S. Stirling - The Reformer

"A monstreme?" he said, bewildered. "A galley propelled by monsters?"

The wheels reversed and whipped froth mast-high as the ram slid into the quinquereme's stern with a smashing crunch of timbers. The weird vessel backed off smoothly, and the quinquereme settled by the stern as water rushed into the huge rift. Its deck boiled with men as the hundreds of oarsmen ran screaming on deck, brushing aside the marines posted at the hatchway and throwing themselves into the water like fleas from a dying dog, heads turning the water black.

"What makes it move ?" Jeschonyk cried, bewildered.

"At a guess, sir, it has something to do with fire-look at the smoke coming out of those two tubes."

Demansk thought that that was the most likely logical explanation. He sympathized with the half-dozen vessels he saw beating a hasty retreat northwards, although he'd see their commanders poled and their crews decimated if he survived this. His gut was showing him pictures of monstrous clawed feet pounding a treadmill inside that iron weirdness, and huge fanged mouths gasping out chuff. . chuff. . Jeschonyk was flinching in time with it, nerve shattered.

A thunder-loud noise rippled across the water, overriding the clash of timbers and the screams of thousands of men in pain and fear of death. A billow of smoke rose from the odd square structure on the forecastle of an Islander quinquereme. Less than a second later, a fountain of splinters and body parts rose from a Confed vessel. More jets of smoke, and the prow of the Confed vessel dissolved in a shower of smoke and wreckage; when it cleared water was already running over the decking. Square fins rose out of the water and swam closer, waiting. Demansk could feel the blank black eyes and hungry mouths beneath them. That was normal, at least. They always got scavengers around a battlefield, land or sea.

Then the Islander vessel's forepeak vanished in an explosion even louder, and left a huge bite out of the structure-enough to shatter the upper part of its hull as well.

"Whatever that thunder-weapon is, it isn't always reliable," Demansk said aloud. "They smote themselves, by the gods!"

He looked around. "You! Escort the Speaker below!" There was a cubbyhole of a captain's cabin on a trireme. "Sailing master!"

"Sir?"

"Take a look at that. . thing. Doesn't it look to you as if those wheels are pushing it through the water?"

"Sir. . I've never seen anything like it in all my life, and I've been at sea since I was six. Yes, that's as likely as anything."

The iron ship had just rammed another Confed quinquereme. This time it hung up for a moment, ram caught by a pinch of its victim's shattered timbers. Brave men leapt down from the quinquereme to its deck. . and over into the sea, as their hobnailed sandals slipped and slid helplessly down the sloping iron. Demansk could see one man striking sparks as he windmilled for an instant and then went over with a splash.

"Lay me a course to ram it right in the center of the port wheel. Hundred-commander!"

The underofficer in command of the ship's Confed marines came up at a run. His face might have been carved from granite, but it was wet with sweat and rigid with tension under the transverse-crested helmet.

"Sir!"

"Have your men take off their marching sandals-I want 'em barefoot."

"Sir?" The man had been obviously, prayerfully thankful for orders; now he looked as if he feared the Justiciar might have joined the day's madness.

"Look at that thing. No, don't stare, just look . It's obviously timber, plated over with iron like a scale cuirass. Hobnails won't grip. Feet will! There are men inside, and I intend to kill those men."

"Yes, sir !"

The man strode off, bawling at his command. Demansk caught a strong whiff of the smoke boiling out of the iron ship as his trireme heeled and turned; honest woodsmoke, right enough.

If there are men inside, and not monsters -he thrust an image of claws on treadmills aside- then they have to be steering from that little boxlike thing in front of the tubes. So they can't have a very good view, looking through slits like a close-helmet, and with all that smoke.

He gave a quick, unaccustomed prayer to Wodep and Allfather Greatest and Best that he was right. His life and the Confederacy's western provinces both depended on it.

"Ramming speed!" he ordered. The iron ship was swelling with frightful suddenness.

* * *

"That's discouraging them," Esmond said.

Another Confed trooper on the beach staggered three steps backward and dropped, arms flung wide and shield spinning away. An arquebusier beside one of the Revenge 's steering oars chuckled and stepped back, letting his assistant and loader work. They moved in a coordinated dance, automatic now, grinning past the powder smuts that turned their faces into the masks of pantomime devils. Esmond's galley rose and fell with the surf, but the gunmen on it and the rest of his squadron were keeping the hundred-odd Confed troopers on shore from interfering.

"Line's hitched!" a sailor said, climbing over the stern naked and glistening wet.

Esmond nodded. "Take her out."

The oars had been poised, waiting. Now they dipped, driving deep; there was a unanimous heaving grunt from below, and again, and again. .

"She floats!" the steersman said, letting his oar pivot down into water deep enough for it. "We've got her off!"

Esmond looked about with pride; five of his six ships were towing captives, the enemy ships coming after them oarless and sternfirst, the traditional sign of victory at sea. The other five triremes of the Confed squadron were burning hulks, or sunk. One was sticking out of the waves, its bronze beak planted firmly in the sandy mud of the shallow coastal waters. Wreckage floated past with the tide. .

. . an awful lot of wreckage. Esmond looked seaward, losing the diamond focus of commanding his own small section of the battle, and shaped a soundless whistle.

"Wodep!" he blurted.

The neat lines had vanished-he looked up at the sun and blinked astonishment-in only an hour. Instead there was a melee that stretched from here to the edge of sight, and almost to within catapult range of Preble's walls. Galleys were burning and sinking everywhere he looked; as he watched, a Confed quinquereme went nosedown and slid under the waves, shedding what looked like a coating of black fur at this distance, and that he knew was men clinging desperately to a life that sank beneath them. A little further off an Islander capital ship fired its four cannon directly into the deck of a Confed trireme, shattering the marines clumped to board into an abattoir mass of blood and torn meat, and punching through the deck into the crowded oar benches beneath. Even as it did a Confed quinquereme ranged up along its other side, and the boarding ramps slung up by ropes crashed down to link the ships, driving their iron beaks into the lower deck of the Islander vessel. Marines launched a volley of their weighted darts, and then swarmed across like implacable warrior ants. Here, there, a confusion no eye could take in. .

"Where's the ram?" Adrian was half-shouting, his eyes wild. "What has that donkey-fucking idiot done with my ship ?"

* * *

"Allfather!" Demansk snapped.

The shock of impact threw him to his hands and knees on the deck, driving bits of armor into his flesh. He pulled himself upright again, watching with savage glee as the deck of the enemy vessel surged backward and the wheel beat itself to flinders on the bronze-sheathed timber of his ship's ram. Splinters rained back, as dangerous as flying knives, but he ignored them. Then the remnants of the wheel froze, and an odd muffled screaming sound came from within the. . Iron Monstreme, Demansk thought. The monster-chuffing breath ceased abruptly.