atop her side, and he could see the gentle rise and fall of her flank as Bush’s hand too was lifted and lowered. They were at the very least alive, and Hornblower might have wept at the thought.
“Bush! Bush! Look to me,” Bush would not- could not face him, and Hornblower placed his hands around his face and gently lifted, so that he may look his friend in the eye, that he may feel every sign of life beneath his hands. “Speak to me, say anything at all.”
Bush’s head was limp and rolled in his grasp, giving no hint he was alive, but his eyes fluttered open and met Hornblower’s. He smiled a grand smile, one that Hornblower felt under his palm, promising life. Promising that he was alive and- and happy to see Hornblower! Though it could of course merely be the blood loss. The possibility, however, was one he did not fully grasp, and he tucked away the thought for future examination.
They were covered in blood, both Bush and Joanna. He glanced to the side where Haemos had already conducted his own examination of her; her white stripes had been soiled to a mix of fresh red and dried brown, the same color as Bush’s night shirt and trousers (for that’s all he wore as the Spanish prisoners had sprung their attack at night). She must have fought viscously, and Hornblower almost smiled wryly as he remembered the battle to take the fort as Samaná bay, where she had wrassled with dæmons four times her size without hesitation, with a crazed snarl he had not seen even on the badger when motivating the gun crews to fire faster, or any time during the sordid mess that was the mutiny against Captain Sawyer. Of course, he was not there for that unfortunate moment, that-
“You’re going to be alright, sir,” Extraordinarily helpless he felt; now that he had found Bush, and called for the doctor, he could do little but sit here and wait. Even the words he spoke were more for his own comfort than Bush’s, as the man was unconscious he could hardly hear them. He didn’t dare move his hands, for some bizarre fear that it would be the end of Bush. It was only when a stretcher arrived to take Bush away that Hornblower reluctantly pulled back, and he was finally forced to acknowledge he could do no more.
As Bush was carried away on the stretcher, Hornblower gave himself a moments pause, and looked over at Haemos. ‘Haemos found Mr. Bush, not I,’ he recalled, ‘And I might’ve passed him over, and it would’ve been too late.’ He knew how it pained Haemos to speak in front of Hornblower himself, let alone every sailor on the quarterdeck, so to call Hornblower over was a great act of service he hardly felt worthy for. 'It was for Mr. Bush's sake, not my own,' he told himself, so that he did not have to contend with the thought that his own dæmon might pity him.
Hornblower reached his hand out and stroked his two fingers and thumb over Haemos’ head in a simple gesture of gratitude, and although Haemos needed no words to understand his meaning, he found himself mumbling thanks in a voice far more frail than he had allowed it to be before.