Of course, there weren’t very many enemies to the east of them, but there was no way they could know that, was there?
“There!” he said, pointing as the flares showed him the single Dohlaran galleon whose lights Vindicator had already sighted. Vindicator had let the other ship sail past her, then Pymbyrtyn had worn ship to follow her, still upwind and on her larboard quarter while the other ships of Ahbaht’s division continued to the south for another fifteen minutes. By now, they would have turned almost straight downwind, running for the transports whose masthead lights Vindicator’s lookouts had finally sighted almost twenty minutes ago. Ahbaht would have preferred to be with them, but Vindicator had a different task to see to.
Estimating the enemy ship’s size accurately was all but impossible under the current conditions, but she had at least two armed decks, and if he’d been the Dohlaran commander, he’d have placed one of his more powerful units in that spot. She was a mile and a half to windward and perhaps that far northwest of the transports, perfectly positioned to run down to them with the wind in case of emergency.
Now Vindicator turned sharply to starboard in a smother of white foam and a boom of canvas, coming onto the wind and bringing her larboard broadside to bear on the Dohlaran ship from a range of just over six hundred yards.
“Engage the enemy, Captain Pymbyrtyn,” Sir Bruhstair Ahbaht said coldly.
* * *
Captain Sir Lywys Audhaimyr was sound asleep in his cabin when the first Charisian rocket screeched into the heavens, but HMS Riptide’s company was as well trained as any crew anywhere. By the time he reached his cabin door, the drums were beginning to roll; by the time he reached the deck, breeching tackle was being cast off, gunports were opening, and powder monkeys were already dashing for the magazines.
And by the time his eyes found the blazing Charisian flares, hanging like curses above the sea, HMS Vindicator was already turning across his stern at a range of six hundred yards, hidden in the darkness while his own ship stood out starkly against the flares and with every gun run out.
“Sail on the weather quarter! Sail on—!”
* * *
“Fire as you bear!” Lywelyn Pymbyrtyn barked.
The range was long, even for Charisian gunners, but the Dohlaran galleons’ illuminated stern windows were about as visible as a target could be and Vindicator’s gun crews had been waiting for this moment ever since the Kaudzhu Narrows. They took their time to do it right. Division officers and gun captains waited, making certain every gun was fully prepared, judging the ship’s motion, then—
“Fire!”
The powerful galleon’s broadside tore the night apart like an erupting volcano.
* * *
Despite all of the gunners’ skill and all of their meticulous preparations, “only” eleven of Vindicator’s thirty-pounder shells found their target. But those shells crashed into Riptide while the Dohlaran crewmen were still racing to their stations, still trying to cope with the paralyzing surprise. It wasn’t a perfect raking broadside; the angle was too acute for that. But it was close enough, and they arrived like demons, howling out of the night to rip into the ship, and exploded with all the fury of Shan-wei herself.
Captain Audhaimyr’s ears cringed under the roar of explosions, and hard on their heels he heard the screams of wounded and dying men.
“Hard to starboard and clear for action!” he shouted. “Come on, boys! Get those guns cleared away—now!”
Riptide began to swing to starboard, turning her vulnerable stern away from her foe, and he heard scattered shouts of acknowledgment from the gun crews. But even as he urged them on, he knew it was futile. The turn would take too long, and it took at least fifteen minutes to clear for action from a standing start. A well-trained crew might manage it in as little as ten, but only if they knew the evolution was coming. Surprised in the middle of the night, with absolutely no warning, they’d be lucky to do it in twenty, and Riptide didn’t have twenty minutes.
Another savage broadside screamed across the water, trailing the red streaks of burning fuses, and HMS Riptide shuddered in agony as the exploding shells savaged her.
* * *
“Captain! Captain Vahrnay!”
Horayshyo Vahrnay opened his remaining eye as someone shook his good shoulder. It took what seemed an eternity for him to rouse in the foul, stinking hellhole of Prodigal Lass’ hold. Then he coughed, cleared his throat, and spat.
“What?” he asked. “What is it, Zhaspahr?”
Zhaspahr Shewmakyr had been HMS Vortex’s third lieutenant. He was also the second-ranking prisoner after Vahrnay himself. Only nine officers—three of them midshipmen—had survived to reach Gorath Bay. Vahrnay knew more than that had been captured initially, but the others had died of their wounds after the battle, and Shewmakyr was the only one of the survivors who hadn’t been severely wounded. Instead, he’d had the misfortune to be knocked out by a falling block when Vortex’s mizzen mast went over the side. He hadn’t recovered consciousness until the second day after the battle. And even then—
“Gunfire, Sir!” Shewmakyr’s urgent voice cut through Vahrnay’s wandering thoughts like a waterpowered bandsaw.
“Gunfire?!” Vahrnay thrust himself upright, his right hand—the only one he still had—sliding in the noisome filth produced by men left permanently chained to the deck. He almost fell, but Shewmakyr’s grip on his shoulder prevented that.
Surely the lieutenant must be mistaken! There was nothing left under the Charisian flag to be firing at the Dohlarans. It must have been thunder. Trapped down here, with the hatches battened, it was impossible to see the sky or evaluate the weather, after all, and—
Horayshyo Vahrnay froze as he, too, heard the long, rolling cascade of explosions which could never be mistaken for anything else by anyone who’d ever heard it.
* * *
“Heads below!” someone screamed, and Captain Audhaimyr looked up just as Riptide’s mizzen toppled like a weary forest giant. The entire mast tilted with slow majesty, and he swore again with hopeless venom. It must have been cut away below deck level by one of those Shan-wei-damned shells, and the rending, tearing sound as the main topgallant mast snapped and followed it was dreadfully clear even through the bedlam.
Three of his spar deck gun crews had gotten their guns cleared away, but they had no target. The Charisian galleon had forged steadily across Riptide’s stern, guns blazing, pounding away, then ranged up beside her to leeward. The situation had been hopeless, and he’d known it, even before his ship lost her mizzen. Now, as he ducked to avoid the decapitating power of the snapping mizzen shrouds he saw his assailant, no more than two hundred yards clear of his ship. She’d backed her topsails, reducing speed, providing a steadier gun platform, and her guns belched flame, smoke, and death with metronome precision.
More of the heretics’ rockets roared into the heavens, pouring their pitiless light down across a scene of horrors. At least three Charisian galleons hammered fire into Captain Kurnau’s Saint Ahndru. She’d already lost her foremast, mainmast, and bowsprit, and although it was impossible to be certain at this range, it didn’t look as if even one of Kurnau’s guns was in action.
Two more of the Charisians had run alongside Tide, pounding her savagely from both sides simultaneously. Even as he watched, both of them crashed aboard Captain Ohkamohto’s ship and grappling hooks flew. He couldn’t hear the high-pitched, howling Charisian warcry—not from here, not through the unending bellow of the guns—but he didn’t have to hear it to know what was happening aboard the escort’s flagship. And after what had happened in the Kaudzhu Narrows, and given where the convoy had been bound, there would be precious little mercy behind that shrill, terrifying howl this night.
He looked around desperately, but the falling masts had taken Riptide’s banner with it. He had no colors to strike, and he was none too sure the Charisians would have paid any attention if he’d had them.
“Fire!” someone screamed. “Oh
, dear God, boys! She’s taken fire!”
Audhaimyr wheeled towards the cry and his belly turned into a knot of ice as he saw the first flames belching from the forward hatch.
“Abandon ship!” he shouted. “Abandon ship!”
Other voices took up the order, and men began plunging over the galleon’s tall sides. Some of them—petty officers and senior seamen, for the most part—kept their wits about them well enough to cast floats to the men in the water. Others struggled to lower the surviving boats. But most of them simply went over the bulwarks or scrambled frantically out of her gunports, fleeing the madness and the terror … and the flames.
And even as they fled, the Charisian guns continued their pitiless thunder.
* * *
“My God,” Father Ahndyr Brauhylo murmured, signing himself with Langhorne’s scepter, as the night astern of HMS Truculent dissolved into flaming chaos and nightmare.
The under-priest had no idea—couldn’t imagine—how it could have happened so suddenly, with so little warning. One moment, it seemed, everything was calm, normal. The next instant those hideous blazing lights poisoned the heavens and the merciless, rolling broadsides began. Commander Urwyn Guhstahvsyn had obeyed his standing orders and immediately brought his ship about and headed southeast, back for the Trosan Channel, but Truculent was a transport galleon. No one had ever intended her as a genuine warship, just as no one had wasted the expense of a coppered bottom on her. The chance that she might outrun a Charisian galleon was minimal, to say the least. Even Brauhylo knew that.
“What’s … what’s happening now?” he asked.
“All due respect, Father,” Commander Urwyn Guhstahvsyn said flatly, “we’re getting our arses kicked. Tide’s done for, Saint Ahndru’s a wreck, and Riptide’s on fire. Must be at least twenty or thirty of the bastards, and it’s only a matter of time until—”
The night in front of them tore apart in the sudden, rapid eruption of broadsides.
* * *
Captain Honshau Bryxtyn had clapped on every stitch of canvas he could when the northern horizon turned into a cauldron of fire and explosions. Unlike the other members of the escort, he’d actually had time to clear for action—and douse every light—yet he was under no illusions about what must have happened. He had no more idea than any other Dohlaran officer of how it could have happened, but the “what” of it was devastatingly clear.
He had no illusions about what would happen if he sailed his ship into the midst of that cauldron, either, yet he had no option. It was his duty, and it was at least possible HMS Saint Kylmahn would survive long enough to cover the flight of Truculent and Prodigal Lass.
“Ship on the larboard bow!”
Bryxtyn wheeled in the indicated direction and swore as the courses and topsails of a Charisian galleon loomed against the fire-sick night. The other ship was boring straight in, leaving him no option but to meet her.
“Three points to starboard!” he told his helmsmen, and Saint Kylmahn began to pivot away from the oncoming Charisian, opening her broadside firing arc.
“Off topgallants and royals!” he shouted, and men dashed aloft to reduce sail as Saint Kylmahn stripped down for combat.
* * *
“And now it’s our turn,” Sebahstean Hylmyn murmured to himself.
He’d always been proud of his magnificent ship. Named for King Haarahld’s flag captain at the Battle of Darcos Sound, HMS Dynzayl Tryvythyn mounted sixty-eight guns, including a pair of pivot-mounted eight-inch muzzle-loading rifles on her upper deck. Hylmyn knew Dynzayl Tryvythyn was outmoded, already left behind by the Imperial Charisian Navy’s breakneck pace of innovation. Armor, steam, and breech-loading guns were the ICN of the future, and he knew that, too. But his ship’s namesake had commanded the Royal Charisian Navy’s flagship in the last galley battle in history. It was fitting that Dynzayl Tryvythyn should be here for this one, as well.
“Not until the range drops, Bryahn,” he said to Bryahn Mastyrsyn, his first lieutenant. “No more than half-musket shot. I want this over as soon as it’s begun.”
His voice was flat, hard, and his eyes were cold.
“Aye, aye, Sir,” Lieutenant Mastyrsyn replied, and his voice was just as hard.
* * *
“Make more sail! Make more sail!” Father Tymythy Maikyn half shouted, brown eyes wild.
“Father, there’s no more sail to make!” Rubyn Mychysyn shot back. He waved one arm at the Prodigal Lass’ masts and yards. “This is a merchant galleon, not a warship! If you see any place I could set another sail, show it to me!”
He knew his voice was dangerously hard for anyone addressing any inquisitor, far less one who was a member of Ahbsahlahn Kharmych’s personal staff, but he really didn’t care. The chance that he might survive to face Father Ahbsahlahn’s anger ranged from slim to none, in his considered opinion. Besides, he hadn’t liked Father Tymythy from the instant the Schuelerite came on board.
Maikyn stared at him, face pale. Clearly the Charisian policy towards inquisitors was running through his mind, and Mychysyn was surprised by the vicious pleasure he felt at that thought. The murder of any priest was impious blasphemy, yet he’d discovered there were some priests he’d miss less than others.
Maikyn whirled away from him, staring back at the carnage astern of them. The firing had begun to fade, and Mychysyn glanced back, knowing what he was going to see. The outnumbered and outgunned escorts, taken by surprise out of a moonless night, had never stood a chance. One of them was heavily on fire and two more were motionless wrecks, with Charisian galleons hard alongside. The burning ship and the rockets, continuing to burst overhead at regular intervals, lit that vista of devastation with hideous clarity, despite the distance between them and Mychysyn’s command.
He had no time to spare for what was happening behind them, however. Not with a pair of galleons locked in mortal combat looming up ahead of them. The Charisian combatant was clearly much larger and more heavily armed than Saint Kylmahn. Even if she hadn’t been, her guns were better served, each of them getting off at least three shots for every two Saint Kylmahn fired in reply.
He had no doubt there were plenty of Charisian galleons—or schooners—bearing down on Prodigal Lass from the north. Any one of them could overwhelm his command in a heartbeat. She was armed with a grand and glorious total of twelve one-pounder wolves in swivel mounts along her rails, and those had never been meant to resist an enemy warship. They were there in case the prisoners chained in the transport’s hold had managed to break loose somehow and storm the hatches.
“’Nother of the bastards, Sir!”
Mychysyn turned towards the shout and saw yet another Charisian galleon bearing down on Truculent from the northwest. The other transport was perhaps a mile upwind and three-quarters of a mile astern of Prodigal Lass, and the galleon swept down upon her like a storm.
* * *
“What are you going to do, Captain?” Father Ahndyr asked quietly, and Commander Guhstahvsyn turned to face him.
“That ship mounts at least fifty-six guns, Father,” Truculent’s commanding officer replied, “all of them at least thirty-pounders. We mount eighteen, all of them twelve-pounders, and all we have for them are round shot. We can’t fight them. Not and win.”
“That’s not what I asked you, my son,” Father Ahndyr said. “I asked you what you were going to do.”
“You can’t dump all of this on me, Father,” Guhstahvsyn said. “I’m this ship’s captain. My decision is final. But you’re Mother Church’s Inquisitor. You speak for her, not me. And you know as well as I do what the heretics will do if you fall into their hands.”
“Yes, I do,” Brauhylo said, far more calmly than Guhstahvsyn could have spoken in his place. “I imagine I’ll be rendering my account to God and the Archangels quite soon now,” the Schuelerite continued. “Whatever else, Captain, I won’t be in any position to report you or your men for … lack of zeal.”
Guhstahvsyn looked at him, and th
e under-priest smiled sadly, almost gently. Then he traced the sign of Langhorne’s scepter between them.
“Go with my blessing, whatever your decision, my son,” he said. “But if I were an officer of the Dohlaran Navy and not an inquisitor sworn to obey the Grand Inquisitor in all things, I would ask myself if I truly wished to stain my hands with the blood of the helpless. And I would also look to my own men’s lives.”
He held Guhstahvsyn’s eyes for another moment, then turned and headed down the companion towards his cabin. Guhstahvsyn watched him go, then drew a deep breath and turned to his first officer.
“Strike the colors and heave-to,” he said.
* * *
“You can’t let these accursed heretics escape their just Punishment!” Father Tymythy shouted as the leading Charisian galleon bypassed Truculent, leaving Guhstahvsyn’s command to her next astern, and bore down swiftly on Prodigal Lass.
“And just how do you suggest I prevent that, Father?” Rubyn Mychysyn demanded harshly.
“You’ve got wolves on the rails!” The Schuelerite waved one arm in a wild sweep indicating the swivel-mounted weapons. “Use them!”
“They’d be less than useless against that!” Mychysyn shot back, jabbing an index finger at the oncoming Charisian.
“Not against the galleon—against the heretics in the hold! Load them with canister!”
“You’re insane,” Mychysyn said flatly. “They’re mounted on the bulwarks, Father. I could sweep the decks with them, but there’s no way anyone could aim them down into the hold! And even if we could, I can’t think of a single thing which would be more likely to get my men massacred—and rightly so!”
“What does that matter beside our duty to God?!”
“I imagine it would matter quite a bit to their wives and children, Father. Besides,” he turned back to the Charisian galleon, already beginning to reduce sail as she came charging up to starboard, “there’s no time for any of that lunacy.”