A Mighty Fortress (138 page)

The rearmost ship in Kornylys Harpahr’s windward column was the fifty- gun galleon NGS
Saint Ithmyn
. Her ship’s company had done well in the fleet’s endless sail and gunnery drills. Over the thousands of miles they’d voyaged, hard work, training, and growing experience had transformed them from a crew only too conscious of its own
lack
of experience into one confident that it no longer had anything of which to be ashamed. And there was a great deal of truth to that.

But training or no training, growing experience or no experience, no one aboard
Saint Ithmyn
expected an attack any more than Harpahr or Taibahld had. Her lookouts had been more concerned with keeping track of consorts who represented potential collision hazards—and with finding ways to shelter from the downpour—than with the ridiculous possibility that the Imperial Charisian Navy might choose a night blacker than the pit of Shan- wei to assail them. And so no one was looking in the right direction when HMS
Ahrmahk
came sliding out of the dark like the Archangel of Death himself.

“What the h—?!”

The crewman by
Saint Ithmyn
’s after rail wasn’t a lookout. In fact, he wasn’t supposed to be on deck—officially—at all. He was one of the servants assigned to the flagship’s wardroom, and he’d nipped above decks when he heard the rain easing to empty one of the wardroom spittoons over the lee rail during the lull. He had no idea what had prompted him to look up at the moment he did. Perhaps it was the urging of some deeply buried instinct, or perhaps he’d already caught sight of something out of the corner of one eye without realizing that he had.

What ever it was, he looked up just as
Ahrmahk
’s jibboom began crossing
Saint Ithmyn
’s wake barely fifty yards astern of her.

His inarticulate, half- strangled shout died in simple, paralyzing shock at the sight. Even then, it never occurred to him it might be a
Charisian
ship. If his brain had been working clearly, if it had been clear and daylight rather than a rainy, moonless night, he would have realized that low- slung, predatory shape couldn’t possibly belong to one of
Saint Ithmyn
’s sisters. But the eye sees what the mind
expects
to see, and so he assumed it must be another of their own vessels, wandering out of formation and narrowly missing a collision with his own ship.

The lieutenant who had the watch looked up sharply at the chopped- off exclamation, then wheeled in the direction of the other man’s stare. For a moment, his mind leapt down the same chain of assumptions, but unlike the servant, his had become a trained seaman’s eye. His brain insisted that it was illogical, preposterous—
impossible
—yet he knew instantly that what ever and whoever that ship was, it didn’t belong to
his
fleet.

“Strange ship, dead astern! Beat to quarters! Captain to the d—!”

The young lieutenant did everything right. More than that, he did it in the right
order
. Unfortunately, it was too late for the right thing to make any difference at all to NGS
Saint Ithmyn
.

Bryahn Lock Island heard the shout even through the sound of wind and wave. The fact that HMS
Ahrmahk
was totally silent, no one speaking, the crew hardly even breathing, helped. He couldn’t make out the words—partly because of the pronounced Temple Lands accent—but he recognized the tone of shock in the brief seconds before the shout was wiped away by another sound entirely.

“Fire!”
Sylmahn Baikyr snapped, and the darkness came apart in fire and fury.

The lieutenant was still shouting when
Ahrmahk
’s first broadside arrived. Twenty- seven thirty- pound round shot came howling out of a sudden, blinding flash of light. The lieutenant had never seen a heavy gun fired in total darkness—never imagined the incredible brilliance, the physical
pain
of abused optic nerves as that totally unexpected fist of light slammed into it. The Charisian artillery spewed flame and smoke, and the lieutenant never had the chance to fully appreciate the brutal beauty and savagery of that man- made lightning bolt.

One of the first round shot struck him just above the belt buckle and tore him in half. His severed torso flew over fifteen feet before it thudded to the deck, and no one heard the sodden impact through the shrieks and the screams and the sound of splintering wood.

Ahrmahk
’s attack took her victim totally by surprise. Better than half the ship’s company were in their hammocks, sound asleep or drowsing. Others were quietly playing cards, enjoying the companionship of their messmates on yet another rainy night. Some were darning holes in trousers, others were working on the scores of tiny repairs that were an incessant part of a wooden sailing ship.

And then, suddenly, without warning, Hell itself came for them. Six- inch round shots slammed into their ship, splintered her stern windows, ripped the full length of her crowded decks. Men in hammocks shrieked as those round shot plucked away arms and legs and victims woke from slumber and dreams of home to the agony of maimed and ruined bodies. The same round shot slammed into deck beams and framing members, spraying lethal clouds of splinters like wooden shrapnel to rip into still more sleeping or totally unprepared crewmen.
Saint Ithmyn
’s captain never had the opportunity to learn his ship was under attack—the third round shot of the first broadside killed him before he ever woke. A third of the galleon’s officers were killed or wounded—the majority in their own cabins, or sitting around the wardroom table—as the Charisian fire ripped through them.

All the training, and all the motivation, and all the experience in the world were not—
could
not have been—enough to absorb that sudden, completely unexpected, unbelievably brutal onslaught. Officers and petty officers were dead or wounded. The ship was suddenly filled with screaming, broken men and the stink of blood and riven entrails. The Archangels themselves would have panicked in the face of that carnage, and
Saint Ithmyn
’s discipline came apart.

Men bellowed in panic, fighting their way through strangling, clinging barriers of spread hammocks, sliding in blood, trampling on the broken, mewling bodies of what had once been messmates and friends. It wasn’t cowardice; it was
shock,
the devastating impact of total surprise. And in the midst of that panic, in the depths of that carnage, someone dropped a lantern.

HMS
Ahrmahk
’s larboard guns recoiled in a squealing thunder of wooden gun trucks across thick planking. The upper- deck carronades had been fired with the slow- matches, at least for the first broadside, and their crews were delighted the rain had ceased, at least for the moment. They’d shrugged off their oilskins even before the rain stopped, freeing themselves of the encumbrance. Now they flung themselves on their weapons, swabbing the barrels, ramming home fresh cartridges, sliding in the fat round shot.

Below, on the main gundeck, men coughed and choked on the strangling brimstone of their own gunsmoke. They, too, embraced their multi- ton charges, swabbing bores to extinguish any lingering sparks, ramming home fresh charges. For the moment, at least, none of them had any attention to spare for their target—time enough for that when they’d reloaded.

But Bryahn Lock Island
did
have attention to spare for
Saint Ithmyn,
and his jaw tightened as he saw the first telltale flicker.

Oh, those poor bastards,
he thought.
Those poor, damned bastards
.

There is nothing more feared aboard a ship—especially aboard a
wooden
ship—than fire. And there is no emergency, no threat, which demands a quicker, more disciplined response. But there was no possibility of anything resembling a disciplined response aboard NGS
Saint Ithmyn
that night, at that moment. Too many men who would have responded instantly under other conditions were already dead, wounded, or maddened by panic, and the smell of wood smoke, the sudden crackle of flames, were the death knell of any hope of restoring order.

The fire spread with horrifying speed, overtaking men as they ran, crawling over the wounded who shrieked and tried to drag their broken bodies out of its embrace. Licking up heavily tarred rigging, despite the saturating rain which had come down for so many hours. Racing through shattered internal bulkheads, roaring jubilantly as it discovered the paint store and gorged itself on turpentine and gallons of cotton seed oil.

By the time
Ahrmahk
had reloaded, and
Darcos Sound
had crossed
Saint Ithmyn
’s stern and poured her own thundering avalanche of iron into the reeling ship, the savagely wounded galleon was clearly doomed. Men—some of them on fire—flung themselves over the side, seeking the temporary cooling salvation of the sea. Flames roared like one of Ehdwyrd Howsmyn’s blast furnaces, and sparks were already cascading up out of the open hatchways.