Hell's Foundations Quiver (83 page)

“But if it
is
the ironclad, Sir?” Mahgyrs pressed, and the admiral's smile was far, far colder than his flag lieutenant's had been.

“Why, in that case, Ahlfryd, I think it's time we took advantage of the opportunities God sends us.”

*   *   *

“Everyone's clear, Sir. Everyone but you and your boat crew.”

Lieutenant Kylmahn had not mentioned himself or Edwyrd Muhlkayhe,
Thunderer
's gunner, Ahbaht noted with grim humor.

“In that case, Daivyn, I think it's time you and Master Muhlkayhe were over the side, as well,” he said.

“All the same to you, Sir Bruhstair, I'll be leaving the same time you do,” Kylmahn replied flatly.

Ahbaht considered making it a direct order, but then he looked at his first lieutenant's face and thought better of it. A glance at Muhlkayhe showed the same stubbornness—and unhappiness—and the captain shrugged.

“Very well, then we'll all leave together,” he said, and waved his two subordinates towards the entry port.

Kylmahn gestured for Muhlkayhe to go first, and the gunner started down the battens attached to
Thunderer
's tall side towards the barely bobbing cutter lying in the ironclad's lee. Ahbaht watched him go, then watched Kylmahn start the same descent. He moved to the entry port himself and took one last look around his ship's deserted deck through eyes which refused to focus somehow. He rubbed them angrily and drew a deep breath.

My fault
, he thought harshly.
All my fault. The whole operation was my idea, and then I ran her onto the mud
. A corner of his mind knew he was being unfair to himself, but the rest of his self-flagellating brain didn't care.
I should've jettisoned the guns yesterday, gotten her off last night. But, no! I was so damned sure I'd have time. The bastards shouldn't've been here until tomorrow, but I should've remembered Charisians aren't the only ones who can move quickly when they have to, and
they
didn't have to worry about the wind while they did it
.

Ahgustahs Sahlahmn, his coxswain, called quietly from below, and Ahbaht shook himself free of his bitter thoughts. He swung out through the entry port and started down the battens himself, pausing six feet below deck level while he groped a Shan-wei's candle out of his tunic pocket. At least there was too little wind to snuff its flame, he thought, and struck it against the ship's armor. It sputtered to life, and he applied it to the length of a slow match hanging down
Thunderer
's side.

The little speck of fire moved up the fuse in a thin plume of smoke, burning its steady way towards its rendezvous with the ironclad's magazine.

Just my luck the damned fuse'll go out
.

He considered climbing back aboard, ordering Sahlahmn to stand off while he made certain the fuse reached its destination. Unfortunately, he doubted that was an order the coxswain would obey, and Kylmahn was even more problematic.

Besides, Muhlkayhe knows his business
, he told himself,
and he knows how important this is. That's why he laid five separate fuses
.

Ahbaht lingered just long enough to see the climbing eye of fire reach the junction point of those five fuses and go hissing along each of them. One of them was certain to reach the magazine, he told himself, and dropped down into the waiting boat.

“All right, Ahgustahs.” His voice was harsh, angry, although he was confident Sahlahmn knew that anger wasn't directed at him. “Get us away.”

“Aye, aye, Sir,” Sahlahmn said quietly, then raised his voice. “You heard the Admiral, boys. Put your backs into it!”

The oarsmen knew where those fuses were headed and needed very little encouragement. The oar blades dug deep and the cutter went scooting towards one of the waiting schooners.

Sir Bruhstair Ahbaht sat facing aft, watching his magnificent ironclad as she lay forlorn and abandoned behind her fleeing crew and five fiery worms ate their way into her belly.

*   *   *

“It
is
the ironclad, by Langhorne!” Captain Tymythy Snelyng muttered to himself in disbelief. HMS
Lance
was close enough to Shingle Shoal for him to be certain of that now, however impossible it might seem. And the heretics had clearly abandoned the ship, which meant—

“They must've set a fuse, Sir.”

Snelyng looked over his shoulder at Ahldahs Zhaksyn,
Lance
's gunner. Zhaksyn was at least twice Snelyng's age, but he also held a warrant rather than a king's commission, which meant he would never command a ship of the Royal Dohlaran Navy. That didn't mean his brain wasn't just as keen as the next man's, however, and Snelyng fully realized how valuable a resource Zhaksyn and his experience were.

And he wasn't saying anything Snelyng hadn't already deduced for himself. On the other hand.…

“But how
long
a fuse?” he said. “That's the question, isn't it?”

“Too damn short for what you're thinking, Sir,” Zhaksyn said bluntly. “They'd be keeping closer to her, elsewise.”

Snelyng knew the gunner was almost certainly correct. The grounded Charisian vessel was still at least two thousand yards distant, and the closest enemy schooner was a thousand yards farther away from it than
Lance
, on the far side of the shoal. In fact, the entire heretic squadron was headed up the Egg Drop Passage directly
away
from the ironclad. Snelyng very much doubted they'd have been doing anything of the sort if they'd thought there was a single chance in Shan-wei's hell that anyone could get boarders onto the ship before the fuse undoubtedly burning in her magazine blew her to perdition. Heretics or no, no one who'd been at the Battle of the Harchong Narrows—or who'd seen the state of the ships who'd fought there afterward—would ever make the mistake of doubting Charisian courage, and the Charisians had to be even better aware than Snelyng of how vital a prize one of their ironclads would prove.

There was no question what a Charisian captain would have done before abandoning a ship like that. Unfortunately, there was no question in Tymythy Snelyng's mind about what he had to do anyway.

“Hold your course,” he said to the helmsman, and looked at Lieutenant Seevyrs, his first officer. “Drop the gig. I want a volunteer crew—
real
volunteers, Alyk, and make sure they understand what they're volunteering
for
.”

*   *   *

“They're dropping a boat, Sir,” Daivyn Kylmahn said quietly, lowering his double-glass and looking at Ahbaht.

“Gutsy bastards,” Ahbaht muttered with a bitter scowl far removed from his normal expression. Then he raised his voice. “Captain Cupyr!”

“Yes, Sir?”

Lieutenant Commander Aizak Cupyr, HMS
Sojourn
's commanding officer, was a fellow Emeraldian. He was also barely half Ahbaht's age, with the sort of corsair confidence the commander of a sixteen-gun schooner required. There was a difference between “confidence” and “recklessness,” however, and young Cupyr had demonstrated that it was a difference he grasped.
Thunderer
's ship's company had been split between three of the squadron's schooners, and
Sojourn
had taken aboard the last sixty men and officers. She was packed to the gunwales—this time the phrase was literally correct, not figurative—and low in the water with all the extra weight, and he obviously had no desire at all to expose that vulnerable, fragile target to the heavy guns aboard the rapidly approaching screw-galley.

Which didn't mean he wouldn't do it anyway if he had to.

“Clear away your pivot, Captain,” Ahbaht said flatly. “We may need it.”

*   *   *

“You're in command now, Alyk,” Snelyng said as the last of the volunteers scrambled down into the boat towing alongside. “Don't bring her within a thousand yards. That's an order.”

“But, Sir—!”

“There's no
time
,” Snelyng said sharply, chopping off Seevyrs' protest as he strode towards the ship's side himself. “And I'm not interested in any arguments. Understood?”

“But—” Seevyrs began again, then cut himself off.

Clearly, there was no point in reminding Snelyng that this sort of lunatic adventure was why captains had first lieutenants. The captain understood just how little chance there was of getting aboard that ironclad in time to extinguish any fuses … and how
good
a chance there was of getting himself and his entire boat's crew blown up for his trouble. And Tymythy Snelyng agreed with Earl Thirsk: a good officer
led
his men, he didn't drive them.

“Understood, Sir,” he said heavily, instead. “A thousand yards. Langhorne bless, Sir.”

“I won't say it wouldn't be welcome.”

Snelyng smiled tightly, clapped Seevyrs sharply on the shoulder once, and dropped over the side. The bowman unhooked almost before the captain's feet hit the floorboards, and the coxswain put his helm over, veering sharply away from the still-moving screw-galley. The five oarsmen were poised and ready, and the oars bit deep the instant they were far enough clear of the ship.

The captain didn't have to tell them how short time might be, and they pulled their oars as if they were in one of the fleet-wide rowing races. Four or five knots was normally a realistic sustained speed for the twenty-four-foot boat, but twice that was possible for short bursts, and it cut through the water like a kraken, spray flying despite the light breeze and short, gentle waves.

*   *   *

“Fire!”

Sojourn
twitched as the pivot-mounted thirty-pounder just forward of her foremast belched a bubble of flame and a cloud of smoke. The round shot screamed away, cutting a line of white across the wavelets. It missed the Dohlaran boat by a generous margin, and Sir Bruhstair Ahbaht made himself stand motionless instead of slamming the schooner's rail with a frustrated fist.

Thunderer
's orphans were packed belowdecks like sardines to clear
Sojourn
's deck, and he considered instructing Cupyr to engage with his broadside guns. Unfortunately, the carronades on the broadside carriages were shorter-ranged, and closing to use them would have required the schooner to close to no more than five hundred yards or so of her target. Her draft was shallow enough she could
probably
get that close without taking the ground herself, but there was no certainty of that. It would also require her to close
Thunderer
once again, which would have been risky enough, given the lit fuses burning away aboard her. Perhaps even more to the point, however, it would have required her to close with the oncoming screw-galley, and that would have been little short of suicidal. The two vessels were very nearly the same size, and
Sojourn
was far more seaworthy and carried twice as many guns, but she was much slower than
Lance
under the current conditions, and her guns would be effectively useless as long as the screw-galley kept its bow towards her.

Ahbaht frowned as the Dohlaran boat seemed to accelerate. It had well over a mile to go, yet at its present speed, it would reach
Thunderer
in no more than another ten or fifteen minutes.

“Fire!”

*   *   *

Snelyng swore as the second round shot slashed through the waves just astern of the boat, close enough to soak them all with spray.

“Lucky shot, boys!” he called, hoping to Langhorne it really had been.

If that was one of the Charisians' rifled pieces, though, luck might have had very little to do with it. Reports said they were fiendishly accurate, and in calm conditions like this, with so little ship's motion to throw the gunners off.…

“Pull, boys—
pull!
”

Fresh, deeper thunder rolled, and he darted a glance back at
Lance
as the screw-galley disappeared behind a thick cloud of gunsmoke.

*   *   *

Ahbaht's eyebrows rose as the screw-galley fired. The range was at least three thousand yards, and Dohlaran gunpowder and gunfounders alike were inferior to their Charisian counterparts. Despite that, three massive projectiles came bounding across the waves towards
Sojourn
. None of them passed within fifty yards of their target … but they continued skipping from wave crest to wave crest for almost five hundred yards
beyond
the schooner. There were no explosions; either they'd been round shot or their fuses had been extinguished. If it was the latter, the same thing was likely to happen to any additional shells that ricocheted into their target, but there was no reason Ahbaht could see for them to be using shells. Projectiles that size didn't
need
to explode to inflict devastating damage on a ship
Sojourn
's size.

And if the bastards really want to bring us into their range, they damned well can
, he thought grimly, watching the screw-galley slice through the waves.

At least those mammoth guns had to be slow-firing, and Cupyr's gun crews were displaying the practiced gun drill which was a Charisian hallmark. They were getting off three aimed shots every two minutes, and the Dohlarans would be fortunate to manage half that rate of fire.

With
three
guns instead of one, of course
, he reminded himself.

He dragged out his pocket watch and checked the time.

*   *   *

“Come on, lads!
Move
your frigging arses!” Ahldahs Zhaksyn shouted. “The Captain
needs
us, damn your eyes!”

Lieutenant Seevyrs was a devout man and something of an oddity in naval service in that he never swore. He felt no temptation to rebuke
Lance
's gunner in this instance, however. He stood on the screw-galley's quarterdeck, peering at the heretic schooner through his spyglass while he raged inwardly against Captain Snelyng's order to keep
Lance
at least a thousand yards clear of the grounded ironclad. His heavy guns' maximum range was a bit over twenty-five hundred yards. With seas this calm, they could reach out another thousand or even another fifteen hundred yards with ricochet fire, but the ironclad lay almost directly between him and the schooner.