“Tell Alyk I’ll be along shortly,” he said, then lowered the double-glass to smile crookedly at Pharsaygyn. “And if you’re going to tell me he wasn’t your accomplice in coming out to drag my arse into the conning tower, please don’t.”
“That obvious, were we?” Pharsaygyn returned his smile unrepentantly.
“Let’s just say subtlety isn’t your strong suit,” Zhaztro said. “Besides, if it’s six miles for us, it’s only four and a half for Riverbend, which means—”
* * *
“Range eight thousand, Sir,” Lieutenant Gyffry Kyplyngyr said, looking up from the voice pipe which connected HMS Riverbend’s gunnery officer to her conning tower. “Lieutenant Metzlyr requests permission to open fire.”
Unlike Admiral Zhastro, Captain Tobys Whytmyn had already retired into that conning tower. It wasn’t because he was any more concerned about Dohlaran artillery at this range than his admiral, but there was going to be plenty of concussion, blast, and smoke from Charisian artillery all too soon. Under the circumstances, he preferred having the conning tower’s armor between himself and the muzzle blast of eleven 6-inch guns.
Call me a wuss, but I’d really like to keep my eardrums intact a little longer, he reflected.
“Very well,” he acknowledged, peering through the starbard angle-glass at their target. “Bring us another two points to larboard, Helm.”
“Two points larboard, aye, Sir.”
Petty Officer Riely Dahvynport turned the wheel easily, despite the fact that Riverbend’s rudder was far more massive—and much, much heavier—than any of galleons’ or galley’s rudder had ever been. The gleaming hydraulic rams deep in Riverbend’s bowels answered to his touch, and the ironclad’s course curved to the west. She continued to approach Cape Toe, but her new heading would open her broadside, allowing every one of her starboard guns to bear on the batteries.
Whytmyn let his ship settle onto her new course, then looked over his shoulder at Riverbend’s second lieutenant.
“Very well, Gyffry. Tell Tairohn he can open fire whenever he’s ready.”
“Aye, Sir!” Lieutenant Kyplyngyr acknowledged with a huge grin and disappeared down the ladder like a lizard into its hole.
* * *
Well, that can’t be a good sign, Ahlfraydoh Kwantryl thought, standing in the embrasure beside his assigned 10-inch Fultyn Rifle.
Lieutenant Bruhstair’s section was fully manned now and Lieutenant Rychardo Mahkmyn, Battery Number One’s commanding officer, had taken over his and Bruhstair’s post on the observation tower. As far as Kwantryl was concerned, he was more than welcome to it, too. The tower had been heavily sandbagged, but there was an enormous difference between sandbags, however thickly piled, and the solid earth of the battery’s thick, protective berm.
That was particularly pertinent at the moment, since the lead ironclad had just turned far enough to present its broadside to Cape Toe. Somehow, Kwantryl doubted they would have done that if they didn’t figure they were—
* * *
“Fire!” Tairohn Metzlyr barked into his voice pipe at the base of HMS Riverbend’s rangefinder.
Not only did the rangefinder give him an accurate distance to his target, but his present perch was also high enough—and the lenses in the rangefinder’s angle-glasses were strong enough—to give him an excellent view of it.
Nothing happened for another five seconds. And then—
* * *
“Langhorne’s balls!” someone gasped.
Fortunately, whoever it had been was somewhere behind Lieutenant Bruhstair, impossible to identify. Not that even a stickler like Bruhstair would have wasted time and energy castigating the malefactor under the circumstances.
The heretic ironclad disappeared behind a stupendous gush of fiery smoke.
HMS Triumphant had been entirely too close to a Charisian galleon when it exploded in the Kaudzhu Narrows. The stunning concussion of that moment, the flaming wreckage flying across his own ship, setting fire to Triumphant’s main topsail, was something Ahlfraydoh Kwantryl had no desire to repeat. Yet the volcanic eruption that blotted out his view of the ironclad was at least as bad. It was also eight thousand yards away, but that had its own drawbacks. Like the fact that at that range it took several seconds for the heretics’ shells to reach their targets, which gave a man all too much time to think about what was headed his way.
Kwantryl stepped back from the mouth of the gun embrasure. He was no more obvious about it than he could help, and he had ample time to put some of that nice, solid berm between him and the incoming fire.
Ten seconds after they’d been fired, eleven 6-inch shells came shrieking down on Battery Number One. They weren’t as tightly grouped as Lieutenant Metzlyr would have preferred. Five of them actually overshot the battery entirely, but that wasn’t a complete loss, because one of them scored a direct hit on one of the wagons Lieutenant Makadoo had reported to Admiral Sarmouth.
The heavy freight wagon disappeared in a savage explosion as the 12-foot-long coast defense rockets in its launching frame exploded. A huge mushroom of smoke, flame, and dirt rose over two hundred feet into the air and half a dozen fire-tailed comets screamed out of it at crazy angles. But the defenders had built high earthen cofferdams between those wagons, putting each of them into its own mini-redoubt, and those cofferdams channeled the blast upwards rather than out to the sides, where it might have taken other wagons with it.
Five of the other six shells slammed into the battery’s berm, drilling into it as Eraystor’s shells had drilled into Battery St. Charlz in the attack on Saram Bay, and Ahlfraydoh Kwantryl’s jaw tightened as their powerful explosions sent shockwaves rippling through his flesh.
The eleventh and final shell sizzled just above the top of the parapet and crashed into the base of the observation tower. The heavy sandbags smothered much of the explosion, but shell fragments sliced upwards through the tower platform’s floor like white-hot axes, killing three of its seven occupants … including Lieutenant Mahkmyn.
And then, eleven seconds after their shells, the thunder of HMS Riverbend’s guns rolled over the battery.
* * *
“Eleven thousand yards in four minutes, My Lord,” Ahrlee Zhones announced. He had to speak fairly loudly as he stood at Baron Sarmouth’s elbow because both of them had already inserted their protective earplugs.
“Thank you, Ahrlee,” Sarmouth acknowledged.
He and his youthful flag lieutenant stood on the flag bridge’s starboard wing as Halcom Bahrns followed Riverbend and Eraystor. Gwylym Manthyr wouldn’t be approaching Cape Toe quite as closely as her smaller consorts, partly because she drew more water and partly because no one could be certain the Dohlarans hadn’t planted any of their sea-bombs to protect those waters.
Actually, Sarmouth knew exactly where Earl Thirsk had put his minefields. As a result, he knew all of the armored ships could have come within as little as four thousand yards of the battery. There was no way he could have explained how he’d come to possess that knowledge, however, and he had a reputation as a canny, methodical officer to maintain.
Besides, even if there weren’t any sea-bombs, there were those rocket wagons he hadn’t been supposed to be able to know about. If worrying about mines he knew weren’t there kept his ships outside the range of rocket launchers he knew were there, that was fine with him. He’d been delighted when the first wagon exploded under Riverbend’s fire, and three more of them had been destroyed since.