«No!» Blade roared. Somehow he managed to outshout even the hysterical prince. Durouman jumped into the air and came down glaring at Blade, his sword raised:
For a moment Blade was certain he was going to have to knock the prince down and send him below for the rest of the battle. That would do nothing for their future relations, but letting Durouman guide Avenger in his present frame of mind would do absolutely nothing at all except lose the battle.
The moment passed. Durouman's mouth snapped shut and he turned away, shaking all over. Blade slapped the chief tillerman on the shoulder. «Get ready to swing us to port when I give the word.» Then he shouted down to the drummers. «New stroke-all oars, reverse!» The drummers broke off to stare up at him for a moment. Then they shrugged and started beating the reverse. Avenger began to back off.
There was only one way to make sure of shifting the direction of the allied attack. Avenger would have to lead it on its new course. That meant getting clear of the close formation so that she could turn and be clearly seen turning. «Follow the leader» was the only reliable signal in a battle like this.
Avenger could not break out of the formation by going ahead, into easy range of the Imperial guns. So there was nothing to do but drop back through the formation to the rear.
During the next few minutes Blade was quite sure that he would finish up this day with his hair and beard as white as milk, if he lived through it at all. As Avenger slowed, the other galleys seemed to be racing past her. For one ghastly moment it seemed that Avenger's next astern was going to ram her barrel straight up the flagship's stern and set it off almost under Blade's feet. By a margin so narrow that it made Blade sweat, that disaster was avoided.
Another galley shot up from astern and, by an even narrower margin, avoided plowing along Avenger's starboard side. That would have smashed half of the flagship's oars and flattened a good many of her rowers for good.
A third galley swerved in plenty of time to avoid coming close to Avenger. In the process she found herself almost across the bows of still another galley. This one had to swerve in turn, missed blowing her comrade to bits, but came so close to her stern that one anchor caught in the other's main rigging. Shrouds parted with dismal twangs and the mainmast went over with a tremendous crash, amid a chorus of furious yells. For the moment it looked as if those two galleys were about to start a private war of their own.
Finally Avenger slid out of the formation. As Blade watched from the quarterdeck, he could see some of the other galleys in the allied center already following his lead and coming about to port. Still others were trying to follow but were too mixed up with their comrades to maneuver safely. Around and among and occasionally on all of them the shot from the Imperial line still fell. Kul-Nam's captains either had unlimited powder or were less afraid of wasting it than of seeming not to be doing their best for their terrible master.
Avenger was now racing along almost parallel to the Imperial line, within range but not taking any fire for the moment. Blade looked away toward the rest of the battle. A bank of smoke was slowly swallowing everything astern, but he could see no real changes. He could barely make out the rest of the Imperial sailing ships. Apparently they were following through on their planned movements.
Fine. If he couldn't see the ships, neither could Kul-Nam. If Kul-Nam couldn't see them, he couldn't signal to them. If he couldn't signal new orders to them, they would go right on obeying the old ones. Fear of the Emperor was making his captains incredibly brave and stubborn. At the same time, it would also make them incredibly rigid in obeying what they thought were his orders.
Rule by fear was a two-edged sword.
Twenty galleys were now moving after Avenger in something that might be called a formation. Even better. They were gaining on the sailing ships. Soon they could swing around and cross the bows of the Imperial line. Instead of twenty sailing ships shooting at sixty galleys, there would be twenty galleys surrounding two or three sailing ships at a time, with full room to maneuver-and full room to swing in and strike with what they thrust ahead of them.
It had been a bloody battle and it would become still bloodier before it was over. But it might also turn into a victory. Blade mentally crossed his fingers-he'd done everything else that could be done for the moment.
Eventually the Imperial ships noticed Avenger and the galleys following her. They couldn't figure out what the galleys' maneuvers meant, but they could see a lot of targets. By now, though, Avenger was using the room created by all the confusion to swing still farther to port. Most of the other galleys were following her. Two-thirds of Blade's attacking force was now out of range from the Imperial line, but the Imperial captains didn't seem to realize this. They went on blazing away as if the galleys were practically alongside.
«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.