Off Armageddon Reef

by David Weber

  It also meant it was going to take time for Black Water to receive word of what was happening, and even longer for him to respond to it.

  "Any signal from Earl Mahndyr?" he asked.

  "No, Sir," Mahlry said tensely, and Khattyr swallowed a curse.

  He looked back at the inexorably advancing Charisian galleons. They had to be making good at least ten or eleven knots in the stiff breeze, he thought, watching them lean to the press of their mountains of canvas, probably more, and they were slicing steadily eastward. In another fifteen minutes—twenty-five, at most—they were going to be squarely across Black Prince's stern, and the captain felt his belly tightening down into a cold, hard knot at the thought. He'd seen what galleys armed with the new Charisian artillery could do, and the nearest Charisian galleons had at least twenty-five guns in her broadside, four times what their galleys had mounted.

  "Sir!" Mahlry said suddenly, pointing across at the Charisian leader. "That's the Crown Prince's standard!"

  "Are you certain?" Khattyr asked urgently. "Your eyes are better than mine, boy—but are you certain?"

  "Yes, Sir," Mahlry said firmly.

  Khattyr slammed his balled fists together, wheeling to stare along the column once again. He could hear other galleys' drums beating to quarters, see crewmen dashing about the decks of the nearer ships, but still there was no signal from Earl Mahndyr.

  He waited another five minutes, then drew a deep breath and nodded sharply.

  "Take in the sail!" he ordered harshly. "Out sweeps! Bring her about!"

  * * *

  "There's someone with his wits about him, Your Highness," Captain Manthyr observed as the northernmost galley in the nearest column suddenly brailed up her single big sail.

  Her oars thrust out of their ports, and she turned sharply, swinging out of her column. One or two derisive taunts went up from some of Dreadnought's seamen, but that galley wasn't fleeing. As they watched, she turned into the wind and steadied on her new course—straight for Dreadnought.

  "They've seen your standard, Your Highness," Ahrnahld Falkhan said quietly as the galley's oars started to stroke.

  "Yes, they have," Cayleb agreed.

  He gazed at the oncoming galley for a moment, judging relative motions with a seaman's eye. Then shook his head slowly.

  "They've seen it, but they didn't turn quite soon enough," he said.

  "With your permission, Your Highness, I'd still prefer to give him a bit more sea room," Manthyr said. "The last thing we need is to have your flagship damaged or taken out of action early."

  "Oh, no, we couldn't have that, Captain," Cayleb agreed, eyes glinting with amusement at his flag captain's careful choice of words.

  "I'm glad you agree, Your Highness," Manthyr said gravely, and looked at his helmsmen again. "Bring her up another point to port."

  * * *

  "Shan-wei seize it!" Khattyr snarled as the long line of galleons altered course slightly. His eye was as good as Cayleb's, and he could see clearly what was about to happen.

  He'd waited too long, assuming there'd ever been any real chance of success at all. But the absolute necessity of maintaining formation had been drilled into every captain of Black Water's fleet. Leaving it without orders was a court-martial offense, and he'd taken too much time wrestling with himself before he acted.

  Unfortunately, there wasn't much he could do about it now. Turning away would only make it worse, and there was always at least the chance he might actually be able to carry through despite their guns, still get to grips with the Charisian heir's flagship. If he could do that, then every Charisian ship in sight would swarm in to save Cayleb. The consequences for Black Prince would undoubtedly be fatal, but if he could just delay those galleons, just tie them up for an hour or two while the rest of the fleet reacted . . .

  * * *

  "Open fire!"

  Captain Manthyr's order rang out clear and sharp. The inevitable noises of a ship underway seemed only to have enclosed and perfected the taut silence of Dreadnought's company, and despite everyone's tense anticipation, the command came almost as a surprise.

  For one tiny slice of a second, nothing happened. And then, every gun captain in her starboard broadside yanked his lanyard simultaneously.

  * * *

  "You wanted me, Your Majesty?"

  Captain Tryvythyn had arrived quickly. Quickly enough, indeed, that he hadn't fully completed dressing and appeared in his cotton shirt, without his uniform tunic.

  "Yes, Dynzyl."

  Haarahld turned to face his flag captain as Sergeant Gahrdaner finished buckling his cuirass for him. The captain's eyebrows had risen in surprise at finding his king obviously arming for battle, and Haarahld smiled tightly.

  "No, I haven't lost my mind," he said reassuringly. "But I've got a . . . feeling we're going to be busy today, and shortly."

  "Of course, Your Majesty." Tryvythyn couldn't quite keep his mystification—and perhaps just a hint of skepticism—out of his voice, and Haarahld snorted in amusement.

  "I don't blame you for cherishing a few doubts, Dynzyl, but trust me."

  "I do, Your Majesty," Tryvythyn said, and there was no hesitation at all in that statement.

  "Good. In that case—"

  "Excuse me, Your Majesty," Midshipman Marshyl said from the cabin door. "We've just received a signal from Speedy."

  "What signal?" Haarahld asked.

  "She reports hearing gunfire to the northeast, Sire. She's moving to investigate it."

  Tryvythyn stared at the midshipman for a moment, then back at his king, and Haarahld saw the wonder—and the questions—in the flag captain's eyes.

  "General signal, Dynzyl," he said. "Prepare for battle."

  * * *

  The Charisian flagship disappeared behind a sudden blinding eruption of gunsmoke shot through with flashes of fire. The range was still almost two hundred yards, but these guns weren't double-shotted. The press of Dreadnought's canvas heeled her to starboard, bringing the sills of her gunports closer to the water, but she had ample freeboard, and it actually made her a more stable gun platform. Better than half her shots still missed . . . but almost half of them didn't.

  * * *

  Captain Khattyr saw the fiery blast of smoke an instant before the first round shot slammed murderously into his galley's port bow. It was a quartering broadside, coming in at an angle of perhaps sixty degrees, and splinters flew as thirty-eight-pound spheres of iron crashed through her timbers. Shrieks of agony came from the oardeck, and her forward sweeps flailed as the men manning them were smashed and mangled by cast-iron and the pieces of their own vessel.

  More shots came in higher, slamming through the bulwarks, carving gory furrows through the borders still assembling on her forecastle and in the waist. Bits and pieces of men were snatched up in that iron hurricane, and blood sprayed as human bodies were torn apart.

  Black Prince staggered, like a runner who'd caught his toe on some unseen obstacle, and Khattyr shouted orders to the helmsmen, trying to compensate for what had just happened to a third of his port sweeps.

  * * *

  "What did you say?" the Earl of Mahndyr demanded of his flag captain.

  "Black Prince reports enemy in sight, My Lord," Captain Nyklas Zheppsyn repeated.

  "That's ridiculous!" Mahndyr said. "How could Haarahld have gotten clear around us that way?"

  "My Lord, I don't know," Zheppsyn said. "We've just received the signal, and—"

  "What was that?" Mahndyr snapped, cocking his head at the sound of distant thunder.

  "Gunfire, My Lord," Zheppsyn said grimly.

  * * *

  Dreadnought's gunners hurled themselves onto their recoiling guns, swabs and rammers jerking. Gun trucks squealed as carriages were hauled back into battery, and muzzles spewed fresh smoke and flame.

  As always, the shorter, lighter carronades fired faster than the long guns on her main deck. Merlin stood well clear of the quarterdeck carronades, between Cayleb
and the rail, and watched the heavy shot tear into the Emeraldian galley across the steadily shortening range.

  Her port sweeps flailed in wild disorder as Dreadnought's fire smashed into the crowded confines of her oardeck, and Merlin felt a mental chill as he pictured the butchery and carnage. A galley under oars depended on the intricate coordination of her rowers, and no one could maintain that coordination while everyone about him was being torn into bleeding meat.

  The galley's forward guns managed to return fire, but their shots went wide, and Dreadnought was passing directly across Black Prince's bows. Her fire ripped down the centerline of the galley, killing and maiming, and the sound of the Emeraldian crew's screams was clearly audible in the fleeting instants in which none of Dreadnought's guns was actually firing.

  * * *

  Captain Khattyr clung to the aftercastle's forward rail.

  There was nothing else he could do. Even his worst nightmares had fallen short of what a galleon's broadside could do. Black Prince's hatchways belched men, many of them bleeding from terrible wounds, as her panicked rowers boiled up through them. But there was no shelter from the Charisians' merciless fire on the open deck, either.

  His ship was losing way, his people were dying for nothing, and he couldn't simply stand here and watch them be slaughtered for no return at all.

  "Lieutenant Mahlry, strike—" he began, turning to the lieutenant. But the young man lay on the aftercastle deck, eyes already glazing, both hands clutching the spear-like splinter which had driven deep into his chest.

  Khattyr's jaw tightened, and he grabbed a midshipman by the shoulder.

  "Strike the colors!" he barked. "Get forward and—"

  The thirty-eight-pound round shot killed both of them instantly.

  * * *

  "Why doesn't he strike?" Cayleb muttered. "Why doesn't he strike?"

  The galley wallowed helplessly, shuddering under the tempest of iron ripping her apart. Devastation and Destruction, the two galleons following in Dreadnought's wake, were firing into her as well, now, and thick streamers of blood oozed down her sides. There was absolutely nothing that ship could do to hinder Cayleb's progress, but still her captain obstinately refused to haul down his colors in token of surrender.

  "She's done, Cayleb!" Merlin half-shouted in his ear.

  Cayleb looked at him for a moment, then nodded sharply. He crossed to Manthyr and gripped the flag captain's shoulder.

  "Let her go, Gwylym!" he commanded.

  Manthyr glanced at him, and the captain's eyes were almost grateful.

  "Cease fire! Cease fire!" he shouted.

  Dreadnought's guns fell silent, but Devastation and Destruction continued to fire for another minute or two. Then, finally, the savage bombardment trailed off.

  The wind rolled the fog bank of smoke away, and more than one man aboard Cayleb's flagship felt a touch of horror as he looked at their target, heard the screams and moans of her broken and bleeding crew. The galley rolled heavily, oars smashed, mast leaning drunkenly, and it sounded as if the ship herself were crying out in agony.

  The entire crew stared at the shattered hulk, and even as they watched, the tottering mast toppled wearily into the sea beside her. Then Captain Manthyr's voice cut through the stillness in a tone of unnatural calm.

  "Let her fall off a point," he told his helmsmen, and Dreadnought altered course to starboard, closing on the second column of her enemies, now less than two miles ahead.

  * * *

  "They took the northern passage?"

  Duke Black Water looked at Captain Myrgyn in disbelief.

  "That's what the signal says, Your Grace," the flag captain replied tautly.

  Black Water turned away, staring out the great cabin's stern windows while his brain tried to grasp Myrgyn's message. The north? How could Cayleb—and it could only be Cayleb—have come at him from the north when Haarahld had been so stubbornly clinging to a southern position? And how had he gotten through Black Water's screen of picket vessels without being spotted? What demon had let him time his arrival so perfectly? Come sweeping in exactly with the dawn?

  He clenched his jaw and shook himself viciously. How didn't matter. All that mattered was what he did about it.

  His mind began to function once more, sorting out possibilities, options.

  The initial sighting report had come in from one of the ships in his westernmost column. That meant Cayleb was either due west of him, or else coming down with the wind from the northwest. Given the limitations of his signaling system, Black Water couldn't be sure which, and it mattered.

  A part of him insisted Cayleb couldn't possibly have placed himself north, as well as west, of the combined fleet. No one could have that much battle luck! But, then again, no one could have enough luck to come straight to him like this in the first place.

  In either case, Cayleb was going to hit Mahndyr's Emeraldians first, and he was going to hit them hard. Surprise was almost total, and that was going to produce panic. Mahndyr was no coward, and neither were most of his captains, but Black Water felt grimly certain he was going to lose at least one of Mahndyr's columns completely.

  The question, he thought, is whether I try to fight him or simply cut and run?

  Every instinct told him to turn towards Cayleb. To bring his entire fleet and its massive numerical superiority sweeping in on the Charisian crown prince's galleons and crush them. But intellect shouted in warning, remembering Myrgyn's descriptions and sketches of the new Charisian artillery . . . and what those outnumbered, far more lightly gunned galleys had done with it.

  But if I run, this entire campaign's been for nothing, he thought grimly. The Prince won't like that—and neither will Clyntahn and the Council. And I can't really know how effective their broadsides are without fighting them. Besides, at this point I'm only guessing about his actual position, his strength—everything! Heading north might actually be the best way to evade him.

  "General signal," he said harshly, turning back to Myrgyn. "Enemy in sight to windward. Prepare for battle. New course north."

  * * *

  "Fire!"

  Dreadnought swept across the second galley column, and her broadside bellowed yet again. The range was a bit shorter this time, and this galley was still headed almost due south, directly away from her. The Emeraldian vessel's stern windows and ornate carving shattered as the broadside slammed home, and more guns began to thunder from the west as Sir Domynyk Staynair's squadron separated from Cayleb's. Staynair's ships began forging down to the south, paralleling the rest of Black Prince's column as it clung to its original course, away from Cayleb, and the outgunned galleys' fired back far more slowly.

  Cayleb's decision not to reduce sail was paying a huge dividend, so far, at least, Merlin reflected. The prince's experience off Armageddon Reef had convinced him that old-style guns had very little chance of inflicting crippling hits on his galleons' rigging. They simply couldn't fire fast enough, couldn't be pointed high enough. And so, he'd opted to come in under all plain sail, without brailling up even his courses until he'd come fully to grips with the enemy.

  That gave him a clear speed advantage, and he and Staynair were using it ruthlessly.

  * * *

  "Anything more from Speedy?" King Haarahld asked as he finished the climb to Royal Charis' aftercastle.

  "Yes, Your Majesty!" young Midshipman Aplyn replied with a huge grin. "Speedy's just repeated a signal from Seagull! 'My position one hundred miles north Darcos Island with twenty-eight galleons. Enemy bears south-by-southeast. Engaging. Cayleb.'-"

  The cheer which answered the eleven-year-old's announcement ought by rights to have deafened Hektor all the way back home in Manchyr, Haarahld thought.

  "Thank you, Master Aplyn," he said quietly through that torrent of shouting voices, resting one hand on the boy's slight shoulder. "Thank you very much."

  He squeezed the midshipman's shoulder for a moment, then turned to Tryvythyn.

  "If they have any s
ense at all, they're going to turn and run for Silver Strait."

  "They still have him outnumbered at least six-to-one, Your Majesty," Tryvythyn pointed out, and Haarahld snorted with harsh, fierce pride.

  "Cayleb is here, Dynzyl, with the loss of only two galleons, and Duke Malikai isn't. What do you suppose that means happened to the last galley fleet that outnumbered my son six-to-one?"

  "A point, Your Majesty," his flag captain conceded. "Definitely a point."

  "And one that won't be lost on Black Water," Haarahld said, his expression and voice grimmer. "I wish it would be. I wish he were stupid enough to stand and fight, but he's smarter than that, and I think he has the moral courage to run if that's the only way to save what he can."