The cutter’s cannon fired again, this time with shots so close together they sounded like a ragged salvo.
The mast jerked, and the vibrations made aiming the doomster impossible.
Shit! They hit the mast!
An image flashed through his mind of the mast breaking, despite Partinel’s testimonial to the strength of creolin wood. If the mast fell, Mark doubted he could get free of the harness before the mast picked up too much speed for him to escape.
The thought pushed him toward panic, and he fired too quickly. Even from his distance, he saw a small eruption of splinters ten feet or more behind his target—a cannon’s crew chief. The Narthani remained unaware of shot whizzing over their heads. Their own cannon firing and the yelling among officers and crew overrode lesser sounds.
Mark forced himself to calm down when the first rifle arrived, reloaded. This time, he grabbed the rope with his left hand, pulled up three feet of rope, passed it to his right hand, and looped it over his shoulder, which then held the rope’s weight. He grasped the rifle with his left hand and lifted it into firing position. It was easier than before because of the slack in the rope. It was still difficult but doable.
The first Narthani cannon fired again, as the other two crews reloaded.
That gun crew must be faster than the other two, Mark thought.
He forced his breathing to slow and deepen. His body swayed in rhythm with the mast’s movements. A seagull-like bird passed through his view, unnoticed. The doomster’s sight alignment steadied, and he noticed a cyclic moment of hesitation before the sights misaligned. He didn’t have the luxury of squeezing the trigger gently, though he’d fired the doomster enough to know how much pressure he could apply without firing. When the next hesitation came and the sights aligned with the first cannon’s gun chief, his trigger finger applied the final pressure.
The heavy rifle kicked hard. He didn’t notice anything, except reacquiring the target. He was just in time to see the man catapulted backward across the deck until he hit the starboard wall. The other crewmembers stared at the pulverized body of their leader. From their agitated movements, Mark imagined their shock and attempt to understand what had just happened.
“Yes!” Mark exclaimed. He shoved aside a brief image of what doomster hits did to a destrex, extrapolated to a human body.
He dropped the expended rifle and waited for the reloaded second rifle. It was now halfway up to him. This time, he misjudged the hesitation of movement of the mast. The shot hit the hull inches below the second cannon’s crew.
The rifle reloading had yet to settle into a rhythm. He waited impatiently for the fifth shot. It was only a matter of time before someone on the other ship realized who was firing on them and from where.
The cutter was now less than a hundred yards away. The first cannon kept up its steady firing without a crew chief, though slower than before. Reverberations announced the hull hits. Mark heard the occasional sound of a shot flying unimpeded past the Dancer. A “whop” announced a shot punching a hole in the partly unfurled jib. Another rope was severed. Mark momentarily held his breath after each firing—waiting for another hit to the mast.
The Dancer suffered its first casualty when a Narthani shot hit one of the swivel guns and tore it from its mounting on the rail. The whirling three-foot barrel miraculously bypassed the two men manning the gun, only to crush the skull and chest of a crewman crouching on the other side of the deck.
Two more misses with the rifles, though both hit within a foot of where Mark had aimed. The second miss was off the rear end of a cannon barrel. Then someone on that crew realized the shot had come from an elevated position. The man looked up, saw Mark, and grabbed the other crewmembers. He pointed at the Dancer’s lookout platform.
“Fuck!” Mark yelled. He’d hoped to go unnoticed longer than that.
He grabbed the next rifle and aimed at the man who’d spotted him. It was a moment of revenge that made no sense. More Narthani pointed at him, so targeting a crewmember and not another crew leader was a dumb tactic—not that he was thinking smart at the moment.
The rifle recoiled, and Mark saw the target spin and be thrown to the deck. He couldn’t be sure at this distance, but he thought the man’s arm no longer remained connected to the body. Wherever the hit, the man was out of action.
A Narthani wearing a uniform and a braid ran among the gun crews.
Must be an officer telling them to get back to firing at the Dancer, thought Mark.
Sure enough, the cannon firings resumed. Half a dozen Narthani with muskets scampered up from a hatch and fired at Mark.
Mark suppressed the urge to duck every time smoke erupted from a musket. He told himself an unrifled musket from a rocking platform had almost no chance of hitting a moving target at this distance. However, “almost no chance” was not “no chance.”
He should have stayed focused on the gun crews, yet he couldn’t help but take a shot at the musketeers. He picked a man with two other men close beside him, figuring if he missed the target left or right, he had a good chance of hitting someone.
A fraction of a second after he fired, another round shot hit the mast. His gut tightened again as he waited a moment to feel more serious movement of the mast. Nothing.
When he reacquired the Narthani ship’s crew, one musket man lay crumpled against the port wall, and a second was rolling over and over on the middle of the deck. His shot must have struck one man a solid blow, with a lesser hit on a second man. However, it was debatable whether any hit from a 90-caliber minie ball could be “minor.”
There was no doubt that firing from the three Narthani cannon had slowed. The crews struggled to reload while minimizing exposure to Mark’s aim. By now, the gun crew members were exposing themselves for only a few seconds, whenever a step in the reloading process required them to rise above the gunwale or from behind their cannon. The next three doomster shots hit wood, but they hit close enough to cannon and crews to be noticed.
When Mark scored another hit, it was good luck for him and a catastrophe for another Narthani gun crew member. He had poked his head above the rail just as the man Mark was targeting ducked back down. The doomster ball took off most of the man’s cranium. The impact momentarily left a neck, a jaw, and part of a face attached to a body for several seconds before it collapsed. Mark wondered briefly why the body had stood upright, instead of being flung backward, but the next loaded rifle banged the bottom of his platform.
Mark didn’t note how much time was passing or how often he’d fired at the Narthani gun crews. He knew he’d fired enough times to worry about the rifles fouling from the black powder. The issue didn’t arise with destrex hunting because the first few shots decided the outcome. Now, he would fire until the rifles or his body quit. His shoulder had moved from aching to painful to numbness from the recoils. He hoped to be alive the next day to suffer what would be severe bruising.
He gave up worrying about Narthani muskets, in favor of worrying about a single swivel gun. It was being positioned on the Narthani ship’s aft port rail. Although the 9-pounders seemed unable to be elevated to fire at him, a rail-mounted swivel gun could aim directly at him.
He switched from firing at cannon crews to the two Narthani who were getting the swivel gun into position. His first shot tore a large splinter from the top of the rail and impaled one of the Narthani. However, another man immediately took his place.
Before Mark received another loaded rifle, the swivel gun fired at him. He didn’t know where the thirty or so canister balls went, but it wasn’t near him.
He had closed his eyes when he squeezed against the creolin, then held his breath while waiting for the canister shot to arrive. When nothing happened, he opened his eyes to stare at a spider web near his face. He jerked back, his heart pounding even more than before. The dark pattern of lines in a section of creolin wood resembled a spider’s creation.
He couldn’t help himself and laughed. His phobia had appeared even
while he was tied to the top of a ship’s swinging mast and shooting at men and being shot at like some carnival target. His reaction would have been farcical if the situation weren’t so deadly.
Now it was his turn to slow his firing because he had to keep one eye on the swivel gun. Depending on when the next loaded rifle arrived, he could get off one or two shots before he had to hide behind the protective creolin wood. Time passed—he didn’t know how much. He became lost in the rhythm of firing, his shoulder numb from the recoils.
Two more hits on Narthani crewman finally convinced their captain that standing off wasn’t working. Pounding at the Dancer resulted in no degradation of the Dancer’s structure and had cost him a slow but steady list of casualties.
Mark was so busy watching for the next rifle delivery, he didn’t initially notice the cutter unfurl a mainsail. It turned toward the Dancer, as the wind caught the sail. When he secured the rifle and peeked for a target, the Narthani ship had already closed to within sixty yards.
“Oh, shit!” he exclaimed. He took a snap shot that should have missed, but another Narthani gun crewman hurtled across the deck, hit in the upper chest.
The heavy, long-barreled doomsters would be useless in a boarding fight, so he dropped the fired rifle back off the platform. He donned a pair of leather gloves he’d stored on the platform for just such a situation. Then he pressed both boots together with a rope between them and slid down to the deck. The Narthani handling a swivel gun saw him start down and hurried to fire. Most of the balls passed over him, but one scored across the top of the muscle from his right neck to shoulder. The adrenaline titer in his blood was so high, he only casually noticed the burning.
However, the minor hit and the near misses caused him to slacken his grip. He accelerated downward and broke just before deck contact. Still, the landing was jarring, and he bit his lip as he fell face-forward.
“Not the most graceful descent from a main mast I ever witnessed, but it worked,” said Gulgit, his head and chest sticking up from the hatch.
The cutter came closer every second and was now forty yards away.
“Isn’t Partinel going to set some sails and try to stay away from the dammed Narthani?” asked Mark.
“Too late,” said Gulgit. “They’ll be alongside and grapples set before we get any speed. He’s decided to fight it out as we are. I agree. He’s positioned his men and told me that you and I should pick whatever spot you think you can do the most good. Your wife is reloading the last rifle. Get those and your other firearms ready. After both sides fire their last muskets and pistols, it’s going to be metal against metal. What do you have?”
“Only a couple of knives,” said Mark.
“Down the hall aft is an open weapons locker. Grab something you can use.” Gulgit gestured toward a sword hanging at his side.
Mark dove down the hatch to where Maghen had just finished loading a rifle. She propped it against the wall.
“Mark! You’re hurt!”
“It’s nothing. The Narthani captain has given up using his cannon to force Captain Partinel to heave to, so they’re closing to board us. I’m afraid it’s going to be a hand-to-hand battle.”
She clutched her throat, but her eyes burned with determination. “What do you want me to do?”
“Our compartment is the last one before the end of the hallway. The compartment next to ours is storage. Pull out some crates and form a barricade you can hide behind and protect Alys. I’ll leave you one of the shotguns and all four of the smaller pistols. They’ll give six shots, so be certain of your target and try not to shoot one of the Dancer’s crewmen. I’m going to a weapons locker to find something to fight with after all my guns are fired. I’ll bring you back something to use as a last resort.”
After a quick hug, he pushed her toward their compartment.
He raced in the opposite direction to where two crewmen pawed through an assortment of pistols and bladed weapons. He glanced at the pistols, but none were loaded, and he didn’t think he had time to find the right shot and load them. Looking at the blades discouraged him. The crewmen he’d seen all carried various swords, short-shaft spears, and sailors’ hatchets and axes. He had never handled a sword and would stand no chance against someone with experience. When he reached for a couple of the spears, he spotted an ugly-looking device partly hidden in the back of the locker.
He pulled out a rust-coated, three-foot metal rod with a leather grip on one end and a four-inch studded iron ball on the other end.
“Some kind of mace,” he said to no one. “At least, I know what to do with it. Bash ’em.”
He looked for something for Maghen and picked out two short spears. In her hallway position, she wouldn’t have room to swing anything, so stabbing weapons were best. He was about to return to her when a metal disc two feet in diameter rolled out of the locker. It was a shield—also rust covered—with two leather handles on one side, one having a larger loop than the other. He assumed the loop’s purpose was to slip an arm through it and grip the smaller loop with the left hand.
He had a flash image of himself in some Viking- or Roman-era movie. It wasn’t an encouraging image, but he grabbed the shield and ran back to where Maghen worked on the barricade. He set the two spears at the end of the hall’s corner, helped Maghen finish the barricade, and gave her another hug.
“I’ll see you when this is over,” he said as confidently as he could. He stuffed the two double-barreled pistols under his belt, added the other shotgun to his arsenal, and climbed the ladder to where Partinel, Gulgit, and the Dancer’s second-in-command huddled. He’d left the rifles after deciding they were too bulky to maneuver among crowded defenders and attackers.
“Can you actually swing that thing?” asked Partinel, pointing to the mace.
“Huh?” responded Mark, raising the mace effortlessly and doing a practice swing to one side.
“Merciful Gods!” exclaimed Partinel. “I can hardly lift it with both arms. I found it in the locker when I bought the ship, and the previous owner said it was here when he bought the ship. I keep thinking I’ll have some scholar look at to see if they can recognize where it came from, but I never got around to it.”
“Well, I’ve never used a sword or spear, so I figured there wasn’t much experience needed with this one—just bludgeon them with it.”
“Thirty yards!” yelled a Dancer crewman.
“This will be their last shots before tying to us,” shouted Partinel.” It’ll be canister, so everyone keep below the gunwale.”
He turned to Mark. “I’ve ordered the crew to hold their musket and pistol fire until the Narthani start boarding to make every shot count. They outnumber us two or three to one.”
The booming of the Narthani 9-pounders was followed by a two-foot square of the Dancer’s hull shattering into pieces and splinters. One of the latter skewed a crewman through his Adam’s apple, and the man fell backward, clawing at his throat. No one went to his aid. Mark knew the man was as good as dead but hadn’t given up the last grasp at life.
“Must of hit where previous shots weakened the creolin wood,” said Partinel.
They heard firing, and musket and canister balls buzzed overhead or impacted on wood but not on flesh. The captain peered quickly over the rail and then signaled everyone to move toward the bow of the ship.
“They’ll be alongside toward the stern,” said Partinel. “I’ve ordered everyone to move forward so we have unobstructed fire down the length of the deck.”
Mark and Gulgit bent low and followed Partinel. Ahead of them, the crew crouched behind a hastily thrown together line of crates and rope coils.
“Good thing the bulwark is as high as it is,” said Mark to Partinel. He rapped his knuckles against the side planking above the deck and below the gunwale. “Otherwise, we’d be too exposed, and they’d see better how you’ve set your crew.”
The captain grinned. “Couldn’t have told you why I added a foot to the bulwark three years ago
. Just told people I had an intuition. Think I’ll listen to my intuition more in the future—assuming I have a future.”
An eighteen-inch, four-clawed grappling hook sailed over the gunwale at midship. The attached rope pulled taut. A second and third hook followed suit. Everyone was jolted to one side as the two hulls met. The first Narthani vaulted onto the deck, a pistol in one hand and a cutlass-type sword in the other. Momentary confusion flashed across his beardless face to see the apparently empty deck—he hadn’t yet looked toward the bow.
A wave of men followed the first Narthani. In seconds, more than a dozen boarders stood on the Dancer’s deck before one of them spotted the Dancer’s crew behind the short, crude barricade. He yelled a warning to the others.
“Fire!” yelled Partinel. Flashes and smoke came from twenty-five muskets. The volley flung many of the Narthani to the deck. Others staggered from minor hits, but more Narthani replaced the fallen as additional attackers climbed over the gunwale.
Mark held his fire, uncertain of what to do during boarding actions. He waited to see when his shotgun and two double-barreled pistols would be needed.
“Keep firing!” shouted Partinel. The crewmen used Gulgit’s musket cargo to keep up continuous fire until they’d expended all their muskets, sweeping more Narthani from the fight. Still, the flood of attackers poured onto the Dancer’s deck.
Now that the Narthani knew the location of the crew, the men didn’t need officers’ orders to know what to do. They fired their pistols at the partly protected Dancer’s crew.
A man next to Mark fell face-down, the top of his skull missing. Mark felt a pluck at his shirt and burning along his side as a pistol ball grazed him. Even over the yelling from both sides, he could hear other balls whizz by or thud into wood. Out of the corner of his eye, he knew other men had been hit.
The Narthani, pistols expended, dropped their empty firearms. They charged, blades raised and voices screaming.
Passages Page 45
