Empire Of Blood

Chapter 26

Prince Durouman regained his voice. «The flagship!» he screamed. «The Imperial flagship! Kul-Nam himself! Steer for the flagship, tillermen! Steer for-«

«No!» Blade roared. Somehow he managed to outshout even the hysterical prince. Durouman jumped into the air and came down glaring at Blade, his sword raised:

For a moment Blade was certain he was going to have to knock the prince down and send him below for the rest of the battle. That would do nothing for their future relations, but letting Durouman guide Avenger in his present frame of mind would do absolutely nothing at all except lose the battle.

The moment passed. Durouman's mouth snapped shut and he turned away, shaking all over. Blade slapped the chief tillerman on the shoulder. «Get ready to swing us to port when I give the word.» Then he shouted down to the drummers. «New stroke-all oars, reverse!» The drummers broke off to stare up at him for a moment. Then they shrugged and started beating the reverse. Avenger began to back off.

There was only one way to make sure of shifting the direction of the allied attack. Avenger would have to lead it on its new course. That meant getting clear of the close formation so that she could turn and be clearly seen turning. «Follow the leader» was the only reliable signal in a battle like this.

Avenger could not break out of the formation by going ahead, into easy range of the Imperial guns. So there was nothing to do but drop back through the formation to the rear.

During the next few minutes Blade was quite sure that he would finish up this day with his hair and beard as white as milk, if he lived through it at all. As Avenger slowed, the other galleys seemed to be racing past her. For one ghastly moment it seemed that Avenger's next astern was going to ram her barrel straight up the flagship's stern and set it off almost under Blade's feet. By a margin so narrow that it made Blade sweat, that disaster was avoided.

Another galley shot up from astern and, by an even narrower margin, avoided plowing along Avenger's starboard side. That would have smashed half of the flagship's oars and flattened a good many of her rowers for good.

A third galley swerved in plenty of time to avoid coming close to Avenger. In the process she found herself almost across the bows of still another galley. This one had to swerve in turn, missed blowing her comrade to bits, but came so close to her stern that one anchor caught in the other's main rigging. Shrouds parted with dismal twangs and the mainmast went over with a tremendous crash, amid a chorus of furious yells. For the moment it looked as if those two galleys were about to start a private war of their own.

Finally Avenger slid out of the formation. As Blade watched from the quarterdeck, he could see some of the other galleys in the allied center already following his lead and coming about to port. Still others were trying to follow but were too mixed up with their comrades to maneuver safely. Around and among and occasionally on all of them the shot from the Imperial line still fell. Kul-Nam's captains either had unlimited powder or were less afraid of wasting it than of seeming not to be doing their best for their terrible master.

Avenger was now racing along almost parallel to the Imperial line, within range but not taking any fire for the moment. Blade looked away toward the rest of the battle. A bank of smoke was slowly swallowing everything astern, but he could see no real changes. He could barely make out the rest of the Imperial sailing ships. Apparently they were following through on their planned movements.

Fine. If he couldn't see the ships, neither could Kul-Nam. If Kul-Nam couldn't see them, he couldn't signal to them. If he couldn't signal new orders to them, they would go right on obeying the old ones. Fear of the Emperor was making his captains incredibly brave and stubborn. At the same time, it would also make them incredibly rigid in obeying what they thought were his orders.

Rule by fear was a two-edged sword.

Twenty galleys were now moving after Avenger in something that might be called a formation. Even better. They were gaining on the sailing ships. Soon they could swing around and cross the bows of the Imperial line. Instead of twenty sailing ships shooting at sixty galleys, there would be twenty galleys surrounding two or three sailing ships at a time, with full room to maneuver-and full room to swing in and strike with what they thrust ahead of them.

It had been a bloody battle and it would become still bloodier before it was over. But it might also turn into a victory. Blade mentally crossed his fingers-he'd done everything else that could be done for the moment.

Eventually the Imperial ships noticed Avenger and the galleys following her. They couldn't figure out what the galleys' maneuvers meant, but they could see a lot of targets. By now, though, Avenger was using the room created by all the confusion to swing still farther to port. Most of the other galleys were following her. Two-thirds of Blade's attacking force was now out of range from the Imperial line, but the Imperial captains didn't seem to realize this. They went on blazing away as if the galleys were practically alongside.

«They can't see very well, can they?» said Prince Durouman.

«No,» said Blade. «Or perhaps they can see nothing but Kul-Nam's flag-and Kul-Nam's rage if they stop firing. We shall have to ask them, after we win the battle.»

Durouman looked sharply at Blade, realized that Blade had spoken with a perfectly straight face, and nodded.

Blade was glad to see that the galleys were drawing ahead of the Imperial ships. They were moving at a pace the rowers could not hold for much longer, if they were to have any strength left for the actual attack. That would have to be made at absolute top speed, for they would be closing to ranges where a gunner blind drunk and half paralyzed could hardly miss.

Avenger was a mile out ahead of the leading Imperial ship when Blade ordered the helm over again and the rowers to increase to the ramming stroke. Looking astern, he saw one galley after another doing the same. He heaved a sigh of relief. They had done all the complicated things he'd wanted them to do as if all the captains had been reading his mind. Now it was going to be a straight, uncomplicated attack again, with every galley for herself.

Avenger swung in a wide circle around the head of the Imperial line. Some of the galley captains behind her were too impatient to do that. They put their helms hard over and drove straight in at the enemy. Blade prayed that no more than half of them would be sunk as a price for that magnificently foolish courage.

It was not Avenger that drove home the first attack with Blade's secret weapon against a sailing ship of the Empire. It was a galley of Nullar and a pirate galley, racing in almost side by side, not firing their guns, every man aboard except the rowers lying flat on the decks. They raced in, waves rising so high over the bows that Blade half expected them to drive right under.

They struck. There was a thudding roar, and a great column of water spewed up alongside an Imperial ship, then broke apart in a cloud of smoke and spray. Moments later the other galley struck, farther forward. Her barrel must have risen clear of the water at the last second, for it went off with a great sheet of flame. From the enemy's foc'sle guns, men, and planks flew in all directions, and the bowsprit cartwheeled through the air to splash into the sea a hundred yards away. Then the mainmast tottered, toppled, and crashed down squarely on the deck of the first galley. She was dragged in alongside her dying enemy as the fallen mast twisted about. Blade saw the smoke of muskets suddenly spring up from both ships as both crews leaped to board or repel boarders.

It was bad luck, being caught that way. Blade had anticipated the risk, but there wasn't anything to be done about it. When a large sailing ship started falling violently to pieces, there was no predicting where the pieces would land.

Avenger was now around on the far side of the enemy line and beginning to work her way back along it toward the flagship. The smoke and the enemy's ships now cut off Blade's view of the attack. He heard two more thudding roars as barrels were driven home and saw two more clouds of smoke rising through and above the murk from the guns. He saw one tremendous flash high in the rigging of a ship, as a powder barrel hurled by a siege engine exploded in her tops. Both masts went down in a rain of spars and blocks and sails; then the dismasted hull was blotted out in the smoke. All this time the guns still rolled.

Then Blade saw something that made him take off his helmet and wave it wildly, because he could no longer control his excitement. Two, three, four of the Imperial sailing ships were coming about, turning away out of line, turning their sterns to the allied galleys-turning to flee! At last the courage of Kul-Nam's captains and crews was beginning to fade. The death that was coming at them out of the smoke filled them with a fear that drove any thought of what Kul-Nam might do out of their minds. All they could think of was what the enemy galleys would do if they didn't flee.

Now the whole enemy line was falling into confusion as ship after ship tried to turn away. It looked like a stampede of drunken elephants, as fifteen or more large ships tried to maneuver in an area of sea that would have been cramped for half that number. All of the ships were clumsy to begin with, and none of them had been improved by the damage they'd sustained.

Blade saw a barrel crash down on one ship's deck and explode. It must have been filled with sulphur, for an enormous cloud of yellowish smoke swirled up from the deck. Flames followed, rapidly climbing the masts and reducing the sails to blackened shreds. Blade heard the crackle and roar, heard the explosions of powder charges on deck, saw men jump over the side with clothing and hair aflame, preferring drowning or sharks to burning alive.

Then another sailing ship loomed out of the smoke too close to the burning one to avoid her. They crashed together and all the masts of both ships went down. Now they were as firmly linked as if a dozen sailors had spent hours tying them together.

Then a galley attacked. Her barrel smashed into the second ship-and it touched off the ship's magazines.

The explosion could not have been louder if a volcano had risen from the bottom of the sea to create a new island. Blade clapped both hands over his ears, quite sure that he was going to be deaf for a week. The entire sea around Avenger seemed to be blotted out by the great flash and the smoke that followed it.

The smoke was so thick that Blade never saw or heard any of the pieces of the three ships and their men fall back into the sea. It was as if all three ships and crews had been blown into dust so fine that the wind carried it away.

Avenger moved on. By now her rowers were deaf to everything except the beat of the drums. She swept through the smoke without slowing down and broke out into the daylight again.

Three hundred yards away rose the towering mass of Kul-Nam's flagship.

Instantly the ship let fly with an entire broadside, thirty or more guns. In spite of the range, only one or two shots struck Avenger. Even the Emperor's eye directly on them could no longer make the Empire's gunners shoot straight. Without any orders, the boarding party began rushing forward, the men from the stern guns joining them. Avenger surged forward, and in that moment the big galley seemed as alive and eager as the men on her decks.

Blade yelled what he hoped everyone heard as «Get down!» and threw himself flat on the deck. The heavy gun on the bow went off. Several balls from the flagship whistled overhead. Then Avenger drove her deadly weapon hard against the flagship's bow.

Instead of a roaring explosion, all Blade heard was a great craaak of splitting wood. Then he heard a tremendous crashing and crunching and was hurled violently forward as Avenger plowed into the flagship.

Blade slid several feet forward on his belly, picking up splinters in every piece of skin that wasn't protected by his armor. Above him the flagship's bowsprit and Avenger's foremast were hopelessly tangled together. Then with a popping of breaking ropes and a crackling of wood the mast leaned gently forward and came down across the enemy's foc'sle. Suddenly there was a perfect bridge from Avenger onto the deck of Kul-Nam's flagship-or the other way around.

Blade wasted no time worrying about why the barrel hadn't gone off. A glancing blow, wet powder, who knew? In any case, there was Prince Durouman, waving his sword and mace, leaping onto the mast and scrambling up it as nimbly as a monkey. He was going to get his chance at a hand-to-hand grapple aboard the Emperor's flagship after all.

This might be folly, but it was a folly the prince could not be left to commit alone. Blade sprang to his feet. Turning aft, he shouted to the men around the siege engine, «Dump the barrels-now!» The deck of a galley locked in close combat with Kul-Nam's flagship was no place for nearly a ton of powder and sulphur. Then Blade drew his own sword, flourished it toward the foc'sle that loomed high overhead, and roared in a voice that carried all over both ships:

«BOARDERS AWAY! FOLLOW ME!»

There were those aboard Avenger who said afterward that Blade went onto the enemy's deck in a single leap or flew up the mast without his feet touching it. Certainly he had no memory of his feet touching anything from the moment he left Avenger's deck to the moment he landed on the enemy ship.

There were seventy or eighty eunuchs and armed sailors on the flagship's upper deck. Blade ran up to join Prince Durouman; then the two leaders leaped down from the foc'sle almost together and went to work.

The eunuchs and the sailors fought well because they were fighting for their lives, but they could not fight well enough to stand against men who were more than half berserk, who did not care about living or dying, only about killing anyone who wore Kul-Nam's colors and lifted a weapon to defend him. They did not fight at all against Blade and Prince Durouman, who strode forward shoulder to shoulder, their swords never still, carving a path through their opponents like a mowing machine through ripe wheat.

Behind the leaders Avenger's musketeers and archers crowded the foc'sle. They fired and shot, reloaded and recocked their weapons, fired and shot again. Their bullets and bolts sailed over the leaders' heads into the rear ranks of the defenders. Man by man the sailors and the eunuchs fell away; rank by rank they dissolved under the attack from front and rear together.

Blade saw a sailor in front of him hesitate, turn away, and make a dash for the ship's side. He had one leg over the bulwarks, ready to leap, when a spear suddenly drove into his back. He looked down at the sharp silver point thrusting out through his chest, coughed up a huge mass of blood, then fell back onto the deck.

Blade's eyes leaped from the fallen sailor to the red tassel on the end of the spear, and from there to the squat figure in the gilded armor standing in the cabin door at the far end of the main deck. Another spear flashed across the deck, this one aimed at Prince Durouman's face. The prince leaped to one side and took the spear in his shoulder. It drove through his armor, slamming him back up against the foremast. Before Kul-Nam could throw his last spear, Blade was charging him, hoping to strike him down before he could draw his sword.

Kul-Nam was too fast. The sword seemed to leap from its scabbard, then split the air inches from Blade's nose. The force of Kul-Nam's swing took the sword around in a great arc, biting through the seasoned wood of the railing as if it were balsa. Blade realized that Kul-Nam was wielding a sword that would go through his armor and his body too if the Emperor had room to swing it with all his strength. The Emperor did.

Blade knew he had to close in to live. He drew his short sword and the commando knife. Then he charged again.

Kul-Nam drove Blade back three times, scraping the point of his sword across Blade's armor twice, slashing his cheek the third time. Then Kul-Nam's own lust to kill overcame him at last, and he tried to close.

His sword flashed in from Blade's left, and Blade's short sword met it. The two weapons came together with a terrible clang and Kul-Nam's sword bit halfway through Blade's. For a moment the Emperor's weapon was locked and immobilized.

Blade didn't dare move his sword. That would have risked snapping it off and freeing Kul-Nam's sword. Instead he held his left arm steady and pivoted on his left foot. His booted right foot crashed into Kul-Nam's face. The Emperor's brute strength kept him on his feet, but he was not seeing too clearly. Blade let go of his short sword and pivoted again. His left hand closed on the Emperor's pigtail where it hung out from under his helmet and jerked hard. Then Blade's right hand struck, thrusting the commando knife up under Kul-Nam's jaw into the Emperor's brain. Kul-Nam died on his feet, his eyes staring into Blade's as the life went out of them.

Blade pulled his knife free and let Kul-Nam's body fall to the deck with a thud. Then he turned. Prince Durouman was leaning against the foremast, his face twisted as he slowly worked the spear out of his shoulder. Finally it came free. He threw it to the deck and his eyes shifted to Blade-and to Kul-Nam sprawled at Blade's feet. His breath went out of him in a great sigh. For a moment it seemed that he would fall to the deck.

Somehow Prince Durouman found the strength to stay on his feet. It was Blade who went down onto the deck-down on one knee, the commando knife raised, wanting to shout with triumph. Instead he was silent as he gave Prince Durouman the salute due the Emperor of Saram.