Fortunately, neither the seas nor the wind were heavy. Antonina had been told they wouldn’t be, as a rule, this time of year. She was relieved to find the information accurate.
Slow progress is still progress. The Malwa convoy—all merchantmen, now that their escorts had been destroyed—were simply seeking to escape the Ethiopians. But the Malwa ships paid a price for their huge and ungainly design. They, too, crept along like snails.
Ousanas verbalized her own assessment. “We’ll overtake them,” he pronounced. “Soon, I think.”
Chapter 30
“Soon” proved to be half an hour.
Half an hour after that, “soon” became “never.”
Antonina, once again, discovered the First Law of Battle. Nothing ever works the way it should.
* * *
“Pull out, Wahsi!” she shouted, trying to make herself heard over the roar of the cannons and the shrieks of the rockets. “We can’t sink them!”
Stubbornly, the Axumite commander shook his head. The headshake turned into a duck, as another flight of rockets soared overhead. But there was no damage. The Syrian gunners, after a few minutes of battle, had switched to cannister. The solid shot had proven ineffective, but the cannister kept the Malwa kshatriyas from the rail. They were not able to lower their rocket troughs far enough to bring the missiles to bear on the Ethiopian ships alongside.
“There’s no point!” she shouted. “We could punch holes in that damned thing for a week, and it wouldn’t make a difference. We can’t sink it!”
Wahsi ignored her. He was leaning out of the shield, studying the rest of the battle. The huge Malwa cargo ships were like buffaloes being torn at by a dozen lean wolves. The roar of cannon fire, mingled with the shriek of rocketry, rippled over the waves. Each Axumite ship was wreathed in gunsmoke; every Malwa ship had holes punched in its hull—and none of them, plain as day, was in any danger of sinking. The battle was a pure and simple stalemate.
While she waited for Wahsi to make a decision, Antonina snarled her own frustration at the Malwa ship looming above her, not twenty yards off.
It was an incredible sight, in its way. The hull of the Malwa ship looked like a sieve. At least a dozen five-inch marble cannonballs had punched holes through the thin planks. But—
I was afraid this might happen. Belisarius warned me that wooden ships, in the days of sail, were almost never sunk by cannon fire. The Spanish Armada was wrecked by a storm, not English guns. The only ship at the battle of Trafalgar actually destroyed by gunfire was the Achille, after fire spread to its magazines. The rest were captured by boarders or lost during the storm which followed. Still, I had hoped—those ships, after all, were heavily built northern European craft. Not these cockleshells. But it doesn’t matter. Wood doesn’t sink. It’s as simple as that.
Another volley of unaimed rockets shrieked overhead. The Malwa were simply venting their own frustration. The missiles plunged into the sea hundreds of yards past the two Axumite vessels drawn alongside.
Wahsi ducked back under the shield. The leather was ragged now, where a few Malwa rockets had struck early in the battle. But that, at least, had worked as Antonina hoped. Even the one rocket which exploded when it hit the shield had spent most of its fury harmlessly. Only five rowers had been injured, none seriously.
“We’ll do it the old-fashioned way!” shouted Wahsi. He seized his spear and began bellowing new orders. The rowers drove the ship against the Malwa vessel. Grappling hooks were being dug out, and scaling equipment readied.
Antonina started to protest. This battle with the convoy had turned into an absurd distraction. They could break off now and still make it into Charax long before the convoy could bring the alarm. The last thing she wanted was to see the Ethiopian forces suffer heavy casualties in a boarding operation.
But the protest died on her lips. One look at Wahsi’s face was enough. The Dakuen commander was in pure battle fury. He would have that convoy, by God—no matter what.
She glanced at Ousanas. The aqabe tsentsen shrugged.