Fortune's stroke

magical communication devices of future centuries. 'Radio,' one was called. Such devices were far beyond the technological capability of her time-and would be, even with Aide to guide them, for decades to come.

She sighed unhappily. To shake off her anxiety concerning Belisarius, she resumed her study of the shields.

Antonina had designed the shields herself, before she left Constantinople the year before. Not, of course, without advice from Belisarius-and plenty of help, when the time came to translate theory into practice, from the Syrians of her Theodoran Cohort. The gunners and their wives, being borderers born and bred, were excellent blacksmiths, carpenters and tanners. And whatever they couldn't handle had been done by the Ethiopian artisans and craftsmen whom King Eon had put at her disposal in Adulis.

Each Axumite ship had been fitted with iron hoops on the rails near the bow. A heavy wooden ridgepole was affixed to the mainmast. The ridgepole ran parallel to the ship's hull, right down the center, its end stabilized in the stem.

As soon as Wahsi gave the order, the Syrian gunners and the Ethiopian sailors began erecting the shield. While Ethiopians furled the sails, the gunners set sturdy wooden braces in the iron hoops along the rails. Each hoop had a bar welded across the bottom to hold the brace butts. The top end of each brace had a hole drilled through it. As the gunners lowered the braces toward the ridgepole, the Ethiopian sailors began threading rope through the holes. Within minutes, the tops of the braces were bound tightly to the mast-and-ridgepole structure. The end result was a sloping A-frame which covered the bow of the ship.

Other sailors were already tossing ropes over the ridgepole and braces. Quickly, with the speed of experienced seamen, the ropes were drawn tight. The A-frame was now lashed down. The ropes provided further strength, along with a filled-in framework.

The wives of the gunners, meanwhile, had finished hauling the special armor out of the hold. The spans of boiled leather, already precut and punched with holes, were stitched onto the pole-and-rope framework with thinner cord. The sailors began dowsing the leather armor with buckets of seawater.

Antonina moved to the bow along with Ousanas and Wahsi, admiring the handiwork. Wahsi did not share her enthusiasm. 'Ugly,' he groused. Through a viewing slit in the shield, the commander glared down at the bow-waves, which were noticeably smaller. 'Slow. Clumsy.'

'Ignore him, Antonina,' said Ousanas serenely. The aqabe tsentsen pointed to the nearest Malwa vessel. The huge cargo ship was less than four hundred yards away. Kshatriyas could be seen scurrying about their rocket troughs. 'Soon enough, he will be glad to have that shield.'

Seconds later, the Malwa vessel was shrouded in rocket smoke. Six missiles came streaking across the water.

Five missed, most of them widely. But, again, the sixth missile sped straight and true. Antonina held her breath. She was about to discover if her inventor's pride was warranted.

It was. The rocket struck the sloping side of the shield and glanced off. The shield boomed like a giant kettledrum. The missile soared into the sky, exploding fifty yards overhead.

She blew out her breath, as a second relief came to reinforce the first.

No impact fuses, thank God. Belisarius didn't think they'd have them yet. Not for cargo vessels, anyway.

Theoretically, she knew, the shield should protect the ship even from rockets armed with impact fuses. Partially, at least. If the Malwa fuses were anything like the Roman ones, they were crude devices. A glancing impact might very well not be enough to trigger them-and, even if it did, most of the force would be spilled across the shield instead of punching through. The design would have been well-nigh useless, of course, against heavy cannon balls. But the Malwa had not yet equipped their ships with cannons. Not these ships, anyway.

'Good,' grunted Wahsi. 'It works.' Grudgingly: 'I didn't really think it would.'

And why not? thought Antonina merrily. It worked at Hampton Roads, didn't it?

But she kept the thought to herself. Both Wahsi and Ousanas knew of Aide. Ousanas, in fact, was one of the few people in the world who had entered Aide's world of future vision. But they were not really comfortable with the knowledge. At the moment, in the midst of battle, they needed surety and solid ground. It was not the best time to launch into a discussion of visions.

Besides, I've got a reputation as a genius to maintain. Won't help that any, if I admit I got my design from a future ship called the Merrimac.

Another volley erupted from the Malwa ship. Then, seconds later, a flight of missiles soared off the deck of another enemy vessel.

Wahsi ignored the oncoming rockets. He stooped, sticking his head into the entrance of the shield, and bellowed orders. The orders were passed down to the steersman at the rear.

The Ethiopian ship began pulling toward the nearest enemy. Progress was slow, of course. The shield was not especially heavy, but it caught the wind like a giant drag. The oarsmen strained, grunting with every sweep of the oars, forcing the craft forward.

Fortunately, neither the seas nor the wind were heavy. Antonina had been told they wouldn't be, as a rule, this time of year. She was relieved to find the information accurate.

Slow progress is still progress. The Malwa convoy-all merchantmen, now that their escorts had been destroyed-were simply seeking to escape the Ethiopians. But the Malwa ships paid a price for their huge and ungainly design. They, too, crept along like snails.

Ousanas verbalized her own assessment. 'We'll overtake them,' he pronounced. 'Soon, I think.'

Chapter 30

'Soon' proved to be half an hour.

Half an hour after that, 'soon' became 'never.'

Antonina, once again, discovered the First Law of Battle. Nothing ever works the way it should.

'Pull out, Wahsi!' she shouted, trying to make herself heard over the roar of the cannons and the shrieks of the rockets. 'We can't sink them!'

Stubbornly, the Axumite commander shook his head. The headshake turned into a duck, as another flight of rockets soared overhead. But there was no damage. The Syrian gunners, after a few minutes of battle, had switched to cannister. The solid shot had proven ineffective, but the cannister kept the Malwa kshatriyas from the rail. They were not able to lower their rocket troughs far enough to bring the missiles to bear on the Ethiopian ships alongside.

'There's no point!' she shouted. 'We could punch holes in that damned thing for a week, and it wouldn't make a difference. We can't sink it!'

Wahsi ignored her. He was leaning out of the shield, studying the rest of the battle. The huge Malwa cargo ships were like buffaloes being torn at by a dozen lean wolves. The roar of cannon fire, mingled with the shriek of rocketry, rippled over the waves. Each Axumite ship was wreathed in gunsmoke; every Malwa ship had holes punched in its hull-and none of them, plain as day, was in any danger of sinking. The battle was a pure and simple stalemate.

While she waited for Wahsi to make a decision, Antonina snarled her own frustration at the Malwa ship looming above her, not twenty yards off.

It was an incredible sight, in its way. The hull of the Malwa ship looked like a sieve. At least a dozen five-inch marble cannonballs had punched holes through the thin planks. But-

I was afraid this might happen. Belisarius warned me that wooden ships, in the days of sail, were almost never sunk by cannon fire. The Spanish Armada was wrecked by a storm, not English guns. The only ship at the battle of Trafalgar actually destroyed by gunfire was the Achille, after fire spread to its magazines. The rest were captured by boarders or lost during the storm which followed. Still, I had hoped-those ships, after all, were heavily built northern European craft. Not these cockleshells. But it doesn't matter. Wood doesn't sink. It's as simple as that.