It wasn’t likely they’d land many hits there, but it was certainly possible. And even the best armored ship had to sink if someone stopped trying to make holes above the water to let air out and managed to punch enough holes below the waterline to let water in.
* * *
Kylpaitryc’s eyes streamed tears as he coughed explosively on harsh, sinus-raping smoke. St. Charlz’s rate of fire had slowed—after twenty-five minutes of furious action, the gunners were beginning to tire badly, but even more to the point, they’d had to reduce fire as the guns heated dangerously. Two of the 8-inchers had already burst, although—Praise Langhorne!—close to their muzzles and nowhere near as catastrophically as they could have, and he was frankly amazed they’d held up as well as they had. St. Charlz had been equipped with older, iron Fultyn Rifles (not that any of them were all that old), which had a much worse reputation for bursting than the newer, steel guns did.
But the Harchongians had never faltered for a moment, despite the risk of failing guns, and he felt a swell of vast, ungrudging pride in them. Perhaps it owed something to that phlegmatic, stoic endurance—that stolid ability to survive anything their masters did to them—for which Harchongese serfs were famed. But perhaps it didn’t, as well.
Kylpaitryc knew he’d never imagined such a tempest of fire and iron, of smoke and battering waves of overpressure. The torrent of heretic fire was a solid wall of hate, scourging the battery’s earthworks like the hammer of Kau-yung, and six more guns had been destroyed by direct hits or silenced by avalanches of earth and masonry, plunging down to block their firing embrasures. It must be as evident to Bauzhyng’s gunners as it was to the lord of foot’s liaison officer that if the rest of the heretic ironclads joined the battle, St. Charlz had to be wrecked from one end to the other by the time they were done.
It took more than resignation, more than fatalism, to face that sort of holocaust, and he recognized raw, unbending courage when he saw it.
The ironclad forged onward—taking fire from both sides now, as Battery St. Agtha joined the battle at a range of 7,500 yards. St. Agtha was sited farther above water level, with a better angle downward at the heretics’ decks, where both logic and the Dohlaran analysis of HMS Dreadnought said the armor had to be thinner. But the longer range, the smoke, and the 6-inch shells shrieking back into its gunners’ faces negated any advantage its gunners might have enjoyed. On the other hand, the ironclad was now under fire from over a hundred heavy guns. A lot of them were missing, judging by the continuous, tortured geysers of white water all about the ship. But a lot of them weren’t missing, too.
It was impossible to make out details through the walls of smoke, the ear-battering thunder of the guns, the explosions of the heretics’ shells, but it seemed to Kylpaitryc that their fire had decreased. They weren’t firing any more slowly, but they seemed to have fewer guns in action, and he bared his teeth at that thought. If they could inflict enough damage, cripple the lead ship, the heretics might break off the attack … and realistically, that was the best Rhaigair Bay’s defenders could hope for.
* * *
“Three inches of water in the bilge, Sir!” Lieutenant Tahlyvyr reported to Alyk Cahnyrs over the conning tower voice pipe. “Pumps’re handling it no problem … so far.”
“Understood,” Cahnyrs replied. “Stay on it, Anthynee.”
“Aye, Sir,” Eraystor’s engineering officer replied, and Cahnyrs let the voice pipe flap close and looked at Zhaztro, standing at his shoulder.
“Bastards are getting more of them in under the belt,” the flag captain said grimly.
“Not enough to make a difference … yet,” Zhaztro said, and Cahnyrs nodded.
“Yet,” he agreed.
It was almost impossible for them to hear one another as the bedlam roared and bellowed around the ship. The Harchongians were firing at least some explosive shells now, and the pounding of shell splinters—and pieces of decking, breakwaters, bridge faces, and Langhorne only knew what else—battered the conning tower’s armor like Shan-wei’s hail. The range was coming down on nine hundred yards, and the savagery of the engagement seemed to redouble with every yard Eraystor steamed. Four of her guns were out of action, now. Damage to her ventilators and funnel had reduced the draft to her boilers, reducing steam pressure accordingly. Everything above decks—everything not protected by armor—had been swept away as if by some fiery hurricane, yet she drove on through the heart of holocaust, firing back, her shells scourging the batteries.
It was impossible to make out details through the smoke, flame, spray, and dust—the conning tower’s vision slits were almost useless, and even the three angle-glasses protruding through the tower’s roof were three-quarters blind—but it seemed to Zhaztro that St. Charlz, in particular, was losing guns. There was nothing wrong with the courage and determination of the men behind those guns, but even though Eraystor was now in the field of fire of every gun on the battery’s western face, it seemed to him that they were actually being hit less frequently … from larboard, at least. Battery St. Agtha was larger, with more guns, and despite the longer range, it was scoring a lot of hits on Eraystor’s starboard side. But there were definitely fewer coming in from St. Charlz, so either the Harchonians were having more trouble finding their target through the blinding walls of smoke—which, he admitted, was a distinct possibility—or else Lieutenant Bahnyface’s gunners were dismounting and crippling their guns.
I hope to hell we are, anyway. Unless something totally unexpected happens, Eraystor’s going to clear the batteries’ fire in the next twenty minutes or so, but God only knows what kind of shape she’ll be in after she does. And then there’s the rest of the squadron. Not to mention the little problem of how we get the galleons and the other support ships into the bay if we can’t silence these frigging batteries! Even a Rottweiler would have trouble living through this kind of fire—there’s no way anything without armor could—and any galleon in the world would’ve been dismasted in the first ten minutes. So nothing besides the Cities is getting through if we can’t take these bastards out.
He gave himself a mental shake. Of course they’d silence the batteries eventually—one way or another. He wasn’t about to let these bastards stop him from doing that! But this sure as hell wasn’t Geyra over again. If the Desnairians had shown this kind of discipline, this kind of accuracy.…
* * *