Hell's Foundations Quiver (89 page)

There were sixteen guns in
Dreadnought
's broadside, and only one of them actually hit its mark.

*   *   *

Scepter
heaved indescribably as Langhorne's own Rakurai slammed into her.

The elongated, cylindrical shell drilled effortlessly through her stout wooden side. It weighed two and a half times as much as
Scepter
's own shells, and its eleven-and-a-half-pound bursting charge was six times as heavy. It exploded in the sailing master's small cubbyhole of a cabin, one deck down and twenty feet forward from Captain Spryngyr's cabin, and the blast shredded the gundeck immediately above it.

Eighteen of the galleon's men died in the explosion. Eleven more were wounded, three seriously, and two of her twenty-five-pounders were dismounted. Blast and concussion stunned everyone in the immediate vicinity, but the ominous smell of woodsmoke jerked them back into action. Spryngyr's crew had laid out buckets of water and rigged pumps and hoses in anticipation of the sort of fire hazard posed by exploding shells, and his specially detailed damage parties hurled themselves towards the shell hole. They'd just reached it and begun dousing the smoldering wreckage when
Dreadnought
fired again.

Sixteen more shells snarled through the air. This time, three of them hit their target, and
Scepter
staggered. One shell punched entirely through the galleon before it exploded harmlessly, throwing up a tall, white column well beyond her; the other two were less kind.

*   *   *

Admiral Rohsail's face was stone as the heretics' shells hammered
Scepter
. Zherohm Spryngyr's ship continued to close upon her more powerful foe, but she had yet to enter her own extreme range of the Charisian, and he watched through his spyglass as the explosions ripped through her. She wasn't going to make it into effective range, he thought harshly, but she refused to break off. She'd go right on trying, attracting the heretics' fire onto herself, soaking up their shells until her sisters could get close enough to avenge her.

Until she sank or blew up, at least.

He lowered the spyglass. Most of his galleons had begun reducing sail in preparation for battle; now, in obedience to his signal, they were crowding on every scrap of canvas. It would make them more vulnerable to damage aloft, and the additional sails increased the danger of fire, but speed was more important than anything else now. They had to get in close, crowd the bastards, hammer that Shan-wei-damned ironclad from every angle they could. But it was going to hurt them while they tried. Langhorne, but it was going to
hurt
them!

“Signal to Admiral Hahlynd. ‘Engage the enemy more closely'!”

*   *   *

Pawal Hahlynd had needed no signals. He'd been as appalled as Rohsail by the reach and power of
Dreadnought
's guns, and he was suddenly sinkingly certain that his screw-galleys' armor wasn't going to stop shells like
that
.

But they'd still have a better chance of surviving than Rohsail's galleons did.

All eleven of his surviving vessels went driving through the steeper waves in bursts of spray, vibrating to the urgent tempo of their cranks. He'd planned on striking his sails when he engaged, the way conventional galleons had for centuries, but now he changed his mind. At least until he was into knife range, he'd need all the speed he could get, both to reach the enemy in time and to make his ships fleet enough to be at least slightly more difficult targets.

*   *   *

Sir Bruhstair Ahbaht looked back.

Like Dahrand Rohsail earlier, he stood in
Broadsword
's mizzen rigging.
Dreadnought
was invisible from deck level now, but he could still see her from his loftier perch. She looked like an exquisitely detailed toy boat in the distance. A toy boat manned by men who were only too much flesh and blood, thundering out thick clouds of brown smoke as she hurled defiance at her enemies while the Imperial Charisian Navy's battle cry flew above her. It was harder to see her target, but the Dohlaran galleon had lost her foremast and was beginning to belch a column of white woodsmoke. Unless she was very, very fortunate, she was doomed, and something deep inside Ahbaht snarled in satisfaction.

He looked away, and his mouth tightened.

Haigyl's plan was working … so far at least. As nearly as Ahbaht could tell, at least half of the Dohlaran galleons were driving in on
Dreadnought
. He didn't know whether it was a calculated bid to get inside her reach and overwhelm her quickly or simply that she'd drawn their attention and their anger, and it didn't really matter.

Haigyl was about to find himself engaged at odds of over twenty-to-one, which didn't even count the screw-galleys … just as he'd intended. And in the doing, he'd reduced the odds against Ahbaht and the conventional galleons to little more than
two
-to-one. Those were scarcely the numbers any sea officer would have chosen, but they gave his squadron at least a chance. He'd considered hoisting the same signal Haigyl had, but he'd decided against it. The honor of flying that defiant challenge on this day belonged to only one captain, only one ship.

The Dohlarans steering to intercept his own battle line must all have coppered bottoms, judging from their speed, and they'd had the positional advantage from the very beginning, since he was pinned against the coastline to the south. He had to hold his own course, allowing them to close with him if they had the speed for it, and he could visualize exactly what was going to happen, as if he were looking down at markers on a chart. They'd enter engagement range of one another just about …
there
, a spot two miles ahead of HMS
Stormbird
, leading the Charisian line directly ahead of
Broadsword
.

He looked aft. Horayshyo Vahrnay's
Vengeance
followed in Broadsword's wake, with Zoshua Kahrltyn's
Firestorm
directly behind her. Combined with
Stormbird
, they were Ahbaht's mailed fist, his battering ram, designed to open a path for the ships behind them. Whether they could hold that path open was another question, of course.

More artillery rumbled and rolled, more than
Dreadnought
's guns could account for, and he raised his double-glass once more.

At least four of the Dohlaran galleons, and probably more, had opened fire. The range remained long enough he was confident none of those round shot and shells were penetrating
Dreadnought
's armor, but the pack was closing in. Peering through the smoke, he could just see a cluster of schooner-rigged screw-galleys charging up from the southwest to add their own weight and fury, and he lowered the double-glass and closed his eyes for just a moment.

Mother Church teaches You love the brave, Lord
, he prayed silently.
Be with them now … and be with us in this, our moment of need. Spare my men, please.

His eyes opened again, and he turned to
Broadsword
's captain.

“About fifteen more minutes, I believe, Captain Zhaksyn. Be good enough to load and run out, if you please.”

*   *   *

“Heads below!”

Kahrltyn Haigyl had no idea how he heard the warning shout through the bedlam raging all about him, but he ducked instinctively backward … just in time to avoid the length of broken spar thundering down from above. He fetched up painfully against the wheel and nearly fell, but one of the helmsmen caught him in time.

He said something in thanks out of pure reflex, but his remaining eye was cold and bleak.

The end couldn't be long in coming now.

He looked the length of his command. The deck was littered with broken rigging and broken men, although there were remarkably few of the latter, given how long the engagement had raged.
Dreadnought
's armor stood undaunted against her enemies' best efforts, defying full broadsides delivered from as little as a hundred yards' range. The
face
of that armor had been dimpled by literally hundreds of rebounding round shot, and some of those round shot had found their way inboard through gunports. That was what had killed or wounded most of the forty or fifty men he'd already lost—those who hadn't been killed aloft. Three of her guns had been dismounted by direct hits, another was out of action with its slide jammed by another round shot, and a messenger from Paityr Gahnzahlyz had warned him they were almost out of bagged charges for the guns. Gahnzahlyz and his gunner's mates were frantically preparing more, but at the rate his men were firing.…

One of the stern chasers roared suddenly, and he wheeled in that direction. He peered through the aftermost angle-glass, and his lips drew back in a slash-lizard smile as he saw a screw-galley swerve to starboard, shuddering in agony while her mainmast went toppling over the side and smoke belched from the wreckage. Two of the galleys had already been sunk, yet his smile faded as nine more of them poured fire into
Dreadnought
. He didn't know what those damned guns of theirs were, but they were one hell of a lot heavier than anything their galleons mounted. They were slower firing, but they hit with enormous power. So far, none of them had managed to penetrate
Dreadnought
's armor, but they'd found one of her potential weak spots and started pounding away at her rudder. It was a difficult target at the best of times—which the steadily rising waves and strangling clouds of blinding smoke definitely weren't—but if enough of them fired at it long enough, someone was bound to get lucky.

Something screamed through the air above the deck, and Haigyl swore viciously. Chain shot. Chain shot was the only thing that made that unearthly, vicious screaming sound. It wasn't the first time this bloody day he'd heard it, either, and he knew why he was hearing it now. Someone aboard one of those attacking galleons had realized they couldn't defeat
Dreadnought
's steel-clad sides, so they were trying to kill her mobility exactly like those screw-galleys attacking her rudder. Other galleons' captains had had the same idea earlier, but anyone who got close enough to use the short-ranged anti-rigging ammunition had to come close enough for
Dreadnought
's six-inch guns to demolish his ship even more rapidly than he could take down her rigging.

Unfortunately, her rate of fire had dropped as exhaustion clawed at her men and it took longer for shells to reach the remaining guns from below. More of the enemies crowding in around her were staying in action longer, getting off more fire of their own before they could be crippled or driven off, and her rigging had already been severely damaged. Her fore topgallant mast had been shot away over an hour ago, taking the fore and main royal masts with it. Thirty feet of her jibboom had been shot away, as well, and the flying and working jibs had gone with it. Now, as the chain shot wailed overhead, a tearing, ripping sound came from above as the mizzen topmast disintegrated just below the topmast cap. The broken spar fell like thunder, and this time the main topgallant came with it. The mast ripped through the protective netting rigged above the decks, crushing half a dozen men, fouling three more guns in the starboard broadside, and then plunging over the side like a sea anchor.

He felt it like a blow to his own body, and swiveled the angle-glass in the direction from which the chain shot appeared to have come. It was hard to even estimate where it might have come from in the wild confusion of smoke, muzzle flashes, and burning galleons, but his eye narrowed as he suddenly saw a familiar profile cleaving through the smoke.

That was no Dohlaran-built ship! That was a
Charisian
galleon, one of the ships Dohlar had taken from Gwylym Manthyr, and Kahrltyn Haigyl snarled.

He'd known from the beginning that
Dreadnought
couldn't escape. The entire purpose of his plan had been to draw as many of the enemy down upon his own command as he could, sacrificing his ship—and his men—so that as many of Ahbaht's ships as possible might escape. And he'd also known from the beginning that his ship could not be allowed to fall into the enemy's hands. Every man aboard her had known what that meant, yet he'd seen no disagreement in any of their eyes … not after what had happened to the last Charisians to surrender honorably to a Dohlaran admiral. He'd made sure Stahdmaiyr and all
Dreadnought
's other lieutenants understood their duty to prevent that from happening and personally supervised the laying of the fuses.

But
this
. He hadn't hoped for this final gift, and his single remaining eye was a fiery coal as he flung himself across the deck.

He tripped, almost falling, and his mouth tightened as he looked down and saw Dahnyld Stahdmaiyr's body. One lens of the lieutenant's spectacles had been shattered by the splinter, blasted from the ironclad's rigging, which had driven through his eye socket and into his brain. Even through the bedlam and the screams and the thunder of the guns, there was room in Kahrltyn Haigyl for a burning stab of regret. But he'd be along to join his first officer soon enough, and he shook himself free and grabbed the shoulder of the midshipman in charge of the nearest three-gun division.

“Sir?!”

The youthful midshipman stared at him, eyes wild in a filthy, powder-stained face, and Haigyl pointed at the topsails edging closer behind another howling salvo of chain shot.

“There's your target, boy!” he bellowed, his mouth inches from the youngster's ear. “Mark her down and then
sink the bastard!
”

The midshipman stared at him a moment longer, then looked at the looming topsails and nodded fiercely.

“Aye, Sir!” he shouted back, and turned to his gunners.