The Shadows of God - J. Gregory Keyes [71]
“You sayin’ t'ey will win this.”
“I'm saying we can only hold out for so long, but the longer the better. Are you good for it?”
“T'at I am, mad General,” Unoka said.
Satisfied, Oglethorpe nodded, then stared back out over the river, waiting for the light, hoping that there would be no mist.
They fired their first shots an hour later, letting loose with the eighteen pounders. The big guns roared like titans and exhaled a black brimstone fog, snapping the brittle morning. A thousand cormorants lifted in a cloud from the trees, and the air itself felt as if it had cracked.
By then they could see what Azilia's Hammer was up against: two steam galliots and a line of barges chained together. They could never have made it through, not even with what the men had begun to call “Oglethorpe's luck” and every gun blazing.
Every shot from the eighteen pounders fell short.
“Raise elevations,” Oglethorpe said quietly. Behind him, the fort was still oddly silent. He had expected a quicker response—but then, it had only been seconds, hadn't it? The clock chiming in his chest said hours.
They fired again, and one shot from this volley struck the barge chain dead center. A plume of water and black smoke kicked up. “Put the other guns at that range,” Oglethorpe commanded. “Damn, but I wish their fervefactum still worked.”
“No, sir,” Parmenter explained. “The Spanish got that in Queen Anne's war with their seeking cannon, and it was never replaced.”
“Maybe the redcoats or Russians replaced it.”
“Maybe. But ‘tis an obsolete weapon.”
“That might be just the sort of thing they would put in a place like this, if they had it. Take some men down, Mr. Parmenter. It should be in that wall by the water, yes? The demilune?”
“That's where it was, Margrave. But you'll need me up here.”
As if to prove his point, a sudden pattering of small-weapons fire started up.
“If they've a fervefactum in place, we can boil the whole channel. It's worth a look, Mr. Parmenter.”
“Aye.”
Oglethorpe then turned to see what was happening on his side of the wall, as the guns again shouted their tuneless anthems.
The gate to the bastion on the spur still held firm, which meant their attackers had to come along the walls. Until they pulled up guns big enough to blow the gate in, Oglethorpe and his men were the Greeks at Thermopylae, able to defend against a few at a time from a position of strength. When the gates went down, they would meet the same fate as those brave Athenians. He looked back down at the entrance to the sound. His artillerymen had truly found their range, now, and the blockade was suffering. Of course, there were surely underwater boats involved, and somewhere out there was a fleet poised to sink King Charles and all of his men in one fell stroke. Even if Azilia's Hammer got through this, she still had much to brave. But she was at least invisible now, when underwater.
The fighting on the walls was stepping up. His men had thrown up shelters of planking around the small guns, but it wasn't much. And where the hell was Unoka?
Then a shadow fell across him, and a chill ran through his bones. It was one of the flying ships, the bird-shaped ones, and it heralded its coming by blowing six of his men and two eighteen pounders off the wall.
“And now the fight really begins,” he murmured. Drawing his kraftpistole, he ran along the wall, trying to get as close to the flying thing as he could. Below, something thudded against the gate.
In the middle heavens, three armies of angels clashed: the dark, strange forces from the forest, hidden by a mist; the bright avenging cherubim of Adrienne's son; and her own pitiful array.
Through the clash, through the ferments of shattering matter and dissolving spirit, she saw Nicolas, and he was dying. His forces were collapsing around him, and fire