Off Armageddon Reef (97 page)

Cayleb's eyes widened, then they narrowed in comprehension, and he sucked in a deep breath and nodded. Not in approval, or even in simple comprehension of what Merlin had just told him. He nodded in decision and turned sharply to his flag captain.

“Captain Manthyr, we'll alter course to the south, if you please. General signal: engage the enemy more closely.”

“Your Grace, the Charisian galleys are standing directly into our path,” Captain Myrgyn said harshly.

Black Water looked up from the chart before him. The flag captain stood in the chartroom door, and his expression was concerned.

The duke didn't blame him. The fleet's formation had become badly disordered when he turned it around yet again. The columns were still sorting themselves out, or attempting to, although the Chisholmian units didn't seem to be trying all that hard to obey his orders. Several of them seemed to have creatively misconstrued—or simply ignored—his signals, depriving him of still more desperately needed strength. He was scarcely in the best possible condition for a general engagement with Haarahld's fleet, and he'd hoped to break past the king before Haarahld realized what he was about.

Obviously, that wasn't going to happen.

Still, he had at least a hundred galleys still under his own command, and Haarahld had only seventy.

“Let's go on deck,” he said quietly to Myrgyn, and the flag captain stood aside, then followed him out of the chartroom.

The duke blinked in the bright sunlight. It was just past noon. The long, running battle had raged for over eight hours now, and his jaw tightened as he heard the continuing rumble of artillery from astern. It seemed to be growing louder, and he smiled grimly. Cayleb couldn't know exactly what his father was doing, but it was evident that the Charisian crown prince understood the importance of staying close on a fleeing enemy's heels.

Black Water looked up at the sky, then forward, to where a forest of galley masts and sails loomed almost directly ahead. Even as he watched, sails were being furled and yards were being lowered, and he bared his teeth as he recognized the traditional challenge to a fight to the finish.

Part of him wanted nothing more than to give Haarahld exactly that. But if he did, Cayleb would close in from behind, and by this time, the Charisian galleys and galleons combined would actually outnumber the ships actually still under Black Water's command. His earlier huge numerical advantage had evaporated, and a general engagement, especially with those galleons added to the fray, could result only in his defeat.

“We'll hold our course, Captain Myrgyn,” he said calmly. “Don't reduce sail.”

“They're going to try to break right past us, Your Majesty,” Captain Tryvythyn said.

“What they
try
to do and what they actually do may turn out to be two different things, Dynzyl,” Haarahld said calmly.

The king stood on
Royal Charis
' aftercastle, watching the clutter of enemy galleys bearing down upon his own fleet. Unlike the four long, disordered lines of Black Water's fleet, Haarahld's was formed into a dozen shorter, more compact columns of a single squadron each, and despite himself, the king felt something almost like satisfaction.

He was far too intelligent not to recognize the enormous advantages Merlin's changes had conferred upon his navy. But the Royal Charisian Navy and the ferocity and deadly skill of the Charisian Marines had made themselves the terror of their enemies long before Merlin and his new artillery ever came along. This would be a battle in the
old
style, possibly the last one, and Haarahld had grown up in the old school.

His flagship led her own squadron, but the King of Charis had no business in the first, crushing embrace of battle. Especially not of the sort of battle Charisian galleys fought.

“General signal, Dynzyl,” he said as Black Water's fleeing squadron's bore down upon him. “Close action.”

Black Water's eastern column had drawn well ahead of the others. Now its lead galleys crunched into the Charisian formation like a battering ram.

That was what it might have looked like to the uninformed observer, at least. But what actually happened was that the Charisian squadrons swarmed forward like krakens closing on a pod of narwhales.

Traditional Charisian naval tactics were built uncompromisingly on ferocity and speed. Charisian Marines knew they were the finest naval infantry—the only
professional
naval infantry—in the world, and Charisian squadron commanders were trained to bring their ships slashing in on any opponent as a unit.

Admiral Lock Island's flagship led the first assault, crashing alongside one of Black Water's Corisandians.
Tellesberg
's port oars lifted and swung inboard with machinelike precision as Lock Island's flag captain smashed his ship's side into the smaller, more lightly built galley
Foam
like a battering ram.

Foam
's mast snapped at the impact, thundering down across her deck. Hull seams started, spurting water, and
Tellesberg
's port guns fired into the mass of fallen cordage and canvas as she ground down
Foam
's side. Lock Island's flagship swung clear, her sweeps snapped back out, and she gathered fresh momentum as she hurtled down on
Foam
's consort
Halberd
. Behind
Tellesberg
, HMS
Battleaxe
hammered
Foam
with her own artillery, then launched herself at the Corisandian
Warrior
.

Tellesberg
slammed into
Halberd
almost as violently as she'd collided with
Foam
.
Halberd
's mast didn't quite come down, but the smaller, lighter galley staggered under the impact, and dozens of grappling irons arced out from the Charisian ship. They bit into
Halberd
's bulwarks, and the first Charisian Marines swarmed across onto the Corisandian's deck behind the high, quavering howl of their war cry. No one who'd survived hearing that sound ever forgot it, and the well earned terror of the Royal Charisian Marines was borne upon its wings.

Most of the new muskets and bayonets had gone to Cayleb's galleons, but
Tellesberg
's Marines didn't seem to mind. They swept across
Halberd
in a tidal wave whose very ferocity disguised its intense discipline and training. Boarding pikes stabbed, cutlasses and boarding axes chopped, and the first rush carried
Halberd
's entire waist.

But then
Halberd
's company rallied. Matchlocks and “wolves” fired down into the melee from aftercastle and forecastle, killing and wounding dozens of the Marines. Corisandian soldiers counter-charged with the power of desperation, slamming into the boarders violently enough to throw even Charisians back on their heels.

For a few minutes, the tide of combat swirled back and forth, first this way, then that, as men hacked at one another in a frenzy of destruction and slaughter. Then
Tellesberg
's consort
Sword of Tirian
came thundering along
Halberd
's other side, and a fresh wave of Charisian Marines overwhelmed the defenders.

Duke Black Water watched bleakly as his fleeing galleys merged with their Charisian opponents.

It wasn't working. His jaw muscles ached as he recognized that. His own column, the westernmost of them all, had fallen perhaps a mile and a half behind the others, but he could see what was happening. The tangle of colliding galleys as the Charisians flung themselves bodily upon the ships of his first two columns was simply too thick for him to cut his way through them. As the second and third and fourth galleys in each long, unwieldy column caught up with the leaders, they were unable—or, in some cases, unwilling—to avoid the knots of vessels which were already grappled together. Some of them tried to, but there always seemed to be another compact Charisian column waiting, another Charisian galley perfectly placed to crash alongside them, grapple them, add them to the steadily growing barricade of timber, stabbing steel, and blood. It was like watching autumn leaves swirl down a racing stream until they encountered a fallen branch and, suddenly, found themselves piling up, heaping together into a solid mass.

And even as Haarahld's fleet threw itself in front of him, he heard Cayleb's guns growing louder and louder behind him as the galleons began savaging the rearmost ships of his own column.

He glared at the tangle of ships, fallen masts, smoke, banners, and wreckage, and saw the complete and total failure of his entire campaign. But then, to one side of the main engagement, he saw a single Charisian squadron, and his eyes flamed as he recognized the banner it flew.

The way his column had fallen a little behind the others was what had allowed Cayleb to get at its rearmost units. But it also meant his flagship, and the galleys behind it, hadn't yet been swept into the general melee.

Most of Haarahld's galleys
had
, however, and Black Water's lips drew back from his teeth. He grabbed Captain Myrgyn's shoulder and pointed at the royal standard of Charis.

“
There!
” he snarled. “There's your target, Kehvyn!”