Off Armageddon Reef (95 page)

Dreadnought
's gunners hurled themselves onto their recoiling guns, swabs and rammers jerking. Gun trucks squealed as carriages were hauled back into battery, and muzzles spewed fresh smoke and flame.

As always, the shorter, lighter carronades fired faster than the long guns on her main deck. Merlin stood well clear of the quarterdeck carronades, between Cayleb and the rail, and watched the heavy shot tear into the Emeraldian galley across the steadily shortening range.

Her port sweeps flailed in wild disorder as
Dreadnought
's fire smashed into the crowded confines of her oardeck, and Merlin felt a mental chill as he pictured the butchery and carnage. A galley under oars depended on the intricate coordination of her rowers, and no one could maintain that coordination while everyone about him was being torn into bleeding meat.

The galley's forward guns managed to return fire, but their shots went wide, and
Dreadnought
was passing directly across
Black Prince
's bows. Her fire ripped down the centerline of the galley, killing and maiming, and the sound of the Emeraldian crew's screams was clearly audible in the fleeting instants in which none of
Dreadnought
's guns was actually firing.

Captain Khattyr clung to the aftercastle's forward rail.

There was nothing else he could do. Even his worst nightmares had fallen short of what a galleon's broadside could do.
Black Prince
's hatchways belched men, many of them bleeding from terrible wounds, as her panicked rowers boiled up through them. But there was no shelter from the Charisians' merciless fire on the open deck, either.

His ship was losing way, his people were dying for nothing, and he couldn't simply stand here and watch them be slaughtered for no return at all.

“Lieutenant Mahlry, strike—” he began, turning to the lieutenant. But the young man lay on the aftercastle deck, eyes already glazing, both hands clutching the spear-like splinter which had driven deep into his chest.

Khattyr's jaw tightened, and he grabbed a midshipman by the shoulder.

“Strike the colors!” he barked. “Get forward and—”

The thirty-eight-pound round shot killed both of them instantly.

“Why doesn't he strike?” Cayleb muttered. “Why doesn't he
strike?
”

The galley wallowed helplessly, shuddering under the tempest of iron ripping her apart.
Devastation
and
Destruction
, the two galleons following in
Dreadnought
's wake, were firing into her as well, now, and thick streamers of blood oozed down her sides. There was absolutely nothing that ship could do to hinder Cayleb's progress, but
still
her captain obstinately refused to haul down his colors in token of surrender.

“She's done, Cayleb!” Merlin half-shouted in his ear.

Cayleb looked at him for a moment, then nodded sharply. He crossed to Manthyr and gripped the flag captain's shoulder.

“Let her go, Gwylym!” he commanded.

Manthyr glanced at him, and the captain's eyes were almost grateful.

“Cease fire!
Cease fire!
” he shouted.

Dreadnought
's guns fell silent, but
Devastation
and
Destruction
continued to fire for another minute or two. Then, finally, the savage bombardment trailed off.

The wind rolled the fog bank of smoke away, and more than one man aboard Cayleb's flagship felt a touch of horror as he looked at their target, heard the screams and moans of her broken and bleeding crew. The galley rolled heavily, oars smashed, mast leaning drunkenly, and it sounded as if the ship herself were crying out in agony.

The entire crew stared at the shattered hulk, and even as they watched, the tottering mast toppled wearily into the sea beside her. Then Captain Manthyr's voice cut through the stillness in a tone of unnatural calm.

“Let her fall off a point,” he told his helmsmen, and
Dreadnought
altered course to starboard, closing on the second column of her enemies, now less than two miles ahead.

“They took the
northern
passage?”

Duke Black Water looked at Captain Myrgyn in disbelief.

“That's what the signal says, Your Grace,” the flag captain replied tautly.

Black Water turned away, staring out the great cabin's stern windows while his brain tried to grasp Myrgyn's message.
The north?
How could Cayleb—and it could
only
be Cayleb—have come at him from the
north
when Haarahld had been so stubbornly clinging to a
southern
position? And how had he gotten through Black Water's screen of picket vessels without being spotted? What demon had let him time his arrival so perfectly? Come sweeping in
exactly
with the dawn?

He clenched his jaw and shook himself viciously.
How
didn't matter. All that mattered was what he did about it.

His mind began to function once more, sorting out possibilities, options.

The initial sighting report had come in from one of the ships in his westernmost column. That meant Cayleb was either due west of him, or else coming down with the wind from the northwest. Given the limitations of his signaling system, Black Water couldn't be sure which, and it mattered.

A part of him insisted Cayleb couldn't possibly have placed himself north, as well as west, of the combined fleet. No one could have
that
much battle luck! But, then again, no one could have enough luck to come straight to him like this in the first place.

In either case, Cayleb was going to hit Mahndyr's Emeraldians first, and he was going to hit them hard. Surprise was almost total, and that was going to produce panic. Mahndyr was no coward, and neither were most of his captains, but Black Water felt grimly certain he was going to lose at least one of Mahndyr's columns completely.

The question
, he thought,
is whether I try to
fight
him or simply cut and run?

Every instinct told him to turn towards Cayleb. To bring his entire fleet and its massive numerical superiority sweeping in on the Charisian crown prince's galleons and crush them. But intellect shouted in warning, remembering Myrgyn's descriptions and sketches of the new Charisian artillery…and what those outnumbered, far more lightly gunned galleys had done with it.

But if I run, this entire campaign's been for
nothing, he thought grimly.
The Prince won't like that—and neither will Clyntahn and the Council
.
And I can't really
know
how effective their broadsides are without fighting them. Besides, at this point I'm only guessing about his actual position, his strength—everything! Heading north might actually be the best way to
evade
him
.

“General signal,” he said harshly, turning back to Myrgyn. “Enemy in sight to windward. Prepare for battle. New course north.”

“
Fire!
”

Dreadnought
swept across the second galley column, and her broadside bellowed yet again. The range was a bit shorter this time, and this galley was still headed almost due south, directly away from her. The Emeraldian vessel's stern windows and ornate carving shattered as the broadside slammed home, and more guns began to thunder from the west as Sir Domynyk Staynair's squadron separated from Cayleb's. Staynair's ships began forging down to the south, paralleling the rest of
Black Prince
's column as it clung to its original course, away from Cayleb, and the outgunned galleys' fired back far more slowly.

Cayleb's decision not to reduce sail was paying a huge dividend, so far, at least, Merlin reflected. The prince's experience off Armageddon Reef had convinced him that old-style guns had very little chance of inflicting crippling hits on his galleons' rigging. They simply couldn't fire fast enough, couldn't be pointed high enough. And so, he'd opted to come in under all plain sail, without brailling up even his courses until he'd come fully to grips with the enemy.

That gave him a clear speed advantage, and he and Staynair were using it ruthlessly.

“Anything more from
Speedy
?” King Haarahld asked as he finished the climb to
Royal Charis
' aftercastle.

“Yes, Your Majesty!” young Midshipman Aplyn replied with a huge grin. “
Speedy
's just repeated a signal from
Seagull
! ‘My position one hundred miles north Darcos Island with twenty-eight galleons. Enemy bears south-by-southeast. Engaging. Cayleb.'”

The cheer which answered the eleven-year-old's announcement ought by rights to have deafened Hektor all the way back home in Manchyr, Haarahld thought.

“Thank you, Master Aplyn,” he said quietly through that torrent of shouting voices, resting one hand on the boy's slight shoulder. “Thank you very much.”

He squeezed the midshipman's shoulder for a moment, then turned to Tryvythyn.