The Sea Peoples(103)
“You couldn’t, Admiral,” órlaith said. “It’s suicidal, in the usual military . . . naval . . . terms. But the enemy are playing a different and longer game. I wish I’d realized that before we started. How long?”
Naysmith glanced to both sides. “Half an hour before the flanking elements grind their way through the enemy screens; possibly as little as fifteen minutes, possibly as much as three-quarters of an hour. Until then we’re on our own except for what comes up from behind us.”
That was the armed merchantmen crammed with troops. Alan Thurston was back there . . . probably wishing he was up here.
“We’ll just have to break the trap open from the inside, then,” órlaith said cheerfully.
Two more Korean ships came on, parting to pass the sinking one to either side; another was approaching from the same angle on the starboard bow. None of them stopped to pick up men from the dismasted ship as it listed to port and went down by the head. It might not go all the way down, since wooden ships were inherently buoyant and very hard to sink, but it would be awash quite soon.
Captain Edwards barked orders, and the hands at the wheel turned it slightly as the watch-officer pointed with her cane. The same commands set the deck-crews hauling and ran up from the mast-captains to the tops, and buntlines adjusted the hang and cant of the sails. Everything was stripped down to a minimum, fighting-sail as it was called, just the biggest in each the four tiers. The strong linen canvas glistened silvery in the bright sun, wet down enough to make its fibers swell to catch the least breeze, as well as making it less—a little less—likely to catch fire.
One of the many joys of naval battle, órlaith thought. Great swaths of burning cloth dropping on your head.
“We’re only going to get one broadside on each side off when they come in, ma’am,” Edwards warned the admiral.
Naysmith’s hand clenched on the hilt of her cutlass, probably without thinking of it. She’d fought on river barges as a young ensign during the campaign up the Columbia and Snake during the Prophet’s War, as well as against pirates and Haida corsairs since, all along the misty forested archipelagoes that stretched down the coast of Alaska towards Kamchatka.
“They’re sacrificing their fleet for a crack at this ship,” she said. “Over to you, Captain. This is a ship-to-ship engagement now.”
She gave a bleak smile. “Ship to ships, rather.”
He nodded, gave a considering look at the approaching ships, and said:
“Load grape. Guns to fire as they bear.” Then to órlaith: “Your Highness, if you’d care to take command of your meinie?”
That meant her personal followers; it would also be safer off the quarterdeck, though nowhere was really safe in a boarding action—even going and sitting on the ballast down by the keel increased your chance of drowning. órlaith nodded and made herself take breaths that were deeper and a little faster than reflex would have made them, building a reserve against extremity. The other monarchs and their personal guards silently formed up with her as she clattered down the companionway from the quarterdeck to the break beneath it, where the long sweep to the forecastle began.
Not many heads turned her way as they arrived. The sailing-crew was busy or waiting with tense focus for orders. Half-pikes and boarding axes, glaives and bucklers and quivers of crossbow-bolts were racked around the masts and against the inside of the thick four-foot metal-sheathed bulwarks that edged the deck. A final working party was scattering sand on the Douglas-fir planks. órlaith grinned tautly at the sight.
So our feet won’t slip in the blood. I remember back in Westria . . . you could see the red flowing out of the enemy’s scuppers like water.
She gave her own folk a brief smile and nod, then looked back up. The enemy ships were shockingly close, and more were coming in behind them. Beyond to either side flame bellowed into the sky, and masts shook and fell; the enemy were using their transports as living shields to slow the Montivallan frigates coming to the rescue of the flagship. That was like putting puppies up against hunting mastiffs, but each one-sided fight delayed them.
“Prepare to receive boarders!”
That was Captain Edwards’ voice from the quarterdeck, amplified through his speaking-horn.
“Fire as you bear!”
CRACK . . . CRACK . . . CRACK . . .
That was the big catapults cutting loose and their throwing arms smacking with shattering force into the rubber-padded stopping plates. Right on the heels came a malignant hiss. The load wasn’t roundshot; it was boiled-leather tubes full of thousands of eyeball-sized lead balls. Collars at the end of the throwing-trough stopped the tubes when the catapults were loaded with grape, but the balls kept right on going, through the scored paper that secured them.
The balls crackled like hail when they hit something hard, with a thunk when it was metal. When they hit flesh, it was more of a wet slapping. They scythed through the crowds of enemy fighters waiting to make the jump to the Montivallan frigate amid a chorus of startlement and agony.
“Down!” Heuradys barked.
The lighter sounds of the enemy’s deck-mounted catapults sounded. The knight clamped a hand on the backplate of órlaith’s armor and used it to jerk her head lower. Something went whirt overhead, like a giant arrow . . . which was what it was, a bolt from something that her people would have called a springald. Blocks and tackle and cables fell from overhead, as the sickle-shaped heads of the bolts cut through the rigging. So did half a sailor trailing a spray of blood that splashed across the ribbed steel of her sabatons where they rested on the deck.