A Mighty Fortress (141 page)

An iron hurricane thundered into
Ahrmahk
’s bows just as she passed between NGS
Holy Warrior
and NGS
Crusade
. It came from yet a third galleon, lying almost directly across her own path, and her entire foremast swayed, then plunged downward, crashing into the water alongside. Her main topgallant mast went with it, and there were more screams and cries from forward. Two of her lieutenants went down, and Sylmahn Baikyr looked at his first lieutenant.

“You may fire, Master Vykain,” he said.

Harpahr winced as the lead Charisian fired at last.

For an instant, he thought the ship had exploded as both broadsides erupted simultaneously. Yet even as he thought that, he realized how wrong he was. Despite the pounding she’d taken during that long, slow, dreadful approach, there was a venomous precision to her fire. Her guns crashed out, two- by- two, spardeck carronades firing in unison with the heavier gundeck guns beneath them, and their accuracy was fearful to behold.

HMS
Ahrmahk
had paid a terrible price to break the Church line. A quarter of her crew were casualties. Her foremast was gone. She was slowed, lamed, with five guns out of action before she ever reached her enemies. But it was a price she had known she was going to pay, and she and her crew made no mistake.

Her guns had been double- shotted this time. They slammed their hate into
Holy Warrior
and
Crusade,
raking both ships simultaneously. Men shrieked and died aboard the Church galleons.
Holy Warrior
staggered, helm control obviously lost. She fouled one of her consorts in a crashing thunder of wooden hulls grinding together. Yardarms locked, masts snapped, and she and her sister wallowed aside.

HMS
Ahrmahk
was in little better state.
Crusade
swung round to larboard, turning to run before the wind, bringing her own larboard broadside to bear. A third of the Church ship’s guns had been dismounted or disabled, but if her men were less experienced than
Ahrmahk
’s, they were no less determined. The remaining guns blasted at the Charisian flagship, and this time, most of them hit. The rest of
Ahrmahk
’s mainmast thundered down, and Bryahn Lock Island went to his knees as a heavy wooden block, swinging from the mizzentop like a lethal pendulum, literally picked a Marine up and hurled him into the high admiral.

“Larboard your helm!” Baikyr’s clear voice cut through the bedlam, and
Ahrmahk
swerved to starboard even as her speed dropped. She slammed into
Crusade
bodily, the shock driving more men from their feet.
Crusade
’s mizzen-mast went down with the impact, grappling irons flew, and Bryahn Lock Island drove himself to his feet, checked his sword, and drew his pistols.

“Away boarders, Master Vykain!” Baikyr shouted, and HMS
Ahrmahk
’s Marines and seamen howled the high, piercing Charisian war cry as they hurled themselves across onto the other ship’s deck with their high admiral at their head.

Behind
Ahrmahk
,
Darcos Sound
came driving through the gap the flagship had created. She bore down on
Holy Warrior
and her fouled consort, larboard broadside thundering, then drove past, deeper into the confusion and smoke and bedlam. Behind her,
Daffodil
, one of Rock Point’s galleons, fought
her
way through, pounding with round shot, battering a road towards the heart of the Church formation. And behind her came
Crag Reach
, and
Margaret’s Land
, and
Greentree
, and
Foam
.

The Charisians maintained their formation with iron discipline as they broke through the outermost Church line, but once they were past that ordered formation, the chaos Lock Island had envisioned enveloped them. There were simply too many Church galleons swarming towards them. There was no possible way to avoid all of them, and the indescribable confusion of a night action churned the chaos into a wild melee that no man could have hoped to sort out.

No one broke. No one ran. Perhaps one would have expected that of a navy with the ICN’s traditions, yet its opponents were just as stubborn, just as determined. Say what one might about Zhaspahr Clyntahn, level what ever charge one wished at the corruption of the Group of Four, scorn the self- serving avarice of a corrupt and venal Church hierarchy if one would, there were no cowards aboard the Church’s ships that night.

Lock Island and his officers and his men had known precisely what sort of action they intended to create. They’d embraced it with the cold, calculating courage of a navy with an all but unbroken record of victory, and they’d walked straight into it deliberately.

The crews of the Navy of God had
thought
they knew what was coming, but they’d been wrong. They’d trained, they’d practiced, they’d drilled, but they’d never
experienced
it, and nothing short of experience could truly have prepared them for it. Man- for- man and ship- for- ship, they were outclassed by their opponents in every category except one: courage. They were terrified, confused, with no clear idea of what was happening, and yet they stood to their guns. They were less accurate, they scored fewer hits, their round shot were lighter, but they poured fire back at the Charisians. And when Imperial Charisian Marines came storming aboard their ships after collision had locked them together, they met them at the bulwarks, on the gangways, with weapons in their hands and no give at all in their hearts.

The last, desperate defense of HMS
Royal Charis
at the Battle of Darcos Sound had been the closest, most brutal, most ferocious engagement in the history of the Royal Charisian Navy.

On this night, in this place, on these red- running decks, the
Imperial
Charisian Navy found its equal.

“God wills it!”

Flame gushed up from the pistol’s pan as Lock Island squeezed the trigger. The heavy, rifled bullet slammed into the Temple Guardsman’s face in an explosion of blood, black in the moonlight. It was the pistol’s second round, and there was no time to holster it as the dead guardsman’s companion kept coming. Lock Island dropped the smoking weapon to the deck and his sword leapt into his hand.

“Langhorne and no quarter!” someone else was howling as the high admiral parried aside the guardsman’s boarding pike. One of his own Marines lashed out with his musket, burying his bayonet in the guardsman’s side, and the Temple Loyalist went down shrieking.

Lock Island staggered as another Church galleon came grinding in along
Crusade
’s other side. The newcomer had been badly battered—she’d lost her mizzenmast, and her larboard bulwarks looked as if they’d been pounded flat by some maniac with a sledgehammer—but her gangways were black with seamen and guardsmen, and steel gleamed dully in the smoke- choked moonlight.

“Charis!
Charis!
” he heard voices screaming.

“Death to the Inquisition!” someone else bellowed, and he felt the wild, half- maddened fury of his own Marines and seamen.

Then the new wave of boarders came streaming across onto
Crusade
’s deck in a torrent of hate and keen- edged steel.

“After me, lads!” Bryahn Lock Island screamed and charged to meet them.

Now
, Domynyk Staynair thought.
Now!

Destroyer
had finally broken through the fraying Church line. At least ten of his and Lock Island’s galleons were yardarm- to- yardarm with Church galleons, cannon muzzles flaming at one another from as little as ten yards’ range or even lashed together, with furious boarding actions raging back and forth.

Yet that island of madness had drawn in still more of Harpahr’s ships. They were closing on the Charisian intruders, preparing to swarm them under before anyone could come to their aid. And in the process, they’d created a clear space, room into which
Destroyer
could lead the truncated line behind her.

“Now, Styvyn!” he barked.

“Aye, aye, My Lord!” Styvyn Erayksyn, his flag lieutenant, shouted through the chaos, and crossed to the larboard side of the quarterdeck.

Erayksyn had discarded his oilskins when the rain ceased. Now he reached into the pocket of his torn, smoke- grimed uniform tunic, extracted one of Commodore Seamount’s “Shan- wei’s candles,” and struck it on the breech of a carronade. It flared and flashed and sputtered to life, and he touched it to the fuse of a curious- looking contraption lashed to
Destroyer
’s taffrail.

For a moment, nothing happened, and then something sputtered and glared even more ferociously. Erayksyn stepped back hastily . . . and the very first signal rocket ever used in combat on the surface of Safehold arced into the night sky. It soared upward, spewing a fiery trail that sent a stab of atavistic terror through men steeped in the restrictions of the Proscriptions of Jwojeng.