Empire Of Blood

Chapter 25

The fleet descended on the Sulphur Islands, off the southern coast of the Empire of Saram.

Blade and Prince Durouman chose the islands as the point of attack because of something Duke Tulu had said. As Blade put it at one conference:

«Somewhere there has to be something so important to Kul-Nam that an attack on it will bring him and his fleet down on us at once. We cannot afford a long campaign. It will exhaust our supplies and wear out our ships and crews. It will also give time to rebellion, other pretenders to the Eagle Throne, and to the Steppemen.»

So Duke Tulu suggested the Sulphur Islands. «From their mines comes nearly all of the sulphur used in making the Empire's gunpowder. Kul-Nam certainly cannot afford to lose them.»

«Is he short of powder?»

«He has far less than he needs. Much was used against Parine. If he has to fight another great battle, there will definitely not be much left.»

Then rebels could spread everywhere. The Steppemen could cross the borders with relative impunity. Even Kul-Nam's vast and expensive fortresses and castles would be far less formidable without powder for their artillery and muskets.

«We will move against the Sulphur Islands, then,» said Prince Durouman.

The islands fell without any resistance worthy of the name. Their garrison had been stripped of ships and men in order to reinforce the Imperial fleet after the losses at Parine. Four galleys and less than a thousand men remained to defend the islands against the attack of a hundred and forty galleys and twenty-five thousand men.

The galleys fled. A few of the men threw themselves off the cliffs or down the mine shafts. Most surrendered. A few of the bolder ones joined the attackers.

Along with the guns on the island, Blade found a number of old-fashioned non-explosive siege engines, designed for throwing large stones. He had them taken aboard the larger galleys, to be used for throwing barrels instead of stones. Some of the barrels would be filled with gunpowder and bits of iron, designed to explode murderously; others would be filled with sulphur, to spread flames, fumes, and ghastly smells across the decks of an enemy.

«With these coming down on their heads, I don't imagine even the best gunners will be able to shoot very well,» said Blade.

After they had loaded the siege engines and their ammunition, it was finally time to reveal the secret weapons. Blade called all the captains aboard Avenger to tell them what he had done and what the new weapons ought to accomplish in the coming battle.

The captains cheered him and they cheered Prince Durouman. They also stood silently for a moment in memory of the barrel-makers of Parine. They would gladly have drunk enough wine to float one of the largest galleys, but there was none aboard. So they cheered some more, then went back to their own ships.

From Avenger's foc'sle Blade and Prince Durouman watched them go.

«If the barrels work as well as the captains expect them to, Kul-Nam and all his fleet are doomed,» said Blade.

«Yes, but are they expecting too much?» said the prince.

«There is no way to answer that until we fight our battle.»

The allies did not have long to wait. Toward sunset of the fourth day a scouting galley hove into view, one mast gone and the signal for the approaching enemy flying from the other. The fleet weighed anchor and crept out to sea as the last light drained from both the sky and the water. They settled down to wait, the crews sleeping at their battle stations, masts bare and oars trailing, all guns loaded.

Aboard Avenger Blade, Prince Durouman, Duke Tulu, Emass, and the admirals of the Five Kingdoms held their final council of war. The tactics Blade had planned for the battle were simple-so simple he'd expected arguments against them.

He got none. Prince Durouman, Tulu, and Emass clearly understood the reasoning behind the plan; it was important to capture Kul-Nam's flagship, and every other consideration was secondary at the moment. The five admirals didn't care about that, but they did see that Blade's tactics involved a headlong charge at the enemy. That was the style of fighting they liked, the style of fighting that gave them the best chance to prove their warrior's courage.

Normally Blade would have felt like beating the admirals over the head until he'd beaten some sense into them. Commanders who thought more of courage than of skill usually led their men into disaster. This time he was able to ignore the problem.

Now all that remained was for Kul-Nam to do his part.

The Emperor seemed to be cooperating. Dawn brought the Imperial scouts up over the horizon. Two hours more and the rest of the fleet was hull-up and bearing down on the allies. Blade waited until he could count the Imperial fleet-forty armed sailing ships, a hundred galleys-and saw it shifting into its usual broad crescent. Then he ordered the formation signal hoisted on Avenger's foremast-and Prince Durouman's battle standard hoisted on the mainmast.

This was the next to the last signal he planned to make, the next to the last he could hope that the whole fleet could see. Galleys scuttled about in all directions like a swarm of mad waterbugs, as though all one hundred and forty captains and crews were suddenly drunk. Blade hoped that Kul-Nam's admirals would think just that and allow their own confidence to swell accordingly.

It was half an hour before the allied formation was pulled into the shape Blade intended. By that time Kul-Nam's fleet was only a couple of miles outside gun range, coming on now like a solid moving wall of wood and canvas, silent gun muzzles and rhythmically beating oars. The sailing ships had all their canvas spread and showed no signs of shortening it at all.

That was not good, but under the circumstances it was inevitable. There was more wind today than Blade liked — not enough for a sailing ship to outrun a galley moving at full speed, fortunately, but plenty to let the sailing ships maneuver freely. Most of Kul-Nam's admirals had more sense than the late lamentable Sukar; they would probably take advantage of the weather.

Blade-scrambled up to Avenger's foremast to take a last look over his fleet. In theory every one of the hundred and forty galleys should now be where she could do her intended part in the coming battle without any more signals. He hoped so. There was only going to be one more.

He cupped his hands and shouted down to the men on the signal halyards.

«Hoist the attack.»

They must have had the flag already bent on. A ball soared up to the masthead and broke apart into a great black flag, streaming out on the wind. Avenger's bow guns went off, one by one. Cheers floated up to him on the wind as the crews of nearby galleys jumped up and down, waving hats, helmets, and swords. Then Avenger's drummers broke into the attack stroke, and the flagship surged forward.

Behind her and around her surged a hundred and thirty-nine other galleys, in Blade's special formation. It was not the standard simple-and simple-minded-crescent. Instead, it looked like a gigantic, squared-off letter U, with the open end of the U facing astern, away from the Imperial fleet.

Each side of the U was formed by a single line of forty light galleys. The base was formed by a triple line of larger ones, twenty in each line. In the center of the second line were ten of the largest, including Avenger. Each of the ten mounted a siege engine on her stern, with barrels stacked ready to load. Every one of the hundred and forty galleys had a barrel and spar lashed to her ram, jutting out sixty feet ahead and six feet below the surface, invisible and hopefully lethal.

The idea was to drive home a straight thrust with the sixty larger galleys, while the others protected either flank. Extended in its usual crescent, the Imperial fleet would try to fold its wings around the attackers' flanks. At the same time it would be weaker in the center, more vulnerable to the massive punch that Blade hoped to drive straight home.

«Home» did not mean just the enemy's center. It meant Kul-Nam's own flagship, and ultimately the Emperor himself. Blade was scanning the enemy lines now, trying to make out the ship flying the Imperial standard. He doubted if Kul-Nam would refuse to fly the standard or permit it to be flown aboard several ships to conceal his location. The man was too arrogant and too jealous to take that kind of sensible precaution. Still, Blade could not see the black eagle on red anywhere in the forest of masts and sails and other bright flags and banners ahead.

Finally he decided to leave that job to the lookouts and get back to his own duties. He swung himself into the shrouds and slid down to the deck so fast he scorched the palms of his hands on the rough rope.

Prince Durouman met him as he landed. The prince was pale and sweating with excitement and anticipation.

«Did you see the flagship?»

Blade shook his head. «The man must be holding well back.»

Prince Durouman cursed and pounded one gauntleted fist into the palm of the other hand. It was his dearest wish to see Avenger laid alongside the Emperor's flagship and personally lead her boarding party into the Emperor's private cabin to kill him there.

Blade understood that a hundred years of frustration and anger and waiting for this moment of vengeance lay behind Prince Durouman's desire. He still didn't think much of it. As far as Blade was concerned, it would be putting the prince and therefore his whole cause into unnecessary danger. There would be no boarding party or death grapple with the Emperor if it could be avoided. Blade would be perfectly happy to blow the flagship apart or send it to the bottom with all hands. That would be less melodramatic but just as effective.

White smoke rose from one enemy ship after another, and whiter fountains of spray began to rise among the advancing allied fleet as the Imperial sailing ships opened fire. They were shooting badly, but not so badly that all their shots missed. Blade saw a mast go overboard from one allied galley, saw another swerve wildly as half the oars on one side were suddenly smashed or tossed into the air.

Beyond the flanks of the allied fleet Blade could now see Imperial galleys sweeping forward. They too were opening fire, but no galley captain would depend on guns if he saw an opportunity to close and ram. Then the lighter allied galleys would have their chance-and so would the Sunday punch they were thrusting ahead of them under the water.

A determination to watch his invention work under battle conditions filled Blade. He sprang into the rigging again, ignoring the steadily increasing beat of the enemy's guns. He had barely settled into the crow's nest when he saw a pirate galley swing out on the left flank, driving in against an Imperial opponent that had wandered too close. Blade held his breath, cursing mentally. The captains were supposed to save the barrels for use against sailing ships first, not against galleys. But a pirate captain who saw a chance to strike down an Imperial opponent would be sorely tempted. This one had obviously yielded to temptation.

The two galleys seemed to be drawn together as if both were magnetized. Then the sea erupted all along the port side of the Imperial galley. Oars, planks, and men flew into the air on top of a great upheaval of dirty water. The water seemed to hang suspended for a moment, then crashed down on the Imperial galley's deck and the wreckage along with it. Before the spray stopped falling the wounded galley was already beginning to list sharply to port.

The pirate galley slid to a stop with her ram almost against her victim's side. Then she started backing away. A puff of smoke from her foc'sle told Blade that at least one gun remained in action. Both masts were tilted at unlikely angles, but both still stood. Otherwise she showed no signs of damage.

Blade swung his gaze to the opposite side of the fleet as another explosion roared out there. Black smoke towered up from the sea, and at the base of the tower the broken halves of a galley from Nullar were slowly settling into the water. Not as agreeable a sight as the first explosion.

The enemy's gunfire still mounted steadily, most of it apparently aimed at the flanks of the allied fleet. One of the galleys in the first line of the center was dropping back past Avenger with her foc'sle a splintered and smashed wreck. Otherwise only a few shots seemed to be passing close enough for Blade to hear them or even see their fall.

He could ignore that. What he could not ignore was the damage the lighter galleys on the flanks were taking. One galley after another was dropping out now. There were no longer fairly neat lines on either side but a series of ragged clusters of ships, some of them already too crippled to maneuver their secret weapons. Imperial galleys were swooping down on them like vultures on dying animals, guns hammering and the sun gleaming on the armor of the boarding parties that crowded their decks.

Not all of the damage was on one side, of course. An Imperial galley made the mistake of stopping a hundred yards in front of a galley of Belthanor that still had her full speed. There was a sudden surge forward, a barrel driven hard against the Imperial galley's stern, and an explosion that made Blade wince. Half of the Imperial galley was gone when the smoke lifted, blown to pieces by the magazine explosion. The other half floated for a couple of minutes, then slipped down out of sight.

The Belthanor galley backed away slowly, only a few oars working on each side. She was not fast enough to escape an Imperial galley that drove in past the floating wreckage and swept alongside. Instantly the decks of both ships were a tangle of fighting men. The battle was still going on when smoke from guns and burning ships laid a curtain across that stretch of sea and cut off Blade's view.

Blade was a worried man. The barrels were working. He'd conceived and built a successful weapon. But they weren't doing what he'd planned. The Imperial attack was hammering on his flanks as if there were no other ships in the whole allied fleet that could be any danger to them. It was all galley against galley so far, and he had not expected this to happen. He had built a sailing-ship killer, and now there were no sailing ships within range.

In another fifteen minutes there would be. The Imperial center was holding position and formation as if every ship were tied to every other. But in another fifteen minutes his attack on the center would have no protection for its flanks. From what he'd seen, he guessed that twenty of his flanking ships were out of action entirely, another twenty too slowed to use their weapons. That left-

A rocket soared up above the enemy's center, trailing a broad cloud of green smoke. Instantly other rockets rose from either end of the first line of the Imperial sailing ships. A moment later Blade realized that the ships of that line were beginning to turn, separating into two groups as they did so. One group was swinging to starboard, the other to port. Behind them Blade could at last begin to make out the Imperial second line.

He forgot about the flanks now as his mind leaped ahead, painting in seconds a complete, detailed picture of the Imperial battle plan. The sailing ships that were turning now would go on turning, swinging far out to port and starboard. By that time the Imperial galleys would have fought their way through the allied flanks. They might have to trade galley for galley to do it, but they would if they had to. There would be no holding back, not under Kul-Nam's eyes and particularly not when he now stood a good chance of living to take vengeance.

So half the Imperial sailing ships would sweep in to the allied rear. The other half-Blade could see them clearly now, and see them slowly swinging to open their broadsides-would wait where they were, hammering away with their guns, standing against the attack of the allied center. The allied galleys would be caught with enemies ahead and enemies behind, no room to maneuver, and shot whistling about their ears every minute.

It was ironic. The exploding barrels were obviously a complete surprise to the enemy and every bit as deadly as Blade had intended. It was just as obvious they weren't going to win the battle. They weren't causing any panic- no one in the Imperial fleet would fear anything half as much as the wrath of the Emperor. Nor could they do much against the Imperial battle plan-a plan perfectly designed to meet a weapon that the planners hadn't dreamed existed.

Had he miscalculated? Perhaps. Yet certainly neither he nor anyone else could have predicted this freakish coincidence. Freakish-and lethal. If something was not done and done fast, before this day's sunset the coincidence would end the lives of twenty-five thousand men and all hope for Prince Durouman's cause.

Fortunately, there were still things that could be done. Blade scanned the sea and the ships ahead, rapidly calculating speeds and distances. If the attack of the allied center could be shifted to one end of the Imperial second line instead of charging straight at it-

Blade again leaped into the rigging and slid down to the deck. He went even faster than before, stripped more skin off his palms, but ignored the pain. Then he ran aft along the port gangway, heading for the drummers and the men at the tiller.

As he leaped up onto the quarterdeck, he nearly collided with Prince Durouman. The prince seemed half hysterical with excitement and delight. Blade wondered if the man were completely ignorant of what was happening to the allied fleet, or if he'd finally cracked under the strain, or if

Then Blade noticed that the prince had drawn his sword and kept pointing with it in one direction, over Blade's shoulder. Blade turned and saw what was drawing the prince's attention.

Squarely in the center of the Imperial line facing them, half hidden by the smoke of its own guns, lay a highcastled, three-masted sailing ship. From all three of the masts floated enormous standards-red, with a black eagle in the center.