The first squad was back at their firing posts. Another volley, still before the cloud of smoke could vanish. Each two-man team in Trae’s gunnery unit, Helga knew, had two arquebuses. With the weapons already loaded and the slow matches prepared, given the rate of fire they were showing now, that meant—
Another volley. Helga was almost shocked herself. They could manage four volleys in the first minute, before the pirate ship could even manage to close the final distance. She realized now that she’d allowed herself to be too influenced by Jessep’s veteran experience. True, even with four volleys, the actual casualties inflicted would be relatively slight. She did the quick arithmetic in her head. Even assuming every bullet hit a pirate—almost certain, fired into such a packed mob, since for each one that missed another would punch through two men—then add another from splinter damage . . .
Still, only forty men hit, out of probably two hundred.
Before she could get too smug about her newfound wisdom, however, Jessep Yunkers was shouting in her ear. “A fifth of them, by the gods! I’ll wager my pension on it! And before we even hit the bastards with the blades!”
She turned and stared at him. The veteran’s blocky face was almost split in half with a grin. Seeing her look of confusion, Jessep shook his head.
“Y’ve never been in a battle, lass.” He was so excited he forgot his normal ma’am or young lady, and his eastern accent was thicker than usual. “A fift’ gone in th’missile volley? We don’ never hope fer more than a tent’, even wit’ dart volleys throwed by vets.” His grin turned into a jeer, aimed at the pirates. “That’ll break most any’un, much less these scum.”
She followed his gaze. The sight of the pirates on the bow and stern—the midships was still obscured by smoke—showed her at once that Jessep was right. Those faces were full of panic, now, not dismay.
The sight brought her thoughts back to her earlier ruminations. In addition to the pirates of the archipelago and the other large islands of Vase and Preble—”pirates” so-called; in reality they were a well-organized kingdom in their own right—there were the pirates who laired along the coast of the continent. Too far south to be under Confederate control, and too remote to be ruled more than nominally by any Southron chieftain, these were simply pirates in fact as well as in name.
Not even that, Helga realized. Most of the time, these “pirates” would survive by fishing and selling the rare hardwoods they cut from the dense forests along the continent’s waist. For all their undoubted seamanship, not to mention their ferocity when easy prey showed off their coastal villages, they had little of the disciplined organization of the Islanders proper. They weren’t even that closely related racially, although they had adopted many of the Islander customs and usually worshipped Islander gods. Part Islander, part Southron—not to mention a heavy admixture of slaves escaped from the Confederate plantations to the north—they were mongrels by blood as well as habit. Tough, yes; as mongrels always are. But with a “discipline” that didn’t begin to compare with the Islanders proper, much less Confederate soldiery.
The fourth volley erupted. That would be it, for the moment. Helga had watched Trae’s men at practice, often enough, while her younger brother trained them on the family’s estate. She knew that those clumsy guns, once fired, needed at least a minute to be cleaned and reloaded. A minute, at best. After a few rounds had been fired through the barrels, they needed to be set aside to cool before they could be used again. Trae had used the best metal he could find for them, but even those precious alloys would start to weaken once the barrels got too hot.
But in this instance, it was irrelevant anyway. Thicelt was already shouting at Trae, telling him to pull his gunners out of the way of the soldiers. The men of the hundred were on their feet, crouched, ready to topple the special sections of the upper deck onto the pirate ship’s rail. By now, only a three-foot gap separated the two vessels—more than short enough to allow the sections to span the distance.