by David Weber
The crewmen assigned to the capstans had spent literally five-days practicing turning their ships, pivoting them to exactly the angles their captains wanted, and they did that now. As the Charisian line, led by HMS Destiny, headed for its enemies, a hailstorm of white splashes rose all about Sir Dunkyn Yairley’s flagship and her consorts. It wasn’t well aimed, but there was so much of it that not all of it could miss, and heavy splintering sounds announced the arrival of twelve-pound and twenty-five-pound round shot. They slammed into Destiny’s bow as she headed straight into the line of Jahras’ anchored galleons, and Hektor Aplyn-Ahrmahk saw one of his ship’s long fourteen-pounder bow chasers take a direct hit. Its carriage disintegrated, spewing out a fan of splinters that wounded three men at other guns. Half its own crew was killed by the hit, and one of the survivors was down, kicking in agony on the deck while the fingers of his right hand tried vainly to stanch the bleeding where his left arm had been. Two members of the same gun crew who seemed to be unhurt grabbed their maimed companion and started dragging him towards the hatch and the waiting healers … just as another broadside lashed the water around the ship and another round shot ripped through all three of them.
This time, there were no survivors.
The ensign turned away, looking for his admiral, and saw Captain Lathyk standing on top of the starboard hammock nettings, one arm through the mizzen shrouds for balance while he leaned out, trying to fix the Desnairians’ position in his mind despite the solid wall of smoke their guns were belching out. As Aplyn-Ahrmahk watched, another Desnairian round shot came whimpering and whining out of the thunder. It slammed through the hammock nettings less than three feet from the captain and a flying splinter cut a deep gash in his right cheek, but Lathyk didn’t even seem to notice. He only leaned farther out, as if he thought he could somehow bend down and look under the smoke, between it and the water, to see his enemy clearly.
Sir Dunkyn stood beside the binnacle, hands still clasped behind him, his head moving steadily back and forth as his gaze swept between Captain Lathyk and the masthead weathervane. Sylvyst Raigly stood two paces behind him, head cocked, watching the chaos as if he were considering how best to arrange seating for a formal dinner. Stywyrt Mahlyk stood on the admiral’s other side, arms folded, head settled well down on his neck while he chewed a wad of chewleaf with the air of someone who had seen this sort of nonsense altogether too often.
Yairley seemed unaware of his henchmen’s presence. His expression was calm, almost contemplative as he glanced briefly down at the binnacle compass card, and Aplyn-Ahrmahk drew a deep breath. It wasn’t as if he’d never seen battle before, he reminded himself, remembering the thunder of guns, the screams, the clash of steel on steel from the Battle of Darcos Sound. But there was a difference this time, he realized. For the first time, he wasn’t truly part of Destiny’s company. He was Admiral Yairley’s flag lieutenant, with no assigned battle station, no responsibility to the ship that he could grasp in mental hands and cling to when the world went mad around him. He couldn’t believe what an enormous difference that made, and yet as the recognition struck him, he also realized it had to be even worse for the admiral. Like Aplyn-Ahrmahk, Yairley was only a passenger this time. The man who’d commanded Destiny, who’d been ultimately responsible for every order given aboard her, found himself with absolutely no decisions to make once the order to engage had been given.
The youthful ensign stepped up beside his admiral. Mahlyk saw him coming and grinned, then spat an expert jet of brown chewleaf juice over the leeward rail. Yairley, alerted by his coxswain’s grin, turned his own head, looking at the ensign, and raised one eyebrow as yet another salvo of round shot plowed the water around his flagship.
“Lively, I believe the Captain predicted, Sir?” Aplyn-Ahrmahk had to speak loudly to be heard through the tumult.
“A sometimes surprisingly apt way with words, the Captain has,” Yairley replied with a nod.
“Exactly what I was thinking myself, Sir.” Aplyn-Ahrmahk managed a smile. “Except I think it’s going to get even more lively shortly.”
“One can only hope, Master Aplyn-Ahrmahk,” Yairley said. “One can only hope.”
* * *
Baron Jahras coughed as incredibly foul-smelling gunsmoke rolled back across Emperor Zhorj’s decks. Hard as he’d tried to prepare himself, he’d never imagined anything like this ear-crushing din. The sheer concussion of hundreds of pieces of artillery, the bubbles of overpressure spreading out when they fired, was unimaginable. He felt the surges of air pressure coming back, punching at his face like immaterial fists reeking of Shan-wei’s own brimstone come hot from hell, and the deck planking underfoot shook to the recoil of his flagship’s guns like a terrified animal. Yet for all the thunder and fury, the range from Emperor Zhorj to her enemies was longer than Jahras had expected … and her fire was proportionately less accurate as a result.
The northeasterly wind swept diagonally across his east-to-west line of anchored ships, rolling the smoke before it. It blew back into his eyes, but he could still make out the Charisian mastheads above the fog bank born of his own artillery, and something like a chill ran down his spine as he watched those implacable mastheads—the ones which had maintained their distance as they approached his line on an almost parallel course, in a long loop from the east—turn suddenly towards it.
They have to be out of their minds! he thought. Langhorne, they’re sailing straight into our broadsides!
He’d never anticipated that. Sail directly into an opponent’s fire, on a heading which let every one of their broadside guns bear when none of yours would? Madness! Yet that was precisely what the Charisians were doing, and that chill in his spine grew colder and stronger as he realized why.
As he watched, the first six ships in the Charisian line headed directly for the six easternmost galleons in his own line. They weren’t going to sail along his line, exchanging broadsides with him, after all. Had their earlier heading been nothing but a bluff to make him think they would? He didn’t know, but whether they’d deliberately tried to deceive him or not was immaterial now. Their new course wouldn’t allow him to concentrate the fire of multiple ships on each of theirs as they moved into position as he’d planned; instead, each of those ships was deliberately taking the fire of its own clearly preselected target end-on in order to close the range far more rapidly than Jahras had ever expected.
They’re going to come to the range they want, then they’re going to anchor, and they’re going to pound the ever living hell out of the end of my line, he realized sickly. They’re going to get hurt doing it, but they’re also going to blow a gap the ships behind them will be able to sail straight through.
He watched those mastheads coming on unflinchingly, knew those ships had to be taking dozens of hits … and recognized that it didn’t matter.
* * *
More and more round shot smashed into Destiny’s sturdy hull. Many of them, especially from the lighter twelve-pounders, failed to penetrate, although no one aboard the Charisian ship realized that was partly because the Desnairian gunners were firing with reduced charges because they distrusted their own artillery. Even with the understrength charges, however, the twenty-five-pounders were another matter. Aplyn-Ahrmahk heard splintering crashes and the screams of wounded men from the crews on the gundeck’s long thirty-pounders as those heavier shot punched through, and a four-foot section of Destiny’s midships bulwark exploded inward in a tornado of splinters and shredded hammocks. Then—
“Heads below! Main topgallant’s coming adrift!”
The admiral and the ensign looked up in time to see the entire main topgallant yard, shot clean through right at the slings, begin its fall. The two halves of the yard slipped downward, then plunged like broken javelins, still joined by the shredded remnants of the sail. The braces, secured to the ends of the yard, stopped it before it actually hit the nettings stretched over the deck to protect against falling debris, and it dangled untidily, swinging
like an ungainly pendulum in a tangle of canvas, broken wood, and cordage.
“Get aloft and secure that wreckage!” Boatswain Symmyns bellowed, and men went swarming up the rigging to capture and tame that pendulum before it could plunge the rest of the way to the deck with lethal consequences.
“Stand by to anchor!” Captain Lathyk shouted. “Hands to buntlines and clewlines! Stand by the larboard broadside!”
Seamen moved through the smoke and the turmoil with disciplined haste. The crews of the larboard guns crouched down, getting as much out of the way as they could. With only topsails and jib set, Destiny needed only a fraction of the men normally required to make or take in sail, which was just as well under the circumstances, Aplyn-Ahrmahk reflected. At least five of the galleon’s larboard guns had already been knocked out of action, her decks were splashed with blood, he saw at least a dozen bodies lying where they’d been dragged out of their mates’ way, and casualties were piling up at the healers’ station on the orlop deck.
“Larboard your helm!” the captain shouted. “Take in fore and main topsail!”
Destiny turned to starboard as the wheel went over, presenting her waiting larboard broadside to the Desnairian galleon HMS Saint Adulfo, the fifth ship in from the eastern end of Jahras’ line.
“Let go the larboard anchor!”
The sheet anchor rigged from the larboard cathead was released. It plunged instantly, but this time the cable was flaked out on the gundeck, not the upper deck, and run not from the hawsehole, but through a stern gunport. The galleon continued past the point at which the anchor had been dropped under her jib alone, sailing out her cable while the men on the gundeck stayed carefully out of the way of the thick hawser rumbling and roaring out the gunport. Then the cable hit the stoppers, halting its run, and Destiny shuddered and jerked as the anchor’s flukes dug into the bottom and held. The cable snapped taut, and Chief Kwayle and his waiting party pounced, nipping the bitter end of the spring to it.
“Made fast!”
The call came up from below, and Lathyk nodded.
“Take in the jib! Veer the cable, Master Symkee! Take tension on the spring!”
* * *
Captain Ehrnysto Plyzyk, of the Imperial Desnairian Navy, watched the Charisian galleon stop moving. She edged a bit further to windward under bare spars as her topsails were brailed up and her jib dropped, and his stomach muscles tensed. She was veering a little more cable, he realized, and when she finished, she’d have the slack she needed for the spring she’d undoubtedly rigged to control her heading just as the springs on his own anchors controlled Saint Adulfo’s. And when that happened.…
“Pound her, boys!” he bellowed, jabbing his sword like a pointer at the Charisian half-obscured by his own gunsmoke. “If you want to live, pound that bitch!”
* * *
“Stand by the larboard battery!” Lieutenant Tymkyn shouted.
A hurricane of round shot hammered his ship, although only HMS Loyal Defender, Saint Adulfo’s next ahead, was able to turn to lend her guns to Saint Adulfo’s defense. Holy Langhorne, astern of Saint Adulfo, might have assisted her as well, but she no longer had any attention to spare. Captain Bahrdahn’s Undaunted had fetched up to windward of her, and Tymkyn heard the thunder of Undaunted’s artillery as the other galleon came into action.
Still, between them, Saint Adulfo’s and Loyal Defender’s broadsides mounted forty-four guns to Destiny’s twenty-five … or what would have been twenty-five if she hadn’t been so heavily hit on the way in. In fact, she probably had no more than eighteen or nineteen guns, and Tymkyn peered through the smoke, waiting for the spring to bring her fully around. He wasn’t going to waste that first broadside by firing one second before he was sure all of his guns bore on the target, and—
The twelve-pound shot from Saint Adulfo’s starboard battery struck Destiny’s youthful third lieutenant just below midchest and tore his body in two.
* * *
Aplyn-Ahrmahk saw Tymkyn flung aside in a spray of blood and torn flesh. At almost the same instant, he realized Trahvys Saylkyrk, Tymkyn’s assistant in command of the larboard battery, was down as well—wounded or dead, he couldn’t tell. Up until his elevation to Admiral Yairley’s flag lieutenant, that had been Aplyn-Ahrmahk’s duty station when the ship cleared for action, and old reflexes took over. He didn’t stop to think; he simply acted, leaping up onto the larboard gangway. His feet slid in Tymkyn’s fresh blood despite the sand scattered over the decks for traction, and he clutched at the main shrouds for balance to keep himself from falling.
“As you bear, lads!” he screamed, then waited two more heartbeats.
“Fire!”
* * *
Saint Adulfo heaved as another broadside blasted out of her smoke-streaming gun muzzles, and there was a sharper, louder report from forward as her number three gun blew up despite the reduced charge. Fortunately, the gun tube simply split lengthwise. Half its crew was killed, the ready charges being brought up for it and the number four gun were touched off in sympathetic detonation by the flame gushing from the shattered cannon, wounding four more men, but it could have been worse. Indeed, it had been worse the last time one of Saint Adulfo’s guns burst.
But that didn’t change the fact that it had burst, and at the worst possible time, Captain Plyzyk thought bitterly. The entire forward half of his starboard battery was thrown into confusion by the sudden—and fully understandable—terror a bursting gun always produced.
“More hands to the forward guns!” he shouted. “Let’s get some fresh—!”
The Charisian galleon fired at last.
* * *
HMS Destiny’s larboard side belched flame and smoke. She’d closed to within less than fifty yards of Saint Adulfo before she anchored, and the air trapped between the two ships was a fiery maelstrom as her broadside fired for the first time. A quarter of her company lay dead or wounded before she fired her first shot, and even as Aplyn-Ahrmahk shouted the command, a twenty-five-pound round shot cut through her mainmast three feet above the deck. The mast toppled into the smoke like a weary tree, and rigging parted, broken ends lashing out, flailing like maddened serpents. Men who got in the way of that heavy, tarred cordage were swatted casually from their feet, usually with broken bones and torn flesh, and others scrambled madly for safety as the entire massive complex of the mainmast came thundering down. The fore topgallant mast followed it, and the galleon staggered as if she’d just lost her rudder all over again.
But the men on her larboard guns ignored the chaos and confusion. They paid no heed to the damage control parties racing to cut away the wreckage and drag the injured and dying out of the tangles of fallen cordage. They were totally focused on their guns, for this was the reason Destiny had taken so much damage. This was what she’d come to do, and as they heard the youthful ensign’s familiar voice, they did it.
* * *
Ehrnysto Plyzyk saw the Charisian mainmast start to topple and opened his mouth to cheer. But before he could, the smoke between the two ships lifted on a fresh furnace blast, and this one didn’t come from his guns.
The deck hammered against the soles of his shoes. It was the first time he’d ever felt heavy shot striking a ship, and a corner of his mind recognized the difference between the recoil from his own guns and the sharper, lighter, and yet somehow more … vicious shock of enemy fire.
And then sixteen of the eighteen shells which had struck his ship exploded almost simultaneously.
* * *
“Reload! Reload!”
Aplyn-Ahrmahk heard the gun captains’ shouted commands and looked around, trying to find Lieutenant Symkee to take over the larboard battery. But then something smacked him sharply on the shoulder.
“Go, Hektor!” His head whipped around as Admiral Yairley smacked his shoulder a second time. “Go!” the admiral repeated, and actually smiled. “Captain Lathyk can have you back for the moment!”
“Aye, aye, Sir!”
The
ensign leapt into the disciplined madness, knowing better than to disrupt the choreographed training by shouting unnecessary orders. Instead, he watched the gun crews, his eyes trying to be everywhere at once, ready to intervene if something went wrong.
But nothing went wrong. Destiny’s gunners had trained for two hours every day during their weary voyage from Tellesberg to Iythria. They’d polished old skills and learned new ones as they grappled with the novel concept of exploding shells, and Aplyn-Ahrmahk watched as the number two on each gun removed and pocketed the lead patch protecting the fuse before the shell was loaded. The fuse times had been set by Payter Wynkastair, Destiny’s gunner, before the ship ever cleared for action, and at the end of the action, the number two on each gun would be required to hand over those patches as proof the shells had been properly prepared for firing.
“Run out! Run out!”
One by one the galleon’s surviving guns were brought back to battery, and gun captains all along the line raised their left hands, right hands gripping the firing lanyards.
* * *
Captain Plyzyk clawed his way up from his knees, shaking his head like a dazed prizefighter while he tried to make his brain work. He didn’t know what had hit him, and he probably never would, but he was pretty sure whatever it was had broken his right shoulder blade.
