“Haven’t a prayer of sinking them,” he said.
You could sink an ordinary galley by catapult fire, if you were lucky. They were lightly built, racing shells of fragile pine, quickly made and quickly worn out. Freighters had oak frames and much thicker hull planks and frames. They were built to take strains and last; many sailed for thirty or forty years before they had to be broken up. The only real way to sink one was to ram it, or burn it . . . and these weren’t going to burn to the waterline until long after they hit the causeway.
“They’re bringing up men with oars,” Esmond said.
Adrian could see them too; someone had been bright enough to rig a pump, to keep them covered with water. They’d never be able to stand the heat, even so. Probably.
“We’d better discourage that,” he said. “Captain Sharlz, if you could bring us broadside on?” He turned and looked down onto the gangway of the galley: “Simun! Six arquebus teams—target the men trying to fend off.”
“Sir, yessir!” the underofficer shouted back, as the galley heeled and turned in its own length, oars churning and then going to a steady slow stroke to keep the craft on station.
Puduff. Puduff. Puduff . . . Sulfur-stinking smoke drifted back to the poop. Men fired, stepped back for their loading teams, stepped forward again, intent on their work. The first six rounds brought one man down—good practice, at this extreme range. The four-ounce balls and seven-foot barrels gave the arquebusiers more range than any torsion catapult, though.
“Bastards don’t know what’s hitting them,” Esmond chuckled.
That they don’t, Raj added. There’s no reason for them to associate a bang and a puff of smoke with someone getting killed. But they’ll learn.
They did, as more of the men getting ready to fend off the fireships went down. Confed troopers trotted up, raising their big oval shields to hold off whatever it was that was killing their comrades. Adrian could see the bronze thunderbolts on their facings glitter as they raised them; another row behind held them overhead, making a tortoise as they would for plunging arrow fire. Habit, but it was also habit that kept them so steady. Even when the first soldiers went down; the arquebus balls knocked men back, punctured shields, smashed through the links of mail.
This time Esmond winced; Adrian sensed he wasn’t altogether happy at seeing personal courage and skill and strength made as nothing by a machine striking from twice bowshot.
” ‘Strong-Arm! How the glory of man is extinguished!’ ” the elder Gellert murmured; a king of Rope had made that cry from the heart, the first time he saw a bolt from the newly-invented catapult.
“Progress,” Adrian replied. Then: “Cease fire!”
The first of the fireships would ground not ten yards from its target. The Islander sailors had done their work well.
* * *
“Ungh.”
A man not two paces from Justiciar Demansk went down, grunting like someone who’d been gut-punched. Unlike a gut-punched boxer he wasn’t going to get up, not from the amount of blood that welled out around his clutching fingers. Better he bleeds to death now, Demansk thought with a veteran’s ruthless compassion. I’d rather, than go slow from the green rot. A puncture down in the gut always mortified. He could smell shit among the blood-stink, even from here.
“That went right through his shield,” he said aloud.
“Fuckin’ right it did,” his First Spear said. “Sir, you’ve got to get out of here! You get killed, who’s going to command this ratfuck? I can’t, and them bastards in the command tent, most of ’em can’t.”
Demansk shook his head. Jeschonyk actually had half a dozen reasonably experienced advisors—one good thing about the past twenty years of Confederation history was that the upper classes were full of men who’d seen red on the field. He turned in exasperation, keeping his voice low:
“I can’t expect the men to hold steady under this if I don’t—”
Ptannggg. Another trooper went down in front of him, a hole punched through his shield. Justiciar Demansk found himself on the rough stones of the causeway as well, blinking up at the First Spear’s horrified face.