All the while, rebellion from within threatened to rend the fabric of reason further, as the prisoners of the stone colony find ways to worm into the melee. Those who felt the edifice trembling and heard the roar of the first explosion raised a mighty din, clanking shackles against their cell doors and lifting harsh outcries to the heavens. As the bombardment was launched, those few captives walking free for whatever reason - on kitchen detail, cleaning the officers' quarters, perhaps being guided through the halls on their way to the stocks - suddenly, as if of one mind, surged up against their captors, as if they, all at once, had seen the common good in rioting, the mere hope of being one of the lucky ones to escape being a morsel tasty enough to make them risk life and limb.

Inside the fortress, it wasn't long before men were running wild, half in and half out of chains, shrieking madly as they raced down the corridors, breaking the catches on dungeon doors where they could and releasing other prisoners, until the halls were streaming with rabid masses on the loose.

As the wave of frenzied bodies surged towards the doors, and upward into the stairwells, clamoring for fresh air and liberty, those zealous few at the head of every pack were mowed down in cold blood - but the tide pushed on, rolling over and around and through, swarming the overwhelmed grenadiers. And in the melee, somewhere in the midst of all the sounds of bones cracking and the moist suction of flesh being torn asunder by lead, some of the rifles found their way into the hands of men with chains and primitive vendettas.

At the first signs of trouble, no alarm had been sounded - it had never been ordered, perhaps because the only person who had foreseen the need was now distanced from barking commands by a tremendous wall of rubble. The crackle of brick coming apart should have been enough, though - at least it was sufficient to send soldiers spilling out of their barracks and guards scrambling to their guns… fat lot of good it did them, though, poor fools, as they found themselves overrun by prisoners with far more passion for the sport.

The convicts made efficient use of whatever came handy - table legs, barrel hoops, even their own shackles - to arm themselves in the feeding frenzy for their captors' blood.

One guard was pacing a slave, pushing him ahead down an isolated corridor at the instant the explosion rocked the building. For a moment, both were frozen with fear, crouched slightly and staring at the ceiling, watching tiny streams of mortar dust rain from the corners. Before long, the rumble of voices had risen like the saw blade howl of swarming killer bees, buzzing through the walls and setting them a-chatter. The slave, sharper by a mere fraction of a moment, jumped to attention, tugging his arms down behind him and catching the guard's hand, knocking his rifle away.

Faced with the option of going for the gun or cuffing the slave across the temple, the shock-addled guard opted for the former. Provided that diversion, it was an easy matter for the slave to step over his own hands and bring them around to the front, so that when the soldier came up from retrieving his weapon, it was a mouthful of chain-wrapped fist that met him.

The well-timed strike served to send the rifle flying again, and in the ensuing scramble of grunts and flailing fists, the pair wrestled themselves into a corner, each grappling for whatever hold he could get on the stock or barrel. The outcome remained questionable until the very last, until it was decided finally by a lucky turn, a fortuitous squirm that brought the end of the barrel near the slave's grubbing fingertips. His features puckered with the effort of holding back a shriek, a blade's blunted edge sawed raggedly through his own fingertips as the slave rammed the bayonet end through the guard's throat.

As the guard's screams gurgled to a hoarse whisper then silence, the slave slumped across his chest, indifferent as his hand fell into the pool of welling blood that poured from the guard's throat. Seconds later, though, spurred by a blend of panic and fervor, he was up again, plodding down the corridor towards the sounds of riot as quickly as his leaden limbs would carry him, wrenching the blood-smudged bayonet free and discarding the rifle along the way.

Some of the prisoners used less conventional methods to arm themselves. In a moment of lopsided comedy, one of the rebels - a stout man with the look of a drunkard in his swollen features - positioned himself outside a barracks door with a heavy brass spittoon. Hefting it over his head, he bashed each soldier across the back of his skull as they streamed past him.

Had he been taller, the ploy might have been more effective. As it was, he was only able to crack a few bones before being overtaken, and once he was skewered on the end of yet another bayonet, the troops moved on.

By this time, the inevitable fires had been started, and smoke crept not on kitten feet, but in giant ostrich plumes, billowing through the nethermost halls. Some of the rioters used the fumes for cover, and some simply did not see the wreckage into which they wandered, risking their lives to sneak in and steal guns from the embers of the armory - surely, had they but seen the remains of still-burning timbers side by side with upset barrels of powder, they would, none of them, have been so foolhardy.

Ah, but the day still belonged to the revolt. Weakened by fear, the crack troops of Kula Bricusse dispersed helter-skelter throughout the fortress. They had thought themselves impervious, and yet, here was the one thing, the unexpected thing, coming to pass.

But its occasion was undeniable - stacks of uniformed men were already lying dead along the corridor walls, their shakos tipped sideways on bleeding skulls, their cheeks pressed into pools of the gore. Here it was, the last circumstance they would ever have predicted, and a fate so unpredictable as to be unthinkable - their charges had developed a collective backbone, and where they had always surpassed the troops in numbers, they now also exceeded the soldiers' enthusiasm.

That some of the rebels' numbers also lay dead only spurred them on - "in the name of my fallen comrade" became the common battle cry as they charged down the halls, waving platters and other scavenged dishes as shields, and spears fashioned from broken-off chair legs. They had no need of a motto - it only served to reinforce the idea that they were on the side of right as they barreled their way through body after body. These men would be prisoners no more, never again, for they were aroused by the taste of freedom, an appetite stronger than any bestial bloodlust.

The tide turned quickly, and like a pitcher tipping forward, once it's begun, it can hardly be stopped - all that was left was for the water to run itself out.

Still, Rohaj knew a few moments of panic. But of course he did - he was still locked fast in the stocks while all Bedlam was breaking out around him.

His stomach lurched uneasily when first he felt the structure list, and as the barking and growling of chaos erupted all around him, his noon meal and the bile of mortal panic threatened, going so far as to bite at the base of his throat before he swallowed it back with a grimace. He watched, helpless, as a charge of deranged animals, grizzled and in canvas tatters like himself, spewed from the belly of the fortress onto the plaza. The first of their ragtag ranks were summarily plowed over by a volley of shot from fusiliers determined to stand their ground; among the dead and dying were the faces of men with whom Rohaj had spoken on occasion, a few of them better known than others, but his only remorse at seeing them stumble past with limbs shredded by lead pellets was that it meant he would be chained up that much longer.

As it was, the only pains he suffered were those of indignity, as his protruding posterior was buffeted by running, unseen figures, and was even speared once by what he supposed to be a knife's tip.

"Let me loose, brother," he wheezed at a passing mutineer, with his most earnest attempt at forming his expression into something approaching a feeling of kinship, and his voice into the nearest approximation of sincerity he could manage. "Turn me loose, and I can help ye fight." He punctuated this last with an enthusiastic nod, and as an afterthought, balled his fist and shook it in defiance.

The man paused long enough to give the matter some consideration. He pondered the chains holding Rohaj's arms behind his back and the padlock securing the stocks, with a glint of puzzlement in his eyes as he tried to work out their mechanics. The moment he stopped still was a moment too long, however - there was the crack of ignition, a flash of powder, and when Rohaj opened his eyes, half the man's face was gone and gobbets of gore clung to Rohaj's cheek. As the useless husk collapsed backwards into a heap of blood and bones, Rohaj offered a one-eyed grimace and groaned from the side of his mouth, huffing in a vain attempt to blow away some of the meat that clung to his skin.

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Meanwhile, the Oudjda Azra was still on the move, jinking around behind an obstacle course formed by the few other ships lined up along the pier - supply barges all of them, not a man of war among the lot. Darting from cover to cover, the Azra more closely resembled a hummingbird skimming a garden top than a behemoth of wood and steel plowing through water. Her men fired away sporadically while her rudder steered her clear of the return fire from the fort. Clearly, it would only be a matter of time before the fortress had spent what remained of its shot. Most had been lost in the first explosion, and what remained was being wasted on a small, taunting ship - the equivalent of a sleeper swatting repeatedly at the gnat buzzing in his ear, only to leave himself, in the end, with a reddened cheek and the pest to drone away for play another day.

The most glorious of coup d'états often begin as the most asinine, foolhardy of risks, only elevated to the status of brilliance when the bets are lucky enough to pay off. This was to be just such a case.

This mighty bastion, home to legitimized slave trade, a monument to the brotherhood of commerce and captivity, and the cornerstone of fiscal stability for Kula Bricusse for nearly a century, was equipped to withstand the slings and arrows of an approaching army, not the pinprick of a single ship - but down came the mighty stone giant, overpowered by a vessel small enough and daring enough to slip through its armaments like a thread through the eye of the needle.

Like serpents writhing from the poor pits of hell, the prisoners and what few guards remained alive scrambled into the open air, clutching at their throats and gasping for breath as their frantic bodies spilled onto the plaza.. Only a few of the lower floors were by now engulfed in flame, but the effect was something like that of setting off a gas canister in a bee hive. Captive and captor alike were equal now in running from a common enemy - the plumes of noxious smoke that billowed up from the bowels of the fortress.

Those with the presence of mind to plot an escape route were crawling along the outer ledges, making their way to the towers on either side; those were yet untouched by flames, but the uncertain lurching of the structure itself made the journey a perilous one. Far more often, however, panic sent men running for their lives, over the parapet and plunging to almost certain death in the waters below.

High above the din of panic and bombs bursting, a a single voice rasped its plea for help, but that plea fell on deaf ears as men scuttled like insects to get away from the doomed fortress innards.

Rohaj made a pathetic picture, his body sagging in the stocks, motionless save in those moments when the effort in those pitiable cries drew his shoulders up and sent his grizzled jowls flapping. His weatherbeaten features were smudged with the ash that drifted through the air; bits of it clung to his eyelids and turned to a muddy paste on his cheeks as the smoke forced tears to stream.

Layers of dirt masked skin ablush with heat and frustration, and around his throat had begun to form a ring of deep scarlet, where he had rubbed his neck raw in his struggles with the wooden device. The heat from within the burning fortress had begun to come up through the stones beneath his feet, as well. He imagined that this must be akin to the sensation of being flayed alive.

"Someone get me out of here!" he tried to bellow, but the words came out an awkward jumble of grunts and squeaks.

The belly of the fortress rumbled with indigestion as another small explosion sent some of the men on the plaza toppling over the parapet.

Eyes wide with terror, Rohaj straightened in the stocks. His gaze darted wildly, searching through the morass of bodies streaming past him. Again, he squawked for help, but so strained was his voice that it came out no better than a forlorn mewling.

"Patience, brother… ahm workin' as fast as ah ken," came a voice like a song, whispered against the shell of his right ear. It was then that he heard the tiny clink of metal picks and felt the presence of a body just behind his shoulder.

"All in good time… ah cahn't attend t'every detail et once, ya know…"

That voice, that marvelous familiar voice… Rohaj gave silent thanks that his eyes were already a watery mess, and that the tears of relief he began to shed would likely go unnoticed. One brief sob timed itself perfectly with the passing of another thick cloud; his hiccup developed into a fit of coughing, which earned him a hearty pat on the back.

A slender hand swam into view, clutching an oily rag. It was followed soon after by an arm in threadbare tweed, and a soft, round shoulder, then by the face of a well-known boy.

"Good ta see ya, Cornelius, lad" Rohaj rasped, once his hacking had subsided. His eyes lit slightly on speaking the name, and he tried for a significant wink, but the effort was too much for him, and his features instead contorted themselves into a gruesome leer.

The lad approached and quickly swiped a line of phlegm from around Rohaj's mouth, then pocketed the rag and stopped for a moment, staring at the old pirate with an inane smile.

Cornelius had fresh, young features, soot-streaked but eager, and with a ready, if slightly buck-toothed, smile. He was slight of build, an indication of a young man in his sixteenth or seventeenth summer. His hair was chocolate colored, and coarsely cropped above his collar, as though it had been trimmed with a pocket knife, but the hair on his chin had yet to make its debut; instead, beneath all the grime lay a complexion like new peaches, not yet worn (as Rohaj's was) by storm and sea salt.

"Don't just stand there, boy," Rohaj jibed. His tone was gruff, but there was a confident sort of teasing in his eyes. "Turn me loose, I tell ya, turn me loose."

Cornelius threw his head back and laughed at that, but straight away returned to the task of wrestling with the hinges that held the stocks' upper bar in place.

"I've a surprise for ye," Cornelius mused, as nimble fingers twisted this way and that.

Rohaj could only see the boy in his periphery; he strained to watch what was happening, but was rewarded only with glimpses of a slouched shoulder.

A soldier spun past, clenched in combat with a prisoner; it was unclear which had the advantage, as one was bleeding profusely from the temple and the other suffered from a swollen lip and a gusher of scarlet streaming from one nostril. Still, the boy stayed relaxed, unflappable, intent on his work, even when the men toppled over the parapet and their cries of anger turned into screams that slowly ebbed away.

Seconds later, his focus paid off - with a click, a snap, and a gasped "Ah, success!", the weight of a plank was lifted from Rohaj's back. It felt like the burden of Atlas removed; sensation flooded through his shoulders and wrists as the blood began to pump freely again. A bit lightheaded, he lurched backwards as he lifted himself out of the frame.

"No time for that," Cornelius quipped, catching his elbow. He waited a moment, until Rohaj was steady, then released his arm and finished tucking his picks into the breast pocket of a tattered waistcoat.

"Come on, pull yourself together old man."

This jab elicited a wry grin from Rohaj, but he showed good humor, at least until he glanced down and noticed what was surely his companion's "surprise".

"We can't go over the side with that!" Rohaj spat, glancing between the parapet, the rope hanging at Cornelius' belt, and the wooden chest at his feet.

"Then we'll have to take the stairs down."

Cornelius kicked lightly at the chest, as though to prove its solidity. It was a large strongbox, but if one boy full of energy and youthful zeal could drag it, then two strong men should be able to carry it easily enough.

"But we can't leave this behind."

Sinking into a crouch beside the chest, the lad draped his arm over the curve of the lid, and with his free hand, tapped at the crest carved and gilded in the center, just over the lock - the official state seal of Kula Bricusse.

"That what I think it is?" Rohaj grumbled. A reliable dose of greed kept him from rejecting the offering outright, but he remained unmoved, his disdainful grimace seemingly cemented in place.

At the query, Cornelius nodded, but his features took on a gravity beyond their years.

Rohaj groaned, one eye closing, the corner of his mouth curling. That look told him everything, and he knew the boy was right - the chest would be coming with them, and whatever hindrance it presented to their escape would be worth the risk.

In the few moments they'd been deliberating over the fate of the chest, the smuggler and his protégé seemed to have forgotten the mayhem erupting all around. But it found them. A flurry of ribbon cockades, the flash of a brass epaulet, and a few shreds of scorched wool tackled Rohaj from the side. He had the wind soundly knocked from his chest, first by the impact, then by the stocks that broke his sideways momentum by so thoughtfully rising up to meet his shoulder.

Pinned against the block of wood by the weight of one determined grenadier, Rohaj could never generate enough force to thrust the fellow back. And from what he could see at the edge of his vision, Cornelius was busy repelling a pest suited to his size.

No doubt inspired by the rush of bloodshed all around him (he hadn't realized his heart was pounding so loudly before now), or perhaps by the possibility of all his plans dying helpless on the vine before they had come fully to fruition, Rohaj dredged up some trifle of energy, enough to turn his torso and drive his knee upward into the soldier's groin.

Luckily for his attacker, he missed the most vital pieces of flesh and muscle, but the impact won him a great enough advantage with shock and surprise that he was able to push the fellow away. The soldier stumbled back a pace, giving Rohaj just enough room to swing on him.

Rohaj, you see, was wearing manacles - they'd been placed on his wrists for the journey up top, and never removed, even after he was locked into the stocks. They were composed of two heavy iron cuffs, attached by a chain of the same iron. The chain was hell to lug around, but long enough that it didn't seem to hinder his reach.

So you see, when he clapped his hands together, his wrists formed a convenient bludgeon. Rohaj reared back, curling his arms over one shoulder, then let fly with a mighty swing. He might not have been a strong man, but he was a man of some bulk, the kind of bulk that likened him to a steam train when he was angry and had the right amount of momentum behind him.

When he belted the soldier in the chops, he heard distinctly the crackle of bone breaking - the sound was crisp and satisfying, penetrating even the noise of the riot. With blood spurting from the corner of his mouth, the man went reeling, spiraling like a top in its last revolutions, until at last he landed in a heap on the plaza stones.

Before Rohaj had a moment's pause to enjoy his triumph, the cry of another attacker set off alarm bells in his head, and he turned just in time to see Cornelius charging at him with a saber raised above his head.

Only for a split-second did fear grip him, blighting reason and sending his heart lurching crazily against the inside of his chest.

And then he realized what the boy was about, and calling upon his last reserve of adrenaline, he swung to the side once more, throwing the chain over the top of the stocks, stretching his arms as wide as he could… and ducking. With a deranged shriek, Cornelius chopped down through the center of the chain, severing the links in a hail of sparks.

Rohaj fell backwards then, landing on his rump, but when he recovered moments later, he was bounding towards the chest, chains swinging freely behind him. Cornelius had tucked the saber into his belt and stopped to scoop up a discarded rifle, which he handed off to Rohaj.

Between the pair of them, they grabbed the handles on either side of the chest and made for the staircase on the far side of the plaza, to fight their way down through the tidal wave of humanity determined to come in the opposing direction. The iron cuffs and the butt of the rifle made for handy clubs, and so Rohaj lead the way, clearing a path for the boy to follow behind him.

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Some minutes later, a small dinghy appeared, bobbling out from beneath what remained of the pier and fighting the choppy surf to reach the Oudjda Azra. Inside were the figures of a teenage boy and a burly man, one rowing furiously, the other barking orders. A few other small row boats trailed alongside them, other prisoners eager to sign on as new recruits. Together, they formed a pygmy armada that finally pulled alongside the Azra and spilled its contents into the much larger ship.

Their leaving was spectacular. Shells exploding in midair created a fireworks show of orange and red in the nighttime sky. Tangerine peels and electric canary feathers were reflected on the water, playfully illuminating the bodies floating there - some alive, some more fortunate - all against a backdrop of mortar and brick crumbling into the ocean as the fortress collapsed.

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As the Oudjda Azra disappeared in the distance, and was soon little more than a shadow on the night horizon, another small boat emerged at the end of the fortress nearest the beach, from the mouth of a nondescript brick-lined tunnel that might otherwise have been mistaken for a sewage pipe.

This boat held a single man, slight of frame but with muscle like steel cords peeking through the rags where his fine linen shirt sleeves had once been. His countenance was somber, and might have been mistaken for nonchalance, but for a hardened glint in his eyes that defied even the darkness of nightfall.

Harville suffered little remorse for the men he'd left behind. He had convinced himself that there was nothing he could have done to save them anyway, and he would be the first to admit that he didn't think many of them worth saving in the first place. If there were survivors, they would find their way to the beach eventually, and then to the town, where they would be cared for and likely treated as heroes.

He, however, had a different purpose. He cruised along the shoreline, headed for the harbor and a larger ship, but his mind was already out on the open ocean and occupied with vengeance.