underfoot.
The crewmen assigned to the capstans had spent literally five-days practicing turning their ships, pivoting them to exactly the angles their captains wanted, and they did that now. As the Charisian line, led by HMS Destiny, headed for its enemies, a hailstorm of white splashes rose all about Sir Dunkyn Yairley’s flagship and her consorts. It wasn’t well aimed, but there was so much of it that not all of it could miss, and heavy splintering sounds announced the arrival of twelve-pound and twenty-five-pound round shot. They slammed into Destiny ’s bow as she headed straight into the line of Jahras’ anchored galleons, and Hektor Aplyn-Ahrmahk saw one of his ship’s long fourteen-pounder bow chasers take a direct hit. Its carriage disintegrated, spewing out a fan of splinters that wounded three men at other guns. Half its own crew was killed by the hit, and one of the survivors was down, kicking in agony on the deck while the fingers of his right hand tried vainly to stanch the bleeding where his left arm had been. Two members of the same gun crew who seemed to be unhurt grabbed their maimed companion and started dragging him towards the hatch and the waiting healers… just as another broadside lashed the water around the ship and another round shot ripped through all three of them.
This time, there were no survivors.
The ensign turned away, looking for his admiral, and saw Captain Lathyk standing on top of the starboard hammock nettings, one arm through the mizzen shrouds for balance while he leaned out, trying to fix the Desnairians’ position in his mind despite the solid wall of smoke their guns were belching out. As Aplyn-Ahrmahk watched, another Desnairian round shot came whimpering and whining out of the thunder. It slammed through the hammock nettings less than three feet from the captain and a flying splinter cut a deep gash in his right cheek, but Lathyk didn’t even seem to notice. He only leaned farther out, as if he thought he could somehow bend down and look under the smoke, between it and the water, to see his enemy clearly.
Sir Dunkyn stood beside the binnacle, hands still clasped behind him, his head moving steadily back and forth as his gaze swept between Captain Lathyk and the masthead weathervane. Sylvyst Raigly stood two paces behind him, head cocked, watching the chaos as if he were considering how best to arrange seating for a formal dinner. Stywyrt Mahlyk stood on the admiral’s other side, arms folded, head settled well down on his neck while he chewed a wad of chewleaf with the air of someone who had seen this sort of nonsense altogether too often.
Yairley seemed unaware of his henchmen’s presence. His expression was calm, almost contemplative as he glanced briefly down at the binnacle compass card, and Aplyn-Ahrmahk drew a deep breath. It wasn’t as if he’d never seen battle before, he reminded himself, remembering the thunder of guns, the screams, the clash of steel on steel from the Battle of Darcos Sound. But there was a difference this time, he realized. For the first time, he wasn’t truly part of Destiny ’s company. He was Admiral Yairley’s flag lieutenant, with no assigned battle station, no responsibility to the ship that he could grasp in mental hands and cling to when the world went mad around him. He couldn’t believe what an enormous difference that made, and yet as the recognition struck him, he also realized it had to be even worse for the admiral. Like Aplyn-Ahrmahk, Yairley was only a passenger this time. The man who’d commanded Destiny, who’d been ultimately responsible for every order given aboard her, found himself with absolutely no decisions to make once the order to engage had been given.
The youthful ensign stepped up beside his admiral. Mahlyk saw him coming and grinned, then spat an expert jet of brown chewleaf juice over the leeward rail. Yairley, alerted by his coxswain’s grin, turned his own head, looking at the ensign, and raised one eyebrow as yet another salvo of round shot plowed the water around his flagship.
“Lively, I believe the Captain predicted, Sir?” Aplyn-Ahrmahk had to speak loudly to be heard through the tumult.
“A sometimes surprisingly apt way with words, the Captain has,” Yairley replied with a nod.
“Exactly what I was thinking myself, Sir.” Aplyn-Ahrmahk managed a smile. “Except I think it’s going to get even more lively shortly.”
“One can only hope, Master Aplyn-Ahrmahk,” Yairley said. “One can only hope.”
Baron Jahras coughed as incredibly foul-smelling gunsmoke rolled back across Emperor Zhorj ’s decks. Hard as he’d tried to prepare himself, he’d never imagined anything like this ear-crushing din. The sheer concussion of hundreds of pieces of artillery, the bubbles of overpressure spreading out when they fired, was unimaginable. He felt the surges of air pressure coming back, punching at his face like immaterial fists reeking of Shan-wei’s own brimstone come hot from hell, and the deck planking underfoot shook to the recoil of his flagship’s guns like a terrified animal. Yet for all the thunder and fury, the range from Emperor Zhorj to her enemies was longer than Jahras had expected… and her fire was proportionately less accurate as a result.
The northeasterly wind swept diagonally across his east-to-west line of anchored ships, rolling the smoke before it. It blew back into his eyes, but he could still make out the Charisian mastheads above the fog bank born of his own artillery, and something like a chill ran down his spine as he watched those implacable mastheads-the ones which had maintained their distance as they approached his line on an almost parallel course, in a long loop from the east-turn suddenly towards it.
They have to be out of their minds! he thought. Langhorne, they’re sailing straight into our broadsides!
He’d never anticipated that. Sail directly into an opponent’s fire, on a heading which let every one of their broadside guns bear when none of yours would? Madness! Yet that was precisely what the Charisians were doing, and that chill in his spine grew colder and stronger as he realized why.
As he watched, the first six ships in the Charisian line headed directly for the six easternmost galleons in his own line. They weren’t going to sail along his line, exchanging broadsides with him, after all. Had their earlier heading been nothing but a bluff to make him think they would? He didn’t know, but whether they’d deliberately tried to deceive him or not was immaterial now. Their new course wouldn’t allow him to concentrate the fire of multiple ships on each of theirs as they moved into position as he’d planned; instead, each of those ships was deliberately taking the fire of its own clearly preselected target end-on in order to close the range far more rapidly than Jahras had ever expected.
They’re going to come to the range they want, then they’re going to anchor, and they’re going to pound the ever living hell out of the end of my line, he realized sickly. They’re going to get hurt doing it, but they’re also going to blow a gap the ships behind them will be able to sail straight through.
He watched those mastheads coming on unflinchingly, knew those ships had to be taking dozens of hits… and recognized that it didn’t matter.
More and more round shot smashed into Destiny ’s sturdy hull. Many of them, especially from the lighter twelve-pounders, failed to penetrate, although no one aboard the Charisian ship realized that was partly because the Desnairian gunners were firing with reduced charges because they distrusted their own artillery. Even with the understrength charges, however, the twenty-five-pounders were another matter. Aplyn-Ahrmahk heard splintering crashes and the screams of wounded men from the crews on the gundeck’s long thirty-pounders as those heavier shot punched through, and a four-foot section of Destiny ’s midships bulwark exploded inward in a tornado of splinters and shredded hammocks. Then “Heads below! Main topgallant’s coming adrift!”
The admiral and the ensign looked up in time to see the entire main topgallant yard, shot clean through right at the slings, begin its fall. The two halves of the yard slipped downward, then plunged like broken javelins, still joined by the shredded remnants of the sail. The braces, secured to the ends of the yard, stopped it before it actually hit the nettings stretched over the deck to protect against falling debris, and it dangled untidily, swinging like an ungainly pendulum in a tangle of canvas, broken wood, and cordage.
“Get aloft and secure that wreckage!” Boatswain Symmyns bellowed, and men went swarming up the rigging to capture and tame that pendulum before it could plunge the rest of the way to the deck with lethal consequences.
“Stand by to anchor!” Captain Lathyk shouted. “Hands to buntlines and clewlines! Stand by the larboard broadside!”
Seamen moved through the smoke and the turmoil with disciplined haste. The crews of the larboard guns crouched down, getting as much out of the way as they could. With only topsails and jib set, Destiny needed only a
