Silently, still fighting for breath, Venandakatra cursed that soldier and savored his destruction. Just as he cursed all the soldiers who cowered beside him, and all the others who had failed to drive back the Axumite assaults and the Roman cannonade.
Almost glazed, his eyes now stared at the hole that the cannonball had made in the ramparts. Venandakatra was astonished by the power of the gun that had fired it. He had not expected that.
He should have—and would have, had he paid any attention to his military advisers or Damodara. But Venandakatra, whose last personal experience with naval warfare had been years before, had not really grasped the rapid advances that both the Malwa and their enemies had made in gunpowder weaponry since the war began. His memory had been of war galleys armed with rockets, not cannons. And his logic had told him that galleys, by their nature, could never carry many guns in any event.
On that, of course, he was correct. Like all war galleys armed with cannon, the Axumite vessels carried only as many guns as could be fit in the bow and stern. Firing a “broadside” was impossible because of the rowers’ benches. And the Ethiopian ships, for all that they were designed to cross the open sea under sail, were still essentially oared galleys in time of battle.
So, yes, they had few guns on each ship—four only, on most of them, two in the bow and two in the stern. Nor were the guns particularly powerful. But the Ethiopians had many ships—and still had, even after running through Venandakatra’s volleys. And the Roman ships coming behind them were designed to fire broadsides, and did carry powerful guns. Venandakatra was not certain, but he thought every Roman vessel was firing what his own gunners called “elephant feet.” The Romans, if he remembered correctly, called them thirty-two-pounder carronades. For the most part, the Romans were firing grapeshot, designed to kill the men manning the huge Malwa guns. But they fired solid shot at regular intervals also, and those heavy balls had proven more than powerful enough to begin shattering the ramparts which protected Malwa’s batteries. The ramparts were old stonework, erected long ago in an era of medieval warfare, not the newer style of fortifications designed to withstand cannon fire. The Malwa had simply never expected to be defending Bharakuccha against such an attack—at least, Venandakatra hadn’t—so the Goptri had not ordered new construction to replace the ancient walls.
The battle had now been raging for hours. The Ethiopians had lost many ships to gunfire, true. But even those losses had been turned to their purpose, as often as not, by the sheer fury of the Ethiopian assault. Unless a ship was destroyed completely, sunk in the harbor, the Axumite sailors had driven their crippled ships into the midst of the anchored Malwa fleet. Then, after pouring over the side in that now all-too-familiar and terrifying way of boarding, had turned their own ships into floating firebombs. Between the gunfire of their galleys and the torchwork of their marines, the Ethiopians completed the destruction of the Malwa navy and began doing the same to the merchant fleet.
With any chance of being intercepted by Malwa galleys now eliminated, the Romans had sailed their warships directly before the Malwa fortifications guarding the harbor and begun firing broadsides at a range which was no more than two hundred yards. So close, ironically, that the Malwa could no longer depress the huge siege guns enough to strike back.
At which point, to Venandakatra’s shock, all of the surviving Axumite galleys had offloaded their marines onto the piers of Bharakuccha itself.
Insane! Are they maddened bulls? This was a raid! They cannot hope to take one of Malwa’s greatest cities!
Then, as their marines rampaged through the harbor area of the city, putting everything to the torch—the shipyards, the warehouses, everything—the galleys had pulled away from the docks. Again, Venandakatra had been shocked. Manned by skeleton crews, the Ethiopian warships had turned their guns on the fortifications. With the Ethiopians now firing the grapeshot which kept the ramparts clear of troops, the Romans had been freed to hammer the fortification themselves with those terrifying great iron balls.