by Джеффри Лорд
This time everyone aboard went off his feet. Blade included. Screams sounded as some men fell over benches or were hit by the flailing ends of oars. Other men went clear over the side.
Blade scrambled to his feet. There was no need to tell the gunners what to do. They were getting up as fast as he was and leaping to clean and reload their pieces. He sprang up onto the heavy gun and looked at the scene on shore again.
It was impossible to make out what was happening among the tribesmen’s huts. Flames rose in a dozen places. Around the flames, lost in their glare or lost in shadow, swirled scores and hundreds of savagely fighting men. Blade could hear a continuous roar of cries and shots and the clash of steel.
Beyond the piles of dead or dying men and horses, more Steppemen were riding out of the darkness. These saw Kukon. Some of them realized what she was, some of them realized what she had done-and some of them even realized who the tall man standing on her bow was. Steppemen began leaping off their horses, slinging their swords across their backs, and unslinging bows and quivers. Arrows began to whistle toward Kukon, sinking into her timbers and sometimes into the bodies of her men.
Under cover of the archers, other dismounted Steppemen began picking their way over the bodies of their comrades, heading for Kukon. Blade saw these men coming on, heard the whistle of arrows around him and the screams from his own crew. He realized that the Steppemen had thoughts of capturing Kukon. He also realized that they very well might do it. The pirates on land weren’t going to help-they were much too busy with their own battle. Prince Durouman’s men-where the devil were they?
As Blade tried to pick out the landing party from the tangled scene on shore, he heard a choked cry behind him. He turned to see Dzhai reeling, convulsively trying to pluck an arrow out of his stomach with his crippled arm. Then a second arrow sliced down and struck him just below the left eye. His mouth opened to let out a gush of blood, and his eyes rolled up in his head. Blade leaped to catch him and lowered him gently to the deck. As he did, he felt the pulse fade out of Dzhai’s wrist, and the body went limp.
Blade suddenly realized that he’d been holding his breath. He let it out between his teeth with a long hiss. Then he rose to his full height, unslung the great Steppe sword from his back, and raised it high over his head.
«Men of Kukon!» he roared. «For our ship, for Captain Dzhai, for all our comrades, for our allies the Free Brothers of Nongai, for our ruler Prince Durouman-follow me!»
Then he turned and leaped through a gap in the bulwarks.
Blade landed precariously on Kukon’s ram, which now rose a few inches above the surface of the water. As he struggled to keep his balance on the slippery surface, Kukon’s heavy gun fired again. The blast knocked him off the ram into the water. He went completely under, came up spluttering, and found his footing. The water was only a little more than waist deep.
He raised his sword again and plowed forward, water churning about his armored torso. Around him he heard the whistle of more arrows; behind him he heard more splashes as Kukon’s men at last started following him.
He hoped enough would stay at the oars to back her off the beach into deep water, but for the moment he couldn’t care too much about that. He was no longer thinking of tactics or strategy or high-level politics. He thought only of closing with the enemy, of fighting and killing.
So it was not a man who emerged from the sea and charged into the oncoming Steppemen. It was a giant who roared warcries in a voice as terrible as that of the sea itself. It was a giant who swung a two-handed Steppe sword as easily as if he’d been swinging a feather fan.
Yet the sword was not made of feathers. It had the weight and the deadly edge of steel. Where it struck, Steppemen died. They died with their heads lopped off or split apart like rotten fruit. They died trying to hold their guts inside their gaping bellies or trying to stop the spurting blood from hacked-off arms and legs. They died, sometimes, before they could even cry out or fall to the ground.
In one way or another, all whom the giant struck died. The giant did not die. He kept on, blood and water dripping from his sword and his armor. He no longer shouted or cursed. He saved his breath for fighting.
Archers might have brought him down. But the press of men around him was too thick for the archers to shoot without hitting their own comrades. Some tried anyway. None of their arrows struck the giant. Some struck down the men around him; most struck the ground or men who were already past feeling anything that could happen to them.
Blade had long since lost track of the number of men he’d faced and struck down. He was beginning to lose track of time. He could hardly see any more, with the darkness and the blood, sweat, and water dripping down into his eyes. He could still see clearly enough, though, to know when Prince Durouman and the landing party from the boats came to join him.
He saw the prince in the lead, sword in one hand, mace in the other, both weapons continuously striking and smashing. He saw the prince’s musketeers following behind their leader, trying to keep up with him as he crashed into the enemy. Most of them were no longer trying to shoot. They held their muskets by the barrels and swung them like clubs. The butts of the muskets were already matted and glistening with blood and hair.
The commandant’s guards were also there, thrusting savagely with their short swords. Blade saw only five of them, but saw each one of them kill a Steppeman. They would certainly win back their honor tonight, if any of them lived to enjoy it.
Would anyone on either side live through this night? Blade wondered if they would go on tearing at each other, hour after hour, even day after day, until the last man on both sides slumped to the ground dead.
Another wave of Steppemen came in, mounted and trying to ride their horses into the battle. Kukon’s guns blasted scores of them out of their saddles. Blade and Prince Durouman led their men in against the rest, ducking low, thrusting or slashing up at the bellies of the horses, then clubbing the riders out of their saddles.
Kukon’s guns roared again. Blade turned to see her backing away from the shore, a few Steppemen clinging to her ram. They still clung to it as it submerged. Some of them surfaced briefly, to thrash about screaming until they sank.
Kukon nearly backed into two pirate galleys moving in toward the shore. But both ships had alert rowers, and both swung wide and continued to approach the beach until they could bring their guns to bear on the Steppemen without hitting the men around Blade and Prince Durouman. All the guns crashed out and more Steppemen died. Farther along the beach, Blade could see other flashes of gunfire as pirate galleys moved in to bombard the Steppemen’s camp. Flames were rising there also. Landing parties must have made it to shore and gone to work among the tents.
Then the shouts and drums signaled more Steppemen coming in, both on foot and on horseback. Blade and Prince Durouman had time to shake hands and slap armored shoulders dented and caked with blood. Then the battle swept them apart again.
To Blade’s mild surprise, the battle did not go on forever. It ended shortly before dawn. All the Steppemen who were still on the shore lay dead or dying. All the Steppemen who still lived were fleeing inland as fast as their own legs or their horses would carry them. The pirates counted more than three thousand Steppeman bodies strewn along the shore between the two camps.
The pirates’ casualties were not light. More than three hundred were dead, twice as many wounded. The tribesmen had lost their share as well. They had primitive weapons but stout hearts and only one simple idea of what to do with an enemy: kill him. It had been a good night for such simple, practical philosophies.
Kukon had twenty-five dead besides Dzhai and fifty more wounded. All the unwounded men were exhausted, and there was hardly a cupful of gunpowder left aboard. This was the price paid for disposing of better than five hundred Steppemen and, for all practical purposes, saving the whole battle.
There was no denying it, and the pirates didn’t try. The work of Kukon’s landing party and Kukon’s gun
s had broken up the Steppemen’s first attacks, saving the boats and giving the pirates on land time to rally. Without Kukon, there would have been no rallying-and three thousand pirates lying dead on the beach when dawn came.
Emass put the pirates’ gratitude eloquently, although he spoke from a cot where he lay with one leg bandaged from thigh to calf.
«Prince Durouman, Prince Blade. The Free Brothers of Nongai owe you their future. We did not expect that our alliance would bear such a mighty fruit so soon. Now that it has, we have only one question to ask of you.
«How may we best serve you?»
Prince Durouman’s answer was nearly as brief. «Gather all the ships and all the fighting men, all the guns and powder and stores you can. Bring all of them to Parine as fast as you can.
«Sail in strong fleets-thirty or more galleys together. Do not waste time and powder attacking the Emperor’s scout ships. Protect and defend the ships of the Five Sea Kingdoms wherever and whenever you find them in need. Lose no time for anything else. We have only one goal now-Kul-Nam’s fleet.»
«We have another,» sail Blade. «Kul-Nam’s head. And after that, a third. The Eagle Crown of Saram, on your head.»
Prince Durouman’s face was unnaturally sober as he nodded slowly. Emass smiled. «It shall be done as you wish, Your-Your Magnificence Who-Is-To-Be.»
There was little else to do. Kukon was undamaged-the grounding had done no harm. Her dead were buried, her wounded carried ashore, and her magazine replenished. Fifty pirates came aboard to fill the gaps in her crew. Five hundred would have gone if there had been room for them.
Just before sunset Kukon weighed anchor. Her sails filled, and her rowing drums sounded the cruising stroke. The cheers of the pirates on shore and aboard their galleys roared louder than the night’s battle. Kukon turned and headed out to sea.
Chapter 24
They first guessed what had happened to Parine when they were a day’s sail away.
Kukon took a course that swung to the east of the principality, toward the coast of Nullar. In those waters there would be less danger of meeting the Imperial fleet. There would also be a greater chance of meeting a ship from Nullar or one of the other Five Kingdoms, one that could take the message of the new alliance to the kings and fleets on the mainland.
They found neither. Instead, they found a fishing boat of Parine, drifting aimlessly. Aboard were four men, three dead and one dying. All four of them showed the unmistakable signs of prolonged and horrible torture in the style of Saram. The dying man died without speaking a coherent word, but no one aboard Kukon needed to be told what had happened. Blade doubled the lookouts and pressed on.
Two hours later they began to smell smoke on the wind that blew out of the west-from Parine. Just before sunset they passed a mass of floating timber, much of it charred black. They moved on through the darkness, the rowers setting a fast cruising stroke whether the drummers beat it out or not. The smoke smell grew stronger hour by hour. Three more times they passed floating wreckage or abandoned fishing boats.
Then the dawn came, and with it gray smoke smeared all across the western horizon. Under that smoke they found Parine, but so changed that it hardly seemed right to call it by the same name as the island they’d left. It was as if mad giants had swarmed across the island, killing everything that lived, burning everything that would burn, and stamping into rubble everything that was neither living nor burnable.
They swung in close enough to the harbor and town to see that the harbor was a mass of floating wreckage and the town a mass of rubble that still trickled smoke. The main fort on top of the cliffs had been blackened and split open by a tremendous explosion.
Bodies floated or lay everywhere-men, women, and children of Parine, soldiers of the forts’ garrisons and the princess’ household troops, mules and horses and goats, and a surprising number of the soldiers and sailors of the Empire of Saram.
«Our friends of Parine died hard,» said Prince Durouman quietly. «I hope the gods give them better thanks for that than I can.»
Blade nodded. «I wonder-did they all die?»
The two men’s eyes met. Each knew without a word what was in the other’s mind. Finally Prince Durouman shrugged.
«We can only go and find out.»
Kukon left the ruined town and harbor and headed toward the north coast of the island. The shortest overland route to the little white palace in the valley started there. Blade did not want to take much of an overland journey now or leave his ship very long. Some of Kul-Nam’s soldiers might still be roaming the interior of the island or his galleys sweeping along the coast.
They found nothing except more death and destruction all the way to their landing place. It was no different when Blade and Prince Durouman led inland a party of forty men, all of them armed to the teeth. The only variation was the number of Kul-Nam’s soldiers among the corpses. Usually there were a great many-sometimes half the total. Blade’s spirits could not rise among such ghastly scenes, but he began to wonder just how many men Kul-Nam had lost here on Parine. Enough to weaken him? Perhaps.
There was no surprise when they finally reached Princess Tarassa’s private valley. The bodies of soldiers from both sides lay thicker here than anywhere else, and from them rose such a stench that the air was almost unbreathable. Blade could see that many of Tarassa’s guards had died literally fighting tooth and nail, biting and clawing at their enemies. But they had all died in the end, and so had Princess Tarassa.
They found her lying behind the blackened rubble of the palace. She had been a long and horrible time dying. Her face was already so swollen and blackened that it was impossible to see what expression had been on it when she died. That was just as well.
They buried Tarassa as deeply as they could and piled blocks of marble from her palace over the grave to make it safe. It was only after the princess was buried that Prince Durouman finally went off behind some blackened stumps and vomited himself empty. When he returned his face was still pale, but there was a ghastly, cold control in his voice when he spoke.
«I think there is no more question of whether the Five Kingdoms will come to aid us. The only question is which one will send the first ships.» His face split in a grim smile. «Would you care to make a bet on it, Blade?»
The first ships came in on the evening of the next day, three galleys from Belthanor, the southernmost of the Five Kingdoms. Blade and Prince Durouman told the captains all they needed to know of the situation and organized the crews into search parties. Prince Durouman would gladly have left the island and its dead behind. Blade thought otherwise. He was determined to comb Parine thoroughly for survivors and anything Kul-Nam’s men might have left behind that might be useful in the coming war.
«Besides,» he added, «what better way to convince people of what is at stake in this war than by showing them Parine? You will have few traitors among those who have seen this.» He swept a hand around them, taking in all the rubble and corpses.
Prince Durouman had to admit Blade’s point.
The search parties turned up two welcome surprises in the first two days. One was Princess Tarassa’s son, alive and reasonably healthy. Two of the household servants had fled with him before the palace was surrounded and had hidden in a cave. The other surprise was more than a thousand of Parine’s famous barrels, seasoned and ready for use, left completely intact in their sheds in the countryside.
«Kul-Nam’s soldiers must have found them too bulky to carry away and not valuable enough to be worth destroying,» said Prince Durouman. «I imagine they’ll be useful for our supplies when we sail, but-Blade, why are you smiling like that?»
So Blade finally had to explain the weapon he had conceived for use against the sailing ships of Kul-Nam’s fleet.
It was extremely simple. Put a sealed barrel of gunpowder on the end of a long spar, preferably at least sixty feet long-
«A ship’s mast?» asked the prince.
«Perhaps. Something long and str
ong, in any case.»
In the end of the barrel, put an iron rod, moving back and forth through a hole sealed with greased leather. Fasten the other end of the spar to the ram of a galley. Row the galley straight at a sailing ship until the barrel strikes the enemy’s side. The iron rod is driven in through the hole, passing across a piece of flint. This strikes sparks. The sparks set off the powder. Anything from sixty to four hundred pounds of gunpowder-explodes against the enemy’s hull well below the water line.
«That will blow a hole large enough for a man to ride through on horseback,» said Blade. «The ship will be on the bottom in minutes.»
«It will also knock the caulking out of every seam in the galley and the teeth out of the jaws of every man aboard her,» said Prince Durouman. «Assuming the sailing ship’s guns haven’t sunk the galley on the way in.»
«True. There is a risk. But it is only a risk on the way in. Once the barrel has exploded, the galley can back off with little further danger from her victim. If the enemy’s men are still on their feet at all, they will be thinking about bucket brigades or sharks, not about manning their guns.»
«Very well,» said Prince Durouman. «I can think of all sorts of petty objections. But this is no time for them, and besides, I know better by now than to try arguing with you.»
«Good,» said Blade. «Men should immediately be put to work filling and arming barrels and trimming down spars. If we have enough material, I would like each galley to have several of these weapons aboard when we sail. No one should be told exactly what they are making or how it will be used until we sail, not even the galley captains.»
«Spies?»
«Exactly. This is a weapon that can be used successfully in only one battle, and it cannot even be used in that battle unless it is a complete surprise. Otherwise Kul-Nam’s admirals will be able to think of tactics to meet it.»
«If they are still interested in winning battles for a ruler who shows such poor judgment as Kul-Nam.»