Closer and closer now the Eldren ships approached. It was almost true what Katorn had said. They did seem to fly through the air rather than through the waves.
My hands began to sweat. Would they take the bait? The plan had struck the commanders as original, which meant that it was not the classical manoeuvre it had been in some periods of the Earth's history. If it did not work, I would lose Katorn's confidence still further and it would not make my position with the king, whose daughter I hoped to marry, any better.
But there was no point in worrying about that. I watched.
And the Eldren took the bait.
Cannon roaring, the Eldren craft smashed in a delta formation into the thin wall and, under their own impetus, sailed on to find themselves thickly surrounded on three sides.
'Raise our colours!' I shouted to Katorn. 'Raise the colours! Let them see the originator of their defeat!'
Katorn gave the orders. My own banner went up first-the black field with the silver sword-and then the king's. We moved to tighten the trap, to crush the Eldren as they realised they had been tricked.
I had never seen such highly manoeuvrable sailing craft as those slender ships used by the Eldren. Slightly smaller than our men-o'-war, they darted about seeking an opening in the wall of ships. But there was no opening. I had seen to that.
Now their cannon bellowed fiercely, gouting balls of flame. Was this what Katorn had meant by 'sorcery'? The Eldren ammunition was fire-bombs rather than solid shot of the sort we used. Like comets the fireballs hurtled through the noonday air. Many of our ships were fired. They blazed, crackling and groaning as the flames consumed them.
Like comets they were and the ships were like flashing sharks.
But they were sharks caught in a net that could not be broken. Inexorably we tightened the trap, our own guns booming heavy iron that tore into those white hulls and left black gaping wounds, that ripped through those slim masts and brought the yards splintering down, the diaphanous sails flapping and faing like the wings of dying moths.
Our own monstrous men-o'-war, their heavy timbers clothed in brass, their huge oars churning the water, their dark, painted sails bulging, drew in to crush the Eldren.
Then the Eldren fleet divided into two roughly equal parts and dashed for the far corners of the net of ships-its weakest points. Many Eldren craft broke through, but we were prepared for this and with monumental precision our ships closed around them.
The Eldren fleet was now divided into several groups and it made our work easier. Implacably, we sailed in to crush them.
Now the skies were filled with smoke and the seas with flaming wreckage and the air was populated by screams, yells and warshouts, the whine of the Eldren fireballs, the roar of our own shot, the shattering bellowings of the cannon. My face was covered by a film of grease and ash from the smoke, and I sweated in the heat from the flames.
From time to time I caught a glimpse of a tense Eldren face and I wondered at their beauty and feared that perhaps we had been overconfident in our assumption of our victory. They were clad in light armour and moved about their ships as gracefully as trained dancers and their silver cannon did not once pause in their bombardment of our craft. Wherever the fireballs landed, the decks or rigging became instantly alight with a shrieking, all-consuming flame that burnt green and blue and seemed to devour metal as easily as it did wood.
I gripped the rail of the foredeck and leaned forward, trying to peer through the stinging smoke. All at once I saw an Eldren ship side-on immediately ahead of us.
'Prepare to ram!' I yelled. 'Prepare to ram!'
Like many of our ships, the lolinda possessed an ironshod ram lying just below the waterline. Now was our chance to use it. I saw the Eldren commander on his poop-deck shout orders to his men to turn the ship. But it was too late even for the speedy Eldren. We bore down on the smaller craft and, our whole ship reverberated with the mighty roar, we drove into its side. Iron and timber screamed and ruptured and foam lashed skyward. I was thrown back against the mast losing my footing and, as I clambered to my feet. I saw that we had broken the Eldren craft completely in two. I looked on the sight with a mixture of horror and exultation. I had not guessed the brutal power of the lolinda.
On either side of our flagship I saw the two halves of the enemy ship rear in the water and begin to go down. The horror on my face seemed matched by that on the Eldren commander's as he fiercely strove to hold himself erect on his sloping poop-deck while his men threw up their arms and leapt into the dark, surging sea that was already full of smashed timbers and drifting corpses.
Swiftly now the sea swallowed the slim ship and I heard King Rigenos laughing behind me as the Eldren drowned.
I turned. His face was smeared by soot and his red-rimmed eyes stared wildly out of his haggard skull. The helmet-crown of iron and diamonds was askew on his head as he continued to laugh in his morbid triumph.
'Good work, Erekose'! The most satisfying method of all when dealing with these creatures. Break them open. Send them to the depths of the ocean so that they can be that much closer to their master, the Lord of Hell!'
Katorn climbed up. His face, too, was exultant. 'I'll give you that, Lord Erekose. You have proved you know how to kill Eldren.'
'I know how to kill many kinds of men,' I said quietly. I was disgusted by their response. I had admired the way in which the Eldren commander had died. 'I merely took an opportunity,' I said. 'There is nothing clever in a ship of this size crushing lighter craft.'
But there was no time to dispute the issue. Our ship was moving through the wreckage it had created, surrounded by orange tongues of flame, shrieks and yells, thick smoke which obscured vision in all directions so that it was impossible to tell how the Fleets of Humanity fared.
'We must get out of this,' I said. 'Into clearer sea. We must let our own ships know that we are unharmed. Will you give the orders, Katorn?'
'Aye.' Katorn went back to his duties.
My head was beginning to throb with the din of the battle. It became one great wall of noise, one huge wave of smoke and flame and the stench of death.
And yet-it was all familiar to me.
Up to now my battle-tactics had been somewhat notional-intellectual rather than instinctive. But now it did seem that old instincts came into play and I gave orders without working them out first.
And I was confident that the orders were good. Even Katorn trusted them.
Thus it had been with the order to ram the Eldren craft. I had not stopped to think. It was probably just as well.
Its oars pulling strongly, the lolinda cleared the worst of the smoke and her trumpets and drums called out to announce her presence to the rest of the fleet. A cheering went up from some of the nearby ships as we emerged into an area relatively free of smoke, wreckage or other ships.
A few of our craft had begun to single out individual Eldren vessels and were hurling out their grappling irons towards the shark ships. The savage barbs cut into the white rails, ripped through the shining sails, bit into flesh even and tore off arms and legs. The great men-o'-war dragged the Eldren craft towards them, as whalers haul in their half-dead prey.