6. Mustard Gas

Bitz traveled the army camp as if he owned it, a long tube bound to his back. A red cap, as large as his head, shut it tightly. Yellow icons on the sides signed that this was dangerous.

As he tapped on the commander’s door, someone else tapped on his back. As he turned around, the tube was stolen off of his back.

He already knew who’d done it.

“Bilara, dear, don’t work against me.” She stood nearby, holding the tube in her paws like a baby.

“I will not allow it. I just will not allow it.”

“If I don’t make these inventions, someone else will. Give it to me.” He stepped forward; she stepped backward. Her tail bumped against a cage. Hastily assembled from pieces of metal and old guns, it contained a scared antilope.

“It is forbidden. The Treaty of Haggel forbids the use of chemical weapons during a war. Ha! Now you must—”

“Give here!” yelled Bitz. A row of soldiers stopped marching to look at him. “Or I arrest you for theft.”

“I am your wife. And I ask you, with all my heart, to stop this madness. Someone else will invent a poisonous gas, some day, sure—but at least you won’t have blood on your paws!”

“What does it matter? A bullet, a bomb, a gas? Dead is dead.”

Bilara’s mouth hung wide open, naked and immobile. The tube of poisonous gas dropped from her grasp. Bitz focused only on saving this invention and presenting it to the commander unscathed.

“And you ask why everyone hates the Freethieves,” the antilope mumbled.

Bilara burst into tears. She ran carelessly past the sharp edges of the cage, sustaining several abrasions that soon started to bleed. Her departure left a trail of blood drops through the army camp. She did not slow down.

“Quite a big mouth, you have,” Bitz snapped at the antelope. “First Islandseeker, puh. Worthless fighter, more like it!”

He pushed his snout against that of Dannis’. Thin bars were all that separated them.

“Thanks to my genius brain, we don’t even need those islands anymore.”

“Then why attack?”

“Because the eagles told us some annoying ship was following them. That our enemy suddenly also had enough food for all. We don’t like that, now, do we?”

Dannis scraped his antlers past the steel. “I should’ve known, dumb dumb dumb,” he mumbled. “The eagles were also on the wrong side during the First Conflict. They still own the Windgustwing and still use it for the wrong things!”

“Wrong?” Bitz smiled. “If the eagles hadn’t made all those islands in the first place, we would have had a Great Starvation a century ago. Millions of animals would have died if guayn didn’t accidentally exist. You Godesweets … always drawing the wrong conclusions.”

The door opened. The commander himself stepped outside.

“Ah, if that isn’t my favorite Jurad!”

“Yessir! The gas is done. It just needs to be … tested.”

The Pricecat shrugged. “Battles are frequent here. We’ll test it next time.”

Bitz shook his head. “A scientist does not guess. He tests, he finds proof, he demands evidence. I can’t live with releasing this gas unknowingly. For all we know, it might endanger our own troops.”

Dannis scraped the metal again. “You can live with gassing others, but not leaving an invention untested!?”

“Well, well,” Bitz said with a grin. “It seems we found our guinea pig.”

Dannis’ expression darkened. He walked away, tot he back wall of the cage. He said something, but only nonsense came out.

“Bring him to an empty room that’s tightly sealed,” Bitz said. “I’ll administer just the slightest bit of gas and we’ll see if the antelope likes it.”

Bystanders helped carry the cage inside, to an unused room at the back of the commander’s quarters. Dannis kicked, and bit, and yelled, but his antlers were tight and the cage was too small to stand.

Once inside the room, they let Dannis out of the cage. They went to the adjacent room, where they could study him through a window, and locked the door.

Dannis ran in circles and pushed his body against every crack in the wall.

There was no escape from this room.

“And the ammunition?” the commander asked.

“All is well, sir commander. We have piles of nitrate already, more than we even need at the moment, and our machines are increasingly efficient and flawless. We’re storing it all in the large storage building not far from here. I must recommend, commander, that we use it soon. It’s quite flammable. Destroy the enemy with a thousand bombs!”

Bitz removed the door handle and pushed the gas cylinder into the hole. He carefully placed tape to seal the entire opening, ensuring no gas leakage.

“Bitz, dear friend, I’ve talked to our highest commander. He insists I give you an even better position in the camp. Maybe … maybe you’ll be the first Jurad allowed to be a commander.”

The beaver fidgeted with his glasses, and cleaned them over and over, as he enjoyed this compliment. He’d proven everyone wrong! Soon he’d be the most important scientist in all of Doveland.

Then he was interrupted by a window bursting to pieces and a penguin and parrot storming the room.

The Pricecat immediately took his weapon between his jaws: a gun that fired by biting on it. He shot the parrot. The bird twirled in the air to dodge it, then pecked the enemy’s fur like an army of sharp daggers. The commander screamed and put out his nails.

Bitz let the penguin come for hem, then opened the door at the last second.

Pin rolled into the room with Dannis.

Bitz quickly closed and locked the door, but Dannis pushed his antlers into the opening. The wooden door crashed into his head and broke pieces of his antlers—

But it stayed open a crack.

Dannis had assumed Bitz would not release the gas when the door was open.

Dannis had underestimated the scientist’s madness.

As Pin scrambled to his feet and reached for Dannis, Bitz slammed the cap off the cylinder. The commander had pushed the parrot against the wall and spread his jaws to take a bite.

The gas spread through the room. Nearly invisible, sometimes a green or yellow ghost. It smelled faintly of mustard. Even before it touched them, their bodies reacted instinctively, shivering and pulsing to tell you to run, jump, fly, anything to make the gas go away.

Bitz pulled the commander out of the room.

The gas hit Pin’s face. He groaned and choked as he fell to the floor, his fins searching for support.

Dannis took a deep breath, shut his mouth, and dove through the gas. His front paws landed around Pin. By kicking backward, the penguin slid from the room, away from the largest fog of gas. The parrot finished it by carrying Pin with his claws, a weight he didn’t know he could carry.

There they fell on the dirt littered with sharp stones. Smoke rose from the room as if someone had burned the place.

But it didn’t really rise, like smoke should. It stayed close to the floor, drifting and lingering.

They studied Pin. His skin had been burned in many places, as if a dozen bullets had grazed him in a firefight. But he’d worn his helmet, as always. It had prevented the gas from hitting any part of his head.

Pin was alive, and in pain.

Perhaps not much longer. A rain of firestones clattered onto that same helmet.

At the next street, an entire storage full of nitrate had exploded.