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Hell's Foundations Quiver: Chapter Six

       Last updated: Sunday, March 1, 2015 15:13 EST

 

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    “Headcount?” Lieutenant Klymynt Hahrlys whispered harshly.

    “Everybody’s back but Edwyrds, Sir,” Platoon Sergeant Gyffry Tyllytsyn hissed back.

    “Damn.” Hahrlys muttered the single word quietly enough no one besides the platoon sergeant could have heard him. Then he inhaled deeply and thumped his senior noncom on the shoulder. “Well done. All the boys did well. Now get your arse back over to the warming tent.”

    “All the same to you, Sir, think I’ll bide a bit. Wouldn’t do t’ let Edwyrds think I didn’t care, now would it?”

    The platoon sergeant’s casual tone didn’t fool Hahrlys, but he’d felt the icy wetness when he touched the other man’s shoulder. Tyllytsyn hadn’t been assigned as one of the swimmers, but clearly his own adventures hadn’t gone exactly as planned, and Hahrlys heard the chatter of his teeth. He was shivering violently, as well, and the cutting wind wasn’t making that any better.

    “Trust me, he knows you care. Now get over there and warm yourself, damn it! Last thing I need is you going down sick on me.”

    There was a moment of silence, as if the platoon sergeant was weighing additional stubbornness. Then he drew a deep breath.

    “Happen you’re right ’bout that, Sir. I’ll be over yonder if you need me.”

    “Fine. Now go get warm!”

    Tyllytsyn touched his chest in a half-seen, half-guessed salute, turned, and made his way through the dense, ribbon-like fire willow leaves which screened the warming tent. Hahrlys watched him go, then pounded his gloved fists together and settled his chin deeper into his muffler, shivering as the wind keened across the river. It was out of the east, unusual for this time of year in the South March, and it wasn’y very strong. He was grateful for the way it helped carry sounds away from the Temple Boys on the farther bank; he was not grateful for the effect of even a light wind’s chill factor upon his men, and he felt a fresh stab of guilt. He knew it was irrational — he was the platoon’s commanding officer and he swam like a rock, two very good reasons for him to have stayed right where he was — yet that impeccable logic did precious little to assuage his stubborn conviction that he should have been out there on the river leading his men.

    Oh, don’t be any stupider than you have to be, Klymynt! he snapped at himself. All you’d’ve managed would’ve been to drown yourself. Assuming you didn’t give away the entire operation splashing around before you went under. You could always’ve added that to your accomplishments. And wouldn’t the Earl have been just delighted when you did?

    He took a quick turn along the bank, a dozen paces either way, elbows brushing the fire willows’ leaves, eyes straining across the black water into the rising mist while he worried about his sergeant. Mahthyw Edwyrds was a good man, one of his best. He’d volunteered for his part of tonight’s mission, and despite his present anxiety, Hahrlys was glad he had. There wasn’t another man in the entire battalion as well qualified for it.

    Most of the charges had been placed by four-man teams operating from the Imperial Charisian Army’s folding canvas boats. Placing the charges themselves had been tricky — not to mention cold and dangerous —in the darkness, but their experience clearing the channel at Yairdyn had helped a lot, and the boats had been effectively invisible.

    There’d never been any possibility of using a boat — especially one that large — for the charge Edwyrds had volunteered to place, however. The outpost Hahrlys had spotted the day before was within thirty yards of where it had to go, and the pickets were undoubtely alert, since the line of scuttled river barges was critical to Sir Fahstyr Rychtyr’s defensive plans, and Rychtyr wasn’t about to let anyone catch him napping.

    Especially now.

    He’d demonstrated his ability as one of the Church’s better generals even before Duke Harless marched off to his rendezvous with disaster, and he’d clearly been informed of the arrival of HMS Delthak at Thesmar. That was almost certainly the reason he hadn’t opted to hold Trevyr. The Seridahn was much narrower where it flowed through the town, but it was also deeper, with too strong a current to be blocked easily. It would have split his defensive position, and if Delthak had gotten into his rear it would have been impossible to withdraw his troops from the Seridahn’s eastern bank under fire. Besides, the town’s position at the Seridahn’s confluence with the St. Alyk had lost its strategic importance with the fall of Brahnselyk.

    That was why he’d pulled his main force another twenty miles upriver, to a point where the Seridahn broadened to the next best thing to a half mile. The current was slower, the water was shallower, and the navigable channels were constricted. All of that had made it easier to sink blocking barges where he needed them, and the river narrowed once more as it passed between steep bluffs immediately upstream. He’d erected a massive twenty-four-gun battery atop the western bluffs, protected by a curved earthwork and positioned to cover the barricade with fire. Its height gave it good command, and the narrower river meant its guns could engage anything that got by the barge line at ranges of as little as a hundred yards.

    It would be difficult to miss anything the size of an ironclad at that range.

    Earl Hanth, however, had no intention of letting Rychtyr lock down the river, which was why Klymynt Hahrlys and his engineers were out here. It was also why Mahthyw Edwyrds had undertaken the riskiest part of the entire mission, because unlike any other member of Hahrlys’ platoon, he was an experienced salvage diver. Not only that, he was an experienced Chisholmian salvage diver, and the water around Chisholm was at least as cold as the Seridahn River in March. Edwyrds had been instructed to bring his equipment with him when he deployed to the Republic, no doubt for moments just like this one, and he’d seemed confident he could handle tonight’s mission.

    Of course he did, Hahrlys thought bitterly. If he wasn’t confident, he’d never have admitted it. Besides, he knew as well as you did that he was the best man for the job. Just like he knew you were counting on him to be stupid enough to step up and volunteer.

    That was how it always was with the good ones. They stepped up, took the chances, and too damned many of them got killed doing it.

    The lieutenant made himself stop pacing and raised one hand, shading his eyes as if that could help him see through the darkness.

    Edwyrds had gone about his preparations calmly. In addition to his training as a diver, he was a skilled kayaker, like many Chisholmians, and he’d borrowed one of the light one-man craft from Major Mahklymorh’s scout snipers for the mission. The scout snipers’ kayaks were designed for stealthy incursions, made of black canvas which would be all but invisible in the darkness. After that, he’d enlisted two members of his squad to smear thick, insulating sea dragon grease over his tight-fitting canvas diver’s coverall with its lining of Corisandian rubber, double and triple-checked the seal of his diving glasses, and stood patiently while his assistants greased his face, as well. Then he’d strapped the air bladder of heat-treated rubber to his back, checked the mouthpiece — the “regulator,” he’d called it — and adjusted his weight belt and canvas and rubber gloves, climbed into his kayak, and paddled away into the night.

    He couldn’t take the kayak all the way across without being spotted by the Dohlaran sentries, so the plan had been for him to moor it in the shadow of one of the half-awash hulks farther from the bank, go over the side, and swim the rest of the way. That should at least get him close enough to reduce the total swim and the risk of hypothermia. But something must have gone wrong. He should have been back twenty minutes ago, and —

    Hahrlys froze as something splashed. He strained his eyes, peering into the dark, and it splashed again. He stood a moment longer, then went tearing down the bank, wading out into the icy water. It was more than waist-deep, and he felt himself half-floating and half-wading, felt the dangerous pull of the current, but he refused to stop. Another step. Just one more, and then —

    A gloved hand rose feebly from the water, and he grabbed hard with both his own hands. His right hand slipped on a thick layer of sea dragon grease, but his left hand caught the other man’s glove and he heaved backward. Silt shifted treacherously underfoot and the current plucked at Edwyrds’ body, prying, levering, trying to drag both of them out into the river’s grasp. It was far stronger than Hahrlys was, and he felt himself being sucked deeper and deeper. The water was shoulder-deep now, slopping at his chin, but this was one of his men. If the river took one of them, then it took —

 

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    “Hold on, Sir!”

    His head whipped around, startled out of the intensity of his battle with the river, as Platoon Sergeant Tyllytsyn grabbed his pistol belt from behind.

    “Don’t let go, Sir! Not yet!”

    Something went around Hahrlys’ body. The cold had already numbed his extremities, but he felt the rope jerk tight. Then —

    “One more second, Sir!”

    Tyllytsyn thrashed past the lieutenant. He was a shorter man. While Hahrlys’ feet were still on the bottom, the platoon sergeant was swimming, but he stroked strongly and the lieutenant felt a sudden easing of the current’s pressure as Tyllytsyn got a firm grip on Edwyrds’ weight belt.

    “Got him!” the platoon sergeant gasped. “Now let go and let them haul you in, Sir!”

    “No.” Hahrlys didn’t recognize his own voice. Was that because it sounded so hoarse and breathless or because his cold-numbed brain wasn’t working very well? “You’ll need help pulling him out of —”

    “Let go,” Tyllytsyn repeated, the two words hard and unyielding. “Happen I can swim, Sir. An’ I was smart enough t’ tie onto a line before I went swimmin’, too. Now let go!”

    Hahrlys gaped at him for another moment, his brain churning sluggishly, then nodded.

    “Whatever you say, Gyffry,” he murmured, and released his grip. The rope around his waist plucked at him insistently, dragging him back the way he’d come, and he managed to grip the rope and turn in the same direction, holding onto the line and letting his legs and body float behind him.

    By the time two of his men had hauled him ashore, three more had Tyllytsyn and Edwyrds within a few feet of the bank. Someone else floundered out into the water to help pull Edwyrds out, and Hahrlys managed to crawl to their side. He was probably more hindrance than help, he thought later, but he didn’t worry about that at the time. He got a firm grip on Edwyrds and added his own feeble efforts to the fight to get the sergeant free of the water.

    They dumped him on the muddy bank and Tyllytsyn peeled off the other noncom’s swimming glasses. He pulled the bladder mouthpiece out from between Edwyrds’ tight-clenched teeth, and put his ear directly beside his mouth.

    “He’s still breathing!” he announced. “You three, get him up to the warming tent. Braishair, you and Wyltahn help the Lieutenant.”

    “And two of you help the Platoon Sergeant, too,” Hahrlys said. Or that was what he tried to say, anyway. He was pretty sure afterward that all that actually came out was a slurred mumble, but that was all right.

    That was just fine.

 

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    “Yes, Pawal?” Hahlcahm Bahrns looked up from the last of his scrambled eggs as Trynt Sevyrs, his steward, admitted Lieutenant Blahdysnberg to his day cabin. The overhead oil lamp cast shadows on the lieutenant’s face, dusting the puckered scar on his cheek, picked up courtesy of a ricocheting rifle bullet during the Canal Raid, with darkness.

    “The picket boat just brought word, Sir. The engineers say they got the charges placed.”

    “Did they?” Bahrns laid down his fork, reached for his hot tea, and sipped deeply. Then he lowered the mug. “How many did they lose?” he asked in a much quieter tone.

    “None of them, apparently.”

    “None of them?”

    Bahrns blinked. He hadn’t been able to refute Admiral Hywyt’s logic, and the advantages if the mission succeeded were amply worth the risk, but he’d never believed the engineers could pull it off without losing someone.

    “According to the coxswain who delivered the message, they did come pretty close to losing at least one man, Sir,” Blahdysnberg admitted. “But they got him back in the end and it sounds like he’s going to be fine after all.”

    “And they got all the charges placed?”

    “That’s what they say, Sir. And I’m ready to take the word of anyone with big enough balls to even try setting them, myself. And the lieutenant in charge — a Lieutenant—” he glanced at the note in his hand, turning it to catch the lamplight “— Bryahnsyn, it says — lit all the fuses right on the dot at five-thirty.”

    “Can’t say I disagree with you about the size of their balls,” Bahrns conceded. Then he hauled out his pocket watch. “If he lit them off at five-thirty, I make it another forty minutes or so, assuming the fuses work the way they’re supposed to.” He closed the watch with a snap. “That being so, I suppose it’s time we cleared for action.”

 

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    It was still dark when Bahrns stepped out onto HMS Delthak’s larboard bridge wing and into the bite of an icy breeze. The ironclad’s superstructure was like an island rising from the thick river mist, and a trailer of funnel smoke wisped down across the dying night to greet him. The black gang had gotten steam up in ample time, and for once he envied the hot, oily cave in which they labored.

    He could see precious little, but at least river currents were constant, not like the tricksy and capricious tide. He knew where his ship was, where she had to go, how the set of the current would try to prevent her from getting there, and what she had to do when she got there anyway. And Bryahnsyn’s timing had been good. The eastern sky was already a tiny bit paler — unless that was his imagination — and he gazed upriver, waiting for the signal to begin.

    He’d come to love his squat, unlovely command. There were times — a lot of them, actually — when the stink of funnel smoke was far from pleasant, or when talcum-fine black dust coated every surface after re-coaling, that he longed for the days when all his command had needed was the pressure of clean wind on canvas. But those times came and went, and even at their worst, they were minor considerations beside Delthak’s speed, maneuverability, and power.

    And her pumps and propellers when the sea turns bitchy, Halcom, he reminded himself. Let’s not be forgetting those little advantages, either!

    He regretted the fact that he’d been forced to give up four guns in each broadside when they rearmed his ship before sending her to Thesmar, but there hadn’t been any choice. The new breechloaders were twice a thirty-pounder’s weight and over twenty feet long.

    Unlike the thirty-pounders they’d replaced, the new mounts were fitted with handwheel elevation gear, and the toothed gears which rode the new, modified deck rails gave his gunners much more precise control of their pieces. The armored shutters had been bolted permanently closed over the empty ports, and the joints between the shutters and the casemate armor had been heavily caulked to prevent leaks. That had shown its worth during the storm-lashed voyage from Siddar City to Thesmar. But the Delthak Works had also fitted each of the new guns with a rounded gun shield that pivoted with the gun as it was trained around.

    In many ways, Bahrns was as pleased by those shields as by the guns themselves. Most of Delthak’s casualties during the Canal Raid— like the scar on Blahdynsberg’s cheek — had come when small arms fire found its way through the opened ports while the guns were run out. That wasn’t going to happen now. In fact, he really wished he could simply leave the guns permanently run out, the way the new-build ironclads were designed to do. Running them all the way in was a backbreaking task, even with the auxilliary steam “donkey.” Unfortunately, the shields, for all their virtues, weren’t perfect. They leaked, and Delthak’s port sills were too close to the water. That was why the guns had to be run fully in so the original port shutters could be closed and secured before he risked taking her to sea in anything much above a dead calm.

    But those long barrels, especially matched with the slower-burning “brown powder,” gave them enormous power. The standard six-inch shell was almost four times the weight of a thirty-pounder smoothbore shell, and according to the Delthak Works, it struck with more than seven and a half times the energy. Theoretically, the new gun had a range of fifteen thousand yards at its maximum elevation of fifteen degrees, although no gunner could hope to hit another ship at ranges much in excess of four thousand. His own ship’s motion would have made that impossible. Firing from the mill pond smoothness of the Seridahn River, however, ought to be a rather different kettle of fish, and he was eager to try them in action for the first time.

    Of course, first he had to get into position, and that was likely to prove . . . interesting.

    He opened his watch again, holding its face to catch the light from a conning tower view slit. The eastern sky was definitely lighter. In fact, according to schedule, the festivities ought to have already kicked off, but he wasn’t surprised they were running a little late. If he’d been in charge of cutting those fuses, he would have given himself a rather more generous margin of error than the nominal timetable required, and —

 

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    “All right, you’re relieved,” Lieutenant Sandkaran growled.

    As military formalities went, it was sadly lacking, Lieutenant Bryahnsyn reflected. On the other hand, Erayk Sandkaran was a surly fellow at the best of times, and he didn’t like getting up before the crack of dawn any more than anyone else did. For that matter, Bryahnsyn couldn’t for the life of him imagine why it was necessary for a sixteen-man outpost to be commanded by an officer in the first place. That was the sort of thing platoon sergeants were for, in his opinion, which Sandkaran obviously shared.

    Not that he or Sandkaran were likely to raise that point with Colonel Sheldyn. That was usually a bad —

 

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    Earl Hanth’s command had been redesignated the Army of Thesmar in recognition of its defense of that city. Despite its magnificent new name, however, it remained lower in supply priority than its fellows. The Army of Shiloh had been shattered; the Desnairian Empire had lost eighty percent of its rifles and new-model artillery; and while the Royal Dohlaran Army had a greater potential to regenerate, it wouldn’t be doing that anytime soon. So it was reasonable to give priority to the armies farther north, where heavy and decisive combat could be expected no later than May or June.

    Because of that, Hanth had received none of the new bolt action rifles and only a handful of the Mahldyn .45 revolvers. The 4th Infantry Brigade had brought along its organic mortars and field artillery; two additional batteries of four-inch muzzle-loading rifles had accompanied the same wave of reinforcements; and Hanth had a plenitude — indeed, an excess — of thirty-pounders on field carriages. They’d done him proud in his attack on Cheryk, and while the naval angle-guns Admiral Hywyt had landed to defend Thesmar were too immobile to take on campaign, the Delthak Works had compensated by supplying him with enough new mortars to equip five additional support platoons.

    And as a consolation prize for the M96 rifles he hadn’t received, Ehdwyrd Howsmyn had sent along eight hundred additional six-inch shells, with even more in the supply chain behind them . . . and just under a hundred tons of Sahndrah Lywys’ newest brainchild. On a pound-for-pound basis, Lywysite was roughly two and a half times as powerful as black powder, because the shock wave of its detonation propagated at over twenty-three thousand feet per second while black powder’s detonation velocity was less than two thousand. That gave Lewysite a much greater shattering effect, and since it weighed twice as much per cubic inch, the same weight charge could be packed into half the volume. And that meant it could be formed into neat sticks, ten inches long and one and a quarter inches in diameter, each of which weighed just under twenty ounces . . . and packed the effectiveness of over three pounds of black powder into barely fifteen percent of the black powder’s volume.

 

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    The explosions weren’t simultaneous. That would have been expecting the impossible. But there were over a dozen of them, spread over a window of less than three minutes, which was very respectable timing . . . and a vast relief for all concerned. Especially for the engineers who’d placed the charges. They’d felt a certain trepidation at the knowledge that the fuses inside those charges had been lit even before the ominous, pitch-sealed packages were handed to the men responsible for putting them where they belonged before they blew the hell up.

    Ehdwyrd Howsmyn and his minions had provided the engineers with a demolition fuse — a variant on the improved metallic time fuses he’d introduced for smoothbore artillery shells the year before — for those moments when it wasn’t expedient to simply light a length of quick match and run for cover. Essentially, it was a solid, disk-shaped bronze casting whose upper surface bore a spiraling groove or channel packed with a very slow-burning compound that crept along the channel at a rate of only a foot an hour. It was sealed with a special varnish, then covered with a protective tin lid marked in increments, each equal to two minute’s burning time, which followed the line of the channel. When it was time to emplace the charge, an awl was punched through the tin at the appropriate time — up to a maximum of two hours — and flame was applied.

    In theory, it provided a reasonably accurate — and reasonably safe — timing device. The only problem was that none of the engineers in question had ever before actually worked with the things, and no one could have blamed them for approaching their task a bit gingerly. Now they stood on the river bank, Sergeant Edwyrds still wrapped in a thick cocoon of blankets and leaning on Platoon Sergeant Tyllytsyn, and cheered each white-and-brown, mud-stained column of water as it erupted in the predawn gloom.

 

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    “I do believe that’s our signal, Crahmynd,” Halcom Bahrns said, leaning in through the conning tower door as the final explosion roared. “I think we can proceed as planned, assuming that’s convenient.”

    “Aye, Sir!” The flash of a white-toothed smile was just visible in Petty Officer Crahmynd Fyrgyrsyn luxuriant brown beard.

    “Ahead half please,” Bahrns continued, glancing at the telegraphsman as Fyrgyrsyn turned the wheel, bringing Delthak around in a slow circle to point upstream.

    “Ahead half, aye, Sir!”

    The telegraphsman swung his polished brass handles and the ironclad quivered as her twin screws turned faster.

    Bahrns stepped back onto the bridge wing while she gathered speed and folded his arms atop the bridge wing rail as white water began creaming back from her blunt bow. He could see quite a bit better in the slowly strengthening light — well enough to pick up landmarks on either bank above the mist — and he grunted in satisfaction as he realized Delthak was almost exactly on course. Not that accurate navigation would help a lot if Admiral Hywyt had gotten his calculations wrong. It was entirely possible he was about to damage his vessel severely, perhaps even sink her, although that was unlikely. Even if he did, the river was shallow enough that refloating her should be fairly simple, and it was far more likely those closely spaced explosions had shattered the sunken river barges as planned. In fact, he could already see broken sections of planking spinning downstream to meet him. Given that Delthak displaced twelve hundred tons and would be moving at approximately six knots when she reached the barrier, she should shoulder her way through whatever remained without too much trouble. The biggest risk, actually, was that one of her propeller blades might hit something big enough to damage it, and repairing that would be far more difficult than merely floating her once more. If she cleared the barrier, on the other hand, the Army of the Seridahn would suddenly find itself in what Emperor Cayleb liked to call “a world of hurt.”

 

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    Ahrnahld Bryahnsyn climbed back to his feet as the deluge of water, mud, shattered pieces of river barge, and dead fish finished thudding down around him. He didn’t remember flinging himself facedown, although it had certainly been the right thing to do. Lieutenant Sandkaran hadn’t, and he lay unconscious, bleeding heavily from a scalp laceration.

    Bryahnsyn felt a distant pity for his fellow lieutenant, but it was buried under the sheer shock of that rolling series of explosions. At least he knew now what Kaillyt must have seen the night before, although Shan-wei only knew how the heretics had managed to get boats or swimmers across that icy expanse of riverwater.

    He was still in the process of working out why they’d managed it when a fresh thunder — this one the explosion of hundreds of mortar bombs and angle-gun shells — crunched down on the Army of the Seridahn’s defenses like the heel of Chihiro’s war boot. He crouched, wheeling towards the sound of the guns, then jerked back towards the river as something screamed impossibly.

    A blazing limb of the sun reached above the horizon, touching the low-lying river mist —swirling in torment from the force of the explosions — with rose and gold. That was all he saw for a moment, but then something moved above the mist, like an island rolling arrogantly upriver, contemptuous of the current which tried to stay its progress.

    The ironclad surged towards the cleared gap, huge and black, impossibly long guns protruding from its sides and across the front of its broad casemate, screaming its fury in a thick, white plume of whistle steam. A man in a watch coat stood on one bridge wing, peering upstream through one of the heretics’ double-barreled spyglasses, and smoke streamed from its tall funnels. A growing mustache of white wrapped itself around the ironclad’s stem, and as he watched, its bow smashed a splintered length of wreckage aside.

    It went charging past, and he and his men clapped their hands over their ears as the dreadful shriek of the whistle crashed over them.

 

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    Bugles sounded high and urgent, drums thundered, and Major Failyx Sylvstyr burst out of his hut in his shirtsleeves, hatless, napkin still clutched in one hand. His head whipped around to the southwest, where the bellow of enemy artillery laid a fiery surf of explosions, shrapnel, and shell fragments across the Army of the Seridahn’s deeply entrenched front, and his jaw clenched.

    That bombardment was entirely too ferocious to be anything other than the prelude to a serious attack, and he wondered how well the dugouts and entrenchments were standing up to it. They were considerably stronger than the ones which had protected Cheryk, but were they strong enough? The heretics’ rifled guns — of which, thankfully, they seemed to have relatively few — had more penetrating power and heavier bursting charges than anything his own twelve-pounders could produce. The engineers had done their best to dig deep enough and pile dirt and sandbags high enough to give the infantry a decent chance of surviving, but only time would tell whether or not they’d succeeded.

    As one of the Army of the Seridahn’s senior artillery commanders, Sylvstyr had been briefed on the new “Fultyn Rifles” which were supposed to become available “any day now.” He’d believe they were coming when he actually saw one, but he hoped desperately that they really existed and might even perform as promised. He was proud of his gunners, of their efficiency and determination, yet that pride only made him even more bitterly aware of how outclassed their weapons were. And if the stories about Guarnak were true, nothing the Royal Dohlaran Artillery currently had could hope to stop the heretic ironclad if it got loose on the upper river. That was a point of significant importance to Failyx Sylvstyr, because it was his regiment that Sir Fahstyr Rychtyr had dug in atop the river bluff to keep just that from happening.

    Sylvstyr didn’t know how he’d drawn the short straw, but he’d done the only thing he could: saluted and then emplaced his guns behind the thickest earthen parapets he could throw up. In addition, he’d built four foot-thick walls of sandbags between guns, putting each of them in its own protected bay, and roofed the entire position with heavy logs and four more feet of earth. Building those works in the midst of a cold, rainy South March winter had been no easy task, but at least —

    Something shrieked, shrill enough to be heard even through the heretic guns, the drums, and the bugles. Failyx Sylvstyr had never heard anything like it in his life, yet he knew instantly what it had to be.

    He turned back to the river, and his mouth was a thin, bloodless line as the ugly black carapace of the heretic ironclad surged through the golden glow of river mist, trailing twin banners of smoke.

    “Stand to! Stand to!”

    He heard other voices repeat the order. Then more bugles were sounding, calling his regiment to war, and he flung himself into the heavily sandbagged battery command post with a silent prayer to Langhorne and Chihiro.

 

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    “There’s the battery, Sir. ’Bout six points on the larboard bow.”

    Captain Bahrns swung his double-glass to the indicated bearing and grunted.

    “Got it. Good eyes.”

    “Thank’ee, Sir!”

    The lookout’s pleasure at the compliment was obvious, but most of Bahrns’ attention was focused on the battery itself. If their spy reports were as accurate as usual, it was likely to prove a tough slabnut to crack. On the other hand, his breechloaders had been designed to crack nuts just like it.

    “Clear the bridge!” he commanded, still peering at the raw earthen face of the enormous battery. It was high enough its guns might just be able to score on the thinner armor of the decks and casemate roof, but the angle would be shallow if they did. “Inform Master Blahdysnberg that we’ll be needing his gunners soon,” he continued. “And bring her a point to starboard, if you please!”

    Acknowledgments came back, and he felt the lookouts moving past him through the conning tower door. He stood where he was for a moment longer as Delthak swung slightly away, presenting her broadside more fully to the battery. Then it was his turn, and he stepped over the raised coaming and swung the armored door shut. One of the lookouts dogged the latches, and he nodded his thanks and stepped across to the forward vision slit on the larboard side.

    The first furious gouts of gunsmoke blossomed from the heavily dug-in field guns, and he raised an eyebrow in ungrudging respect. They were quick off the mark, those gunners, and Delthak’s armor rang like a hammered anvil as twelve-pounder round shot ricocheted from her casing.

    “Slow to one quarter,” he said. There was no point dodging about, and the lower speed would improve his own gunners’ accuracy.

    “One quarter speed, aye, Sir!” the telegraphsman sang out, and Bahrns stepped to the voice tube, uncapped it, and blew down it to sound the whistle at the other end.

    “First Lieutenant!” Pawal Blahdysnberg’s voice acknowledged.

    “I believe it’s time you earned your princely salary, Master Blahdysnberg. You may open fire when ready.”

    “Aye, aye, Sir!”

    Bahrns let the voice pipe cover snap shut and stepped back to the vision slit just as HMS Delthak’s six-inch rifles spoke in anger for the very first time.

 

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    Major Sylvstyr felt a fresh, fierce surge of pride. Even surprised by the ironclad’s appearance, his gunners had gotten off their first salvo before the heretics could fire. The waterspouts clustered around the ironclad were proof they’d taken time to aim, as well, and at least nine or ten had scored direct hits.

    Which appeared to have been just as effective as the hits Bishop Militant Bahrnabai’s gunners had registered at Guarnak.

    He caught his lower lip between his teeth, peering out the observation slit through his spyglass, and his heart sank like a stone as he got his first really good look at his opponent.

    Whatever those run-out guns were, they weren’t the thirty-pounders the ironclad had used against Guarnak. Those barrels were longer than any gun he’d ever heard of, which suggested they were even more powerful than he’d feared, but how in Shan-wei’s name did something that long run back in to reload? He couldn’t imagine how it might be done, but however they did, the rate of fire must be incredibly slow. For that matter, how did they swab out and extinguish the sparks from the last round before loading the charge for the next into the muzzle? And —

    The ironclad fired.

    The muzzle flash was incredible, a bubble of fire raging out above the river’s surface, burning away the mist, laying a ripple pattern of shockwaves across the water. The volcanic eruption of smoke was enormous, and it was brown — dark, dense, thick brown smoke!

    That thought had just begun to register when six six-inch shells struck their targets almost simultaneously, and Sylvstyr staggered to their earthquake arrival.

    Sweet Langhorne! How the hell much powder are those things filled with?!

    The shells drove deep before they exploded, and even black powder could blow an enormous crater when there were eleven and a half pounds of it in each shell. At six thousand yards, Delthak’s armor piercing shells would have penetrated four inches of solid, face hardened steel armor. She wasn’t firing armor piercing . . . but the range was less than two hundred yards, and she certainly wasn’t firing at face hardened armor.

    One of her six shells drilled into the face of the bluff below below the battery and ripped its hole harmlessly into the inoffensive dirt and clay. But the other five struck the parapet face, and Failyx Sylvstyr discovered that he hadn’t made it thick enough, after all.

 

---

 

    Shell bursts erupted along the shore, and Bahrns showed his teeth as the earthwork between two of the gun embrasures blew heavenward in a vortex of fire, smoke, and dirt. The embrasure to the right of the point of impact disintegrated, and he thought he could see the muzzle of that field gun buried in the spill of earth and ruptured sandbags. He wasn’t sure about the second gun; it might have survived, if its crew was unreasonably lucky. But there was no question about one of Delthak’s other shells. It landed almost directly under a third twelve-pounder’s barrel and the explosion ripped open its emplacement and threw the shattered gun high into the air.

    Down on the gundeck, the big rifles recoiled, then slid smoothly back into battery under the urging of the hydropneumatic recoil system. Gunners turned the heavy breech blocks and swung them open, and the waiting swabs hissed into the breeches to extinguish any lingering embers, followed by fresh sixty-eight-pound shells and twenty-pound bags of powder.

    Twenty seconds later, they fired again.

 

---

 

    Not possible. That’s not possible, damn it!

    Failyx Sylvstyr stared in disbelief. Those preposterously long guns hadn’t run back in at all! They’d merely surged backward several feet, then slid right back into firing position. And then, impossibly quickly, they did fire again. His twelve-pounders’ maximum rate of fire was no more than four rounds per minute — one every fifteen seconds — even with a superbly trained crew. There was no way guns with the massive destructive power the heretics’ had revealed could fire equally quickly! It simply couldn’t be done!

    But the heretics were doing it. Somehow, they must be loading the accursed things from the breech end, like their damned infantry’s rifles!

    Another hurricane of devastation ripped through his regiment’s position, rending and shredding, setting off ready charges in a cascade of secondary explosions, and Major Sylvstyr’s stomach was a frozen iron ball as he realized just how quickly that demon-spawned ironclad was going to tear his command apart.

    And they weren’t even scratching its paint.

    Bile rose in his throat. His men were dying about him, and they were dying for nothing. Surely, whatever God demanded of them it wasn’t to sacrifice their lives uselessly when their weapons couldn’t even hope to damage the enemies who were killing them!

    “Get them out!” he roared, staggering out of his command post and down the length of the earthwork, feeling his way through the smoke, the stench of explosions, and shattered human bodies. “Get the men out of here, damn it!”

    He collided with Captain Hylmyn, one of his battery commanders, in the smoke and chaos and grabbed him by both shoulders.

    “Get your men out, Henrai!” he shouted, his voice frail in the tumult and the madness while he shook Hylmyn. “Get them out — and pass the word! We can’t fight that with twelve-pounders!”

    “But . . . but, Sir —!”

    “Don’t argue, damn you!” Sylvstyr snarled. “Get them out — now!”

    Fresh thunderbolts unleashed new explosions and the screams of torn and broken men tore at their ears. Hylmyn stared at him for a single heartbeat longer, then jerked a choppy nod and spun away, shouting orders of his own.

    Sylvstyr left him to it, fighting his way down the length of the earthwork through the confusion and the dying, bellowing the order to retreat again and again. Some of his men heard him and refused to obey. Others would never hear anything again, but most of his gunners — those who were still alive, anyway — heard and obeyed.

    The major felt the shame of running away. He knew — he knew — it was the right order to give, but still he felt the shame. And he knew his men would, as well. He didn’t know what the inquisitors might say about this day’s work, but General Rychtyr would understand. He’d know there’d been no choice but to —

    Another six-inch shell stabbed into the ruins of Failyx Sylvstyr’s regiment. This one found a magazine, and the major felt himself flying through the air. Then he felt a shattering impact . . . and nothing else at all.

 

---

 

    “Secure the guns, Master Blahdysnberg,” Halcom Bahrns said, and his voice was flat, his eyes dark. “Tell the crews I said well done.”

    “Aye, aye, Sir!” Pawal Blahdysnberg’s jubilant voice came back up the voice pipe. “Thank you!”

    “You’re welcome,” Bahrns replied. “You deserve it.”

    He closed the voice pipe, undogged the conning tower door, and stepped back out onto the bridge wing. The long, brown fog bank of Delthak’s gunsmoke rolled away on the chill, strengthening breeze. More smoke rose in a thick, choking plume above the plowed wreckage which had once been a battery of twenty-four twelve-pounders. There might be as many as five intact guns buried in those ruins, he thought grimly. There couldn’t be more of them.

    I wonder how Pawal will feel about those compliments of mine when he has time to come above decks and really see what we’ve done? I know Baron Green Valley’s right. You don’t win a war by dying for your cause; you win it by making the other poor damned bastard die for his. And Langhorne knows the perfect battle from any CO’s viewpoint is one in which none of his people die. But this —! It was like . . . like clubbing baby chicks. They couldn’t possibly hurt us, and we . . . .

    He stared at his ship’s handiwork, listening as the thunder of the army’s artillery rolled and bellowed, and then he drew a deep breath and turned back to the conning tower.

    “Come a quarter point to larboard and increase to half ahead,” he said quietly.

    “Quarter point to larboard and half ahead, aye, Sir!” PO Fyrgyrsyn responded, and if there was any doubt in his voice, Bahrns couldn’t hear it. At the moment, that mattered. It mattered a lot, because Fyrgyrsyn mattered.

    Captain Halcom Bahrns squared his shoulders and raised his double-glass again as he looked for the tow road along the top of the western riverbank. The one he was supposed to take under fire to deny it to the enemy and cover the landing of the Marine battalion Earl Hanth was sending upriver in Delthak’s wake. It was unlikely they’d be able to cut off Rychtyr’s retreat entirely. The Dohlaran general had been too smart to dig in on the eastern side of the river. He’d probably believed — hoped, at least — that his barricade of river barges would protect his rear, but it was obvious he hadn’t been prepared to risk his army’s existence on that belief. And their spies reported another barricade across the river five miles farther north. However willing the engineers might be, they wouldn’t be able to blow a gap through that obstacle before most of the fleeing Dohlarans were already past it on their way to Evyrtyn. So, no, they weren’t going to keep Rychtyr from falling back up the line of the Seridahn, but they could damned well make it a costly process.

    And that, he reminded himself, glancing back at the shattered defensive battery, was what fighting a war was all about, wasn’t it?