by David Weber
"Forget it!" he shouted. "There's no time! Over the side, boys!"
The rest of the gun crew stared at him for a moment, wild-eyed. Then they were gone, scrambling over the bulwark. Blaidyn watched them go, then turned to take one last look around the deck, to be sure everyone was gone or going.
Flames were beginning to spurt out of the hatchway. He could feel their heat on his face from here, even through the rain, and he tried to close his ears to the agonized shrieks of men trapped below in that blazing inferno.
There was nothing more he could do, and he turned to follow the gun crew . . . just as a single round shot from a final thundering broadside struck him squarely in the chest.
Fourteen minutes later, the flames reached his ship's magazine.
* * *
At least three of the anchored galleys were on fire now, illuminating the anchorage brightly despite the rain. Merlin stood beside Cayleb on Dreadnought's quarterdeck as the galleon's guns continued to rave at their targets, and the wild vista of destruction all about him dwarfed anything Nimue Alban, who'd warred with the power of nuclear fusion itself, had ever seen with her own eyes.
The ship was no longer moving. She was motionless—not as stable as a shoreside fortress in these whitecapped waters, perhaps, but close enough to it for gunners accustomed to the rolling, pitching motion of a ship at sea. Scoring hits on equally anchored targets was child's play for them under these conditions, and their rate of fire was far higher than it would have been from a moving ship's deck. They loaded and fired, loaded and fired, like automatons, reducing their targets to shattered, broken wrecks.
Steam curled from the hot gun tubes between shots, hissing up like tendrils of fog to be whipped away by the wind. The reek of powder smoke, blazing wood, burning tar and cordage raced across the waves in spray-washed banners of smoke, twisted and broken above the whitecaps, starkly silhouetted against the flash of guns and flaming ships.
One of the blazing galleys drifted free as her anchor cable burned through. The wind sent her slowly in Dreadnought's direction—not directly towards her, but close enough—wreathed in the fiery corona of her own destruction. Captain Manthyr saw her, and his orders sent the capstan around, tightening the spring until the galleon's starboard broadside bore on the fiery wreck.
He stood ready to cut his own cable and make sail, if necessary, but three quick, thunderous broadsides were enough to finish the already sinking galley. She settled on her side in a huge, hissing cloud of steam as water quenched flame, a hundred and fifty yards clear of his ship, and another snarling cheer of victory went up from his gunners.
* * *
Royal Bédard exploded.
The deafening eruption when the flames reached her magazine dwarfed every other sound, even the brazen voices of the Charisian guns. The tremendous flash seemed to momentarily burn away the spray and rain. It illuminated the bellies of the overhead clouds, flashed back from the vertical western face of Crag Hook, and hurled flaming fragments high into the windy night, like homesick meteors returning to the heavens.
The fiery debris arced upward, then crashed back, hissing into extinction as it hit the water, or smashing down on the decks of nearby galleys and galleons alike in cascades of sparks. Crewmen raced to heave the burning wreckage over the side, and here and there small fires were set, but the pounding rain and windblown spray had so thoroughly soaked the topsides of both sides' vessels that no ship was seriously threatened.
Yet the furious action paused, as if the galley's spectacular, terrifying disintegration had awed both sides into a temporary state of shock.
The pause lasted for two or three minutes, and then it vanished into renewed bedlam as Cayleb's gunners opened fire once more.
* * *
Earl Thirsk stared helplessly at the hellish panorama.
He had no idea how long he'd stood on Gorath Bay's aftercastle. It seemed like an eternity, although it couldn't really have been much longer than two hours, possibly a bit more. Someone had draped a cloak over his shoulders—he had no idea who—and he huddled inside it, holding it about him, while he gazed upon the final ruin of his command.
The Charisians had split into at least two columns, or perhaps three. They were deep inside his anchored formation, firing mercilessly, and everywhere he looked the rain was like sheets of bloody glass, lit by the glare of burning galleys and flashing artillery.
He'd underestimated his enemy. He'd never dreamed Cayleb would have the insane audacity to lead an entire fleet of galleons into Crag Reach at night through the fury of a near-gale. He still couldn't believe it, even with the devastating evidence burning to the waterline before his very eyes.
Royal Bédard was gone, taking her flames with her, but a half-dozen of his other ships blazed brightly, and even as he gazed out at the carnage, another kindled. He watched flames shooting up out of its holds, licking up its tarred shrouds, and silhouetted against the light he saw crowded boats pulling strongly away from the inferno. As far as he could tell, no Charisian had even been firing at the blazing ship, and his teeth ached from the pressure of his jaw muscles as he realized the crew had deliberately fired their vessel and then abandoned ship rather than face the enemy.
He turned away from the sight, only to see another of his as yet undamaged galleys getting underway. Not to close with the enemy, but to row directly towards the western shore of the anchorage. Even as he watched, she drove herself bodily up onto the rocky beach, and her crew flowed over her sides, splashing into the shallow water, stumbling ashore, fleeing into the darkness.
Part of him wanted to curse them for their cowardice, but he couldn't. What else could anyone have expected? Destruction was upon them all, appearing out of the night like the work of some demon, and were they not anchored in the waters of Armageddon Reef itself?
That was the final straw, he thought. This very land was cursed. Every single one of his men knew the story of the monumental evil which had been birthed here so long ago and the terrible destruction which had been visited upon it, and that was enough, added to the terror of the totally unexpected attack, the sudden explosion of violence, and their completely unprepared state.
Another galley flamed up, fired by its own crew, and a second started moving towards the beach. And a third. And beyond that, silhouetted against the smoky glare of their burning sisters, he saw other galleys hauling down their flags, striking their colors in token of surrender.
He stared at them for a moment longer, then turned away. He climbed down the aftercastle ladder slowly, like an old, old man, opened his cabin door, and stepped through it.
III
HMS Dreadnought,
Crag Reach,
Armageddon Reef
"Earl Thirsk is here, Your Highness," Ahrnahld Falkhan announced with unusual formality as he opened the door to HMS Dreadnought's flag cabin.
Cayleb turned from the vista of whitecapped water beyond the stern windows to face the door as his senior Marine bodyguard ushered the Dohlaran admiral through it.
"Your Highness," Thirsk said, bending his head.
"My Lord," Cayleb returned.
The Dohlaran straightened, and Cayleb studied his face thoughtfully. The older man was soaking wet from the rough passage in an open boat, and he looked worn and exhausted, but more than fatigue was stamped upon his features. His dark eyes—eyes, Cayleb suspected, which were normally confident, even arrogant—carried the shadows of defeat. Yet there was more to it even than that, and the crown prince decided Merlin had been right yet again when Cayleb explained what he had in mind. Not even this man, confident and strong minded though he was, was immune to the reputation and aura of Armageddon Reef.
Which was going to make this morning's conversation even more interesting.
"I've come to surrender my sword, Your Highness," Thirsk said heavily, as if each word cost him physical pain.
He reached down with his left hand, gripping not the pommel, but the guard of the sword sheathed at his hi
p. He drew it from its scabbard, ignoring the eagle eye with which both Falkhan and Merlin watched him, and extended it to Cayleb, hilt-first.
"No other man has ever taken my sword from me, Prince Cayleb," the Dohlaran said as Cayleb's fingers closed upon the hilt.
"It's the sword of a man who deserved a better cause to serve," Cayleb replied quietly. He looked down at the weapon in his hand for a moment, then handed it to Falkhan, who set it gently on Cayleb's desk, in turn.
The crown prince watched Thirsk's face carefully for any reaction to his comment. He thought he saw the Dohlaran's lips tighten slightly, but he couldn't be positive. After a moment, he gestured at one of the pair of chairs set ready on opposite sides of the dining table.
"Please, be seated, My Lord," he invited.
He waited until Thirsk had settled into the indicated chair before seating himself on the opposite side of the table, and Merlin, in his bodyguard's role, moved to stand behind him. A decanter of brandy sat on the linen tablecloth, and the prince personally poured a small measure into each of two glasses, then offered one to Thirsk.
The Dohlaran commander accepted the glass, waited for Cayleb to pick up his own, and then sipped. He drank very little before he set the glass back on the table, and Cayleb smiled wryly as he set his own beside it.
"I've also come, as I'm sure Your Highness has deduced, to discover what surrender terms the remainder of my fleet may expect," Thirsk said in a flattened voice.
Cayleb nodded and sat back in his chair.
Nineteen of Thirsk's galley's had been sunk or burned. Another three had been battered into shattered, foundering wrecks which had barely managed to beach themselves before they went down. Eleven more had struck their colors, and eight had driven themselves ashore, undamaged, before their crews abandoned them. Yet a third of Thirsk's total warships remained, along with all his supply ships, and Cayleb had paid a price of his own for that victory.
HMS Dragon had found herself in the path of one of the burning galleys after the Dohlaran ship's anchor cable burned through. The blazing wreck had drifted down upon the galleon, and though Dragon had cut her own cable and tried to evade, she'd failed. The two ships had met in a fiery embrace, and both had been consumed in a floating, roaring inferno which had eventually engulfed two more of Thirsk's anchored ships.
Over two-thirds of Dragon's company, including her captain and all but one of her lieutenants, had been lost, killed when their ship's magazine exploded, or else drowned before they could be plucked from Crag Reach's waters.
Despite that, Thirsk's remaining twenty-one warships were helpless. Cayleb's surviving twelve galleons were anchored in a somewhat ragged line between them and any hope of escape. After what those galleons' guns had already done, none of those galleys' crews—or the admiral in command of them—had any illusions about what would happen if they tried to attack the Charisians or break past them to the open sea.
"My terms are very simple, My Lord," the crown prince said finally. "I will expect the unconditional surrender of every ship in this anchorage."
Thirsk flinched, not so much with surprise, as in pain.
"I might point out, Your Highness," he said, after a moment, "that you don't begin to have sufficient men aboard your ships to take my own as prizes."
"True," Cayleb conceded, nodding equably. "On the other hand, I have no intention of taking them with me."
"No?" Thirsk gazed at him for a moment, then cocked his head. "Should I assume, then, that you intend to parole them and my surviving men?"
"You should not," Cayleb said in a far, far colder voice.
"Your king sent his navy to attack the Kingdom of Charis in time of peace," he continued in that same icy voice, aware of Merlin standing at his back. "Charis did nothing to offend or harm him in any way. He made no demands upon us, nor did he declare his intent. Instead, like an assassin, he dispatched Duke Malikai—and you, My Lord—to join with the forces of one of our own allies to treacherously attack a land over six thousand miles from his own."
Surprise, and perhaps a flare of anger at Cayleb's biting tone, flickered in Thirsk's eyes, and Cayleb snorted.
"We weren't as unsuspecting as you—and your masters among the 'Knights of the Temple Lands'—expected, My Lord. Our agents in Tarot knew all about your plan to attack us. How else do you think we could have known which waters to watch for your approach? And never doubt, Earl Thirsk, that Gorjah of Tarot will pay for his treachery, as well.
"But what matters to us at this moment is that your king neither deserves, nor can be trusted to honor, any parole you or your men might give. And so, I regret to say, you won't be offered that option."
"I trust," Thirsk said through tight lips, "that in that case you aren't so foolish as to believe my men won't attempt to take back their ships from whatever prize crews you may be able to put upon them, Your Highness?"
"There will be no prize crews," Cayleb informed him. "Your ships will be burned."
"Burned?" Thirsk gaped in shock. "But their crews, my men—"
"Your men will be put ashore," Cayleb said. "You'll be permitted to land supplies, materials from which shelters may be built, and provisions from your vessels, including your supply ships. You will not be permitted to land any weapons other than woodcutter's axes and saws. Once all of your men are ashore, all of your vessels, except a single, unarmed supply ship, will be destroyed. That vessel will be permitted to sail wherever you wish to send it with dispatches for your king."
"You can't be serious!" Thirsk stared at him, his expression horrified. "You can't put that many men ashore and simply abandon them—not here! Not on Armageddon Reef!"
"I'm entirely serious," Cayleb replied mercilessly, holding the older man's eyes with his own and letting Thirsk see his angry determination. "You brought this war to us, My Lord. Don't pretend for a moment that you were unaware of the plans the 'Knights of the Temple Lands' had for my kingdom's total destruction and what that would mean for my father's subjects! I can, and will, put you and your men ashore anywhere I choose, and I will leave them there. Your choice is to accept that, or else to return to your flagship and resume the engagement. If, however, you choose the latter course, no further surrenders will be accepted . . . and no quarter will be offered."
Merlin stood behind Cayleb's chair, his own face an expressionless mask. He heard the absolute, unyielding steel in Cayleb's voice and prayed that Thirsk heard it, as well. The terms Cayleb had offered were the crown prince's, and no one else's. Merlin had been only slightly surprised by what Cayleb had decided to do with Thirsk's surrendered personnel, but he'd felt an inner chill when Cayleb explained what he intended to do if Thirsk rejected those terms.
Now Thirsk gazed at Cayleb Ahrmahk's unyielding face and recognized the youthful prince's total willingness to do precisely what he'd just said he would. Cayleb might not like it, but he would do it.
"Your Highness," the earl grated, after a long, tense moment of singing silence, "no commander in history has ever made a threat such as that against enemies who have offered honorable surrender."
"No?"
Cayleb looked back at him, then showed his teeth in a smile his dynasty's kraken emblem might have envied and spoke with cold, deadly precision.
"Perhaps not, My Lord. Then again, what other commander in history has discovered that no less than five other kingdoms and princedoms have leagued together to destroy his own, when his king's done no harm to any of them? What other commander has known his enemies intend to burn his cities, rape and pillage his people, for no better reason than that someone's offered to hire them like the common footpads they are? I told you our agents in Tarot know what your paymasters had in mind, and honorable and generous terms of surrender are for honorable foes, My Lord. They are not for hired stranglers, murderers, and rapists."
Thirsk flinched, his face white and twisted, as Cayleb's savage words and vicious contempt bit home. But his eyes flickered, as well—flickered with the knowledge that thos
e words, however savage, however contemptuous, were also true.
Cayleb let the silence linger for a full minute, then looked Thirsk squarely in the eye.
"So, now you know the conditions under which your vessels and their crews will be permitted to surrender, My Lord. Do you wish to accept them, or not?"
* * *
Merlin stood with Cayleb on Dreadnought's sternwalk, watching as Thirsk's launch rowed away through the still rough waters of Crag Reach.
"You were a bit harsh with him," the man who had once been Nimue Alban observed.
"Yes," Cayleb conceded. "I was, wasn't I?"
He turned to face Merlin squarely.
"Do you think I was harsher than he deserved?" he asked.
It was a serious question, Merlin realized, and he considered it seriously before he responded.