B3Ch74-Henri (Patreon)

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The timber came from the stores set to dry months ago, thanks to Lord Harold's foresight. He stopped with his hand on it, and Halvard came back three steps to see what he'd found.

"Here." Henri tapped the joint where the futtock met the floor timber. "The scarf joint is long. It’s good work. But the grain runs the wrong way through the joint about two hands short of where it needs to. Under a hard sea this will split."

Halvard bent to it. He was a wide, grey Alnor shipwright with tar worked so deep into his knuckles it would never come out, and he did not enjoy being corrected. "It'll hold."

"It'll hold in the river. It won't hold off the sea bar in a swell. And I’m not happy with sub-par building." Henri straightened and looked down the length of the slipway, at the ribs standing up out of the mud like the bones of something.

Halvard grunted, which from an Alnor man was most of an apology. He pulled a stub of chalk from his apron and drew a hard line across the timber, then moved on down the frames.

It was amazing how much insight his starting perk gave him towards faults in ships. Assess structural integrity. Identify weaknesses in hull construction. Margaret had told him that it was worthless. Harold had no ships. The perk had nothing to do.

Yet…Harold had ships now. He had his own ships now.

They came up the yard to the mould loft, where the thaw dripped steadily off the eaves, and Yann had the new drawings weighted down against the wind off the water. Yann was his first rare summon and had allowed him to build the barge that transferred Arjun's troops over the river. He never felt the cold and never pretended to, standing in shirtsleeves with his arms crossed while everyone around him steamed into their collars.

"The new hull," Yann said, and turned the top sheet toward him.

Henri looked at it for a long moment. He felt his perk start up and the blueprint jumped out at him all at once. Where the vessel would flex, where the water would take hold of it, where it would want to stress under way. He could read a hull the way Harold understood a potion. Maybe, he admitted to himself. Just his was given by a perk, and Harold had about 100 years of practice.

"The entry's finer," he said. "You've taken her in at the forefoot."

"Two strakes." Yann tapped the bow lines. "She split the water better in front of her. She will be faster to ram, faster to answer the steering oar."

Henri traced the waterline forward with one finger. "And she be rougher in a hard sea. But yes, she will be faster."

"You said you wanted speed."

"I want a ship that gets there and can still fight when it arrives." He pulled the sheet flat. "Bring the fullness aft a little. Let her shoulder the swell instead of stabbing it. You lose half a knot but she will be more steady in rough seas. Keep the men drier a little more."

Yann didn't argue. He made the note.

"Show me how she's rowed."

Yann slid the second sheet out. Henri looked at it.

"You've added a third row of oars," he said.

"And a frame to carry it." Yann traced the line where the new beam ran out past the side of the hull, out over the water. "Two rows down inside her, the way she's built now. The third sits out on that frame, so we don't have to make the ship any longer to fit the men. Half again as many oars in almost the same hull. She'll come off her mark like something thrown."

"She'll be very fast, and you will have the men for a good scrap," Halvard said from the doorway. He'd drifted back to listen. "But that's a great deal of weight to keep up out of the sea. And a frame hung off the side of a ship like that has not been done before; you will be forced to spend nights somewhere sheltered."

"The ram," Henri said finally as he was running through the pros and cons.

Yann turned to the last sheet without being asked. The beak on the new drawing was heavier than the old one, bronze over a forged core, and the fastening ran back through the stem deep into the keel.

"You've carried the bolts all the way to the keelson," Henri said.

"So the shock goes into the whole ship, not just the nose of her." Yann tapped the timbers where the load spread. "The old rams stove the bow in on a hard strike. We could ram ships, but it would cost us our frame as well. This one will take the blow and pass it down the spine."

Henri stood over the drawing with both hands flat on the loft table. He could see it — the moment of contact, the shudder. Last time he took the fleet out, that exact thing had happened to them, and he had only barely gotten the ship back to port. It pleased him more than he'd admit to have that fixed.

"Good," he said. "That's good work."

Yann glanced up, mildly surprised.

"We can't build any of it fast enough," he went on, before it could become a moment. "Two slipways won't do. I want a third laid out along the north bank, and a new seasoning shed. Lord Harold has commanded me to build him a fleet." He looked at Halvard. "Your people season your wood for three years? I don't have that kind of time. What's the least I can get away with?"

Halvard thought about it. "Eighteen months, if you're selective about which timbers go where. You can do green wood, but you’ll spend more time in port for repairs than on the water. You can use your fire crafters to dry the wood out, but that is delicate work, and I doubt you have the people to do that here."

"Eighteen months, then. Start it drying now, all of it, so the next generation isn't waiting on wood." Henri rolled the sheets and handed them back. "Lay the keel of the trireme this week. I will figure out how we can dry the timbers faster."

He stepped out of the loft into the wet grey light.

Below him the yard ran down to the water, and past it the river mouth opened out to the sea, still edged with the last ice of the thaw. His nine galleys lay along the quay — three of his own building, six he'd taken. Two banks of oars apiece, forty to a side and a man on every one, and a deck that could carry a hundred soldiers to do the boarding once she'd run alongside and grappled on. A pair of ballistae sat forward on each of them, aimed out over the bow. Small things, next to what the drawings promised.

He was halfway down the yard when the boy came at him.

He came at a dead run from the gate, slipping on the wet planks, and Henri caught him by the arm before he went down into the mud. A signal runner, one of Corbin's, still in the oilskin clothes they gave the ones who manned the watch towers.

"From the headland, my lord." The boy pushed a folded slip at him, gulping air. "Master Corbin said run. So I ran."

Henri unfolded it. Corbin's hand was poor at the best of times and worse for haste, but the words were plain.

Eagles spotted sails SW. Two dozen and more. Orc rig, running before the wind.

He read it twice. Twenty-five, near enough. On his coast by tomorrow's tide, maybe sooner.

Merde. He swore. His blood running cold.

He stood there with the wet paper going soft between his fingers and made himself think it through. His first answer was the coward's one, and it was already in his mouth. Run the fleet upriver. Put the shoals and the bar between his ships and theirs and let the orcs have the coast. They would take it. They would burn the villages on the coast, and the fishing families in them. And every hull he could not drag off the water, while he sat safe under the walls watching them. Engaging that many ships was suicide.

No. He thought it over and over, and the shame overwhelmed him. No version of this played out where he could abandon the coast and remain in Lord Harold's good graces. This was the second strike Lady Margaret said to watch for. Of course it was aimed at him. He was a fan of Villeneuve, but he would not go down like him. “Come on, Henri, Sac à Merde,” He whispered to himself.

Nine ships couldn't beat twenty-five and win a boarding fight. But these were ships. This was what he was supposed to be good at. Even his starting perk was made for this fight.

Two lives now, and every arena Harold had put him in had been someone else's. This was water. This was hulls and wind. If there was a single fight in either of his lives that was his to solve, it was this one.

He folded the paper down small and put it in his coat.

"Halvard!" He did not turn to see the shipwright come to the loft door. "The keel waits. Every hand on the water tonight."

Then to the boy, who was still catching his breath. "You're not done. I want a number I can trust. I need messages sent." He was already walking, and the boy fell in at his shoulder. "One across the river to Lord Arjun. Give him my compliments, and ask for his men. One up the north road to Lady Aiko — her man Sato is the one who'll answer. I need swords and the western Cohort to fast march here to reinforce us. The strike is aimed at us."

"And the others, my lord?"

"Down the coast. Every village between here and the sea." Henri stopped at the head of the quay and looked out at the grey line of the river mouth. "Tell them the truth. Boats off the water by nightfall, or the orcs will burn them. And tell the people to prepare to run. Then I need a message drafted to the council at The Landing detailing what we are dealing with."

The boy hesitated. "And if they ask, can we hold them?"

"Tell them we fight." It was not an answer, and they both knew it. "Go."

The boy went, and Henri stood alone at the head of his own quay with his nine small ships below him. A horn began to sound across the water, calling his people to war.

By the time the horn quit, the town was in turmoil.

He came down onto the stones and did not have to tell most of them what his business was. The quay knew their business. Casks came out of the cooperage and down to the water on their sides, rolling, a boy running ahead of each one to clear the way. The net lofts emptied. Men who had been shaping oars an hour ago were carrying them, four to a shoulder, out along the galleys. It was loud, and it looked like chaos. But this was why he had drilled them relentlessly, and they knew their business.

He caught the first real problem at the third ship. A steward stood over the loading with a slate, marking off barrels as they went down the plank, and there were too many of them.

"Half that," Henri said. "Off. Now."

The man turned, startled. "My lord, that's three days' —"

"We're not going three days out. We're going to meet them and come home, one way or the other." He tapped the slate with one finger, running down the count. "Keep the water but we only need a day's rations. I want to stay light. I want the ships light, and I want them fast, not victualled for a voyage. We’re going fighting, not sailing."

The steward scratched at the slate and started calling men back up the plank.

Yann met him at the fifth ship, one of the captured six, and Henri felt his perk come up before Yann said a word. The hull spoke to him. A strain ran through her portside frames, an old repair never fixed correctly.

"You feel it?" Yann said.

"Port side, aft of the mast. She’s been mended poorly." Henri put his palm flat on the strake as if he could hold the fault shut with it. "In a following sea she'll work. If she takes a ram on that quarter, she’s screwed."

"Then leave her at the quay."

"I can't. Nine's already too few." He straightened. "Rig her ballistae, check her steering oar, and put her in the second line where she won't take a bow-on hit if I can help it. She has to fight."

Yann didn't like it, but he went.

The marines came down from the barracks in column, axe and short sword and light leather, and split off in hundreds toward the ships as their captains called them. They were Legion men, and they embarked like it. Old Perrin had the ninth ship and stood at her rail counting his boarders aboard, and when Henri passed he only jerked his chin at the sky.

Out at the river mouth the fort sat low and grey on the island, Councilor Josh’s earth-crafters raised at the mouth of the river. Its own ballistae were just visible above the wall. It had been completed only a few weeks ago, but it was already set to be tested. Henri let his eye rest on it a moment and moved on. The fight would depend on that fort.

Above the headland, an eagle rose. Then a second, climbing in wide turns until they were two marks against the grey and then gone southwest, out over the water toward the sails. He needed a better count, a heading he could set his plan against, and the eagles would bring it back to him before dark.

He headed into his chartroom to figure out this fight and grab the documents Lord Harold left him on the threats in the sea.

He found the runner's older brother at the gate and sent him along the line of ships.

"I need the captains," Henri said. "My chartroom, before full dark." He looked out one more time at the grey line where the river met the sea.

---

They came in wet and crowded the chartroom until there was no floor left to stand on. The lamps were lit against the dark coming down outside, and the big chart of the river mouth was weighted flat on the table. Henri had Harold's documents open beside it.

"Twenty-five Orc rig," he said, “ running before the wind. The eagles have them southwest of the headland. They'll make our coast by tomorrow's tide."

For a moment nobody said anything. Then Tomas, who had the fourth ship and was the youngest man with a command, said it out loud. "Twenty-five." His voice cracked on it. "My lord, we have nine. We have nine." He stopped himself, but the rest of it was on his face.

Nine green captains and a green admiral, against twenty-five hulls crewed with Orcs.

"Then we're dead," Tomas said. "I'm sorry, my lord, but that's the truth."

"Sit down, boy, puberty might forget you exist the way you’re sucking your mam's teat." Old Perrin didn't look up from the chart. "The lord didn't call us up here to hear you whining. We can all count."

"Then tell me how nine beats twenty-five!"

"It doesn't," Henri said.

That turned every head to him.

"Our nine small galleys don't beat twenty-five of theirs. Not the way we're built to fight." He put his hand flat on the chart. "Our galleys are made to close, ram, and grapple, and win it on the deck once we're alongside. That's the fight we drill. But that is exactly the fight the orcs want. They live to board. They are bigger and stronger, and their ships carry more of them on every hull than we can put on ours." He paused and rubbed his mustache. "So we're not going to fight them the way we're built to fight."

Bec grunted from the corner. He was the oldest man in the room, a fisher out of the coast villages, and his face was weathered with salt. "Good. Because I've seen what a straight fight with that lot gets you."

"Tell me about them," Henri said. He tapped Harold's pages. "Lord Harold left me what he knows. I want to know what you know."

Bec came off the wall. "They're island-bred. Sea raiders and born to it. Good swimmers. Their ships are big and rough — no craft or elegance in them, but they're strong, and they'll take a hit and keep coming. They make their ships from a type of iron wood that gives them greater durability. Once they smell a fight, they lose their heads."

"That matches what the lord wrote." Henri turned the page toward the lamp and read. "Impulsive. Undisciplined at sea — every crew fighting its own fight and chasing its own kill — unless there's a high-tier leader in the fleet holding them to a line." He looked up. "A fleet of twenty-five has a leader. It has to. But." He tapped the word on the page. "Even a led fleet frays. Enrage it and break its order, and the leash slips. That is the lever we must engage. Their discipline is brittle. For the Basin, we must make it break."

"Fine words, my lord Henri," Perrin said. "But you are not Count Harold. How?"

Henri put both hands on the table and looked down at the chart. The river mouth opened out in front of him — the deep channel, the bar, the shoals, the low green islands scattered across the throat of it.

"We must use maneuver," he said. He set a finger on the island square in the mouth of the river. "Start here. The fort."

"Councilor Josh's earth-crafters raised it, and it was finished three weeks ago. Six ballistae are on the wall that cover the approach to the river, and every one of them throws an upgraded explosive bolt." He looked around at them. "You've all seen our galley ballistae bounce off a hull. These bolts will punch in and pop. Nothing gets upriver into the Basin past that fort without paying. That's our anvil."

He moved his hand out to the open sea beyond the bar.

"We have nine galleys. They are faster and armed with two forward ballistae each, a hundred marines aboard. Useless in a boarding fight on their own. But out here—" he swept the shoals, the islands, the long teeth of the sea bar "—out here we have the chance to engage their ships in detail as they move around the small islands. We dart in, break a hull or two, enrage them, and get out before they can get close."

"Bait," Bec said slowly.

"Bait. We wreck a few of their ships in water they are hopefully unprepared for, and we run for the river mouth. An impulsive fleet should chase us, and this will ensure they don't turn to raid the coast somewhere else. And they come after us straight into the throat, straight into the fort's range, straight onto the anvil." He straightened. "We can’t out-fight them when they are massed."

Nobody spoke for a moment. But it was a different silence than the one Tomas had made. Perrin was leaning over the chart now, and Bec's weathered face had gone thoughtful.

"The shoals off the north island go bare at low water," Bec said. He put a thick finger on the chart, west of the fort. "By tomorrow's tide they'll be just under. A ship as large as theirs will run aground. That sand bar shifts so they shouldn’t know where that is."

"Let’s plot a course that allows us to engage them on our terms before they can turn to fight us," Henri said. "Every shoal, every bar, the set of the tide through the mouth."

For the better part of an hour the room stopped being nine frightened men and, every captain leaning in to mark a shoal or argue a tide, Perrin overruling Tomas twice.

"When we shoot," he said, "Every one of you will watch for the signal from my ship. We must get close enough that my perk will allow me to see flaws in their ships' construction for us to target." He said it simply. "We will emerge from an unseen angle. Get close enough to target a ship with our ballistae, then turn and run before they can close. Our gunners are accurate, but they must make their shots count this time."

He gave them their places in broad strokes. A full century of Legion would go across to the fort tonight, to reinforce the fort if the orcs put men ashore against it. The rest of the Cohort would reinforce the marines on the ships for boarding actions. As much as he hated it. He knew it would come down to blades before the end.

"We'll set off hard before first light, with the eagles' count and their heading. Get your crews fed and dry tonight. Sleep if you can."

None of them said anything, and he didn't either. That some of the ships in this room would not come back up the river. Every man there knew it. This was a bleak and desperate fight.

Perrin was the last one still bent over the chart. He straightened, rolled his shoulders, and looked at Henri with something that wasn't quite a smile.

The captains filed out into the dark, and Henri stood alone over the chart with the lamps guttering. He sighed and went over to the chest he hadn't opened since returning to his town. He lifted it and grasped a bottle of something Lord Caswell had given him. He grabbed a cup and poured himself a measure of the terrible alcohol and shot it as fast as he could with a grimace. He needed all the luck he could get, and Caswell had a habit of getting into bad fights. Merde, he murmured.

---

Henri stood on the forecastle of his ship as they rowed. He had named his ship Souverain in a moment of vanity, but she cut across the water as his people rowed. Sovereign. He had named it in a moment of vanity and tried not to think about it right now. Villeneuve had named ships grander than this one and lost every one of them. He tried not to think about that.

They had stood out past the seabar in the dark, nine hulls in a line he could just make out by the pale water, each one turned up under her bow. The light was on the stern of the ship for the ship behind them to follow. The rowers kept the stroke off Marchand's soft count from the bow of Henri's ship, and the count carried ship to ship down the line like something whispered. His galleys lay tucked in the lee of the north island, in the still water behind it, waiting on the light and on his eyes.

He had received a message back from Councilor Margaret during the night. The Legion is engaged with the nest of Ants. You are instructed to hold at all costs. Lord Arjun and Lady Aiko move to support you. No further support available. The Basin is being tested. We will not fail Lord Harold. Good Luck

His eyes were two marks in the sky.

The eagles had gone up before he could see his own hand, and they hung out over the sea to the southwest now, wheeling slowly and holding station over the enemy fleet. The birds slid north and east, running before the wind.

"They've not changed their heading," he said, low, to no one but the men near the oar.

He made himself breathe. His stomach was a fist and had been since the dark.

Behind him, a marine blew into his cupped hands and cursed the cold under his breath, and another told him to stow it before the whole coast heard him. Ms. Eyris stood at the steering oar and hadn't moved in an hour.

"You cold, Ms. Eyris?" he asked, low, mostly because he wanted a voice in his ear that wasn't his own.

"No, my lord." A beat. "Stopped being cold around the second hour. Now I'm just wet."

Down the benches, a rower snorted and even he let out a small smile. No doubt for a different reason than that rower.

The first orc ship came around the point of the island, and it was enormous.

He had told them all how big it was. Their ships could questionably be called a Galleass. The thing was half again the length of his own galley and rode high and heavy, ironwood black with old seawater, a single square sail bellied full and a beak on her like a battering ram. Forty orcs at least stood along her rail, and none of them could see the smaller ships hidden in the sheltered leeward side of the island. She was a straggler, or an outrunner too greedy for the coast to hold the line with the rest of the fleet. Or maybe she was a scout their leader had sent this way. Either way, she had come around the point alone. They were supposed to wait until the tail end of the fleet had rounded the island so his small fleet could come upon the rear of it before they could react. But they had given him an easy ship to test his plan on.

Somewhere aft a marine let out a low whistle. "Mother of God, look at the size of her," and this time nobody told him to stow it.

"Sac à Merde," Henri breathed. One ship, and she made the Souverain look like something a child had whittled. He'd told them all how big. Telling was not the same as watching one come at you out of the grey. Then he made himself grin, because they were watching him for it. "Big," he said, loud enough to carry the deck. "Big and slow and full of holes she doesn't know about yet. Mr. Marchand — stand by."

The ship was almost 500 meters away, and his perk didn’t activate like he had hoped it would. For a moment, he panicked. The plan revolved around his ability to find faults in ships so their ballistae could target them. He buckled down and focused on the ship. His eyes started to water as he channeled mana into them to enhance his vision before it activated.

The hull spoke to him.

"Mr. Marchand." He did not raise his voice. "Signal the line. Lead ship, second ship, engage. Target her starboard quarter, low, aft of the mast — the garboard, hand's breadth above the waterline. Nowhere else. One pass, as many volleys as they can get off."

The runner ran it up in a complicated series of signals they had worked out the night before. Down the line the captains read it and passed it on, and Henri felt his own crew lean into the oars without being told.

His galley surged out of the island's shadow into the grey with the second ship on her flank, both of them from cover and up to speed before the orcs on the rail turned their heads. The seas were calm within this series of islands. The islands served as breakwaters, letting his ships aim without the constant up-and-down that would have happened on the open sea. His bow ballistae loosed together. He saw the bolts strike right above the hull's weak point.

The two ballistae slammed back against their tackle as they threw, and the crews were on the windlasses before the bolts landed — four men to a crank, boots braced, hauling the cording back against the arms with their breath sawing in and out. Loading the things was a full-body fight on dry land. On a heaving deck it was murder.

“Merde,” he cursed. “Reload!” he shouted as he watched the second set of bolts impact. One went low and sank right into the sea. The second impacted right where it needed to. The strake splintered and splashed into the water.

“Again! Hit them again!” The orcs were awake now, and he could hear commands roared in another language as the ship started to turn towards him. Too slow, and too late. “That's it — allez, come to me, you great wooden pig,” Henri muttered. “Turn.”

“Ms. Eyris. Keep us starboard and abreast of her as she turns. I want our ballista with a clean angle.” He shouted back quickly to his helmswoman. His marines were lining the railing, and the section with bows was getting ready to put a volley into them.

His ship bucked as the ballistae loosed again, and they plunged further into the splintered section of the ship, and the sea started to spill in. The second ship put two more into the same wound. The orcs were roaring now, swarming to the rail with grapples and hate. It was already too late for the grapples, because his stern was already coming around.

"Away!" Henri shouted. "Bring us around and out of range. She’s listing and won't make it to the coast."

The oars bit and his galley surged away. The orc ship fell behind them, wallowing with her quarter opening to the sea. They hadn’t outright sunk her. But she was out of the fight and would be on the bottom by noon. He could see her crew stood on the deck screaming at the little ships, and he smiled wolfishly.

On the bench nearest him, a rower half stood and bawled across the water at the wallowing ship — something about learning to swim, and something worse about the orcs' mothers — and a dozen throats picked it up.

"That's how we do it, boys!" Henri shouted. His hands had stopped shaking. "These orcs die like everything else!"

The cheer went down the line ship to ship. He let them have it; morale would soon be in short supply when combat started.

The eagles were still up, and their heading hadn't changed. The assembled fleet was still moving, and they were rowing hard to get ahead of them within the islands.

"Quiet it down," he called back along the deck. "That was the easy one. Now we work."

He turned to his helmswoman. "Ms. Eyris. Back into the islands. I want us behind their ships before they clear the last island."

She put the steering oar over without a word, and the Souverain heeled and came about. Marchand's count picked up, and his line of battle answered it — nine galleys peeling off the open water and sliding into the green channels behind it, into the still lee where the bigger ships would have a harder time following.

His galleys were light. Their draft much shallower than the bigger orc ships. The channels between the low islands ran shallow and crooked, choked with sandbars and reefs. He would have loved to try to draw their fleet into combat within the islands, but there was no way the orcs were dumb enough to follow like that.

So while the orc fleet came the long way around the outside of the islands, hauling their weight through open water, Henri took the inside line.

"Signal Captain Bec." He raised his voice. "He is to take us through to the north end and put us out ahead of them."

The signal reached Captain Bec. The old fisher knew this area well. Their ships rowed hard as they moved through the islands. They were beautiful islands. Some of these he had considered building an estate on. They were similar to the islands of Greece and Italy, and he just imagined groves of olives or terraces of grapes. His hands clenched on the rail of his ship. They had to hold. They had to.

Captain Bec led them through a gap Henri would not have called a channel, close enough that the oars on the port side came up and the men fended off the mud bank with the oars, and out the far side into a pool of flat grey water. The islands hid them the whole way. Somewhere off to seaward the orc fleet was still rowing as the eagles shadowed them.

"I’ll be betting they're strung out," Bec shouted, coming abreast of him where the channel widened. He pointed with his chin. "A fleet that big, running that hard. A current exits there that will slow them as they cross it on the long axis! I doubt their captains will be smart enough to slow down on the other side and wait for the rest of their formation to reassemble! The lead ships will be too far ahead to turn back and support them as we pass!"

"We take the last few! Watch for my signal!”

Captain Bec nodded back, and his ship took the lead again in the line.

He set them behind the north island, in the still water, oars shipped, and waited. They had left port before the sun fully rose and had been rowing hard all day. He knew his people were tired. He could see it on the benches — men slumped over their looms the moment the stroke stopped, hands opening slow and stiff, more than a few wrapped in rag where the oar had taken the skin off the palm. One grey old rower caught him looking and gave him a gap-toothed grin. "Don't you fret, my lord," the man wheezed. "We've a few good pulls left in us. Cost you extra, mind." Henri huffed something that was almost a laugh. "Put it on my account." He tried to stand there and project confidence, but he didn’t know if it worked. He struggled not to pace up and down the length of his ship. How did Harold do it? He always seemed so in control. He shivered as that thought came to him. Until he wasn’t, he supposed.

The fleet came round the point the way Bec had said it would — not a wall of a well-dressed formation. It was a ragged column, the lead ones far ahead and the tail dragging. Henri watched the front pass nervously. If any of them were to turn and sweep the islands with a telescope, they would see his ships sitting there waiting. His stomach was a fist again. Every ship that rowed by was at least around three to four hundred orcs.

Then the tail came level with the island, six ships strung loose across the grey, and there was at least a five hundred meters gap there he could exploit.

“Shit.” He swore. For a moment, forgetting he was French. That was more ships than he wanted to engage at once. There was no choice; they would have to close to combat. His hand gripped his rapier, and his eyes closed for a moment before opening them.

"Mr. Marchand. Signal the whole line, on my mark. Full speed ahead. All to engage the tail of their line.”  He would have to count on his captains to understand what he wanted. He was already reaching for the hulls with his eyes, mana burning in them until they watered. Every bolt had to count.

The nearest ship spoke to him. So did the one past her.

"Lead ship — the near one, port quarter, that dark seam under the third oarport. Second and third ships, take the one behind her, low at the sternpost where she’s been sistered." He read down the tail as fast as his eyes could climb the hulls. "Everyone else, one target apiece, and none of you loose until you've got the flaw. Mark."

He wiped the blood that was dripping from his eyes and closed them as he tried to ignore the pain. He didn’t have time for it right now. He could see his ballista crews trying to sight in their pieces with their own telescopes as they tried to target according to his commands.

They came out of the island's shadow together, rowing hard. This time, the drummers were going and kept time with the other ships. The oars were pulling hard, and the horns on his ships sounded, calling them to battle.  His blood began to race as horns sounded from the orcs.

“Seems they have spotted us.” He murmured to himself as he watched his crew aim the ballistae. They were at their extreme range right now and had almost no hope of hitting a ship heaving up and down in the sea like that.

The line loosed together, and eighteen bolts went into the sea.

Short. All of them, throwing up little feathers of grey spray thirty meters shy of the tail, and a groan came up the deck behind him. Somewhere in the waist a ballista-man said, clear as anything, "Well. That scared the fish," and got a bark of ugly laughter for it.

"Merde." He hit the rail with the flat of his hand. "Reload! Mr. Marchand — whole line, close the range. Fifty meters nearer before the next volley, and tell them to quit shooting at the water!"

Marchand's flags went up, and the drummers picked up the stroke down the line.

"Ms. Eyris, across her wake, not bow-on. I want the swell lifting us into the shot, not dropping us out from under it." He dragged a sleeve across his eyes. Already watering. "Hold your loose until you're on her, all of you — hold—"

The second volley. Two bolts caught the near ship and skated off her ironwood flank like stones off ice, spinning away flat into the grey. The rest missed clean.

His stomach dropped. It was not working. "Come on," he said, thin and low. "Come on, come on."

He drove the mana into his eyes and made himself read her again. The pain came up behind them as a spike going in, and something warm slid down his cheek and into his mustache. Blood. He didn't have time for it. The hull spoke to him anyway — the seam under the third oarport, the poorly sistered sternpost on the one behind her, plain as chalk lines.

"Signal Captain Bec — he’s shooting high! Drop it a hand and shoot the seam, not the rail!" He was shouting now, both hands cupped, though Marchand ran up the real signals. "Tomas! Your bolts are going wide right — she's turning into you, lead her! Lead her, boy!"

“We need more speed to stay ahead of their turn! We have to hit those weak spots!”

Down the line the crews worked it, volley on volley, and it was ugly. Bolts short, bolts wide, bolts bouncing off good timber. The windlass men were spent, cranking the arms back on shaking legs, cursing the cording every time it fouled, the loaders bleeding from the hands. He called the corrections, and Marchand flagged them, and slowly, slowly, the crews walked the shots in. He watched the fourth volley climb the near ship's flank and find the seam at last — one bolt, then a second right behind it, and the strake splintered and the sea rushed in.

"There! There, that's it — again on the same wound, don't move off it!"

The ship behind her took two low at the sternpost a breath later and began to settle by the tail. Henri let out a sound that was half a laugh and half a sob and didn't care which.

"Two of them! That's two, boys — again!"

Then the tail came alive. The four ships still whole hauled around toward him, roaring, oars beating white water, and one of them — the third from the end — did not come straight on like the rest. Her captain swung wide and hard to the north, cutting inside Henri's line to come up on Tomas's unengaged flank with grapples already swinging.

"Merde — Tomas, hard away, she's on your quarter!" His voice cracked on it. "Ms. Eyris, bring us round to cover him — Marchand, Perrin to close on that ship's stern, box her! I want bolts into her rudder, and we leave her!"

Tomas's galley leaned away just as the grapples flew, and two of them fell short into the sea. One caught the rail and a marine hacked the line before it drew tight. The orc ship came on, snarling, and then Perrin's ballistae took her from behind, and Bec's crossed her from the far side, and she slewed off with her steering oars smashed, wallowing.

"Good! Good, that's how — Perrin, you beautiful old bastard!"

The tail broke. What was left of it. The two wounded ones falling astern to die.

"They're chasing! Marchand, signal the line to run the way we came, string them out behind us." He turned, grinning through the blood. "Captain Bec! Your water now. Take us home the crooked way and bring them right onto it."

"They'll not turn now if the sky fell on them!" Bec bawled back, and his ship shouldered into the lead, oars digging. "Follow my stern and don't you dare cut the corner!"

Bec ran them through the narrows between the islands, close enough that the mud came up under the port oars, and the last four galleasses came after them, too enraged and too committed to watch the water. Bec brought his ship hard around the shoulder of the north island where the water went pale and still — and held his course a hair too long, drawing them across the flat where the shoal lay just under.

“Here we go, boys!” Henri shouted!

His galley skimmed it and continued without any damage.

The two nearest galleasses, at a dead chase and riding heavy, did not.

The first went aground with a noise Henri felt in his bones, the hull stopping dead and slewing sideways as her mast whipped and cracked and orcs spilled off her deck into the sea. The second plowed straight into her stern a breath later, grinding up onto the sand beside her, stuck fast and heeling.

"Yes!" Henri roared, and the cheer that went down the line was a wild thing.

Some part of him had already quit cheering and started counting the two that were still coming, cold and quick, and it startled him how easy that came. He was good at this. Of all the things to find out about himself, and on a morning like this one.

Two grounded. Two sunk. That left two still coming.

And his eyes gave out. His mana strained his eyes until he could barely see.

He tried to empower his eyes to read the nearest orc ship, and there was nothing there. The pain behind his eyes was a hot wire now, and the blood was running freely down both cheeks. He pushed, and the world tilted, and a line burned across the edge of his sight.

"No — no, come on—"  He scrambled to pull a healing potion from his belt, and he drank it as fast as he could. He could feel a furious itch behind his eyes, and he groaned as it worked. But his eyesight appeared again.

"Mr. Marchand!" He did not turn from the rail. "Signal the line — encircle. Bec takes his wing left, all the way around the outside of them. Perrin, four ships peel right with me. We put them in a box, and we don't let one of them out."

The flags went up. Down the length of the line the count changed under Marchand's hands, and his nine galleys came apart like a thing splitting like a zipper — Bec swinging wide to the north with his wing, the water going pale under his oars, and four hulls peeling off south behind the Souverain. Two orc ships came on into the middle of it, oars beating, and did not slow. If anything, they seemed to be getting faster.

"They still don't see the trap," Henri said to Ms. Eyris. "Good. Merde, let them not see it."

The near one bore down on his own wing, dead on and roaring. He made himself read her. The pain came up like a nail going in behind his eyes, and he heard himself make a sound he wasn't proud of, and he began to read the hull. The ship was newly made, but midships, where two planks joined a hand above the waterline, they weren't joined correctly.

"There — the one bearing on us! Marchand, whole wing, midship, waterline, the seam abaft the mast — nowhere else!" He was shouting it, cupping his hands, though Marchand's flags ran the real order down the line. "Hold your shots till you're on her!"

Four galleys loosed together. The near range did the rest of the work his eyes couldn't. He saw three bolts find the seam, two skip off good timber and spin away, and the ironwood midship splintered white and let a first mouthful of grey sea in.

She kept coming.

Her oars never broke stroke. She rowed straight through the wound with the water pouring into her, orcs howling along the rail, undeterred, closing.

"Again!" Henri hit the rail with his fist. "Reload, damn you, same wound, don't move off it — again!"

North of him, Bec's wing swung wide to box the other one — but she never meant to trade fire with anybody. She put her bow down and drove straight through the middle of it, oars flat out, past the ballistae and the closing box, running for the nearest of the little ships. Bec's wing could not claw across her bow in time.

His own wing's second volley climbed the near ship's flank and the seam collapsed suddenly. A whole seam of panels tore loose and folded back, and the sea swept into her.

"Yes! There it is!" His voice cracked, and he didn't care. "Mr. Marchand — that's one! Now the other, get me the—"

He wiped the blood out of his eyes and found her, and the words died in his mouth.

The second ship had grapples in Tomas's galley.

She'd driven in under the fight while his wing worked the runner, hooks flying, and now she was fast alongside the boy's ship with her lines drawn tight, and orcs were pouring over the rail onto his deck. Tomas's marines were dying.

Both wings turned almost in the same breath — Bec's line hard on her stern, Henri's four driving in.

"Row!" Henri roared it down the deck, and the drummer caught his voice and married it to the stroke. "Our brothers are in the fight! Every one of you — ROW! We do not lose this ship — ROW!"

The drum and his voice went together, and the Souverain came off her mark and ran. He could see the orcs on Tomas's deck now, huge and dark against his own men, hacking.

“We must join the fight! ROW!”

A marine at his own bow spun a grapple twice and threw it across the closing water into the orc ship's rail, and it bit and dragged tight.

Henri ran for it. He caught the line in both hands where it came taut over the gap, planted a boot on the rail, and roared. And maybe for a brief moment really began to believe it too. Putain, he thought — a rapier and a good coat against a deck full of these — and he went anyway.

"FOR THE EMPIRE!"

He swung across.

He hit the orc ship's deck, already pouring everything he had into his body — mana into muscle and bone, the burn of it climbing his arms. He was a lord and not just a man in a good coat. Though he was that too. The first orc turned on him, and it was a head and a half taller than he was, swinging an iron bar the size of a fence post around one-handed like it weighed nothing. Henri got his rapier up and his empowered arm behind it and turned the blow, and the shock of it went through his shoulder, but he turned and swiped his rapier through the orc's leg before it could turn.

His marines came over the line behind him in a flood. They dogpiled onto the orc deck, and his other ships closed and grappled on and put their boarders across too, until the orcs were swarmed three and four to one — and still they did not go down easily. They took a sword through the gut and killed the man who put it there. They took an axe to the leg and dropped to one knee and kept swinging. Henri put his point through one's throat, and the thing got both hands on a marine's head as it died, and Henri had to look away.

Then they started to chant.

It came up low out of the ones still standing, guttural, all of it in their own tongue, the same words over and over, and they began to fight harder. They pressed harder. They laughed while they bled.

"Kill them!" Henri screamed it over the chant. "Kill all of them — put them down!"

An orc near him took a spear clean through the chest and walked up the shaft to get its hands on the man who held it, and it took three marines to drag the thing down and finish it. Mon dieu, Henri thought. They didn't know how to die. All weight and hate, and every one of them meant to take a man with it.

They cut them down one at a time, and it cost heavily. Men went into the sea between the hulls. Men went down on the boards and did not get up. Tomas's galley was a slaughterhouse and half-swamped along one side by the time the last orc on his feet took four blades at once and finally, finally went down still chanting, and the deck went quiet but for the wounded.

Henri stood in it, chest heaving, blood in his eyes, and made himself lift his head and look southwest.

The eagles were still up, but the fleet had turned. They were running for the coast, and they were ahead of him now. The clock had run out. Now it was only a race.

"Off the deck!" Henri hauled a marine up by the harness and shoved him toward the lines. "Back to the ships — all of you, back to the ships! Leave the dead, take the hurt, get potions into them — MOVE!" He found the boy across the carnage. "Tomas! Get her rowing or get your men off her!"

They came back over the grapples in a ragged rush, hauling their wounded between them, and the drummers picked the stroke back up ship by ship. The Souverain shipped her boarders and put her bow up the mouth of the river, and the line formed behind her out of the wreck of the fight — fewer of them than had come out in the dark, one galley low and mauled and being nursed along in the middle of them, all of them rowing flat out now. It didn’t have to deliver its people back to the coast.

Ahead up the throat the fort sat low and grey on Josh's island, its ballistae just showing above the wall. The anvil.

Henri wiped his ruined eyes. "Row," he said. "Row for the fort."

---

The Souverain rowed like the wind, and it still wasn't enough.

His people had been on the oars since before dawn. Benches that should have carried a man on every oar carried gaps now; every ship in his line down rowers from the boarding fight. His galleys had been fast in the dark, but they had lost speed.

Marchand kept the count from the bow, but the voice had gone out of it. He rasped it now, and the stroke came back slow and heavy off arms that had nothing left. Henri watched a bow oar catch a beat late and then drag. Allez, he thought. Allez. Willing them faster did nothing. Villeneuve had run from a fight he couldn't win once and been hunted down for it, and Henri shoved the thought off before it could settle.

The orc fleet was moving faster now.

He stood at the rail with the blood drying stiff on his face and watched — they had 19 hulls left. They drove on up the throat ahead of him. Toward the fort. Toward the town past it.

"Merde," he said. "Merde—"

They were going to beat him home. He had bet everything on the anvil. It had to work.

"Row!" His voice tore on it. "I don't care what's left in you — ROW! Beat the drums! ROW!"

The lead orc ships came up on the island, and the water around them stood full of markers. Painted spars, anchored out across the approach in the weeks the fort had gone up, so the crews on the wall could judge a range. He had helped space them himself.

The nearest galleass crossed the far marker.

The wall lit up.

All six ballistae loosed at once, and the bolts went out farther than anything his galleys had thrown all day. They found the lead ship, and the front of her blew apart as the bolts impacted — the bow blown open, ironwood and orcs going up in a gout of smoke, her nose digging under before the sound of it reached him. All day his own bolts had bounced off that ironwood. These punched clean through it and popped inside her, and the strakes his galleys couldn't crack came apart in splinters the size of oars. 

A roar went up off his own deck, ragged and half-mad. Somewhere in the waist a marine was screaming about the wall, calling it the hand of God, and half the benches took it up. One ship, he told himself, cold behind his teeth. One gone and eighteen still rowing for his home. He let his crew have the moment. 

Then he took it back.

"Row, boys!" He pushed through the hoarseness. "They're in a fight now — you hear it? Those are our families up that river! ROW!"

The Souverain came off her mark and dug in, her bow cutting the grey water, and for a few strokes it felt like they were gaining.

The wall spat fire again. This time the crews split the bolts — three bolts reaching for one ship, three for another, and both of them cratered amidships and caught, alchemical flame crawling up their flanks where no water was going to put it out.

"Yes!" Henri hit the rail with the flat of his hand. "Yes — thank God for it—"

And he meant it; in that moment he would have prayed to any god that would have him. And thank god for Harold thinking of raising a fucking island from the river.

Then the orcs found more speed.

He didn't know where they pulled it from — tired arms, a leader's horn, the smell of an open town — but the grey ships surged. Five ships turned their bows around toward the island itself, toward the fort. The rest put their noses upriver and rowed past the wall for the town.

Putain. He saw what their leader meant to do, and hated how good it was. Spend five hulls to kill the fort, let the anvil chew on them. Then run the rest past while it was busy. The wall could only reload so fast. An orc that had lost his head would have flung the whole fleet at the guns at once. This one was spending men like coin and buying the town with them.

His blood ran cold.

"No," he whispered. "No, no—"

He knew what sat behind those walls, and it was almost nothing. The cohort that garrisoned his town was out here, on his ships. Almost all the trained swords he had were on the water. Only his household guard remained in the town. The west cohort and Lady Aiko's men, the reinforcements — weren't due until later today. It was hours out on the north road while the orcs made his beach.

"They're going for our homes!" he bellowed down the deck. "That's the town, boys — we have to make it, we HAVE to make it!"

The centurion on the fort saw it too, and he did the right thing. As the bypassing ships came level and closer, the fire split again — two ballistae to a ship, three ships, every one of them hammered amidships as they tried to slip by. The bolts punched in and the fire exploded inside their walls. Three hulls opened up and began flooding. Orcs jumped off the rails into the cold water. But they were close now, and low water or not, they weren't going to sink before they reached the beach. They'd flood, and they'd still land.

The five ships that had turned for the fort ground in against the beach. Over a thousand orcs came off them and started up the stone.

Henri was kilometers out. He could count it in oar-strokes he didn't have. Whatever happened on that wall was going to happen long before his bow touched the island, and there were two hundred legionaries up there to defend with. It wasn’t enough. He’d stood on his own quay in the dark and sent the century across himself. There was no calling it back now.

They'd have to hold it on their own.

They fought like they meant to. Even with orcs coming and assaulting the rampart, the wall kept killing. Two of the ballistae swung down and fired point-blank into the mass boiling off the beached ships, and pieces of orcs went spinning away — but orcs didn't form into disciplined blocs, so it wasn’t many that were killed. The bolts tore up the orcs and the wrecked hulls more than the enemy. Those five ships would never sail again, but the orcs off them kept coming.

The other four ballistae hunted the ships going past. One bolt threw up a feather of spray and missed. The other three found their marks amidships, and three more ships began dying, but dying slowly. They would still make landfall.

"We're gaining, my lord." Ms. Eyris said at the steering oar. "Feel her? We're gaining."

"Not fast enough." He snapped back at her. He looked back down his own line. Two galleys had fallen off the stern, rowers dead on the benches, dropping behind no matter how their captains screamed at them. He had nearly two thousand fighters strung out behind him on tired arms — marines, rowers, everyone who could hold a blade. And Harold's potions in the holds. It could be enough to save the town. If they got there. Only if they got there. "We need to move Ms. Eyris. Don't lose a stroke to anything."

The fort came up on his beam, and he could see it now, through his ruined eyes. The garrison fought along the top of the wall, a thin line of legionaries heaving against a black tide trying to come over, and even from five hundred meters out he heard it — the clash and the roaring came across the water flat and ugly. They threw explosive potions, but the potions that would shatter goblins only injured the orcs and made them fight all the harder.

The wall fired again. All but one bolt went down into the packed orcs at the base of the wall and blew a red gap through the swarm. The last reached out and took another passing ship amidships and cracked her spine, and she folded and stopped.

Hold the enemy in the throat, bleed them, break their hulls, buy them time. It had been a gamble to sail out and attrit the orc ships.  Between Bec's shoals and the anvil, more than half the fleet that reached it was on the bottom now or crawling toward it.

Then the river opened, and his town came into sight, and the orc ships were landing at it.

Their bows were up on his beach; below the walls, orcs were pouring off them. On the wall above, his household guard stood formed to meet them — and beside them, others. Not armored. Some in plain leather, some in nothing but the clothes they'd worked in that morning.

It took him a moment to understand it, and when he did, he swore.

The crafters. His people were taking up arms to fight. They’d gone to the wall.

The first orcs hit the beach and roared and rushed the wall, and arrows came down off the wall and struck home, orcs dropping in the surf — and more came behind them, tens more, as five ships emptied themselves onto his beach.

The Souverain drove past the dying fort, and Henri turned to look at it one last time — the orcs up over the rampart now, swarming the top of the wall, the thin line of legionaries swallowed in the black of them—

And the fort exploded.

The whole island exploded in one blast, white and enormous. Every bit as large as the one Harold had set off in the trial, a wall of fire and thrown stone that Henri felt in his bones before the sound rolled over him and shoved him.

"Merde," he whispered.

They'd done it themselves. Fired every explosive bolt left in the magazine at once, and taken the fort and everything on it into the sky. Most of the orcs storming the wall went with it. So did two hundred of his legionaries, and more. He'd shaken half of them awake himself the night before. He said the words his grandmother used to say over the dead, in French, under his breath — Notre Père, qui es aux cieux — and couldn't finish them.

The fort was gone, but they had done their duty.

He made himself turn away from it. There was still a job to do.

"Mr. Marchand!" His voice came out cracked and hard. "Signal Captain Tomas. He breaks off with his wounded hull and captures those beached ships — every one on the beach." He dragged his sleeve across his ruined eyes, and it came away bloody. "Not one orc sails away from here. Not one!"

The flags went up. Behind him, his battered line rowed after him on dead men's oars, and ahead the beach was already black with orcs coming ashore under his walls.

Henri set his hand on his rapier and looked up the last stretch of grey water to the fight waiting there.

"Take us in, Ms. Eyris," he said. "Angle us to the beach so we can make room for our line."

She leaned on the steering oar, and the Souverain's bow swung onto the beach. Henri turned and looked back down his ragged line — fewer hulls than had gone out in the dark, the wounded galley nursed along in the middle, all of them strung loose on tired arms.

Loose was no good. If they came in one at a time, the orcs would defeat them in detail.

"Mr. Marchand!" He caught the rail as she heeled. "Form up! The whole line, tighten on me — I want us landing together, at once, not one boat at a time!" He cupped his hands, as the flags ran the real signal. "We only get one chance at this, and we do it right! Our assault hits them all at once!"

The flags went up. Down the line the count changed under Marchand's hands, and the galleys crept in on the Souverain until Henri could have thrown a line to the ships on either quarter. It cost them speed. He didn't care. A little slower, together, beat fast and piecemeal.

Along the benches the marines did the small ugly work of men about to land — cinching straps, spitting on stones, thumbing edges they'd already thumbed a hundred times. A big Legion man with an old flat-broken nose hefted his axe and looked at the beach.

"Lot of them," he said.

"That's the idea," the man on the next oar told him. "More of them, fewer of us. Less crowding at the pay table."

"You don't get paid."

"And now you know why there's so few of me left."

"Mr. Marchand." He grabbed the boy's shoulder before he could look away from the flags. "When we're ashore, you have the fleet's ballista. All of them. You stay aboard, you watch me with your spyglass, and you wait for my signal — I'll tell you where I want the massed fire. Nowhere else. You understand me?"

Marchand's face was white, and he understood him fine. "Aye, Lord Henri!"

The narrows squeezed them, the throat of the beach approach, and the ships closed up as tight as the water would let them. Henri watched the beach come.

"Now, Ms. Eyris — final turn starboard and land us!"

The steering oar came over. The Souverain leaned and drove her bow up onto the stones, and Henri looked back one more time, and it was there — the whole line turning with him, near enough all at once, every bow swinging for the beach and every crew throwing its last into the oars for the last stretch. Together. However rough, together.

He turned back to the wall and made himself look.

A few thousand orcs were at his walls. They came off the beached hulls and up the beach and hit the stone in a green tide, and they were hacking at it — axes and iron bars and their own hands — and it was slow going. The walls held. Wood still, mostly, but Josh's earth-crafters had put the foundations under them before they left, and they'd doubled up on the palisade thickness as well. Even orcs that size couldn't chew through double timber fast. His people manned the ramparts above. Orcs hurled spears up at them, and here and there a legionary or a crafter went off the wall with one through him. His people threw back — rocks, and the little explosive potions, dropped into the packed mass at the base where they popped and threw orcs off their feet.

Somewhere along the parapet a household guard had gone hoarse screaming down at the things below him — telling them to come on, to climb up and get what they wanted, calling them pig-faced and worse — and heaving rocks between the words.

Then a spear came down.

Out of somewhere off the flank, flat and hard and fast, it drilled clean through the throat of a big orc that had been roaring men off the wall, and the thing folded and dropped and the ones around it looked for who'd thrown it.

Henri knew that throw. Or he knew the kind of person who made it. It put him in mind of Vera and her Thornwalkers, and he almost laughed.

The adventurers. They were here. He didn't know where — timing their own attack to his landing, waiting on the same beat he was — but they were here.

"Okay," he breathed. "Okay, we have a chance."

The bow ground up finally and stopped. His people gathered at the rail with their weapons, and he turned and looked at their faces, and his stomach dropped. They were done. He could see it. Exhausted, bloodied, shaking, he was about to throw them off this ship and into another fight.

He drew breath with no idea on God's earth what he was going to say.

"There!" It came out of him. He flung his arm at the wall. "On that beach — your home is under attack! The empire is your home!"

And as he said it, he knew that he meant it. He was Harold's now. Whatever else was true, that was true, and this town under these walls was home. The Landing and the Basin were home.

"The empire is home!" he roared, and his voice tore. "And those monsters want to destroy it — they want to kill your families! There they are, fighting for us — look at them! We are their shield! We are their light in the dark! Fight with me, brothers — FOR THE EMPIRE!"

He went over the rail before he could find out whether they'd follow; if he stopped to find out he'd never move again. He hit the beach and ran for the wall and dearly, dearly hoped they were behind him.

They came. Off every ship, marines and rowers, sailors who'd been on the oars since before dawn, and they came off screaming it back at him — "FOR THE EMPIRE!" — and the beach filled with his people.

A chunk of the green tide broke off the wall and turned to meet them.

The two lines came together and the sound of it was an ugly thing — shields and axes and the wet crack of the men caught in the middle. An orc the size of a door took a marine head-on, iron sword looping, and where the sword landed the man simply came apart. Henri saw it and made himself forget it. Off to his left a voice went up over the din, hoarse and carrying — a centurion, bawling his men into the wall. "Hold, hold, you beautiful ugly bastards! First one who breaks, I dig him up after and kill him again!"

On the rampart above, an orc got a hand over the top and hauled itself up, and a crafter went down with an axe buried in his head, and the thing smashed a fist into the man beside him and dropped him too before a legionary drove a sword into its spine and put a boot on it to work the blade free.

The first orc reached Henri.

He flooded his body with mana — muscle and bone, the burn climbing his arms — and matched its speed just enough. It swung and he ducked under the large axe and put his rapier across its throat as he went past, and he did not stop moving. Two more came at him. He rushed the one on his right and lunged his point into its face, tore the blade free, and swept it back to turn the other one's blow — and a marine's axe was already there, chopping into its leg. Relief hit him like cold water.

Merde, they were strong. Every parry rang up the blade and into his shoulder, and there were so many of them.

"Forward!" he shouted. "Forward — don't let them set!"

For a stretch it was a furious melee to get the line set. The beach under his boots was mud and loose rock that slid when a man set his weight wrong. The orcs had the reach and the weight; his marines had the speed the mana gave them, darting in under the long swings to hamstring and gut and dart back out. It was enough, but barely enough. Henri's arms had gone to lead. A marine near him took a tusk through the cheek from an orc that had lost its axe and started to bite, and he screamed and drove a thumb into its eye until it let go. "Bloody things fight dirty," the man snarled, spitting red. Henri got out between breaths. "So do we!"

An eagle came down out of the sky with a whoosh.

It fell out of the sky on folded wings and raked its talons down a long line of orcs pressing the wall, and they scattered and screamed, and Henri started to cheer it—

A bolt of lightning erupted out of the orc ranks.

It caught the eagle as it climbed away, and the bird shrieked in the air and fell, dead before it hit the earth. Henri wrenched his ruined eyes back along the line the bolt had come from and found the source — an older orc, back from the wall, a headdress on its head and a staff in its hand, and it was still pointing the staff at the empty air where the bird had been.

"No—"

He whirled his rapier over his head, the signal, and stabbed it out straight at the shaman. Threw everything into the gesture so Marchand could not mistake it.

Out on the water, seven ships' ballistae loosed at once.

The first bolt was dead on. It shattered off something a foot from the staff, some kind of barrier that flared and held — and then the rest of them came in around it, and hammered the ground where the shaman stood and obliterated it. Staff, headdress, orc, all of it gone in the churn of thrown shingle and smoke.

A ragged cheer went up the beach — a marine howling that that one was for the bird — and Henri cheered with them.

The orcs began to chant.

It came up out of them low and guttural, the same words over and over, the same chant he'd heard on the water when they'd killed the last one on Tomas's deck, and Henri's blood went cold because he knew what it did.

The orc in front of him got faster.

Its blade came down faster than he could answer, and he got his rapier up a fraction late and the iron slammed into his shoulder. His arm dropped, useless, screaming.

It should have taken the arm off. It should have killed him. The only reason it didn't was the armor the System had rewarded him with when he finished his grail quest. He stifled the groan behind his teeth, poured mana into his blade in his good hand, and swept it through the orc's sword and on into its throat before it could bring the weapon back.

Mon dieu, the arm. He couldn't feel the fingers. He tucked it against his ribs and kept moving, because the other choice was to stop, and stopping was dying.

He staggered clear, cradling the dead arm, and looked up the beach.

A hundred meters off, past the churn, there was a knot of orcs packed tight around one that was bigger than all of them — as big as the warleader from the trial, a full head over the rest, ringed by a guard so thick and so heavy Henri's stomach dropped just looking at it. Higher-tier. He could see it in how his own people bounced off them.

He turned to signal Marchand for the ballista again — and saw the ships.

Orcs were swarming the beached fleet from somewhere down the strand, up over the rails his people had just come off, a second wave falling on the Souverain and the ships beside her.

A fresh mob of them, wet from swimming the wrecks or straight off a hull run up the strand, and the only ones back there to meet them were his gunners.

"Merde," he said as he brushed the blood out of his mustache. "We have to kill their leader and break their organization. There's nothing else."

He fumbled a health potion out of his coat one-handed, bit the cork, and drank it. The bone in his shoulder ground and knit, and the arm came back to him. He found the marine centurion — Roque — a few paces off in the churn, hacking an orc off a downed man, and grabbed him.

"We have to kill their leader!" He pointed up the beach at the knot. "That one — the big one, in the middle of the guard. Get me to him!"

The centurion followed his arm to the hundred meters of orcs and the wall of elite around the warlord, and his face fell. He knew exactly what Henri was asking. He spat a mouthful of blood onto the stones and looked at it a breath longer. "Straight through the big bastard's whole honor guard. To get at the big bastard." He said it flat, like a man reading out a bad bill. "Course it is. Aye, my lord!" And he turned and started grabbing men out of the fight, bawling names, pulling a spearhead together out of nothing.

His people were barely holding. He could see it everywhere he looked — the walls, the ships, both, the orcs still making ground even as they died for it. Killing them cost too much. There were too many.

From the top of the wall a jet of fire swept out and washed across a knot of orcs that had gained the rampart, and they burned, and some threw themselves off the wall to get away from it, screaming.

"Yes!" Henri shouted. "Yes — burn them!" He had no idea what crafter did that, but he needed more.

"Whoever that is, I'm marrying them!" a marine bawled, hauling his axe out of something. 

He got his rapier flat across his knee and pulled the little vial Harold had given him — the blade-coating. He poured it down the steel, and it shimmered as it turned silver along the edge and clung.

A rapier and a bottle of Harold's chemistry against a monster twice his size. Villeneuve would have laughed himself sick. Henri found he could almost laugh too.

"I'll only get one good strike with this," he told the centurion, "so we make it count — we make it count!" He pulled a fistful of Finn's explosive potions from his coat, the high-yield ones, better than anything the alchemy college trained its students on and would issue to the Legion, and he weighed them in his good hand.

The centurion had his wedge. Shields to the front, a blunt iron point of them aimed at the warlord's knot.

"PUSH!" the centurion roared.

The shields slammed forward together and barely moved the orcs an inch, but they moved them — boots skidding on wet shingle and worse, every man in the front rank driving off the man braced behind him — and swords stabbed out through the gaps into orc flesh, death and screaming, and the shields snapped back before the counterblows could land. An iron bar came down on the second shield in the line, split it, and broke the arm behind it; the man dropped, and the man behind him stepped over him into the gap without being told.

"That all you've got, you pig-faced sacks of shit?" Roque bawled it into their faces, spit flying. "My gran shoves harder getting up from her chair!"

"PUSH!"

Again, and more orcs went down, and an orc that tried to leap the shield line took an arrow in midair from somewhere in the wedge and dropped into it. They ground forward a body length. Two.

An orc hooked a hand over the top rim of a shield, dragged it down, and buried a cleaver in the marine behind it before three blades found its wrist and its throat. The marine dropped and did not get up, and the line closed over the hole he left as if he'd never stood there.

"SHORT CHARGE!"

Every legionary and marine in the wedge flooded blade and body with mana at once, and they turned from men into gods of war — moving faster than orcs, blades biting clean through arms and necks and ironwood hafts — and for those few seconds they were gods on that beach, killing where they liked, and the orcs died in front of them like wheat. Then the mana guttered, and they pulled back and locked the shields again, panting.

Up in the knot, the warlord turned its head and watched them do it. Interested now.

A horn sounded off to the right.

Teams of them came out of the flank and threw themselves into the orcs at the wall — adventurers, and their armor caught the grey light strange, hard and scaled. Thresher King scales. Orc blades came down on them and skated off, bounced, and the adventurers cut deeply into the orc lines like the blows didn't reach them.

One of them took an axe across the chest that should have folded him in half and only rocked back a step, then opened the orc that swung it from hip to shoulder. Down the line, a marine watched it happen and laughed, half-mad. "Where do I get me one of them coats!"

"That's it," Henri breathed. "That's it—"

The wedge shoved him the last of the way close. He was almost on the knot now, close enough to throw, and he threw — an explosive potion arced over the shields and into the packed guard and popped, and a leg came off one orc, and it went down howling. He threw another. An arm. Again, and again, chaos boiling through the knot, orcs stumbling into each other, the tight guard coming loose.

"SHORT CHARGE!"

This time he went with them. He threw everything he had left into his body, all of it, and ran with the wedge as it broke into the loosened knot — but these were not the orcs on the beach. These were the warlord's own, a full tier up, and even mana-charged his people's blades hung up in them, stuck, failing to cut clean. It turned into a grinding, screaming press, orc and man chest to chest, and Henri ducked and slid and weaved through the middle of it toward the big one.

The warlord watched him come.

Something cold went through Henri when he saw it looking at him, just watching him thread the melee toward it, waiting. He faked right, cut hard left, and threw his mana-coated dagger for its face.

It brought a hand up to swat the blade and the dagger went into its palm to the hilt.

Henri smiled and darted in under the pinned hand and lunged the coated rapier for its throat — the one strike, the guaranteed one, everything on it—

The warlord's blade came up faster than anything that size had a right to move, caught his rapier and threw it high and wide, and its other hand — dagger still through the palm — balled into a fist and punched him full in the face.

The beach went white. He was in the air, then he was in the melee on his back with orcs stepping over him, his nose broken and folded, blood pouring, stars swarming his ruined eyes.

"TO THE LORD!" The centurion's voice, far away and cracking. "RECOVER THE LORD — TO HIM!"

Hands got him under the arms and hauled him up out of the churn. His legs didn't want it. Everything hurt. A marine had him on one side and the centurion had him on the other, and the centurion's face was gone grey with more than blood.

"Sir, we must fall back!" He had to shout it against the chant. Around them the legionaries were dying — the higher-tier orcs killing them faster than they could answer, the whole push coming apart. "My lord, we can't take him — we fall back, or we all die here!"

"No—" Henri got it out around the blood. He spat a mouthful of it. "We lose if we don't kill this orc. There's no falling back to. We do it now."

Up the beach, the warlord had waded into the fight itself now, and it was killing his people the way a man kills flies, one and two at a stroke, and every one it dropped the orcs around it chanted louder.

His soul got quiet and firm. The orc had to die. He was going to die making it happen, and he found he was at peace with that. It struck him distant and strange that this might be the only decision in either of his lives he'd ever been fully at peace with, and that had been entirely, only his decision.

"Get me close," he shouted.

The centurion closed his eyes. For a second he just stood there with them shut in the middle of the slaughter, and Henri watched the good man understand. Then he opened them and nodded.

"Aye, my lord."

He turned and threw his head back and roared it. "FOR THE EMPIRE!"

And it went up around them, ragged and furious off bloody men who had nothing left — "For the empire!" — and they flooded their blades with mana one more time and hit the orcs and fought them evenly, hauling a lane open through the press toward the big one.

They opened it with their bodies. Roque was at the front of it, roaring, taking a cut across the scalp that sheeted his face red and not slowing for it, and two marines went down on either side of him to widen the gap a body at a time.

Henri ran up it.

He used everything he had left. Everything he'd thought he had left, and then more than that, dredged up from somewhere under the exhaustion and the broken bones. The wind off the water cut his ruined face, and he barely felt it. He hopped a dead legionary. He planted a boot on the shoulder of a dead orc and used it as a step and threw himself up and out, off the ground entirely, straight at the warlord's head as it wrenched its blade out of another of his people—

He would never know how he reached it. Maybe it hadn't thought he could move that fast — not after he saw how he moved earlier. Maybe it simply hadn't looked. But he connected. His rapier went into the side of its face and punched out the other side, and he ripped the blade back out through its mouth and hit the beach beyond it and rolled and came up with nothing left in the tank. He was empty.

But he'd killed it. He'd killed the orc.

The warlord turned its head and looked at him.

And it smiled. Wide, split-faced, a grin like the Joker's, blood sheeting off both cheeks where his blade had gone in one cheek and out the other. He'd missed.

The ice came into Henri's veins, and his heart dropped straight through the bottom of him.

"For the empire," he whispered.

The warlord's blade came down, and he knew there was no dodging it.