By 'claws,' Helga knew, Jessep was referring to the traditional boarding ramps used by the Confederate army in their favored method of naval operation. The 'claws' were nothing more complicated than wide planks, held upright and fit into prepared hinges along the rails just before action. And with spikes at the other end, which would drive into the wood of an opposing vessel when the planks were pushed over.
But there had simply been no way to adapt the demibireme to that tactic, which presupposed the large war galleys of the Vanbert regular navy. Instead, what Thicelt had done was redesign portions of the upper deck-already designed to be removed in the event of action-so that they would collapse down onto an enemy vessel alongside. He'd even added fittings for small spikes which could be inserted at the last minute. Those adaptations had not been the least of the cost to her father of getting this ship ready for her voyage.
The end result would be boarding ramps not much different from claws. In theory, at least. But like almost all soldiers, Jessep was conservative when it came to mayhem. The tried and true methods are best, and be damned to the fancy schemes of amateurs.
'They'll work,' said Thicelt firmly. 'We've tested them plenty of times.'
Jessep left unsaid the obvious rejoinder: not in a real battle, you haven't. There was simply no point now in arguing about the matter. Thicelt's complicated boarding ramps would work or they wouldn't. Either way, Jessep was obviously not concerned about the outcome- a crack Vanbert hundred against twice their number of mangy pirates? surely you jest! — but simply the casualties. With proper claws, the Confederate marines would turn the pirate crew into so much ground meat. With these new-fangled things…
He sighed heavily. 'Whatever happens will happen. And now, young sir, you'd best get to it. You don't have much time left.'
Trae was gone instantly, shouting orders to his gunners waiting on the deck below. The gunners began scurrying to their newly-designated posts. Helga was a bit puzzled to see how easily they seemed to interpret Trae's orders. Most of the words her younger brother was shouting were simply obscenities.
'That much he's got right,' growled Yunkers. The former First Spear grinned at Helga. 'Trained soldiers pretty much know what to do anyway. You just have to cuss at 'em to keep their brains working.'
Afterward, Trae and his men would be able to boast endlessly. Which, to the regret of everyone else, they did.
The pirate vessel, as Thicelt predicted, had no difficulty eluding the demibireme's ramming attempt. Then, as the one-and-a-half slid by, the pirates pulled feverishly on their oars to close the distance. The one and only benefit of the ramming attempt was that it kept most of the pirate archers and all of their slingers out of the action. There was no room on that crowded vessel, with hundreds of men working at huge oars, for more than a handful of archers to fire a few missiles. Most of which, as Jessep had foreseen, went astray anyway.
Trae waited until the pirate ship was not more than ten yards distant. By then, Thicelt had removed all the rowers and Trae's gunners had set the tripod clamps at ten places along the lower deck which gave them a clear line of fire. At Trae's command-which was nothing more than a string of particularly obscene words-the first team of gunners set their arquebuses and fired.
None of it took more than a few seconds. The gunners themselves, following Trae's previous orders, were not even aiming at individual men. In fact, they weren't shooting at 'men' at all. Not directly, at any rate. Their heavy, large-bored guns were simply pointing at the side of the pirate ship. The only sense in which 'aiming' applied was that they were trying to hit the wooden wall of the enemy ship at approximately the height of the rowers' benches on the other side. 'Hip-high,' had been Trae's specific command. But… with the heavy four-ounce balls fired by those two-man arquebuses, at point-blank range, anything close would do just fine.
And so it proved. The gunhandlers set their weapons, more or less 'aimed,' then braced for the recoil and closed their eyes when the other man of the team applied the slow match. A slightly ragged volley erupted, and one which was noisy enough to make the word 'erupted' much more than a poetic allusion. It sounded like a small volcano, heard up close.
Looked like one, too. Immediately, the middle portion of the pirate ship vanished from sight, engulfed in a cloud of smoke. Helga, from her vantage point, could only see the bow and stern of the enemy. The faces of the pirates standing there, which only a moment before had been leering at her, were now so many studies in shock and confusion.
She thought that a bit odd, at first. Her former lover Adrian Gellert, after all, had been the one who first introduced gunpowder weapons to the world-using the pirates of the islands as his chosen instrument. And the Islanders had taken to the new weapons eagerly, as her father and Speaker Emeritus Jeschonyk had discovered to their dismay when the first Confederate assaults on the rebel island of Preble had been bloodily repulsed. That had been over a year ago. By now, Helga would have thought, pirates would be quite accustomed to gunpowder.
Then, seeing the rags in which the pirates on this ship were clad, she realized the truth. Like most Vanberts, Helga tended to think of 'Islanders' and 'pirates' as synonymous terms. But the truth was more complicated.
The Islanders could be separated into at least four distinct groups. There was the actual Kingdom of the Isles, ruled over by Casull the IV from his capital on the island of Chalice. Or, as he officially styled himself: 'King Casull IV, Lord of the Isles, Supreme Autocrat, Chosen of the Sun God and Lemare of the Sea.' Leaving aside the rhetorical flourish of the rest, the term autocrat was accurate enough. Except that the power of the King of the Isles, as great as it undoubtedly was, also had the historical characteristic of transience. Islander politics were even more notorious for treachery, double-dealing and palace revolts than the Confederacy's.
Then, there was-had been, rather-the smaller-scale but similar realm of Vase. The island of Vase, because it was located quite some distance from the main archipelago, had traditionally enjoyed independent status. Until Casull conquered it the year before, it had been ruled by the so-called Director of Vase. It had been in that old pirate chief's hareem that Helga had spent the most unpleasant year of her life, after she'd been sold by the pirates who captured her. The Director had been delighted to obtain a high-ranked member of the Vanbert aristocracy for one of his concubines. Even if, in practice, he hadn't been able to do much to enjoy his prize.
She grimaced, as a sudden image came back to her. A fat belly, heaving and covered with sweat, almost crushing her; and an old man's peevish voice, cursing her because he couldn't get an erection. He'd slapped her, that night, hard enough to leave bruises on her cheeks for days thereafter.
The ugly memory was blown away by another volley from Trae's guns. She was startled to realize that not more than a quarter of a minute had elapsed since the first. Trae really had trained his men well.
And he was using them intelligently, Helga thought. Trae had kept back half of his twenty two-man teams, having apparently decided that maintaining a good rate of fire was more important than the size of the volleys themselves. Now, as his teams switched places-one squad firing loaded and ready guns while the other picked up their second set of weapons-his decision proved itself. The second volley slammed into the side of the pirate ship before the cloud of smoke from the first had been dissipated by the slight breeze.
Confusion, she could remember her father telling her, is an even better weapon against an enemy than casualties. The pirates, she realized, had not had time to make sense out of what was happening to them before yet another volley ripped into their ranks.
Because of the smoke, she couldn't really see the casualties which were being inflicted by Trae's guns. But judging from the volume of the screams coming from amidships of the enemy vessel, as well as the dismay on the faces of those pirates she could see on the stern and bow- they weren't gloating over their projected rapine now, the stinking bastards — she thought the guns were tearing the enemy like a pack of predators tears a cornered greatbeast.
The unwanted image of a rapist's fat belly was replaced by another. The more slender waists of would-be rapists, sitting on benches, screaming as they stared at their shattered hip bones and ruptured intestines. Helga had seen what those lead bullets would do to a heavy pig, shot at close range. The thin planks of the pirate ship wouldn't slow them down much more than paper. If anything, she thought, the splinters the bullets would produce punching through the walls would simply double the casualties. And if pieces of broken wood sent sailing by four- ounce lead balls wouldn't do quite as much damage as the bullets themselves, they would do more than enough to put most of the men they struck half out of the action by the time the marines stormed aboard. 'Half out of the action,' against experienced Confederate infantrymen, was pretty much a euphemism for dead meat.
The first squad was back at their firing posts. Another volley, still before the cloud of smoke could vanish. Each two-man team in Trae's gunnery unit, Helga knew, had two arquebuses. With the weapons already loaded and
