Flint and Mirror by John Crowley

Author:John Crowley [Crowley, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

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For self-defense, and to overawe the defenses of a harbor or a roundship, the Richard carried a small array of long guns in the bow (tall ships could set their guns on a deck below, but a galley had no room for that). Here was a black wrought-iron verso bound in iron rings, two small cast-bronze Spanish morteretes that flung scattershot, and a long half-cannon also of bronze, the biggest of the four and set in the center, like a tall man with smaller friends around him. They were mounted on swivels, to raise and lower them and swing port to starboard when needed. The bronze half-cannon was covered with raised decoration, twisting dragons and sea-monsters, coats of arms, asterisks. Cormac, rushing back and forth along the crowded gangway between the oarsmen’s benches on Queen Gráinne’s errands, couldn’t help stopping to regard them, all asleep, awaiting their time to be awakened. The cannoneer and his gunners tended to them as to favored children, wiping them with oiled rags for the salt, counting over the stone balls and the iron balls in their different stacks. The kegs of powder that would bring them to life were brought up only when an encounter was imminent.

Cormac’s fascination with the guns was clear to the gunners, who allowed him up to watch. He kept his hands clasped behind him, unworthy to touch them. He listened, trying to pierce the gunners’ thick language by mere attention, watching their gestures. He knew—the Queen had told him—that the guns were of most use to overawe and threaten, and out of many voyages the Richard had only fired at a ship twice. Three times. Maybe it had been four, but always and only when it appeared that the roundship they planned to board and discuss terms with had flung open its gun-deck portals and like the snouts of black pigs the guns had poked out. Then the Richard would fall back, allow the prey to fly ahead: but only till the groaning oarsman brought the galley up to the roundship’s unarmed stern, and the cannoneer let fly, one, three, five, and the bronze-man last with the largest ball, splintering timbers. Rather than take the chance of being sent to the bottom, the ship would cease to run, and when the galley came up alongside her again and the armed pirates had clambered over the rails, then Queen Gráinne with two pistols in her belt would be heaved up and on board the ship, to call a halt to murdering, and invite the captain to a conference.

How Cormac longed to see it.

The Richard and other ships of the O’Malleys rarely went far out; high seas could swamp a low-lying galley, the storms of the open Atlantic were fierce, the necessity of more provisions left less room for anything else. The masters and navigators were skilled and wise enough in home waters, but lacked the seamanship that could take a galley out to India or to Atlantis in the west, and safe home again.

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