“Give me a hundred strokes,” shouted Shef to the rowers. “A hundred strokes and you can rest easy. Hagbarth, call the time. Cwicca, play them along.”
The big men began to heave harder, using up the last of their hoarded strength, something they would never do at the start of a normal battle, to be decided by hard hand-strokes. The screeching music urged them on. Cuthred, grinning sourly, looked up from the shadow of the armor plating. “Ogvind here says he’ll row harder without the bagpipe, can you shut him up?” Shef waved back and shouted something no-one heard. As the count ran down, Shef looked again at the scene in front of him, estimating distances, looking at the enemy catapults, the racing skiffs, the Ragnarsson front line, suddenly seeming much nearer. Lucky that that at least had not moved. If they had broken their formation instantly, their “scissors” might have cut his “paper,” large ships riding down small ones. But now his “paper” would wrap their “stone,” his “stone” blunt their “scissors.”
“Ten last strokes,” Shef shouted, “and steer to starboard. Put us broadside on. Cwicca, shoot for the one with the Raven Banner. Osmod—” he raised his voice even more to reach the aft catapult, “—shoot for the one to the left of the Raven and then work left, left, you hear?”
The ship swung, with a final gasp the rowers completed the stroke, slumped sweating over their oars. Shef jumped from his place and ran to another vantage-point clear of the catapults. As the Fearnought drifted to a stop, Cwicca and Osmod stared along the trails of their mules, through the gaps left in the plating.
Cwicca dropped his hand, Hama pulled the retainer bolt, the whole ship shuddered to the thwack of the throwing arm striking its padded bar. Shuddered again a moment later as Osmod followed suit. Shef watched the skimming black dots of boulders tensely. Cwicca and Osmod had had to train most of their crews. They had missed the Crane at a critical moment. Would they do better this time?
Both dots came to an abrupt end in the center of the Ragnarsson line, Shef was almost sure he could see splinters fly. He waited for the sudden collapse, the disappearance of a ship opened up like a flower, as he had seen happen at the battle off the Elbe. Nothing. The line was still there, dragon-heads glaring. What had the Ragnarssons done? Had they armored their ships?
“Two hits,” Shef shouted. “Work out to left and right, as ordered.” He did not know what was happening. But in machine-war, as in the old kind, once battle was joined you just had to put your head down and keep doing your job.
The winders whirled their levers, the oarsmen backed water gently to Hagbarth’s directions, trying to keep the ship broadside onto the enemy line. Again the double shudder as the stones released, again the black streaks of boulders flying into the line of ships. Still no gaps, no sagging prows. But he could see men running, leaping from ship to ship. Something was taking effect.
As he stared out, the Fearnought was suddenly battered down in the water. A great clang made Shef cringe, something whirred over his head in pieces. He looked round, realized that the catapults up on the spit of land had changed their aim, were shooting now not at the skiffs closing on them, but at the ship destroying their battle-line. If the Fearnought had not been armored she would have sunk then and there. The boulder had hit dead center, in line with the stepped mast, had shattered on impact with the case-hardened plates, the fragments whistling overhead. Shef stepped through the rowers to join Hagbarth looking at the damage. The plates were unharmed, but the wooden frame that held them had cracked clean through, leaving the outer shell sagging.
Again the Fearnought quivered to her own discharges, and again and again came the violent clangs of boulders striking. One struck forward of center, again shattering the frame, the other on the aft catapult platform. Osmod stepped up, pushing sagging plates out of the way, shoving winders back to their places. “Some rope,” he called, “tie these timbers back, we can shoot again.” The whole platform was out of line, Shef saw, something broken deep in its mounting. They could not take very much more of this battering. A steel plate slid free of its broken frame, fell into the sea, leaving a gap of sunlight. “Turn the ship while they’re winding,” Shef shouted. “Turn the undamaged side towards them. Three more volleys and we’re done.”