The ironclad’s guns bellowed again,
* * *
That’s got to be eighty-five hundred yards, Major Kylpaitryc thought as the dirt and debris thrown up by the nearest shell pattered back down around him. Most of that debris was fairly small, but a few larger chunks thudded down onto the heavily sandbagged roof of his observation post. I didn’t really expect them to open fire from that far out. Or to be that accurate when they did, either!
He raised his spyglass, capturing the lead ironclad’s image once again as the huge, dense clouds of brown gunsmoke rolled astern. Part of that was the wind, which was already beginning to shred the cloud bank, but part of it was also the armored ship’s steady forward progress. The long, black fingers of its guns hadn’t recoiled at all, as far as he could see, and even as he watched, they belched huge, fresh bubbles of fire.
Langhorne! Something cold settled in the vicinity of his stomach. The reports from Geyra said they could fire those things quickly, but I didn’t expect them to be that fast! It couldn’t have been more than thirty seconds!
Battery St. Charlz’s Fultyn Rifles—especially the huge 10-inch weapons—could never hope to match that rate of fire. They’d be doing well to get off one shot every couple of minutes! Of course, the battery had many more guns than any single ironclad could bring to bear, but not all of St. Charlz’s weapons could be brought to bear on the same target, either. And unlike an ironclad, the battery wasn’t going to be moving.
And we don’t have to worry about an ironclad; we’ve got to worry about five of the frigging things!
He didn’t like how powerful the heretics’ shells appeared to be, either. According to the Desnairians, who’d actually measured one of the heretics’ shells which had failed to explode at Geyra, the ironclads’ broadside weapons fired only 6-inch shells, considerably smaller than the ones fired by their bombardment galleons. If that was accurate, however, then the Imperial Charisian Navy had managed to build a 6-inch shell which seemed to carry a bursting charge at least as big as anyone else’s 10-incher.
That’s going to hurt when they start registering a lot of hits, he thought grimly, lowering his spyglass and ducking involuntarily as four more dazzlingly white columns of water—tinged mud-brown at their bases—erupted from the Main Ship Channel. Two more shells burrowed deeply into the protective berm before they exploded, and fresh showers of debris came pelting down.
* * *
Eraystor forged onward, the range dropping steadily. She’d taken Battery St. Charlz under fire at a range of 8,400 yards—still 12,000 yards from Battery St. Rahnyld on the eastern end of Sharyn Island and 10,500 from Battery St. Agtha on East Island’s Cut Bait Point. That put her well beyond the effective range of the other batteries, although the range to St. Agtha dropped just as steadily as the range to St. Charlz.
At six knots, she’d need an hour to reach her shortest range to St. Charlz, at which point—assuming she held her intended course—she’d be less than one thousand yards from the muzzles of the Harchongese guns. It was a sobering thought … especially since those guns had yet to fire a single round.
“Signal Bayport to reduce speed!” Admiral Zhaztro ordered. “Captain Gahnzahlyz is to open the interval between her and Eraystor by at least a thousand yards.”
“Aye, aye, Sir. Bayport to reduce speed and open the interval to Eraystor by at least a thousand yards,” the signalman repeated. Zhaztro nodded, and the signalman and his assistant started pulling signal flags out of their bags.
The ironclad’s guns fired again, the shock of recoil hitting the soles of Zhaztro’s shoes like a hammer and Captain Cahnyrs leaned close to shout in the admiral’s ear in the—relatively—quiet interval between shots.
“Buying a little more time for Lynkyn to look things over before it’s his turn, Sir?”
“Couldn’t hurt,” Zhaztro shouted back with a shrug. “Can’t pretend I won’t be happier when the bastards shoot back and give us a better feel for what they’ve got!”
* * *
Major Kylpaitryc coughed and spat out a mouthful of grit, then dragged a watch from his pocket and peered down at its face.
Thirty minutes? He shook his head, feeling like a prizefighter who’d taken too many punches to the body. It has to be more than half an hour!
But he knew it hadn’t been, whatever it might feel like.
The ironclad’s side disappeared behind a fresh eruption of flame-cored brown smoke and two 6-inch shells came screaming across the top of the eastern berm. One of them slammed into the inner face of the western berm, blasting a huge divot out of the masonry backing the thick earthwork.
Brick shattered, men screamed, and Kylpaitryc cursed. Each of Battery St. Charlz’s guns was mounted in its own, individual bay—a vaulted chamber built out of thick, solid brickwork and then buried under as much as twenty feet of solid earth. Those bays were impervious to anything short of a direct hit … which was exactly what that Shan-wei-damned shell had just scored. Worse, the hit had come in from the bay’s rear, where it was open to St. Charlz’s small parade ground. The 8-inch Fultyn Rifle lurched drunkenly sideways, spilling from its fortress carriage and crushing one of its crew to death before the entire bay collapsed and buried him and half his companions.
Shouted orders brought more men on the run, ignoring the heretics’ fire as they dashed from their own protected positions to help the gun crew’s survivors dig frantically for their buried fellows, and Kylpaitryc shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts.
There was something more than a little terrifying about the ironclad’s remorseless, unflinching approach. The range had fallen from over eight thousand yards to barely three thousand, and the hellish ship had turned to present its full broadside to St. Charlz. Now eleven guns bellowed from it three times every minute, driving their merciless fire brutally into the earthworks, filling the air with smoke and dust.
How much longer was Bauzhyng going to wait? The heretics were already well within his five-thousand-yard range, and still he simply stood there, gazing out through the vision slit at the channel! Dust and dirt speckled his immaculate uniform and his face bled freely where a fragment of brick had flown in through the slit and opened an inch-long cut just below the cheekbone. Yet his expression was calm, almost contemplative, and Ahdem Kylpaitryc had discovered that he felt a deep admiration—almost a sense of affection—for the arrogant, fastidious “fop” who commanded Battery St. Charlz.
Another heretic broadside thundered, blasting into the fortifications outer face, and more screams arose, faint to Kylpaitryc’s brutalized ears. The ironclad was close enough now, firing rapidly enough, that its fire had finally started to shred even those high, thick earthen ramparts. Surely Bauzhyng had to—
“All batteries will open fire now!” Kwaichee Bauzhyng said.
* * *
“The bastards do have guns in there, don’t they, Sir?!” Alyk Cahnyrs demanded in tones of profound exasperation.
“I’m sure they do!” Zhaztro replied. “And sooner or later, they’ll have to shoot back!”
After thirty minutes’ steady firing, he felt as if he’d been hammered out on a flat rock and left to dry in the sun. So far, Eraystor had fired almost four hundred 6-inch shells into Battery St. Charlz. She carried only a hundred and twenty shells per gun, so that represented fifteen percent of her total ammunition supply … and almost a quarter of her total supply of standard shells. And still the Harchongians hadn’t fired a single shot in reply!