"Whatever that thunder-weapon is, it isn't always reliable," Demansk said aloud. "They smote themselves, by the gods!"
He looked around. "You! Escort the Speaker below!" There was a cubbyhole of a captain's cabin on a trireme. "Sailing master!"
"Sir?"
"Take a look at that. . thing. Doesn't it look to you as if those wheels are pushing it through the water?"
"Sir. . I've never seen anything like it in all my life, and I've been at sea since I was six. Yes, that's as likely as anything."
The iron ship had just rammed another Confed quinquereme. This time it hung up for a moment, ram caught by a pinch of its victim's shattered timbers. Brave men leapt down from the quinquereme to its deck. . and over into the sea, as their hobnailed sandals slipped and slid helplessly down the sloping iron. Demansk could see one man striking sparks as he windmilled for an instant and then went over with a splash.
"Lay me a course to ram it right in the center of the port wheel. Hundred-commander!"
The underofficer in command of the ship's Confed marines came up at a run. His face might have been carved from granite, but it was wet with sweat and rigid with tension under the transverse-crested helmet.
"Sir!"
"Have your men take off their marching sandals-I want 'em barefoot."
"Sir?" The man had been obviously, prayerfully thankful for orders; now he looked as if he feared the Justiciar might have joined the day's madness.
"Look at that thing. No, don't stare, just look. It's obviously timber, plated over with iron like a scale cuirass. Hobnails won't grip. Feet will! There are men inside, and I intend to kill those men."
"Yes, sir!"
The man strode off, bawling at his command. Demansk caught a strong whiff of the smoke boiling out of the iron ship as his trireme heeled and turned; honest woodsmoke, right enough.
If there are men inside, and not monsters-he thrust an image of claws on treadmills aside-then they have to be steering from that little boxlike thing in front of the tubes. So they can't have a very good view, looking through slits like a close-helmet, and with all that smoke.
He gave a quick, unaccustomed prayer to Wodep and Allfather Greatest and Best that he was right. His life and the Confederacy's western provinces both depended on it.
"Ramming speed!" he ordered. The iron ship was swelling with frightful suddenness.
* * *
"That's discouraging them," Esmond said.
Another Confed trooper on the beach staggered three steps backward and dropped, arms flung wide and shield spinning away. An arquebusier beside one of the Revenge's steering oars chuckled and stepped back, letting his assistant and loader work. They moved in a coordinated dance, automatic now, grinning past the powder smuts that turned their faces into the masks of pantomime devils. Esmond's galley rose and fell with the surf, but the gunmen on it and the rest of his squadron were keeping the hundred-odd Confed troopers on shore from interfering.
"Line's hitched!" a sailor said, climbing over the stern naked and glistening wet.
Esmond nodded. "Take her out."
The oars had been poised, waiting. Now they dipped, driving deep; there was a unanimous heaving grunt from below, and again, and again. .
"She floats!" the steersman said, letting his oar pivot down into water deep enough for it. "We've got her off!"
Esmond looked about with pride; five of his six ships were towing captives, the enemy ships coming after them oarless and sternfirst, the traditional sign of victory at sea. The other five triremes of the Confed squadron were burning hulks, or sunk. One was sticking out of the waves, its bronze beak planted firmly in the sandy mud of the shallow coastal waters. Wreckage floated past with the tide. .
. . an awful lot of wreckage. Esmond looked seaward, losing the diamond focus of commanding his own small section of the battle, and shaped a soundless whistle.
"Wodep!" he blurted.
The neat lines had vanished-he looked up at the sun and blinked astonishment-in only an hour. Instead there was a melee that stretched from here to the edge of sight, and almost to within catapult range of Preble's walls. Galleys were burning and sinking everywhere he looked; as he watched, a Confed quinquereme went nosedown and slid under the waves, shedding what looked like a coating of black fur at this distance, and that he knew was men clinging desperately to a life that sank beneath them. A little further off an Islander capital ship fired its four cannon directly into the deck of a Confed trireme, shattering the marines clumped to board into an abattoir mass of blood and torn meat, and punching through the deck into the crowded oar benches beneath. Even as it did a Confed quinquereme ranged up along its other side, and the boarding ramps slung up by ropes crashed down to link the ships, driving their iron beaks into the lower deck of the Islander vessel. Marines launched a volley of their weighted darts, and then swarmed across like implacable warrior ants. Here, there, a confusion no eye could take in. .
"Where's the ram?" Adrian was half-shouting, his eyes wild. "What has that donkey-fucking idiot done with my ship?"
* * *
"Allfather!" Demansk snapped.
The shock of impact threw him to his hands and knees on the deck, driving bits of armor into his flesh. He pulled himself upright again, watching with savage glee as the deck of the enemy vessel surged backward and the wheel beat itself to flinders on the bronze-sheathed timber of his ship's ram. Splinters rained back, as dangerous as flying knives, but he ignored them. Then the remnants of the wheel froze, and an odd muffled screaming sound came from within the. . Iron Monstreme, Demansk thought. The monster-chuffing breath ceased abruptly.
"Follow me!" he roared. "Whatever it is, we hurt it! Now we finish it off!"
The boarding ramp fell. The iron spike penetrated at least a little, and Demansk ran down it. The iron plates felt strange beneath his bare feet, but skin gripped-the only problem was that it was just short of painfully hot. He crouched, holding his round officer's shield out for balance, and ran up the low curve towards the square blockhouse forward of the smoke cylinders. He could hear men following him, and one despairing scream as somebody slipped and slid into the water on his way to the bottom, and then they were crouched around the blockhouse. It was iron plates on timber, the same as the rest of the strange construction, but steam was leaking out of the slits-oddly like a bathhouse.
A hatchway on top of the blockhouse opened, and a man stumbled up and out, wavering, pawing at his crimson face. A dart landed in his gut with a wet thwack that was all too clear at this range.
"Prisoners!" Demansk shouted. "I want prisoners!"
Men clambered on to the roof of the blockhouse, and one of them gave Demansk a hand. The hatchway proved to be about the size of an ordinary door, but the space beyond was a ghostly mass of steam and vague thrashing figures.
Like an orgy in the steam room, Demansk thought, dazed. Whatever he'd been expecting, it wasn't this.
"We surrender!" a voice coughed, hoarse and rough, an Islander accent. "Let us out, for the love of the Mother!"
"Come out with your hands empty," Demansk called down.
A man came up, showing empty palms; one side of his face was a huge blister. "Spare us, lord! Mercy!"
"Who are you?" Demansk barked. "And what is this thing?"
Even as he spoke, he realized the futility of the question. Whatever this was, it probably couldn't be explained by a wounded man at assegai-point.
"Sharlz Thicelt," the man said. "Water, lord?" Demansk nodded, and a man handed over a canteen. The Islander drank, gasped, coughed, drank again. "I'm skipper of the Wodep's Fist-or was."
He spat some of the water on the corpse of the first man who left the hatchway, and tore off his turban in a gesture of pure rage, revealing a long shaven skull. The gold hoops in his ears bounced with the vehemence of his motion as he threw the turban after the spittle. Demansk thought that if the footing had been better, he'd have run over and kicked the corpse as well.
"And that
was Prince Tenny, may the Sun God reincarnate him as the blind bastard of a pox-ridden half-arnket whore. The gods-forsaken little sodomite lost us the battle."
* * *
"Lord King!" Adrian said.
The King of the Isles was still wearing his gilded armor, hacked and battered and blood-splashed. That took some courage, in a small launch. There was no need to ask what had happened to the flagship; it was not a thousand yards off, with two battered but still floating Confed quinqueremes lashed to either side.
Casull stalked to the quarterdeck, his eyes travelling over the chaos that reigned on this stretch of reddened ocean. "I do not abide by a plan that has failed," he grated. "We'll retreat." He looked at the Revenge's steersman. "Set course for the nearest ship still in our hands. We'll have to arrange a rearguard, if we're to get to Preble in one piece."
He looked at Esmond then. "Where is my son?"
Esmond met his eyes. "Lord King, the enemy holds the Wodep's Fist. Beyond that, I do not know."
Casull sighed, his eyes dull. "If he lives, we'll hear before sunset; demands for ransom, enough to leave the kingdom poor. If not. . if not, we'll drink his spirit home to the Sun."
TWELVE
The King's eyes were alive and bitter by the time the sun had been down two hours; they were bloodshot and a little inclined to wander, as he lay on the cushions downing cup after cup of unwatered wine, but his voice was only slightly slurred. The air of the chamber was thick with incense, with attar of roses and patchouli oil from the courtesans who danced and sang and drank with men on their cushions, with the smells of wine and sweat and ointment on bandaged wounds. Light flickered from the lamps on the gilded plaster of the ceiling, worked in sea monsters and figures from legend, and on the pale stone of the walls and their lapis inlay of flowers and trees.
"A toast!" the King of the Isles said, glaring at the Emeralds where they sat halfway down the great municipal banqueting hall of Preble. The dull roar of conversation died, except for snatches of drunken song from those too far gone to care. "A toast to my son, the shining warrior, Prince Tenny!"
"Prince Tenny!" the hall roared back.
Casull threw the cup to one side, and the priceless Vanbert glassware shattered. A servant shoved another into his hand.
"And another toast! To the bastard son of a whore, Esmond Gellert, who lost the battle by running amok without orders!"
Esmond stood, graceful and tall in a plain tunic and swordbelt. His hand fell unconsciously to the place where a hilt would have been, if men could feast armed before the King. The guardsmen leaning on their great scimitars tensed slightly; a fighting man like the Emerald was never entirely disarmed. Before he could speak, Adrian rose beside him, bowing:
"O King, your kingdom's heart bleeds with you in your honorable grief for Prince Tenny, fallen like so many others on this day of sorrow!" he said, the trained rhetor's voice filling the chamber without straining. "Yet even in grief, a King remembers justice!"
The red-veined eyes turned on him. "You speak of justice, bumboy?" he grated.
"Indeed, Lord King," Adrian cut in, smoothly enough that it did not seem to be an interruption-one art both the Grove's school of rhetoric and the lawcourts of Vanbert taught. "It would not be just to punish the only squadron commander in your fleet who today sank his own numbers in Confed vessels, and brought as many more behind him, towing them in victory to lay at your feet."
That brought Casull to a halt for a second, his mouth open. Adrian swallowed, his own so dry that he was insanely tempted to stop for a drink; his temples pounded, and his body dragged with the weariness of the day's fighting. He flogged his brain into functioning, as merciless to himself as he'd been throwing grenades into the oar decks of Confed galleys.
"And indeed, he did so on my urging," he went on. Casull's eyes narrowed. "Not that I, a mere artificer, would have dared to put my word against the King's! May the King live forever! We are as dust beneath his feet. No, my own wisdom is only wise enough to know that I should never interfere in such matters. Yet before the word of the shining Prince Tenny, the hero and heir, what could I do but obey?"
"What is this?" Casull said, visibly trying to gather his wits. He didn't need to be sober for the sort of temper-fit he'd had in mind, or to give the necessary orders afterwards. He hadn't expected to be engaging in the elenchos of the Grove.
"In this very harbor, while I showed him the ship Wodep's Fist, Prince Tenny commanded me on pain of his utmost wrath that any Confed movement towards Preble must be stopped-since the Royal garrison would be on shipboard for the great battle. Thus I saw Confed ships break away towards Preble, and thus I laid the commands of the Prince upon my brother. What could he do but obey, my lord King? What could I do? We were as dust beneath his feet. And see the wisdom of the Prince's commands; the walls of Preble stand, a strong base for our next attack!"
"Next?" Casull roared, shaking a fist. "You want me to lose my whole fleet, and see the Confeds sacking Chalice? Are you in their pay?"
"Ah, my lord pleases to jest! See how I laugh, taken by his wit! My lord will have noticed today, that our triremes-those that carried, as I advised, many arquebusiers, rather than spreading them about in small numbers-could devastate the slower Confed ships from a range that neither catapult nor bow could match. Thus were five sunk, and five captured, with hardly any loss. Next time-"
"Get out! I've had my belly full of your lies, and my son is dead, and I must beg the Confed commander for his body. Get out, before I kill you!"
"The King commands," Adrian said, bowing again.
* * *
"What are these things?" Helga asked, fascinated, touching one gingerly but trying to make it seem as if it was to steady herself against the gentle rocking of the anchored ship.
Demansk frowned at his daughter, but it wasn't really a formal occasion where it was grossly improper for a woman to speak. Most of the Confed force's commanders were asleep in their tents, and so were most of the surviving men. Only a few aides and some troopers to hold torches were with him on the deck of the captured Islander quinquereme.
He peered at the bronze shape that lay on a carriage of oak with four small wheels, amid a cat's-cradle of ropes and pulleys. A smell hung about it, of hot metal and sulfur. Death farts from the Lord of the Shades, he thought sardonically.
"It's like those arquebuses, only much bigger," he said. "Look, there are the stone balls it threw-or those sacks of lead ones. Hellpowder down the muzzle, the ball or bag on top, set fire to it, and out it goes-smashing ships and men." He shook his head. "This changes the whole face of war, forever, do you understand?" His anger was distant, muffled. "We can't keep it secret, now-not with the Islanders still having more. If they use these things, we must too, and. ." His voice stopped with an enormous yawn.
"And you can curse Adrian more tomorrow, Father," she said. "I still think you weren't recovered enough for a battle-even if you did destroy the iron ram all by yourself."
Pride glowed through the sarcasm of her words, and Demansk felt himself swelling a little. Well, it was something of a feat. . perhaps enough for a triumph in Vanbert? Perhaps even the Speaker's chair; there was so much that cried out to be done, to make safe the State.
And I'm out on my feet and getting delirious, he told himself severely. "Back to camp."
The captured quinqueremes were with the surviving capital ships of the Confed fleet, tied up to bollards at their bows, sterns out into the artificial harbor. They couldn't be drawn up like the dozens of triremes beached on either side, but they were secure enough here. More than secure, Demansk thought. The rock-filled merchantmen that made up the breakwaters reached well out into the ocean, defining a rectangle five hundred feet by a thousand; out at the entrance, two wooden forts rested on two large cargo carriers each. Flaming baskets of wood reached out on poles, to show the boom of chain-linked logs that sealed the entrance against raiders. The forts had archers and slingers and catapults, and they were well within range
of each other. Shoreward were the dockyards and the whole Confed camp, still sixteen thousand regulars and as many auxiliaries-they'd even had time to run up timber barracks and housing, while the fleet was being made ready.
He glared out towards the dim lights of Preble, just visible on the southwestern horizon. The battle had been about even, which made it a Confed victory-and next time they'd have had time to study the new weapons, come up with countertactics of their own, and they'd still have the weight of men and metal on their side. Next time. .
* * *
"The King was angry," Adrian said judiciously.
Esmond drank and wiped his mouth. "The King was ripshit," he said. "The King may have us all impaled before morning, if he doesn't pass out first-he may regret it when he sobers up, but that won't help us."
probability of execution in the next 6 hours is 67 %, ±7, Center said helpfully.
To be fair, Raj said judiciously, Casull really doesn't understand the new weapons. He's a fair to good commander with what he does understand.
Adrian looked around the small rooftop platform; he and Esmond, and their seconds-in-command, plus a scattering of Striker officers. . Nobody was looking too cheerful. Frankly, I doubt anyone here is in the mood to be particularly fair, he thought.
"We're the only ones who kick Confed ass, and we're in line to be buggered by the Oakman," Donnuld Grayn said. "Ain't no justice in this world, not if you're a hired soldier. Fuck all Islanders, anyway. If Lord Gellert'd been in command today, we'd be drinking Jeschonyk's wine." He grinned with a friendly malice. "And Lord Adrian here would be back diddling Demansk's daughter."
Adrian flushed. How that news had gotten out, the Gray-Eyed alone knew. Although letting it do so was more in Gellerix's line, if you listened to the old stories.
"Esmond would have done better," he agreed neutrally.
Because he'd listen to you, Raj said. I think that left to himself, he'd make a battle plan and then use the new weapons in it, not build the plan around their capacities. Of course, he doesn't have Center to lean on. He's a better than middling commander, with the weapons mix you have here-very good indeed.
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