A Mighty Fortress (37 page)

There wasn’t much time to aim.

Fortunately, HMS
Destiny
’s gun captains had enjoyed plenty of practice.

The world came apart in a deafening bellow of lightning- shot thunder.

Sir Hairahm Wailahr had never imagined anything like it. To be fair, no one who had never experienced it
could
have accurately imagined it. He stood on the tall, narrow poop deck of his flagship—a deck little more than forty feet long and barely twenty feet across at its widest point—and twenty- seven heavy cannon exploded in a long, unending drumroll, spitting fire and blinding, choking smoke as
Destiny
crossed
Archangel Chihiro
’s stern and her broadside came to bear from a range of perhaps fifty feet. The two ships were so close together that
Destiny
’s jibboom had actually swung
across
her enemy’s poop, barely clearing
Archangel Chihiro
’s mizzen shrouds, as she altered course almost all the way to northeast- by- east, and the concussive force of that many cannon, firing at that short a range, each gun loaded with a charge of grape on top of its round shot, was indescribable. He actually felt the heat of the exploding powder, felt vast, invisible fists of muzzle blast punching his entire body with huge bubbles of overpressure. Felt the fabric of his flagship bucking and jerking—slamming upward against his feet as if some maniac were pounding the soles of his shoes with a baseball bat—as the Charisian fire crashed into her. Planking splintered, the glass of
Archangel Chihiro
’s big stern windows simply disappeared, and the screams and high- pitched shrieks of men who’d been taken just as completely by surprise as Wailahr himself ripped at his ears even through the incredible thunder of
Destiny
’s guns.

Cleared for action,
Archangel Chihiro
’s gundeck was one vast cave, stretching from bow to stern. A cavern edged with guns, nosing out through the open ports, waiting for a target to appear before them. But the target wasn’t there. It was
astern
of them, where the gunners crewing those guns couldn’t even
see
it, far less fire back at it, and six- inch iron spheres came howling down that cavern’s length like Shan- wei’s own demons.

Half a dozen of the galleon’s lizards took direct hits, their carriages disinte-grating into clouds of additional splinters, the heavy bronze gun tubes leaping upward, then crashing back down to crush and mangle the survivors of their crews. Human beings caught in the path of one of those round shot were torn in half with casual, appalling ease. Splinters of the ship’s fabric—some of them as much as six feet long and three or four inches in diameter—slammed into fragile flesh and blood like spears hurled by some enraged titan. Men shrieked as they clutched at torn and riven bodies, and other men simply flew backwards, heads or chests or shoulders destroyed in explosions of gore as grapeshot—each almost three inches in diameter—smashed into them.

That single broadside killed or wounded almost half of
Archangel Chihiro
’s crew.

“Bring her back off the wind, Waigan!”

The captain had to raise his voice to be heard, yet it seemed preposterously calm, almost thoughtful, to Chief Waigan.

“Aye, aye, Sir!” the petty officer replied sharply, and the wheel went over in the opposite direction as
Destiny
’s rudder was reversed.

The galleon didn’t like it, but she answered like the lady she was. Her hull heaved awkwardly as she swung back to the west, across the waves, but Yairley had timed the maneuver almost perfectly, and the wind helped push her back around.

Destiny
came back before the wind, then swept even farther to larboard, taking the wind on her larboard quarter instead of her starboard beam, and her topsail yards swung with machine- like precision as they were trimmed back around.

She’d lost a great deal of her speed through the water, and
Archangel Chihiro
’s motion had continued to carry her away from Yairley’s ship, along her earlier course. But there was far too much confusion aboard the Desnairian ship for Captain Ahbaht—or, rather, Lieutenant Mahrtynsyn, since Ruhsail Ahbaht had encountered one of
Destiny
’s round shot—to even consider altering heading. Her officers were still fighting to reestablish control after the incredible carnage of that first broadside when
Destiny
swept across
Archangel Chihiro
’s stern yet again, this time from northeast to southwest, rather than southwest to northeast.

There hadn’t been time for her gun crews to reload, but they didn’t have to. The starboard guns had been loaded before they were run out, and even with so many hands detailed to man the braces, the starboard battery’s officers had been left more than enough crewmen to fire the already loaded weapons. The range was much greater—well over a hundred yards this time. Closer to a hundred and fifty, actually. But not
enough
closer to a hundred and fifty.

“Clear away that wreckage! Get it over the side—
now!
” Sir Hairahm Wailahr shouted.

A commodore had no business allowing himself to be distracted from his responsibilities as a flag officer. Wailahr might not be a sailor, but he knew that much. Unfortunately, there was damn- all else he could do at the moment, and he actually grabbed one end of the broken length of gangway which had fallen across the upper-deck guns himself. He heaved, grunting with effort, fighting to clear away the wreckage blocking the guns, then wheeled back around, his head coming up, his eyes darting to the wind- shredded smoke astern of his flagship, as HMS
Destiny
fired her second broadside.

The next best thing to thirty more heavy round shot came screaming at him. The range was much greater this time, and, unlike the last broadside, many of these shot missed
Archangel Chihiro
entirely. But some of them didn’t, and one of those which didn’t crashed into the mizzenmast, cutting it cleanly in two eight feet above the deck. It toppled forward, smashing into the mainmast with all its own weight added to the driving pressure of the wind, and the mainmast went with it.
Archangel Chihiro
shuddered like a mortally wounded prong lizard, then heaved as a torrent of shattered spars and shredded canvas came crashing down across her decks or plunged into the sea alongside. She surged wildly, rounding to the sudden sea anchor of her own rigging, and fresh screams echoed as still more of her crew were crushed under the falling spars or torn apart by the Charisian fire.

Wailahr staggered clear of the broken mizzen, right hand clutching his left arm. That arm was almost as badly broken as his flagship, a corner of his brain reflected—not that it mattered a great deal at the moment.

He watched, his eyes bitter with understanding, as the Charisian galleon altered course yet again. She swung back, coming fully back before the wind, her spars once more tracking around as if controlled by a single hand. She leaned to the wind, driving hard as she accelerated once more, and he saw the topgallants blossoming above her topsails. They fell like curtains, then hardened as sheets and tacks were tended, and
Destiny
came storming past
Archangel Chihiro
.

Wailahr turned, looking for
Blessed Warrior
.

He knew Captain Mahntain must have been taken at least as much aback by the Charisians’ unexpected maneuvers as Ahbaht and he himself had been.
Blessed Warrior
had altered course almost automatically when
Destiny
opened fire, swinging around onto a westerly heading as originally arranged. Unfortunately, that was the only part of Wailahr’s original arrangements which had worked as planned. Worse, neither
Destiny
nor
Archangel Chihiro
were where he’d expected them to be when he planned his original tactics. Now
Blessed Warrior
was well to the southwest of her original track . . . and
Destiny
, edging around to north by northwest, was already heading to pass
astern
of her—and with the advantage of the weather guage, as well—rather than finding herself broadside- to- broadside with both of her opponents at once.

The Charisian galleon’s starboard broadside flamed and thundered yet again as she swept past
Archangel Chihiro,
heading for her second victim. The foremast, already weakened by the loss of the stays which had once led aft to the vanished mainmast, pitched over the side, leaving
Archangel Chihiro
completely dismasted. The ship rolled madly, drunkenly, corkscrewing indescribably as the sudden loss of all her tophamper destroyed any vestige of stability, only to snub savagely as she brought up short against the wreckage still anchored to her side by the broken shrouds. Lieutenant Mahrtynsyn was still on his feet, somehow, shouting commands, driving parties of his surviving seamen to clear away the wreckage. Axes flashed and thudded, chopping through tangled cordage, fighting to free the ship even while other sailors and Marines dragged sobbing, screaming, or silently writhing wounded out of the debris.

Destiny
’s passing broadside added still more torn and broken bodies to her cruel toll, but it was obvious
Archangel Chihiro
had become little more than an afterthought to the Charisian vessel. Wailahr’s flagship was a broken ruin, so badly mangled, with so many of her people dead or wounded, that she could be gathered in anytime
Destiny
got around to it. The enemy had more important concerns at the moment, and Hairahm Wailahr’s jaw clenched with something far worse than the pain of his broken arm.

He knew Tohmys Mahntain. If there was a single ounce of quitter in Mahntain’s entire body, Wailahr had never seen even a hint of it, and
BlessedWarrior
was already altering course. Her sail drill lacked
Destiny
’s polished precision, and the ship wallowed around to her new heading unhappily, sails flapping and thundering in protest. Her maneuver managed to turn her stern away from her enemy before
Destiny
could rake her as she had
Archangel Chihiro,
and her starboard guns ran out defiantly. Yet gallant and determined as Mahntain undoubtedly was, the awkwardness with which his ship came onto her new heading only emphasized how little comparison there was between the skill level of his crew and that of the Charisian galleon slicing towards him. He wasn’t simply outgunned and outweighed; he was out
classed,
and a part of Sir Hairahm Wailahr wished he still had an intact mast and signal halyards. Wished he could order Mahntain to break off the action and run for it.

Or surrender,
he admitted to himself with bleak, terrible honesty as he watched Sir Dunkyn Yairley’s ship stoop upon her fresh prey like a hunting wyvern.
He
can’t
break off—can’t outrun her or avoid her. And since he can’t
—