the slow matches prepared, given the rate of fire they were showing now, that meant Another volley. Helga was almost shocked herself. They could manage four volleys in the first minute, before the pirate ship could even manage to close the final distance. She realized now that she'd allowed herself to be too influenced by Jessep's veteran experience. True, even with four volleys, the actual casualties inflicted would be relatively slight. She did the quick arithmetic in her head. Even assuming every bullet hit a pirate-almost certain, fired into such a packed mob, since for each one that missed another would punch through two men-then add another from splinter damage…
Still, only forty men hit, out of probably two hundred.
Before she could get too smug about her newfound wisdom, however, Jessep Yunkers was shouting in her ear. 'A fifth of them, by the gods! I'll wager my pension on it! And before we even hit the bastards with the blades!'
She turned and stared at him. The veteran's blocky face was almost split in half with a grin. Seeing her look of confusion, Jessep shook his head.
'Y've never been in a battle, lass.' He was so excited he forgot his normal ma'am or young lady, and his eastern accent was thicker than usual. 'A fift' gone in th'missile volley? We don' never hope fer more than a tent', even wit' dart volleys throwed by vets.' His grin turned into a jeer, aimed at the pirates. 'That'll break most any'un, much less these scum.'
She followed his gaze. The sight of the pirates on the bow and stern-the midships was still obscured by smoke-showed her at once that Jessep was right. Those faces were full of panic, now, not dismay.
The sight brought her thoughts back to her earlier ruminations. In addition to the pirates of the archipelago and the other large islands of Vase and Preble-'pirates' so-called; in reality they were a well-organized kingdom in their own right-there were the pirates who laired along the coast of the continent. Too far south to be under Confederate control, and too remote to be ruled more than nominally by any Southron chieftain, these were simply pirates in fact as well as in name.
Not even that, Helga realized. Most of the time, these 'pirates' would survive by fishing and selling the rare hardwoods they cut from the dense forests along the continent's waist. For all their undoubted seamanship, not to mention their ferocity when easy prey showed off their coastal villages, they had little of the disciplined organization of the Islanders proper. They weren't even that closely related racially, although they had adopted many of the Islander customs and usually worshipped Islander gods. Part Islander, part Southron-not to mention a heavy admixture of slaves escaped from the Confederate plantations to the north-they were mongrels by blood as well as habit. Tough, yes; as mongrels always are. But with a 'discipline' that didn't begin to compare with the Islanders proper, much less Confederate soldiery.
The fourth volley erupted. That would be it, for the moment. Helga had watched Trae's men at practice, often enough, while her younger brother trained them on the family's estate. She knew that those clumsy guns, once fired, needed at least a minute to be cleaned and reloaded. A minute, at best. After a few rounds had been fired through the barrels, they needed to be set aside to cool before they could be used again. Trae had used the best metal he could find for them, but even those precious alloys would start to weaken once the barrels got too hot.
But in this instance, it was irrelevant anyway. Thicelt was already shouting at Trae, telling him to pull his gunners out of the way of the soldiers. The men of the hundred were on their feet, crouched, ready to topple the special sections of the upper deck onto the pirate ship's rail. By now, only a three-foot gap separated the two vessels-more than short enough to allow the sections to span the distance.
The gunners scrambled aside and the soldiers yanked out the pins which held the sections in place. Then, with a shout and heaved shoulders, toppled the improvised boarding ramps onto the pirate ship.
Then Nothing. At their First Spear's shouted command, they simply stood by the ramps, waiting. Helga was too confused to do more than notice that they weren't even hefting their weighted darts for an initial volley.
She heard Jessep's harsh chuckle. 'I told you Uther was a good First Spear. Good as I was, truth be told-sure enough at his age.'
She turned her head and stared at him. Jessep's rare grin was back.
'Live and learn, ma'am. Experience always counts.' He pointed with his square chin at the pirate vessel, still half obscured by smoke. 'Uther's never seen gunpowder at work before, but he has led boarding operations onto burning ships. You don't want to lead men into a pile of smoke, you surely don't. Half your discipline'll vanish in a few heartbeats. Let Vanbert soldiers know their place-see and feel their mates at their shoulders-they'll handle anything. Let them lose their bearings, and you never know what'll happen. The only Confederate hundred I ever saw break and run did so in a dense fog.'
The grin vanished, replaced by the usual block-against-block that did Jessep for a jaw. 'Didn't keep 'em from being decimated afterward, o' course. Those of 'em who survived the enemy pursuit.'
Now understanding, Helga nodded jerkily. Not for the first time, she was reminded of the harsh regime under which the Confederacy's soldiers lived and fought.
Another shout from Uther jerked her head back around. The smoke had cleared enough, apparently. The first wave of marines was charging across the ramp, two abreast. Even on that precarious footing, they had their shields locked and the assegais ready for that terrible underhand thrust which had made Confederate infantrymen feared for centuries.
There were four ramps, in all. The first eight men hammered into the screeching mass of pirates. Their spear thrusts were almost desultory. For the most part, the vanguard was using the force of their charge and their shields to clear some fighting room for their comrades coming behind.
The shields were well designed for the purpose. Oval in shape, covering a man from shoulder to mid-thigh, and with a metal rim and boss to bolster the laminated wood from which they were made. Between their own mass and the weight of the three lead-weighted darts clipped on the inside, the shields were just about perfect for the task of driving back a crowd.
Perfect, at least, when wielded by men trained in their use. Watching the soldiers at work, the way their shoulders hunched into the shields and their powerful legs worked like the pistons Trae had shown her in the captured steam ram, Helga suddenly understood something else for the first time.
She'd been trained in combat herself, at her insistence, and by the finest retired gladiators her father could find, Lortz being the latest of them. But her training had been, basically, in the Emerald style which was fashionable in aristocratic duels and the gladiator arenas. That style favored long swords, small round shields, with all the fancy footwork and need for room which it required.
She snorted. 'It's no wonder we whipped them.'
Jessep, again, showed an uncanny ability to read her mind. 'True enough, la-ah, ma'am. You want a short blade for real killing. And then you do most of the killing with your shoulders and legs anyway. The spear thrust's just the finish. Easy enough, if you've gotten the strength and endurance it takes to keep a heavy shield steady at all times-and leg muscles like iron.'
She remembered watching her father's soldiers at training. It had seemed a bit odd to her, at the time, the way they devoted such a relatively small amount of time to practicing spear thrusts. For the most part, the training of Confederate infantrymen seemed to be nothing more than endless running-and shield work. Time after time, she'd watched as a squad of men-always a squad, or a whole hundred; Confederate soldiers never trained as individuals-pushed a huge and heavy box full of dirt all the way across a training field. Their legs hammering like pistons, the shields steady against the obstacle. Never halting, never tiring, never stumbling.
They were doing it again now. The first wave of boarders had been joined at the front by the next two. Fully a fourth of the hundred were not using their spears at all. They were simply clearing the midships of the pirate vessel, pushing their opponents back with a solid shield wall. Their shields remaining locked, even as the men holding them threaded their way down the bench rows. Their legs drove relentlessly, never losing their footing even when the sandals stamped down on ruptured bodies instead of wood. Helga could remember watching her father train soldiers on a field littered with the carcasses of gutted pigs. She'd thought it gross, at the time.
Not to mention wasteful of perfectly valuable swine. But now, also, she understood why she'd overheard soldiers say they preferred serving under a rich officer, as long as he was competent. She'd thought, then, that they'd only been thinking of pay and bonuses. But now she realized that a man like her father could afford to train his soldiers properly, as well as provide them with the best equipment. Pay and bonus did no good to a dead soldier.
