by David Weber
“Tell Alyk I’ll be along shortly,” he said, then lowered the double-glass to smile crookedly at Pharsaygyn. “And if you’re going to tell me he wasn’t your accomplice in coming out to drag my arse into the conning tower, please don’t.”
“That obvious, were we?” Pharsaygyn returned his smile unrepentantly.
“Let’s just say subtlety isn’t your strong suit,” Zhaztro said. “Besides, if it’s six miles for us, it’s only four and a half for Riverbend, which means—”
* * *
“Range eight thousand, Sir,” Lieutenant Gyffry Kyplyngyr said, looking up from the voice pipe which connected HMS Riverbend’s gunnery officer to her conning tower. “Lieutenant Metzlyr requests permission to open fire.”
Unlike Admiral Zhastro, Captain Tobys Whytmyn had already retired into that conning tower. It wasn’t because he was any more concerned about Dohlaran artillery at this range than his admiral, but there was going to be plenty of concussion, blast, and smoke from Charisian artillery all too soon. Under the circumstances, he preferred having the conning tower’s armor between himself and the muzzle blast of eleven 6-inch guns.
Call me a wuss, but I’d really like to keep my eardrums intact a little longer, he reflected.
“Very well,” he acknowledged, peering through the starbard angle-glass at their target. “Bring us another two points to larboard, Helm.”
“Two points larboard, aye, Sir.”
Petty Officer Riely Dahvynport turned the wheel easily, despite the fact that Riverbend’s rudder was far more massive—and much, much heavier—than any of galleons’ or galley’s rudder had ever been. The gleaming hydraulic rams deep in Riverbend’s bowels answered to his touch, and the ironclad’s course curved to the west. She continued to approach Cape Toe, but her new heading would open her broadside, allowing every one of her starboard guns to bear on the batteries.
Whytmyn let his ship settle onto her new course, then looked over his shoulder at Riverbend’s second lieutenant.
“Very well, Gyffry. Tell Tairohn he can open fire whenever he’s ready.”
“Aye, Sir!” Lieutenant Kyplyngyr acknowledged with a huge grin and disappeared down the ladder like a lizard into its hole.
* * *
Well, that can’t be a good sign, Ahlfraydoh Kwantryl thought, standing in the embrasure beside his assigned 10-inch Fultyn Rifle.
Lieutenant Bruhstair’s section was fully manned now and Lieutenant Rychardo Mahkmyn, Battery Number One’s commanding officer, had taken over his and Bruhstair’s post on the observation tower. As far as Kwantryl was concerned, he was more than welcome to it, too. The tower had been heavily sandbagged, but there was an enormous difference between sandbags, however thickly piled, and the solid earth of the battery’s thick, protective berm.
That was particularly pertinent at the moment, since the lead ironclad had just turned far enough to present its broadside to Cape Toe. Somehow, Kwantryl doubted they would have done that if they didn’t figure they were—
* * *
“Fire!” Tairohn Metzlyr barked into his voice pipe at the base of HMS Riverbend’s rangefinder.
Not only did the rangefinder give him an accurate distance to his target, but his present perch was also high enough—and the lenses in the rangefinder’s angle-glasses were strong enough—to give him an excellent view of it.
Nothing happened for another five seconds. And then—
* * *
“Langhorne’s balls!” someone gasped.
Fortunately, whoever it had been was somewhere behind Lieutenant Bruhstair, impossible to identify. Not that even a stickler like Bruhstair would have wasted time and energy castigating the malefactor under the circumstances.
The heretic ironclad disappeared behind a stupendous gush of fiery smoke.
HMS Triumphant had been entirely too close to a Charisian galleon when it exploded in the Kaudzhu Narrows. The stunning concussion of that moment, the flaming wreckage flying across his own ship, setting fire to Triumphant’s main topsail, was something Ahlfraydoh Kwantryl had no desire to repeat. Yet the volcanic eruption that blotted out his view of the ironclad was at least as bad. It was also eight thousand yards away, but that had its own drawbacks. Like the fact that at that range it took several seconds for the heretics’ shells to reach their targets, which gave a man all too much time to think about what was headed his way.
Kwantryl stepped back from the mouth of the gun embrasure. He was no more obvious about it than he could help, and he had ample time to put some of that nice, solid berm between him and the incoming fire.
Ten seconds after they’d been fired, eleven 6-inch shells came shrieking down on Battery Number One. They weren’t as tightly grouped as Lieutenant Metzlyr would have preferred. Five of them actually overshot the battery entirely, but that wasn’t a complete loss, because one of them scored a direct hit on one of the wagons Lieutenant Makadoo had reported to Admiral Sarmouth.
The heavy freight wagon disappeared in a savage explosion as the 12-foot-long coast defense rockets in its launching frame exploded. A huge mushroom of smoke, flame, and dirt rose over two hundred feet into the air and half a dozen fire-tailed comets screamed out of it at crazy angles. But the defenders had built high earthen cofferdams between those wagons, putting each of them into its own mini-redoubt, and those cofferdams channeled the blast upwards rather than out to the sides, where it might have taken other wagons with it.
Five of the other six shells slammed into the battery’s berm, drilling into it as Eraystor’s shells had drilled into Battery St. Charlz in the attack on Saram Bay, and Ahlfraydoh Kwantryl’s jaw tightened as their powerful explosions sent shockwaves rippling through his flesh.
The eleventh and final shell sizzled just above the top of the parapet and crashed into the base of the observation tower. The heavy sandbags smothered much of the explosion, but shell fragments sliced upwards through the tower platform’s floor like white-hot axes, killing three of its seven occupants … including Lieutenant Mahkmyn.
And then, eleven seconds after their shells, the thunder of HMS Riverbend’s guns rolled over the battery.
* * *
“Eleven thousand yards in four minutes, My Lord,” Ahrlee Zhones announced. He had to speak fairly loudly as he stood at Baron Sarmouth’s elbow because both of them had already inserted their protective earplugs.
“Thank you, Ahrlee,” Sarmouth acknowledged.
He and his youthful flag lieutenant stood on the flag bridge’s starboard wing as Halcom Bahrns followed Riverbend and Eraystor. Gwylym Manthyr wouldn’t be approaching Cape Toe quite as closely as her smaller consorts, partly because she drew more water and partly because no one could be certain the Dohlarans hadn’t planted any of their sea-bombs to protect those waters.
Actually, Sarmouth knew exactly where Earl Thirsk had put his minefields. As a result, he knew all of the armored ships could have come within as little as four thousand yards of the battery. There was no way he could have explained how he’d come to possess that knowledge, however, and he had a reputation as a canny, methodical officer to maintain.
Besides, even if there weren’t any sea-bombs, there were those rocket wagons he hadn’t been supposed to be able to know about. If worrying about mines he knew weren’t there kept his ships outside the range of rocket launchers he knew were there, that was fine with him. He’d been delighted when the first wagon exploded under Riverbend’s fire, and three more of them had been destroyed since.
Which only leaves twelve of the damned things, he thought grimly, looking down on the vortex of smoke and flame through an overhead SNARC.
* * *
“Sweet Bédard,” Zoshua Makadoo murmured as Gwylym Manthyr opened fire at last.
Unlike anyone else in the squadron—aside, if he’d only known, from its commander—he and Bryntyn Hahlys had an unobstructed view of the incredible vista, and his double-glass was glued to his eyes. He’d never imagined anything like the huge billows of brown Char
isian gunsmoke, the equally huge jets of dirty gray-white spurting from the battery’s earthen ramparts as the Dohlarans’ banded rifles returned fire, the black smoke pouring from the squadron’s funnels, and the white smoke of burning barracks rising From Battery Number One’s interior. Even at the kite balloon’s altitude, it quivered and bounced in the shockwaves as the flagship’s main battery spat out an even more enormous mountain of smoke.
Four 10-inch shells howled through six miles of empty space, and seven 8-inch shells came with them.
Twelve seconds later, they struck.
* * *
Kwantryl coughed harshly, despite the water-soaked bandanna across his nose and mouth, and stared into the blinding smoke through red-rimmed, tear-streaming eyes. He and the rest of Lieutenant Bruhstair’s gun crews—his surviving gun crews, at any rate—had only the vaguest notion of their target’s position. The gunsmoke was bad enough; the wood smoke pouring from the blazing barracks, mess hall, sickbay, and what had once been the battery commander’s office was worse.
“Clear!” the gun captain shouted, half-screaming to be heard, and Kwantryl and the other crew members jumped clear of the slides. The captain peered along the barrel while the heat of firing rose from it as if from a stove, looking for the funnels protruding from the impenetrable fog bank of gunsmoke. They were all he could really hope to see, and even then only fleetingly.
“Firing!” he shouted and jerked the lanyard.
The 10-inch rifle thundered like Chihiro’s trump of doom. It recoiled fiercely, and the gun crew swarmed over it, shoving the water-soaked swab down the barrel to quench the last shot’s embers. The barrel was so long it took two men to manage the swab, and the men with the next powder charge waited impatiently.
“Handsomely, boys!” Lieutenant Bruhstair shouted. “Handsomely!”
The lieutenant paced steadily, unhurriedly, up and down the line of his guns. There were only four of them now. One had been buried in its embrasure by an exploding heretic shell, but another had burst four feet in front of the trunnions. Half of that crew had been killed or wounded, and the survivors were distributed among the remaining guns, replacing other men who’d been cut down.
At that, they were lucky only one gun had burst. The cast-iron guns which had been issued to Lieutenant Bruhstair’s section were far more likely to fail than the newer steel rifles. It hadn’t made his gunners feel one bit more confident when he’d gone to the 15-pound bombardment charge rather than the standard 12-pound charge. Not that anyone had been tempted to argue. Given what the heretics’ shells were doing to Battery Number One it struck most of his men as unlikely they’d live long enough to be killed by a bursting cannon.
“Load!” the gun captain bellowed, and the man with the bagged charge reached for the gun’s overheated muzzle and—
* * *
Two tons of steel slammed into Battery Number One as Gwylym Manthyr’s first broadside landed. The 10-inch shells’ effect on the protective berm was devastating, but one of the 8-inch shells drilled straight into the face of the battery’s number two magazine with freakish accuracy.
The explosion was like the end of the world.
* * *
Ahlfraydoh Kwantryl dragged himself to his knees, shaking his head like a punchdrunk fighter. He didn’t remember the explosion that had picked him up and tossed him aside like a child’s doll. He didn’t remember landing, either, and he looked down with a sort of detached bemusement as he realized his left arm was broken in at least three places.
Better off than the rest of the lads, though, a corner of his brain told him.
The entire section was gone. The breeches of two of its guns still protruded from the churned earth which had once been a protective berm. The others were simply gone, dismounted and buried, and two-thirds of the gunners who’d served them had gone with them. A gaping, crescent-shaped bite had been ripped out of the battery’s parapet, and two more rocket wagons exploded even as he came to his feet. At least he thought it was two of them, but his ears didn’t seem to be working very well, and it could easily have been more than that.
He turned in a slow circle, clutching his broken arm, watching as men who’d been wounded or simply stunned began struggling upright, and his jaw tightened as he saw Dyaygo Bruhstair.
The young man’s—the boy’s—left leg ended at mid-thigh, and blood poured from the ragged stump. More blood pulsed from a deep wound in his left shoulder, but he’d fought his way into a sitting position somehow, clutching at the stump of his leg, and his face was paper-white, his eyes glazed with shock.
Kwantryl staggered to his side and went back to his knees. It was harder than hell with only one working arm, but he managed to pull his belt free and looped it around the truncated leg. Another member of the section knelt beside him, helping to tighten the crude tourniquet, but Kwantryl couldn’t have said who it was. It didn’t really matter. They’d just gotten the tourniquet tightened when another 6-inch shell exploded and a white-hot splinter decapitated whoever it had been.
He moved behind Bruhstair, gripped his collar in his good hand, and heaved, dragging the lieutenant towards the nearest supposedly shellproof dugout. After what had just happened to the section, he had his doubts about that “shellproof” guarantee. The engineers who’d made the promise had never seen heretic shells. But it would be better than nothing.
Another salvo tore into the shattered and broken battery. Steel splinters shrieked overhead and screams answered as they drove into men who’d just discovered they were all too mortal.
“Leave me!” Bruhstair’s voice was barely audible through the bedlam, but he reached up, pawing feebly at the hand locked onto his collar. “Leave me!” The words were half-slurred, but their intensity came through. “Get under cover!”
“No, Sir,” Kwantryl panted, staggering like a drunken man as he hauled the lieutenant towards the dugout.
“Damn you, Ahlfraydoh! Just once do what I say!”
“Not happening,” Kwantryl gasped. “’Sides, we’re almost—”
The 10-inch shell landed less than five feet behind them.
* * *
“Repairs completed, Sir. Or as close as we’re getting without Mahndrayn, anyway.”
Lieutenant Anthynee Tahlyvyr’s face and uniform were both filthy. In that respect, he was no different from most of the rest of HMS Eraystor’s crew. In his case, however, a liberal coating of oil and coal dust had been added to the grimy gunpowder residue, and Captain Cahnyrs shook his head with a smile as he regarded his senior engineer.
“How bad is it?”
“We’re not getting that breech block on Number Seven six-inch back anytime soon, Sir,” Tahlyvyr said sourly. “Same thing for the larboard engine room blower, and there’s still a hole in Compartment Sixty-Two we can’t reach to plug. Must be pretty good-sized, too, judging by how much water’s coming in, but the pumps’re holding it. Until I can get the funnel uptakes patched, I can’t give you enough draft for full steam pressure, but she’s still good for thirteen, maybe even fourteen knots.”
“Outstanding!” Cahnyrs said sincerely, and patted him on the shoulder. “Not go scrub some of that crap off your hands and grab something to eat. We’ll be finding more work for you soon, I’m sure.”
“What I’m here for, Sir,” Tahlyvyr replied with a weary, off-center smile. “And food sounds really good right about now.”
“Well, make it quick,” Cahnyrs warned. “You’ve got about forty minutes.”
“Aye, aye, Sir.”
The engineer touched his chest in salute and climbed down the exterior bridge ladder to Eraystor’s narrow side deck. Cahnyrs watched him go, then turned to the admiral at his side.
“I wonder if he understands just how good he really is, Sir Hainz?”
“I don’t know if he does, but I sure as hell do,” Zhastro said. “I assume your after-action report will bring him to my attention in suitably glowing terms?” Cahnyrs nodded, and Zhaztro snorted. “Well, see t
hat it does! That young man deserves a medal or two. Not the only member of your ship’s company that’s true of, either, Captain. For that matter, you haven’t been too shabby today.”
“Day’s still young, Sir. Plenty of time for me to screw up.”
“And if I thought that was likely to happen, I might actually worry about it,” Zhaztro replied dryly.
Cahnyrs chuckled, and Zhaztro gave him a smile. Then he moved out to the end of the bridge wing and lifted his double-glass to observe Eraystor’s next challenge and his smile faded.
The shattered ruins of the Cape Toe fortifications lay five hours and the better part of forty miles astern as she steamed steadily up the Zhulyet Channel towards its narrowest point, between Sandy Island to the east and the far smaller Wreckers’ Island on the western side of the channel. Even at its narrowest, that channel was twenty-six miles wide. Unfortunately, Slaygahl Shoal lay right in the middle of it, running almost thirty-five miles from north to south. Slaygahl was just awash at low tide, and even at high tide there were barely four feet of water across it. The shipping channel was far deeper—at least six fathoms everywhere—but it was also barely five miles wide on the western side of the shoal, and about ten miles wide on the eastern side. And, even more unfortunately, Sir Lywys Gardynyr wasn’t the sort of commander to miss the possibilities that offered. According to the seijins, he’d laid a dense field of sea-bombs on either side of the shoal.
Right where anyone trying to find a way through them would come under the heavy fire of at least a dozen 12-inch Fultyn Rifles.
This is going to be … unpleasant, Hainz, Zhaztro told himself. You thought Battery St. Charlz was bad, but this is going to be worse.