Off Armageddon Reef (80 page)

The galley's stern windows disappeared, blotted away as
Dreadnought
's raking fire turned that magnificent sternwork into the mouth of a gaping cave of horror. Roundshot and grapeshot ripped down the full length of the ship. Splinters flew, men screamed, and the billowing smoke of the broadside hid the carnage of its impact.

There was time for only one shot from each gun as the galleon crossed
King Rahnyld
's stern, but Captain Manthyr's voice rang out.

“Off sheets and braces! Starboard your helm!” he shouted.

Duke Malikai's world disintegrated in a stunning eruption of devastation. He'd never imagined, never dreamed of, anything like the long, unending bellow of
Dreadnought
's broadside. Twenty-seven guns hurled round shot six and a half inches in diameter, each weighing over thirty-eight pounds and accompanied by twenty-seven inch-and-a-half grapeshot, into his ship. They came crashing in through the galley's stern, totally undeterred by the flimsy glass and carved planking, and smashed clear to the bow, killing and maiming anyone in their path.

That carefully aimed and timed broadside killed or wounded over a hundred and thirty of
King Rahnyld
's crew. Men shrieked as round shot, grapeshot, and splinters of their own ship ripped into them. Blood sprayed across deck planks in great, grotesque patterns, and men who'd never imagined such a hurricane of fire—men already demoralized and frightened by the inexplicable appearance of their enemies so many thousands of miles from Charis—stared in horror at their mangled crewmates.

Most of
Dreadnought
's fire went in below the level of
King Rahnyld
's aftercastle. Half a dozen round shot crashed directly through the galley's great cabin, exploding out from under the break of the aftercastle and cutting great, blood-splashed furrows through the men packing her deck. But at least two shots ripped upward, directly through the aftercastle, and Malikai staggered as a blizzard of splinters howled through the officers gathered there.

Something big, heavy, and fast-moving slammed into his own breastplate, nearly knocking him from his feet. But the armor held. The impact spun him around, just in time to see Captain Ekyrd stumble backward, clutching at the thick splinter which had driven into the side of his neck like a jagged-edged harpoon. Blood sprayed around the splinter, like water from the nozzle of a pump, and the captain thudded to the deck.

Malikai fought for balance as the final shots of
Dreadnought
's thundering broadside hammered into his flagship. His mind seemed stunned, as if it were caught in some thick, dragging quicksand. He stared about wildly, and saw
Dreadnought
passing clear of his ship to starboard.

The galleon put her helm over, turning steadily to port, taking the wind broad on her beam rather than directly astern. Her yards moved smoothly, with machinelike precision, as she settled on the port tack, a hundred yards to leeward, between
King Rahnyld
and Armageddon Reef, like a kraken between a new-hatched sea wyvern and the land.

The confusion and carnage her fire had wreaked paralyzed
King Rahnyld
. The galley's captain was dead; her first lieutenant was mortally wounded; her helmsmen lay bleeding their lives out on the deck. By the time her second lieutenant could begin reasserting control,
Dreadnought
had settled on her new heading and her broadside thundered again.

Fresh round shot battered into the galley's towering starboard side, not her flimsier stern. The thicker planking offered little more resistance to the galleon's heavy shot, but it provided more and bigger splinters to slice lethally into her crew. And as
Dreadnought
fired into her yet again, HMS
Destroyer
,
Dreadnought
's next astern, crossed
King Rahnyld
's wake and raked her all over again.

Malikai turned back from
Dreadnought
as
Destroyer
opened fire, and in the second galleon's thundering guns he saw the destruction of his fleet. None of his galleys could begin to match the concentrated firepower of Cayleb's galleons; they were hopelessly spread out and disordered while the Charisian ships were in a compact, well controlled formation, firing their guns with impossible rapidity; and galleys were at a hopeless maneuver disadvantage in the existing sea conditions. Numbers meant nothing unless they could be brought to bear, and his couldn't be.

He heard the flagship's second lieutenant shouting orders to the replacement helmsmen, fighting desperately to at least turn
King Rahnyld
's stern away from that terrible, raking fire. But even as the lumbering galley began finally, reluctantly, to answer to her helm, a round shot cut away her mainmast below deck level. It came thundering down, spilling over the side in a tangle of shattered timber, flailing canvas, and broken rigging. It smashed across the deck and into the water, and the galley lurched wildly, indescribably, as she found herself suddenly helpless. The wreckage alongside acted like a huge sea anchor, dragging her around, and
still
that merciless fire smashed into her again and again and again.

Malikai stared aft, his stunned brain reeling, as the
third
ship in Cayleb's line came crashing in.
King Rahnyld
had turned enough for HMS
Daring
's fire to hammer into her quarter, instead of directly into her stern, but the flagship wasn't really her primary target.

Duke of Fern
, the next galley astern of
King Rahnyld
, had shaken out one of her reefs as she fought to come to the fleet commander's assistance. She heeled dangerously under the greater sail area, but she also drove through the water faster…only to find herself driving straight into the fire of
Daring
's starboard broadside, as well.

Malikai cringed as the volcanic fury of the galleon's fire erupted. He could hardly see through the choking pall of gunsmoke, but the wall of smoke lifted on the fiery breath of yet
another
galleon's broadsides as HMS
Defense
came into action, as well. She blasted her fury into his ship, and into
Duke of Fern
, and behind her came HMS
Devastation
.

All he could hear was the thunder of Charisian artillery. It seemed to come from every direction—from
all
directions—as
Dreadnought
's consorts followed her around, pushing steadily southwest. They were faster—much faster—under sail than any of his galleys, and their guns fired steadily, mercilessly, with that same impossible rapidity, as they overtook ship after ship.

King Rahnyld
's motion was growing heavier and heavier. Her hull must be filling with water, Malikai thought vaguely as he staggered to the side. He leaned on a shattered bulwark, aware of the heaps of bodies and parts of bodies littering the aftercastle. The main deck was a chaos of corpses where the men Captain Ekyrd had assembled for the boarding attempt which had never happened lay piled in mangled drifts, and he looked over the side at the thick tendrils of blood oozing from the galley's scuppers. It was as if the ship herself were bleeding, a corner of his brain thought. And then something made him look up as
Devastation
swung around the shattered, slowly foundering hulk which had once been the pride of the Dohlaran Navy.

He raised his head just in time to see the thunderous flash of the galleon's guns.

It was the last sight he ever saw.

Dreadnought
forged steadily south, leaning to the press of the northeasterly wind. The thunderous cannonade astern of her continued unabated as the other ships of her column crossed the Southern Force's line of advance, then turned to follow in her wake.

The strong breeze rolled a billowing fog bank of gunsmoke towards the barely visible smudge of Rock Point, and the ferocity of the fire still roaring behind her indicated that at least some of the galleys north of Malikai's sinking flagship continued trying to fight their way through to the duke's side with futile gallantry.

Neither Cayleb nor Merlin was much concerned by that possibility. The entire enemy fleet was too spread out and straggling to concentrate enough ships for the sort of hammer blow it would take to break past the galleons' broadsides. If they wanted to come in ones and twos, Cayleb was content to leave the problem of their destruction to his captains' discretion while he concentrated on the rest of the Southern Force.

“I think we need a little more speed, Gwylym,” he said, glancing up from the billow of smoke still two miles ahead, where Admiral Staynair's column had also broken across the enemy's course, to check the sun's height.

Captain Manthyr glanced upward at the topsails and masthead pendant, gauging the strength of the wind, then waited while a fresh broadside thundered. The galley which had tried to break west, away from
Dreadnought
, staggered as the galleon's starboard guns hammered her from astern. Rigging parted, her single mast crashed over the side, and she rounded to as the wreckage dragged at her.

“Set the topgallants?” the captain suggested.

“For now,” Cayleb agreed.

“Aye, aye, Your Highness.” Manthyr lifted his leather speaking trumpet. “Master Gyrard! Hands to make sail, if you please! Let's get the topgallants on her!”

“Aye, aye, Sir!” the first lieutenant acknowledged the order and started giving orders of his own, and seamen from the port gun crews went scampering up the ratlines to lay out along the topgallant yards while others raced to the forecastle and afterdeck and along the spar decks above the guns to the pinrails to cast off sheets, buntlines, and clewlines.

“Loose topgallants!” Manthyr bellowed through his speaking trumpet, and the hands aloft ungasketed the sails, untying the gaskets which fastened the canvas to the yards. The captain watched them critically, fingers of his left hand drumming slowly against his thigh while his ship's guns put another bellowing broadside into the galley to starboard.

“Let fall the topgallants!” the captain shouted, and the hands aloft pushed the canvas off the yard into its gear.

“Sheet home the topgallants!” Manthyr commanded.

“Sheet home!” the officer in charge of each mast echoed.

“Ease the buntlines and clewlines!” the pinrail captains commanded, and the topgallant sails fell like vast curtains, billowing above the already drawing topsails as the powerful wind filled them.

“Haul around on the sheets!”

Dreadnought
leaned harder to the press of her increased canvas as her topgallants were braced round. She drove across the beam sea in sharp, white explosions of spray, and her starboard gunports dipped closer to the water. But the same increased angle of heel lifted her weather gunports higher, and she bore down upon the galleys ahead of her like a stooping hawk.

A final broadside from her starboard guns slammed into the galley to leeward, and Cayleb looked astern.
Destroyer
was setting her own topgallants to match the flagship, and beyond her, above the billows of smoke as she fired into the same hapless galley, he could see more canvas blossoming from the other ships in his column.

He glanced at Merlin with a tight, kraken-like grin, then turned back to the south as Captain Manthyr altered course very slightly to bring his port guns to bear upon yet another Dohlaran galley.