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Jopson shouldn’t have even been on deck. There was no reason to be awake, let alone away from the warmth and routine below. Certainly no reason to be up before dawn in fog and snow the choking cold without a single damn reason. It was stalling for time, perhaps, trying to outpace his sleeplessness. Jopson was feeding his fear and dread as though he might find something to keep it appeased.
He shouldn’t have been on deck. Sailing through interminable salt ice and dark water in light winds and under a sky mostly starless and cloudy. The snow fell softly, hissing down the sails and landing with an audible paf on the decks. Ahead of them, Erebus rose as a stately tower, faintly radiant in the glow of her lamps as the snow slid past her. The gold glow from the stern windows that showed Sir Franklin was awake, not perfectly at ease either it seemed. The deck rolled slowly under Jopson’s boots, no great ocean rollers here, sheltered by the innumerable islands and the gathering ice.
No reason to be up, on deck, in this profoundly uneasy silence, letting snow settle over his shoulders and melt in his hair. But no one had slept much since Blankey had spotted trouble days ago, and Jopson, regardless of the logic, felt it was safer when he could see the danger. He knew how to keep out of the way of the deckhand and ABs. Knew how to stay clear of the officers and their duties. He kept well clear of the marines, they had maintained a watch on deck for days. Standing turn and turn at watch astern, awake and alert and their rifles in their arms. They had been granted permission to stand wherever they needed the deck space, and stood still and poised and quiet, staring aft.
In the darkness and the snow that whirled away from the glow of their stern light, a ship followed them.
It looked like a ship. An old ship, huge and heavy, gaining on them every day, even in winds that did not favour it. Sun-baked sails that filled and drew even in light airs and pulled against ragged lines that never parted and flew a flag no one onboard would name. They could see people on the decks sometimes, sailors not dressed for the winter they found themselves in. The ship dropped back before the sun rose and kept well astern when the weather was fine, but in the fog or the dark, it closed the gap between them. It always came closer at night.
Blankey had seen it, had gotten an AB to boost Jopson out of bed to wake Crozier to take a look. They had argued about it, Blankey and Crozier were pragmatic men but only one of them was so skeptical to refuse such an outlandish suggestion as the one Blankey made. But Blankey got his way when Sir Franklin weighed in the next day, and on a quiet night with little enough wind, and as Terror stood halfway between Erebus and the pursuit, Blankey fired a series of blank sound signals from the same cannon. Three shots forward, three shots aft. Erebus, a serene tower ahead of them, dutifully reported back with three echos that bounced off her transom and sails. The pursuit ship made no reply. A huge ship, with high freeboard, her royals set and a couple of studsail out, had made no echo.
Crozier was furious, and Blankey wasn't any better pleased. Sir Franklin heard their report and called for a meeting, deliberated at length, and finally chose to keep Erebus in the lead, but sent Sergeant Tozer with nearly half of Erebus' marines back with them all to Terror. So helpful, Jopson thought, after all the fuss.
"You ought to be down below."
The words startled Jopson. The sound of a voice, any voice, on deck in the last few nights was surprising. The pursuit ship tended to depress conversation, even necessary orders were spoken instead of called.
"Mr. Jopson isn't it? Unless you'll be needing anything?" Sergeant Tozer didn't sound particularly concerned where Jopson found himself but wasn't unfriendly about it either.
“I’ll be on my way. Wanted to see how we faired,” Jopson could just see the gleam of Tozer's eyes in the half-light of lamps reflecting off whirling snow. “The stalker seems closer.”
“Closeing on us,” Tozer said, matter-of-fact and sounding resigned, or bored. “Choosing their time.”
He didn’t chivy Jopson away, or try to. Tozer was easy in his acceptance of what was and was not his problem.
They stood side by each as the snow fell and they watched the tower of huge stained sails and old lamps stand off behind them. Jopson had served Tozer at table and exchanged news about the officers and occasionally talked in the quiet, unhurried way of tenuous shipmates off duty and aware of the limited places their souls touched, the few things they shared. But Tozer, who could show all the jagged edges of his rank and position, was as gentle and unruffled by Jopson’s company as a sleeping dog would be. Jopson tended to pick his way carefully around him, a fastidious cat with too much to do anyway. But he liked how Tozer treated the men he commanded, liked how he stood for them and himself in Sir Franklin's eyes, liked how he didn’t make any attempt to sound like the officers. His voice, his accent at table whenever he joined it marked Tozer, and Jopson liked him for it.
The pursuit ship made no sound behind them, no lines creaked or orders called, their bell never rang at the half hour, and as the snow thickened, the great tower of its sails dimmed and vanished behind them.
“Make ready,” Tozer barely raised his voice, but his men heard him and obeyed.
Jopson glanced at him.
“You should be below,” Tozer said. His eyes were down, his head cocked, studying the action of his rifle. “Now.”
There was no sound, but Jopson felt the air punched out of him, suddenly felt tiny. Something in the darkness beside him slammed into his awareness with a breadth and height and a sick sense of momentum and crushing weight. Jopson felt, in a visceral, gut-deep panic, that this was the darkness at the bottom of a well.
The wind whipped up in a sudden howl that made the snow streak past them and when Jopson could open his eyes he found he'd shied slightly away from the starboard side. Found that the pursuit ship wasn't following them, wasn't closing anymore. Found that the pursuit ship had slammed out of the snow and darkness on a gale of wind and was nearly on top of them. Impossibly, Terror and her stalker were side by side.
Terror was 107' long and had been most of Jopson’s world for the years since they left England but it had never felt so small. The great old ship beside them was a mountain in the water, her rail a good ten feet above Terror's quarterdeck, the bow a full ship's length ahead of them and her stern still away behind. Above them, the span and hum of the sun-baked sails on massive yards swept overhead, crowding their rigging, threatening to tear into Terror’s lines which suddenly seemed as light and insubstantial as spider silk. The deck shuddered as Terror tried to follow the direction from her helm and bear away to avoid a collision, but the pursuit drove ahead of her, cut her sea room and stole her wind and it was heeled over towards them with the wind filling all her sails and it bore down on Terror's path in a charge.
Terror was an icebreaker with iron and hardened oak in her heart, but the pursuit had twice as much freeboard, almost twice the length and must weigh far more than any ice anyone would willingly allow her to touch at this speed. The huge stalker could let them wreck against it, and Terror screamed under Jopson's feet as all her timbers found the weight and momentum of the pursuit ship bearing down on her when they made contact.
“Fire!”
Tozer’s voice rose above the wind, and it saved Jopson from flinching as every rifle on deck spoke almost in the same instant. The snow around him blazed red from the flash and blast of muzzle fire, tongues of flame licked out at the snow and no sound bounced off the wall of ancient dark planking beside them.
Tozer’s back thumped lightly into Jopson’s chest as his rifle went off, and that was how Jopson found Tozer standing before him, snow melting on the red shoulders of his uniform, driving his body between Jopson and the ship.
Not the ship, Jopson saw, finally, what they were aiming at. Jopson had been taking the time to look at the ship itself, the size of the thing, the impossible height of the masts and bodies of the sails. But Tozer has seen more than he had, and Tozer’s men had fired when they could do the most good.
Jopson swore, caught his balance, got a hand on Tozer’s shoulder to steady him as well in the same motion. Heard Tozer shouting orders to his men. All trained, all drilled, all wonderfully brave. Disciplined and calm in the face of boarders—
Boarders. There were strangers on Terror's decks.
"Back," Tozer snarled, he got his elbow into Jopson's ribs and backed a step, pushing Jopson across the deck and away from the fighting. "Out of the way—"
For the first time in years, Jopson saw faces he did not recognize, hair not cut by the same tiny handful of men, faces lined in patterns unfamiliar to him. Tozer had anticipated them, aimed high because he and his marines had fired into the first wave of boarders as strangers leaped the rail, and dropped down onto Terror.
The shock was almost greater than anything else.
Jopson was unarmed and unarmored and the decks were suddenly full of fighting, crowded with figures he didn’t recognize, weapons he’d never seen, orders called down in a voice he had never heard.
All around him, the red coats of the familiar marines were fighting, swarmed and overrun, driven down where they stood and fought without backing a step.
“Jopson, as long as you’re well enough there, that’s fine. But if you could clear—“
The sound Tozer made as he hit the deck slammed Jopson's focus back, and he turned to find a boarder recovering from driving Tozer to the deck, moving fast, practiced, the bloody edge of a sword calculated to take Jopson at his waist and cut through to bone—
Jopson stepped over Tozer, into the stranger's reach, face to face and close enough to kiss. Jopson’s fist hit bone before the sword got close to him. Hit bone and felt it crack, felt it slide deeper, even as the sound the stranger made gave a good indication of what kind of damage the breaking of a floating rib at that angle, from that close, with the kind of vicious, calculated malice could do.
The stranger staggered, tried to gasp and visibly jolted with panic when nothing happened. Breathless, voiceless, their grip slackening even as Jopson reached, caught the stranger's hand, took the sword, and turned to use. It was too heavy for him, Jopson knew that immediately, he couldn't use this. The weapon was too heavy and too long and it was made for cleaving and breaking bone. But Jopson held the stranger's coat in one fist and carefully drove the length of the bloody sword through the silent and struggling stranger, and felt it come out the other side before he let them fall.
“Jopson—“
Tozer was still alive. Jopson breathed.
“Shouldn’t you be down below?” Jopson said, stooping. Tozer was lying on his back between Jopson’s feet, staring up at him, one arm tucked protectively around a bloody patch on his uniform. “If you’d permit me.”
Jopson took Tozer's rifle from him, his hands unresisting, his mouth a little open.
There were still orders being barked down from the high deck above them. Terror still struggling, unable to answer the helm and sheer away with the massive bulk of the stalker stealing their wind, forcing them down into the water. Their ship had survived long winters in more than one great white ice pack but her timbers growled and barked at this rough treatment. And all the time, more boarders dropped down to fight among Tozer's men, struggling to rise from the deck or still upright and fighting, among the sailors scrambling to shift the yards, clew up the big course sails to give the helmsmen more visibility, racing aloft and ready to cut the lines of the pursuit ship if they could. Strangers on Terror’s decks, carrying swords but no guns.
No guns.
Jopson considered that as he checked the load on Tozer's rifle, raised the barrel, and looked up through the whirling snow and the occasional burst and sizzle of muzzle flare. Jopson listened to the orders being barked down, the way the unknown voice carried but didn’t echo.
Below him, Tozer breathed, a little shakey.
Jopson fired. The voice barking orders broke off, audibly gasped, gave a yell that felt belated and Jopson was already moving, holding the barrel away and letting the butt come down from his shoulder as he stooped low over Tozer again.
"Here, just..." Tozer's voice was uneven, but his hand found Jopson's and dragged it until he could press fresh rounds against Jopson's fingers.
"Thank you," Jopson said, taking them. The reload didn't take much time, and he didn't need to look at his hands or watch the familiar reflexive patterns to arm himself again.
Below him, Tozer almost seemed to speak before subsiding, a little helplessly. Jopson couldn't check on him, couldn't speak, too busy waiting and watching with the butt of the rifle coming back to his shoulder and the comforting weight of the barrel rising in his hand. He found the trigger and he took a fraction of the weight on his finger because the commotion on the deck high above them had already shifted and coalesced. Checking his stance, Jopson paused, breathed, ignored the flurry of snow and the fighting that was closing towards him, he saw the shift in the pattern of the whirling snow before he saw the top of a head. Centred his aim. Waited. Half of everything he'd ever learned was patience.
The rifle spoke and this time there was no scream, just the sound of a body dropping and Jopson breathed out and felt his heart hammer against his ribs. His hands didn’t shake and his breath was a halo of white as he breathed out hard.
The other half of what he'd learned.
His hands were already moving, a pocket full of shot and there was no lack of targets. Jopson realized, taking his eyes from the high rail, that nearly half the red coats were mingled in with the boarders, the neat lines broken and the fighting forced to become general. Spreading across the decks, a few breaking out and making for the helm, directly behind Jopson.
The reload was in and ready and Jopson swung the big gun back into place, took the trigger once the rifle's butt was against his shoulder, fired and saw the muzzle flare reflect in the wide eyes of the stranger who had almost made it into sword range.
Tozer swore, very quietly, as the boarder's blood arced red into the whirling snow before falling.
There were more voices. The deck of the pursuit ship above him was noisy and disordered.
For the first time, Terror bore slightly away, showing a chasm of water between her rail and their side. The stalker had lost something of its deliberately murderous trim.
Jopson stood and reloaded with careful precise movements, looked around the decks, watched the strangers hesitate, look around.
Back a step from where they'd gained.
“Drive them back,” Tozer’s voice came out a little rough, a little less force than usual and it came up from deck level where he still lay, but the marines heard him. They swayed to get their balance, steadied themself at the sound of his voice. “Clear the decks.”
Jopson’s eyes were cast up, waiting with the comfortable weight of the rifle cradled in his arms. The strangers backed another step across Terror, and on the pursuit ship, the decks were busy, bustling, the trim of the vessel tightened and Jopson waited, and watched and when one figure above him in the snow stepped to the rail and a voice of command began to bark down, gesturing furiously, Jopson moved.
He heard Tozer make a muffled groan from below him, pain or anxiety or frustration at being laid out as he was with his men rallying without him, but Jopson had the butt of the rifle in the crook of his shoulder and was leaning into the weight of the big gun, his sights clear through the whirling snow and the flickering light, the glint and shine off raised bare steel in his periphery—
The rifle spoke and the shouted orders ceased and Jopson moved with the vicious speed he'd learned from hunger as a child, opened his right hand and tightened his left and swung the butt of the rifle around in a blind and wordless arc.
A Boarder almost on top of him on his left, already swinging down with those huge swords. The butt of the long gun cracked through bone and Jopson wouldn't let the downstroke of the heavy sword hit Tozer, and braced to catch it instead. Jopson swore, the sword landed with more weight than cut to the stroke, but it drove Jopson down to one knee, and he let the rifle fall.
Both hands free again, and Jopson could see the stranger wasn’t going to breathe again. But that didn’t matter, since he had his off-hand closed in a fist, brought up, ready to swing it down in a hammer blow that wouldn’t touch Jopson.
It would touch Tozer. Jopson froze at the realization. It would slam through Tozer’s skull—
Jopson reached with both hands, all his hunger and all his fury and all the outrage of wasted effort and he closed both hands on the stranger wrist. Closed hard enough he felt the bones of the wrist under the skin. He listened for the crack as they broke. Squeezed and twisted until the jagged pieces under the suddenly too-soft skin between his hands were separate and lost to each other. Jopson put his head down and drove his shoulder forward and flung the stranger away.
Tozer made a small, pained noise below him, and Jopson looked down, worried for some other injury, something Jopson had failed to notice. But nothing had gotten past him. He was crouched down on one knee with one hand down on the snowy decks by Tozer’s head, but they were both whole, surely.
But Tozers eyes were bright, fever bright, and he was pink from the cold and his breath shook.
“Sergeant?”
Jopson watched Tozer try to speak, his breath shaking as he fought to say anything. The too-bright eyes slightly glazed.
“Sergeant Tozer, please—“
There was a shout, a crack, and Jopson looked up, hunching forwards to cover Tozer then realized the strangers weren’t just backing, they were fleeing.
Crozier swept past Jopson, his coat open, caught by the wind, his hair scuffed upright from sleep, one arm extended with his pistol in hand. Blankey passed on his other side and the deck shivered under Jopson’s hand with the thump of booted feet running up the ladders.
The last thing Jopson saw of the strangers was the way they leapt from Terror to their mountain of a ship as it cleaved off, the heavy yards audibly thumping around as she tipped her bow away.
Then the long coats of two of the lieutenants blocked his view as the officers of Terror formed a line between him and the enemy, and Jopson relaxed, heard Tozer take a shakey breath with a trace of a whine in it, and looked back down at him.
“It's a rout,” Jopson said, like a reassurance.
Tozer looked feverish, glazed, but nodded like he understood. His breath showed stark white, too hot, too fast.
Jopson stood and watched as the great form of the pursuing ship bore away, the wind on her beam and the big, old-fashioned rig drawing well.
Terror bobbed and swayed upright, punching back up through the waves and lunging after the huge ship as the water dragged over from its departure pulled at Terror’s bow before the helmsman shifted his bearing, and she grudgingly came back into her line.
Jopson looked down at Tozer.
“Can you stand?” Jopson asked.
“No,” Tozer said without hesitation. His voice was the faintest Jopson had ever heard it
“We’ll get you down below then.”
Jopson got help to carry Tozer. The foc'sil was already in the process of being converted to a triage station for Peddie and McDonald to work, tables in place, benches cleared, everyone, regardless of watch or duties, busy and moving with well-trained purpose to receive the injured or dead. Tozer was laid down and McDonald began his inspection while the rest of the marines were brought down.
All the marines. All of Terror’s crew, of all stations and positions were brought down alive. Jopson felt a moment of hesitation over the way he’d reacted to what seemed to have been a non-lethal encounter.
But when he finally left Tozer to McDonald and stitches, he joined Crozier and his officers on a deck clear of any bodies, any weapon. He looked out at a horizon empty and clear as far as he could see, though dawn had arrived and a flat silver bar away behind them showed the snow did not extend down past the horizon. The late fall sun illuminated the ocean more than the air. The odd, shadowless light showed the snow as radiant, and Jopson could see the horizon any way he chose to look and could see only Erebus, dropping back to assist.
“Nothing left of them,” Crozier told him. “Nor of the ship.”
His officers were grim beside him, Little and Hodgeson mussed from sleep, with their uniform coat thrown on over whatever they slept in and covered over all by their great coats. Irving, the officer of the watch, looked furrious, glaring at the horizon, daring an explanation to present itself.
“You did very well it seems,” Crozier said, eyeing Jopson. “They tell me you killed the captain, the mate, and at least one other officer with Tozer’s rifle.”
Jopson smiled at what was clearly a joke and brushed his hair back. “Did they also tell you how I impaled one, blew another’s head off, and threw a third across the decks after grinding his bones to paste?”
“I’d expect nothing less,” Crozier said. “Why didn’t you cut one in half while you about it? I don’t expect half-measures from you.”
"The opportunity for frivolity didn't present itself, captain.”
He sounded serious but there was a smile there, and something about the unlikelyness of Jopson behaving with such violence seemed to break the tension. The officers smiled and let their shoulders ease. They allowed themselves to be peeled away by the many and varied demands of stabilizing the ship after her brief and brutal encounter. They left Crozier and Jopson watching the band of silver light that edged towards them, the snow finally moving on.
“It took less than two minutes,” Crozier said, a while later.
The sun had nearly reached them, and Jopson stood looking aside, down at the place on the deck where Tozer’s blood had tinted the snow, making it blush.
“Two minutes, captain?”
“The contact woke us, I’ve never heard a scream like the one she let out when that thing touched her. I’ve never heard a ship so perfectly enraged before. But from that time to her breaking away. It wasn’t much. You did well, Jopson.”
“I’ll remember to cut one in half next time, captain.”
Jopson startled, only slightly, when he felt Crozier's hand on his shoulder. “Tell me about it later.” He said under his breath. “Get below. You look frozen. Get that leg seen to.”
Jopson had been trying to hide the limp. But Crozier knew how he moved, and even if Jopson knew he could fool most people, he never really expected to fool Crozier.
He went below, patiently waiting his turn for McDonald or Peddie to see him. He sat next to Tozer as he dozed, ate his breakfast, and they stayed below.