A Mighty Fortress (142 page)

If it hadn’t come at them cold, they would have recognized what it had to be. They’d worked and trained with gunpowder long enough to realize this was only one more application of a familiar material. But it
did
come at them cold, and when it exploded in a brilliant, thunderous flash high overhead, some of them—men who’d faced a maelstrom of howling round shot without flinching—panicked at last.

It didn’t last, that panic. There were those who understood what they were seeing despite the surprise, and there were others who simply didn’t care what Shan- wei- spawned deviltry the Charisian heretics might have brought with them. They rallied their more frightened companions, and the volume of fire which had faltered visibly when the rocket launched began to climb once more.

But the rocket was only a precursor. Only a sign of things yet to come. As it exploded overhead, ten Charisian galleons—every one of Rock Point’s shell-armed ships which wasn’t already mired in one of the furious boarding actions—stopped firing round shot.

“Langhorne!”
Kornylys Harpahr gasped.

Sword of God
had so far avoided the melee, but his flagship was headed into the cauldron now, leading a dozen more galleons to seal off the Charisian penetration and crush the intruders. The admiral general had been as startled as anyone when the rocket hissed up from
Destroyer,
but he’d also been one of those who’d realized immediately that there was nothing demonic about it. In fact, he’d found himself wondering why the same idea had never occurred to him.

What he hadn’t realized was what the rocket was
for
. For a few minutes, he actually hoped that it was a signal to break off, that the Charisians had realized they were too outnumbered to achieve victory. But then he discovered his mistake.

He was looking directly at HMS
King Sailys
when the fifty- eight- gun galleon fired a full broadside of thirty- pounder shells into NGS
Holy Writ
at a range of ninety yards. Only three of the twenty- seven shells missed. Two fuses malfunctioned—the gunners using them for the first time hadn’t gotten them set properly. But that left twenty- two, and not even Commander Mahndrayn’s tests had truly prepared Rock Point and his crews for what happened next.

Holy Writ
blew up.

It was like some terrible avalanche of light. Baron Seamount’s fuses were still in the developmental stage. Unlike the impact fuses he’d designed for the rifled shells he’d been forbidden to produce, the smoothbore shells used timed fuses ignited by the flash when the gun’s propellant exploded, and he hadn’t yet managed to come up with a fuse compound with a completely uniform combustion rate. As a result, the shells detonated in a staggered sequence. All of them exploded in the space of no more than three seconds, yet there were discernible intervals between them—gaps long enough for the Navy of God to realize that what ever ammunition
King Sailys
had just fired, it was the shells themselves exploding. It wasn’t
Holy Writ
’s own ammunition; it was yet another new Charisian
weapon
.

And then, as the exploding shells reached a crescendo,
Holy Writ
’s ammunition
did
explode. Her main powder store went up like a disemboweling volcano, tearing her to pieces and scattering her fragments across the sea.

A twelve- foot section of
Holy Writ
’s mainmast slammed into
Sword of God
’s hull like some demented giant’s battering ram. It hit low enough, and the hull was stout enough, that it failed to penetrate, but Harpahr felt the impact run up through his legs as if the ship had just struck a reef.

Yet he hardly noticed. He was too busy trying to grasp the scale of the disaster which had just enveloped his fleet.

King Sailys
wasn’t the only Charisian ship firing shells.

So were HMS
Green Hollow
, HMS
King Haarahld
, HMS
Port Royal
, HMS
Wave ...
and the effect was terrible. The Imperial Charisian Navy had paid a dreadful price, but it had drawn virtually Harpahr’s entire fleet into close- ranged, furious combat. Now shellfire ripped into a dozen of that fleet’s galleons at once.

Not all those initial broadsides were as deadly as
King Sailys
’ had been, and none of those other targets simply blew up in the very first exchange. But in some ways, the chains of exploding shells—the
repeated
chains of exploding shells—were even worse. They were proof that what had happened to
Holy Writ
hadn’t truly been a fluke . . . and they showed how a ship could be demolished by explosion after explosion.

Hulls were ripped open, huge stretches of decking blew into the air, masts toppled, and flames began to dance and crackle in the wreckage.

It was too much. Harpahr knew what was going to happen. He knew he couldn’t stop it . . . and it never once occurred to him to blame his men for it. How could he? He knew what they’d given and endured. He knew they’d stood toe- to- toe with the vaunted Charisians, and if they hadn’t been as good as the Charisians, they’d been good enough. They’d been
winning,
trumping Charisian experience and Charisian firepower with numbers and raw courage.

But there were limits in all things, and what ever this new and horrible weapon was, he couldn’t ask them to face it. Not after all they’d already given him. And not when they had no counterweight for it, when the range was too short for the Charisians to miss . . . and when he had no sea room to run for it.

He never knew which ship’s flag came down first. He supposed a careful enough investigation might have determined who it was, which galleon was the first to strike. But it was an investigation he never launched, a question he never sought to answer, because it didn’t matter.

It was the right thing to do, and he knew it.

Imperial Palace,

City of Cherayth,

Kingdom of Chisholm

It was cold on the battlements.

Cayleb Ahrmahk stood in the icy wind, staring sightlessly into the driving snow. He’d stood there for three hours, long enough for the front of his hooded parka to turn matted and white, and the tall, sapphire- eyed guardsman had stood at his back the entire time.

Merlin Athrawes, Edwyrd Seahamper, and Sharleyan Ahrmahk were the only people who knew where he was. Sharleyan had wanted to join him, but he’d only squeezed her hand gently, smiled sadly, and nodded at their sleeping daughter. Then he’d kissed her tear- streaked cheek, climbed into the parka, and headed out into the snowy evening.

It was possible the wetness on his own face was only the melting snow.

It was possible.

Finally, his shoulders moved as he drew a vast breath and turned to look at his guardsman, mentor, and friend.

“I didn’t really think they could do it,” he said quietly, the words barely audible, the voice that of the confessional. “I knew they had to try, that I had to
let
them try, but I didn’t really think they could do it.”

“I know,” Merlin replied.

“It was worse than watching Gwylym,” the emperor said, shaking his head. “All those men—on
both
sides. All that killing.”

“And Bryahn,” Merlin said softly, and Cayleb closed his eyes and nodded.

“And Bryahn,” he whispered.

Merlin did something he’d never done before. He reached out, resting one hand on each of Cayleb’s shoulders, and then he drew the Emperor of Charis into a tight embrace. He held him there, while Cayleb let his face rest—for a moment, at least—against his armsman’s shoulder.

Merlin felt his own eyes burning as their composites faithfully mimicked the reaction of their flesh- and- blood originals.

The Battle of the Gulf of Tarot was going to go down beside Darcos Sound or Crag Reach. That much, he already knew. What neither he nor Cayleb yet knew, even with access to Owl’s remotes, was how terrible the final cost was truly going to prove.

Lock Island’s twenty- five galleons had been brutally hammered. Eleven of them had been reduced to shattered near wrecks. Three of the eleven had been completely dismasted, and a twelfth ship, HMS
Stonehill,
had burned to the waterline, then exploded. Merlin wasn’t certain how it had happened, but he suspected the ship had been deliberately fired by one of the Church boarders. He hoped he was wrong, and not just because of the degree of fanaticism that act of self- immolation would represent.

Eight of Domynyk Staynair’s galleons had gotten off with only negligible damage, or even completely untouched, but between them, the other seventeen Charisian ships engaged had suffered over three thousand casualties—four hundred of them aboard
Stonehill,
alone, when she blew up. That was nearly a third of their total complements, and of that total, half were dead, and many of the wounded were still going to die.

As High Admiral Bryahn Lock Island had died in the final, furious melee aboard NGS
Crusade
.

Yet terrible as Charis’ losses had been, Kornylys Harpahr’s had been worse. Of the Navy of God’s seventy- four ships, only nine had escaped. Thirty- five of the Imperial Harchongese Navy’s unarmed galleons had been taken, along with six of their armed galleons . . . five of which had surrendered to mere schooners, three without firing a single shot. The remainder of Harpahr’s fleet had managed to escape mainly because there hadn’t been enough Charisians with intact rigging to chase them, and only a handful of those escapees still had any interest in reaching Desnair. The rest were fleeing back the way they’d come.