by David Weber
At least fifty of Sarmouth Keep’s understrength garrison had been less fortunate… or slower to react. Half his total manpower had to be out of action by now, and the fury of the Charisian bombardment was only mounting.
He’d tried to man his own artillery and return fire, but Sarmouth Keep wasn’t-or hadn’t been-considered a likely target. King Zhames’ purse was shallower than usual these days, and Wahls’ garrison was made up of old men past their prime, young men who didn’t yet have a clue, and gutter-scraping mercs the Crown could pick up cheap. He did have a reasonably solid core of noncoms, but the total surprise when the first Charisian ship opened fire had panicked most of his men. He didn’t suppose he could blame them for that, since he’d felt pretty damned panicked himself, yet he’d been in the process of restoring order when that first broadside of exploding shot came over the curtain wall and exploded… just as his sergeants had gotten them fallen in on the parade ground. They’d gone down like tenpins-except, of course, that tenpins didn’t roll around on the grass screaming while they tried to hold their own ripped-out guts in place.
The handful of men who’d actually gotten to their guns and tried to man them had fared almost worse than the ones on the parade ground as the Charisians swept in close and hammered the battery embrasures with storms of grapeshot. Sarmouth Keep’s artillery had never been updated, and Colonel Wahls had never encountered the new-style guns the Charisians had introduced. Now he had, and none of the reports he’d heard about them had done them justice. He couldn’t believe the rapidity of those galleons’ fire or the tempest of grapeshot which had silenced his own guns in such short order.
“Sir!” his second-in-command shouted in his ear, shaking him by the shoulder. “Sir, this is useless! The second barracks block’s on fire, and it’s right next to the main magazine! We’re not even getting a shot off, and they’re blowing us to hell!”
The colonel stared at the other man, unwilling to accept what he was saying. But then another wave of exploding shot slammed into his command and he heard fresh screams. His jaw tensed, and he nodded once, choppily.
“Haul down the flag,” he grated. “Then get our people into the best cover we can find- if we can find any!-until they stop shooting at us.”
***
“Well, that was using a hammer to crack an egg, wasn’t it?” Sir Dunkyn Yairley said mildly as the flag above the battered, smoking, burning keep came down like a shot wyvern.
“Personally, I’m in favor of doing just that, Sir Dunkyn,” Captain Lathyk replied, grinning fiercely. “Not any more eager to kill people than the next fellow, you understand, Sir. But if somebody’s got to get killed, I’d a lot rather it was the other fellow’s people!”
“I can’t argue with that, Rhobair. And Captain Rahzwail did us proud, didn’t he?” the admiral continued, turning to look at HMS Volcano as her crew began securing her guns.
“He did, indeed, Sir. A useful fellow to have along.”
“Agreed.” Yairley gazed at the bombardment ship for a moment, then beckoned to his flag lieutenant. Aplyn-Ahrmahk crossed the quarterdeck and stood waiting respectfully while the admiral examined him.
“I assume you’re ready and-like every young lieutenant who’s yet to develop a working brain-eager to go, Hektor?” he said finally.
“I wouldn’t say eager, Sir,” Aplyn-Ahrmahk replied, “but my boat crew’s waiting. Well, actually I suppose, your boat crew.”
“They’re yours for the moment,” Yairley reminded him. “And keep an eye on that rascal Mahlyk. Don’t let him damage my paintwork!”
“I’ll make sure he behaves himself, Sir,” the flag lieutenant promised.
“See that you do. Now, go! I believe you have a little trip to make.”
“Aye, aye, Sir!”
The lieutenant touched his chest in salute, first to Yairley, then to Captain Lathyk, and headed for the boat hooked onto Destiny ’s main chains. He didn’t look back, and Yairley watched him go, then shook his head.
“Young Hektor will do just fine, Sir Dunkyn,” Lathyk said quietly, and Yairley cocked his head at his flag captain.
“That obvious, was I?”
“Well, we’ve served together for a while now, you and I, Sir. And young Hektor, for that matter.” Lathyk shrugged. “I don’t think everyone in Destiny ’s guessed how you feel about the lad, though. Why, I’m sure there’s some assistant cook’s mate who hasn’t noticed at all!”
“I see why the men think so highly of your sense of humor, Captain,” Yairley said dryly, but Lathyk only smiled, saluted, and turned away to see to conning his ship the rest of the way up the estuary to the town of Sarmouth itself.
Yairley watched him go, and the truth was that the flag captain’s humor had helped… a little, at least. On the other hand, if anything happened to Aplyn-Ahrmahk, the admiral knew he’d spend the rest of his life second-guessing himself. He’d had no specific orders to send the youngster upriver, and he was quite certain any number of other captains and flag officers would have been horrified by his decision to detail a member of the imperial family-even an adoptive member of the imperial family-to such a risky venture. But the Charisian Navy’s tradition was that neither birth nor rank exempted a man from the risks everyone else ran, and trying to wrap the boy-the young man, now-in cotton silk to protect him would have done no one any favors. All the same, he wondered sometimes if some perverse streak inside him kept goading him into sending Aplyn-Ahrmahk into danger in an effort to prove, possibly only to himself, that he was willing to do it. Or as some sort of bizarre counterweight for how fond of the boy he’d become.
In this case, however, given who the boat party was supposed to pick up, Aplyn-Ahrmahk was actually a logical choice. In some ways, at any rate. And as long as one could overlook the probability of getting a member of the imperial family killed, of course. Not likely to enhance a flag officer’s future career, that.
Oh, stop it, Dunkyn! The boy’s in no more danger than anyone else you’re sending with him! The experience will do him good, and Lieutenant Gowain’s a good, competent officer. He’ll keep Hektor out of trouble.
Sir Dunkyn Yairley took a deep breath, clasped his hands behind him, put Lieutenant Aplyn-Ahrmahk firmly out of his mind, and began to pace slowly up and down the weather hammock nettings while he watched his squadron advance on the hapless little town they’d come to destroy. . IV.
Siddar City, Republic of Siddarmark
“ Kill the heretics! Burn the bastards out!”
The raucous shout went up from somewhere deep inside the mob, and other voices took up the refrain, bellowing the words in an ugly, hungry rhythm. It sounded like the snarl of some huge beast, not something born of human throats. It was still several blocks away, but Byrk Raimahn’s heart plummeted as he heard it coming.
“Come on, Grandfather!” he said, reaching out and actually grasping Claitahn Raimahn’s arm as if to drag him bodily out of the courtyard.
The old man-he was in his sixties, his hair shining like snow in the cold winter sunlight-was still powerfully built, and he jerked his arm out of his grandson’s grasp.
“Damn it, Byrk!” he snarled. “This is our home! I’m not handing it over to a mob of street scum!”
For a moment, Byrk seriously contemplated knocking him unconscious and simply hauling his limp body down the street. Claitahn might still be a fit, muscular man, but Byrk had spent the last five years sparring with some of the finest boxing coaches available in Tellesberg’s and now Siddar City’s gymnasiums. A quick jab to the solar plexus to bring his grandfather’s hands down, then a right hook to the jaw would do the trick, he thought grimly.
But he couldn’t do that, of course. Not to his grandfather. And because he couldn’t, he stepped back, drew a deep breath, and made his voice come out flat and hard.
“We’ve got to go. Go now, while there’s still time.”
“This is our home,” Claitahn repeated, “and it’s a lot safer place to be than getting ca
ught in the street by those thugs! The City Guard’s bound to turn up soon, and when it does-”
“The Guard isn’t going to get here-not in time to do any good,” Byrk said, hating himself for the words as he saw the look in his grandfather’s eye. Yet they had to be said. “And we’re in the richest part of the Quarter. Those bastards out there will make burning us out a priority. I know you don’t like the thought, but we’ve got to go.”
“And where do you propose we go to?”
“I know a place. A place where we’ll be safe-or, at least, if we’re not safe there, we won’t be safe anywhere in Siddar City!”
“Then go!” Claitahn snapped. “Take your Grandmother and go. But I didn’t give up everything in Tellesberg just to let gutter trash and street scum drive me out of my home here! ”
“Grandfather, they may be street scum,” Byrk said as reasonably as he could, “but there are hundreds of them. You wouldn’t stand a chance of stopping them. All you’d manage to do is get yourself killed.”
“And if I choose-” Claitahn began, but for the first time since he’d been a passionate, adolescence-driven fifteen-year-old, Byrk cut him off in midsentence.
“And if you choose to stay here and get yourself killed, Grandmother will stay with you! There’s no way she’ll run away and leave you… and neither will I, you stubborn, stiff-necked, obstinate -!”
He made himself stop and glared at his grandfather. Eyes of Raimahn brown locked with eyes of Raimahn brown, and after a brief, titanic moment, it was Claitahn’s which fell.
“I…”
“Grandfather, I understand.” Byrk reached out again, resting his hands on Claitahn’s shoulders. “You’ve never run from anything in your life, and giving ground before a mob comes hard. I know that. But I don’t want to see you die, and I know you don’t want to see Grandmother die, so, please, can we get out of here, you stubborn old… gentleman?”
Claitahn stared at him for a moment, then surprised himself with a harsh laugh. He put his right hand over the younger, stronger hand resting on his left shoulder, just for a moment. Then he nodded sharply.
“My legs aren’t as young as they used to be,” he said. “So if we’re going to be running away, what say we see if we can’t get a good head start?”
***
Samyl Naigail gave a yell of delight as he used the smoldering slow match to light the rag stuffed into the neck of the bottle of lamp oil and threw the incendiary through the display window. Glass shattered, and a moment later he smelled smoke and saw the spreading pool of fire flickering in the depths of the shop. Racks of dry goods and bolts of cloth began to smolder, taking flame quickly, and Naigail’s eyes glowed.
This was better even than bedding a woman! There was a power- a wild fierce freedom-in finally freeing the anger which had boiled inside him for so long. Smoke rose from other shopfronts all around him as the mob rampaged through the Charisian Quarter, torching everything in sight. Fortunately, the wind was out of the northwest. It would blow the wind and cinders away from the central part of the city, and if they happened to set fire to the harborside tenements where the filthy Charisians lived like so many spider-rats in a city garbage dump, so much the better!
He turned away from the burning shop, reaching into his satchel, and heard a shrill scream. He looked up just in time to see three or four more young men-his age or a little older-run down a girl who couldn’t have been more than fifteen. They trapped her against the wall of a building, and she cowered back against it, head darting around frantically, looking for any escape. Then she made a desperate dash for an alley mouth, but one of her pursuers caught up with her first. She cried out again, in mingled terror and pain as he wrapped his hand in her hair and jerked her off her feet. Naigail heard her crying out-begging, pleading, imploring anyone to help her-and he smiled. He watched them dragging her by the hair down the alley where the little Charisian bitch had thought she might find safety, and then he drew another bottle from his satchel, lit the rag, and threw it through another shop window.
***
“Behind me- now! ” Sailys Trahskhat snapped.
Myrahm Trahskhat looked up, then gasped and stumbled back behind her husband. She clutched three-year-old Sindai, their youngest in her arms, while seven-year-old Pawal clung to her skirts, their eyes huge with terror as the bedlam thundered around them. Thirteen-year-old Mahrtyn pushed himself in front of her, behind her father, his face white and frightened but determined. Behind the boy, Myrahm darted her head around, looking for any escape, but with two small children, outdistancing pursuit was out of the question.
Trahskhat knew exactly what was going through his wife’s mind, and his own terror was as deep as her own. Not for himself, but for her and the children. Only he couldn’t let that terror paralyze him, and he glared at the three men sauntering arrogantly towards them. He knew two of them-longshoremen, like himself, but definitely not Charisians, and both of them with knives thrust through their belts. The third was a stranger, but he carried a sword and there was a cruel, eager glitter in his eyes.
“Stay with your mother, Mahrtyn,” he said quietly, his voice iron with command, never taking his own eyes from the other men. “Whatever else happens, look after your mother and the babies.”
“Well, well, well,” the sword-armed man called mockingly. “What do we have here?”
“Pretty wife you’ve got there, Trahskhat,” one of the longshoremen said, reaching down and rubbing his crotch suggestively while his fellow leered and drew the foot-long knife from his belt, testing its edge with a gloating thumb. “Gonna enjoy showing her a really good time.”
Trahskhat’s face tightened, and he brought up the baseball bat. He’d had that bat for more years than he could remember. He’d broken plenty of others over the years, but never this one. It had always been his lucky bat, and he’d brought it with him from Tellesberg when he left the Krakens behind with the rest of his heretical homeland.
Somehow, he didn’t feel lucky today.
“Ooooh! What’s he gonna do with the big bad baseball bat?” the sword-armed man taunted in a high-pitched falsetto. He raised his own weapon, smoky light gleaming on its point. “Come on, baseball man! Show us what you’ve got.”
“Sailys?” Myrahm’s voice was frightened, and he heard his younger children weeping in terror. But he never took his eyes from the men in front of him.
“Now!” the swordsman shouted, and the hunting pack charged.
Sailys Trahskhat had a lifetime professional batting average of. 302. He’d always been a strong man, but not especially fast, so he’d been forced to hit for power rather than rely on speed on the bases. Over the years, he’d developed rather amazing bat speed, and the longshoreman with the drawn knife made the mistake of getting a little in front of the others.
The same bat which had hit twenty-three home runs in Sailys Trahskhat’s last season with the Tellesberg Krakens hit him squarely in the forehead with a terrible crunching, crushing, squashing sound. He didn’t even scream; he simply flew backward, knife spinning away through the air, blood spraying from his shattered forehead, and Trahskhat stepped to his left.
The baseball bat slashed over and around in a flat, vicious figure-eight. The other longshoreman saw it coming. His eyes flared with sudden panic as his right hand fumbled frantically at the hilt of his knife and the other arm rose to fend off the blow. But he was too slow, and the panic in his eyes disappeared as they went unfocused and forever blank as the end of the bat caved in his right temple with contemptuous ease.
That quickly, that suddenly, Trahskhat found himself facing only one opponent, and the swordsman looked down at the two corpses sprawled untidily in the street. His eyes darted back up to Trahskhat and the blood-dripping bat poised in the big Charisian’s powerful hands, and Trahskhat smiled at him.
“That’s what I’m going to do with the big bad baseball bat, you bastard, ” he said, all the resentment and anger he’d felt since coming to Siddar City roar
ing up inside him with his terror for his family’s safety. “You want a piece of me? A piece of my family? You bring it on, goddamn you! You bring it on! ”
The swordsman stared at him, then stepped back, retreating. But it was only a feint. The instant Trahskhat’s bat started to dip, the man threw himself forward again.
Yet he wasn’t the only one who’d been capable of feinting. As he came forward, the bat which had been waiting the entire time came up again, arcing from below belt level, catching his sword on the flat of the blade and flinging it to one side, then crunching into the underside of his jaw. The swordsman screamed, teeth and blood flying. He dropped the sword, clutching at his shattered face with both hands as he stumbled the rest of the way forward, and Trahskhat stepped out of his path. The man lurched, starting to go to his knees, and that terrible baseball bat slammed into the back of his skull like the Rakurai of Langhorne.
He hit the pavement in a puddle of blood, and Trahskhat looked down at him, breathing hard.
“Threaten my family, will you?” he hissed, and kicked the dead man in the ribs. Then he looked at his wife and children. “Are you all right?” he demanded.
Myrahm nodded mutely, her eyes huge, shaking with terror and reaction. Mahrtyn, he saw, had already pounced on the knife his first victim had lost, and if the foot of steel shook in his hand, his eyes were grim and determined. Those eyes were shocked by what they’d just seen, but they met his father’s levelly, and Trahskhat’s heart filled with pride.
And then young Pawal, still clinging to his mother’s skirt with one hand, pointed with the other.
