* * *
Merlin watched yet another ship stagger as Dreadnought's first broadside ripped into her. The sight was becoming horrifically familiar, like some infinitely repeating act of butchery. The galley's sweeps flailed wildly as the round shot slammed home among her rowers, and bits and pieces of her hull flew lazily through the air until they hit the water in white feathers of spray.
He looked away, concentrating once again on the SNARC's overhead imagery, and stiffened. Then he turned quickly to Cayleb.
The prince stood beside Captain Manthyr, his young face bleak as he watched his flagship's guns slaughtering yet another crew.
"Cayleb."
Cayleb turned at the sound of his name, and Merlin leaned closer.
"Black Water's changed his mind," he said, speaking as quietly as he could and still be heard. "He's turning his columns back around, heading southeast."
"Silver Strait," Cayleb said flatly.
"Exactly," Merlin agreed, and his expression was grim. Cayleb raised an eyebrow as his tone registered, and Merlin grimaced.
"Your father obviously anticipated what Black Water might do. He's already heading to cut them off short of the strait."
Cayleb's eyes widened, then they narrowed in comprehension, and he sucked in a deep breath and nodded. Not in approval, or even in simple comprehension of what Merlin had just told him. He nodded in decision and turned sharply to his flag captain.
"Captain Manthyr, we'll alter course to the south, if you please. General signal: engage the enemy more closely."
* * *
"Your Grace, the Charisian galleys are standing directly into our path," Captain Myrgyn said harshly.
Black Water looked up from the chart before him. The flag captain stood in the chartroom door, and his expression was concerned.
The duke didn't blame him. The fleet's formation had become badly disordered when he turned it around yet again. The columns were still sorting themselves out, or attempting to, although the Chisholmian units didn't seem to be trying all that hard to obey his orders. Several of them seemed to have creatively misconstrued-or simply ignored-his signals, depriving him of still more desperately needed strength. He was scarcely in the best possible condition for a general engagement with Haarahld's fleet, and he'd hoped to break past the king before Haarahld realized what he was about.
Obviously, that wasn't going to happen.
Still, he had at least a hundred galleys still under his own command, and Haarahld had only seventy.
"Let's go on deck," he said quietly to Myrgyn, and the flag captain stood aside, then followed him out of the chartroom.
The duke blinked in the bright sunlight. It was just past noon. The long, running battle had raged for over eight hours now, and his jaw tightened as he heard the continuing rumble of artillery from astern. It seemed to be growing louder, and he smiled grimly. Cayleb couldn't know exactly what his father was doing, but it was evident that the Charisian crown prince understood the importance of staying close on a fleeing enemy's heels.
Black Water looked up at the sky, then forward, to where a forest of galley masts and sails loomed almost directly ahead. Even as he watched, sails were being furled and yards were being lowered, and he bared his teeth as he recognized the traditional challenge to a fight to the finish.
Part of him wanted nothing more than to give Haarahld exactly that. But if he did, Cayleb would close in from behind, and by this time, the Charisian galleys and galleons combined would actually outnumber the ships actually still under Black Water's command. His earlier huge numerical advantage had evaporated, and a general engagement, especially with those galleons added to the fray, could result only in his defeat.
"We'll hold our course, Captain Myrgyn," he said calmly. "Don't reduce sail."
* * *
"They're going to try to break right past us, Your Majesty," Captain Tryvythyn said.
"What they try to do and what they actually do may turn out to be two different things, Dynzyl," Haarahld said calmly.
The king stood on Royal Charis' aftercastle, watching the clutter of enemy galleys bearing down upon his own fleet. Unlike the four long, disordered lines of Black Water's fleet, Haarahld's was formed into a dozen shorter, more compact columns of a single squadron each, and despite himself, the king felt something almost like satisfaction.
He was far too intelligent not to recognize the enormous advantages Merlin's changes had conferred upon his navy. But the Royal Charisian Navy and the ferocity and deadly skill of the Charisian Marines had made themselves the terror of their enemies long before Merlin and his new artillery ever came along. This would be a battle in the old style, possibly the last one, and Haarahld had grown up in the old school.
His flagship led her own squadron, but the King of Charis had no business in the first, crushing embrace of battle. Especially not of the sort of battle Charisian galleys fought.
"General signal, Dynzyl," he said as Black Water's fleeing squadron's bore down upon him. "Close action."
* * *
Black Water's eastern column had drawn well ahead of the others. Now its lead galleys crunched into the Charisian formation like a battering ram.
That was what it might have looked like to the uninformed observer, at least. But what actually happened was that the Charisian squadrons swarmed forward like krakens closing on a pod of narwhales.
Traditional Charisian naval tactics were built uncompromisingly on ferocity and speed. Charisian Marines knew they were the finest naval infantry-the only professional naval infantry-in the world, and Charisian squadron commanders were trained to bring their ships slashing in on any opponent as a unit.
Admiral Lock Island's flagship led the first assault, crashing alongside one of Black Water's Corisandians. Tellesberg's port oars lifted and swung inboard with machinelike precision as Lock Island's flag captain smashed his ship's side into the smaller, more lightly built galley Foam like a battering ram.
Foam's mast snapped at the impact, thundering down across her deck. Hull seams started, spurting water, and Tellesberg's port guns fired into the mass of fallen cordage and canvas as she ground down Foam's side. Lock Island's flagship swung clear, her sweeps snapped back out, and she gathered fresh momentum as she hurtled down on Foam's consort Halberd. Behind Tellesberg, HMS Battleaxe hammered Foam with her own artillery, then launched herself at the Corisandian Warrior.
Tellesberg slammed into Halberd almost as violently as she'd collided with Foam. Halberd's mast didn't quite come down, but the smaller, lighter galley staggered under the impact, and dozens of grappling irons arced out from the Charisian ship. They bit into Halberd's bulwarks, and the first Charisian Marines swarmed across onto the Corisandian's deck behind the high, quavering howl of their war cry. No one who'd survived hearing that sound ever forgot it, and the well earned terror of the Royal Charisian Marines was borne upon its wings.
Most of the new muskets and bayonets had gone to Cayleb's galleons, but Tellesberg's Marines didn't seem to mind. They swept across Halberd in a tidal wave whose very ferocity disguised its intense discipline and training. Boarding pikes stabbed, cutlasses and boarding axes chopped, and the first rush carried Halberd's entire waist.
But then Halberd's company rallied. Matchlocks and "wolves" fired down into the melee from aftercastle and forecastle, killing and wounding dozens of the Marines. Corisandian soldiers counter-charged with the power of desperation, slamming into the boarders violently enough to throw even Charisians back on their heels.
For a few minutes, the tide of combat swirled back and forth, first this way, then that, as men hacked at one another in a frenzy of destruction and slaughter. Then Tellesberg's consort Sword of Tirian came thundering along Halberd's other side, and a fresh wave of Charisian Marines overwhelmed the defenders.
* * *
Duke Black Water watched bleakly as his fleeing galleys merged with their Charisian opponents.
It wasn't working. His jaw muscles ached as he recognized that. His own column, the westernmost of them all, had fallen perhaps a mile and a half behind the others, but he could see what was happening. The tangle of colliding galleys as the Charisians flung themselves bodily upon the ships of his first two columns was simply too thick for him to cut his way through them. As the second and third and fourth galleys in each long, unwieldy column caught up with the leaders, they were unable-or, in some cases, unwilling-to avoid the knots of vessels which were already grappled together. Some of them tried to, but there always seemed to be another compact Charisian column waiting, another Charisian galley perfectly placed to crash alongside them, grapple them, add them to the steadily growing barricade of timber, stabbing steel, and blood. It was like watching autumn leaves swirl down a racing stream until they encountered a fallen branch and, suddenly, found themselves piling up, heaping together into a solid mass.
And even as Haarahld's fleet threw itself in front of him, he heard Cayleb's guns growing louder and louder behind him as the galleons began savaging the rearmost ships of his own column.
He glared at the tangle of ships, fallen masts, smoke, banners, and wreckage, and saw the complete and total failure of his entire campaign. But then, to one side of the main engagement, he saw a single Charisian squadron, and his eyes flamed as he recognized the banner it flew.
The way his column had fallen a little behind the others was what had allowed Cayleb to get at its rearmost units. But it also meant his flagship, and the galleys behind it, hadn't yet been swept into the general melee.
Most of Haarahld's galleys had, however, and Black Water's lips drew back from his teeth. He grabbed Captain Myrgyn's shoulder and pointed at the royal standard of Charis.
"There!" he snarled. "There's your target, Kehvyn!"
* * *
Captain Tryvythyn saw the line of Corisandian galleys sweeping down upon Royal Charis. There were at least fifteen ships in the column-he couldn't be certain of the exact number; there was too much smoke-and there was no question that they'd recognized the royal standard.
The rest of the flagship's squadron saw the enemy almost as soon as he did, and oarmasters' drums went to a more urgent tempo as the other five galleys swept forward, charging around Royal Charis to intercept the attack. Tryvythyn glanced at his king and half-opened his mouth, but Haarahld only looked back steadily, and the flag captain closed it once more.
"Better," Haarahld said with a thin smile, then nodded at the oncoming Corisandians. "If these people get past us, there's no one left to stop them."
"I realize that, Your Majesty," Tryvythyn said. "But I hope you'll forgive me for saying that I think you're worth more to Charis then all of those ships put together."
"I appreciate the compliment, Dynzyl. But no one man is essential, and victory is. And not just victory, either. This war's only just beginning, whatever happens here today, and our ability to control the sea is the only thing which may let us survive. We need a victory so complete, so crushing, the next admiral to think about fighting us will be half-defeated in his own mind before he ever leaves port. So devastating our men will know they can do anything, defeat anyone, no matter what the odds. And we need an example that will make them willing to fight at any odds. That's more important than the life of any one man-even a king. Do you understand me?"
Tryvythyn looked into his king's eyes for a moment, and then he bowed.
"Yes, Your Majesty," he said steadily. "I understand."
* * *
Dreadnought overtook another galley.
Devastation had fallen astern, but Destruction had out sailed her and forged up almost abreast of the fleet flagship, and the two of them had spread further apart. Destruction lay further to the east than Dreadnought, passing down the galley Scimitar's port side, and her starboard guns thundered. Dreadnought was still a ship's length ahead of her consort, and her port guns smashed in the galley's starboard side. A few of her shots missed, two of them whipping across Destruction's bows at dangerously close range, but the concentrated fire, crashing in on Scimitar simultaneously from both sides, was devastating.
Cayleb glared at the crippled hulk as the Corisandian flag came down. Dreadnought's gunners were too exhausted to raise a cheer this time, and ammunition was getting low. The gunner was almost out of made-up cartridges, and Captain Manthyr had detailed a long chain of Marines to pass more round shot up from the shot lockers. Despite that, the crown prince already knew Charis had won a crushing victory this day. He knew that, yet he fretted inside like a caged slash lizard as Manthyr tried to wring still more speed out of the flagship.
Cayleb's own squadron-more than a little disordered as the faster ships, like Destruction, overtook and passed the slower ones in front of them, but still intact-was closing rapidly on Duke Black Water's fugitives. To the north, Staynair had wreaked dreadful havoc upon the western half of Black Water's original fleet, and over twenty Chisholmian galleys had surrendered with only minimal resistance. At least a few determined Emeraldian and Corisandian captains had managed to evade both squadrons of Cayleb's galleons in the smoke and confusion and break north successfully. There weren't more than a double handful of them, however, and at least two-thirds of the ships still with Black Water were locked in melee with the galleys of his father's fleet.
Only thirty or so Corisandians still had any hope of escape. They were trying to break around the western edge of the huge, confused hand-to-hand fight raging between their consorts and the main body of the king's fleet. Cayleb and his squadron were on their heels, already engaging their rearmost units, but some of them might yet win free.
Except for the six Charisian galleys steering to meet them head-on.
* * *
Black Water looked astern. He could see the topgallants of the nearest galleons now, looming above the smoke. They were still well astern, but they were coming up fast, and there was plenty of daylight left.
