How Firm a Foundation (69 page)

He stamped to the forward edge of the poop deck, raising his spyglass
and peering through it. From this close to the water he couldn’t actually see the fortress thanks to the curve of the earth, but he could make out the clouds of gunsmoke rising beyond Sickle Shoal. He knew it was pointless, but he was still trying to pick out some sort of detail when Captain Ahlvai cleared his throat.

“Beg pardon, My Lord, but it seems the heretics are about to come calling.”

Jahras lowered the glass and looked across
Emperor Zhorj
’s starboard rail, and his expression tightened. The leading Charisian squadron had turned downwind once more, sailing directly into his anchored ships’ broadsides. He had enough of an angle on them to see their rigged anchors and realize they, too, intended to anchor by the stern, undoubtedly on a spring. With the wind setting steadily out
of the northeast and the tide making, wind and current alike would help them maintain their positions. There wasn’t much subtlety to it, he thought harshly. A straight broadside duel, a pounding match. One he ought to be able to win, even if his guns were lighter, because he could bring so many more of them to bear. Except for the minor fact that unless he was sadly mistaken, every one of those
galleons was about to begin firing the same sort of ammunition which had just blown the guts out of a heavy masonry fortress.

And we’re just a tiny bit more likely to catch fire—or sink—than a fortress,
a mental voice told him.

“Open fire, Captain Ahlvai,” he said flatly.

.VII.

Inner Harbor, Port of Iythria, Empire of Desnair

The afternoon tore apart in thunder, lightning, smoke, and screams.

HMS
Destiny
had missed the savage battle in the Markovian Sea, but she made up for it now. The Imperial Desnairian Navy was nowhere near the equal of the Navy of God. Its crews had less training, most of them had less motivation, and although their artillery had been manufactured
to the same design, there was an enormous difference in its workmanship and quality. Most of Baron Jahras’ captains refused to load their guns with full charges, given their propensity to explode unexpectedly, and the gun crews (who tended to have a closer association with them) were even more leery of their weapons. Worse, Jahras had been more or less forced to settle for dry-firing their
pieces for training, since he couldn’t afford to use them up before they were actually needed in battle. His gunners had mastered the motions of their drill, but it was a largely theoretical mastery, without the experience of the actual thunder of their weapons, the reek of smoke, and—certainly—without a live enemy on the far side of the gunport from them.

On the other hand, there were a
lot
of guns on those Desnairian ships, and Jahras’ galleons had been in place literally for months. His crews might be nowhere near the equal of their Charisian opponents as seamen, but then very few seamen were. And the Desnairians might not have the Charisians’ tradition of victory—because, again, very few navies did. But what those Desnairian crewmen did have was practice and complete familiarity with
their commander’s battle plan, and while they might not have mastered the gunner’s trade in the brimstone reek of actual burned gunpowder, the
motions
of the evolution had been drilled into them mercilessly. They knew exactly what they were supposed to do, because their captains had explained it to them in detail and they’d practiced it over and over again. And if their fire might not be as accurate
or as rapid as their opponents’, it was far more accurate and rapid than it would have been at sea, maneuvering under sail while the ship moved and surged underfoot.

The crewmen assigned to the capstans had spent literally five-days practicing turning their ships, pivoting them to exactly the angles their captains wanted, and they did that now. As the Charisian line, led by HMS
Destiny
, headed
for its enemies, a hailstorm of white splashes rose all about Sir Dunkyn Yairley’s flagship and her consorts. It wasn’t well aimed, but there was so much of it that not all of it could miss, and heavy splintering sounds announced the arrival of twelve-pound and twenty-five-pound round shot. They slammed into
Destiny
’s bow as she headed straight into the line of Jahras’ anchored galleons, and Hektor
Aplyn-Ahrmahk saw one of his ship’s long fourteen-pounder bow chasers take a direct hit. Its carriage disintegrated, spewing out a fan of splinters that wounded three men at other guns. Half its own crew was killed by the hit, and one of the survivors was down, kicking in agony on the deck while the fingers of his right hand tried vainly to stanch the bleeding where his left arm had been. Two
members of the same gun crew who seemed to be unhurt grabbed their maimed companion and started dragging him towards the hatch and the waiting healers … just as another broadside lashed the water around the ship and another round shot ripped through all three of them.

This time, there were no survivors.

The ensign turned away, looking for his admiral, and saw Captain Lathyk standing on top of
the starboard hammock nettings, one arm through the mizzen shrouds for balance while he leaned out, trying to fix the Desnairians’ position in his mind despite the solid wall of smoke their guns were belching out. As Aplyn-Ahrmahk watched, another Desnairian round shot came whimpering and whining out of the thunder. It slammed through the hammock nettings less than three feet from the captain and
a flying splinter cut a deep gash in his right cheek, but Lathyk didn’t even seem to notice. He only leaned farther out, as if he thought he could somehow bend down and look under the smoke, between it and the water, to see his enemy clearly.

Sir Dunkyn stood beside the binnacle, hands still clasped behind him, his head moving steadily back and forth as his gaze swept between Captain Lathyk and
the masthead weathervane. Sylvyst Raigly stood two paces behind him, head cocked, watching the chaos as if he were considering how best to arrange seating for a formal dinner. Stywyrt Mahlyk stood on the admiral’s other side, arms folded, head settled well down on his neck while he chewed a wad of chewleaf with the air of someone who had seen this sort of nonsense altogether too often.

Yairley
seemed unaware of his henchmen’s presence. His expression was calm, almost contemplative as he glanced briefly down at the binnacle compass card, and Aplyn-Ahrmahk drew a deep breath. It wasn’t as if he’d never seen battle before, he reminded himself, remembering the thunder of guns, the screams, the clash of steel on steel from the Battle of Darcos Sound. But there was a difference this time, he
realized. For the first time, he wasn’t truly part of
Destiny
’s company. He was Admiral Yairley’s flag lieutenant, with no assigned battle station, no responsibility to the ship that he could grasp in mental hands and cling to when the world went mad around him. He couldn’t believe what an enormous difference that made, and yet as the recognition struck him, he also realized it had to be even
worse for the admiral. Like Aplyn-Ahrmahk, Yairley was only a passenger this time. The man who’d commanded
Destiny,
who’d been ultimately responsible for every order given aboard her, found himself with absolutely no decisions to make once the order to engage had been given.

The youthful ensign stepped up beside his admiral. Mahlyk saw him coming and grinned, then spat an expert jet of brown
chewleaf juice over the leeward rail. Yairley, alerted by his coxswain’s grin, turned his own head, looking at the ensign, and raised one eyebrow as yet another salvo of round shot plowed the water around his flagship.

“Lively, I believe the Captain predicted, Sir?” Aplyn-Ahrmahk had to speak loudly to be heard through the tumult.

“A sometimes surprisingly apt way with words, the Captain has,”
Yairley replied with a nod.

“Exactly what I was thinking myself, Sir.” Aplyn-Ahrmahk managed a smile. “Except I think it’s going to get even more lively shortly.”

“One can only hope, Master Aplyn-Ahrmahk,” Yairley said. “One can only hope.”

*   *   *

Baron Jahras coughed as incredibly foul-smelling gunsmoke rolled back across
Emperor Zhorj
’s decks. Hard as he’d tried to prepare himself, he’d
never imagined anything like this ear-crushing din. The sheer concussion of hundreds of pieces of artillery, the bubbles of overpressure spreading out when they fired, was unimaginable. He felt the surges of air pressure coming back, punching at his face like immaterial fists reeking of Shan-wei’s own brimstone come hot from hell, and the deck planking underfoot shook to the recoil of his flagship’s
guns like a terrified animal. Yet for all the thunder and fury, the range from
Emperor Zhorj
to her enemies was longer than Jahras had expected … and her fire was proportionately less accurate as a result.

The northeasterly wind swept diagonally across his east-to-west line of anchored ships, rolling the smoke before it. It blew back into his eyes, but he could still make out the Charisian mastheads
above the fog bank born of his own artillery, and something like a chill ran down his spine as he watched those implacable mastheads—the ones which had maintained their distance as they approached his line on an almost parallel course, in a long loop from the east—turn suddenly towards it.

They have to be out of their minds!
he thought.
Langhorne, they’re sailing straight into our broadsides!

He’d never anticipated
that
. Sail directly into an opponent’s fire, on a heading which let every one of
their
broadside guns bear when
none
of yours would?
Madness!
Yet that was precisely what the Charisians were doing, and that chill in his spine grew colder and stronger as he realized why.

As he watched, the first six ships in the Charisian line headed directly for the six easternmost galleons
in his own line. They weren’t going to sail along his line, exchanging broadsides with him, after all. Had their earlier heading been nothing but a bluff to make him think they would? He didn’t know, but whether they’d deliberately tried to deceive him or not was immaterial now. Their new course wouldn’t allow him to concentrate the fire of multiple ships on each of theirs as they moved into position
as he’d planned; instead, each of those ships was deliberately taking the fire of its own clearly preselected target end-on in order to close the range far more rapidly than Jahras had ever expected.

They’re going to come to the range they want, then they’re going to anchor, and they’re going to pound the ever living hell out of the end of my line
, he realized sickly.
They’re going to get hurt
doing it, but they’re also going to blow a gap the ships
behind
them will be able to sail straight through
.

He watched those mastheads coming on unflinchingly, knew those ships had to be taking dozens of hits … and recognized that it didn’t matter.

*   *   *

More and more round shot smashed into
Destiny
’s sturdy hull. Many of them, especially from the lighter twelve-pounders, failed to penetrate,
although no one aboard the Charisian ship realized that was partly because the Desnairian gunners were firing with reduced charges because they distrusted their own artillery. Even with the understrength charges, however, the twenty-five-pounders were another matter. Aplyn-Ahrmahk heard splintering crashes and the screams of wounded men from the crews on the gundeck’s long thirty-pounders as
those heavier shot punched through, and a four-foot section of
Destiny
’s midships bulwark exploded inward in a tornado of splinters and shredded hammocks. Then—

“Heads below! Main topgallant’s coming adrift!”

The admiral and the ensign looked up in time to see the entire main topgallant yard, shot clean through right at the slings, begin its fall. The two halves of the yard slipped downward,
then plunged like broken javelins, still joined by the shredded remnants of the sail. The braces, secured to the ends of the yard, stopped it before it actually hit the nettings stretched over the deck to protect against falling debris, and it dangled untidily, swinging like an ungainly pendulum in a tangle of canvas, broken wood, and cordage.

“Get aloft and secure that wreckage!” Boatswain Symmyns
bellowed, and men went swarming up the rigging to capture and tame that pendulum before it could plunge the rest of the way to the deck with lethal consequences.

“Stand by to anchor!” Captain Lathyk shouted. “Hands to buntlines and clewlines! Stand by the larboard broadside!”

Seamen moved through the smoke and the turmoil with disciplined haste. The crews of the larboard guns crouched down,
getting as much out of the way as they could. With only topsails and jib set,
Destiny
needed only a fraction of the men normally required to make or take in sail, which was just as well under the circumstances, Aplyn-Ahrmahk reflected. At least five of the galleon’s larboard guns had already been knocked out of action, her decks were splashed with blood, he saw at least a dozen bodies lying where
they’d been dragged out of their mates’ way, and casualties were piling up at the healers’ station on the orlop deck.

“Larboard your helm!” the captain shouted. “Take in fore and main topsail!”

Destiny
turned to starboard as the wheel went over, presenting her waiting larboard broadside to the Desnairian galleon HMS
Saint Adulfo
, the fifth ship in from the eastern end of Jahras’ line.

“Let
go the larboard anchor!”

The sheet anchor rigged from the larboard cathead was released. It plunged instantly, but this time the cable was flaked out on the gundeck, not the upper deck, and run not from the hawsehole, but through a stern gunport. The galleon continued past the point at which the anchor had been dropped under her jib alone, sailing out her cable while the men on the gundeck stayed
carefully out of the way of the thick hawser rumbling and roaring out the gunport. Then the cable hit the stoppers, halting its run, and
Destiny
shuddered and jerked as the anchor’s flukes dug into the bottom and held. The cable snapped taut, and Chief Kwayle and his waiting party pounced, nipping the bitter end of the spring to it.