* * *
“Gutsy bastards,” Zosh Hahlbyrstaht said quietly.
Fleet Wing’s position, well to the northwest of the Dohlaran main body, put her safely beyond Caitahno Raisahndo’s reach. It also meant she was too far away to see a damned thing from deck level. Which was why Hahlbyrstaht and Hektor had climbed to the schooner’s maintop.
The first lieutenant wasn’t very happy whenever his CO went up the mast, although he knew better than to say anything of the sort. And the truth was that, even with only one working arm, the Duke of Darcos was nimble as a monkey lizard. He’d been scooting up and down warships’ rigging since he was ten years old, he’d always been blessed with an excellent head for heights, and that single arm of his had grown amazingly muscular since he’d lost the use of the other.
Hahlbyrstaht knew all of that. But he also knew the old sailor’s aphorism: “One hand for the ship, and one hand for yourself.” In his opinion, it would be just a little difficult for someone with one hand—period—to put that into practice if the ship pitched suddenly.
From their lofty perch, however, their double-glasses let them see only too clearly, and Hektor’s expression was bleak as they watched the screw-galleys’ charge.
“Nobody ever said they weren’t gutsy,” he said as fresh torrents of brown smoke burst from the ironclads’ sides. It rolled across the ships, driven by the wind, spreading away to leeward. “All the guts in the world aren’t going to get them out of this one, though.” He shrugged. “In their place, I probably would’ve pulled the screw-galleys back, slowed them down and gone in with the galleons for support. I can see arguments for doing it this way, though, and Raisahndo obviously intended for them to maneuver independently of the galleons all along. In a lot of ways, this only speeds that up, and if he can get them far enough into Admiral Darys’ face before the rest of his squadron gets there, the distraction quotient might be enough to—”
He broke off, his bleak expression turning to stone as HMS Javelin ran headlong into a pair of 6-inch shells. All of Sir Dunkyn Yairley’s ironclads and bombardment ships had been issued the “armor piercing” ammunition Admiral Seamount and the Duke of Delthak had developed for their rifled guns. It was intended more for drilling deep into stone fortifications than for killing warships, but it worked just fine against those, too.
Both shells punched cleanly through Javelin’s armor and exploded deep inside her hull. She was unreasonably fortunate in at least one sense, because her magazine didn’t explode right along with them. But the sudden, savage explosions were too much for a hull already driven to and beyond its limits.
Her back broke, and the combination of her whirling screws and the massive wind pressure on her sails drove her bodily under.
There were no survivors. Even if anyone had made it into the icy water, hypothermia would have killed them long before anyone could rescue them.
Forty seconds later, Arrow staggered sideways, rolling madly, as a shell hit her, as well. It missed her armor completely, and it didn’t even explode. But it did strike her mainmast ten feet above her deck, and eight feet of the heavy spar disintegrated in shrieking splinters. The mast collapsed instantly under the weight of its rigging and the fierce strength of the wind.
The screw-galley almost capsized, and the wrecked mast toppled overside, still fastened to her by the shrouds, pounding her hull like a captive battering ram. Axes and cutlasses flashed as her crew hacked frantically at the rigging, fighting to free their ship from its lethal embrace, and HMS Flail and Catapult swerved to avoid her as they continued their own headlong charge.
* * *
“The rest of their galleons are setting their royals, Sir!” Captain Sympsyn shouted in Admiral Darys’ ear.
The admiral turned to look at him, and Sympsyn pointed up to the lookout in the maintop through the smoke swirling across Lightning’s deck.
“All of them?”
“Yes, Sir,” Sympsyn confirmed, and Darys inhaled a deep, smoky lungful.
I sure hope Dunkyn was right about how close on these bastards’ heels he’ll be, he thought. If he’s very far behind them, this could get … dicey.
“Trying to pile in on us, make it a general melee. They want to break our line and swarm in close enough to board,” he said grimly, and Sympsyn nodded.
“Current range?” The admiral tapped the angle-glass at his side and smiled without humor. “I can see damn-all through the smoke from deck level.”
“Their van’s about two miles behind the screw-galleys,” Sympsyn said. “According to my man up there—” he pointed at the maintop again “—and he’s a good, experienced man—that interval’s increasing because of how fast the screw-galleys are going, and their main body’s as much as a mile behind that.” The flag captain shrugged. “Sounds like Raisahndo’s trying to close with us as fast as he can, but they’ve still got a long way to go.”
Darys frowned, brain whirring like one of Rhaiyan Mychail’s spinning jennies while he considered distances and wind speeds. If Raisahndo was setting his royals in this freshening wind, he was clearly willing to court damage aloft, even knowing any ship with crippled rigging would become easy prey. That could turn around and bite him, and even with the royals set, he’d be considerably slower than the screw-galleys.
Call it ten knots in these conditions with the wind where it is, he decided, and three miles from us to their van. Twenty minutes before they can reach us, and six minutes or so more for their main body. So that means.…
“We’ll finish dealing with the screw-galleys,” he told his flag captain. “Tell the gunners they’ve got fifteen minutes. Then we turn downwind.”
“Yes, Sir.”
* * *
Pawal Hahlynd’s face was an iron mask as HMS Halberd staggered. For a second or two, it seemed she’d shake off the blow. Then the Charisian shell detonated and she heaved madly. Her mast snapped, thundering down across her deck, crushing and maiming her people, but that wasn’t all that had happened. She began losing way almost instantly, far more quickly than a screw-galley should have, and Hahlynd’s jaw clamped.
Took out the cranks, he thought, trying not to picture the carnage in the cramped space below decks where the cranksmen stood literally shoulder to shoulder, laboring to drive their vessel through the water. An explosion in that confined space must have ripped the crewmen to pieces and painted the planking with their blood.
Well, they’d already had plenty of company. Arrow was still afloat, although it looked as if she was slowly foundering. That wreckage must have beaten in her planking like a hammer on wickerwork before her people managed to cut it away. Flail was also afloat … barely, and not for very much longer; there was no question that she was going down. Arbalest had blown up in a spectacular ball of fire, and Saber’s armored citadel had been gutted by a pair of 6-inch shells that had slammed through her bow armor and exploded almost simultaneously. Cutlass had been driven out of action while she fought a losing battle against the flames consuming her, and if Dirk’s citadel remained intact, her starboard broadside had been hideously maimed by the explosion which had ripped her flank like some slash lizard’s furious talon. He could see the blood flowing from her scuppers as proof of the casualties she’d taken, and though she continued to fight her way through the waves with heartbreaking courage, her combat value had to be … dubious.