Mamelukes

by Jerry Pournelle

  Sailing ships did that during the Age of Sail, I think. Did the Romans even issue hammocks, though? Wonder if Warner has a clue about that one?

  The ship also had two large torsion catapults or ballistae, like enormous crossbows, on the forecastle and a trio of arrow throwers spaced out along each bulwark amidships. Each arrow thrower consisted of a gimbal-mounted, trough-like firing tray that could be loaded with six enormous arrows. They were actually closer to fletched javelins than anything Rick would have called an arrow, and they were fired using a single, torsion-driven striker that was cranked back with a windlass and then released to strike the butts of all six arrows with enormous force.

  The arrow throwers were primarily close-in, antipersonnel weapons designed for a scattergun effect, but the ballistae on the forecastle were quite another matter. Large spear-like bolts, much heavier than the arrows of their little brothers mounted on the bulwarks, were laid out near each of them, and their torsion bands, like those of the arrow throwers, were wrapped in a waterproofing made of well-oiled parchment. They could also fire other types of projectiles, and a supply of stones, each of which probably weighed forty or fifty pounds, rested in boxes nearby. They were remarkably uniform in size and shape, and Rick reminded himself that early cannonballs had also been made of shaped stone. There was also a rack of clay pots—empty, at the moment—clearly of a size to be launched by the catapults, and a dozen Roman marines were stationed on the forecastle to operate the artillery. They were dressed in cloth tunics and there were no hobnails on their boots, but the other differences from the standard Roman army uniform were minor.

  All in all, Rick thought, Ferox was a formidable fighting machine, and its crew was much larger than he’d estimated. According to Pilinius, the quinquireme carried three hundred rowers, seventy marines, and twenty-five deck crew to run the rigging.

  I just hope the Fivers and the Riccigionans don’t have a lot like it! I doubt the Five Kingdoms do, but Riccigiona may be an entirely different kettle of fish. It sounds like the Duchy’s got itself a professional navy, like Rome and Nikeis, and that could be bad.

  The visitors were conducted to the quarterdeck. Pilinius made certain they were all safely in their assigned places and out of the way before he began to shout commands. Signal flags rose up lines on the masts. Landsmen cast off the harbor lines and the oarsmen shipped oars. The burly oarmaster raised his hammers, and at a signal from the captain began to beat out a pace on a big wooden block as the squadron began filing out of the harbor.

  Once into the open sea, Pilinius set the big lateen sails on each mast and the rowers ran their oars back inboard. They moved more rapidly under sail, and once they were well underway, Rick went below to the battery-operated repeater set Baker had brought to Tran. The antenna had been mounted well up on Ferox’s mainmast, connected to the set by coaxial cable, and he picked up the microphone and pushed the talk button.

  “Test. Rabbit One, this is Big Mamma. Over.”

  “Rabbit One here. Given that there are nine radios on this planet it’s not likely I’d be anyone else, is it, Sir? I hear you well. Over.”

  “Good. We have communications. Over.”

  “We’re making the expected pace,” Baker said. “The plan calls for us to be in sight of the swamp before noon tomorrow, and I expect that will happen. We’ll anchor offshore at dusk tonight, as planned. With this wind I presume the anchors will hold. Captain Oranato is a fussbudget, but he appears competent enough. Over.”

  “The lookouts at masthead can make you out at the horizon,” Rick said. “We’re keeping pace with you. The fleet is right behind us. Yell if you need help. And keep a close watch tonight! Over.”

  “I’ll do just that, Sir. But I don’t think we’ll have any problems. Over.”

  “Any issues with the crew? Mr. Warner working out all right? Over.”

  “No problems with troops. Not with Oranato, not with mine,” Baker said. “Baker out.”

  “It is true, then,” Publius said when Rick came back on deck. “You have ways to speak to your men at great distances. You did not have such in our previous battles.”

  “No. The equipment was brought here by Major Baker.”

  Publius nodded, frowning thoughtfully.

  “Will there—is there more of this magic in the containers?”

  “There may be,” Rick said. And he’s a pretty smart bird. He knows how valuable all this stuff is. And the ship is his. Rick was glad of the weight of his Colt .45 in its shoulder holster. And that Bisso and Rand would stand watch outside his cabin.

  Of course, now wasn’t the dangerous time. The dangerous time would be after they’d defeated the main pirate fleet. Both Rome and Nikeis needed his help now, but when that threat was removed . . . And it was probably not a good idea to count one’s battles before they were won. One fight at a time. On the best reckoning they’d be outnumbered by more than two to one in a naval battle with the pirate alliance, and it might be as high as five to one. That might not make any difference, since the pirate fleet wouldn’t have guns, but it was still something to worry about.

  * * *

  They anchored at dusk.

  Rick estimated they were less than a mile from shore. The land to the west was flat, but marshes began just to the north. The wind was from the northeast, an onshore wind, but it was very light, and no one seemed concerned. The anchor held nicely, at least.

  Rick’s binoculars indicated that some of the land was cultivated but he saw no one. Probably fear of pirates and slavers. They would farm in large parties rather than individually, with lookouts to watch for incoming sails. It might even have been the sight of his fleet that drove everyone inland. Probably was, now that he thought about it.

  This stretch of coast was nominally under the governance of an Eqeta who was seldom seen, and who managed to trim between Rome as an ally and Drantos as sovereign without rendering much assistance or tribute to either.

  “Could the Eqeta actually be in alliance with the pirates?” Rick asked, and Fleetmaster Junius shrugged.

  “We have little to do with this shore,” he admitted. “Rome has little commerce with the Five Kingdoms to the north, and when we do go there, we go by way of Nikeis. Nikeis commands the Inner Sea.”

  “Nikeis may claim to,” Publius said. “But the pirates clearly have a rival claim of some strength.”

  Rick nodded silently. A hundred ships was a considerable claim.

  Dinner was cold, mostly bread, and there was little further conversation. Rick had no desire to betray his utter lack of knowledge about naval warfare, and his attempts to draw more information from Fleetmaster Junius were received politely but without much encouragement. Rick went to bed early. They’d found him a small cabin with a hammock. It wasn’t comfortable, and it took a long time to get to sleep. His stomach growled and more than once in the night he winced in pain.

  Rick kept thinking about his conversation with Baker. Like it or not, the history of this planet was going to change radically, thanks to whatever was in those containers. The only religious war he knew of on Tran was the one with the Defenders of the old faith led by Phrados the Prophet. Before that there was no record or memory of one—none that anyone remembered, anyway; there had to have been at least minor squabbles, given human nature—so they hadn’t had Reformation and Counter-Reformation. Maybe they wouldn’t. The only major religions were pagans and Christians, and the new Unified Church was absorbing one of the major pagan powers into something like a Christian church, largely because Rick and his star men seemed to accept Christianity. Religion was strong here: there were many histories of divine intervention and skyfire every six hundred years or so. No wonder they believed in God and gods. But wouldn’t that change with the spread of science and scientific method?

  He fell into a fitful sleep and dreamed that someone was shouting that Great Pan was dead.

  * * *

  Rick woke before dawn and wandered down to the galley, where there was a fire
in a large ceramic stove. A cook obligingly put on a kettle to boil, and after a cup of mint tea that would have to serve, since he hadn’t brought any of his precious coffee on board, Rick climbed up the rope ladder at the ship’s mainmast and took out his binoculars. It was shortly before the rise of the True Sun. As the glow in the east grew brighter Rick could just make out Baker’s little fleet on the northern horizon. He watched until he saw all three ships turn away on a northwesterly heading.

  “They’re getting under way,” he called down.

  “My thanks, Patrician,” Captain Pilinius yelled back. Rick was taken aback for a moment; he was still getting used to his new Roman title.

  Pilinius shouted orders, and the sailors raised the big iron-and-wood anchor. The other ships of the fleet did the same. Sails were set, and they moved steadily northward, careful to keep Baker’s fleet just at the horizon as seen from up the mast while Mason, Bisso, and Rand took turns climbing up to observe with binoculars.

  At noon the radio gave a message alert.

  * * *

  Larry Warner perched on a tiny platform halfway up the mast of the tubby merchant vessel Sagitta.

  Sagitta my ass, he thought, gazing through his binoculars. Damned hard to think of anything less like an “arrow” than this tub!

  The navis oneraria was on the small size for its type, about the size of one of the Roman triremes, and that meant its masts were on the short side, too. Which was just as well, since it meant he’d fall a shorter distance before he splattered on the deck. It also meant he couldn’t see as far as he could have from a greater height, but he was just fine with that.

  His current roost could hardly be called a crow’s nest, but that was the only term he had for it. Down below there was no sign of the Gurkha troops, although Major Baker stood on the quarterdeck. From close enough he would look a bit strange in his battle dress, but there wasn’t any chance of that. The pirates wouldn’t have telescopes.

  Not yet, Warner thought. But once the idea gets loose . . .

  He scanned the horizon to the east, then northeast. He’d seen nothing since they got underway just after dawn, but they were headed northwest—well, more like northwest-by west he supposed, if he was going to be all nautical about it—with the wind out of the northeast. That meant it was coming in almost broad on their beam, which he thought he recalled was supposed to be the best point of sailing. Or was that with the wind on the quarter? It didn’t seem to matter much, either way, because they weren’t setting any speed records, even with the lateen sails set on both of the ship’s stubby masts. They could probably have gotten more speed out of the ship by rowing, but Warner had been surprised to discover how seldom oars were actually used. Merchant ships like Sagitta used them only to maneuver in and out of harbor, or in a dead calm, and they were slower than hell when they did. War galleys were a lot faster under oars than merchant ships—had a lot to do with their hull forms, he thought; they were much longer in proportion to their beams. But even they almost invariably cruised under sail and stripped down to their oars only when a fight was imminent or they needed to move against the wind. All of which meant that if anything dangerous was around, it would probably be coming from upwind.

  He scanned again, this time to the southeast. He could just make out the sails of the trailing fleet, and he turned back to the north.

  Bait, that’s what we are, he thought, and a line from Pogo came unwanted. “Once you been bait, you ain’t much good for anything else.” For some reason that hit him hard. Because they were a long way from Earth, and he’d never see a Pogo cartoon again, he realized glumly. Then he grinned.

  Too bad I can’t draw. I could do my own. If I need to miss something from Earth, a cartoon possum shouldn’t be all that high on the list.

  He scanned eastward, then north again. Then—Hah! Something there, but a lot farther west than he’d expected. He focused in to be sure of what he was seeing, then called down to Major Baker.

  “Sail ho. Two of them, actually. Sails just in sight, hull down, almost dead northwest of us.”

  “Only two?”

  “So far that’s all I can see, Sir.”

  “Right. Keep watching.” Baker turned to Captain Oranato and tried to say “Enemy in sight” in the common Tran trade parlance, but Oranato’s expression showed that Baker’s northern accent had defeated him.

  More sails crept into view, and Warner called down again, in English then repeated his message in the local language.

  “Five sails in sight now! Bearing north-northwest. They look to be headed east-southeast, not straight for us. There’s another. Six. Six so far, all on the same course.”

  “Right,” Baker shouted. “Corporal Wakaina, take Mr. Warner’s place on the mast! Warner, I’d rather have you down here, in case we need to give information to Captain Oranato.”

  Warner grinned.

  “Yes, Sir. Coming right down.”

  As soon as he was on deck, a Gurkha trooper with binoculars clambered up the mast to replace him.

  “I assume they’re trying to catch us, Mr. Warner?” Baker asked.

  “They’re northwest of us, Sir,” Warner said to Baker in English, then translated for Captain Oranato. “Maybe six miles away, and steering a bit south of due east. They look to be heading about as close to the wind as they can under sail.”

  “Not quite a reciprocal of our course,” Baker murmured, rubbing his chin. Then his eyes narrowed. “They’re sweeping around to get upwind of us,” he said. “Of course, they can see us. Ask Captain Oranato what he would normally do in this situation.”

  Oranato must have understood without translation, because he was already speaking—rapidly, and with wide gestures.

  “Basically, he’d get the hell out of here,” Warner translated. “This is a merchant ship, after all. Usually, he’d turn southeast, directly away from them, or southwest to put the wind straight behind us, and run for it. But southwest’s straight into the swamps from here. So under the circumstances, he’d turn northeast, as close to the wind as he can sail—close-hauled, I think they call that—and try to get out to sea. Get away from the swamps and get some maneuvering room to dodge them.”

  “Hmm. So at some point we ought to do that. How soon will they be sure we’ve seen them?”

  “Anytime now, I’d think.” Warner shrugged. “They can’t know about binoculars, but even so . . . ”

  “Precisely. So the one thing we don’t want is for them to think we want them to catch us. Mr. Warner, ask Captain Oranato to run off to the northeast, but slowly, as if there’s something wrong with his ship.” He thumbed the radio. “All Rabbits, this is Rabbit One. Enemy in sight. We will turn northeast as if running away. Keep station on us and close to a hundred meters behind, please. Acknowledge. Over.”

  The radio squawked twice in acknowledgment and he shifted channels.

  “Big Mama, enemy in sight,” he said. “Repeat enemy in sight. Six sails, I repeat, six sails in sight. I believe they have seen us. They are trying to close with us. I will signal when engagement is near. Over.”

  “Nothing else to report?” The radio flattened tones, but Rick sounded anxious, and Baker grinned at Warner.

  “Not a thing, Sir,” he said. “Out.”

  The wind was light, so Captain Oranato chose to tack through it under oars rather than wear ship. They cast off the sheets to spill wind from the sails, the oarsmen pulled the bow through the wind, and the deck crew reset the sails on both masts. The canvas filled, and they began moving faster, headed east-northeast, away from the shore with the wind coming in from port and well forward of the beam. Warner was astounded by how close to the wind their lateen sails could come, but Captain Oranato left the men on the oars to help the canvas along. It took several minutes for Baker to persuade him to at least slow the oarsmen’s stroke.

  “Excellent,” the major said then. “Now to let the Colonel know.” He selected a channel and thumbed the radio again. “Big Mama this is Rabbit One. Ove
r.”

  “Big Mama here. Is all well, Major Baker? Over.”

  “Well, we now have seven sails closing. There doesn’t seem to be a great deal of doubt about their intention; they turned to pursue as soon as we altered course. We’re steering to east-northeast, as if running from them, but we’re not at full stroke. They’re definitely pirates, not great galleys—single-masted, the lot of them—so we have more sail area than they do, but they’re also built for speed. We aren’t, and they have the wind from a more favorable angle. Captain Oranato estimates they should catch us up in a couple of hours. Over.”

  “What do you want us to do? Over.”

  “Sir, mostly we need you to stay out of sight if we expect to lure these chaps out where we can get at them. I’d rather fight them at sea than try to thread our way through marshes and swamps. Over.”

  “We didn’t expect seven. Does that worry you? Over.”

  “No, Colonel, it doesn’t worry me at all. Over.”

  A short pause.

  “All right. We’ll stay out of sight. Be careful, Major. Over.”

  “That I will, Sir. That I will. Out.”

  * * *

  The wind came up stronger an hour later, and some of the Gurkha troopers looked a bit green as the ship pitched. Baker went down to the main deck to be sure they weren’t in distress, but came back up to the poop deck in good spirits.

  “Nothing wrong that a chance to fight won’t cure,” he said, and thumbed the radio again. “All Rabbits, this is Rabbit One. Ask your skippers to stand by for maneuver, it’s time to go catch those buggers while we have enough daylight to work in. Acknowledge, Rabbit Two. Over.”

  “Martins here. Acknowledged. Stand by one.” There was a pause. “Skipper says they’ll want to wear ship rather than tack in this wind, Sir.”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “We’re headed east-northeast, the wind is from north-northeast, and the pirates are west-northwest of us, Sir,” Martins said. “To tack we’d turn to port and put the bow through the wind. He’s not going to do that. He’s going to turn to starboard—turn right—so the stern goes through the wind. Then he’ll turn right some more to get on the new course towards them.”