Snatching the linen napkin from his collar for the second time that evening, he whipped it to the table top (it landed with as much force and racket as a mere linen napkin could muster) and leaned back in his chair. Curling one leg over the other and lacing his fingertips across his boot, he thrummed impatiently, and uttered just one word:
"Enter."
The word was pronounced coolly, without the least bit of animosity or anger behind it, but it was precisely that unflappable chill that inspired a look of dread on the face of the clerk who poked his head around the door.
Captain Harville eyed him warily, with a grim, tight smile that betrayed his bad humor, and the clerk strained visibly against his own sense of reason as he forced first one foot, then the other, through the opening, and finally stood erect, his eyes downcast and his hands folded at the small of his back as he addressed the officer.
"Pardon the intrusion, Captain, but there’s a galleass approaching from the west, sir, and we’ve no new arrivals on the log for this evening, sir."
The Captain drew in a deep, harried breath and pushed away from the table, sparing only a moment’s glance for the clerk as he strolled to the window, curling his fingers around a spy glass from the nearby desk along the way. His pace was unhurried, but the manner in which he snatched up the glass spoke of steadily growing annoyance. In this case, the annoyance was with himself - that he must be called upon to handle every affair, no matter how small its import, reflected badly on his own ability to cull the weak from this pack of mongrels and breed a strong company of men.
"Have the guns been readied?"
"Yes, sir."
It was common practice to raise cannons at the first sign of an unscheduled approach - no man entered or left the prison at Kula Bricusse without the express knowledge of its officers, and perhaps that was the secret to its long history as a fortress that would not be breached.
The Captain lifted the glass to one eye and stared out across the water, his features softening to a pensive scowl that gave the clerk at least a little bit of ease.
"Have them lowered, but keep the men at the ready. It’s only one ship, and a small one at that. We’ve nothing to worry about. We’ll let them dock, but meet them with an escort. I’ll be along to see what business they’re about, but I’ve some business of my own to which I must attend first. They’ll simply have to be kept waiting until then."
Upon receiving his orders, the clerk wasted no time in clicking his heels in salute and departing, leaving the door cracked slightly in his haste to leave.
But the Captain hardly noticed - he was still at the window, the glass still at his eye, his mouth still drawn in suspicion and the unfinished meal behind him long since forgotten…
THE OUDJDA AZRA
Night was falling without any hurry, gradual enough to be a torture all its
own, but the spot of black on the water had filled Rohaj with adrenaline
enough to lift his tired eyes, and keep them lifted. A ship had begun to
take shape out of that speck of darkness; ripples of orange stretched over
the waves from the horizon, chasing the hull of the ship like fingers of
flame on the open water, and filmy midnight dotted with stars cascaded over
the sails like the sheerest of veils (that translucent darkness that is
characteristic of a twilight not quite arrived).
Rows of whitecaps, neat and orderly, indicated a healthy wind, but the spiked
silhouette grew at its leisure - it could not have been advancing at more
than two knots, Rohaj surmised, and likely less than that. It seemed an eternity
before the stakes approached something resembling masts - three of them,
to be precise - and with a few moments' observation more, the trained eye
from the terrace was able to guess that, from stem to stern, the craft measured
no more than seventy feet; the galleon could not have been above one hundred
tons for each of its masts.
If there were guns (as though there could be any doubts about their presence),
they were well-hidden behind the railings, for the hollows of cannon ports
were nowhere to be seen along the hull - this was a merchant trader, or at
least was meant to masquerade as such. In his most hopeful heart, Rohaj invented
at least thirty cannons to line the decks, but given his crew and the time
permitted, it was more than likely that they had mustered twenty at best,
and those a wild assortment of classes and calibers.
His own ship, the Mad Maebh, bore a resemblance to the boat on the waters
below only in the sense that it was crafted of wood and resin and canvas,
and was relatively the same shape, but where this vessel tripped lackadaisically
across the crests, the Maebh devoured each wave and forged ahead, hungry
for more. She always flew a banner of robin's egg blue, the colors of some
long-forgotten peace-loving harbor, with the slivers of two crescent moons
nested one within the other, and a triad of stars in the corner. In its home
world, it was a symbol of peace, and Rohaj considered it the supreme jest
to fly this banner over a ship of nearly six hundred tons, with gun ports
bulging out of the hull from nose to tail, a war ship unwilling to cozy to
the pretense of benevolence.
But when the Maebh moved in for the kill, oh yes, then the skull and crossbones
would always be hoisted, but only at that last moment, when ropes and hooks
were clinking at the ready, when the smell of sulfur hung heavy on the air
and the clouds of battle were beginning to clear, when the jaws of the beast
were opened and fangs dripping with venom, about to plunge in…
Of course, he had known that his own ship would not be along for the enterprise;
only the most harmless merchant galley would be allowed so close to Kula
Bricusse without rousing the attention of the fleet, and only a batch of
innocuous traders could advance on the fort at twilight with such passive
ease. A ship would have had to be commandeered for the job, to allow his
crew to adopt the guise of businessmen.
This body of men was accustomed to deceit, practiced it as - no, wait, there
was no practice involved, for it came to them as naturally as did breathing.
Rohaj had always crawled in the abject company of men who, like he, had raised
themselves out of leading strings on the wings of pretense. Rohaj, in fact,
was not his real name, and hadn't been for some time. His true monicker had
been buried somewhere in the bowels of time, forgotten even by the man
himself.
A lifetime of treacheries had been clustered one upon the other over the
decades until the tracks of his origin were footprints in the snow, blown
out of proportion by the evening' s flurries, and buried with the next morning's
frost… but, still, something peculiar in his features belied the Moroccan
root of his name - the significance of his jowls, the ruddy complexion, the
tinge of auburn in his mutton chops. He could have been Irish, but nothing
else about his demeanor was so generous as to lend a clue, for his countenance
was otherwise too wind-ravaged for a nationality to be discernible.
The swollen silhouette of the ship had, by this time, come to within a few
hundred feet of the fortress, close enough that the bowsprit could be seen,
and that blinking eyes through the slivers of windows could make out the
carved figure that adorned it - a bare-breasted woman, her long flowing tresses
carved of mahogany, her skin of buffed chestnut, her exposed bosom warding
off the storms as she forged ahead through the water, and where her legs
should have been, mermaid scales the color of burnt chocolate.
Rohaj could only make out a few figures strolling across the deck - from
his height, they appeared as scurrying weevils burrowing into the planks.
One stern figure stood proud at the bow - that would surely be Dharjeel,
his stalwart mate, standing still and placid, and staring ahead into the
next moments as though they held no more concern for him than a piece of
lint under his thumbnail, doing his best to appear both affluent and harmless.
He might have been a statue, in a suit of stolen finery, but even from this
height, Rohaj recognized the lazy slope of his shoulders. Dharjeel was a
man raised out of the gutters who had an uncanny knack for carrying himself
with the ease of a plantation gentleman when the need arose. Never, on their
first meeting in that ale house in Swithern, would Rohaj have guessed him
suited for a seafaring life. Never, based on the languid manner he had displayed,
would he have suspected that one day he would trust Dharjeel with his life.
But Rohaj had never known a more cunning compatriot - or a more pitiless
brute - Dharjeel would sell his own mother for a few copper pennies, if it
captured his fancy to do so…
Rohaj at last allowed his lids to settle together. Following a few moments
of blackness and haze, a picture began to emerge in his mind, of his crew
- most of whom he did not even know by name, but recognized them all by scars
and stubble and stringy hairs, each one having his own unique combination
of the three - huddled behind the railing in merchant costume, crouched beside
the cannons. He could just feel the crackle of brittle tension on deck, and
an unwelcome quiver rocked his shoulders, causing his frame to swell within
the confines of the stocks.
…and the cannons, with their makeshift mounting, would be lashed to
the deck with their barrels flush to the railing, their gaping black mouths
just rounded shadows between the posts. Rohaj could almost smell the bitterness
of sulfur, and the imagined odor tickled his nostrils and caused them to
flare.
-------------------------------
A mantel clock somewhere in Harville's office ticked away minute after laggard
minute, and the top of the hour passed without incident, neither chime nor
gong to mark or disturb it… but the silence, in fact, did herald an
incident of some gravity - an appointment passed, perhaps the first missed
in a lifetime…
The reason was a lifetime's contemplation, all being compacted into a few
meandering moments. John Harville remained motionless at the window, the
spy glass affixed to his eye as though held there with cement, listening
for the sound of waves slapping against the wooden hull of an approaching
ship. It was a broader, more stout sound than that to which he was accustomed
- the whine of water splashing against stone walls just a few feet below
him … like the sound of thunder and tympani compared to the sloshing
of barnacles and the sludge of algae…
He was lost in the sound, swimming in a percussive symphony of memories,
of young muscles and hairless jaws, the smell of salt spray like a fine mist
of perfume… the bow of a ship crashing into the waves, sinking again
and again into those velvet folds, cleaving the water like a man plunging
in violent rape, a brutal frenzy accompanied by the passionate music of shouting
ropes and snapping sails…
That had been a younger time, a time before, a time distant by seeming eons
since the moment his boot heel had first clapped welcome against the planks
of the pier outside … to settle into the inertia of a life behind a
desk … to have virtually every seafaring instinct worn away by time
and indolence just as the mightiest boulders are eventually worn away by
the gentle tide… and every time he heard that roar of water on wood,
the press of his lips drew tighter, no doubt an effort to suppress a maudlin
loneliness for the sea he had left behind…
The glass had been at his eye for so long that in removing it, peeling it
away from the moistened skin just below his brow, a smudge of pain caused
him to wince … grimacing aside to the brief discomfort, he compacted
the glass with a sharp slap and slipped it into his breast pocket. Leaning
forward, leaning onto the bulge in his waistcoat, and with forearms propped
on the sill, the world-wearied, frustrated captain of the guard cast a glance
aside, to the dock - true to expectation, a battery of foot soldiers had
gathered and were milling about, in that uneasy prelude to snapping to
attention.
Harville heaved a restive sigh. His uneasiness he attributed to the panorama
of his wasted life having been suddenly opened up before conscious thought.
Where they were always so deeply buried beneath layers of starch and polish
and authority, he carried the weight of the memories now like a knapsack
full of rocks - all because of the unplanned arrival of a harmless merchant
vessel.
He did not need the glass to see the banner
that flew from the ship's highest mast - it shone like the most brilliant
of sunrises, even in this murky evening light. Unfurled and fluttering idly
in the breeze, it was a ribbon of pure tangerine, stamped with the golden
figures of two opposing larls, those most noble beasts of Gor, in rampant
position.
Within moments, the silent silk of his breath had converted to the rasp of
burlap, a warning toll for the very respiratory ailment that had ripped him
from a life at sea and deposited him here in this grown man's nursery; he
lingered at the window a moment longer, admiring the banner and then glancing
aside to the sharp formation of men on the deck.
With another weary sigh, he leaned back away from the salt air and wrestled
the glass from his pocket once more, opening its shutters in the same easy
manner that had closed them. Lazy effort brought the glass to his eye, and
casual observance focused on the bow of the ship. He bypassed the view, however
alluring, of the maiden at its head, and glanced to lettering along the side.
The ship was close enough now to bring the round, gilded characters into
view, and he could just read the name - Oudjda Azra.
Oudjda Azra… he mouthed the words, and the name rolled over his tongue
like a whisper of sweet claret. Harville knew by rote the names of most of
the merchant ships that roamed these waters, but this was a name he would
have remembered had he seen it before. Still, it was a sound enough title
for a trader's vessel, and the banner sprouting from its masts hailed it
as a journeyman from very far-off waters.
He shifted the glass and allowed his gaze to trail upward, to linger on the
figure at the helm - a dark-skinned man with sloping shoulders, but a noble
lift to his chin, exotic raven hair, wearing a scholar's cape and staring
ahead at the fort with the look of studied boredom so common in the wealthy.
Harville's study drifted quickly past him, to the railings, where a scant
few crewmen were visible; those that were seemed to pose along the baluster,
steeped in studied informality, attired in uniforms that were the seaman's
equivalent of a livery…
The Captain spoke the name aloud once more…
"Oudjda Azra…"
…and whether it was a distant remembrance nudging him awake, or the
ghosts of mercenary instinct come back to haunt him, something acid and
unsettling blossomed up from the pit of his stomach. He craned forward, straining
through the glass to focus on the easygoing crew. In the space of a moment,
he noted the assemblage of unkempt beards, the thin wires of smoke beginning
to wind up over the railing, and even, then, he swore he detected a look
of smug satisfaction on the distant captain's features.
The glass was out of his hands at once, toppling over the window sill to
be carried away by the waters below, and Harville snapped his attention towards
the door, the bellow of warning already forming in his throat… but before
the sound of the words could leave his mouth…
THROUGH THE NEEDLE'S EYE
A blinding white ribbon of light roused Rohaj from his stupor, like the tail
end of a bullwhip snapped across his brain, splitting open the cavity and
opening the way for thunder and fire to come spilling in. All within less
than a moment, the plaza floor trembled beneath him, and a shock jolted him
backwards in the stocks, slamming the back of his cranium against oak with
impact enough to set off a series of cymbal crashes and turn his vision to
a watery blur around the edges.
The sea air was suddenly steeped in the odor of rotting eggs and the earthy
aroma of charred brick and barbecuing meat (best not to think too long on
the source of that curiously appetizing smell - the fortress at Kula Bricusse
has never kept beef cattle). His jaws clacked together, shuddering from the
movement all around, and his ears were battered by the pandemonium of boulders
landing on boulders and cracking open in a landslide of sound. The steady
growl kept coming and coming, an endless stream of bone-jarring storm reports,
with all the fervor of flamenco steps, but with the jumbled cadence of a
parapet collapsing, cinder blocks spilling helter-skelter to the ground.
Something had toasted the chill of dusk out of the atmosphere, and had replaced
it with an almost uncomfortable warmth. Through the moist fever clouding
his vision, Rohaj watched frantically, his eyes dancing back and forth in
their sockets, to see the soldiers dashing back and forth at his periphery.
Their shouting was joined by voices from below, and on all sides by the grumbling
of the stone structure. As they scurried, tendrils of smoke grew like ivy
between their feet, rising from cracks in the stone flooring. It rendered
the air bitter, barely breathable, in a matter of seconds, and the men still
barking commands rasped with the dry, parched throats of desert wanderers,
their orders quickly dying on the air and dissolving into particles of ash.
Rohaj could not escape the sensation that he was inhaling great mouthfuls
of dust with every heaving gasp, but he struggled against what he felt sure
was an illusion. His mind, by this time, had become so muddied that he would
never realize how close he came to death, in those moments when his lungs
were thick with fumes and his brain was fighting a losing battle against
repeated impact against the inside of his skull; his heart struggled to keep
beating, and his veins tightened like rubber bands stretched taut with the
effort of pushing blood to his limbs.
No, he reasoned that, since he had not witnessed the tell-tale flashes of
lightning from the side of the ship that bespoke black powder combustion,
his own mind had created a flight of fancy to lead him out of pain, and the
music and fire of explosion were all a part of that reverie.
![[IMAGE]](tiro.gif)
As he hung limp in the stocks, his muscles useless
and his head barely mobile, a tickle of laughter began to roll up from his
chest. It was initially a man's low bass; the vibrato from within caused
the back of his neck to brush against the wooden collar, the inside of which
was worn smooth from years of captive struggles and the sweat of the damned
- the prickles he felt were not splinters, but rather the itch of excitement
creeping up over his senses. The pitch of his laughter crept up, too, welling
into the high-pitched whinny of a child, and his head lolled feebly - if
this fantasy were truly of his own creation, then at any moment the troops
would begin to fall around him, under a fusillade of burning shrapnel.
When he felt the entire structure groan and list, sagging appreciably to
one side so that the stocks pitched, and he swung to and fro like a rag doll,
his humor found new gusto, and he bellowed, lifting his chin with a revived
vigor and shouting his amusement to the gently swelling stars.
"Devil be hanged, this is no dream!" he howled, and from the corner of one
eye, he watched time slow to a crawl, and saw with precise clarity each step,
each stride, towards disaster, as a powder charge ignited moments too soon
inside one of the small cannons nearby; a surge of flame forced itself out
of newly made cracks in the barrel, and billows of oily black smoke preceded,
by mere seconds, the explosion that sent shards of the cannon's iron hull
flying across the parapet.
Rohaj was sure that his chest would explode in a like manner, and soon, if
this vast entertainment continued. All around him, once-pretty soldiers with
their neatly pressed uniforms and spit-polished boots now cowered and clung
to the stone railings along the rampart - what a fine jest, that they should
turn towards the least stable component of the fortress for safety. Surprise
had taken its foothold, and in the ensuing anarchy, panic fed on itself and
defeated them before the battle had even begun.
A charred piece of flesh, possibly the remains of a forearm severed by another
sloppy misfire, went rushing past his ear and landed with a moist thud before
his feet, only to be swallowed moments later by another wave of smoke rolling
over the floor. This did, indeed, choke the smuggler's laughter to an abrupt
end, and he stilled, but for the occasional quiver of merriment that shook
his shoulders. Through the haze of turmoil all around him, through his watering
eyes, he saw his own imminent escape… but, oh, how he longed to be below
deck now, to see Harville cowering in his quarters, wondering what had hit
him… Oh, what a sight that would be…
----------------------------------------------------------
Truth was, the distinguished Captain Harville was at that moment in a rather
humiliating position, having just embarked on his climb from the rubble of
broken furniture pieces and chunks of clay. Plaster dust clung to his skin,
masking his seafarer's tawny leather, bleaching his lips ghostly white and
crowning him in an old man's grey locks. But through the study in whites,
beady eyes blazed a demon's red, so intense with anger and frustration were
they.
Spitting some of the vile powder from the corner of his mouth, along with
a healthy dose of his own blood-laced saliva, he stumbled towards the door,
the beginnings of a thousand incensed commands and obscenities burning on
his lips.
His progress was hindered by the handholds he grasped for, the ones that
broke away like so many charred match sticks in his hands and left him faltering,
step after step. One foot landed on what he thought to be a stable plaster
ledge, until the full weight of his tread revealed it to be little more than
a pile of dust and debris. All around him, he recognized bits of his office
decor - table legs and patterned chair arms, the once-fine paneling from
his roll top desk now reduced to splinters, sparkling shards of crystal awash
in congealing sticky-sweet pools of crimson brandy.
One misstep sent his wiry frame sprawling into the remains of a wall, and
the ragged panel fell away at his touch, landing with a thud and sending
up a concentrated cloud of dust. Where the wall had once stood, Harville
now had a clear view into his clerk's outer office. A man whose features
he did not recognize sat spread-eagled against the far wall, his eyes open
and blank with the vast emptiness of death. A spider web of scarlet trickled
down over his forehead, where a heavy oak beam had come to rest, and the
fingers of thick red fluid had stretched over the fellow's cheek, rolling
down to defile a once-gleaming epaulet.
Beside the dead soldier, his clerk huddled in a similar position, but with
one shoulder wedged beneath the edge of a sturdy oak desk. That desk was
his savior, the edge having broken the fall of yet another overhead beam,
holding the timber to within inches of his precious skull.
The clerk's expression aped the dead man's, with the wide open eyes and gaping
fish mouth, but occasional sparks of fear and shock in those silent lenses
told Harville that he had at least one man still standing, however useless
he might be; when Harville groped his way across the barrier between one
room and the other, and stood before him, the clerk simply stared past the
Captain, seeming not to see him, or staring through him, as though he were
indeed the powder-coated ghost of his most fearsome delusions.
In those initial few moments, as Harville's mind cleared and he began to
realize that, in fact, this catastrophe had been caused not by a broadside,
but by an explosion, the air was still ringing with the repercussions of
shattering stone and wall falling against wall. The structure of the fortress
groaned in agony all around him, and he hoped, beyond hope, that his own
office had taken the brunt of the damage. If the remainder of the prison
had lost even half as many supporting rafters…
With some sort of shuddering horror, his mind's eye conjured the image of
the great citadel peeling away from its cliff side foundation and collapsing
into the water as one tremendous mantle of crumbled brick intermingled with
scorched human flesh and the wails of men in that final moment, that moment
of certainty that they are about to plunge beneath the sea forever…
With this gruesome notion to spur him on, Harville clambered all the more
quickly towards the opening where his door had once hung, picking his way
gingerly over a pile of strewn cinder blocks. Despite his care, one boot
heel caught on a burst brick, plunging him with unintended velocity into
the hallway outside.
The unmistakable odor of rotting eggs raped his senses from the second he
plummeted over the threshold, and as soon as he was able to regain his footing,
a string of irate curses began to spew from his lips. Instinctively, his
feet carried him in the opposite direction, into the heart of the fortress
and away from where he knew the powder room to be, in case there were further
detonations from the volatile stores of 'villanous saltpetre'.
With military precision, his mind snapped through a catalog of reasons why
the armory would have burst, even as his footfalls echoed a frantic pace
down one hallway after another. He supposed it most likely to have been the
fault of carelessness - but the puzzle was far less important than saving
his own skin, and the hides of those few of his men that he considered to
be of worth. And so, he abandoned the quandry for the moment, choosing instead
to focus on his feel for direction in the darkened corridors, and praying
to whatever gods would listen that he could reach safety.
After all, there was still a ship out there, bearing down on them with fuses
lit and, no doubt, a load of shot with his name on it…
Not for the chronicles of great sea battles was this encounter; no, indeed, for all that came to pass after the Oudjda Azra opened fire was a comedy of errors, a series of events so biased in their outcome that they, combined, could only have been the work of some trickster god reaching his hand in and stirring up the brew, shaking the dregs to the top of the barrel and leaving them for the likes of Harville and Ducharme to sift through.
The explosion from inside the armory was a tough act to follow, but the Oudjda Azra and her crew were not to be outdone. When they opened fire, it was with some fifteen guns. Every piece of artillery bordering the deck went off at once, and some of the hand pieces besides, as those with pistols leaned across the rails and fired into the exposed troops on the pier. Not one of the pistol shots struck true, but rather the balls ruptured the ocean's frothy surface like a scattering of grape shot, hitting the water hot and hissing, falling short of their mark but inspiring a panicked outcry on the dock. The pistols would be reloaded in short order, and within range in moments, and the soldiers either scrambled for cover, or knelt, fumbling with ramrods and tearing powder cartridges in their teeth.
The first broadside was a spectacular exercise in precision, fifteen jets of fire and plumes of smoke bursting from the side of the ship at once, but the command to fire at will came almost immediately, so that order devolved into chaos; after that, the billows of flame-spitting gas came in random two and threes, as quickly as the men could load power and balls, so that the Oudjda Azra was obscured inside a shielding vapor.
Only Dharjeel's head was visible above the jaundiced, sulfur-soaked cloud. Even with one foot propped on the windlass, hunched over the bent limb and balancing his arm on the joint to lend some careless aim to his flintlock, he was an imposing figure. His current posture did nothing to disguise a tremendous height and lean build. His hair was shoulder-length and black as coal, fine and straight like threads of silk, and the aquiline arch of his nose spoke of a bloodline once running with streams of blue, a pedigree lost for centuries in the dung hills of hard times and backwater towns of poverty - it was an ancestry to which he held no claim, save in the occasional trumpeting declaration of his features. He wore a coat the color of dried mustard, obtained from a once-wealthy man now down on his luck - the velvet was worn in spots, but it looked fine enough to serve his purposes.
Most striking about the man, though, was the cold killer calculation defining itself in his eyes, savagery unrestrained by pity. This marked lack of compassion was understood in the indifferent slope of his shoulders, and the unhurried way in which he fired, drew the gun back against his belly, reloaded, and fired again, over and over, with the unaffectedness of an automaton or a dandy's ease.
Until the ship drew within pistol range of the dock, that is - then, his motions flowed more quickly, and his eyes narrowed, taking on the hawk's steely glint, as though they were adopting that noble bird's talent for spotting prey. Even as he shouted orders back over his shoulder, guiding the ship into a maneuver around the protruding dock, his eyes never left his targets; he took out a foot here, a hand there, and his thin-lipped smile teased, drawing up at the corners and becoming more broad with each successive wound.
This was his great joy, after all - he was in this for the game, for the catch-as-catch-can of hunting and killing. Dharjeel followed Rohaj not because the man was endowed with scruples or possessed of particularly worthy skills, but because rohaj had a knack for leading him into all the best killing fields. The smuggler captain was like a beacon for trouble and bad blood. That, in itself, might have been a reason for admiration. At least it was reason enough to bring Dharjeel this far, but again, this brutal escapade was less for the sake of saving the captain, and more about the challenge of breaking into a legendary stronghold. Even if he were successful, Dharjeel knew he would never claim this exploit on a resume, but at least he would have a story to tell his grandchildren, something to occupy the last breaths as he lay on his deathbed years hence.
The first mate and Captain pro-tempore commanded with a voice like charcoal on velvet, but he could be heard by those in his immediate vicinity and no farther. The booming of cannons and the rumble of shattered brick crashing into the water set up a terrible thunderous fanfare that echoed and threatened to rattle the teeth right out of the skulls of pirate crew and fortress garrison alike. Dharjeel was forced to impart orders to the crew with hand signals and the use of envoys, immersed as he was in this performance full of music and fire.
A shower
of plaster and clay powder served further to blur the air with uncertainty
- at first, the sound of a shell opening a fissure in the fortress wall blended
with the rest of the commotion; soon after, though, the resulting fragments
of stone struck the water with a preliminary sort of fragile plinking, a
split-second before the wall began to crumble in on itself. Interior timbers
quaked and groaned, and bricks slapped the water, all the noises pitching
together and melting in a farrago of obscenities.
It took much longer than their commander would have liked, but the ill-prepared militia up top finally collected enough of itself to fight back, and this after only the third violent blow to the lower wall (hurrah!).
Rohaj watched from the corner of his eye as three men sprinted across the plaza; for no reason at all, his muddled brain took note of the coat tails and pigtails flying behind them, the iron balls woven into their forelock braids swinging back and forth, their soot-streaked cheeks glistening with perspiration. Already, the rooftop courtyard resembled a war zone, with smoke serpents weaving through the air and the sounds and smells of powder discharge numbing all but the most primitive thought.
In the wake of the madly dashing body of men came another party, this comprised of two more soldiers hauling behind them a pair of slaves shackled at ankle and wrist. The captives were wrenched forward into the center of the plaza with a robust tug, their holders obviously in haste to get them to the cannons. All of this Rohaj watched with a bemused eye - the dated artillery had already shown a predilection towards bursting, and he almost pitied his fellow convicts for the guinea pigs they were about to become, in the loading and firing of the uncertain cannons.
With much gruff barking of orders and the hurried clinking of keys, the wrist restraints were released, the chains spilling aside, striking a melody to the distant booming rhythm of the Azra's thunder. No sooner were the men's hands freed than they were pushed unceremoniously towards the gun - one had the misfortune of being slower than the other, and when a heavy-heeled boot landed solidly at the small of his back, his knees buckled beneath him, and he landed in a heap of tired bones and rags.
The second of the convicts quickened at that, grabbing up a pair of balls - solid shot connected by a ten-foot chain - and ramming them into each of the mouths of a double-barreled cannon, nearly tripping on the excess length of chain that draped towards the ground between the two cylinders as he stepped away.
The soldiers gathered behind the gun, all except for their leader, a corporal who looked as though he had been commissioned out of the cradle just that day. He handled himself with calm and common sense, however, shouting orders behind and to the side of him, overseeing the loading of several guns up on the deck as he wrestled a bit of lanyard from the cartridge case on his belt. The slave who had been on his knees finally regained himself, and with trembling fingertips, took the lanyard, as well as a friction primer, from the corporal, who offered it with the kind of stern nod that indicated little choice in the matter of whether or not it be taken. The corporal himself then drifted back a few feet, to stand with the others. With hands still quavering, the slave looked to his mate, who solemnly shook his head as though to say that he could offer no assistance. And so, after a long moment's pause, the slave bent forward, wincing inwardly as he went about the task of inserting the primer into the gun's center vent.
But the second slave wasn't to get off so easily - a sudden prod in the small of the back with the business end of a rifle sent him stumbling forward. The private who held the other end of the weapon nodded meaningfully, and so the took a few hesitant steps. He grasped the lanyard gingerly at first, flinching visibly as his fingertips fell around it, then, at a more violent urging from the corporal, he gave the rope a hard yank.
Rohaj watched it all from the side, fascinated by the minutiae of detail in every movement, amused at the visible fear in the men's faces - *all* of the men, soldier and slave alike - despite the fact that he, himself, was still chained and defenseless.
(THU-WHAM!)
First one barrel and then the other thundered into action. Following a thick, dry suction, the cannon jumped violently in recoil, spewing its connected shot out over the water - the twirling projectiles, fired separately but simultaneously, pulled the chain taut between them … and had the Oudjda Azra been farther away, the shot would have mowed her masts down like a giant, whirling scythe…
A few feet away, another of the weapons was touched off, and again the twin barrels grudgingly bellowed, blasting the chain shot in a gyrating arc through the air, only to see it splash down between the waves.
To their credit, the soldiers retaliated with gusto, bombarding the water below with enough force to leave it churning as though at a hard boil - but for all the drama and noise of the curtain of fire they laid down, it only served to splash the decks of the Oudjda Azra with foam.
The fortress at Kula Bricusse, you see, had endured for nearly a century, as proud a testament to the forces that manned it as it was to the republic that built it. The noble cliffside prison was staffed with some two hundred men, held three times as many in chattel, completely dominated the slave trade in the region, and accounted for nearly seventy percent of the annual fiscal gain of of the prosperous city on the shore.
It was also possessed of over one hundred double-barreled cannons, each some five feet long and nearly fourteen inches wide, designed to fire off rounds of chained shot that would mow down masts and rigging as they hurtled across the maritime battlefield. The guns were lined up along the parapet, some in turrets at the corners of the structure, and some secreted behind gunports in the lower levels of the fortress - but, in short, there was more than enough artillery to stop an approaching armada in its tracks.
But the armaments were their own undoing - sheer size prevented them from being fired down at a steep enough angle, and so their balls hit the water just beyond the ship, which had already drawn well to the inside of a reasonable firing range. Several of the Oudjda Azra's men, veterans of life and thus wary, ducked as the missiles whistled past, far, far above the masts. A moment of nervous wincing was all they suffered, however - the ship was close enough to be impervious to such extravagant defenses, and like a tiny bumblebee buzzing past a giant, flailing human hand, she simply sailed ahead, past the impotent volley, moving in for the sting.
The immediate threat to the vessel came from the lower level cannons. Cast in bronze, they were considerably smaller, at 16-pounds, but were still an overwhelming match against the Azra's fifteen 24-pound mortars. Most of the fort's lower gunports, however, had been taken out with the first inside blast, and if not the cannons themselves, then the gunners. A few muzzle swells were still leveled out of the rubble, so the Oudjda Azra concentrated its firing power across, steadily pounding away at the walls with artillery fists, opening great cavities, and collapsing at least one, one that was already handicapped from the powder room explosion.
The contingent of men on the pier had all but spilled into the ocean by this time - red uniforms splashed about in the water, and stout bell shakos with cockades and brass badges bobbed and drifted aimlessly on the waves. Most of the men flailed uselessly with their wounded limbs and limped back towards the only security they knew, clinging to the legs of the nearly ruined dock until the Azra's men picked them off one by one and sent them bleeding to watery graves; others took their chances, swimming out into the sea, presumably to steer around the shallow jetty and reach the coast.
