«They can't see very well, can they?» said Prince Durouman.
«No,» said Blade. «Or perhaps they can see nothing but Kul-Nam's flag-and Kul-Nam's rage if they stop firing. We shall have to ask them, after we win the battle.»
Durouman looked sharply at Blade, realized that Blade had spoken with a perfectly straight face, and nodded.
Blade was glad to see that the galleys were drawing ahead of the Imperial ships. They were moving at a pace the rowers could not hold for much longer, if they were to have any strength left for the actual attack. That would have to be made at absolute top speed, for they would be closing to ranges where a gunner blind drunk and half paralyzed could hardly miss.
Avenger was a mile out ahead of the leading Imperial ship when Blade ordered the helm over again and the rowers to increase to the ramming stroke. Looking astern, he saw one galley after another doing the same. He heaved a sigh of relief. They had done all the complicated things he'd wanted them to do as if all the captains had been reading his mind. Now it was going to be a straight, uncomplicated attack again, with every galley for herself.
Avenger swung in a wide circle around the head of the Imperial line. Some of the galley captains behind her were too impatient to do that. They put their helms hard over and drove straight in at the enemy. Blade prayed that no more than half of them would be sunk as a price for that magnificently foolish courage.
It was not Avenger that drove home the first attack with Blade's secret weapon against a sailing ship of the Empire. It was a galley of Nullar and a pirate galley, racing in almost side by side, not firing their guns, every man aboard except the rowers lying flat on the decks. They raced in, waves rising so high over the bows that Blade half expected them to drive right under.
They struck. There was a thudding roar, and a great column of water spewed up alongside an Imperial ship, then broke apart in a cloud of smoke and spray. Moments later the other galley struck, farther forward. Her barrel must have risen clear of the water at the last second, for it went off with a great sheet of flame. From the enemy's foc'sle guns, men, and planks flew in all directions, and the bowsprit cartwheeled through the air to splash into the sea a hundred yards away. Then the mainmast tottered, toppled, and crashed down squarely on the deck of the first galley. She was dragged in alongside her dying enemy as the fallen mast twisted about. Blade saw the smoke of muskets suddenly spring up from both ships as both crews leaped to board or repel boarders.
It was bad luck, being caught that way. Blade had anticipated the risk, but there wasn't anything to be done about it. When a large sailing ship started falling violently to pieces, there was no predicting where the pieces would land.
Avenger was now around on the far side of the enemy line and beginning to work her way back along it toward the flagship. The smoke and the enemy's ships now cut off Blade's view of the attack. He heard two more thudding roars as barrels were driven home and saw two more clouds of smoke rising through and above the murk from the guns. He saw one tremendous flash high in the rigging of a ship, as a powder barrel hurled by a siege engine exploded in her tops. Both masts went down in a rain of spars and blocks and sails; then the dismasted hull was blotted out in the smoke. All this time the guns still rolled.
Then Blade saw something that made him take off his helmet and wave it wildly, because he could no longer control his excitement. Two, three, four of the Imperial sailing ships were coming about, turning away out of line, turning their sterns to the allied galleys-turning to flee! At last the courage of Kul-Nam's captains and crews was beginning to fade. The death that was coming at them out of the smoke filled them with a fear that drove any thought of what Kul-Nam might do out of their minds. All they could think of was what the enemy galleys would do if they didn't flee.
Now the whole enemy line was falling into confusion as ship after ship tried to turn away. It looked like a stampede of drunken elephants, as fifteen or more large ships tried to maneuver in an area of sea that would have been cramped for half that number. All of the ships were clumsy to begin with, and none of them had been improved by the damage they'd sustained.
Blade saw a barrel crash down on one ship's deck and explode. It must have been filled with sulphur, for an enormous cloud of yellowish smoke swirled up from the deck. Flames followed, rapidly climbing the masts and reducing the sails to blackened shreds. Blade heard the crackle and roar, heard the explosions of powder charges on deck, saw men jump over the side with clothing and hair aflame, preferring drowning or sharks to burning alive.
Then another sailing ship loomed out of the smoke too close to the burning one to avoid her. They crashed together and all the masts of both ships went down. Now they were as firmly linked as if a dozen sailors had spent hours tying them together.
Then a galley attacked. Her barrel smashed into the second ship-and it touched off the ship's magazines.
The explosion could not have been louder if a volcano had risen from the bottom of the sea to create a new island. Blade clapped both hands over his ears, quite sure that he was going to be deaf for a week. The entire sea around Avenger seemed to be blotted out by the great flash and the smoke that followed it.
The smoke was so thick that Blade never saw or heard any of the pieces of the three ships and their men fall back into the sea. It was as if all three ships and crews had been blown into dust so fine that the wind carried it away.
Avenger moved on. By now her rowers were deaf to everything except the beat of the drums. She swept through the smoke without slowing down and broke out into the daylight again.
Three hundred yards away rose the towering mass of Kul-Nam's flagship.
Instantly the ship let fly with an entire broadside, thirty or more guns. In spite of the range, only one or two shots struck Avenger. Even the Emperor's eye directly on them could no longer make the Empire's gunners shoot straight. Without any orders, the boarding party began rushing forward, the men from the stern guns joining them. Avenger surged forward, and in that moment the big galley seemed as alive and eager as the men on her decks.
Blade yelled what he hoped everyone heard as «Get down!» and threw himself flat on the deck. The heavy gun on the bow went off. Several balls from the flagship whistled overhead. Then Avenger drove her deadly weapon hard against the flagship's bow.
Instead of a roaring explosion, all Blade heard was a great craaak of splitting wood. Then he heard a tremendous crashing and crunching and was hurled violently forward as Avenger plowed into the flagship.
Blade slid several feet forward on his belly, picking up splinters in every piece of skin that wasn't protected by his armor. Above him the flagship's bowsprit and Avenger's foremast were hopelessly tangled together. Then with a popping of breaking ropes and a crackling of wood the mast leaned gently forward and came down across the enemy's foc'sle. Suddenly there was a perfect bridge from Avenger onto the deck of Kul-Nam's flagship-or the other way around.
Blade wasted no time worrying about why the barrel hadn't gone off. A glancing blow, wet powder, who knew? In any case, there was Prince Durouman, waving his sword and mace, leaping onto the mast and scrambling up it as nimbly as a monkey. He was going to get his chance at a hand-to-hand grapple aboard the Emperor's flagship after all.
This might be folly, but it was a folly the prince could not be left to commit alone. Blade sprang to his feet. Turning aft, he shouted to the men around the siege engine, «Dump the barrels-now!» The deck of a galley locked in close combat with Kul-Nam's flagship was no place for nearly a ton of powder and sulphur. Then Blade drew his own sword, flourished it toward the foc'sle that loomed high overhead, and roared in a voice that carried all over both ships: