Mamelukes

by Jerry Pournelle

  “There!” someone shouted, and he heard bowstrings twang.

  He was turning towards the sound when the gunpowder charge exploded between his ship’s decks.

  * * *

  “Valerico!” Lucia cried.

  The militiaman stumbled backward, eyes enormous in a suddenly pale face as his hands clutched at the arrow buried in his chest. Marco caught the younger man, and Lucia felt her stomach knot as the valet eased him to the floor in a crimson rush of blood. An explosion cracked outside the window, not as loud as she’d expected, somehow, as she went to her knees beside him.

  “Signorina?” he gasped, reaching one bloody hand towards her. She clasped it in both of hers, feeling the hot, slick wetness, watching the terrible red tide spread beneath him.

  “Yes, Valerico,” she said, bending over him.

  “Did I—did I—?”

  “You did well, Valerico.” She moved her right hand to his forehead, stroking back the hair. “You did well.”

  “G-Good,” he said, but his voice faltered as pain twisted his face. “Tell my . . . tell my father I did—”

  His voice died and the hand gripping hers so fiercely relaxed suddenly.

  “I will, Valerico,” she whispered, bending over him. She kissed his forehead. “I will.”

  She closed her eyes against the burn of tears, fighting them with all her strength, until she felt someone touch the side of her face. Her eyes flared open then, and she found herself looking into Lord Bart’s eyes. They were dark behind the lenses of his spectacles.

  “He’s gone,” the star man said in his atrociously accented trade dialect. “I’m sorry.”

  Her mouth trembled, but she would not show weakness in front of Lord Bart. She would not! She—

  A tear escaped her, sliding down her cheek, and he brushed it away with a thumb.

  “I’m sorry,” he repeated. “But we need you right now.”

  He drew her back to her feet, then tucked one arm around her and drew her towards the window. It felt good, that arm, and she let herself lean against him.

  * * *

  “Curse them!” Captain Thalysios snarled.

  He knew what had to have struck Sea Harvest, although he’d never seen the star men’s “gunpowder” weapons actually used. He also knew where it had come from, and he glared up at the windows above the canal.

  The explosion aboard Sea Harvest had come at the worst possible moment, and she’d staggered sideways, colliding with Thunderbolt. The two of them—both burning—were jammed together, blocking the canal. The channel was wide enough his own Spatha could have squeezed past, but not without taking fire herself. They had to get those blazing wrecks as far to one side of the canal as they could, but no one could get close enough without coming into range of those windows. Especially not if the defenders had been smart enough to spread through several of the buildings.

  Two more galleys came around the bend behind him and backed oars heavily to avoid collision. That was all they would have needed!

  He glared up at those deadly windows, then raised his speaking trumpet as he turned towards the galleys astern of Spatha.

  * * *

  Another bucket of filthy water went over the leeward bulwark. And then another.

  Another.

  Warner stood on the quarterdeck, watching a bucket line of marines bail Ferox’s bilges. Green water swept across her deck more and more often, and still more of it was spurting past the leather stoppers on the oarports. At first, the deck crew had managed to control the flooding by taking turns cranking an Archimedes screw pump. But that was no longer enough, and Pilinius had ordered one end of the main hatch opened so that the marines could help bail. Warner wouldn’t have cared to be one of the marines standing on the ladder and passing those buckets up through the hatch.

  If this picks up any more, we’re going to be swamped, he thought. When we get back, I’ll have to build them a piston pump. Oh wait, a venturi flow tube on the stern with a check valve. Yeah, as long as we’re moving, the flow of water will draw fluid out of the bilge.

  The one good thing he could say about fear of drowning was that it helped keep his mind off being seasick, at least until the ship went down.

  The shoulder mic chirped twice and he pressed the transmit button.

  “This is Hunter One. Over.”

  “Looks like it’s time for you to start your run,” Art Mason said over the radio. “If you alter course now, you should be able to get on their flank as they pass. Over.”

  Warner looked up as Martins and Junius stepped closer to hear Mason.

  “Roger,” he said. “What course? Over.”

  “Hard to say—they’re really scattered. And we see some really big navibus onerārius inbound with them. Over.”

  “That doesn’t sound good,” Warner said. “Nobody mentioned anything like that to us. Over.”

  “Noticed that, did you?” Mason replied dryly. “But they’re out there, and they’re three-masted, probably bigger’n Ferox. The Colonel figures they’re probably troopships. Which means our troop estimates were probably low, too. Anyway, they’re here and it looks like they’re being escorted by some more of those Duchy ships. Any transports you can keep from landing their troops would be a really good thing. Hold one.”

  There was a brief pause, then Mason’s voice returned.

  “Head southwest for now. Over.”

  “Roger, southwest. Can you see what happened to our other ships? Over.”

  “Yeah, they’re engaging the other squadron upwind of you. Looks like some of the ships are in a big raft fight, and at least one of the other guys has gone down. Not sure that was our doing. Poor bastard might just have capsized. And—oh! Somebody’s on fire big time! Think someone just used a cocktail . . . ”

  “That can’t be good,” Martins said. “The wind’s in the wrong direction. That’ll blow back on friendly ships.”

  “Someone make a mistake?” Warner wondered out loud.

  “Maybe. Could’ve been out of desperation.”

  Warner looked into the wind, scanning the horizon. He thought he saw a smudge of smoke where he’d last seen friendly mastheads, but in this wind, that had to be his imagination.

  “Whoever it is, he’s not going to make it. Over,” Mason said.

  “Gotcha. We’ll be changing course shortly. Over.”

  Warner released the transmit button and looked at Junius.

  “The Colonel says to steer southwest. He wants us to go for the navibus onerārius, but we’ll probably have to fight our way through some of their galleys first.”

  Junius nodded and beckoned to Pilinius.

  “Steer southwest,” he ordered, and Pilinius nodded in turn and began bawling orders.

  A red flag went to the top of Ferox’s mizzenmast as the deck crew sprang to the braces. Pilinius waited a moment longer, for the rest of the squadron to see the signal, then nodded curtly to the three men on the helm. The steering oar went over, the waiting crewmen trimmed the sails, and Ferox surged around. The other galleys followed suit, maneuvering to form a wedge formation with the flagship at its apex.

  The ride was easier now, although it was still a hell of a lot rougher than Warner might have preferred. The wind was almost directly astern, no longer coming in from the quarter, and the violent corkscrew rolling motion had eased considerably. The seas were as mountainous as ever, but the galley’s stern castle was six or seven feet higher than the midships bulwark. That meant waves were no longer sweeping the main deck, and the marines abandoned their buckets in favor of weapons.

  * * *

  “Hot work!” Admiral Ottone del Verme shouted to his flag captain.

  “Too hot!” Captain Forcucci shouted back, and del Verme nodded in grim agreement.

  The timing had gone to hell—not too surprising, with the way the weather had turned. Del Verme had never expected it to be this bad, and it was getting worse as the wind came howling down the funnel of the Inland Sea. Even here in
the islands’ lee, the seas were high enough to make rowing both difficult and exhausting. He preferred to not even think about what it must be like for the Roman squadron. And anybody who failed to make it into a safe anchorage in the next half dozen hours or so was unlikely to ever see port again.

  Not that that was likely to be a pressing problem for his own command.

  His squadron had intercepted the enemy just short of the entrance to the Canale Occidentale, but they were badly outnumbered, and still more attackers were clawing their way towards the channel mouth. Some were actually coming up from the southwest, using the islands’ wind shadow to fight their way upwind towards del Verme’s squadron. He suspected that most of them were more concerned with finding shelter from the mounting storm than with attacking him. Unfortunately, he was in their way, and this was no weather for a maneuvering battle where he might have avoided them. Even if that hadn’t been true, sheer weight of numbers had already forced him back into the Canale Occidentale, and at least a dozen enemy galleys had run ashore on Isola di Cannaregio. He wasn’t certain they’d done it on purpose, but whether by intent or accident, they’d gotten their marines and rowers onto the island. He hoped the militia could hold them, but he was far from certain of that, as well.

  Meanwhile, he had problems of his own. The great galleys at the center of his line had thrown back every assault with relative ease—so far—and the star man-designed firebombs had burned five Riccigionan galleys which had come too close to the seawall on the southern edge of the channel. That had bought him precious time, but the attackers were getting their own infantry ashore on the northwestern shore of San Giorgio, as well as Cannaregio. The firebomb throwers had been driven back, and that had cleared the full width of the channel for the enemy to come at him. Two thirds of his galleys were already locked in combat with half their number of Riccigionan and Five Kingdoms galleys, and twice that many fresh enemies were charging in on them.

  It would appear they had actually underestimated their enemies’ numbers. He hadn’t thought that was possible.

  “It’s time to block the channel,” he told Forcucci. The captain looked at him for a moment, then drew a deep breath and nodded.

  “Si, Ammiraglio,” he said.

  The captain began shouting orders, and Pugnale, Del Verme’s great galley flagship, thrust forward into the melee raging in the channel mouth. The other disengaged galleys accompanied Pugnale, smashing their way into the tangle to create yet another channel-blocking raft.

  “Tell Lord Rick we are going to anchor,” he said to the star man at his elbow. He gestured at the southernmost of his galleys, hard up against Isola di San Giorgio. A mass of militiamen gathered on the canalside quay, catching the galley’s mooring lines and making them fast.

  “Tell him I believe we can stand our ground as long as Sangue is able to hold her position and the militia can continue to reinforce my crews.”

  “Yes, Sir,” Corporal Franklin O’Reilly said, reaching for the device—the “microphone”—fastened to his right shoulder.

  “And then, Lord Franklin, I believe it will be time for you to go ashore.”

  “Admiral, my orders—”

  “I know your orders,” del Verme interrupted. “I’m sure Lord Rick can see us from the bell tower, however, and there are no more complicated orders for him to pass us. We hold here, or we die.” He shrugged. “Very simple. But they’re getting men onto the islands, even if we hold the channels, and you and your men’s star weapons will be more useful defending the Palazzo San Marco than here. Go now, while the bridges from San Giorgio are still in our hands.”

  “Admiral, without the radio, you won’t know when—”

  “I know,” del Verme interrupted once more. “It doesn’t matter. Go!”

  The star man looked at him for a moment, and then, to del Verme’s surprise, he straightened his shoulders and gave the admiral a star man salute. He returned it in the Nikeisian style, and their eyes held for a moment. Then O’Reilly said something to his fellow star men and they turned to race across the entangled ships while del Verme’s crews began lashing the raft together.

  * * *

  Enemy ships continued to pour into the outer lagoon. Half of them went directly to the rafted ships clogging the throat of the North Channel. Most of the others were driven by the wind towards the western side of the archipelago. A lot of them found shelter of a sort in the pocket where the fishing boat channel between the islands of Cannaregio and Lido entered the outer lagoon. Rick couldn’t see most of the channel because of the buildings clustered along its sides, but he could see its exit into the inner lagoon. The good news was that the canal was obviously too shallow for the pocketed galleys to get through it. The bad news was that their crews had go somewhere, and the radios confirmed that hundreds—probably thousands, really—of men were swarming ashore on the western shore of Lido and the northeastern shore of Cannaregio.

  A few had attempted to circle around east of the ship raft in the main channel, but none of them had made it. They’d been driven onto shoals or beaten to death against the seawall, but he could see hundreds of enemy troops swarming ashore on Isola di San Lazzaro, the island on the east side of the North Channel, as well.

  “Message from Lieutenant Cargill, Colonel,” Mason said, and Rick lowered his binoculars to look at him. Cargill and Rick’s own Corporal Stratton commanded the ten Gurkhas and the single Bren gun which had been deployed to San Lazzaro. “He says they can’t hold their ground much longer. The militia’s fighting better’n we expected, really, but their losses are rising and they’re beginning to waver, even with star weapon support.”

  “Damn.”

  Rick raised his binoculars again, his jaw tight. If Cargill was forced back from San Lazzaro, they’d lose the ability to reinforce the Nikeisians fighting to hold the ship raft. And with no influx of replacements, the raft’s defenders wouldn’t last long.

  God, I hope to hell Cargill can hold, he thought grimly. If we lose control of the raft . . .

  He turned and looked to the west. At least there was less pressure on the militia supporting del Verme’s squadron and it seemed to be standing firm. As long as it did, del Verme could probably look after himself.

  He turned his gaze back to the north and found himself wishing, not for the first time, that he knew Cargill and Martins better. They were so damned young. How good was their judgment, really?

  Guess it’s always come down to this in the end. It all depends on some goddamned lieutenant’s judgment call out at the sharp edge. Doesn’t seem to matter whether it’s me in Angola or Cargill on Tran. And I’ve got no option but to hope he knows what he’s doing.

  “Tell Cargill to use his own judgment,” he said, never lowering the binoculars. “Tell him we can’t reinforce him. He’s to hold as long as he can and then get the hell out.”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “And then,” Rick turned his head to meet Mason’s eyes, “tell Walbrook I think we’re going to need him on the North Channel first.”

  * * *

  Captain Thalysios trotted stealthily through the winding alley, trying not to wince at the unholy racket of the marines behind him. Apparently, none of them had ever heard of the word “quiet,” he thought disgustedly. At least the wind howling around the city’s roofs should drown it out. Mostly.

  Over a dozen galleys—and, more importantly, one of the troop-laden navibus onerārius—had made landfall on Isola di Lido. Most of the attackers were headed east, towards the fortress guarding the western side of the Canale del Nord. If they could storm the fortress, they could swarm the mass of galleys blocking the channel from the west. Thalysios was certain that other attackers had made their way ashore on San Lazzaro to attack the other end of the ship raft, as well. But he and his men had headed in the opposite direction.

  The Nikeisians had spent years planning their city’s defenses. They had to know that any attack would focus on the entrances to the main channels, and they would h
ave deployed their own troops to protect the most probable lines of approach from those points. But there’d been no galleys protecting Canale Gottardo Capponi, and so far as Thalysios could tell, he’d gotten his men ashore undetected. For that matter, they’d covered three blocks without seeing a single soul, far less an enemy soldier. It looked as if the Nikeisians truly had discounted any threat by way of the fishing boat channel and deployed their fighting power elsewhere. Aside from the devils who’d burned Thunderbolt and Sea Harvest, at least.

  Thalysios hoped Polidoro Scarcello’s payment would do him some good in hell, because the Nikeisian would never have the chance to spend it in this world. As far as the captain knew, no more than a quarter of Eurydamus’ crew had made it ashore, and Scarcello hadn’t been among them. But so far, all of his information had proved accurate, and according to the turncoat, only three drawbridges crossed the canal. No doubt all of them had been lowered, if only to facilitate the defenders’ own movements. That also neatly blocked the canal for any of the attackers’ galleys, however, and at least some troops must have been posted to protect them. That was why they’d planned on landing marines to seize control of them from the beginning. Until whoever had dropped those fiery missiles intervened, at any rate. As long as they were in a position to burn any galley that passed below their perch, no one could get by them to attack the bridges. And if they could sink one or two more ships at the same spot, the bridges wouldn’t matter. The wrecks would block the channel quite nicely.

  Unless, of course, someone prevented the bastards from dropping any more fire.

  * * *

  “What do you figure they’re up to now, Bart?” Cal Haskins asked in a low voice.

  He and Saxon stood well to one side of another window—not the one they’d dropped their incendiaries from—peering down at the choppy waters of the canal. The first angry drops of rain drummed on the roof above them and the wind sounded stronger than ever, but the canal seemed almost placid by contrast. Except for the two galleys still burning below them.