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  He sighed heavily. "Whatever happens will happen. And now, young sir, you'd best get to it. You don't have much time left."

  Trae was gone instantly, shouting orders to his gunners waiting on the deck below. The gunners began scurrying to their newly-designated posts. Helga was a bit puzzled to see how easily they seemed to interpret Trae's orders. Most of the words her younger brother was shouting were simply obscenities.

  "That much he's got right," growled Yunkers. The former First Spear grinned at Helga. "Trained soldiers pretty much know what to do anyway. You just have to cuss at 'em to keep their brains working."

  * * *

  Afterward, Trae and his men would be able to boast endlessly. Which, to the regret of everyone else, they did.

  The pirate vessel, as Thicelt predicted, had no difficulty eluding the demibireme's ramming attempt. Then, as the one-and-a-half slid by, the pirates pulled feverishly on their oars to close the distance. The one and only benefit of the ramming attempt was that it kept most of the pirate archers and all of their slingers out of the action. There was no room on that crowded vessel, with hundreds of men working at huge oars, for more than a handful of archers to fire a few missiles. Most of which, as Jessep had foreseen, went astray anyway.

  Trae waited until the pirate ship was not more than ten yards distant. By then, Thicelt had removed all the rowers and Trae's gunners had set the tripod clamps at ten places along the lower deck which gave them a clear line of fire. At Trae's command — which was nothing more than a string of particularly obscene words — the first team of gunners set their arquebuses and fired.

  None of it took more than a few seconds. The gunners themselves, following Trae's previous orders, were not even aiming at individual men. In fact, they weren't shooting at "men" at all. Not directly, at any rate. Their heavy, large-bored guns were simply pointing at the side of the pirate ship. The only sense in which "aiming" applied was that they were trying to hit the wooden wall of the enemy ship at approximately the height of the rowers' benches on the other side. "Hip-high," had been Trae's specific command. But. . with the heavy four-ounce balls fired by those two-man arquebuses, at point-blank range, anything close would do just fine.

  And so it proved. The gunhandlers set their weapons, more or less "aimed," then braced for the recoil and closed their eyes when the other man of the team applied the slow match. A slightly ragged volley erupted, and one which was noisy enough to make the word "erupted" much more than a poetic allusion. It sounded like a small volcano, heard up close.

  Looked like one, too. Immediately, the middle portion of the pirate ship vanished from sight, engulfed in a cloud of smoke. Helga, from her vantage point, could only see the bow and stern of the enemy. The faces of the pirates standing there, which only a moment before had been leering at her, were now so many studies in shock and confusion.

  She thought that a bit odd, at first. Her former lover Adrian Gellert, after all, had been the one who first introduced gunpowder weapons to the world — using the pirates of the islands as his chosen instrument. And the Islanders had taken to the new weapons eagerly, as her father and Speaker Emeritus Jeschonyk had discovered to their dismay when the first Confederate assaults on the rebel island of Preble had been bloodily repulsed. That had been over a year ago. By now, Helga would have thought, pirates would be quite accustomed to gunpowder.

  Then, seeing the rags in which the pirates on this ship were clad, she realized the truth. Like most Vanberts, Helga tended to think of "Islanders" and "pirates" as synonymous terms. But the truth was more complicated.

  The Islanders could be separated into at least four distinct groups. There was the actual Kingdom of the Isles, ruled over by Casull the IV from his capital on the island of Chalice. Or, as he officially styled himself: "King Casull IV, Lord of the Isles, Supreme Autocrat, Chosen of the Sun God and Lemare of the Sea." Leaving aside the rhetorical flourish of the rest, the term autocrat was accurate enough. Except that the power of the King of the Isles, as great as it undoubtedly was, also had the historical characteristic of transience. Islander politics were even more notorious for treachery, double-dealing and palace revolts than the Confederacy's.

  Then, there was — had been, rather — the smaller-scale but similar realm of Vase. The island of Vase, because it was located quite some distance from the main archipelago, had traditionally enjoyed independent status. Until Casull conquered it the year before, it had been ruled by the so-called Director of Vase. It had been in that old pirate chief's hareem that Helga had spent the most unpleasant year of her life, after she'd been sold by the pirates who captured her. The Director had been delighted to obtain a high-ranked member of the Vanbert aristocracy for one of his concubines. Even if, in practice, he hadn't been able to do much to enjoy his prize.

  She grimaced, as a sudden image came back to her. A fat belly, heaving and covered with sweat, almost crushing her; and an old man's peevish voice, cursing her because he couldn't get an erection. He'd slapped her, that night, hard enough to leave bruises on her cheeks for days thereafter.

  The ugly memory was blown away by another volley from Trae's guns. She was startled to realize that not more than a quarter of a minute had elapsed since the first. Trae really had trained his men well.

  And he was using them intelligently, Helga thought. Trae had kept back half of his twenty two-man teams, having apparently decided that maintaining a good rate of fire was more important than the size of the volleys themselves. Now, as his teams switched places — one squad firing loaded and ready guns while the other picked up their second set of weapons — his decision proved itself. The second volley slammed into the side of the pirate ship before the cloud of smoke from the first had been dissipated by the slight breeze.

  Confusion, she could remember her father telling her, is an even better weapon against an enemy than casualties. The pirates, she realized, had not had time to make sense out of what was happening to them before yet another volley ripped into their ranks.

  Because of the smoke, she couldn't really see the casualties which were being inflicted by Trae's guns. But judging from the volume of the screams coming from amidships of the enemy vessel, as well as the dismay on the faces of those pirates she could see on the stern and bow—they weren't gloating over their projected rapine now, the stinking bastards—she thought the guns were tearing the enemy like a pack of predators tears a cornered greatbeast.

  The unwanted image of a rapist's fat belly was replaced by another. The more slender waists of would-be rapists, sitting on benches, screaming as they stared at their shattered hip bones and ruptured intestines. Helga had seen what those lead bullets would do to a heavy pig, shot at close range. The thin planks of the pirate ship wouldn't slow them down much more than paper. If anything, she thought, the splinters the bullets would produce punching through the walls would simply double the casualties. And if pieces of broken wood sent sailing by four-ounce lead balls wouldn't do quite as much damage as the bullets themselves, they would do more than enough to put most of the men they struck half out of the action by the time the marines stormed aboard. "Half out of the action," against experienced Confederate infantrymen, was pretty much a euphemism for dead meat.

  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.

  The gunners scrambled aside and the soldiers yanked out the pins which held the sections in place. Then, with a shout and heaved shoulders, toppled the improvised boarding ramps onto the pirate ship.

  Then—

  Nothing. At their First Spear's shouted command, they simply stood by the ramps, waiting. Helga was too confused to do more than notice that they weren't even hefting their weighted darts for an initial volley.

  She heard Jessep's harsh chuckle. "I told you Uther was a good First Spear. Good as I was, truth be told — sure enough at his age."

  She turned her head and stared at him. Jessep's rare grin was back.

  "Live and learn, ma'am. Experience always counts." He pointed with his square chin at the pirate vessel, still half obscured by smoke. "Uther's never seen gunpowder at work before, but he has led boarding operations onto burning ships. You don't want to lead men into a pile of smoke, you surely don't. Half your discipline'll vanish in a few heartbeats. Let Vanbert soldiers know their place — see and feel their mates at their shoulders — they'll handle anything. Let them lose their bearings, and you never know what'll happen. The only Confederate hundred I ever saw break and run did so in a dense fog."

  The grin vanished, replaced by the usual block-against-block that did Jessep for a jaw. "Didn't keep 'em from being decimated afterward, o' course. Those of 'em who survived the enemy pursuit."

  Now understanding, Helga nodded jerkily. Not for the first time, she was reminded of the harsh regime under which the Confederacy's soldiers lived and fought.

  Another shout from Uther jerked her head back around. The smoke had cleared enough, apparently. The first wave of marines was charging across the ramp, two abreast. Even on that precarious footing, they had their shields locked and the assegais ready for that terrible underhand thrust which had made Confederate infantrymen feared for centuries.

  There were four ramps, in all. The first eight men hammered into the screeching mass of pirates. Their spear thrusts were almost desultory. For the most part, the vanguard was using the force of their charge and their shields to clear some fighting room for their comrades coming behind.

  The shields were well designed for the purpose. Oval in shape, covering a man from shoulder to mid-thigh, and with a metal rim and boss to bolster the laminated wood from which they were made. Between their own mass and the weight of the three lead-weighted darts clipped on the inside, the shields were just about perfect for the task of driving back a crowd.

  Perfect, at least, when wielded by men trained in their use. Watching the soldiers at work, the way their shoulders hunched into the shields and their powerful legs worked like the pistons Trae had shown her in the captured steam ram, Helga suddenly understood something else for the first time.

  She'd been trained in combat herself, at her insistence, and by the finest retired gladiators her father could find, Lortz being the latest of them. But her training had been, basically, in the Emerald style which was fashionable in aristocratic duels and the gladiator arenas. That style favored long swords, small round shields, with all the fancy footwork and need for room which it required.

  She snorted. "It's no wonder we whipped them."

  Jessep, again, showed an uncanny ability to read her mind. "True enough, la — ah, ma'am. You want a short blade for real killing. And then you do most of the killing with your shoulders and legs anyway. The spear thrust's just the finish. Easy enough, if you've gotten the strength and endurance it takes to keep a heavy shield steady at all times — and leg muscles like iron."

  She remembered watching her father's soldiers at training. It had seemed a bit odd to her, at the time, the way they devoted such a relatively small amount of time to practicing spear thrusts. For the most part, the training of Confederate infantrymen seemed to be nothing more than endless running — and shield work. Time after time, she'd watched as a squad of men — always a squad, or a whole hundred; Confederate soldiers never trained as individuals — pushed a huge and heavy box full of dirt all the way across a training field. Their legs hammering like pistons, the shields steady against the obstacle. Never halting, never tiring, never stumbling.

  They were doing it again now. The first wave of boarders had been joined at the front by the next two. Fully a fourth of the hundred were not using their spears at all. They were simply clearing the midships of the pirate vessel, pushing their opponents back with a solid shield wall. Their shields remaining locked, even as the men holding them threaded their way down the bench rows. Their legs drove relentlessly, never losing their footing even when the sandals stamped down on ruptured bodies instead of wood. Helga could remember watching her father train soldiers on a field littered with the carcasses of gutted pigs. She'd thought it gross, at the time.

  Not to mention wasteful of perfectly valuable swine. But now, also, she understood why sh
e'd overheard soldiers say they preferred serving under a rich officer, as long as he was competent. She'd thought, then, that they'd only been thinking of pay and bonuses. But now she realized that a man like her father could afford to train his soldiers properly, as well as provide them with the best equipment. Pay and bonus did no good to a dead soldier.

  The pirates were screaming even more loudly, now that this second blow had struck them. They'd been expecting to face nothing more than the usual crew of a demibireme. Sailors, basically, who doubled as fighters only on rare occasion. Coming on top of the surprise volleys of gunfire, the shock of seeing regular Confederate marines storming across boarding ramps—and where the hell had those come from? — had unnerved them completely.

  The pirates facing the marines directly weren't even fighting, except here and there. Most of them were simply trying to scramble away.

  But there was no room to scramble. Two hundred men packed aboard such a galley had left little room to begin with, even before the Confederate assault cleared the space in the middle.

  "They're starting to go over the side," said Jessep. Sure enough, Helga could see at least a dozen pirates spilling into the water. A few of them from jumping, most of them simply from being knocked overboard by the sudden crush.

  "Pity the poor bastards," he added. Softly, if not gently.

  Helga was about to snarl something to the effect that she wanted all the pirates dead. The coast wasn't that far away, after all, and at least some of them would be good swimmers. But then, seeing the first fins cutting through the water not more than fifty yards away, the words died in her throat.

  "These are shark waters, aren't they?" she asked.

  Jessep grunted. "Famous for it." He studied the shoreline for a moment; then: "I'd say it's a good two miles. Maybe closer to three. Not too many men can swim that distance to begin with. Here. ." He shook his head. "Not a chance."