A Mighty Fortress (105 page)

Captain Raisahndo grimaced as the second Charisian ship came into action. There was no mistaking the sound of that single, massive broadside—or, for that matter, the sudden eruption of fresh smoke. He peered aft, trying to decide which ship the Charisian had targeted. It was hard to make out details. In fact, he could barely see HMS
Bedard
’s headsails as she sailed along in
Rakurai
’s wake. It didn’t look as if Ahndair Krahl’s ship had been hit, though, and Raisahndo was unpleasantly confident that a Charisian broadside fired at such short range wasn’t going to completely miss its target.

Must’ve been
Grand Vicar Mahrys, he decided.

The thought evoked mixed emotions. Personally, Raisahndo hated Sir Dahrand Rohsail right down to his oh- so- nobly- born toenails. The man was an arrogant, aristocratic prig who’d never bothered to hide the fact that he was a member in good standing of the officers sucking up around the Duke of Thorast. Or, for that matter, to hide his disagreement with Earl Thirsk’s notions of shipboard discipline. On the other hand, he’d
complied
with Thirsk’s restrictions on the use of the lash, whether he agreed with them or not, and he had guts. He’d actually been willing to learn at least the rudiments of seaman-ship (however much he’d hated taking lessons from commoners), for that matter, and no man who lived could question his willingness to come to grips with the enemy.

I may hate the bastard, but the bloody- minded son- of- a-bitch is in the right place right now!

Rohsail staggered as a section of rail five feet to his left disintegrated. Something slammed into his shoulder with brutal force, nearly knocking him to his knees, and he heard shrieks from the waist of the ship, where the bulk of the broadside had gone home. His right hand clutched convulsively at the undamaged rail in front of him, keeping him on his feet somehow, and he turned forward.

His left shoulder felt broken, his arm dangling uselessly at his side, but there was no sign of blood, and a corner of his brain wondered what had hit him. There was no time to worry about that, however, and he stumbled forward to lean on the poop deck rail, staring toward the bow.

Most of the enemy’s fire had gone in low, punching into
Grand Vicar Mahrys
’ gundeck. From the screams, it must have inflicted Shan- wei’s own lot of casualties, he thought, then reminded himself not to assume the worst. A wounded man’s shrieks could be loud enough for two or three, after all.

But at least some of those round shot had plowed across the upper deck. Unlike Charisian ships,
Grand Vicar Mahrys
mounted no guns on her forecastle, but she did mount ten on the upper deck in the waist, five in either broadside.

Now there were only
two
in action to starboard.

Rohsail’s jaw tightened. One of the three silenced twelve- pounders was permanently disabled, dismounted by a direct hit; the other two appeared to be intact, but most of the sixteen men who’d manned them were down, either dead or wounded. Of the forty men who’d crewed all five pieces, no more than a dozen were on their feet, and they were all busy dragging dead and wounded crewmates away from the still ser viceable guns.

Grand Vicar Mahrys
was barely a hundred and sixty feet long, yet billowing smoke—most of it rolling down from the enemy’s guns, now—made it difficult to pick out details forward of the waist. From what he
could
see, though, at least another half dozen or so seamen and soldiers serving as shipboard infantry were down, as well. And that was only the upper deck; there was no telling how many men had been killed or wounded on the
gundeck
.

Yet, despite the screams and the blood, Rohsail’s other gunners were still in action. They were firing in dependently now, as quickly as each crew could reload, without the disciplined unanimity of controlled broadsides. The cannon’s thunder was a hellish cacophony, an almost uninterrupted succession of bellowing discharges. Accuracy had to be suffering as each gun captain fired blindly into the smoke at what ever
he
thought was the appropriate point in the ship’s roll, but they were
firing
, and even through the bedlam, he heard shouts—of encouragement from officers and petty officers, and of defiance from sailors and soldiers.

He looked up. There were holes in several sails, severed sheets and halyards blew on the wind here and there, and at least four or five dead men sprawled over the edge of the maintop where they’d been marked down by the spitefully cracking rifles of Charisian Marines. Nothing critical seemed to have carried away, though, and even as he watched, topmen were swarming through the rigging, heedless of round shot and bullets alike, to repair the ship’s running rigging.

They’d never be anything but common- born scum, Rohsail thought—all too many of them the sweepings of Gorath’s gutters. Yet as he watched them dragging dead and wounded messmates towards the center of the deck, making repairs in the teeth of the Charisian fire, tossing broken bits of railing and fallen blocks off the breeches of their guns, reloading and firing again and again, he felt a fierce stab of pride in them.

“Lay it to them, lads!” he heard himself shouting. “
Lay it to them!
”

Captain Stywyrt swore under his breath, restraining a most un captainly temptation to pound a fist on the binnacle, as the fury of the artillery exchange mounted. From his own position, astern and still up to windward, he could see
Dart
’s and
Shield
’s masts clearly as their course folded together with the Dohlarans. They were in action with three of the five Dohlaran galleons now, and the fourth enemy ship was about to pile in.

So far, all of
Dart
’s and
Shield
’s rigging seemed intact; both ships were still under control, and unlike the Dohlarans, still firing controlled broadsides. That told Stywyrt a great deal. Despite the fury of the engagement, despite the fact that they were about to find themselves fighting at two- to- one odds, both Pawal and Aiwain were still firing
broadsides
, rather than going to in de pen dent fire. He suspected each of them was also engaging only a single enemy ship, as well, preferring to methodically smash one target at a time rather than split their fire between two targets and inflict lighter damage on both. That took cool nerves, since it meant at least one of their opponents was left undisturbed, her gunners free to load and fire without worrying about round shot or grapeshot screaming into their own faces. By the same token, it gave them a far better chance of completely disabling one of their foes relatively quickly.

He turned his own attention to the last galleon in the Dohlaran line. She seemed to be smaller than the others, little larger than his own undersized
Squall
. Despite that, though, her captain was crowding on more sail as Stywyrt watched, resetting his courses to get more speed. Obviously, he intended to pile onto
Dart
and
Shield
as quickly as possible.

More gutsy and determined than smart,
Stywyrt thought. Dart
and
Shield
are both faster than any of them are. He may be able to overtake them with his courses set, but he’s only going to cramp their own formation once he gets there. He certainly won’t be able to get up to windward of Zhon and Harys what ever he does! In fact, he’ll have to haul out of line or run into one of his own consorts!

It was a mistake, although as mistakes went, it was preferable to a lot of others. At least that other captain was determined to get
into
action, rather than hold back to
avoid
it, and that said unpleasant things about the degree to which the Royal Dohlaran Navy’s morale must have recovered since Rock Point and Crag Reach.

Well, we’ll just have to see what we can
do
about that, won’t we, Ahrnahld?
he thought grimly.

Captain Raisahndo was in no position to see what Captain Mahrtyn Zhermain’s
Prince of Dohlar
was doing. The dense smoke made that impossible from deck level, and the men aloft, including those detailed as lookouts, were (understandably) more focused on the Charisian ships alongside than on their own consorts. If Raisahndo
had
been able to watch
Prince of Dohlar
’s maneuvers, however, he would have fully endorsed Ahrnahld Stywyrt’s analysis of Zhermain’s actions. At the same time, little though he would have liked what Zhermain was doing, he would also have agreed with Stywyrt that too much aggressiveness was a far better problem to have than too much timidity.

Just at the moment, however, Raisahndo had rather more pressing things to worry about. The leading Charisian galleon was slowly closing the range, despite Raisahndo’s own turn away, and her fire was both unpleasantly heavy and dismayingly accurate. The steady, measured bellow of her guns—obviously still firing in controlled broadsides—was like the rhythmic concussion of some giant’s spiked boots, tramping relentlessly across
Rakurai
’s decks. He was confident he was scoring more hits of his own, now that the range had dropped, but Charisian round shot were beating in
Rakurai
’s bulwarks and side like the remorseless blows of that same giant’s club.

A half dozen of
Rakurai
’s guns—a quarter of her entire larboard battery—were out of action now, and the pile of bodies along the centerline of the deck was growing thicker. Wounded men were being dragged below to the healers and surgeons, making it hard to form any detailed estimate, but Raisahndo suspected that he’d taken at least forty or fifty casualties. That was almost one in eight of his entire company, yet the crew—experienced seamen and pressed landsmen alike—stood steadily to their guns, firing back as quickly as they could reload.

The Charisian continued to fire low, smashing broadside after broadside into
Rakurai
’s hull, slaughtering her crewmen steadily, while the marksmen in
Dart
’s tops fired across at their Dohlaran counterparts or down into the smoke below. At least a few Charisian shot had gone high, though, and
Rakurai
’s deck was littered with fallen blocks and lengths of cordage. Raisahndo had seen two or three men felled by those heavy, plunging blocks, and he castigated himself for not having thought of the protective rope nets he’d observed aboard the Charisian galleons before fire was opened. Obviously, they’d been rigged above the enemy’s decks to catch debris—and bodies—falling from overhead, and he made a mental note to suggest that Dohlar adopt the same practice in his report to Earl Thirsk.