David Weber - How firm a foundation

A hurricane of round shot hammered his ship, although only HMS Loyal Defender, Saint Adulfo ’s next ahead, was able to turn to lend her guns to Saint Adulfo ’s defense. Holy Langhorne, astern of Saint Adulfo, might have assisted her as well, but she no longer had any attention to spare. Captain Bahrdahn’s Undaunted had fetched up to windward of her, and Tymkyn heard the thunder of Undaunted ’s artillery as the other galleon came into action.

Still, between them, Saint Adulfo ’s and Loyal Defender’ s broadsides mounted forty-four guns to Destiny ’s twenty-five… or what would have been twenty-five if she hadn’t been so heavily hit on the way in. In fact, she probably had no more than eighteen or nineteen guns, and Tymkyn peered through the smoke, waiting for the spring to bring her fully around. He wasn’t going to waste that first broadside by firing one second before he was sure all of his guns bore on the target, and The twelve-pound shot from Saint Adulfo ’s starboard battery struck Destiny ’s youthful third lieutenant just below midchest and tore his body in two.

Aplyn-Ahrmahk saw Tymkyn flung aside in a spray of blood and torn flesh. At almost the same instant, he realized Trahvys Saylkyrk, Tymkyn’s assistant in command of the larboard battery, was down as well-wounded or dead, he couldn’t tell. Up until his elevation to Admiral Yairley’s flag lieutenant, that had been Aplyn-Ahrmahk’s duty station when the ship cleared for action, and old reflexes took over. He didn’t stop to think; he simply acted, leaping up onto the larboard gangway. His feet slid in Tymkyn’s fresh blood despite the sand scattered over the decks for traction, and he clutched at the main shrouds for balance to keep himself from falling.

“As you bear, lads!” he screamed, then waited two more heartbeats.

“Fire!”

Saint Adulfo heaved as another broadside blasted out of her smoke-streaming gun muzzles, and there was a sharper, louder report from forward as her number three gun blew up despite the reduced charge. Fortunately, the gun tube simply split lengthwise. Half its crew was killed, the ready charges being brought up for it and the number four gun were touched off in sympathetic detonation by the flame gushing from the shattered cannon, wounding four more men, but it could have been worse. Indeed, it had been worse the last time one of Saint Adulfo ’s guns burst.

But that didn’t change the fact that it had burst, and at the worst possible time, Captain Plyzyk thought bitterly. The entire forward half of his starboard battery was thrown into confusion by the sudden-and fully understandable-terror a bursting gun always produced.

“More hands to the forward guns!” he shouted. “Let’s get some fresh-!”

The Charisian galleon fired at last.

HMS Destiny ’s larboard side belched flame and smoke. She’d closed to within less than fifty yards of Saint Adulfo before she anchored, and the air trapped between the two ships was a fiery maelstrom as her broadside fired for the first time. A quarter of her company lay dead or wounded before she fired her first shot, and even as Aplyn-Ahrmahk shouted the command, a twenty-five-pound round shot cut through her mainmast three feet above the deck. The mast toppled into the smoke like a weary tree, and rigging parted, broken ends lashing out, flailing like maddened serpents. Men who got in the way of that heavy, tarred cordage were swatted casually from their feet, usually with broken bones and torn flesh, and others scrambled madly for safety as the entire massive complex of the mainmast came thundering down. The fore topgallant mast followed it, and the galleon staggered as if she’d just lost her rudder all over again.

But the men on her larboard guns ignored the chaos and confusion. They paid no heed to the damage control parties racing to cut away the wreckage and drag the injured and dying out of the tangles of fallen cordage. They were totally focused on their guns, for this was the reason Destiny had taken so much damage. This was what she’d come to do, and as they heard the youthful ensign’s familiar voice, they did it.

Ehrnysto Plyzyk saw the Charisian mainmast start to topple and opened his mouth to cheer. But before he could, the smoke between the two ships lifted on a fresh furnace blast, and this one didn’t come from his guns.

The deck hammered against the soles of his shoes. It was the first time he’d ever felt heavy shot striking a ship, and a corner of his mind recognized the difference between the recoil from his own guns and the sharper, lighter, and yet somehow more… vicious shock of enemy fire.

And then sixteen of the eighteen shells which had struck his ship exploded almost simultaneously.

“Reload! Reload! ”

Aplyn-Ahrmahk heard the gun captains’ shouted commands and looked around, trying to find Lieutenant Symkee to take over the larboard battery. But then something smacked him sharply on the shoulder.

“Go, Hektor!” His head whipped around as Admiral Yairley smacked his shoulder a second time. “Go!” the admiral repeated, and actually smiled. “Captain Lathyk can have you back for the moment!”

“Aye, aye, Sir!”

The ensign leapt into the disciplined madness, knowing better than to disrupt the choreographed training by shouting unnecessary orders. Instead, he watched the gun crews, his eyes trying to be everywhere at once, ready to intervene if something went wrong.

But nothing went wrong. Destiny ’s gunners had trained for two hours every day during their weary voyage from Tellesberg to Iythria. They’d polished old skills and learned new ones as they grappled with the novel concept of exploding shells, and Aplyn-Ahrmahk watched as the number two on each gun removed and pocketed the lead patch protecting the fuse before the shell was loaded. The fuse times had been set by Payter Wynkastair, Destiny ’s gunner, before the ship ever cleared for action, and at the end of the action, the number two on each gun would be required to hand over those patches as proof the shells had been properly prepared for firing.

“Run out! Run out!”

One by one the galleon’s surviving guns were brought back to battery, and gun captains all along the line raised their left hands, right hands gripping the firing lanyards.

Captain Plyzyk clawed his way up from his knees, shaking his head like a dazed prizefighter while he tried to make his brain work. He didn’t know what had hit him, and he probably never would, but he was pretty sure whatever it was had broken his right shoulder blade.

And even at that, he realized, he was better off than his ship.

Smoke-much of it wood smoke now, not just powder smoke-streamed from shattered holes ripped through Saint Adulfo ’s timbers and planking. Some of those holes looked big enough for a man to walk through. They weren’t, of course, but they looked huge compared to the much smaller holes round shot punched through a ship. Splintered and broken wood was everywhere, torn canvas and severed lengths of rigging littered the deck, he heard voices screaming in mingled agony and terror, and at least half the midships upper deck twelve-pounders had been knocked over like toys. The bulwark in front of them was simply gone; the deck edge looked like a cliff shattered by a hurricane, and he realized three or four of the Charisians’ infernal “shells” must have impacted almost together to produce that damage.

But there was plenty of other damage to go with it, and someone grabbed him, dragging him bodily out of the way as his galleon’s mizzenmast came thundering down.

“Fire!” somebody screamed. “Fire in the cable tier!”