David Drake: Reformer

Adrian looked up. "It's after midnight," he said. "Nobody'll be around."

"Deck watches, sor," Simun pointed out, nodding towards a dim lantern on the stern of one of the Confed vessels.

"But nobody on the captured ships, not yet. Take us in, but keep as near the middle as you can; beach her right next to the left-hand quinquereme of those four. When these" — he tapped the clay jugs—"start going off, things are likely to get a bit hairy, so be ready to push off when I get back."

"Bit hairy, sor." Simun chuckled softly. "Take yor time, but by Gellerix' cunt, don't linger, eh?"

The oars bit, and Adrian — slowly, cautiously — loaded one of the jugs into his staff-sling. The jugs held a mixture of fish oil, sulfur, naphtha oil that oozed out of rocks, and quicklime. Experiment had shown they'd burn like the heart of a forge fire and couldn't be put out. They were also fairly fragile.

"Coming up on the shore," he said. The darkness grew more absolute, as they ghosted into the shade of the captured quinquereme; it had the faint sewer stench a rowing vessel always did, even if the bilges were pumped regularly. "Lay on your oars."

The two men did, and Adrian hopped over the side. His sandals grated on pebbles and sand, and he reached back in for the sack of what Center, for some reason, called molotovs .

"Back in a minute," he said casually, and walked up the beach.

The rams of the quinqueremes almost glowed with Center's unearthly vision, serrated bronze catching faint starlight. Off somewhere a man's voice raised in song, then ended in a squall — probably a wakened sleeper hitting him, Adrian thought distantly. He walked casually: if you looked as if you belonged, you'd shed a casual glance — people saw what they expected to see. Turning, he took his stance and aimed. Left to right, he thought.

Swing, swing, throw .

The jug arched out, wobbling a little as the liquid within shifted. It struck the first quinquereme right on the forecastle, on the timber square added to bear the weight of the guns. Crash . Not very loud, but distinct amid the wave lap and insect buzz of the night. A flicker of light, as the air found the quicklime. Crash . One more, to make sure. Crash. Crash. Crash. Crash. Crash. Crash. .

Fire on every one of the four captured ships. Enough to brighten this stretch of beach quite perceptibly; paint and rope and dry pinewood caught easily. Now all he could do was pray.

probability of optimal outcome 51 % ±3,Center supplied hopefully. in this instance, "optimal" requires the survival of adrian gellert.

I'll still pray, Adrian thought, jogging back to the boat.

" Good to see ye, sor," Simun panted.

They shoved off and began rowing, not so quickly as to attract attention. . he hoped.

"Uh-oh."

A horn winded through the night, and then an alarm drum. With the gathering light from the burning ships, the harbor looked much smaller than it had in darkness. Much smaller, and the fire baskets on the entrance forts suddenly blazed, as they were swung in and then out again with a fresh load of pine knots. The huts nearest the beach held the deck crews of the Confed warships; men were swarming down to the shore, wading out and climbing up the sides of their vessels. Already officers were beginning to warp them away from the burning ships — excess caution, really. They were close, but not that close, and without rigging or sails aloft it would take more than heat and sparks to set them alight. Confeds might have been able to extinguish the fires on the captured ships if they'd gone straight there, Adrian mused — anything to distract his mind from what might happen, and what he couldn't do a thing about. They had no chance at all once they'd finished seeing to their own ships, but trained reflex was stronger than thought in an emergency. It had to be.

Flames licked higher from the prows of the ex-Islander warships. Adrian suddenly felt like a bug on a plate, his head whipping to and fro as he tried to see in all directions at once. Simun and his nephew were cursing in antiphonal harmony as they dug their oars in madly, like the chorus at a Goat Song festival play. Men were crowding onto the parapets of the wooden forts — archers. A six-oared launch put out from one of them, and the officer in the bows was pointing at him . More and more men ran down to the shore, and the growing buzz from the Confed camp was like some great beast awakening, grumpy and angry from its winter sleep. . and growling.

Sisst . A flight of arrows came slanting down out of the dark, into the water off the skiff's bow. Sissst . Closer now, and the raiders' own efforts were driving them further into range. The light grew ever brighter, as well. He could see quite plainly now, for several hundred yards; see the crew manhandling a catapult around on the tower top, a dart-thrower that could skewer a man at a thousand feet, much less the four hundred that separated his own tinglingly vulnerable body from it.

His head whipped back to shore. There were other small craft there; men were shouting and pointing at Adrian's skiff, and launching the boats. All men are initiates of the mysteries of death, he repeated to himself. And: Helga. Damn it. .

The world ended.

* * *

"What's that ?" Donnuld Grayn gasped.

"That is my brother," Esmond said, throwing up a hand and shouting.

He needed to do both. The Strikers had been creeping up toward the Confed encampment in the dark, their ships lightly beached behind them to the north. For a moment the night turned bright as day, a huge globe of fire rising to silhouette the rear of the camp's wall where the magazines of the captured Islander quinquerimes had exploded. Streaks and ribbons of fire shot up from it, and huge burning timbers pinwheeled through the sky. When they fell, whatever they landed on burned as well; the other ships in the harbor, the long sheds above the shoreline crammed full of pitch and tar, turpentine and rope and boards and sails, the warehouses of olive oil and grain, the rough pine barracks the Confeds had raised. .

One of the wooden towers along the landward wall was blazing, too; a twenty-foot baulk of pine flaming like a torch had dropped out of the sky on it. Men swarmed along the parapet, frantically tearing at the burning wood and dashing futile buckets on it.

"Fire!" Esmond called, startled out of his wonderment. "Fire, and save your lord!"

The arquebuses of Adrian's men began to bark with a methodical eagerness. And on the wall of the Confed fortress, men began to die.

Oh, shit, Adrian thought, as he pulled himself up.

His ears hurt, and his head when he shook it to clear his vision of the spots strobing across it. When it did clear, a grin spread over his mouth despite the pain. Half the harbor was burning, and half the camp beyond — and most of the men there were far too occupied to be concerned with the small boat they'd spotted a moment before. Make that three-quarters, he thought, as another Confed vessel began to blaze out of control, and its deck crew scrambled ashore or over the side.

Sisssht . More arrows plowed into the water around the boat; this time two stuck in the thwarts, humming like bees.

"I'd be afraid if I had the time," Adrian said quietly. Louder: "Row for the north bank of the harbor — that ship there!"

He pointed to one of the sunken merchantmen, just within sling range of the north tower. Then he stood, trying to compensate for the pitch and roll of the little skiff with his knees, sling dangling from his hand. The enemy launch was quite close now, close enough to see the firelight glitter ruddily on the spears of the men between the rowers.