Hell's Foundations Quiver by David Weber
“Let go,” Tyllytsyn repeated, the two words hard and unyielding. “Happen I can swim, Sir. An’ I was smart enough t’ tie onto a line before I went swimmin’, too. Now let go!”
Hahrlys gaped at him for another moment, his brain churning sluggishly, then nodded.
“Whatever you say, Gyffry,” he murmured, and released his grip. The rope around his waist plucked at him insistently, dragging him back the way he’d come, and he managed to grip the rope and turn in the same direction, holding onto the line and letting his legs and body float behind him.
By the time two of his men had hauled him ashore, three more had Tyllytsyn and Edwyrds within a few feet of the bank. Someone else floundered out into the water to help pull Edwyrds out, and Hahrlys managed to crawl to their side. He was probably more hindrance than help, he thought later, but he didn’t worry about that at the time. He got a firm grip on Edwyrds and added his own feeble efforts to the fight to get the sergeant free of the water.
They dumped him on the muddy bank and Tyllytsyn peeled off the other noncom’s swimming glasses. He pulled the bladder mouthpiece out from between Edwyrds’ tight-clenched teeth, and put his ear directly beside his mouth.
“He’s still breathing!” he announced. “You three, get him up to the warming tent. Braishair, you and Wyltahn help the Lieutenant.”
“And two of you help the Platoon Sergeant, too,” Hahrlys said. Or that was what he tried to say, anyway. He was pretty sure afterward that all that actually came out was a slurred mumble, but that was all right.
That was just fine.
* * *
“Yes, Pawal?” Halcom Bahrns looked up from the last of his scrambled eggs as Trynt Sevyrs, his steward, admitted Lieutenant Blahdysnberg to his day cabin. The overhead oil lamp cast shadows on the lieutenant’s face, dusting the puckered scar on his cheek, picked up courtesy of a ricocheting rifle bullet during the Canal Raid, with darkness.
“The picket boat just brought word, Sir. The engineers say they got the charges placed.”
“Did they?” Bahrns laid down his fork, reached for his hot tea, and sipped deeply. Then he lowered the mug. “How many did they lose?” he asked in a much quieter tone.
“None of them, apparently.”
“None of them?”
Bahrns blinked. He hadn’t been able to refute Admiral Hywyt’s logic, and the advantages if the mission succeeded were amply worth the risk, but he’d never believed the engineers could pull it off without losing someone.
“According to the coxswain who delivered the message, they did come pretty close to losing at least one man, Sir,” Blahdysnberg admitted. “But they got him back in the end and it sounds like he’s going to be fine after all.”
“And they got all the charges placed?”
“That’s what they say, Sir. And I’m ready to take the word of anyone with big enough balls to even try setting them, myself. And the lieutenant in charge—a Lieutenant—” he glanced at the note in his hand, turning it to catch the lamplight “—Bryahnsyn, it says—lit all the fuses right on the dot at five-thirty.”
“Can’t say I disagree with you about the size of their balls,” Bahrns conceded. Then he hauled out his pocket watch. “If he lit them off at five-thirty, I make it another forty minutes or so, assuming the fuses work the way they’re supposed to.” He closed the watch with a snap. “That being so, I suppose it’s time we cleared for action.”
* * *
It was still dark when Bahrns stepped out onto HMS Delthak’s larboard bridge wing and into the bite of an icy breeze. The ironclad’s superstructure was like an island rising from the thick river mist, and a trailer of funnel smoke wisped down across the dying night to greet him. The black gang had gotten steam up in ample time, and for once he envied the hot, oily cave in which they labored.
He could see precious little, but at least river currents were constant, not like the tricksy and capricious tide. He knew where his ship was, where she had to go, how the set of the current would try to prevent her from getting there, and what she had to do when she got there anyway. And Bryahnsyn’s timing had been good. The eastern sky was already a tiny bit paler—unless that was his imagination—and he gazed upriver, waiting for the signal to begin.
He’d come to love his squat, unlovely command. There were times—a lot of them, actually—when the stink of funnel smoke was far from pleasant, or when talcum-fine black dust coated every surface after re-coaling, that he longed for the days when all his command had needed was the pressure of clean wind on canvas. But those times came and went, and even at their worst, they were minor considerations beside Delthak’s speed, maneuverability, and power.
And her pumps and propellers when the sea turns bitchy, Halcom, he reminded himself. Let’s not be forgetting those little advantages, either!
He regretted the fact that he’d been forced to give up four guns in each broadside when they rearmed his ship before sending her to Thesmar, but there hadn’t been any choice. The new breechloaders were twice a thirty-pounder’s weight and over twenty feet long.
Unlike the thirty-pounders they’d replaced, the new mounts were fitted with handwheel elevation gear, and the toothed gears which rode the new, modified deck rails gave his gunners much more precise control of their pieces. The armored shutters had been bolted permanently closed over the empty ports, and the joints between the shutters and the casemate armor had been heavily caulked to prevent leaks. That had shown its worth during the storm-lashed voyage from Siddar City to Thesmar. But the Delthak Works had also fitted each of the new guns with a rounded gun shield that pivoted with the gun as it was trained around.
In many ways, Bahrns was as pleased by those shields as by the guns themselves. Most of Delthak’s casualties during the Canal Raid—like the scar on Blahdynsberg’s cheek—had come when small arms fire found its way through the opened ports while the guns were run out. That wasn’t going to happen now. In fact, he really wished he could simply leave the guns permanently run out, the way the new-build ironclads were designed to do. Running them all the way in was a backbreaking task, even with the auxiliary steam “donkey.” Unfortunately, the shields, for all their virtues, weren’t perfect. They leaked, and Delthak’s port sills were too close to the water. That was why the guns had to be run fully in so the original port shutters could be closed and secured before he risked taking her to sea in anything much above a dead calm.
But those long barrels, especially matched with the slower-burning “brown powder,” gave them enormous power. The standard six-inch shell was almost four times the weight of a thirty-pounder smoothbore shell, and according to the Delthak Works, it struck with more than seven and a half times the energy. Theoretically, the new gun had a range of fifteen thousand yards at its maximum elevation of fifteen degrees, although no gunner could hope to hit another ship at ranges much in excess of four thousand. His own ship’s motion would have made that impossible. Firing from the mill-pond smoothness of the Seridahn River, however, ought to be a rather different kettle of fish, and he was eager to try them in action for the first time.
Of course, first he had to get into position, and that was likely to prove … interesting.
He opened his watch again, holding its face to catch the light from a conning tower view slit. The eastern sky was definitely lighter. In fact, according to schedule, the festivities ought to have already kicked off, but he wasn’t surprised they were running a little late. If he’d been in charge of cutting those fuses, he would have given himself a rather more generous margin of error than the nominal timetable required, and—
* * *
“All right, you’re relieved,” Lieutenant Sandkaran growled.
As military formalities went, it was sadly lacking, Lieutenant Bryahnsyn reflected. On the other hand, Erayk Sandkaran was a surly fellow at the best of times, and he didn’t like getting up before the crack of dawn any more than anyone else did. For that matter, Bryahnsyn couldn’t for the life of him imagine why it w
Not that he or Sandkaran were likely to raise that point with Colonel Sheldyn. That was usually a bad—
* * *
Earl Hanth’s command had been redesignated the Army of Thesmar in recognition of its defense of that city. Despite its magnificent new name, however, it remained lower in supply priority than its fellows. The Army of Shiloh had been shattered; the Desnairian Empire had lost eighty percent of its rifles and new-model artillery; and while the Royal Dohlaran Army had a greater potential to regenerate, it wouldn’t be doing that anytime soon. So it was reasonable to give priority to the armies farther north, where heavy and decisive combat could be expected no later than May or June.
Because of that, Hanth had received none of the new bolt-action rifles and only a handful of the Mahldyn .45 revolvers. The 4th Infantry Brigade had brought along its organic mortars and field artillery; two additional batteries of four-inch muzzle-loading rifles had accompanied the same wave of reinforcements; and Hanth had a plenitude—indeed, an excess—of thirty-pounders on field carriages. They’d done him proud in his attack on Cheryk, and while the naval angle-guns Admiral Hywyt had landed to defend Thesmar were too immobile to take on campaign, the Delthak Works had compensated by supplying him with enough new mortars to equip five additional support platoons.
And as a consolation prize for the M96 rifles he hadn’t received, Ehdwyrd Howsmyn had sent along eight hundred additional six-inch shells, with even more in the supply chain behind them … and just under a hundred tons of Sahndrah Lywys’ newest brainchild. On a pound-for-pound basis, Lywysite was roughly two and a half times as powerful as black powder, because the shock wave of its detonation propagated at over twenty-three thousand feet per second while black powder’s detonation velocity was less than two thousand. That gave Lywysite a much greater shattering effect, and since it weighed twice as much per cubic inch, the same weight charge could be packed into half the volume. And that meant it could be formed into neat sticks, ten inches long and one and a quarter inches in diameter, each of which weighed just under twenty ounces … and packed the effectiveness of over three pounds of black powder into barely fifteen percent of the black powder’s volume.
* * *
The explosions weren’t simultaneous. That would have been expecting the impossible. But there were over a dozen of them, spread over a window of less than three minutes, which was very respectable timing … and a vast relief for all concerned. Especially for the engineers who’d placed the charges. They’d felt a certain trepidation at the knowledge that the fuses inside those charges had been lit even before the ominous, pitch-sealed packages were handed to the men responsible for putting them where they belonged before they blew the hell up.
Ehdwyrd Howsmyn and his minions had provided the engineers with a demolition fuse—a variant on the improved metallic time fuses he’d introduced for smoothbore artillery shells the year before—for those moments when it wasn’t expedient to simply light a length of quick match and run for cover. Essentially, it was a solid, disk-shaped bronze casting whose upper surface bore a spiraling groove or channel packed with a very slow-burning compound that crept along the channel at a rate of only a foot an hour. It was sealed with a special varnish, then covered with a protective tin lid marked in increments, each equal to two minutes’ burning time, which followed the line of the channel. When it was time to emplace the charge, an awl was punched through the tin at the appropriate time—up to a maximum of two hours—and flame was applied.
In theory, it provided a reasonably accurate—and reasonably safe—timing device. The only problem was that none of the engineers in question had ever before actually worked with the things, and no one could have blamed them for approaching their task a bit gingerly. Now they stood on the river bank, Sergeant Edwyrds still wrapped in a thick cocoon of blankets and leaning on Platoon Sergeant Tyllytsyn, and cheered each white-and-brown, mud-stained column of water as it erupted in the predawn gloom.
* * *
“I do believe that’s our signal, Crahmynd,” Halcom Bahrns said, leaning in through the conning tower door as the final explosion roared. “I think we can proceed as planned, assuming that’s convenient.”
“Aye, Sir!” The flash of a white-toothed smile was just visible in Petty Officer Crahmynd Fyrgyrsyn’s luxuriant brown beard.
“Ahead half please,” Bahrns continued, glancing at the telegraphsman as Fyrgyrsyn turned the wheel, bringing Delthak around in a slow circle to point upstream.
“Ahead half, aye, Sir!”
The telegraphsman swung his polished brass handles and the ironclad quivered as her twin screws turned faster.
Bahrns stepped back onto the bridge wing while she gathered speed and folded his arms atop the bridge wing rail as white water began creaming back from her blunt bow. He could see quite a bit better in the slowly strengthening light—well enough to pick up landmarks on either bank above the mist—and he grunted in satisfaction as he realized Delthak was almost exactly on course. Not that accurate navigation would help a lot if Admiral Hywyt had gotten his calculations wrong. It was entirely possible he was about to damage his vessel severely, perhaps even sink her, although that was unlikely. Even if he did, the river was shallow enough that refloating her should be fairly simple, and it was far more likely those closely spaced explosions had shattered the sunken river barges as planned. In fact, he could already see broken sections of planking spinning downstream to meet him. Given that Delthak displaced twelve hundred tons and would be moving at approximately six knots when she reached the barrier, she should shoulder her way through whatever remained without too much trouble. The biggest risk, actually, was that one of her propeller blades might hit something big enough to damage it, and repairing that would be far more difficult than merely floating her once more. If she cleared the barrier, on the other hand, the Army of the Seridahn would suddenly find itself in what Emperor Cayleb liked to call “a world of hurt.”
* * *
Ahrnahld Bryahnsyn climbed back to his feet as the deluge of water, mud, shattered pieces of river barge, and dead fish finished thudding down around him. He didn’t remember flinging himself facedown, although it had certainly been the right thing to do. Lieutenant Sandkaran hadn’t, and he lay unconscious, bleeding heavily from a scalp laceration.
Bryahnsyn felt a distant pity for his fellow lieutenant, but it was buried under the sheer shock of that rolling series of explosions. At least he knew now what Kaillyt must have seen the night before, although Shan-wei only knew how the heretics had managed to get boats or swimmers across that icy expanse of riverwater.
He was still in the process of working out why they’d managed it when a fresh thunder—this one the explosion of hundreds of mortar bombs and angle-gun shells—crunched down on the Army of the Seridahn’s defenses like the heel of Chihiro’s war boot. He crouched, wheeling towards the sound of the guns, then jerked back towards the river as something screamed impossibly.
A blazing limb of the sun reached above the horizon, touching the low-lying river mist—swirling in torment from the force of the explosions—with rose and gold. That was all he saw for a moment, but then something moved above the mist, like an island rolling arrogantly upriver, contemptuous of the current which tried to stay its progress.
The ironclad surged towards the cleared gap, huge and black, impossibly long guns protruding from its sides and across the front of its broad casemate, screaming its fury in a thick, white plume of whistle steam. A man in a watch coat stood on one bridge wing, peering upstream through one of the heretics’ double-barreled spyglasses, and smoke streamed from its tall funnels. A growing mustache of white wrapped itself around the ironclad’s stem, and as he watched, its bow smashed a splintered length of wreckage aside.
It went charging past, and he and his men clappe
* * *
Bugles sounded high and urgent, drums thundered, and Major Failyx Sylvstyr burst out of his hut in his shirtsleeves, hatless, napkin still clutched in one hand. His head whipped around to the southwest, where the bellow of enemy artillery laid a fiery surf of explosions, shrapnel, and shell fragments across the Army of the Seridahn’s deeply entrenched front, and his jaw clenched.
That bombardment was entirely too ferocious to be anything other than the prelude to a serious attack, and he wondered how well the dugouts and entrenchments were standing up to it. They were considerably stronger than the ones which had protected Cheryk, but were they strong enough? The heretics’ rifled guns—of which, thankfully, they seemed to have relatively few—had far more penetrating power and heavier bursting charges than anything his own twelve-pounders could produce. The engineers had done their best to dig deep enough and pile dirt and sandbags high enough to give the infantry a decent chance of surviving, but only time would tell whether or not they’d succeeded.
As one of the Army of the Seridahn’s senior artillery commanders, Sylvstyr had been briefed on the new “Fultyn Rifles” which were supposed to become available “any day now.” He’d believe they were coming when he actually saw one, but he hoped desperately that they really existed and might even perform as promised. He was proud of his gunners, of their efficiency and determination, yet that pride only made him even more bitterly aware of how outclassed their weapons were. And if the stories about Guarnak were true, nothing the Royal Dohlaran Artillery currently had could hope to stop the heretic ironclad if it got loose on the upper river. That was a point of significant importance to Failyx Sylvstyr, because it was his regiment that Sir Fahstyr Rychtyr had dug in atop the river bluff to keep just that from happening.
Sylvstyr didn’t know how he’d drawn the short straw, but he’d done the only thing he could: saluted and then emplaced his guns behind the thickest earthen parapets he could throw up. In addition, he’d built four-foot-thick walls of sandbags between guns, putting each of them in its own protected bay, and roofed the entire position with heavy logs and four more feet of earth. Building those works in the midst of a cold, rainy South March winter had been no easy task, but at least—