S. Stirling - The Reformer

He grinned like a direbeast, and Adrian nodded agreement. The enemy ships grew nearer with the always-surprising speed of meetings at sea, where you could be alongside one minute and hull-down when you looked back. Suddenly the ant-tiny figures along the enemy rail were men, and human limbs could be seen through the oar ports of the outriggers as their rowers strained and heaved to a quickening beat of the hortator's mallets.

Adrian winced mentally, imagining being down there. . never knowing when a dart, or fire, or the bone-crushing blow of an enemy's ram was going to come through. Solinga had been a democracy for a long time after the League Wars-a democracy as far as freeborn male citizens were concerned, at least-and the main claim of the lower classes to equality with the farmers who provided their own armor was that it was the poor freemen who rowed the City's ships to battle. The Scholars of the Grove had always held that a specious argument, a sign of the City's decline. Now he was inclined to agree with the rowers.

His voice was steady as he spoke: "Aim for their catapults. The catapults only until further orders."

"Sor, yessor," Simun said, looking up from the port rail. The long weapons were leveled now, men kneeling with a hand over the lock to keep spray out of the priming powder, their barrels out over the uniform centipede motion of the oars. "Catapults it is, sor."

"Signaler, pass it along!"

Turning southward, the Emerald-manned ships were a line parallel to the coast, coming up on the Confed ships from the rear, with Esmond's in the lead. Four minutes of straining effort brought it level with the foremost Confed. Water was creaming up along the ram, curling down the side, and the ship had a slight rocking-horse motion as it clove the low swell.

"Open fire!"

Baaammmm.

Twenty arquebuses fired as one. The Confed ship had three catapults a side, two dart-casters and a stone-thrower, on pivot mounts. The stone-thrower fired, as the man standing behind it yanked the release-cord-not voluntarily, but as he was thrown backwards by a four-ounce lead ball smashing through his body and out the other side, to kill the man behind him as well. The rock fell halfway between the ships, a moment's unnoticed fleck of foam against the green-blue of the shallows.

Baamm. Baaam. Baaam . Over and over again, the long jet of dirt-colored smoke. The smell swept aft, sulfur and rotten eggs and the flint-on-steel scent underneath it. Less than half the shots struck the enemy ship, and less than half of those landed around the catapults, but enough did. He saw splinters flying from the machines and the deck they were mounted on; a throwing arm snapped forward as a holding line was cut; another pinwheeled up as a ball sliced through the twisted greatbeast sinew that powered it.

"They're out of action," Adrian said.

Esmond nodded, still smiling that disquieting smile. "Steersman, close us in-long arrow-shot."

Adrian turned to Simun. "Take out their archers and slingers."

Those had been crowding to the rail as the Emerald-manned ships approached, with the twenty or so Confed regulars standing behind them-as much to keep them to their tasks as to back them up; the missile troops were hirelings or noncitizen allied levies. A flight of arrows winged out, and fell a little beyond the foam lashed up by the galley's port oars.

"Fire!"

Baaammmm.

This time the target was bigger. Four men flew backwards, dead or dying-the heavy balls of the three-man arquebus would rip a limb completely off or turn a torso into a draining sack of ruptured flesh and shattered bone.

Baaam. Baaam. Baaam.

One of the arquebusiers whooped exultantly. "This is like gaffing fish out of a garden pond!" he shouted, and fired again.

Esmond nodded; he was looking back along the line. The other ships of his squadron were keeping pace and repeating his tactics; a little slower, perhaps, without Adrian to keep their arquebusiers on-target, but getting the job done.

When he turned back to look at the closest ship, the slingers and archers had vanished. He saw one take a running leap over the landward side of his vessel, and come up again swimming overarm-no Confed landsman there . Another tried the same, to fall overside with a Confed regular's assegai through his back. More were leaping down the hatchways, and the steady pace of the enemy vessel's oars went ragged as the missile troops threw themselves down on the lower gangway between the benches, anywhere to get away from the crushing, invisible death of the lead balls.

"Steersman! Close in!" he shouted exultantly.

The Confed marines threw their futile darts and waited behind raised shields-all but the last; he threw his down and ran, howling, until he splashed overside. He wasn't going anywhere but to the bottom, not with fifty pounds of armor on him. Esmond's ship was barely beyond oar's length from its opponent now.

"Adrian!"

His brother nodded. "Gunmen!" he called. "Targets of opportunity-grenadiers, prepare to throw." There was the slightest trace of a sigh in his voice. "Throw!"

His own grenade arched out with four others. Three struck; one straight down a hatchway, as if guided by Wodep's hand. The explosions were quieter than arquebus fire over this distance, but they scythed the trireme's decks free; the remaining sailors were over the side and swimming like eels, those not lying silent or thrashing and screaming. The arquebusiers were firing straight into the oarbanks now, through the ports or through the light planking of the deck; the massed shrilling of the oarsmen was deafeningly loud. And. .

"Sor!" Simun shouted from the gangway. "She's afire, my lords! Burnin'!"

Another look back along the line of ships showed two more in flames; one was grappled alongside a galley of his, and taken; another two were adrift, their oars limp as their entire crews swam for it. That left four unengaged, and they'd turned for the shore, hoping to beach their ships-at a guess, the Confed marines aboard had "insisted" on that with their assegais pressed to the helmsmens' kidneys, and others guarding the hatchways to keep the oarsmen at their tasks.

"Well enough," he laughed. "We can tow them off when they're beached. Bit of a present for the King!" He turned, shading his eyes with a hand. "I wonder how that's going?"

* * *

"Speaker Jeschonyk!"

The Speaker Emeritus of the Council of Vanbert was in a small boat, with an aide and two men rowing. He looked up at Demansk.

"My flagship is gone," he said. "There."

Demansk looked up as hands pulled the commander onto the trireme's quarterdeck. The Speaker's great quinquereme was wallowing, its starboard oars broken. From beyond it came a shape like nothing Demansk had ever seen by land or by sea, like a great turtle with two tubes belching smoke from the uppermost part of its. . deck, he supposed it should be called. . and a small square structure just before them. Wheels thrashed the water on either side, churning up more foam than a quinquereme's oars, and driving it forward as fast as a trireme at ramming speed. It gleamed like wet iron. . it was iron.

"But iron can't float!" he heard himself say.

"It is iron," Jeschonyk said bitterly from beside him; he started slightly. "Arrows bounce off it, catapult bolts do no damage-it sheared off the starboard oars of my ship and the one next to it in line, and-"

The iron ship was turning, a wide circle, much wider than a galley. After a moment it lay a hundred yards off, pointing at the command quinquereme's stern; the ram that split the water ahead of it as it gathered speed was entirely comprehensible, unlike the rest of it. Demansk could hear a mysterious chuff. . chuff. . from it as it made its run, like the panting of some monstrous beast.