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CHAPTER TWELVE

BEST LAID PLANS

The Roman quinquireme Ferox worked its way eastward from the South Channel, followed by the rest of the Roman squadron. The wind out of the northeast was brisk, strong enough already to raise whitecaps and blow occasional spray across the decks, and it was clearly strengthening. The channel was twisty and not well marked, winding between mud flats, many of them underwater now, which made progress slow. The True Sun was barely above the horizon, and it was difficult to see channel markers in the dawn light. Most of the markers had been removed, anyway, to make life difficult for the invaders.

Which also makes things tough for allied captains who don’t know the channel, of course, Larry Warner thought. Can’t have everything, I guess.

They’d headed out in the predawn gloom when one of the rocket-equipped picket ships signaled that it had spotted sails on the horizon. Now they were leaving the lee of the taller islands which surrounded the inner lagoon, headed for a breakwater which marked a safe channel exit from the outer lagoon, and the leadsman on the leeward relief platform cast a line forward. Warner stood braced against the mainmast while he mentally translated the leadsman’s calls.

“No bottom,” he chanted monotonously. Then “Fondo. Bottom at mark three. Bassofondo.”

Mark three, Warner thought. Three fathoms. Nikeis still used the original fathom—a bit over five feet; the distance of a man’s outstretched arms—brought to Tran by the transplanted Romans. The Brits, taller than ancient Romans, used a six-foot fathom, but as far as Warner knew, the almost-five-and-a-half-foot fathom was standard on Tran, so three fathoms was fifteen feet. Actually, a little more than sixteen. Less than three real fathoms, though. They’d strayed out of the channel, and the water was shoaling, but they hadn’t run aground. Close, though. Not much water under the bottom here, he thought, and looked aft.

Captain Pilinius wore his Roman army tunic, with neither armor and helmet nor marks of rank, but that hardly mattered. Everyone on the ship knew he was its master as he stood snarling at the Nikeisian pilot at the starboard steering oar, aft on the quarterdeck. Fleetmaster Junius stood talking to Lieutenant Martins on the babordo side, and Warner remembered some discussion about pecking order seniority and who was supposed to be upwind of whom, but—

“Fondo. Mark three!”

Shallow, yeah, Warner thought. But from Pilinius’ expression, I think we’re pretty far outside the channel, and it shouldn’t be this deep here. Not good. Not good at all.

He looked up the mast.

“Hang on good!” he shouted. “Water’s shoaling. Hang on in case we hit bottom. See anything?”

“Not a thing, Mr. Warner,” Private Trevor Manners called down from the small platform just above the hoist block for the lateen sail. “Not a thing.”

At least he didn’t remind me it’s been all of five minutes since the last time I asked, Warner thought.

The ship pitched badly, and he looked up at Manners in alarm. But the private seemed to be secure enough, so he turned and peered into the wind, instead. The whitecaps even here in the outer lagoon seemed bad enough to him, but the wide entrance through the breakwater was ahead. Some of the high seas came through into the lagoon, and beyond the breakwater, the waves were higher still, many of them with whitecaps and a few of them breaking. Quite a few of those waves were breaking across the breakwater, too, despite the fact that they were still hours away from high tide, and he tried to remember the exact language of the Beaufort scale.

Large waves begin to form; the white foam crests are more extensive everywhere; probably some spray. That seems to be happening out there. Beaufort scale six, I think. Next step up is a near gale . . . and it may not stop there. Wonderful.

A gale would be a serious blow for ships this size. In fact, the oarsmen were already working hard to send Ferox forward with the wind off the port bow, and the quinquireme didn’t seem to care for it, even here inside the breakwater. They weren’t going to be setting any speed records once they got outside it, either.

Martins called it “bracing weather,” Warner thought, and tried not to think about being seasick. If you don’t admit you’re seasick it’s better, he told himself firmly. What the hell am I doing out here?

Well, if nothing else, this would make him and Martins the two officers with the most sea experience. And Martins was no engineer; he didn’t even have a college degree.

With my experience, I should be put in charge of experimenting with the new navy we’ll be building with the stuff in those containers. Admiral Warner. Commodore, anyway. Chief of BuShips! Guns, steam engines—learn about armor and ironclads . . .

Of course, first I have to live through this, he thought wryly.

The shoulder mic clipped to his field jacket epaulet chirped twice. The radio itself was tucked securely inside his jacket to protect it from the salt spray, and he pressed the talk button on the shoulder unit.

“Hunter One. Over.”

He released the button.

“Mason,” the radio said. “We may have a sighting on the horizon. Don’t sound any alarms yet; we’re not sure. The light’s still pretty crappy. I’ve got McAllister going up to the top of the tower to confirm. All’s well? Over.”

“So far, so good. Pilinius hates having a pilot aboard and insists on repeating every instruction so no goddamn Nikeisian buzzard lion is giving orders to his helmsmen, but he looks happy enough. Major, if we’re facing action, I need to tell them pretty quick. We’re coming to the breakwater. Over.”

“I can see that. Sea looks rough,” Mason replied. “But it’s going to be a while until they close. Over.”

“You’re right. It’s not like these things are speedboats. Over.”

“How are you doing? Over.”

“It’s rough. We’ve already got spray coming across the bow and down the ship. And that’s here in the lagoon. Out there, I make it Beaufort six, and I think it’s getting stronger. Stiff breeze, Beaufort scale says. Next step up is a half gale, and we’ll have that in a few hours. Maybe sooner. I think it’s too risky to go outside the breakwater. Especially if we have to fight. Over.”

“That decision is in the hands of the sailors, I’m afraid. Over.”

“Yeah, I figured that. It sounds like they’re spoiling for a fight. Over.”

Let sailors be sailors, Warner remembered Baker saying. And soldiers be soldiers. Turns out that limey bastard Martins speaks Latin. Learned it in some fancy boarding school in England taught by Benedictine monks. Walked the Colonel right into that one. Might as well have had Publius in on the planning session from the start.

“You all right out there?” Mason asked. “You’re expected to live through this. Acknowledge. Over.”

“Acknowledged,” Warner said. “One order I’m damned happy with. But the oarsmen don’t look too scared, and they’re pulling us just fine. Captain Pilinius looks like he’s having fun, so far at least.” Of course, he’s got that damned Roman stiff upper lip, doesn’t he? “We’re all right. In here.” He thought about turning the ship broadside on to the seas out beyond the breakwater and shuddered. “We’re already being blown all over the place even in here, though. Martins says it’s because these ships have no keels, so we get blown downwind. Have to install dagger boards, real rudders or something . . . ”

Warner let go of the transmit button as he drifted deeper into thought. But his ruminations were quickly dispersed when he heard Mason’s voice.

“Any danger of your running aground? Over.”

“No. In fact, the markers don’t mean a lot, because we can sail outside the channel. And if a ship this big can do that, I bet any of the pirates can, except maybe the navibus onerārius. They might still have too much draft. I think it’s storm surge. I wouldn’t expect the outer breakwaters or mud flats to channel the pirates. Over.”

“Let me get this straight. You say the water’s deep enough that the pirates can just come straight in? Over.”

“Not sure, Major, but I know damned well we got outside the channel a couple of times, and we didn’t run aground. How far that goes, I don’t know. I do know the pilot seemed surprised. Over.”

“I’ll tell the Colonel,” Mason said. “Thanks. Anything else? Over.”

“Nothing from my end, but how’s McAllister doing?” Warner tried to keep his voice calm. It was bad enough heading into a land battle, but out at sea was worse. No way to run away. “Over.”

“Mac’s up the ladder. Got to the top. Hang on a sec—Okay, it’s official. Sails on the horizon. Stand by for the count. First count. More than ten. Bearing, dead north of the tower. At least ten sail dead north of my location in the bell tower. Over.”

“That’s a couple of hours sooner than we planned on. Over.”

“Yeah. Either the outer picket ships missed them or they’re moving faster than we’d assumed. And the visibility’s not great. Over.”

“Roger that. I’ll spread the word. Out for a while.”

Warner released the button, then cupped his hands and shouted up the mast.

“Major Mason says sails on the horizon. Dead north from the tower. That’ll be north-northeast of us. Off to the left. Course, the islands may still be in the way from here.”

“Aye, aye,” Manners called down. “But I don’t see a damn thing.”

“Keep an eye out. I’m going aft to tell Captain Pilinius.”

Warner kept both hands on the safety line that stretched from the mast to the steering oars as he made his way aft. He thought clinging to it made him look like a lubber, but he’d noticed that most of the Roman sailors did the same thing. All of them held the safety line with at least one hand, anyway, and no wonder. Going overboard here would likely be the end.

Looks be damned. He walked himself aft, holding the line in both hands until he got to the quarterdeck ladder. There were safety lines on it, too. He pulled himself up.

“Hail, Praefectus Pilinius!”

“Hail, Praefectus Warner,” the captain replied, and Warner tapped the radio.

“Those in the bell tower have seen ships to the north. More than ten, possibly many more than that. We see none from the masthead yet—”

The Nikeisian pilot spoke sharply. Publius answered, and they both spoke rapidly, too quickly for Warner to follow. Then the pilot raised one hand and pointed. They turned to follow his pointing finger as a red ball went up the top flagstaff of the bell tower. When it reached the top, it broke out in an enormous double-tailed red streamer and the pilot shouted.

“Enemy in sight,” Captain Pilinius said.

* * *

“Don’t like it that the water’s so deep already,” Art Mason said quietly over the radio to Sergeant Major Bisso. “Over.”

“Me neither,” Bisso replied. “We’re gonna have to fight right here in the city in the end, whatever else happens. Over.”

“Always knew we would,” Mason said. “Trick is to do as little of that as we can get away with. And at least the radios give us a lot more flex to fix things when the shit hits the fan. Wish we’d had these earlier! Over.”

“Me, too.” Bisso replied. “Only wish I didn’t think we’re gonna need ’em. Over.”

“You got that right, Harry. You got that right. Out.”

* * *

Warner crossed the quarterdeck carefully towards Fleetmaster Junius and Martins. The Colonel had told him to keep as close an eye on Martins as the Romans.

The lieutenant was taking a sighting with his compass, and then drew a line with his pencil on a map. Actually, it’s a chart, Warner corrected himself. It has sounding marks on it.

Martins looked up again, then looked at the bell tower with his binoculars and consulted a chart in his “memoire.” Then he manipulated the calipers in his left hand and drew a range arc.

Must be measuring the angle between the ground and the tower with the reticule in the binos to determine range.

The Brit did the same thing with a couple of other features while Junius watched with great interest.

“Should we be doing that?” Warner asked in English.

“I’d like us to be able to return,” Martins replied, still focused on his work.

“Yeah, but we can still see the tower, and we have the pilot. I imagine the Nikeisians and Romans have been finding their way back for quite a while now. Besides, I’m not sure the Colonel will be happy you’re showing the Romans another advanced technique.”

“I understand that,” Martins said, “but the tower and the pilot may not always be there, and we have no GPS.”

“GPS?”

“Sorry. Satellite navigation system put up after you left Earth.” Martins’ voice was quiet enough Warner had trouble hearing it through the sound of wind and wave as the younger man thought for a moment. “It’s been a while since I’ve done this, so I’m out of practice. I can’t speak to the accuracy of my work. I’d need a proper alidade and a sextant for that. Better than nothing, though.”

“Praefecti?” Junius asked. His tone was polite but made it clear that he considered their use of English a bit rude. He’d addressed both of them with the same rank, Warner noticed, but with deference towards Martins.

“I beg your pardon, Fleetmaster,” Martins replied in Latin. “I was explaining to Praefectus Warner what I was doing. I suspect he’ll soon be able to build even better tools than I currently possess to make it possible for all of our allies’ ships to sail well outside sight of land.”

“We already do that,” Junius replied, and smiled slightly at Martins’ expression. “We do try to stay in sight of land in waters we don’t know, but that’s why any experienced captain keeps his sailing journal.”

“Sailing journal?” Martins repeated.

“The record of currents and winds.” Junius gave a Roman-style shrug. “An experienced captain, sailing in waters he knows, should make landfall within fifteen miles”—those would be Roman miles, Warner thought, so a tad under sixteen and a half statute miles . . . not that it mattered—“of his destination even if he’s sailed the entire way out of sight of land.”

“Really?” Martins seemed a bit taken aback, and Junius smiled at him.

“I’m sure your star magic will be very useful in finding our way back this time, Praefectus,” he said in an encouraging tone. “After all, wind and wave are far more confused today.”

What was that in the planning session about “galleys don’t normally sail beyond sight of land?” Warner thought, suppressing what he knew was a rather unworthy temptation to ask the question aloud. And damned if Junius didn’t enjoy that! Gotta be sweet when somebody from Tran gets to one-up a star lord!

“Funny you didn’t mention you spoke Latin to the Colonel,” he said out loud, this time again in English.

“I remember telling my tutor Latin was a dead language,” Martins replied in Latin. “It seems I was in error. Good thing we both learned Latin in secondary school.”

Smart ass, Larry thought. I’ve been here since before you were able to shave, kid.

He suppressed the temptation to say that out loud, too, and grabbed the quarterdeck rail, instead. Ferox’s motion was sharper as they neared the breakwater. The bow rose harder and faster, then fell back with a sharpness he felt in his legs and spine, and he fought to suppress his stomach’s rising queasiness.

He looked away from the waves, concentrating on the bundles at the short ladder up onto the forecastle. At least two lines lashed the Carl Gustav in its weatherproofing to the back of the ladder. Next to it, under the break of the forecastle, a waterproof box contained the recoilless’ shells. As long as the ship was afloat it should be all right, he thought. McQuaid, Frick, and the others “volunteered” for the mission were another matter. They didn’t look so good.

“Guys, make sure your safety lines are fast!” he shouted in English, then looked around for the other containers. One held the Molotov cocktails, another firebombs, and both were secured as thoroughly as the recoilless and its ammunition.

Good, he thought to himself. Not enough of those. Don’t want to lose any of them.

* * *

Rick was out of breath by the time he got to the bell tower’s observation landing. The stairs stopped there. If he wanted to go higher, he’d have to climb ladders, and he wasn’t tempted. If he couldn’t see it from here, he wasn’t going to see it. Besides, the base radio had been emplaced here, with its antenna farther up, atop the tower and connected to the set by coaxial cable. One of Saxon’s bicycle generators had been set up beside it, just in case.

He stepped off the landing towards Art Mason.

“How close are they?” he asked in English, and Mason turned quickly.

“Didn’t hear you coming, Colonel. Nearest enemy’s maybe sixteen, seventeen miles out. All that wind and spray isn’t helping visibility, but there’s lots of sails, Sir. Best I can estimate, there’s at least eighty or ninety of them, so far. Maybe more; it’s all mixed up out there, and they’re not all together. Their fleet’s strung out for miles. Bunch of ten or a dozen about a mile ahead of the main body, and it looks like some of ’em are still coming over the horizon. Figure they’ll be here in three, maybe four hours. Seas are high, wind’s high.” He shook his head. “They’ll be coming straight in, I think. No way for them to maneuver. It’s going to be a rush.”

“Pretty much like we expected,” Rick said.

“Worse, Colonel.” Mason shook his head again. “Sir, Mr. Warner says the water’s a lot deeper out there than anyone expected.”

“But they know the seas rise—” Rick frowned.

“Yes, Sir. Maybe it’s the storm. Or maybe some know it and some don’t. Clavell says this is the damnedest place for keeping secrets. I don’t know, Colonel, but I don’t think the outer harbor defenses are worth a damn. A lot of the mud flats have disappeared. I think they’ll just come straight in. It don’t even look like they have any choice in the matter. I doubt they could get back home in these seas. I think they have to attack, and hope they’re lucky getting past the shoals.”

Rick nodded.

“Which means they don’t have any choice but to use their best tactic. Rush us hell for leather. Maybe this Cannae wasn’t such a bad idea.”

Assuming the Romans can maneuver better than the pirates can, anyway, he thought while projecting as much confidence as he could.

“Well, if the pirates don’t kill us, maybe the storm can, Sir.”

“That’s a cheery thought,” Rick replied. “Pass the word for Admiral Stigliano to get the northern squadron ready. And check with Walbrook. Make sure he’s ready to move with the mortars.”

“Yes, Sir.”

As Mason began passing orders, Rick picked up his binoculars and looked through them at the Nikeisian squadron anchored in the inner lagoon near the northern channel. Lying to anchor had allowed the crews to stay rested and fresh, which would give them an edge over the pirates. As he watched, Admiral Piero Stigliano received his signal and there was a flurry of activity on the fifteen assigned ships as they prepared to get underway.

Rick shifted his gaze north to the outer lagoon. At first he was disoriented and uncertain what he was looking at, because features he’d expected to see were no longer visible. Many of the low-lying islands that made up the barrier for the outer lagoon were now awash; the mud flats that made up the rest were nowhere to be seen, although angry white water churned across them.

And the rising tide still had a long way to go . . .

“Looks like Stigliano’s going to have to fight in what’s left of the outer lagoon,” Mason said as he looked in the same direction with his own binoculars. “The seas have really risen.”

“I had the same thought,” Rick replied. “And if there’s this much storm surge now, we’re really in for it when it hits.”

“Don’t like the look of the sky to the north, either,” Mason said, and Rick nodded grimly. Visibility was deteriorating as the wind continued to rise. Whitecaps were everywhere, with foam beginning to blow in long streaks, and the clouds rolling in on the wind were dark, angry looking, and moving fast.

“I don’t care for it much myself,” he said.

“I don’t think we should’ve sent the team with the Roman squadron,” Mason said. “I don’t see how Frick’s going to hit anything with the Carl Gustav from a pitching ship in those seas, and the team with him’s going to be wasting ammo if they use their rifles. Especially if it gets worse.”

“You’re right, but think. It could’ve been worse. We could have gone with that battlecruiser idea.”

“Do you want to recall the squadron?”

Rick chewed on his inner lip for a moment, then shook his head.

“No, we have to figure Pilinius and the others know what they’re doing. Leave it up to Junius.”

I sure as hell hope they know what they’re doing, anyway! Besides, what do I do if they ignore a recall order? Publius obviously wants a naval victory. I have to wonder how much he’s willing to risk betting on the weather to get it, but that’s clearly what he wants. And since they’re his ships, it’s entirely possible they’d do what he wants instead of what I want. What’s that old saying about never giving an order you know won’t be obeyed?

They heard the sound of hobnailed boots on the steps behind them and turned.

“Hail, Friend of Caesar,” Tribune Caius Julius said from the stairs as he came up to join them.

“Hail, friend, Tribune of Rome,” Rick replied in his rough Latin as he smiled. Can’t get away from you guys. “I’m glad you’re here.”

“Publius asked that I assist you in any way I can.”

I bet he did.

* * *

Rick watched the Nikeisian squadron deploy and felt his stomach knot as they filed slowly through the main channel in a line. The channel ran between two islands—Isola di Lido and Isola di San Lazzaro—which were part of the ring surrounding the inner lagoon, a bit higher than the boundary islands of the outer lagoon, and he shifted his gaze up and to the north to see another line of ships heading south towards what remained of the outer lagoon. The seas outside the lagoon were too high for oars, and angry surf boiled white over the semisubmerged outer islands. There was more and more spray as the waves pounded home, boiling in confused white sheets across the submerged mud flats and the outer breakwater. Despite that, the oncoming galleys, at least half of them great galleys, held a remarkably straight line as they leaned to the wind under double-reefed, tight-bellied lateen sails.

Who are those guys? Rick wondered. They’ve got to be professionals.

“What am I looking at?” he asked Caius Julius, offering him the binoculars. The Tribune peered through them for a moment, then lowered them with a grimace.

“Those are the galleys of the Grand Duchy of Riccigiona.”

“Looks like they’re leading with some of their best troops to soften us up,” Rick said.

“Indeed they are,” Caius Julius agreed.

“Which means they could be the only ones who could hold the formation in the storm. Probably that as much as any deliberate planning, Colonel,” Mason added.

Rick nodded as he recovered his binoculars. Then he put the strap around his neck and watched through them in fascination as the enemy squadron passed over what had been the boundary of the outer lagoon. They pitched wildly in the shallow, turbulent water, but they held their course and, nearly simultaneously, lowered the spars of their lateen sails, secured them for battle, and thrust out their oars once again in the less tumultuous seas of the lagoon.

That took guts, he thought. They must have realized the mud flats were submerged, but until they actually crossed them, they couldn’t be sure by how much. They sure as hell weren’t going to be able to stop if it turned out to be too shallow! These people are good.

He lowered his gaze towards the Nikeisian squadron as that thought ran through them, and his jaw tightened.

A couple of those ships have green crews. If they don’t get out of that column, things aren’t going to go well.

The channel broadened as it approached the wider lagoon, and the Nikeisian squadron began breaking out of the column. The first two ships altered course by forty-five degrees—the first to the left, and the second to the right. The others fanned out behind them, with the ships in trail alternating to follow the two guides. When the last two ships had fallen into place, they all altered course directly north, facing the enemy in a formation like a huge, inverted V, with four of Nikeis’ eight great galleons at the refused apex of the wedge.

They’d gotten into formation just in time, and the forwardmost ships started trading fire with the enemy, using their bow-mounted ballistas. The Nikeisian missiles fell short and to the left, driven off true by the winds. The Riccigionan squadron had the wind at their backs, but few of the large quarrels hit their targets on either side. Not surprisingly, given the roughness of the seas even within the lagoon. Ships in both squadrons started to retract their oars as they surged towards one another, and their marines exchanged crossbow and javelin fire.

Rick watched the outermost Nikeisian ships at the right end of the line pivot sharply inward towards the nearest enemy ship. Their prow-mounted rams screeched across the enemy ship’s metal-clad bow, then skittered across its wooden sides. The rams had too little angle or momentum to penetrate the hull, but the impact did slow all three of them. Grapnels flew, and the three ships surged together, weapons waving at the point of contact.

More ships slammed together at the other end of the line, but it took the enemies in the center longer to close and the Duchy ships concentrated their fire on the center Nikeisian great galley. Marines fell on its deck, and the Nikeisian rowers were slow in retracting their sweeps in what might have been a sign of inexperience. An enemy galley—one of the faster, more maneuverable galee sottili, swerved at the last moment and sped down the Nikeisian’s side. Oars shattered as its prow sliced through them, the inboard ends of the long sweeps became furious demons, crushing bone and flesh, and the attacker slipped through the gap it had opened in the Nikeisian line. Grapnels flew at it from either side, but too late to catch it, and it sped off down the channel.

Behind it, both squadrons slammed together into a gigantic raft of floating wood, metal, and fighting men. Marines surged across the bulwarks in a deadly melee. Despite how tightly they were locked together, the ships heaved and rolled against one another, timbers screaming as they grated together, and some men lost their footing. The lucky ones fell back onto their own ships. Others fell into the sea or were crushed between the grinding hulls.

Rowers surged up from their benches, boiling up through the hatches with weapons in hand, piling in behind their marines, and it was all close-range, hand-to-hand butchery. Rick had seen it on far too many battlefields since arriving on Tran, but not like this. Not compressed into such a small area. Not on a heaving, rolling wooden perch in the middle of a spray-lashed sea. And the fact that it was so far away, so distant even through the binoculars, only made it worse somehow.

There was nothing wrong with the Duchy crews’ courage, but the three-to-one odds on the outer wings quickly worked in Nikeis’ favor. The opposing great galleys locked together in the center, but the Nikeisian galee sottili had been loaded with extra drafts of militia to support their marines. They added their weight to the onslaught sweeping inward from the wings, and though the Riccigionan marines fought frantically to hold the bulwarks, their lines cracked in too many places. Nikeisian marines swarmed through the gaps, engaging the rowers trying to reinforce them, and Nikeisian rowers followed, spreading out, taking the Riccigionan defenders from the rear.

The defense crumpled quickly, the outermost Duchy ships fell, and the victorious Nikeisian marines prepared to sweep down the rest of the line while the angry wind drove the entire, rafted mass back onto the channel mouth.

* * *

Captain Gulian Foscari tried to hide his nervousness as his ship, Corona, threaded its way towards the heart of Nikeis. He stood beside Terenzio Rambaldo, Corona’s first lieutenant, on the quarterdeck, his gaze flicking back and forth between the leadsman on the bow and the windows and balconies of the buildings flanking the channel. That gaze was spending more time on the buildings, actually. The leadsman would tell him if there was a chain or other obstruction in the channel, but crossbow bolts or arrows could fall from any opening in the buildings above them with no warning. There was not a Nikeisian in sight—no doubt they had pulled as many of their women and children as they could up the hills and out of harm’s way—but he was sure the defenders would show themselves soon enough, and when they did . . .

The sounds of battle receded as his crew maneuvered expertly through another twist in the channel. Now, safely in the lee of the taller islands, the water was far calmer and it seemed almost silent compared to the blowing wind and tumultuous waves through which they’d sailed throughout the night. It wasn’t silent, of course; not with that same wind still muscling its way through the buildings about them, but it was close enough he could actually hear the creak of the hull.

“Our spies were right,” Rambaldo said quietly. “Nikeis has neglected its defenses. Perhaps we’ve already seen the best they have to offer.”

“Perhaps,” Foscari replied. “I don’t intend to rely on that, but our cousins’ tightfisted nature may have been their undoing. I do know they were making offers to hire experienced crews very recently.”

“It’s too late to hire us,” Rambaldo said with a grin.

“Very true.”

Foscari had been there when the Captain General of the Riccigionan fleet discussed the offer from the High Chancellor of the Five Kingdoms. He’d never seen so much gold and silver before, and over and above that, the High Chancellor had promised that the Five Kingdoms would waive all tribute for the next two years if the Grand Duke joined the armada to take Nikeis. That would have been tempting enough, but the promise of loot from the star lord boxes had been even more tempting. That kind of prize could bring a lifetime of luxuries!

Still, a small suspicion had been planted in Foscari’s mind that day, and it had grown far stronger now that they were actually here in Nikeis. The gold, the offer, and the details about the boxes and their destination had all arrived in the Grand Duchy well before any rumors of the sky lights had arrived by way of ships coming from Nikeis. Or from anywhere else in the Inland Sea, for that matter. So how had the Five Kingdoms known about them so much sooner than anyone else?

I fear the hands of the sky demons are behind this message from Issardos, he thought now, and too many legends warned of the price which always accompanied the sky demons’ aid.

They rounded another bend and Corona emerged from the channel’s shadows into the relative brightness of the inner lagoon. The first outriders of the storm clouds which had pursued the fleet throughout the night stretched overhead, but the visibility was far greater than it had been.

“There!” Rambaldo cried. “There they are—just like he said it would be!”

The first lieutenant was pointing at three preposterously large, oddly shaped boxes lined up before the Doge’s Palace on the far side of a half-flooded square. They were painted blue, with dark and strange letterings of different sizes and in different colors scattered across them. Between them and the edge of the square was a head-high barricade, built roughly and in obvious haste out of paving stones, timbers, and what looked like stone taken from demolished buildings. The one thing Foscari couldn’t see were any defenders.

“Take us in closer,” he said. “But slowly! Let’s not get deep enough for any nasty surprises while we’re all alone.”

Rambaldo looked mulish for a moment, but then his own common sense reasserted itself and he nodded before he turned back to the helmsman.

Corona sidled cautiously towards the square in the eerie quiet, broken only by the sound of the wind buffeting the buildings all about them, and still there was no one to be seen. Crewmen and officers grinned at each other with greedy delight, but there was an edge of disquiet in those grins.

“Maybe they all ran away,” Rambaldo said nervously.

“Maybe, but—”

A sharp slapping sound, like a fist against a jaw, interrupted Foscari’s response. The steersman went up on his toes, hands flying to his chest, and a spray of blood erupted between his shoulder blades. A single explosive crack of thunder sounded an instant later, and the steersman fell to the deck.

Then Rambaldo’s jaw disintegrated in a pink cloud, followed by the same thunderclap. The ship veered off course. The sound of a whistle rang out from behind the waiting barricade, and dark-faced men with strange hats appeared along it.

Someone barked orders in an unknown language, in a voice louder than any Foscari had ever heard. Then the thunder crackled again, far closer and twenty times as loud. Something struck him. He fell to the deck, clutching his own chest, and saw the blood erupting between his fingers. He realized the quarterdeck was covered in bodies. And the forecastle. Bodies like his. Someone was screaming. No, a lot of men were screaming.

It was hard to breathe, and he closed his eyes to rest.

* * *

The fustas swarmed the drifting galley and Rick watched Roman legionnaires and Nikeisian halberdiers storm across its bulwarks. The stunned rowers were overwhelmed before they could even rise from their benches.

“That was excellent, Mac,” Rick said. “Pass the word to everyone on the net—well done!”

He returned his gaze to the fight outside the northern channel as Mason keyed the microphone, and his smile faded. The Nikeisian marines had closed in on the last two Riccigionan ships in the center of the line, coming at the defenders from three directions at once. The Riccigionans were clearly doomed, but they stubbornly refused to yield.

“Ah, hell!” Rick snarled as he raised his binoculars to the turbulent seas beyond the outer lagoon and saw the reason they were being so stubborn.

At least a score of additional galleys, the standard of the Five Kingdoms starched stiff as steel at their mastheads by the ever-stronger wind, came storming towards the churning water of the outer barrier. They heeled dangerously as they rode the gale, but they weren’t slowing, and even more ships followed astern of them. The Nikeisian squadron was out of time. Even if the city’s marines managed to end the fight before the Five Kingdoms galleys arrived, the defending ships couldn’t possibly cut themselves free of the rafted mass and redeploy in time to meet them.

Admiral Stigliano must have reached the same conclusion. The interlocked Nikeisian and Riccigionan galleys had been driven back on the mouth of the channel, and as Rick watched, the Nikeisian crews not actively fighting scrambled to drop anchors and grapnels into the water from as many ships as possible while others lashed them as tightly together as they could. They stretched across the channel, almost directly between the twin fortresses on Lido and San Lazzaro, like a huge, wooden boom. But it was a boom made of ships and men.

Cork in a bottle, he thought, and his heart sank. It wasn’t a surprise, really. It had always been a possibility—indeed, a probability—that something just like this would happen. That’s why you put Walbrook where you did. He watched the Nikeisians turning their ships into their city’s outer bulwark, knowing it meant most of them would die, and something inside him quailed from the order he knew he would almost certainly have to give.

“Publius says he’s going to commandeer the galley they just captured as his new command ship,” Mason reported.

“You’re kidding me!” Rick lowered his binoculars to look at the major in disbelief.

“Says the fusta crews will run the deck. His security team will make sure the rowers stay put, and his legionnaires will be the marines.”

“Oh, crap!” Rick shook his head. “Tell him to keep his ass—I mean, kindly ask him to at least stay in the inner lagoon.”

“Yes, Sir.”

And what the hell do I do if he gets himself killed? Rick wondered, turning back to the fight in the channel.

* * *

The shoulder mic chirped.

Warner could barely hear it through the crashing roar of sea and wind, and he was tempted to not answer it. He was too busy hugging the mainmast like a sodden bear while he waged a grim rearguard action against his nausea. Maybe if he just went ahead and threw up he’d feel better afterward?

They’d been sailing for five hours, and he’d had enough rolling and pitching to last a lifetime. Especially after what he’d endured when they changed tack an hour earlier. He’d had to abandon his spot by the mast as the deck crew adjusted the sail, and he’d huddled with the other mercenaries as the steering oar was put hard over.

Martins had explained—with what Warner personally considered appalling cheerfulness—that they’d have to wear ship rather than tack.

“Why?” Warner had asked, and Martins had shrugged.

“These galleys’ lateen sails are handier for coming about—turning upwind to change tack—than a square-rigger would be without a proper jib.” Warner nodded in impatient understanding, and Martins shrugged. “But handier or no, Captain Pilinius doesn’t want to risk it in this lot.” The Brit waved a hand at the tumult raging around them. “Turning downwind will take longer, because he’ll have farther to turn, but it lets him use the wind instead of fighting it. And we’re far less likely to get caught and thrown aback facing straight into it.”

“Sounds good to me,” Warner had said fervently, wiping spray from his face.

Of course, that had been before Pilinius actually did it.

If working with the wind was supposed to be safer and easier, Larry Warner never wanted to be aboard a ship that did it the hard way. Ferox had rolled madly, heaving in protest, and unless Warner was badly mistaken, she’d damn near capsized in the process. Huge clouds of spray had burst up over the angular shape of her oar box and water had broken green and angry across her decks, washing as high as his knees as he’d clung to the forecastle ladder with white knuckles. It had flooded the upper deck completely until the ship came reluctantly back upright and it fountained from the scuppers. Even Pilinius had lost his air of studied calm as he volleyed orders and threw his own weight against the steering oar.

Still, they’d made it. Somehow.

And I am so never going to sea again, Warner thought.

The rest of the squadron had made it around, as well, and changed formation in the process. Ferox led the port—babordo, he reminded himself—column of ten ships to leeward, while Fides, one of the triremes, led the windward column, followed by ten more galleys. The wind was even stronger than it had been, with spray flying everywhere and waves rolling up on the starboard quarter like moving, foam-topped mountains. Some of them were considerably higher than Ferox’s fourteen-foot freeboard, and the quartering sea added a nasty corkscrew effect to the galley’s motion. He didn’t like to think about what it must be like aboard the smaller triremes and liburnians.

The shoulder mic chirped again, and this time the sound pulled him up out of his misery to press the button.

“Hunter One, over.”

“I was getting a little worried there,” Major Mason said. “Thought the radio had gone dead. Over.”

“Radio’s fine. I’m not so great. Over.”

“How bad? Over.”

“Damned if I know,” Warner said frankly. “I’m more’n a little seasick, and I think Pilinius and Junius”—and that prick Martins—“are a lot more worried than they were when we set out. Wind’s really picking up. Over.”

“Well, I have a little news to take your mind off of that. The bad guys are earlier and moving faster than we’d expected. They’re more scattered, too. Their main body’s still coming into sight from the bell tower, but it’s pretty damned ragged and we’re watching a squadron north-northeast of you, heading your way. It’s the farthest east of the lot—so far at least. Don’t see how they could actually have sighted you yet, though. Most probably just got separated from the rest and now they’re steering for Nikeis, but it looks like your courses are going to intersect short of the main body. Over.”

“How many? Over.”

“I make it a dozen. They’re too far away to see their pennants, but there’s at least one great galley in there and they’re maintaining a line formation, so they’re probably not pirates. Best guess, Five Kingdoms. Over.”

“Roger. Out.”

Warner released the talk button and detached himself from the mast, not without regrets, to make his cautious way aft to the quarterdeck.

“Hail, Fleetmaster,” he half-shouted across the angry wind. It came out a little strangled sounding as he fought not to vomit.

“Hail, Praefectus Warner,” Junius replied.

“The tower tells me there’s an enemy squadron of a dozen galleys north-northeast of us, headed our way.”

Martins consulted his compass, then scowled and pointed upwind.

“Bad luck,” he said. “They’ll have the weather gauge on us.”

“If we don’t see them yet, then they don’t see us,” Junius said. It was his turn to scowl.

“Tower says they’re in a line formation with at least one great galley, probably not pirates.”

“If they’re maintaining formation in this weather instead of scattering, they’re regular navy ships,” Junius agreed. He picked up a leather speaking trumpet from a bulwark rack and raised it in Fides’ direction.

“Enemy squadron spotted upwind,” he bawled through it, somehow making himself heard despite the weather. Warner thought it must be some kind of trick professional seamen learned. “Stand by to detach your division and engage. We will continue as planned.”

* * *

The next wave of attacking galleys swept across the outer lagoon and charged down on the rafted Nikeisian squadron blocking the North Channel. The rising wind clearly left them little option but to make for the closest passage to the inner lagoon, and arrows flew from the moored Nikeisian galleys to greet them. One of the attacking galee sottili must have lost its steersman, because it swerved wildly and broached across the waves surging over the submerged breakwater. For a moment, Rick thought it was going fully over, but it managed not to capsize . . . just in time to be rammed squarely amidships by a following galley.

The rammed galley rolled completely up on its side as the other ship slammed into it, and he saw men spill into the angry waves. Very few of them seemed to surface again.

The ship which had hit it found itself in almost equally dire straits. There’d been no time to reduce sail before it struck, and the impact had snapped its masts. Both of them went over the side in a tangled, thrashing knot of wreckage. The galley itself ripped its ram out of its sister, completing the fatal gash, as the fallen top-hamper dragged it around. The fallen spars were a sea anchor, holding it broadside to the waves. It rolled madly, and axes flashed as its crew hewed desperately at the shrouds tethering it to the wreckage.

But the rest of the oncoming galleys carried through. They surged down on the defenders, sails billowing madly as they let their sheets fly to spill the furious wind from their sails just before they struck. There were only two or three great galleys in this wave, but they were accompanied by far too many lighter ships. Some of them buried their rams in the anchored ships; most of them crashed home without actually ramming, and more grapnels flew as they made fast. More boarders boiled up, swarming across the bulwarks, coming to grips with the already depleted Nikeisian marines and rowers. The defenders had been given precious time to reorganize and station themselves as advantageously as possible, but they were going to be badly outnumbered, and still more enemy galleys were coming up fast. Weapons slashed and stabbed, and something far darker and redder than seawater splashed across the jammed galleys’ decks.

One of the attacking galleys jammed itself into a gap at the extreme right end of the Nikeisian line, and more grapnels flew—this time from the shore. As Rick watched, an avalanche of Nikeisian militiamen swarmed over its decks, hacking and chopping, then raced down the line to reinforce the squadron’s depleted crews.

His heart rose as he realized they’d be able to support Stigliano after all. Maybe if they could do the same thing at the other end of the line, Stigliano could hold his ground despite the odds!

“Some of them are gonna find other channels, Sir,” Mason said, and Rick lowered his binoculars again as he turned to face the major and raised both eyebrows.

“Most of ’em still seem to be headed for North Channel,” Mason said, answering the unvoiced question. “Probably because it’s the main way in from that part of the lagoon. But some of them are managing to avoid all that.” He jerked his head at the growing logjam of galleys. “Mostly because of how scattered they got on the way here, I think. They aren’t coming in together—not tightly, anyway—and some of them are taking advantage of that.”

“How?”

“They’re peeling off to stay clear of the main action. Maybe they’re just trying to get into the lee of the islands, or maybe they’ve got somebody onboard who knows the local waters. Hell, Sir, maybe they’re just getting lucky! But we’ve got at least a couple of dozen veering off, especially to the west, and that means they’re headed towards some of the other channels. Gonna have some leakers, Sir.”

“From the west?” Rick turned, peering through his glasses, but the buildings on the islands the Nikeisians called Lido and Cannaregio blocked his view.

“What the spotters are reporting, Sir,” Mason said, and shrugged. “Don’t see how they could come at us from the east in this weather, really. The surf’s really bad on that side of the outer lagoon right now.” He shook his head. “No, Sir, they’re trying to get around to the west. Come at us from the leeward side of the main islands. Might even be able to row from that side.”

“Crap. What do we have covering the West Channel?”

“Aside from Admiral del Verme’s squadron, you mean?” Rick nodded a bit impatiently, and Mason puffed his lips unhappily. “Not much from our side, Sir. Three or four firebomb parties at the narrower spots, but that’s about it.”

“Damn. How much cover do our firebombers have?”

“Not a ton, Sir,” Mason said grimly. “Got militia on all of them, but most of the steadier troops are clustered at the fortresses. Our guys are three or four blocks farther west than that. I don’t know how steady their militia’s going to be if the bad guys try coming ashore short of the inner lagoon. And if they flank the firebombers’ positions it’ll get ugly.”

Rick thought furiously for a moment, then grimaced.

“All right. We’re just going to have to hope most of them don’t think about stopping early, but we damned well can’t count on it. Put Rand on it. Tell him he can have half the reserve archers and a platoon of musketeers, but we need to get somebody in there. And tell him to take one of the radios!”

“Yes, Sir!” Mason acknowledged, and Rick heard him passing urgent orders over the radio as he turned back to the battle for North Channel.

* * *

“Sail to windward!”

It was difficult to hear the lookouts through the din of wind and wave, but a chain of a half dozen seamen passed the word to Ferox’s quarterdeck.

“At least ten sail on the starboard quarter! Coming down on us fast!”

“Sooner than I expected,” Fleetmaster Junius said grimly, then shrugged. “I understand Lord Rick is fond of saying no plan survives when the enemy arrives, Praefectus Warner?”

“He is,” Warner agreed. No point mentioning that the Colonel had cribbed it from von Moltke.

“A warrior of great wisdom, Lord Rick,” Junius said, and reached for his speaking trumpet again.

And there goes half our strength, Warner thought as the windward squadron altered course to intercept the oncoming galleys. That leaves ten ships to take on something like eighty. I sure hope all of our weapons work. Can’t swim home, that’s for sure.

* * *

“Bad news, Bart.”

“What? You mean more bad news, right?” Bart Saxon asked, looking up at Cal Haskins as the ex-corporal strode into the great hall which had become his bombmaker’s workshop.

“Just got the word from Clavell.” Haskins looked grim. “At least some of the bastards are avoiding the traffic jam in the North Channel. Dunno where else they’re likely to go, but Clavell says there’s at least three or four ways in.”

“Crap!”

“What is it, Lord Bart?” a voice asked. Saxon turned his head and met Lucia Michaeli’s anxious eyes. Obviously she’d understood Haskins’ tone even if she hadn’t understood the English.

“Some of the pirates are likely to—” He paused, wondering how to say “bypass” in the trade dialect, then shrugged. “Some of the pirates are likely to come a different way.”

“Not down the Canale del Nord?”

She didn’t sound very surprised, Saxon thought. For that matter, she sounded a lot calmer than he felt, too. Then again, she’d already surprised him more than once tonight. She and her sister—and Ginarosa Torricelli—had all made themselves very useful while he and Warner were concocting their jury-rigged incendiaries and explosives. He’d been a little leery about that, given the possibility of accidents, but Lucia had only rolled her eyes at his tentative objections and then gone right back to work.

“Exactly,” he said now. “They may come another way.”

“If they avoid the Canale del Nord, someone is likely to come down the Canale Gottardo Capponi,” she said in the trade dialect. “There are three—no, four—channels they might use to reach the inner lagoon from the north, but Canale Gottardo Capponi is the closest to the main channel. It’s the one between Isola di Cannaregio and Isola di Lido, just west of the Canale del Nord.”

“Surely someone is guarding the Canale Got—Gotter—whatever,” Saxon said reassuringly.

“Are they?” She shook her head, her expression more anxious than ever. “I’m not certain of that. I know they’re guarding the Canale Occidentale—the West Channel—but usually, Gottardo Capponi is too shallow for war galleys. It’s broad enough, but not deep enough for anything but the local fishing boats. It isn’t a place someone would normally think to guard, but with the water as deep as it is . . . ”

She turned away and began snapping orders in Italian. Saxon couldn’t understand a word she said, but her militiamen clearly could. They headed for the pyramid of wooden chests in the center of the great hall where the reserve incendiaries had been packed so that they could be transported to wherever they might be needed.

“What are they doing?” he demanded.

“We are going to defend the canal,” she told him.

“No! You can’t!”

“It is our city,” she told him defiantly.

“But—”

She only turned away, still spouting commands at the militiamen, and they formed up with four of the reserve chests and headed for the door.

Saxon looked around, searching for one of Galloway’s men. But he and Haskins were the only “star lords” in sight. There was just the two of them and—

Oh, no, he told himself. You are not going to do this. Especially not after Galloway ordered you to keep your ass out of the line of fire! You’re a frigging schoolteacher, not a soldier! But if you can’t stop her, then what—?

“Wait,” he said.

“There’s no time!” she said impatiently. “Besides, I am going!”

“That’s not what I meant,” he heard someone else say with his voice. “I meant I’m coming with you.”

* * *

“Oh, shit,” Art Mason said, and Rick turned quickly in his direction.

“What?”

“Looks like those ‘leakers’ are arriving sooner’n we expected, Sir,” Mason replied, lowering his binoculars. “And looks like there’s more of them, too.”

The major pointed northwest. Rick raised his own glasses to peer in the indicated direction, and his jaw tightened as he saw mastheads clearing the flank of Isola di Cannaregio, headed straight for the West Channel.

There were a lot of them.

He turned back to the southwest where Admiral Otero del Verme’s second Nikeisian squadron held position. His galleys were sheltered from the worst of the wind by the bulk of the main island itself, but the seas were rough enough even there that just holding station had to be exhausting to their rowers, and it was getting worse. That was bound to affect their combat effectiveness when he finally committed them. The longer he waited, the worse that would get, and the timing had already gone south on them. The pirates had gotten here well before they were expected, and the Romans wouldn’t be able to attack for at least another hour or hour and a half. Even then, they were likely to be at only half strength. And if he waited long enough to send them in simultaneously, the way they’d planned—

“Hell with it,” he said out loud. “Signal Admiral del Verme to move up now. He’s got to block the West Channel between Cannaregio and San Giorgio.”

“Going to be rough on them if they have to go in without the Romans, Sir.”

“I know that! But we can’t let them flank the North Channel.”

“No, Sir,” Mason acknowledged, and Rick heard him passing urgent orders as he turned back to the still raging battle for North Channel.

A half dozen additional galleys had crashed into the ship raft, throwing still more men into the fight while he was speaking with Mason. Even with reinforcements from both flanking fortresses, the Nikeisian line was driven back across the spray- and blood-slick decks by sheer weight of numbers. Worse, other enemy galleys had run ashore on San Lazzaro and Lido, pouring men onto the islands. Every man sent from the fortresses to support Stigliano’s galleys was one less they’d have for their own defense.

* * *

“Go back to the Palace!” Bart Saxon said sharply. “Let me take care of this!”

“No.” Lucia Michaeli glared at him.

“You found us the right spot. Now the rest of us can handle it, and I want you out of here!”

“No!” she shot back even more sharply.

“It’s going to get dangerous!”

“I know that,” she said. “Whose city do you think this is?”

“Damn it, if something happens to you—”

“And what if something happens to you?! You’re—Professore Clavell says you’re important to Lord Rick’s plans.”

“But—”

“’Scuse me, Bart,” Cal Haskins said, “but I think you two’re gonna have to settle this later. Look.”

Saxon shot Lucia one more exasperated glance, then turned to where Haskins stood beside one of the windows. Like Saxon, he had his H&K slung over his shoulder. Unlike Saxon, who’d fired no more than forty or fifty rounds with the weapon before they left Earth, Haskins also looked like he knew how to use it. Now he pointed out and down, and Saxon swallowed a curse.

Lucia had picked their current position because it was four streets north of one of the three drawbridges which crossed the canal. All of them had been lowered, blocking any galley, but they were only made of wood, and the militia guarding them were spread dangerously thin. Most of the manpower on Isola di Lido had been stationed along its northern and eastern shoreline, where the real threat had been anticipated. That was why Lucia had insisted that they had to be north of the northernmost drawbridge. Once the enemy saw the bridges, they’d know they had to send men ashore to clear the way.

“But if we sink them first, use them to block the channel, the bridges won’t matter!” she’d said fiercely, and he’d been forced to agree with her logic. Which made him feel no better now that they had proof her worries had been well founded.

The galley threading its way down the Canale Gottardo Capponi flew a standard he didn’t recognize. It wasn’t Roman or Nikeisian, anyway. And a second galley had rounded the bend just north of their present position behind it.

“Five Kingdoms,” a soprano said at his elbow, and he turned to glare at Lucia.

“Well, it is!” she told him pertly, then turned and threw a stream of Italian at “her” militiamen. It was far too rapid for Saxon to understand a word of it, but the militiamen immediately opened the chests they’d brought with them.

“Goddamn it,” he snarled, and Haskins glanced at him. “This is no place for a damned kid, Cal!”

“Don’t disagree, but some of the others ain’t that much older’n she is, man. And they ain’t listening to her like she was just a ‘kid.’ ’Sides, at least she can tell ’em what to do in their own language, which is more’n you or I can do!”

* * *

“Praise Vothan,” Eurydamus of Tiryns said as Thunderbolt eased her way along the shadowed channel. Waves slapped loudly even here, but the solid bulk of the Nikeisian buildings flanking it on either side were a blessed barrier to the brutal wind roaring down the length of the Great Gulf.

“Aye, I’m thinking he had a lot to do with it,” Scamandius, his first lieutenant, agreed. “Him and the Thunderer.”

“And our turncoat,” Eurydamus murmured, cutting his eyes at the man standing beside Thunderbolt’s steersman. Polidoro Scarcello wasn’t a Riccigionan. He was a native Nikeisian.

“He cost enough,” Scamandius said sourly, then shrugged. “And worth every silver of it. I never would have expected there to be enough water in here, even with the Demon Star.”

“A lot of things are changing thanks to the Demon,” Eurydamus replied, never taking his eye from the leadsman at the bow.

There was enough water under Thunderbolt’s keel right now, but there was no promise things would stay that way, and none of the great galleys or navibus onerārius could possibly have come this way. He looked over his shoulder at the next galley in line behind Thunderbolt with a crooked smile that mixed grudging respect with amusement. Captain Anaxilaus was an excellent seaman, and Eurydamus was fairly certain Anaxilaus hadn’t “just happened” to fall behind in the squadron’s mad scramble to claw its way into the canal. If someone ran aground in here, it wasn’t going to be him, and—

A blur of movement at the corner of his eye snatched his attention back to his own ship as something plummeted from above. It trailed a thin line of smoke behind it, and he heard the sharp shattering sound of pottery or glass as it slammed into the deck three feet from him.

His eyes were still widening in alarm when the spray of flame splashed across his legs. He cried out, leaping away from it, beating frantically at the liquid fire clinging to him as it gnawed his flesh, and someone else cried out in alarm as a second plummeting object smashed into the deck, right beside the main hatch. Liquid fire poured over the hatch coaming onto the babordo rowing bench, and alarm turned to anguish as half a dozen men were engulfed in sudden flame. More of the burning liquid spilled hungrily down the hatch, and Thunderbolt veered to starboard as the rowers leapt away from the inferno.

* * *

Yes!” Lucia’s shriek of triumph was as fierce as any eagle’s as the firebombs smashed home on the leading galley.

She’d insisted on lighting the first one herself, and she’d watched it all the way down to the galley’s quarterdeck. It helped that the ship had been almost directly below their fourth-floor perch, but the canal was so narrow they could probably lob the gunpowder bombs—they were a little lighter than the firebombs—clear across it if they had to.

That was Bart Saxon’s first thought. His second was that he hadn’t really let himself think about what he was making as he constructed the incendiaries. The shrieks of agony and the thickening columns of smoke-shot flame filled him with a crawling horror. Those men down there had come here to plunder Nikeis, and he doubted they would have cared very much how many people they massacred in the process. But they were still human beings, and he was the one who’d built the weapon which had set them afire like so many logs.

He looked away, fighting an urge to vomit, and saw Lucia’s profile as she snapped more orders in rapid Italian, pointing at the second ship swinging to starboard in an effort to get around their first victim. If she felt any trace of his own repugnance, there was no sign of it in that fierce, focused young face.

* * *

“Quickly, Marco! Quickly!”

“Yes, Signorina!” Marco Salata acknowledged. If her father’s valet had any reservations about handling the star men’s infernal devices he clearly had no intention of showing it.

“Valerico! Your throwing arm is stronger than mine,” he said, and the young militiaman stepped up beside him. Valerico’s expression showed considerably more trepidation, but he accepted the gunpowder bomb and held it gingerly while Marco opened the slide on the lantern.

“We want to hit the other galley, Valerico.” Lucia remembered to smile encouragingly at him. “And we want to do it quickly. If we can sink two or three of them it will block the entire canal!”

“I understand, Signorina.” Valerico nodded, his eyes widening as Marco lit the fuse from the lantern’s flame.

Lucia turned back to the window and grimaced in frustration.

“Move!” she barked, and slammed a pointy elbow into Lord Bart’s ribs.

The star man shook his head, like a man waking up, and then stepped quickly aside as he saw the sputtering fuse.

“Now, Valerico!” she commanded.

* * *

“Hard a starboard!” Anaxilaus of Edron shouted. “Harder, damn you!”

The steersman leaned hard on the steering oar and Sea Harvest swerved, but Thunderbolt was lurching to the right, as well, and Anaxilaus swore vilely. It was going to be close, and if Thunderbolt’s ram caught them . . .

Damned rat trap of a channel! he thought viciously. No room to dodge. And what in the gods’ name did they hit her with?!

It wasn’t the pyrkagiá galleys flung at their foes. It was too liquid for that, and burned with a darker smoke, but it also spread even more fiercely. Firefighting parties were reaching for the buckets of sand kept available to smother pyrkagiá hits, but the flaming liquid had already found its way below decks through the central hatchway. If Sea Harvest collided with Eurydamus’ ship they’d become a single holocaust.

“Watch the windows!” he heard Polykleitos, Sea Harvest’s captain of archers, shouting. “Watch the—”

It was a smaller, more compact whatever-it-was this time, Anaxilaus thought. One of his marines tried to catch it and throw it overboard, but it slipped past him and thudded squarely down the huge central hatch.

Had to open it, didn’t you? he thought. Just like Eurydamus.

That hatch had been battened firmly down when the sea began making up on the way here, but it had trapped the rowers in a dark, wet, noisome prison as seawater forced its way in through the oarports. They’d needed fresh air, and he’d needed to be able to get them on deck as quickly as possible when the time came, so as soon as he’d gotten Sea Harvest into the canal’s calmer waters, he’d ordered it opened. Well, at least everyone aboard knew what had happened to Thunderbolt, so his crew undoubtedly had the sand buckets ready.

“There!” someone shouted, and he heard bowstrings twang.

He was turning towards the sound when the gunpowder charge exploded between his ship’s decks.

* * *

Valerico!” Lucia cried.

The militiaman stumbled backward, eyes enormous in a suddenly pale face as his hands clutched at the arrow buried in his chest. Marco caught the younger man, and Lucia felt her stomach knot as the valet eased him to the floor in a crimson rush of blood. An explosion cracked outside the window, not as loud as she’d expected, somehow, as she went to her knees beside him.

“Signorina?” he gasped, reaching one bloody hand towards her. She clasped it in both of hers, feeling the hot, slick wetness, watching the terrible red tide spread beneath him.

“Yes, Valerico,” she said, bending over him.

“Did I—did I—?”

“You did well, Valerico.” She moved her right hand to his forehead, stroking back the hair. “You did well.”

“G-Good,” he said, but his voice faltered as pain twisted his face. “Tell my . . . tell my father I did—”

His voice died and the hand gripping hers so fiercely relaxed suddenly.

“I will, Valerico,” she whispered, bending over him. She kissed his forehead. “I will.”

She closed her eyes against the burn of tears, fighting them with all her strength, until she felt someone touch the side of her face. Her eyes flared open then, and she found herself looking into Lord Bart’s eyes. They were dark behind the lenses of his spectacles.

“He’s gone,” the star man said in his atrociously accented trade dialect. “I’m sorry.”

Her mouth trembled, but she would not show weakness in front of Lord Bart. She would not! She—

A tear escaped her, sliding down her cheek, and he brushed it away with a thumb.

“I’m sorry,” he repeated. “But we need you right now.”

He drew her back to her feet, then tucked one arm around her and drew her towards the window. It felt good, that arm, and she let herself lean against him.

* * *

“Curse them!” Captain Thalysios snarled.

He knew what had to have struck Sea Harvest, although he’d never seen the star men’s “gunpowder” weapons actually used. He also knew where it had come from, and he glared up at the windows above the canal.

The explosion aboard Sea Harvest had come at the worst possible moment, and she’d staggered sideways, colliding with Thunderbolt. The two of them—both burning—were jammed together, blocking the canal. The channel was wide enough his own Spatha could have squeezed past, but not without taking fire herself. They had to get those blazing wrecks as far to one side of the canal as they could, but no one could get close enough without coming into range of those windows. Especially not if the defenders had been smart enough to spread through several of the buildings.

Two more galleys came around the bend behind him and backed oars heavily to avoid collision. That was all they would have needed!

He glared up at those deadly windows, then raised his speaking trumpet as he turned towards the galleys astern of Spatha.

* * *

Another bucket of filthy water went over the leeward bulwark. And then another.

Another.

Warner stood on the quarterdeck, watching a bucket line of marines bail Ferox’s bilges. Green water swept across her deck more and more often, and still more of it was spurting past the leather stoppers on the oarports. At first, the deck crew had managed to control the flooding by taking turns cranking an Archimedes screw pump. But that was no longer enough, and Pilinius had ordered one end of the main hatch opened so that the marines could help bail. Warner wouldn’t have cared to be one of the marines standing on the ladder and passing those buckets up through the hatch.

If this picks up any more, we’re going to be swamped, he thought. When we get back, I’ll have to build them a piston pump. Oh wait, a venturi flow tube on the stern with a check valve. Yeah, as long as we’re moving, the flow of water will draw fluid out of the bilge.

The one good thing he could say about fear of drowning was that it helped keep his mind off being seasick, at least until the ship went down.

The shoulder mic chirped twice and he pressed the transmit button.

“This is Hunter One. Over.”

“Looks like it’s time for you to start your run,” Art Mason said over the radio. “If you alter course now, you should be able to get on their flank as they pass. Over.”

Warner looked up as Martins and Junius stepped closer to hear Mason.

“Roger,” he said. “What course? Over.”

“Hard to say—they’re really scattered. And we see some really big navibus onerārius inbound with them. Over.”

That doesn’t sound good,” Warner said. “Nobody mentioned anything like that to us. Over.”

“Noticed that, did you?” Mason replied dryly. “But they’re out there, and they’re three-masted, probably bigger’n Ferox. The Colonel figures they’re probably troopships. Which means our troop estimates were probably low, too. Anyway, they’re here and it looks like they’re being escorted by some more of those Duchy ships. Any transports you can keep from landing their troops would be a really good thing. Hold one.”

There was a brief pause, then Mason’s voice returned.

“Head southwest for now. Over.”

“Roger, southwest. Can you see what happened to our other ships? Over.”

“Yeah, they’re engaging the other squadron upwind of you. Looks like some of the ships are in a big raft fight, and at least one of the other guys has gone down. Not sure that was our doing. Poor bastard might just have capsized. And—oh! Somebody’s on fire big time! Think someone just used a cocktail . . . ”

“That can’t be good,” Martins said. “The wind’s in the wrong direction. That’ll blow back on friendly ships.”

“Someone make a mistake?” Warner wondered out loud.

“Maybe. Could’ve been out of desperation.”

Warner looked into the wind, scanning the horizon. He thought he saw a smudge of smoke where he’d last seen friendly mastheads, but in this wind, that had to be his imagination.

“Whoever it is, he’s not going to make it. Over,” Mason said.

“Gotcha. We’ll be changing course shortly. Over.”

Warner released the transmit button and looked at Junius.

“The Colonel says to steer southwest. He wants us to go for the navibus onerārius, but we’ll probably have to fight our way through some of their galleys first.”

Junius nodded and beckoned to Pilinius.

“Steer southwest,” he ordered, and Pilinius nodded in turn and began bawling orders.

A red flag went to the top of Ferox’s mizzenmast as the deck crew sprang to the braces. Pilinius waited a moment longer, for the rest of the squadron to see the signal, then nodded curtly to the three men on the helm. The steering oar went over, the waiting crewmen trimmed the sails, and Ferox surged around. The other galleys followed suit, maneuvering to form a wedge formation with the flagship at its apex.

The ride was easier now, although it was still a hell of a lot rougher than Warner might have preferred. The wind was almost directly astern, no longer coming in from the quarter, and the violent corkscrew rolling motion had eased considerably. The seas were as mountainous as ever, but the galley’s stern castle was six or seven feet higher than the midships bulwark. That meant waves were no longer sweeping the main deck, and the marines abandoned their buckets in favor of weapons.

* * *

“Hot work!” Admiral Ottone del Verme shouted to his flag captain.

“Too hot!” Captain Forcucci shouted back, and del Verme nodded in grim agreement.

The timing had gone to hell—not too surprising, with the way the weather had turned. Del Verme had never expected it to be this bad, and it was getting worse as the wind came howling down the funnel of the Inland Sea. Even here in the islands’ lee, the seas were high enough to make rowing both difficult and exhausting. He preferred to not even think about what it must be like for the Roman squadron. And anybody who failed to make it into a safe anchorage in the next half dozen hours or so was unlikely to ever see port again.

Not that that was likely to be a pressing problem for his own command.

His squadron had intercepted the enemy just short of the entrance to the Canale Occidentale, but they were badly outnumbered, and still more attackers were clawing their way towards the channel mouth. Some were actually coming up from the southwest, using the islands’ wind shadow to fight their way upwind towards del Verme’s squadron. He suspected that most of them were more concerned with finding shelter from the mounting storm than with attacking him. Unfortunately, he was in their way, and this was no weather for a maneuvering battle where he might have avoided them. Even if that hadn’t been true, sheer weight of numbers had already forced him back into the Canale Occidentale, and at least a dozen enemy galleys had run ashore on Isola di Cannaregio. He wasn’t certain they’d done it on purpose, but whether by intent or accident, they’d gotten their marines and rowers onto the island. He hoped the militia could hold them, but he was far from certain of that, as well.

Meanwhile, he had problems of his own. The great galleys at the center of his line had thrown back every assault with relative ease—so far—and the star man-designed firebombs had burned five Riccigionan galleys which had come too close to the seawall on the southern edge of the channel. That had bought him precious time, but the attackers were getting their own infantry ashore on the northwestern shore of San Giorgio, as well as Cannaregio. The firebomb throwers had been driven back, and that had cleared the full width of the channel for the enemy to come at him. Two thirds of his galleys were already locked in combat with half their number of Riccigionan and Five Kingdoms galleys, and twice that many fresh enemies were charging in on them.

It would appear they had actually underestimated their enemies’ numbers. He hadn’t thought that was possible.

“It’s time to block the channel,” he told Forcucci. The captain looked at him for a moment, then drew a deep breath and nodded.

Si, Ammiraglio,” he said.

The captain began shouting orders, and Pugnale, Del Verme’s great galley flagship, thrust forward into the melee raging in the channel mouth. The other disengaged galleys accompanied Pugnale, smashing their way into the tangle to create yet another channel-blocking raft.

“Tell Lord Rick we are going to anchor,” he said to the star man at his elbow. He gestured at the southernmost of his galleys, hard up against Isola di San Giorgio. A mass of militiamen gathered on the canalside quay, catching the galley’s mooring lines and making them fast.

“Tell him I believe we can stand our ground as long as Sangue is able to hold her position and the militia can continue to reinforce my crews.”

“Yes, Sir,” Corporal Franklin O’Reilly said, reaching for the device—the “microphone”—fastened to his right shoulder.

“And then, Lord Franklin, I believe it will be time for you to go ashore.”

“Admiral, my orders—”

“I know your orders,” del Verme interrupted. “I’m sure Lord Rick can see us from the bell tower, however, and there are no more complicated orders for him to pass us. We hold here, or we die.” He shrugged. “Very simple. But they’re getting men onto the islands, even if we hold the channels, and you and your men’s star weapons will be more useful defending the Palazzo San Marco than here. Go now, while the bridges from San Giorgio are still in our hands.”

“Admiral, without the radio, you won’t know when—”

“I know,” del Verme interrupted once more. “It doesn’t matter. Go!”

The star man looked at him for a moment, and then, to del Verme’s surprise, he straightened his shoulders and gave the admiral a star man salute. He returned it in the Nikeisian style, and their eyes held for a moment. Then O’Reilly said something to his fellow star men and they turned to race across the entangled ships while del Verme’s crews began lashing the raft together.

* * *

Enemy ships continued to pour into the outer lagoon. Half of them went directly to the rafted ships clogging the throat of the North Channel. Most of the others were driven by the wind towards the western side of the archipelago. A lot of them found shelter of a sort in the pocket where the fishing boat channel between the islands of Cannaregio and Lido entered the outer lagoon. Rick couldn’t see most of the channel because of the buildings clustered along its sides, but he could see its exit into the inner lagoon. The good news was that the canal was obviously too shallow for the pocketed galleys to get through it. The bad news was that their crews had go somewhere, and the radios confirmed that hundreds—probably thousands, really—of men were swarming ashore on the western shore of Lido and the northeastern shore of Cannaregio.

A few had attempted to circle around east of the ship raft in the main channel, but none of them had made it. They’d been driven onto shoals or beaten to death against the seawall, but he could see hundreds of enemy troops swarming ashore on Isola di San Lazzaro, the island on the east side of the North Channel, as well.

“Message from Lieutenant Cargill, Colonel,” Mason said, and Rick lowered his binoculars to look at him. Cargill and Rick’s own Corporal Stratton commanded the ten Gurkhas and the single Bren gun which had been deployed to San Lazzaro. “He says they can’t hold their ground much longer. The militia’s fighting better’n we expected, really, but their losses are rising and they’re beginning to waver, even with star weapon support.”

“Damn.”

Rick raised his binoculars again, his jaw tight. If Cargill was forced back from San Lazzaro, they’d lose the ability to reinforce the Nikeisians fighting to hold the ship raft. And with no influx of replacements, the raft’s defenders wouldn’t last long.

God, I hope to hell Cargill can hold, he thought grimly. If we lose control of the raft . . .

He turned and looked to the west. At least there was less pressure on the militia supporting del Verme’s squadron and it seemed to be standing firm. As long as it did, del Verme could probably look after himself.

He turned his gaze back to the north and found himself wishing, not for the first time, that he knew Cargill and Martins better. They were so damned young. How good was their judgment, really?

Guess it’s always come down to this in the end. It all depends on some goddamned lieutenant’s judgment call out at the sharp edge. Doesn’t seem to matter whether it’s me in Angola or Cargill on Tran. And I’ve got no option but to hope he knows what he’s doing.

“Tell Cargill to use his own judgment,” he said, never lowering the binoculars. “Tell him we can’t reinforce him. He’s to hold as long as he can and then get the hell out.”

“Yes, Sir.”

“And then,” Rick turned his head to meet Mason’s eyes, “tell Walbrook I think we’re going to need him on the North Channel first.”

* * *

Captain Thalysios trotted stealthily through the winding alley, trying not to wince at the unholy racket of the marines behind him. Apparently, none of them had ever heard of the word “quiet,” he thought disgustedly. At least the wind howling around the city’s roofs should drown it out. Mostly.

Over a dozen galleys—and, more importantly, one of the troop-laden navibus onerārius—had made landfall on Isola di Lido. Most of the attackers were headed east, towards the fortress guarding the western side of the Canale del Nord. If they could storm the fortress, they could swarm the mass of galleys blocking the channel from the west. Thalysios was certain that other attackers had made their way ashore on San Lazzaro to attack the other end of the ship raft, as well. But he and his men had headed in the opposite direction.

The Nikeisians had spent years planning their city’s defenses. They had to know that any attack would focus on the entrances to the main channels, and they would have deployed their own troops to protect the most probable lines of approach from those points. But there’d been no galleys protecting Canale Gottardo Capponi, and so far as Thalysios could tell, he’d gotten his men ashore undetected. For that matter, they’d covered three blocks without seeing a single soul, far less an enemy soldier. It looked as if the Nikeisians truly had discounted any threat by way of the fishing boat channel and deployed their fighting power elsewhere. Aside from the devils who’d burned Thunderbolt and Sea Harvest, at least.

Thalysios hoped Polidoro Scarcello’s payment would do him some good in hell, because the Nikeisian would never have the chance to spend it in this world. As far as the captain knew, no more than a quarter of Eurydamus’ crew had made it ashore, and Scarcello hadn’t been among them. But so far, all of his information had proved accurate, and according to the turncoat, only three drawbridges crossed the canal. No doubt all of them had been lowered, if only to facilitate the defenders’ own movements. That also neatly blocked the canal for any of the attackers’ galleys, however, and at least some troops must have been posted to protect them. That was why they’d planned on landing marines to seize control of them from the beginning. Until whoever had dropped those fiery missiles intervened, at any rate. As long as they were in a position to burn any galley that passed below their perch, no one could get by them to attack the bridges. And if they could sink one or two more ships at the same spot, the bridges wouldn’t matter. The wrecks would block the channel quite nicely.

Unless, of course, someone prevented the bastards from dropping any more fire.

* * *

“What do you figure they’re up to now, Bart?” Cal Haskins asked in a low voice.

He and Saxon stood well to one side of another window—not the one they’d dropped their incendiaries from—peering down at the choppy waters of the canal. The first angry drops of rain drummed on the roof above them and the wind sounded stronger than ever, but the canal seemed almost placid by contrast. Except for the two galleys still burning below them.

“Damned if I know,” Saxon muttered back, plucking at his rifle’s sling. “I think there’s still room for them to sneak past the wrecks if they’re careful. For that matter, I’m not sure the wrecks are on the bottom. They might be able to push them out of the way, if they’re still floating. I don’t understand why they aren’t at least trying!”

“Probably don’t want to cross Miss Lucia’s path!” Haskins snorted. He shook his head admiringly. “That’s a nasty girlfriend you got there, Bart!”

“She’s not my girlfriend!” Saxon snapped, darting an angry look at his friend.

“Hey, man! No need t’ bite my head off! I’m just calling it the way I see it. Girl’s got an eye for you.”

“She’s only a kid,” Saxon muttered, reminding himself that Haskins didn’t know about Sherry Northland.

“Mighty gutsy one, though,” Haskins said, bending closer to the window. Unlike Saxon, whose H&K was slung, the ex-corporal held his at the ready, although he was careful to keep his finger off the trigger. “And that’s why we ain’t seen any more ships down there. No way they’re gonna risk what she’s waitin’ to do to them!”

And that, Saxon had to admit, was no more than the truth. In fact, that was what had him worried. He doubted the bad guys were just going to turn around and go home, so what were they up to?

Damn, I wish I’d thought to bring a radio!

He grimaced. All the radios had been pooled, and he’d been so worried about trying to keep Lucia from doing something stupid that he’d done something stupid all of his own. Not only had he forgotten to ask for a radio back, he hadn’t even told anyone where they were going!

I’m a teacher, not a soldier, damn it! he told himself, but that wasn’t an excuse. Not a good enough one, anyway. And—

* * *

Lucia stood beside Marco, trying not to look at Valerico’s body. She’d never seen so much blood, and it was her fault for bringing him here.

Maybe it is, she thought, but I have my duty as much as anyone else! I may not be big and strong enough to swing a halberd, but I have a mind that works, and Professore Clavell always said minds are far more dangerous than mere weapons!

She smiled at that thought, despite her own terror and her grief for Valerico, because she’d been right! She’d been right about the Canale Gottardo Capponi, and Lord Bart knew she had! She’d seen the way he’d looked at her, earlier. It had sent a thrill of excitement through her, and she wondered why he hadn’t said anything to her about it. She was of marrying age, after all, and if her father wasn’t a senator, his position at the Arsenale was one of the most important in all of Nikeis! She had always heard that the star men were scandalously oblivious to birth and wealth, yet Lord Bart had refused to say a single word despite the invitation in her own eyes. Any boy she’d ever known would have been butter in her hands, but not Lord Bart!

Still, she knew she had impressed him. That was good. That was something she could build on. And he was so much handsomer than Professore Clavell or Professore Harrison! Surely, if she charted her course with care—

* * *

Thalysios had known it was the right building when he saw the three militiamen in the street. They had been very young, little more than boys, and now they would never grow older, because they had allowed their attention to be drawn to the battle sounds riding the angry wind from the northeast. Only one of them had seen Thalysios’ men coming, and he’d seen them too late to save himself or his companions.

Or to raise the alarm.

Now the captain led the way up the stairs, sword in hand. In truth, he would have preferred to let someone else have the honor of the lead, especially since half a dozen of the men behind him were armed with crossbows. But after listening to them in the streets, he trusted none of them to pick a way up a wooden staircase without waking the dead. So he eased his way upward, testing each stair tread carefully, hoping none of those crossbowmen had itchy fingers, and pointing out the stairs that creaked to the marines following in his wake.

At least so far none of them had managed to trip and roll all the way to the bottom in a clatter of armor and weapons, praise Vothan!

He reached the top and paused, waiting. A dozen marines gathered on either side of him, packing the narrow hallway, and he nodded to them, then drew a deep breath, laid one hand on the door latch, and lowered his shoulder.

* * *

Lord Bart!

Wood splintered, and Saxon heard Lucia scream his name.

He twisted around, jaw dropping as a burly man in breastplate and helmet came crashing through the door with a drawn sword. Lucia and Marco were closest to the door, and Marco charged the intruder with the short battle ax he’d brought along. But the armored warrior evaded the valet almost negligently, and Marco went up on his toes as two inches of bloody steel emerged from his back.

Saxon’s hands fumbled, caught between trying to unsling his rifle or reaching for the Beretta under his left arm, and more men appeared, crowding through the doorway, trying to get past their leader as he yanked his sword from Marco’s body. One of them held a crossbow, and Saxon saw it come up and level and knew he was about to die.

No!” a young voice screamed, and Lucia Michaeli flung herself at the crossbowmen with a dagger in her hand.

The crossbow’s string snapped, and Bart Saxon’s universe froze as the steel-headed quarrel punched through Lucia’s body in a terrifying spray of blood. The man who’d killed Marco punched her in the head with one gauntleted fist while he twisted away from her thrusting dagger, and her head flew back with a sickening crack.

She plunged to the floor, and even as she fell someone drove a shoulder into Saxon, thrusting him out of the way, and the room filled with thunder.

* * *

Thalysios recovered his blade and charged forward just as the men on the far side of the room turned towards him. Both wore strange garments unlike any Thalysios had ever seen. One of them was tall and fair skinned; the other was even bigger and his skin was the darkest Thalysios had ever seen.

He had time to register that, and then he saw the weapon in the black-skinned man’s hands.

Star men! They’re star men, and that’s a star weap—!

* * *

Haskins hammered the doorway with fire. Splinters—and blood—flew as the 7.92-millimeter slugs chewed into the intruders at a range of less than thirty feet. He heard screams and walked his fire along the wall in both directions, stitching the wood paneling—and anyone on the other side of it—with holes in short, controlled bursts. There were more screams from the hallway, and he lunged forward, dropping the H&K to hang across his chest from the sling, while his right hand reached into a jacket pocket.

Bastards, he thought, stepping over Marco’s body, trying not to think about Lucia. Goddamned bastards! Well, I got something for your worthless asses!

He’d somehow failed to mention to Saxon that he’d “borrowed” a couple of the Gurkhas’ precious hand grenades. Now one of them came out of his pocket, he yanked the ring free, released the arming spoon, heaved it down the stairwell, and ducked back into the room.

“Fire in the hole!” he shouted. The Nikeisians only looked at him uncomprehendingly, and he jabbed a finger at the floor.

Down—now!” he barked, and they flung themselves prone just before the grenade detonated.

* * *

“Lucia! Lucia!”

Saxon was on his knees beside her, ripping at her gown frantically while the blood pooled. He bared the wound, and his gorge rose.

Her eyes slitted open, huge and dark in a face that was far too pale, and her mouth twisted in pain.

“Lucia!”

“I . . . I am sorry, Lord Bart,” she whispered. “I didn’t—”

“Hush. Hush!” He shook his head fiercely. “You’ve got nothing to be sorry for!”

“But . . . I wanted . . . you to like m . . . ”

Her eyes drifted shut, her voice trailed off, and he realized blood was trickling from her scalp, as well. Not very much—he told himself that and tried to believe he wasn’t lying—but that brutal punch must have opened a gash in her scalp. He clenched his jaw, hands fumbling at the emergency dressing Colonel Galloway had insisted every one of the “star men” had to take with him, but he couldn’t get it open and she was bleeding to death!

Stupid, useless, gutless

The bitter self-condemnation rolled through his brain. He should never have let her come! He should have made her go back once they got here! And if he hadn’t frozen, stood there like some spineless idiot, she’d never have been hurt! It was all his fault, and if Cal hadn’t been here, they’d all be dead!

“Hey, now,” Haskins said, and Saxon turned his head to see the other man on one knee beside him, fitting a fresh magazine into his rifle. “Could be a hell of a lot worse, Bart.”

Worse?!” he blurted. “She’s bleeding to death!”

“So get some pressure on it!” Haskins snapped, rifle back up to cover the doorway, and Saxon shook himself. He finished ripping open the dressing and pressed it to the ugly groove the crossbow bolt had torn through the left side of Lucia’s torso. The trough looked terrifyingly deep to him, but at least the dressing was big enough to cover it, and he leaned on it, pressing as hard as he could.

“That’s better, man,” Haskins said, eyes still on the doorway. “Now listen to me, Bart. She ain’t gonna bleed out if we can keep pressure on that. Didn’t cut no arteries, and it may be ugly, but it don’t look like it hit her clean, either. Or maybe her ribs turned it some. Anyway, it didn’t go through her guts, and that’s good, man. That’s good! We get her back, and the Colonel’s medics’ll have a good chance of pulling her through. We just gotta get her there, you with me?”

Saxon nodded dumbly, not trusting his own voice, and cloth tore as one of the militiamen knelt on his other side, shredding a tunic to provide strips to bind the dressing in place.

“We gotta move,” Haskins went on. “Bastards know where we are, there’s likely a hell of a lot more of them than there are of us, and neither one of us got a lot of ammo. So we can’t stay here.”

“No, we can’t,” Saxon acknowledged. “But how do we move her?”

“Don’t got time to make a stretcher,” Haskins said as Saxon finished tying the bandage in place. “Wish we did, ’cause it’d be a lot better for her. But we’re just gonna have to carry her.”

“I’ll do it,” Saxon said.

“No, man.” Haskins shook his head, his expression almost gentle. “We only got the two rifles, and ain’t none of these locals know how to use one. I’m gonna need you with me, Bart.”

“But—”

“Pardon, Lord Bart.” It was the militiaman who’d helped him bandage Lucia, speaking the trade dialect. “It would be my honor to carry the signorina so that you and Lord Cal can fight.”

The Nikeisian couldn’t have understood Haskins’ English, Saxon reflected, but it would appear he was no idiot. Saxon didn’t know how much use he’d be with his H&K—God knew he hadn’t been much use yet! But . . .

“Be careful with her!” he said fiercely in the same dialect, and felt his eyes burn.

“As if she were my own sister,” the young man replied, and Saxon gave him a choppy nod. Then he looked back at Haskins and unslung his own rifle.

“All right,” he grated. “Let’s get her the hell out of here.”

* * *

“Oh, shit!”

“What’s wrong, Sir?” Art Mason asked, bringing up his own binoculars and peering in the same direction as Rick.

“Look between Cannaregio and Lido. Where the fishing channel comes out.”

“Oh, hell,” Mason grunted, and Rick nodded.

“Guess it wasn’t that shallow after all,” he said grimly, watching the first enemy galley slide out into the inner lagoon.

“We knew the surge was piling water up everywhere. Guess it was piling it up in there, too.” Mason shook his head. “Shoulda thought of it, Sir. Sorry.”

“Not like you’re the only one who didn’t think about it. I wonder what the hell took them so long?”

“No telling, but whatever it was, it’s not slowing them up anymore,” Mason observed as a second galley emerged. Then a third nosed out of the shadows.

“Warn Bisso and Baker they’ve got incoming. I just hope Publius is smart enough to not try and take these bastards on all by himself!”

“He’s Roman, but he ain’t an idiot, Sir,” Mason said as he turned to the radio.

Rick’s grunt was noncommittal. The way this was going, it might not matter what Publius decided to do.

He looked back to the north. The ship raft was still there, but the fortress on Lido must have fallen, because Riccigionan and Five Kingdoms soldiers were fighting their way onto the western end of the raft. More and more galleys—and at least one of the navibus onerārius—had crashed directly into it, as well. Men funneled over the new arrivals’ bows, and the defenders retreated sullenly, pulling back towards San Lazzaro. From the looks of things, the fortress on that island was still in Nikeisian hands, but for how much longer?

And now that they’re leaking around the flank, your whole plan may be about to go belly up. What the hell made you think you could handle something like this?!

* * *

“You ready, Bart?” Cal Haskins asked as quietly as he could through the sound of wind, rain, and—now—thunder.

“Yeah,” Saxon muttered, hoping he didn’t sound as scared as he felt. The two of them crouched in an alley, peering out through the rainy gloom.

“So far, so good, man.” Haskins’ teeth were almost shockingly white when he smiled. “And from the sounda things, the militia’s still holding.”

“Yeah.” Saxon tried to put a little enthusiasm into his tone this time, and the truth was that they had done well, so far.

The surprise of encountering star weapons—and the devastating effect of Haskins’ grenade in the crowded stairwell—had panicked the group which had attacked their initial position. Its survivors had fled back the way they’d come, abandoning even their own wounded, and Saxon didn’t blame them. Haskins had killed or wounded at least a dozen of them in the hallway, and Saxon hadn’t even tried to count the bodies on his way down the stairs. Some of them had still been alive, groaning—or screaming—with pain, and he’d been torn between a desire to finish them off for what they’d done to Lucia and Marco and a sense of horror at leaving them to live or die in such agony on their own.

Haskins had pushed them hard as soon as he was confident the bad guys hadn’t left anyone in the street outside their building. He’d sent them scurrying towards the southernmost bridge between Lido and Cannaregio on the theory that it would be the last the attackers reached.

Saxon understood his logic, but that didn’t mean he’d liked the way their pace had to jar Lucia. She seemed to be drifting in and out of consciousness, and he didn’t know how much of that drift stemmed from the wound in her side and how much from the punch to her head. Concussion. Another thing to worry about! But young Aristeo Mangione, the militiaman who’d offered to carry her, was a big fellow by Tran standards, with strong arms and powerful shoulders, and he was absolutely as gentle with her as he could be. In fact, every one of their surviving Nikeisians seemed to regard Lucia as a combination battle standard and kid sister, which said a hell of a lot about her personality.

And Haskins had been right to push them hard. They had gotten to the southernmost drawbridge before anyone had attacked its sentries, but it was obvious they hadn’t had many minutes to spare. Despite the rain, at least some of the buildings behind them were on fire, adding their own lurid glare to the plunging raindrops, and they’d come damned close to being fired upon by one of the militia crossbowmen guarding the bridge before they could identify themselves.

They’d raced across it, hurried along by the sound of approaching battle. It was coming from more than one direction, too, and Saxon’s heart had sunk as he realized the enemy was already ashore on Cannaregio in strength. More attackers were sweeping down both sides of the Canale Gottardo Capponi, as well. It was obvious that the other bridge guards weren’t slowing them down very much, and he’d said as much to the teenaged ensign commanding the twenty-man bridge detail. The boy might have been young, but he wasn’t indecisive. He wasn’t an idiot, either. He’d ordered his men to cut the lift ropes and smash the windlasses at each end of the bridge, then joined their party.

The damage to the hoisting gear would probably slow the invaders down, but Saxon doubted it would slow them very much. They were professional sailors, and that meant they had to be adept at rapid repairs to rigging and masts. It wouldn’t take them long to rerig the windlasses and raise the bridge to let their ships past it. On the other hand, the sentries had been far too few in numbers to prevent the bridge’s capture, so it made far more sense to cripple it as badly as possible and then hightail it.

The militiamen had been a welcome reinforcement to their own party, and they knew this part of the city better than anyone else in their original group. They’d guided the star men quickly through back ways, and he’d felt his heart rising as they moved steadily towards safety.

And now this.

“How many, you think?” he asked.

“Probably look like more’n there really are,” Haskins said. “Call it thirty, maybe.”

“Thirty,” Saxon repeated, and swallowed hard.

“Might be a few more,” Haskins said thoughtfully, then flashed another of those shocking smiles. “Other hand, they don’t know we’re here, and they sure as hell don’t expect no assault rifles!”

“Gotcha.” Saxon swallowed again, hoping he wasn’t about to vomit, and doublechecked the safety on his rifle.

Wish to hell I’d fired this thing more, he thought grimly. And I hope to hell Cal stays clear, because God knows where I’m going to be spraying bullets!

Short bursts, he reminded himself. The H&K had no three-round burst setting; it was single shots or full auto, with nothing in between. Short bursts on auto. Don’t just hold the damned trigger back or you’ll empty the mag in like two seconds. Then where the hell will you be?

He closed his eyes for a moment and drew a deep breath, hoping Ensign Cardinale really understood the plan, then snorted. Of course Cardinale understood! Wasn’t like it was real complicated, was it?

“Get set,” Haskins said softly, and Saxon’s eyes popped open again. The enemy troops were closer, moving cautiously down the street. They seemed to be paying more attention to the windows and balconies above them than they were to street level, but they were obviously scouts, looking for a way to get around the flank of the militia holding the northern bank of the West Channel. And according to Ensign Cardinale, they were between Saxon’s group and the militia’s position in the Palazzo Santa Lucretia.

He shouldered his rifle, looking across its sights at the men who were about to become targets.

Cal’s right. Only way home is through them. God, don’t puke. Don’t puke!

Now!” Haskins snapped, and squeezed his trigger.

The muzzle flash was unbelievably brilliant in the dimness, and Saxon realized he was firing, too. He felt the recoil, the vibration. His own muzzle flash blinded him, but he knew where the enemy was, and he squeezed the trigger again and again, burning through the thirty-round magazine. He probably wasn’t hitting anything—a part of him hoped to God that he wasn’t!—but as Cal had explained, that wasn’t the real point. The point was to take the other side completely by surprise and panic them the same way they’d panicked the survivors of the first attack.

Charge!” Haskins bellowed, and Saxon remembered to jerk his index finger out of the trigger guard as Cardinale and the militia stormed past the two riflemen, halberds and spears lowered.

“On your feet, Bart!” A powerful hand dragged him up off his knees. “Gotta stay close behind them boys! Might need us!”

Saxon nodded and lurched to his feet. He took one more second to be sure Mangione and Lucia were close behind him, then started jogging rapidly down the street behind the whooping militiamen.

* * *

Warner was actually starting to feel better. It wasn’t because the weather had improved, though. Darkness was falling, the overcast had turned into boiling dark clouds and lashing rain, and the wind was stronger than ever. Worse, it was shifting farther towards the north.

He held a stay, peering up into the rain and the spray, and damned if lightning wasn’t starting to flicker out there in the storm!

Well, that’s all the hell we needed, he reflected, and glanced across the quarterdeck at Fleetmaster Junius and Captain Pilinius.

From the looks of things, all that airy confidence before they set out had started to wear pretty thin. They were Romans, of course, so they weren’t going to admit it, but it showed in the tautness of their shoulders and their focused expressions. Martins’ British sangfroid had started to fray around the edges a little, too.

Serves the bastards right, Warner thought. Hell! I’ve been scared shitless ever since we started on this!

And despite all that, he really did feel better. Talk about perverse.

Maybe I’ve got my sea legs. More likely it’s the adrenaline and fear kicking in.

The reason for that adrenaline was closing with them rapidly.

The lookouts had spotted the masts of the big ships Mason had told them to find twenty minutes earlier. It was just as well that they had, because one of the quinquireme’s wilder rolls had slammed Warner into the bulwark hard enough he was pretty sure he’d cracked at least one rib. It hurt like hell, even through his flak jacket, but that was the least of it, because his radio had gone dead, too, so no one from the bell tower could have corrected their course if they’d missed their target. Unfortunately, they’d obviously been spotted in return, and a line of galleys was closing on them from starboard, angling towards them on an intercept course while the navibus onerārius angled away.

At least we’re bigger’n any of them, he thought.

They were all galee sottili, although a couple of them looked bigger than any of the Roman triremes. None of them would be able to match Ferox’s size and fighting power. Not individually. But that wouldn’t matter if someone ripped out the quinquireme’s guts on a ram.

The seas were too high for anyone to row, so both sides were under sail, which was unusual for naval combat on Tran, to say the very least. In theory, it ought to favor the longer-ranged riflemen and, especially, the recoilless; in practice, he was less certain it would work out that way. The ship’s motion, even with the wind from almost directly astern, was far more violent than he’d anticipated when he suggested turning Ferox into a battleship. It wasn’t too terrible at the moment, but the navibus onerārius’ course change to evade them meant they’d have to alter their own course across the wind to catch them. They’d be right back to that gut-twisting corkscrew roll when that happened, and even Rudolf Frick would have a hell of a time scoring hits with the Carl Gustav. For that matter, aimed rifle fire was going to be far less accurate. And that assumed they survived what the sea had in store for them.

Damn. Wish I’d spent some time inventing lifejackets! Oh, well. No point worrying about that until I don’t get killed by the galleys.

“Was this the way you envisioned it?” he said in Martins’ ear, raising his voice to be heard over the crashing of wind and wave. The Brit looked at him for a moment, then shook his head.

“No,” he admitted. “From all I’d heard”—his eyes cut briefly in the direction of Junius and Pilinius—“it shouldn’t have been this violent at this time of year. The ship’s motion is far worse than I’d anticipated.”

Well, at least he owned up, Warner thought with grudging respect. Don’t know if he realizes he just pretty much admitted he and Baker were running around behind the Colonel’s back, but that’s for later.

“Yeah, well, my battlecruiser idea doesn’t look like working out all that well, either,” he said, and surprised himself with a grin. Martins smiled back, but then the smile faded.

“What worries me most,” the younger man said, turning his eyes back to the oncoming enemy, “is what happens once we’re past these chaps.”

“Changing course across the wind again?”

“Won’t be quite that bad. We should take the wind almost dead on the starboard quarter again, not from broad abeam. Not too worried that we’ll broach or anything of that sort.”

“Then what are you worried about?”

“Your last report was that the lead elements were assaulting the islands?” Martins asked a bit obliquely.

“Yeah,” Warner replied.

“Well, I’m rather afraid we may be doing the same shortly.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that the way this lot”—he waved the hand that wasn’t clutching a safety line at the clouds where fresh lightning had just made an appearance—“is continuing to worsen, I very much doubt we’ll have any choice but to run downwind to Nikeis ourselves.”

“There are at least seventy more galleys out there,” Warner pointed out. “Probably more, from what Mason’s already told us.”

“And I’m fairly certain that almost all of them will have made it at least as far as the outer lagoon by the time we arrive,” Martins replied with a nod. “Sounds a bit dicey, doesn’t it?”

“That’s one way to put it,” Warner growled. He gazed at the oncoming galleys, then shrugged and made his way to the quarterdeck rail and gripped it securely with both hands.

“Frick!” he shouted to the mercs huddled on the main deck at the stairs to the forecastle. No one seemed to notice. “Frick!

This time one of the Roman seamen heard him and tugged on one of the other mercs’ sleeve. The merc turned, and the seaman pointed to Warner.

Frick!” Warner bellowed, even louder, and the merc poked the recoilless gunner until he turned and looked in Warner’s direction.

“Time to break out the Carl Gustav and the rifles!” Warner shouted, holding up his own rifle case to reinforce the point. Frick looked at him for a moment, then nodded and began passing orders to the men around him while Warner turned back to Junius.

“Please excuse me, Fleetmaster,” he said. “I’m going forward to join the others.”

“Is that wise?” Martins asked. Warner looked at him, and the young lieutenant shrugged. “My orders were to keep an eye on you. I don’t wish to sound callous, but at the University, you’re worth more than a hundred of those men.”

“We’re not at the University, and those are not only my men, they’re my friends. It was my idea to bring them out here.”

“Ours, actually. And they’re my men, as well.”

“And unlike me, you know your ass from your elbow where ships are concerned.” Warner looked up into the gloom, felt the wind-lashed rain running down his face, then looked back at Martins. “Stay here where you can do some good and might just get us back.”

Martins gazed back at him for a moment, then saluted with the palm of his hand facing forward and the tips of his fingers touching his forehead in the British manner.

Vade ad Deum.”

Warner returned the salute in the American fashion.

* * *

“What do you think you’re doing here?!” Admiral del Verme demanded.

“Trying to get back to San Marco,” Bart Saxon said wearily.

“You could have been killed!”

“Signorina Michaeli almost was.” Saxon’s tone was as bitter as it was harsh, and del Verme paused in midtirade. Then he shook himself.

“Then we must get all of you out back to Lord Rick,” he said.

For the moment, his men were in firm control of the galleys jammed into the West Channel. They’d actually expanded the obstruction a bit, taking possession of half a dozen more pirate galleys which had rammed into it. Most of those galleys’ previous owners were floating facedown in the wind-lashed channel while their ships buttressed the defenders’ barricade. But del Verme was under no illusions. The lunatic star men and their small party had been forced to fight their way through the enemy strength gathering on Cannaregio. It was only a matter of time—and not much of it—before the militia defending the Palazzo Santa Lucretia at the northern end of his line were overwhelmed. When that happened, when the enemy could come at him from the north, as well as from the sea . . .

“Captain Forcucci, see that Lord Bart and Lord Cal are provided with a guide. Detail another twenty marines to escort them. And find a stretcher for Signorina Michaeli.”

* * *

“I hope you’re ready, Frick,” Warner said as he finished knotting the safety line around his waist.

All of the mercs and their Roman assistants were on individual lines now to free up their hands. For that matter, he’d tied a line through the shoulder sling of his rifle, as well. In fact, all of the star weapons had been similarly secured. Warner didn’t think Colonel Galloway would really rather lose one of his men than that man’s weapons, but he didn’t want to find out the hard way that he was wrong about that.

“Ready as I’m gonna get,” Sergeant Rudolf Frick replied in less than enthusiastic tones.

Even with the wind almost directly astern, the ship pitched hard. It might not be the jarring corkscrew motion they’d experienced earlier, but the bow still rose steeply as Ferox climbed each mountainous wave, then dove like a homesick elevator as the galley tobogganed down into its trough. It was hard to tell which was thicker, the spray or the rain, but all of them were soaked, cold, and miserable.

Frick had taken a knee on the foredeck, resting the barrel of the recoilless rifle on the bulwark of the starboard side. Now he looked over his shoulder and scowled at one of the Roman marines.

“Get down the ladder, damn it!” he snapped. “Unless you like burns, anyway!”

The marine standing halfway down the ladder in question looked surprised, but then he’d never actually seen the Carl Gustav fired. He stood a moment longer, then shrugged and dropped back down to the main deck, and Frick looked around again before he returned his attention to the galleys driving steadily closer.

Warner wondered if part of the sergeant’s ire at the marine had actually been directed at him. Frick was definitely in two minds about firing his beloved weapon from the deck of a wooden ship. The back blast which the marine had never seen was spectacular. The Gustav wasn’t a rocket launcher, like an old-style bazooka. Instead, it was like a conventional artillery piece with a rocket venturi glued to its ass. It ejected enough of its propellant in a rocket-like blast to offset the recoil of firing an 84-millimeter round down range at up to 840 feet per second, and that produced a danger zone thirty meters deep in which any unfortunate would be severely burned. In fact, it was hazardous to be anywhere within seventy-five meters of the recoilless rifle’s venturi, and the US Army had limited a Carl Gustav gunner to only six practice shots a day in order to protect him against the cumulative blast and shock effect of firing what was basically a sawed-off howitzer from his shoulder.

Frick had been less than enthusiastic about the potential incendiary effect of that enormous cloud of superheated gases. Even fired at a ninety-degree angle perpendicular to the galley’s centerline, the backblast would extend clear across the deck and slam into the solid wooden bulkhead on the opposite side. That would probably deflect quite a lot of it back in Frick’s direction, even if it didn’t actually set the ship on fire. And Ferox was less than fifty meters in length. If Frick had to fire at a less acute angle, the blast could blanket almost the entire length of the main deck.

Probably a good thing we’re all so goddamn wet, Warner reflected now. A bucket brigade had been told off to keep the deck around Frick well soaked with water, but mother nature had kindly taken on that responsibility.

“Clear,” Private McQuaid, Frick’s loader, told him. McQuaid knelt beside him, on the opposite side of the weapon. That wasn’t his normal position in combat, but it was the best they could do on the galley’s constricted deck.

“Damn well better keep it that way,” Frick growled, putting his eye back to the recoilless rifle’s sights. The nearest galley was barely eight hundred yards away and the ships were closing at a combined speed of around eight or nine knots, which gave him three or four minutes, at the most. Under normal conditions, the Carl Gustav could fire six rounds in a minute, but a wildly pitching galley in the middle of a rainstorm weren’t exactly normal conditions.

“Fire in the hole!” Frick shouted.

KABOOM!

The volume and violence of the Carl Gustav’s discharge had to be experienced to be believed. It jarred Warner to the marrow of his bones as the 84-millimeter projectile screamed out of the muzzle.

And vanished into the side of the wave barely sixty yards from Ferox.

The white fountain when it exploded was impressive, even under the current sea conditions. It was also completely useless.

“Damn it!” Frick bellowed through the ringing in Warner’s ears. He felt as if someone had just hit him in the back of the head with a huge, hot hammer, and he shook his head to clear it.

“Reloading!” McQuaid yelled as he pulled another round from the waterproof container. He turned the venturi lock to open the hinged breach, slid the new round into the rifle barrel, closed the breach, smacked Frick lightly on the back of the head, and dropped back down beside him.

“Ready!”

“Fire in the hole!”

KABOOM!

Another white fountain announced another miss, and Warner shook his head again, anxiously, as the lead galley swept closer. The rest of the enemy squadron followed behind, and if Ferox collided with any of them, they were probably doomed. Even assuming the gale didn’t simply sink both ships outright, they’d find themselves in a fight for their lives against the enemy’s marines. And if any of the other enemy galleys were able to add their weight to the fray . . .

“Frick,” he said, trying to speak clearly but calmly while McQuaid reloaded again, “you have to fire as the bow starts to come up. Stop and feel the waves flow forward. There’s a rhythm to it. Time your shots as the bow rides up on the wave.”

“Warner, the only wave I’m feeling is a constant one of nausea. So what say you take the shot?”

“We don’t have time, and you’re the best on that thing. Tell you what. You draw a bead on the bastard’s bow and tell me when you’re ready to fire. Then just hold your position. Just wait until I tell you to fire based on our movement. Don’t try to adjust your aim or follow the target, it’s not gonna move all that far before I give you the word.”

“Okay, Zen master. You got it.”

“Ready,” McQuaid said, back beside Frick at the bulwark.

“And . . . I’m set,” Frick announced.

Warner looked aft as a wave overtook the stern. He didn’t look at Frick or the target—only the wave as it lifted the stern up and the bow dipped. The wave swept forward, and the bow rose. For a moment, the ship was almost level again, but then the bow started to rise.

“Fire!”

The recoilless boomed again, battering him with the brutal, fiery shockwave, backflash blindingly bright in the gathering dark, and he wheeled back forward as the round screamed out of the tube.

The oncoming ship’s foredeck exploded. Marines who’d assembled on it were hurled into the air and over the side. The four-pound high-explosive warhead had hit well above the waterline, penetrated the planking, and detonated inside the galley’s forecastle. Warner was disappointed that it hadn’t simply blasted the ship’s bow wide open, but then its foremast buckled as the blast sheared it off between decks. It smashed down across the forecastle with terrible force, driven by the power of its wind-filled sail, and crushed a half dozen marines and seamen who’d survived the shell’s explosion.

That wasn’t all it did. It toppled over the side, still fastened to the ship by the rigging, and the galley staggered, swinging round to the sudden, enormous drag. The next wave crashed across it in a solid sheet of green and white fury, and more men were hurled over the side. The galley rolled in anguish as the saltwater swept over it, and its mainmast followed the foremast over the side.

It was done for, Warner realized. Even if it survived, it was out of the fight, but its next astern was coming on fast.

“Next one!” he shouted.

Thud. McQuaid dropped a round on the pitching deck.

“Crap!” McQuaid grabbed for it but missed as it rolled aft.

“Take it easy, Dougie,” Frick said. “Let that one go. Get another.”

The marine the gunner had yelled at earlier poked his head up for a moment, saw the shell rolling towards him, and caught the six-and-a-half-pound round as it tipped over the edge of the forecastle. He cradled it safely against his chest, winked at McQuaid, and then dropped back down into the forecastle’s blast shadow.

McQuaid made himself slow down as he pulled another round from the case and loaded it. A bolt from the new leader’s ballista vanished tracelessly into a wave fifty yards from Ferox’s bow.

“Ready!” he snapped.

“Set!” Frick confirmed a moment later, and Warner looked aft again. This time, the wave set was confused. He couldn’t find the rhythm.

“I’m set, Zen master!” Frick said pointedly as the first crossbow bolts began whistling in their direction.

There! The wave was overtaking the stern. Now at the mast. The bow was rising, and—

“Fire!”

KABOOM!

The recoilless roared, but this time, the round struck even higher on the target’s side. The explosion ripped a jagged gash in the bulwark and the combination of the blast and the savage spray of splinters killed or wounded most of the men actually on the galley’s forecastle, but structural damage was minimal.

Warner cursed, remembering Art Mason’s warning that even the Carl Gustav would require direct hits to cripple something the size of a Tran war galley. He started to say something, then made himself bite his tongue as McQuaid reloaded yet again.

“Ready!”

“Set!”

Warner swallowed. The enemy galley’s captain had altered course. He was steering straight for Ferox, probably to close and ram before he went the same way as his leader, and Frick’s point of aim had moved farther forward as the gunner tracked his target. The backblast was going to go farther aft this time. And if this shot didn’t stop the galley, it was going to get through to them.

He looked aft, watching the waves. Timing it. And—

Fire!

This time the muzzle blast and the sound of the explosion were almost simultaneous, and he wheeled back to see the round smash into the galley’s hull, thirty feet aft of the ram and no more than a foot or two above its normal waterline. It blew a gaping hole in the shattered planking, and the wounded galley staggered as greedy water poured into it. It fell off as Ferox forged past it, so close he could hear the screams of pain and terror.

Poor bastards. They’re as good as dead in this weather. And if we do the same thing to those troop ships . . .

Disgust filled him, melding with the nausea he’d fought all day, and he vomited over the side of the ship.


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