keronchinese.blogg.se

• Quiver book of demons windows#

The turn would take too long, and it took at least fifteen minutes to clear for action from a standing start. But even as he urged them on, he knew it was futile. Riptide began to swing to starboard, turning her vulnerable stern away from her foe, and he heard scattered shouts of acknowledgment from the gun crews. “Come on, boys! Get those guns cleared away-now!” “Hard to starboard and clear for action!” he shouted. But it was close enough, and they arrived like demons, howling out of the night to rip into the ship, and exploded with all the fury of Shan-wei herself.Ĭaptain Audhaimyr’s ears cringed under the roar of explosions, and hard on their heels he heard the screams of wounded and dying men. It wasn’t a perfect raking broadside the angle was too acute for that. But those shells crashed into Riptide while the Dohlaran crewmen were still racing to their stations, still trying to cope with the paralyzing surprise. The powerful galleon’s broadside tore the night apart like an erupting volcano.ĭespite all of the gunners’ skill and all of their meticulous preparations, “only” eleven of Vindicator’s thirty-pounder shells found their target. Division officers and gun captains waited, making certain every gun was fully prepared, judging the ship’s motion, then.

Quiver book of demons windows#

The range was long, even for Charisian gunners, but the Dohlaran galleons’ illuminated stern windows were about as visible as a target could be and Vindicator’s gun crews had been waiting for this moment ever since the Kaudzhu Narrows. “Fire as you bear!” Lywelyn Pymbyrtyn barked. By the time he reached his cabin door, the drums were beginning to roll by the time he reached the deck, breeching tackle was being cast off, gunports were opening, and powder monkeys were already dashing for the magazines.Īnd by the time his eyes found the blazing Charisian flares, hanging like curses above the sea, HMS Vindicator was already turning across his stern at a range of six hundred yards, hidden in the darkness while his own ship stood out starkly against the flares and with every gun run out. “Engage the enemy, Captain Pymbyrtyn,” Sir Bruhstair Ahbaht said coldly.Ĭaptain Sir Lywys Audhaimyr was sound asleep in his cabin when the first Charisian rocket screeched into the heavens, but HMS Riptide’s company was as well trained as any crew anywhere. Now Vindicator turned sharply to starboard in a smother of white foam and a boom of canvas, coming onto the wind and bringing her larboard broadside to bear on the Dohlaran ship from a range of just over six hundred yards. She was a mile and a half to windward and perhaps that far northwest of the transports, perfectly positioned to run down to them with the wind in case of emergency. Ahbaht would have preferred to be with them, but Vindicator had a different task to see to.Įstimating the enemy ship’s size accurately was all but impossible under the current conditions, but she had at least two armed decks, and if he’d been the Dohlaran commander, he’d have placed one of his more powerful units in that spot. By now, they would have turned almost straight downwind, running for the transports whose masthead lights Vindicator’s lookouts had finally sighted almost twenty minutes ago.

Vindicator had let the other ship sail past her, then Pymbyrtyn had worn ship to follow her, still upwind and on her larboard quarter while the other ships of Ahbaht’s division continued to the south for another fifteen minutes.

“There!” he said, pointing as the flares showed him the single Dohlaran galleon whose lights Vindicator had already sighted. Of course, there weren’t very many enemies to the east of them, but there was no way they could know that, was there?