As the squadron was sighted, the fleet began its salute, some four hundred vessels suddenly coming alive in clouds of smoke and flame, a thunder which echoed across the hills inland and carried for miles out to sea as the King was saluted and welcomed back to his kingdom. The salute was the signal for the battle to commence, and before its last echoes had died away the warships of Hebrion had unfurled their sails and were weighing anchor. The blank rounds of a moment before were replaced by real cannonballs, and the bombardment of the mole forts which protected the Great Harbour had begun.
The staggering noise of a fleet action was something which had to be experienced for anyone to believe it. Added to the guns of the ships now was the return fire of the batteries on the city walls and the harbour forts. As his squadron edged closer to the eastern half of the Lower City, where his forces would attempt their landing, Abeleyn saw the water about the leading squadrons of the fleet erupt in geysers of foam as the first rounds went home. Topmasts were shattered by high-ranging shells and came crashing down in tangles of rigging and wood and billowing canvas. The bulwarks of the leading ships were swept with deadly chain shot, splinters of oak spraying through the gun crews like charges of canister. But still the great ships in the vanguard sailed on, their chasers firing across their bows and producing puffs of rubble and flame from the casemates of the forts.
Abeleyn saw one tall carrack dismasted entirely, her towering yards shattered and crumpling over her side. She yawed as the fallen spars dragged her to one side and in a moment had collided with one of her sister-ships. But the battle for the mole forts and the boom was being obscured by rising clouds of pale powder-smoke. It seemed that the whole surface of Abrusio’s Great Harbour, over a mile from one end of it to the other, was a seething cauldron which bubbled steam, amid which the masts of ships could be glimpsed as the smoke rolled and toiled in vast thunderheads across the broken face of the sea.
The Providence’s guns were roaring, softening up the waterfront where the marines and soldiers of the squadron would make their landing. On the formation’s vessels the fighting men stood in unbroken ranks amidships, their lips moving in prayer, their hands checking armour and weapons one last time. Three thousand men to carry the eastern half of Abrusio and hack a way up to the palace. They seemed pitifully few to Abeleyn, but he had to remind himself that the fleet was doing its part in the Great Harbour, and Mercado’s men would be assaulting across the burnt wasteland of the western city also. With luck, his own forces should not have too many of the enemy to contend with.
He could see the sea walls of eastern Abrusio now, scarcely three cables away. The water was deep here, seven fathoms at least, and even the carracks would be able to run in close to the walls to support the landing parties with point-blank fire.
The longboats and cutters of the squadron were already on the booms, and sailors and marines were hauling together in sweating crowds to swing them out over the ship’s sides and down to the water so far below. All this while the guns bellowed out broadside after broadside and were answered by the wall batteries. Abeleyn had to hold himself upright, unflinching, as rounds began to whistle and crash home on the carrack. A longboat took a direct hit and exploded in a spray of jagged wood and gore, men flung in all directions, ropes flapping free. But the work went on, and the small boats were lowered down the sides of the ships one by one. There were scores of them, enough to carry over a thousand men in the first wave.
“Your boat is ready, sire,” Admiral Rovero shouted over the noise, his lopsided mouth seemingly built to concentrate the force of his voice. Abeleyn nodded. He felt a touch of warmth as Sergeant Orsini fell into step beside him, and took a moment to grip the man’s shoulder. Then he put one leg over the bulwarks and began climbing down the rope ladder hanging there while a yard away on the other side of him the culverins exploded and were reloaded, running in and out like monsters let loose and then restrained.
He was in the boat, his heart almost as loud as the gunfire in his head. The vessel was already packed with men, struggling with oars and arquebuses and swords and ladders. Abeleyn stepped over them to the prow, where the laddermen were squatting ready. He waved his hand at the helmsman, and they cast off from the looming carrack along with half a dozen other crowded boats. The men’s oars dipped, and they began to move over the shot-stitched water.
An agonizing time of simply sitting there while they crawled forward towards the walls. There were scores of boats in the water, a mass of close-packed humanity crammed into them, dotting the deadly space between the hulls of the warships and the sea walls of the city. But they took few casualties in that choppy approach. The broadsides of the carracks were smothering the wall batteries with fire like mother hens protecting their chicks. Abeleyn felt that if he stuck up a hand into the air he could catch a cannonball, so thick was the volume of shot screaming overhead. To his own alarm, he had a momentary urge to throw up. Several of the men in the boat had already done so. It was the waiting, the drawing tight of the nerves to unbearable tautness. Abeleyn swallowed a mouthful of vomit that was searing his throat. Kings could not afford to show such weaknesses.
They were at the wall, the boat’s bow bumping against the weathered stone. Showers of rock were falling down on them as the shells from the carracks ploughed into the defences above their heads. The naval gunners would elevate their fire at the last moment, giving their comrades as much cover as possible in that murderous time of grappling with the ungainly ladders.
The laddermen stood up with their bulky charge-a fifteen-foot ladder with hooks of steel at its top which were clanging against the stone. They swayed and lurched, their legs held steady by their comrades, until finally the ladder had hooked on to an embrasure above.
Abeleyn pushed them out of the way and climbed first. Golophin and Mercado would have railed at him for such foolishness, but he felt there was nothing else to do. The King must be seen to take the lead. If these men showed their willingness to die for him, then he too must illustrate it in return.
So intent, so utterly concentrated were his thoughts, that he did not even pause to wonder if any of the men would follow him. The spectre of his death was something which hovered gleefully, cackling at his shoulder. His feet were leaden in their boots. He pictured his precious body torn asunder, riddled with bullets, tossed down into the bloody water below. His life ended, his vision of the world, unique and unrecoverable, made extinct. The strain was so great that for a second the wall in front of his nose seemed to turn slightly red, echoing the thunder of blood through his booming arteries.
He drew his sword, awkward and heavy in his armour, and climbed one-handed, gulping for air that would not be sucked into his lungs fast enough.
A stone clanged off one shoulder, and he almost fell. Looking up, he saw a wild-eyed Knight Militant looking over the battlements at him. He froze, utterly helpless as he stared into the man’s raging countenance. But then the Knight’s face disintegrated as a volley of arquebus fire from the boat below hammered into him, throwing him back out of sight. Abeleyn climbed on.
He was at the top, on the walls. Men running, dismounted guns, rubble, gaping holes in the defences. Shot from the carracks whistling higher as the guns were elevated.
Someone running towards him. His own sword flicking out before he even thought of it, clashing aside the other man’s blade. A boot to the midriff, and the man was gone, screaming off over the catwalk.