Marian nodded, looking out through the forward slit of the Eades's bridge. The view was strange, a lot closer to the water than she was used to, but with no masts or spars to limit vision; merely the smooth gray-green slope of the casement's front section and the equally featureless front deck, awash whenever the knife bows dug in a little. The foam surged right up to the foot of the casement about every tenth wave, green and white against the painted steel, looking incongruously cool and refreshing in the stifling heat of the ship's interior.
"All ahead slow," she said. "Helm, mark your head."
"Two-seven-five, ma'am," the helmsman said.
"Keep her so," Marian replied.
Light and air came through the hatchway above; they had a deck lookout working. She waited patiently as the low shoreline came in sight, tasting the sweat on her lips. Clear sky, steady good weather… it had better be. No more Tartessian balloons, the ultralights had taken them down…
"Ms. Kurlelo-Alston, aerial scout reports?"
"Galleys massing just inside the harbor mouth," Swindapa replied. "No attempt to loft more balloons… wait. Launch trails reported!"
The lookout above cried out in the next instant, and came tumbling down the hatchway. The thick hatch itself fell with a doomsday clung next and then a chunk as it was dogged shut. The slit ahead seemed bright in the sudden gloom, and then a rippling cloud of red fire raced along the low sandy shoreline ahead. Trails of smoke climbed skyward…
"Incoming! All hands prepare for impact!" she called in a clear carrying voice.
Others took it up and repeated it. She found herself calling off the seconds as she waited, one-one-thousand, two-one-thousand. She'd gotten to six when the shrieking overhead turned to a whistling moan. The bridge crew slammed the covers on the vision slits closed and the last sunlight vanished, leaving only a lamplit gloom. The steady chuffing of the engine was the only sound before…
The big ship shivered a little as the first rocket struck and burst, like a sharp blow with a hammer on a steel bucket. Then another hit, and another, building like a hailstorm on a tin roof, a roar of white noise that made her wince with its intensity. Hundreds more were landing in the water around, the dull heavy sounds of the explosions thudding against the ironclad's hull.
Let too many come too close, and they might stave the planking; let a couple come right down the funnel, blowing their way through the wire baffles…
Silence fell, hard to realize for an instant while her ears still rang.
"Report by divisions!" she snapped, signaling the yeomen to open the vision slits. Fresh sea air came through like a hint of heaven to the damned.
"Three inches in the well-tight and dry, Commodore."
"Full steam, ma'am."
She hid a smile as cheers rang through the casement, and faintly up from the engine deck. Swindapa made a slight phew! face and mimed wiping her forehead, which made gravitas even harder.
"Silence fore and aft!" Marian called instead, and heard it echo down the chain of command.
The low shore was much closer now, the great drifting fog-bank left by the rockets' passage drifting away to the westward. An explosion pockmarked it as she watched-some of the missiles hanging fire and then going off together, propellant and bursting charges together.
I thought we'd be okay, she mused. The rockets carried simple gunpowder bombs, not shaped-charge warheads designed to punch a finger of superhot vapor through steel. They would have torn any wooden ship to burning splinters in seconds, but this lumbering knight-in-armor was relatively immune… On the other hand, I didn't know we'd be okay. Do Jesus, but I hate moments like that.
She focused her binoculars. The entrance to the bay of Tartessos was fairly narrow, divided into two channels by a long narrow island. She could see the massive low-slung forts there now, scaling the land on either side like a dragon's armor. And the Tartessians had thoughtfully taken up the buoys that marked deeper water.
"Let's get down to it," she said.
Swindapa brought over the map and pinned it to the cork-board beside the wheel and compass binnacle. Hiller stayed glued to the vision slit, watching for the shading off of blue to green that would mark shoals-the Eades drew twenty-three feet. Marian focused all her attention on the task at hand.
She'd ignore the galleys coming out to defend their harbor as long as she could. They weren't as much threat as a mud-bank, and what happened when those frail pine rowing boats met the ironclad would be unpleasant enough without dwelling on it beforehand.
The distant thud of ship's cannon boomed through the warm air, over toward the Feather River side of the Tartessian fort-town. Peter Giernas's lips skinned back from his teeth. A couple of the enemy were walking toward him along the fighting platform below the points of the palisade logs, looking over their shoulders in puzzlement.
"Go for it," he said.
Eddie reached over from his side of the door into the tower and pulled it open; it was a massive piece of carpentry, baulks pinned together and strapped with iron. A voice asked a question from within; Giernas jerked the toggle of the fuse free, waited until he heard the confirming hiss, then tossed the leather satchel in.
His partner slammed the door shut again. Giernas dropped a wooden wedge to the planks of the floor, heeled it home, then secured it with a stroke of his musket butt. The oncoming Tartessians were alarmed now, as the two men plastered themselves to the log wall on either side of the door and threw protective arms over their eyes. Then-
BADDUMP!
The door blasted out from between them, hinges ripped free, and pinwheeled through the approaching soldiers. Smoke and a red flash punched out after it, and erupted through the narrow firing slits that surrounded this level of the tower.
"Go, go, go!" Giernas shouted.
The two rangers plunged through into the interior, eyes watering and lungs coughing at the harsh reek of gunpowder. The trapdoor to the ground floor below was open, but the ladder was gone… too slow anyway. Giernas leaped upward, dropped through it, let his long legs absorb the impact as he was driven into a crouch, rolled forward with his rifle clutched to his stomach, and came up to one knee. The weapon came to his shoulder in the same movement, and he shot the stout gray-bearded man trying to open the door of the sally port between the shoulder blades. The Tartessian pitched forward against the wood and slid down it.
Lighter, Eddie bounced erect and kicked upward, his heel slamming into the chin of a Tartessian who'd come half-erect. Bone splintered; then they were both at the crank of the mechanism that raised the bar across these gates. Another couple of hundred Indian warriors were waiting, but they couldn't get in unless the portals opened.
Eddie jittered about. Pete studied it, Fimbulwinter-cold and methodical; Spring Indigo's fate depended on her man keeping a cool head, and so did his son's.
"Right," he said, pulling back an iron bar and tripping a pawl-catch. "Lay into it!"
They grabbed the bar and heaved; it was made for four men, and inertia fought them for long seconds. Giernas sucked air into his lungs, planted his feet, and pulled with all the strength that was in him-but carefully, carefully, how all the devils in Hell would laugh if he put his back out now!
A long moment when red throbbed before his eyes, and the mechanism went around with a clank… clank… clank-clankclank, spinning smoothly and easily as the counterweight swept up to the vertical and the gates swung open. Then he took up the bar, considered again, struck three wrecking blows, and jammed it deep through a shattered gear. Anyone who wanted to lower the gate now would have to cut cables and then pull it down past the tipping point.