A Mighty Fortress (139 page)

And then
Ahrmahk
’s guns came to bear on their second target.

The destruction of Kornylys Harpahr’s windward column was total. Taken by surprise, unable to believe what was happening, rousing from the depths of sleep to face nightmare, and with the sudden, roaring inferno of
Saint Ithmyn
blazing against the night, the ships of that column never recovered.

It wasn’t for want of trying.

The three rear ships never had a chance. Assailed out of the darkness, their crews were ripped to pieces before they could even begin to respond. The Charisian ships closed to as little as twenty yards, paralleling their targets, overhauling them steadily and yet slowly enough to pound each of them mercilessly in turn. Masts went over the side. Guns were dismounted before their breeching ropes could even be cast off. It was a howling nightmare that shattered the fabric of the ships themselves almost as quickly and as brutally as it shattered the cohesiveness of the crews which manned them.

The eleven ships ahead of them had more time, at least some warning. Sailing ships, even
Charisian
sailing ships, are seldom as swift as slash lizards. It took time for
Ahrmahk
to overtake the ships ahead of
Saint Ithmyn,
and Lock Island’s greatest fear had been that one of the Church column’s leading units would turn out of line on her own initiative. Would steer to cut across the head of his own line in an effort to do to him what he’d done to
Saint Ithmyn
.

But surprise, confusion, and horror are poor soil for initiative. Especially for men who have never before experienced the violence of a point- blank broadside. The officers and the crews of those ships did their best, and after the initial strobes of panic, they responded with courage and determination. But they
responded
. They reacted. They made no effort to impose their own will. They defended themselves, getting their guns cleared away, bringing their batteries into action despite their surprise, despite the confusion. They fired back—raggedly, at first, then more steadily—even as an unending sequence of Charisian gun-ports sailed past them, every one of them belching flame and fury.

They had nothing to be ashamed of, those men, those officers. Most of them, when their time came, fell
facing
their enemies, shouting defiance, manning their weapons. But the only thing that could have saved them was swift, determined
offensive
action... and that was the one thing of which they were totally incapable.

Well, that was the easy part,
Lock Island thought as the shattered wrecks of the windward column fell astern.

Three more of them were on fire now, flames roaring up and painting the clouds in crimson and blood. It was obvious the other ten ships were out of action for hours, probably days. It was unlikely any of them would sink, and if they’d been going to catch fire, they would have already. But taken together, they represented almost twenty percent of Harpahr’s total strength, and what ever else happened, they would play no part in any further combat this night.

If we win, any one of them can be snapped up by a single schooner,
the high admiral thought.
If we lose, Harpahr will probably be able to recover and repair them all . . . eventually. But that’s not going to happen
.

A part of Lock Island was tempted to break off, to vanish back into the darkness. What had already happened to the Church fleet was bound to have brutal repercussions for its morale. And if he could break off for now, do the same thing again once or twice, then—

Forget it,
he told himself sternly.
Harpahr and Taibahld are too good for that kind of crap. Yes, you caught them with their trousers down and their bare arses hanging out to -night. What makes you think a pair as smart as they are is going to let you do that to them all over again? Besides, you only got away with it
to night
because of the weather!

No. He’d hurt them badly. Now it was time to hurt them even
more
badly, before they could recover.

“Captain Baikyr, we’ll come about,” he said, and waved at a distant red glimmer where firelight reflected on topsails to the northwest. “Those gentlemen are trying to get themselves into formation to greet us,” he continued. “It would be rude to keep them waiting.”

Kornylys Harpahr stood on
Sword of God
’s poop deck and tried to look impassive.

It wasn’t easy.

His flagship led what had been the centermost of five columns of warships. Now there were only four columns.
Saint Ithmyn
and her consorts had been too far away for him to make out any details, but the speed and savagery with which they’d been hammered into impotence had been only too easy to follow.

And there’d been nothing he could do about it. The Charisians had attacked from almost dead to windward, and the massacre of his column was over and done long before any of his other galleons could have beaten up to windward to assist it.

He’d almost tried, anyway—he’d almost hoisted the signal for a general chase in the hope at least some of his ships might see it and manage to scramble into action with the Charisians. But he hadn’t. The one thing he absolutely could not do was to permit the Charisians to panic him into reacting without thinking, and so he’d locked himself in the icy armor of self- control. He’d forced himself to stand there, watching, feeling the destruction of each of those ships as if they were extensions of his own body, and refused to react blindly.

Instead, he’d started the process of forming his own line of battle. It wasn’t going to be a
proper
line. That would have been impossible in these conditions. But it would be there, ready to his hand, and he bared his teeth at his foes.

By his estimate, there were between fifteen and thirty galleons in the attacking force, which suggested there were others somewhere about. If he’d been the Charisian commander, he’d have done his best to get at the Harchongese, so it was possible that was where at least some of the missing Charisians were.

At the same time, he reminded himself, it wouldn’t do to start assigning superhuman powers to the enemy. He’d found during his own career in the Guard that competent officers had a tendency to make their own luck, but even allowing for that, the Charisians had been incredibly fortunate to come upon his outermost column on an almost perfect interception course. They’d exploited that good fortune for all it was worth, and the burning, crippled remnants falling astern were brutal evidence of just how effectively they’d done it.

But they weren’t going to take the
rest
of his ships by surprise, and unless there were Shan- wei’s own lot of them still wandering about out there in the darkness, he still had them outnumbered by better than two- to- one.

Go ahead,
he thought at the Charisian commander.
Go ahead, come after us. We’ll be here, waiting
.

“All right, it’s time,” Lock Island said.

He was addressing Captain Baikyr, but it was Domynyk Staynair to whom he was actually speaking.

“We’ve whittled them down some,” he continued, “but the rest are staying together. They’re not going to let us pick them off in isolation, and I don’t want to give them daylight to sort themselves out. Our own line’s in pretty good shape, I think, and Admiral Rock Point’s back there to take over if anything unfortunate happens to us. More to the point, the cloud cover’s trying to break up and let some moonlight in here so we can actually see what we’re doing. So it’s time to get tucked in.”

“Yes, Sir,” Baikyr replied grimly.

He didn’t seem to be looking forward to the experience, and Lock Island couldn’t blame him. There were the next best thing to sixty galleons over there, and their very lack of formation was going to make things even uglier. He knew his captains, knew they would hold the line of battle together as long as humanly possible, supporting one another, massing their fire on single targets. But he also knew that sooner or later—and probably sooner—that line was going to come apart, especially in the chaos and confusion of a night action. If Harpahr’s crews proved as determined as he expected them to, this engagement was going to degenerate into a melee, with individual ships fighting desperately against individual enemies . . . and all too probably firing into friends in the madness.

Baikyr knew that as well as Lock Island did. Still, if there was any hesitation in the flag captain, the high admiral couldn’t see it.

“Very well,” he said. “Take us to them, Captain. Find us a way to their flagship.”

“Here they come, My Lord,” Taibahld said flatly, and Harpahr nodded.

“Here they come, indeed,” he murmured.