The Sea Peoples

by S. M. Stirling

  He was falling, into something infinite and soft and full of comfort.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  OFF PEARL HARBOR

  AUPUNI O HAWAIʻI

  (KINGDOM OF HAWAIʻI)

  NOVEMBER 29TH

  CHANGE YEAR 46/2044 AD

  King Kalaˉkaua looked on soberly as the first flat thudding crack of a ship’s catapult sounded to the north, shading his eyes with a broad hand against the bright morning sunlight.

  It was too far to see the blur of a bolt or roundshot, though the flaming cover of a napalm shell would have been visible. Órlaith reflected that he’d probably been on ships of his own navy that saw action against corsairs and pirates; she’d been on Feldman’s Tarshish Queen when it shot its way out of San Francisco Bay a few months ago, against Haida raiders and Korean warships just like these.

  “This is . . . a lesson,” the Hawaiian monarch said, adjusting to the gentle pitch and roll of the Sea-Leopard’s quarterdeck with the ease of a lifetime’s practice. “We could not have fought off this attack by ourselves.”

  One of his commanders stirred, and he looked at the man. “Yes, General Alika, perhaps if we had not welcomed the Montivallans and Japanese the Koreans would not have attacked us. But perhaps they would—this fleet, this army, came in the same week that the others arrived. It must have been in preparation for months, traveling towards us for a long time.”

  He shrugged his broad taut-muscled shoulders, most of which showed beyond the straps of his light cuirass.

  “And if we let fear of attack stop us from making friendships as we please, are we a sovereign kingdom, a free people, or the slaves of those who master us with threats?”

  “I am sorry, Your Majesty,” the scar-faced older man said. “It is just . . .”

  He nodded towards the pillars of smoke coming from Oahu to the north. There was a faint reek of it now, a somehow sour scent of fires burning things not meant for the flames.

  “Yes, much wealth won by sweat and work has been lost and will have to be rebuilt. And the blood of our people—I hope most were able to escape to the mountains, but every hour we wait more will be killed or worse.”

  Órlaith gave him a sympathetic nod. She knew that Montivallan soldiers and sailors would die in the coming fight, or be maimed and go halt or blind or handless all their lives afterwards, and it hurt. Yet they were all here carrying blades, herself with them and sharing their peril. They were here because they wished it—for honor’s sake, or for their given oaths; for a lord they loved or comrades dearer than life who they would not see go into danger alone, or an abstract sense of duty, or any number of causes down to simple callow boredom with endless days spent staring up a plow-horse’s arse or hauling nets.

  When you took up the spear you gave yourself up to the sacrifice, as one who went to the Dark Mother consenting and with open eyes. She herself made that choice every day.

  But Kalaˉkaua knew that his folk were meeting death and fire in their own homes, and that his land lay waste beneath an invader’s heel. That had to be hard, hard. The lord and the land and the folk were one, and the lord of the land was bound to the spirits who embodied both. In a very real sense, for a true ruler harm to the people or land was like a blade in your own flesh; even the thought of it made her skin crawl. She exchanged a glance with Reiko and thought she saw the same knowledge in her dark eyes. They inclined their heads to each other, in a communion no others they knew could share outside the closest of their own blood kin.

  Her left hand gripped the hilt of the Sword of the Lady. That sense of communion with her followers was there, the knowing that felt as every one of them was a presence, and the calculus of force and speed and wind and wave that moved them. And she could sense what Reiko bore—a storm of fire and air locked in steel by a will beyond that of humankind.

  More faintly, more diffuse . . .

  Wrath, she thought, glancing at Kalaˉkaua again.

  Power and wrath, an anger that could grind the bones of earth to dust and raise the sea to moving walls. He was a kindly man, she judged, but his were a folk as wild in war as they were easygoing in everyday life, a people whose ancestors had hunted shark for sport, diving naked in the waters with only spears for weapons, and sailed the breadth of the Mother Ocean in their canoes undaunted by typhoon and raw solitary distance. The Powers that shaped and guarded them were likewise strong and wild.

  Kaˉne and Pele and mighty Kuˉ of the Battles walk today.

  And over the enemy, a flat black louring, like a window into . . . not blackness, not as night or even the interior of an unlighted cave was black. A doorway into nothing, into a world at the end of all things that could drink the death of a universe and spend eternities chewing the stale tag ends of thought about . . . nothing but itself. Her father had described that to her in his tales of the Prophet’s War, but the words . . . didn’t have the metallic taste of it, the sense of utter motionless cold and a nullity that lived and hated and hungered.

  “Orrey?” Heuradys said softly.

  Órlaith started and shook her head. Her liege knight’s eyes were a lionlike amber, but just for an instant there was a hint of gray, and a crested helm and a bitter spear and a shield marked with a Gorgon’s head. That was the Lady she worshipped as her second mother had before her, the wise and crafty Defender of the City whose emblems were the owl and the olive.

  “Things are a bit raw right now, Herry,” she said, equally softly. “Normally I’m fine with leaving the Otherworld on the other side of its Veil, and dealing with the light of common day. But not this day, and that’s part of my work too.”

  “Nice to know you’re not just a pretty face,” Heuradys said, and Órlaith grinned thanks for the little jest.

  Naysmith stiffened. “What the devil?” she said, looking at the latest message from the kite-observer and then through her own glass. “They’re not opening out into line! They’re all heading straight for us! That’s . . . suicide.”

  She turned to the signaler. “Flanking ships advance. Captain Edwards, take in sail. If they’re willing to stick their heads into a sack, we’ll oblige them.”

  • • •

  CRACK!

  Sea-Leopard heeled under the recoil of her broadside of twenty-four-pounder catapults. The roundshot slashed out, invisible except as blurred streaks, and the Korean warship coming in on the port quarter seemed to stagger in the water. Órlaith could hear the crunching sound of the cast-steel globes racking into the timbers of the enemy ship. Splinters flew skyward amid screams. At least it wasn’t napalm shell or firebolt; two more of the enemy ships burned like torches not far behind them and sent the black slanting pillars of their funeral pyres into the sky, but this one was too close to risk setting it afire. Pumps were jetting water over the Sea-Leopard’s decks anyway, and down the thin sheet metal that guarded the wooden hull. Special squads waited with the foam-gear that could extinguish chemical fire.

  More screams of pain and mortal terror came from the waist of the Korean craft, where several of the heavy metal balls smashed through the gunwales and went through ranks of men kneeling behind them. Men too tightly packed to dodge even if they’d had time.

  What flew skyward from those impacts wasn’t splinters, except from a few of the polearms the soldiers carried. It was parts of men, and if you looked closely you could see that they splashed as much as breaking.

  “For what we are about to receive . . .” some Christian with a sense of humor said.

  The metallic twangs from the enemy ship were fewer in number; six, she thought. And subtly different, probably because the engineering tradition behind their design was. Natural law set the limits for what the students of the mechanic arts could do, but styles differed from nation to nation within those bounds. The massive fabric of the ship shuddered a bit, and something flashed by overhead too fast to see. Bits fell—severed ends of rope, and a block-a
nd-tackle that caught in the netting overhead. Shouts sounded harsh as orders were barked and the topmen cleared the rigging above, with their clasp knives in their teeth.

  Then the frigate’s broadside cut loose again; she could see in her mind the crews lunging up and down at the handles of the cocking mechanisms below, and the grunts as the shot were levered into the troughs. The enemy ship was only a few hundred yards away now, within long bowshot, and there was an explosion of spray and splinters as the heavy metal struck at the waterline. The bow jerked down as water flooded in, rammed home by the forward momentum of the ship. Then the thick stay-lines that held the foremast in place and transmitted the force of the wind to the hull snapped, writhing across the deck like thigh-thick whips with bone-cracking force.

  The tall mast was a composite, smaller timbers fitted and bound together with shrunk-on hoops, not a single trunk like the Sea-Leopard’s Sitka spruce sparage. It was nearly as strong, but when it failed . . . as its writhing bend showed it was about to do . . .

  “Duck!” Órlaith shouted crisply; petty officers were echoing it all the way down the hundreds of feet of deck.

  She suited action to words by knocking down her visor and going to one knee with her shield up.

  The enemy ship’s mast shattered like one of the fabled bombs of the ancient world. The huge strain on the length of it turned into energy in motion as splinters and chunks scythed outward. Heuradys stepped in front of her, as several of Reiko’s samurai did with her; the Tennoˉ merely looked down for a moment and put an armored forearm in front of her face as she knelt.

  The mast cracked like a whip as it disintegrated too; like an endless succession of whips, in fact. About a second later something went bang! into Órlaith’s shield, hard enough to rock her backward. Whatever it had been went over the side spinning hard enough to look like a disk as it flew. There were screams and curses from spots where sharp wood hit flesh or blunt pieces struck with bone-cracking force, and more purposeful shouts as stretcher-bearers and surgeon’s assistants hurried to bandage and rush the wounded below to the lazaretto and the waiting doctors.

  They all came back to their feet afterwards; Kalaˉkaua had a bleeding gash on his right forearm, but he worked the fingers to make sure nothing important had been damaged, and submitted impatiently as a Montivallan medic dusted it with antiseptic powder and bound it up tightly.

  “My apologies, Your Highness,” Admiral Naysmith said. “I didn’t anticipate this.”

  “You couldn’t, Admiral,” Órlaith said. “It’s suicidal, in the usual military . . . naval . . . terms. But the enemy are playing a different and longer game. I wish I’d realized that before we started. How long?”

  Naysmith glanced to both sides. “Half an hour before the flanking elements grind their way through the enemy screens; possibly as little as fifteen minutes, possibly as much as three-quarters of an hour. Until then we’re on our own except for what comes up from behind us.”

  That was the armed merchantmen crammed with troops. Alan Thurston was back there . . . probably wishing he was up here.

  “We’ll just have to break the trap open from the inside, then,” Órlaith said cheerfully.

  Two more Korean ships came on, parting to pass the sinking one to either side; another was approaching from the same angle on the starboard bow. None of them stopped to pick up men from the dismasted ship as it listed to port and went down by the head. It might not go all the way down, since wooden ships were inherently buoyant and very hard to sink, but it would be awash quite soon.

  Captain Edwards barked orders, and the hands at the wheel turned it slightly as the watch-officer pointed with her cane. The same commands set the deck-crews hauling and ran up from the mast-captains to the tops, and buntlines adjusted the hang and cant of the sails. Everything was stripped down to a minimum, fighting-sail as it was called, just the biggest in each the four tiers. The strong linen canvas glistened silvery in the bright sun, wet down enough to make its fibers swell to catch the least breeze, as well as making it less—a little less—likely to catch fire.

  One of the many joys of naval battle, Órlaith thought. Great swaths of burning cloth dropping on your head.

  “We’re only going to get one broadside on each side off when they come in, ma’am,” Edwards warned the admiral.

  Naysmith’s hand clenched on the hilt of her cutlass, probably without thinking of it. She’d fought on river barges as a young ensign during the campaign up the Columbia and Snake during the Prophet’s War, as well as against pirates and Haida corsairs since, all along the misty forested archipelagoes that stretched down the coast of Alaska towards Kamchatka.

  “They’re sacrificing their fleet for a crack at this ship,” she said. “Over to you, Captain. This is a ship-to-ship engagement now.”

  She gave a bleak smile. “Ship to ships, rather.”

  He nodded, gave a considering look at the approaching ships, and said:

  “Load grape. Guns to fire as they bear.” Then to Órlaith: “Your Highness, if you’d care to take command of your meinie?”

  That meant her personal followers; it would also be safer off the quarterdeck, though nowhere was really safe in a boarding action—even going and sitting on the ballast down by the keel increased your chance of drowning. Órlaith nodded and made herself take breaths that were deeper and a little faster than reflex would have made them, building a reserve against extremity. The other monarchs and their personal guards silently formed up with her as she clattered down the companionway from the quarterdeck to the break beneath it, where the long sweep to the forecastle began.

  Not many heads turned her way as they arrived. The sailing-crew was busy or waiting with tense focus for orders. Half-pikes and boarding axes, glaives and bucklers and quivers of crossbow-bolts were racked around the masts and against the inside of the thick four-foot metal-sheathed bulwarks that edged the deck. A final working party was scattering sand on the Douglas-fir planks. Órlaith grinned tautly at the sight.

  So our feet won’t slip in the blood. I remember back in Westria . . . you could see the red flowing out of the enemy’s scuppers like water.

  She gave her own folk a brief smile and nod, then looked back up. The enemy ships were shockingly close, and more were coming in behind them. Beyond to either side flame bellowed into the sky, and masts shook and fell; the enemy were using their transports as living shields to slow the Montivallan frigates coming to the rescue of the flagship. That was like putting puppies up against hunting mastiffs, but each one-sided fight delayed them.

  “Prepare to receive boarders!”

  That was Captain Edwards’ voice from the quarterdeck, amplified through his speaking-horn.

  “Fire as you bear!”

  CRACK . . . CRACK . . . CRACK . . .

  That was the big catapults cutting loose and their throwing arms smacking with shattering force into the rubber-padded stopping plates. Right on the heels came a malignant hiss. The load wasn’t roundshot; it was boiled-leather tubes full of thousands of eyeball-sized lead balls. Collars at the end of the throwing-trough stopped the tubes when the catapults were loaded with grape, but the balls kept right on going, through the scored paper that secured them.

  The balls crackled like hail when they hit something hard, with a thunk when it was metal. When they hit flesh, it was more of a wet slapping. They scythed through the crowds of enemy fighters waiting to make the jump to the Montivallan frigate amid a chorus of startlement and agony.

  “Down!” Heuradys barked.

  The lighter sounds of the enemy’s deck-mounted catapults sounded. The knight clamped a hand on the backplate of Órlaith’s armor and used it to jerk her head lower. Something went whirt overhead, like a giant arrow . . . which was what it was, a bolt from something that her people would have called a springald. Blocks and tackle and cables fell from overhead, as the sickle-shaped heads of the bol
ts cut through the rigging. So did half a sailor trailing a spray of blood that splashed across the ribbed steel of her sabatons where they rested on the deck.

  His eyes blinked three times in astonishment before the face went slack.

  Ah, Mother-of-all receive him in the Summerlands, Órlaith thought. I wish I hadn’t seen that. It’s not the sort of furniture you want in your mind, coming back in dreams or idle moments.

  Then a huge grinding roar as four of the Korean warships crashed into the Sea-Leopard, two each amidships on either side, and two more at the bows. The great ship staggered in the water, and half the crew fell as the deck pitched. Órlaith braced herself with the lower point of her shield and stayed upright. A hard clarity filled her, where she seemed to see everything at once, know everything at once.

  Grapnels flew and tangled in the frigate’s rigging, dozens of them, or crunched their points into the bulwarks. Heaved tight, they held the ships together. Crewfolk rushed to hack at them with axes and cutlasses, but the last yard of each hawser was wound with steel rope, and sparks flew where the weapons struck. Arrows came up in clouds from the decks of the enemy ships, or down from sharpshooters in their rigging. Everyone who could tucked themselves under the inward slant of the bulwarks, or raised bucklers in protection. Many of the arrows struck the maze of hawser and rope in the rigging, or the sails, or masts and spars or the netting. Plenty got through, and more lofted with that ugly hissing sound massed archery made.

  Órlaith put her shield up above her with a quick punching twist of her left arm; two shafts rammed into it and through the sheet metal of its facing with punk-punk sounds, into the bison-hide and plywood of its core, feeling like a pair of hard sharp pushes.

  Karl Aylward Mackenzie had a bleeding cut on one leg just below the knee and the hang of his kilt. He examined it, shrugged, and snarled:

  “And it’s two can play at that game! Mackenzies—take the ones in the rigging, the others are dropping their shafts blind!”