“How?”
“They’re peeling off to stay clear of the main action. Maybe they’re just trying to get into the lee of the islands, or maybe they’ve got somebody onboard who knows the local waters. Hell, Sir, maybe they’re just getting lucky! But we’ve got at least a couple of dozen veering off, especially to the west, and that means they’re headed towards some of the other channels. Gonna have some leakers, Sir.”
“From the west?” Rick turned, peering through his glasses, but the buildings on the islands the Nikeisians called Lido and Cannaregio blocked his view.
“What the spotters are reporting, Sir,” Mason said, and shrugged. “Don’t see how they could come at us from the east in this weather, really. The surf’s really bad on that side of the outer lagoon right now.” He shook his head. “No, Sir, they’re trying to get around to the west. Come at us from the leeward side of the main islands. Might even be able to row from that side.”
“Crap. What do we have covering the West Channel?”
“Aside from Admiral del Verme’s squadron, you mean?” Rick nodded a bit impatiently, and Mason puffed his lips unhappily. “Not much from our side, Sir. Three or four firebomb parties at the narrower spots, but that’s about it.”
“Damn. How much cover do our firebombers have?”
“Not a ton, Sir,” Mason said grimly. “Got militia on all of them, but most of the steadier troops are clustered at the fortresses. Our guys are three or four blocks farther west than that. I don’t know how steady their militia’s going to be if the bad guys try coming ashore short of the inner lagoon. And if they flank the firebombers’ positions it’ll get ugly.”
Rick thought furiously for a moment, then grimaced.
“All right. We’re just going to have to hope most of them don’t think about stopping early, but we damned well can’t count on it. Put Rand on it. Tell him he can have half the reserve archers and a platoon of musketeers, but we need to get somebody in there. And tell him to take one of the radios!”
“Yes, Sir!” Mason acknowledged, and Rick heard him passing urgent orders over the radio as he turned back to the battle for North Channel.
* * *
“Sail to windward!”
It was difficult to hear the lookouts through the din of wind and wave, but a chain of a half dozen seamen passed the word to Ferox’s quarterdeck.
“At least ten sail on the starboard quarter! Coming down on us fast!”
“Sooner than I expected,” Fleetmaster Junius said grimly, then shrugged. “I understand Lord Rick is fond of saying no plan survives when the enemy arrives, Praefectus Warner?”
“He is,” Warner agreed. No point mentioning that the Colonel had cribbed it from von Moltke.
“A warrior of great wisdom, Lord Rick,” Junius said, and reached for his speaking trumpet again.
And there goes half our strength, Warner thought as the windward squadron altered course to intercept the oncoming galleys. That leaves ten ships to take on something like eighty. I sure hope all of our weapons work. Can’t swim home, that’s for sure.
* * *
“Bad news, Bart.”
“What? You mean more bad news, right?” Bart Saxon asked, looking up at Cal Haskins as the ex-corporal strode into the great hall which had become his bombmaker’s workshop.
“Just got the word from Clavell.” Haskins looked grim. “At least some of the bastards are avoiding the traffic jam in the North Channel. Dunno where else they’re likely to go, but Clavell says there’s at least three or four ways in.”
“Crap!”
“What is it, Lord Bart?” a voice asked. Saxon turned his head and met Lucia Michaeli’s anxious eyes. Obviously she’d understood Haskins’ tone even if she hadn’t understood the English.
“Some of the pirates are likely to—” He paused, wondering how to say “bypass” in the trade dialect, then shrugged. “Some of the pirates are likely to come a different way.”
“Not down the Canale del Nord?”
She didn’t sound very surprised, Saxon thought. For that matter, she sounded a lot calmer than he felt, too. Then again, she’d already surprised him more than once tonight. She and her sister—and Ginarosa Torricelli—had all made themselves very useful while he and Warner were concocting their jury-rigged incendiaries and explosives. He’d been a little leery about that, given the possibility of accidents, but Lucia had only rolled her eyes at his tentative objections and then gone right back to work.
“Exactly,” he said now. “They may come another way.”
“If they avoid the Canale del Nord, someone is likely to come down the Canale Gottardo Capponi,” she said in the trade dialect. “There are three—no, four—channels they might use to reach the inner lagoon from the north, but Canale Gottardo Capponi is the closest to the main channel. It’s the one between Isola di Cannaregio and Isola di Lido, just west of the Canale del Nord.”
“Surely someone is guarding the Canale Got—Gotter—whatever,” Saxon said reassuringly.
“Are they?” She shook her head, her expression more anxious than ever. “I’m not certain of that. I know they’re guarding the Canale Occidentale—the West Channel—but usually, Gottardo Capponi is too shallow for war galleys. It’s broad enough, but not deep enough for anything but the local fishing boats. It isn’t a place someone would normally think to guard, but with the water as deep as it is . . . ”
She turned away and began snapping orders in Italian. Saxon couldn’t understand a word she said, but her militiamen clearly could. They headed for the pyramid of wooden chests in the center of the great hall where the reserve incendiaries had been packed so that they could be transported to wherever they might be needed.
“What are they doing?” he demanded.
“We are going to defend the canal,” she told him.
“No! You can’t!”
“It is our city,” she told him defiantly.
“But—”
She only turned away, still spouting commands at the militiamen, and they formed up with four of the reserve chests and headed for the door.
Saxon looked around, searching for one of Galloway’s men. But he and Haskins were the only “star lords” in sight. There was just the two of them and—
Oh, no, he told himself. You are not going to do this. Especially not after Galloway ordered you to keep your ass out of the line of fire! You’re a frigging schoolteacher, not a soldier! But if you can’t stop her, then what—?
“Wait,” he said.
“There’s no time!” she said impatiently. “Besides, I am going!”
“That’s not what I meant,” he heard someone else say with his voice. “I meant I’m coming with you.”
* * *
“Oh, shit,” Art Mason said, and Rick turned quickly in his direction.
“What?”
“Looks like those ‘leakers’ are arriving sooner’n we expected, Sir,” Mason replied, lowering his binoculars. “And looks like there’s more of them, too.”
The major pointed northwest. Rick raised his own glasses to peer in the indicated direction, and his jaw tightened as he saw mastheads clearing the flank of Isola di Cannaregio, headed straight for the West Channel.
There were a lot of them.
He turned back to the southwest where Admiral Otero del Verme’s second Nikeisian squadron held position. His galleys were sheltered from the worst of the wind by the bulk of the main island itself, but the seas were rough enough even there that just holding station had to be exhausting to their rowers, and it was getting worse. That was bound to affect their combat effectiveness when he finally committed them. The longer he waited, the worse that would get, and the timing had already gone south on them. The pirates had gotten here well before they were expected, and the Romans wouldn’t be able to attack for at least another hour or hour and a half. Even then, they were likely to be at only half strength. And if he waited long enough to send them in simultaneously, the way they’d planned—
“Going to be rough on them if they have to go in without the Romans, Sir.”
“I know that! But we can’t let them flank the North Channel.”
“No, Sir,” Mason acknowledged, and Rick heard him passing urgent orders as he turned back to the still raging battle for North Channel.
A half dozen additional galleys had crashed into the ship raft, throwing still more men into the fight while he was speaking with Mason. Even with reinforcements from both flanking fortresses, the Nikeisian line was driven back across the spray- and blood-slick decks by sheer weight of numbers. Worse, other enemy galleys had run ashore on San Lazzaro and Lido, pouring men onto the islands. Every man sent from the fortresses to support Stigliano’s galleys was one less they’d have for their own defense.
* * *
“Go back to the Palace!” Bart Saxon said sharply. “Let me take care of this!”
“No.” Lucia Michaeli glared at him.
“You found us the right spot. Now the rest of us can handle it, and I want you out of here!”
“No!” she shot back even more sharply.
“It’s going to get dangerous!”
“I know that,” she said. “Whose city do you think this is?”
“Damn it, if something happens to you—”
“And what if something happens to you?! You’re—Professore Clavell says you’re important to Lord Rick’s plans.”
“But—”
“’Scuse me, Bart,” Cal Haskins said, “but I think you two’re gonna have to settle this later. Look.”
Saxon shot Lucia one more exasperated glance, then turned to where Haskins stood beside one of the windows. Like Saxon, he had his H&K slung over his shoulder. Unlike Saxon, who’d fired no more than forty or fifty rounds with the weapon before they left Earth, Haskins also looked like he knew how to use it. Now he pointed out and down, and Saxon swallowed a curse.
Lucia had picked their current position because it was four streets north of one of the three drawbridges which crossed the canal. All of them had been lowered, blocking any galley, but they were only made of wood, and the militia guarding them were spread dangerously thin. Most of the manpower on Isola di Lido had been stationed along its northern and eastern shoreline, where the real threat had been anticipated. That was why Lucia had insisted that they had to be north of the northernmost drawbridge. Once the enemy saw the bridges, they’d know they had to send men ashore to clear the way.
“But if we sink them first, use them to block the channel, the bridges won’t matter!” she’d said fiercely, and he’d been forced to agree with her logic. Which made him feel no better now that they had proof her worries had been well founded.
The galley threading its way down the Canale Gottardo Capponi flew a standard he didn’t recognize. It wasn’t Roman or Nikeisian, anyway. And a second galley had rounded the bend just north of their present position behind it.
“Five Kingdoms,” a soprano said at his elbow, and he turned to glare at Lucia.
“Well, it is!” she told him pertly, then turned and threw a stream of Italian at “her” militiamen. It was far too rapid for Saxon to understand a word of it, but the militiamen immediately opened the chests they’d brought with them.
“Goddamn it,” he snarled, and Haskins glanced at him. “This is no place for a damned kid, Cal!”
“Don’t disagree, but some of the others ain’t that much older’n she is, man. And they ain’t listening to her like she was just a ‘kid.’ ’Sides, at least she can tell ’em what to do in their own language, which is more’n you or I can do!”
* * *
“Praise Vothan,” Eurydamus of Tiryns said as Thunderbolt eased her way along the shadowed channel. Waves slapped loudly even here, but the solid bulk of the Nikeisian buildings flanking it on either side were a blessed barrier to the brutal wind roaring down the length of the Great Gulf.
“Aye, I’m thinking he had a lot to do with it,” Scamandius, his first lieutenant, agreed. “Him and the Thunderer.”
“And our turncoat,” Eurydamus murmured, cutting his eyes at the man standing beside Thunderbolt’s steersman. Polidoro Scarcello wasn’t a Riccigionan. He was a native Nikeisian.
“He cost enough,” Scamandius said sourly, then shrugged. “And worth every silver of it. I never would have expected there to be enough water in here, even with the Demon Star.”
“A lot of things are changing thanks to the Demon,” Eurydamus replied, never taking his eye from the leadsman at the bow.
There was enough water under Thunderbolt’s keel right now, but there was no promise things would stay that way, and none of the great galleys or navibus onerārius could possibly have come this way. He looked over his shoulder at the next galley in line behind Thunderbolt with a crooked smile that mixed grudging respect with amusement. Captain Anaxilaus was an excellent seaman, and Eurydamus was fairly certain Anaxilaus hadn’t “just happened” to fall behind in the squadron’s mad scramble to claw its way into the canal. If someone ran aground in here, it wasn’t going to be him, and—
A blur of movement at the corner of his eye snatched his attention back to his own ship as something plummeted from above. It trailed a thin line of smoke behind it, and he heard the sharp shattering sound of pottery or glass as it slammed into the deck three feet from him.
His eyes were still widening in alarm when the spray of flame splashed across his legs. He cried out, leaping away from it, beating frantically at the liquid fire clinging to him as it gnawed his flesh, and someone else cried out in alarm as a second plummeting object smashed into the deck, right beside the main hatch. Liquid fire poured over the hatch coaming onto the babordo rowing bench, and alarm turned to anguish as half a dozen men were engulfed in sudden flame. More of the burning liquid spilled hungrily down the hatch, and Thunderbolt veered to starboard as the rowers leapt away from the inferno.
* * *
“Yes!” Lucia’s shriek of triumph was as fierce as any eagle’s as the firebombs smashed home on the leading galley.
She’d insisted on lighting the first one herself, and she’d watched it all the way down to the galley’s quarterdeck. It helped that the ship had been almost directly below their fourth-floor perch, but the canal was so narrow they could probably lob the gunpowder bombs—they were a little lighter than the firebombs—clear across it if they had to.
That was Bart Saxon’s first thought. His second was that he hadn’t really let himself think about what he was making as he constructed the incendiaries. The shrieks of agony and the thickening columns of smoke-shot flame filled him with a crawling horror. Those men down there had come here to plunder Nikeis, and he doubted they would have cared very much how many people they massacred in the process. But they were still human beings, and he was the one who’d built the weapon which had set them afire like so many logs.
He looked away, fighting an urge to vomit, and saw Lucia’s profile as she snapped more orders in rapid Italian, pointing at the second ship swinging to starboard in an effort to get around their first victim. If she felt any trace of his own repugnance, there was no sign of it in that fierce, focused young face.
* * *
“Quickly, Marco! Quickly!”
“Yes, Signorina!” Marco Salata acknowledged. If her father’s valet had any reservations about handling the star men’s infernal devices he clearly had no intention of showing it.
“Valerico! Your throwing arm is stronger than mine,” he said, and the young militiaman stepped up beside him. Valerico’s expression showed considerably more trepidation, but he accepted the gunpowder bomb and held it gingerly while Marco opened the slide on the lantern.
“We want to hit the other galley, Valerico.” Lucia remembered to smile encouragingly at him. “And we want to do it quickly. If we can sink two or three of them it will block
the entire canal!”
“I understand, Signorina.” Valerico nodded, his eyes widening as Marco lit the fuse from the lantern’s flame.
Lucia turned back to the window and grimaced in frustration.
“Move!” she barked, and slammed a pointy elbow into Lord Bart’s ribs.
The star man shook his head, like a man waking up, and then stepped quickly aside as he saw the sputtering fuse.
“Now, Valerico!” she commanded.
* * *
“Hard a starboard!” Anaxilaus of Edron shouted. “Harder, damn you!”
The steersman leaned hard on the steering oar and Sea Harvest swerved, but Thunderbolt was lurching to the right, as well, and Anaxilaus swore vilely. It was going to be close, and if Thunderbolt’s ram caught them . . .
Damned rat trap of a channel! he thought viciously. No room to dodge. And what in the gods’ name did they hit her with?!
It wasn’t the pyrkagiá galleys flung at their foes. It was too liquid for that, and burned with a darker smoke, but it also spread even more fiercely. Firefighting parties were reaching for the buckets of sand kept available to smother pyrkagiá hits, but the flaming liquid had already found its way below decks through the central hatchway. If Sea Harvest collided with Eurydamus’ ship they’d become a single holocaust.
“Watch the windows!” he heard Polykleitos, Sea Harvest’s captain of archers, shouting. “Watch the—”
It was a smaller, more compact whatever-it-was this time, Anaxilaus thought. One of his marines tried to catch it and throw it overboard, but it slipped past him and thudded squarely down the huge central hatch.
Had to open it, didn’t you? he thought. Just like Eurydamus.
That hatch had been battened firmly down when the sea began making up on the way here, but it had trapped the rowers in a dark, wet, noisome prison as seawater forced its way in through the oarports. They’d needed fresh air, and he’d needed to be able to get them on deck as quickly as possible when the time came, so as soon as he’d gotten Sea Harvest into the canal’s calmer waters, he’d ordered it opened. Well, at least everyone aboard knew what had happened to Thunderbolt, so his crew undoubtedly had the sand buckets ready.
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