Empire Of Blood

Chapter 13

That afternoon the squadron swung onto a new course, toward the northeast, and the wind began to die. For the first time in two weeks the oars were broken out at sea and the rowers set to work. Fortunately, they only worked at the steady cruising stroke, rather than the back-breaking, lung-searing attack or ramming strokes.

They rowed on through the rest of the day. As night fell they kept on, but with only half the oars in action and half the rowers at work. The other half sprawled on or under their benches and tried to sleep.

Blade was in the half that remained on duty. He rowed on steadily as the last of the daylight faded from the sea. He found it easy by now to row without any use of his conscious mind. His body swayed, his arms strained, his oar dipped and rose and dipped again without his really being aware of any of it.

Eventually the slavemasters called for a change in the rowers. Blade stretched out on the deck under the bench and made himself as comfortable as possible. The planks were filthy, they seemed as hard as iron, and they were full of splinters that Blade always had to pick out of his skin the next morning. But he'd slept on them for months now and was resigned to sleeping on them for quite a while longer. He fell asleep quickly, with the clunk of the oars, the rattle of chains, and the creak of the galley's timbers sounding in his cars.

Blade awoke to the bellowings and whip-crackings of the slavemasters as they turned out all the rowers. Toward the bow he saw Dzhai, his axe flashing as he chopped up firewood with machinelike precision and stacked it beside the stone hearth on the foc'sle. Closer at hand he saw the bearded man, already awake and pulling steadily at his oar, seemingly as tireless and indestructible as a statue of solid iron.

They rowed on slowly and steadily through a broiling hot day, the air so heavy and windless that the sails hung as limp as dishrags. Toward noon the sailors sent down the yards and sails onto the deck. Only the masts rose, now gaunt and bare, with the lookouts perched in the tops like crows on top of dead trees. Now the galleys had no power but their rowers. On the other hand, they were much less visible from a distance.

Barely two hours after the sails came down, the northern horizon began sprouting the dark shapes of rugged, heavily wooded islands. Once again half the oars were pulled in and half the rowers allowed to rest. The galleys crept toward the islands all through the afternoon, the lookouts scanning both the land and the sea for any sign of a watching enemy. Both horizons were empty of friends or enemies.

Toward evening the fleet swung in toward the lee of an uninhabited island a mile long and nearly as high. A landing party of soldiers went ashore to set up a lookout station and make sure the island stayed uninhabited. All seven galleys dropped anchor and sent all hands to dinner.

As he ate his porridge and salt fish, Blade noticed Kukon's captain pacing up one side of the quarterdeck and down the other. He wore a crumpled blue tunic and a thoroughly grim expression. Blade remembered what the bearded man had said of Kukon's captain: a thoroughly efficient, professional sailor and fighting man, risen to captain by sheer ability, with no friends in court to help him rise farther. Not a man who would be happy with Admiral Sukar's wild chase after personal glory.

If they still had surprise on their side, things might go well enough. Yet here they were, anchored for the night, not knowing what word might be racing across the islands to bring the pirates' fleet swarming out.

Admittedly, it might be sheer suicide to try moving through the islands by night. The passages were known to very few pilots outside the pirates' fleet. A night move could simply run the galleys aground or rip them open on submerged rocks, without any help from the pirates.

There was danger on either hand and in any course of action. The only way for the squadron to be sure of getting safely out of its predicament seemed to be for Admiral Sukar to have a sudden attack of common sense. Blade suspected, though, that it was too late.

As it turned out, Blade was quite right.

Blade and everyone else in the squadron learned the hopelessness of their situation at dawn the next morning. A wild cry from the masthead jerked Blade out of sleep like an electric shock. He stood up as the lookout shouted again.

«Pirates! The pirates! Dead to seaward! The pirates are on us!» Another wordless cry, turning into a choking scream of sheer terror. «We are lost! Lost! We areaaaagh!» A crossbow went spung and the panicky squalling broke off; the lookout plunged to the deck with a crunch of shattering bones. He was already dead, the crossbow quarrel driven deep into his chest. Kukon's captain nodded briefly to the archer who'd fired. Duty had been done and cowardice punished. The look on the captain's face, though, was utterly grim. There was good reason for it.

The seaward horizon was sprouting lateen sails and low, rakish black hulls, five, ten, more than twenty in all. They were sweeping in toward the Imperial galleys in a long crescent, hemming them in, trapping them. If the squadron fled into the islands, they would be split up, overtaken, and destroyed one by one. If they fled seaward, they would meet the pirates head-on. The long line of black galleys would coil around the squadron like a great snake around a deer.

Either way, the Imperial squadron had no hope now of doing anything except dying gallantly-not against odds of better than three to one. The pirate galleys were smaller than the Imperial ones, but they carried no slaves. Every man aboard, from captain to cook's boy, was free and armed. The lighter pirate galleys could not stand up well to Imperial gunfire or do much damage by ramming, but they could and did maneuver swiftly, choosing the moment to close in and pour a superior force of boarders onto an enemy's deck.

Then there would be red, bloody slaughter, as always. The pirates ransomed very few prisoners. Able-bodied men they sold to the mainland tribes in return for lumber, tar, cordage, and salt meat. Able-bodied women they kept for themselves. Those who could neither pay nor labor were killed on the spot.

Now the drums were beating out the alarm. Even louder than the drums were the pounding feet of the sailors running to weigh anchor and the soldiers and gunners running to their posts. The slavemasters dashed forward and aft, wide-eyed and wide-mouthed with desperation and fear, furiously and pointlessly cracking their whips across the backs of slaves who were already scrambling into position.

The anchor windlass rattled around as the sailors heaved furiously on it. The anchor broke water, dripping and slimy green with weeds. As the sailors worked to stow it, the drummers began beating out the rowing cadence. Cruising stroke for the moment, but that wouldn't last long!

Kukon's ninety oars rose high in the air, like the wings of a bird ready to take flight, then dipped in a swirl of foam. She was underway, heading out to battle, the other six galleys with her.

Blade settled into the stroke, then took a brief look around him. Admiral Sukar's flagship was moving up into the lead, one, two, three Imperial battle standards flying from her masts beside the admiral's personal flag. The admiral was at least going to die grandly. Blade would have been more sympathetic if the dying hadn't been so bloody unnecessary!

Closer to hand, Kukon's captain stood at his battle station between the great drums. His face was now as expressionless as the planks of his ship's deck, but it was also as white as the foam churned up by her oars. He was a man who knew he was doomed, hated the fact and the folly that had made it a fact, but also accepted it as part of his duty.

Blade accepted no such thing. If the coming battle didn't offer him an opportunity to improve his situation, he would bloody well make that opportunity! He hoped Dzhai would see things the same way. Together they could do far more than either could on his own.

The pirate fleet was now striking their sails and closing up their formation. They had seen Admiral Sukar's challenge and were accepting it. A gun crashed out from the bow of one of the Imperial galleys. Some nervous gunner, Blade thought. The pirates were still more than three miles away. There wasn't a gun in the squadron that could reach more than half that far.

Now the pirates' crescent stretched two miles from tip to tip, squarely across the path of the Imperial squadron. The pirates' oars hardly seemed to be moving. Why should they waste the strength their men would need for fighting? The enemy was coming straight into their arms.

The drummers flourished their drum hammers over their heads. One dropped his, drawing an explosion of curses from the captain beside him. The man was not quite as calm as he seemed. The clumsy drummer snatched up his hammers; then both drummers began beating out a new stroke-the approach to battle.

Kukon's heavy bow gun went off with a deafening roar and a shock that made the deck seem to ripple and heave under Blade's feet. For a moment he thought he would lose his balance. A man on the oar opposite him did fall, knocking down one of his mates. Their oar wobbled and fell out of the stroke as the remaining man struggled to control it.

Instantly two slavemasters were at the fallen men, laying on furiously with their whips. Both men struggled to their feet. One screamed in agony as a whip caught him across the eye.

The lighter guns forward went off, all three of them together, and the deck shuddered again. Their foul-tasting smoke swirled back, making Blade cough, then swirled away. The heavy gun fired again. This time Blade held his breath until the smoke was gone, then gulped in air and looked forward.

He was in time to see the shot from the heavy gun throw up a white fountain of spray only a hundred yards from the bow of a pirate galley. He also saw that Kukon was farthest to port in the Imperial squadron. If she held her present course, she would slice through the pirates' crescent near one tip.

That could be helpful. Certainly the first and fiercest fighting would be in the center of the crescent, as Sukar's flagship and its flankers crashed into the pirates. The pirates would be doing their best to give Sukar the gallant and spectacular death he seemed to want. They might not pay as much attention to their wings, and a fast-moving galley might-

The thunder of Kukon's guns interrupted Blade's thoughts. This time all four fired together. As the smoke cleared, Blade saw fountains of spray rising practically alongside an enemy.

Then smoke and orange flame spurted from the bows of all the pirate galleys. A noise like immense sheets of canvas ripping apart sounded overhead as a ball flew low over Kukon's deck and struck the sea just astern. Blade felt himself sweating from more than his labor at the oars. Each side was in range of the other now, and Kukon was approaching the pirates almost bows-on. Only a little lower, and a shot would strike her in the bow and plow the length of her deck, straight through the massed rowers.

Another shot ripped through the air above Kukon's deck. This one flew straight into the foremast. Splinters flew in all directions. Then there was a crackling and tearing sound of tough wood giving way and the mast itself toppled.

Men shrieked as flying splinters gouged their flesh. The lookouts on the foremast screamed as they felt the mast hurling them down to death in the sea. Then the mast fell across the port gangway and the bulwarks with a tremendous splintering crash. More screams sounded as oars were jerked out of rowers' hands, the weighted shafts lashing about like giant clubs. Blade saw a man struck across the forehead by an oar, the solid bone of his skull split apart so that the brains showed. Then the mast heaved up and rolled over the side, to be left astern as the galley's oars steadied onto the stroke again.

The slavemasters leaped down from the gangways, cutting the wounded and dead loose from their oars, dragging them clear. The drummers began pounding out the attack stroke. The clatter and crash of flailing oars swelled, fighting against the roar of the cannon forward and the terrible whistle and rip of enemy shot overhead, drowning them out. Blade heaved back and forth on his oar, fighting to maintain his awareness of what was going on around him. He could not afford to miss any chance to strike for freedom, not when he might get only one.

The guns forward were now firing so fast that smoke streamed back from them almost continuously. Kukon seemed to be ploughing through a thick fog of her own making. Blade could only occasionally manage to see anything beyond the ship's sides.

He saw that Sukar's flagship had lost both masts but still flew battle standards from both stumps. She seemed to be moving crabwise, as if she had lost too many oars on one side. Then two pirate galleys swept in toward her, all the guns of all three ships fired at once, and smoke blotted them out.

He saw a pirate galley trailing a steadily swelling mass of black smoke with red flame pulsing at its base. At least her rowers were not chained. If the fire gained control, they could take their chances with the sharks rather than burn to death.

There was a tremendous clang from forward, a peculiar thud, then screams of horror and a second thud. Blade saw one of the gunners sprawl backward on the deck, something like a stepped-on fruit where his head had been. A shot must have struck the ram and bounced upward, smashing up under the man's jaw.

The guns fired again. They made a continuous roaring in Blade's ears, rising and falling like the sound of a stormy sea on a rocky coast. At the same time the roaring came to him more dimly, as if the clouds of powder smoke were packing his ears full of cotton.

The drummer to port increased his beat still more, to the ramming stroke. Blade and all the other rowers on his side hurled themselves at their oars, then heaved them savagely backward, arms straining and backs painfully bent. The galley began to swing to starboard as the furious beat of the port bank of oars turned her. Then the starboard drummer increased his beat as well, the starboard oars thrashed just as furiously, and Kukon straightened out, racing in toward whatever prey her captain had picked out. Blade had no idea what that might be. Ahead he could see nothing except a solid wall of gray-white smoke, seamed with columns of black from burning ships and every now and then lit up with the orange furnaceglow of guns firing.

Then the masts and bulwarks of a pirate ship burst out of the smoke, the black paint scarred by shot and glistening in places with fresh blood or mangled bits of human flesh. On her foc'sle her gunners frantically struggled to swing their pieces around to rake Kukon.

Before they could do so, Kukon's pounding oars drove her ram hard into the pirate's side. Oars flew into the air, a few of them with the rowers still holding onto them. Blade saw one pirate flung high, to smash down on Kukon's deck head first and lie still. The tons of sharp iron and massive timber at Kukon's bow tore through the pirate ship's hull like a knife through parchment. Planks shattered, knees cracked, ribs bent inward and split apart. Then Blade heard the gurgle of green water foaming and flooding in through the huge breach in the pirate's side.

The ramming shook Kukon from stem to stem. Every piece of wood and metal in her seemed to be adding its own separate voice to the uproar. Blade was hurled forward, crashing into a man on the bench in front of him. They both went down, sprawling on the deck in a tangle of arms and legs as the oars flailed wildly over them. They were both luckier than the rowers who didn't duck under the oars. Blade saw an oar shaft fly up and strike one man under the chin. He flew backward as if he'd been kicked by a mule and fell to the deck, his head bent at an impossible angle on his shoulders.

Blade gently pushed the other man's head out of his stomach and tried to gather his legs under him. The slavemasters dashed up and down the gangways, screaming at the top of their lungs and waving their whips furiously. Blade saw one wrap his whip around the mainmast so violently that he fell off the gangway with a crash. The soldiers and sailors forward were all firing bows and muskets into the men on the pirate's deck. The rest of the soldiers and sailors were rushing forward to join them. Blade saw the captain running with them, his sword out, his face no longer expressionless and pale but black with powder smoke and half hysterical with battle rage.

Blade saw swords and spears tossing about wildly on the foc'sle. Some of the pirates were pressing forward, trying to board Kukon across the precarious bridge made by her ram and the splintered oars and timbers of their own ship.

Two of the guns on Kukon's foc'sle had been dismounted in the ramming. The gunners were frantically struggling to reload the others as arrows and musket balls from the pirates whistled about their ears. Finally they succeeded. The guns crashed out together, and a veil of smoke swept across Blade's vision, blotting out the scene forward for a moment. It did not blot out the hideous chorus of screams that exploded from the pirate's deck.

Then the smoke cleared. Where a mass of pirates had stood on the deck of their ship was a mass of bodies and pieces of bodies. Some of the bodies were still moving and screaming. Most lay still. Kukon's guns must have been crammed halfway to the muzzle with musket balls or small stones. The massed pirates could not have been more thoroughly slaughtered by a pair of machine guns.

Blade thought for a moment that Kukon's fighting men would now board the pirate ship. But the slavemasters were shouting and lashing out again, to get the rowers back on their feet and back to the oars. The drummers began pounding a frantic reverse beat as the oars clattered out.

A moment later Blade saw why. Out of the smoke to starboard loomed another pirate ship, bearing down on Kukon at full speed. Her oars leaped forward and back and foam curled from her ram. On her foc'sle musketeers and archers blazed away at Kukon. Blade saw the bo'sun stagger and fall to the deck, clapping his hand over a spouting wound in his thigh.

Kukon drew clear of the rammed pirate ship with a great cracking of timbers. Both forward and aft her gunners furiously worked to bring their guns to bear on the oncoming enemy. The men at the heavy gun aft made it first. Blade turned his head in time to see the master gunner apply his match to the touchhole. Then a vast sheet of flame and smoke erupted from Kukon's stern as the gun exploded.

Jagged chunks of iron the size of a man's bead flew in all directions at the speed of musket balls. Blade threw himself flat on the deck, with a dozen men under him and a dozen more on top of him in a packed mass of panic-stricken humanity. He was momentarily blind, but not deaf. Nothing could drown out the screams of those torn apart in the explosion of the flying fragments of iron.

Like a swimmer struggling up from deep water, Blade rose out of the tangle of bodies and stood up. He took the single step that was all his chain would allow him, nearly tripped over a severed head, then slipped on a patch of plank covered by a man's scattered guts and fell backward. Fortunately, the man he landed on was already dead or at least beyond feeling Blade's two hundred and ten pounds crashing down on his chest.

Before Blade could make a single move to rise again, the pirate galley drove her ram into Kukon's side. It did not go in deeply, but the starboard oars were scattered in all directions. For the moment Blade didn't even try to get up. It would do nobody any good if he got his skull split open by a swinging oar.

Then the screams and the clattering of oars gave way to shouts and shrill war cries. The pirates were swarming forward along their deck to board Kukon.

Blade sprang to his feet, looking around for something he could use to cut himself free or at least to defend himself. He didn't know what the exploding cannon might have done to Kukon's fighting men. He doubted if there were enough of them left to defend her against the boarders.

In the smoke and confusion he saw Dzhai making his way along the port gangway. He had a sword thrust into his belt and his axe over his shoulder. Blade cupped his hands and shouted. Dzhai turned and stared. Blade shouted again, waving one hand furiously.

Dzhai nodded, and the axe flashed in the gloom as he swung it over his head. Then it was flying through the air toward Blade, settling into his hand as neatly as a homing bird.