A Mighty Fortress

by David Weber

  “My point is that we’ve been guilty of underestimating them. We know they turned Tarot upside down trying to figure out how their plans leaked before Armageddon Reef. We also know they never found an answer, since Tarot didn’t actually have anything to do with it. But what should have occurred to us when we were analyzing their ‘cover plan’ is that eventually they were going to have to assume we have some fiendishly effective spy network in place. Obviously, that’s exactly what they did . . . as the fact that they were bothering with a cover plan at all should damned well have told someone as clever as I’m supposed to be!”

  The portly little prince sounded about as bitter as Merlin had ever heard him, and his self- anger was painfully apparent when he paused for a deep breath.

  “As I say, we should have realized they were going to think of something like this,” he went on in a more controlled tone. “And, given all the coded messages all of them have passed through the semaphore at one time or another, they have to be aware someone else could be sending coded messages under the guise of simple commercial transactions or personal letters. The only way they could stop that would be to shut down all secular use of the semaphore, and that would cause all sorts of dislocations, not to mention costing them a hefty chunk of their revenue. Not only that, but once they start thinking in that direction, it’s going to occur to them that there could be other ways to cobble up an alternative communications system even if they did shut down the semaphore stations. Like carrier wyverns.”

  He paused again, and Cayleb snorted. Back when Prince Nahrmahn of Emerald had been conspiring to assassinate King Haarahld and Crown Prince Cayleb of Charis, his chief agent in Tellesberg had been one of the kingdom’s most prestigious providers of hunting and homing wyverns. Which had just happened to provide Nahrmahn with a swift, clandestine means of communication between Charis and Emerald.

  “If they’ve decided we do have spies in the Temple Lands, and if they’ve accepted that those spies can get information to us as quickly—or even just almost as quickly—as they can send messages using the semaphore, then it was only a matter of time before they started taking precautions. That’s what happened here. They told their captains to prepare to sail west expecting any of our spies who intercepted those orders to send them along to us, while all the time they were planning on changing their captains’ orders at the last minute.”

  “I think Prince Nahrmahn’s right, Your Majesties,” Rahzhyr Mahklyn offered from his apartment in Tellesberg Palace. “It makes sense, anyway.”

  “Maybe it does,” Merlin acknowledged. “And maybe that will make me feel better about the way they snookered us someday. It doesn’t help much when it comes to deciding what to do about it, though.”

  “No, you’ve got a point there,” Cayleb agreed in a much grimmer tone. “Frankly, there’s not much we can do,” Lock Island said bleakly. “Kohdy Nylz and your reinforcements are barely a five- day behind you and Sharleyan, and the prevailing winds are out of the west. Even if we could communicate with him instantly—and explain how the hell we’d done it—he’d still need at least a month, more probably seven or eight five- days, to get back here.”

  “Thanks to my eagerness to get him started early, you mean,” Cayleb said. “If you don’t want Merlin kicking himself over things that aren’t his fault, don’t kick yourself over things that aren’t your fault,” his cousin told him tartly. “Given what all of us ‘knew,’ you made the right decision. They just—as Merlin said—‘snookered us.’ ” The high admiral chuckled harshly. “Assuming ‘snookered’ means what I think it means!”

  “Well, assuming the orders they’ve sent to Kholman and Jahras aren’t more of Nahrmahn’s ‘disinformation,’ they’re obviously planning on catching you and Domynyk between two forces,” Sharleyan said. “So I’d say the first priority is to make sure they don’t do that.”

  “I could agree with that,” Lock Island said feelingly. “Of course, there is the little problem of how twenty- seven of our galleons fight a hundred and thirty of theirs, even assuming we can engage them without Jahras hitting us from behind,” Rock Point pointed out.

  “Only ninety of them are armed,” Lock Island replied, and Rock Point snorted.

  “All right, how do twenty- seven of our galleons fight ninety of theirs? I’m willing to count one of ours as worth two of theirs, maybe even two and a half. Hell, let’s make it three! But even assuming we turn the northern force back, we’re going to get hurt, Bryahn, and you know it. So what happens if we get whittled down against one force, then get jumped by the other one?”

  “We get hurt badly,” Lock Island said grimly. “And we see to it that they get hurt a hell of a lot worse.”

  “They don’t have a few hundred transports loaded with troops sailing along with them,” Sharleyan pointed out. “Even if they manage to get through to Desnair, they don’t have an army ready to land anywhere.”

  “You’re thinking we could avoid action? Play for time?” Cayleb said. “More or less,” she agreed. “All they can really do is sail around. They certainly can’t invade Old Charis or Emerald—not against the garrisons we’ve got in place with rifles and the new artillery!”

  “The problem is that we can’t afford to let these two forces unite,” Cayleb replied. “They’d have over two hundred galleons in the Gulf of Mathyas. And if they could bring Thirsk and his Dohlarans down around Howard, they’d have three hundred.” He shook his head. “We have to keep them from concentrating.”

  “And let’s not forget Tarot.” Rock Point’s tone was bleak. “You’re probably right that they don’t have the troop strength for a serious landing in Old Charis or Emerald, Your Majesty. Unfortunately, I’m sure they do have enough strength to carry out raids at least as destructive as the ones we carried out in Corisande. And whether they can do that or not, between the seamen and the soldiers they’ve got aboard all those ships, they’ve got more than enough strength to invade Tarot. Gorjah doesn’t have any of the new weapons, and while I don’t think there are as many Tarotisian Temple Loyalists as the Group of Four thinks there are, there are enough to create a genuine civil war if they think the Church is invading. If Clyntahn and Trynair get a couple of hundred galleons into Thol Bay, Tarot’s gone.”

  “Wonderful,” Cayleb sighed.

  “What are your latest numbers on shell production, Ehdwyrd?” Lock Island asked.

  “About what they were when you asked me yesterday,” Ehdwyrd Howsmyn replied from his bedroom. His normally affable voice was considerably more tart than usual. “Effectively zero, in other words. We’re still setting up the production line, Bryahn. You know that, and—”

  “I’m not criticizing,” Lock Island said quickly. “But with only twenty galleons, we’re going to need an edge if we’re going to stop these bastards.”

  “Well, I’m not going to have the new line up for at least another two five-days.” It was obvious from Howsmyn’s tone that he was kicking himself for not having gotten it up sooner, although given the weather problems he’d faced . . .“Well, you’ve got at least eight five- days before they can reach the Gulf of Tarot,” Rock Point replied. “That’s almost a month and a half, Ehdwyrd!”

  “Yes, it is.” Howsmyn’s tone was suddenly far more thoughtful.

  There was silence for several seconds, then he shrugged.

  “I can go ahead and start making fuses now,” he said. “Once I have the furnaces in and the molds ready to go, I can probably produce about a hundred or a hundred and fifty thirty- pounder shells a day. I might be able to edge that up a little higher if I forget finishing the insides of the shell chambers. In another couple of five- days, I can probably get two more furnaces online, and that will get me up to somewhere around three hundred shells a day. So, figure every-thing works perfectly from this point—which it damned well hasn’t so far!— and I can produce, say, a hundred and twenty- five shells a day for two five- days, and then three hundred a day for another six five- days. Call it a total of
ten thousand.”

  That sounded like an awful lot, Merlin reflected, but it wasn’t really, given the normal ammunition allotments of ICN galleons. The “establishment” was forty rounds of round shot, ten rounds of grapeshot, and five rounds of chain shot per gun. That was almost three thousand rounds for a single fifty- four- gun galleon. Replacing just the round shot in her shot lockers on a one- for- one basis would require the next best thing to twenty- two hundred shells.

  On the other hand, if the other side didn’t anticipate yet another new Charisian weapon, they might well break and run the moment they encountered it.

  And they mightnot, too, he reminded himself grimly. This isn’t going to be like Armageddon Reef or Darcos Sound. These ships are coming directly from Harchong and the Temple Lands themselves, and Mother Church has proclaimed Holy War. Then there’s the little fact that we’ve already been denounced as Shan- wei- worshippers and demon- worshippers by Clyntahn’s propaganda. If we start firing exploding shells at them, that’s only going to confirm Clyntahn’s lies, at least in the short term. And the fact that they’re headed down this way on a jihad against the Powers of Darkness may actually help them take it in stride. ...“Not good enough, I’m afraid,” Cayleb said. Merlin and Sharleyan looked at him, and he shrugged.

  “Ehdwyrd’s estimate is the number of shells he can deliver eight five- days from now. But by that time, they’ll be halfway across the Markovian Sea... and ships sailing from Old Charis at that point won’t possibly be able to intercept them before they’re into the Tarot Channel. We might be able to catch them at the southern end of the Channel, before they cross the Gulf of Math-yas, but we’ll never stop them from getting into Thol Bay, if they decide to do that. And, to be honest, even the chance of intercepting them in the Gulf’s probably no better than even.”

  “We could load them aboard transports and deliver them at sea,” Lock Island said.

  “We could try,” Cayleb conceded, “but we’d run the risk of getting caught by the other side while we were doing it. For that matter, just to get transport galleons to the northern end of the Tarot Channel would take a good four five-days, Bryahn. Which means Ehdwyrd would lose four of the eight five- days he’s planning on. And according to my numbers, that would cost six thousand or so of his total.”

  “Maybe we don’t have any choice but for me to go call on Admiral Nylz the way I did on your father before Darcos Sound,” Merlin said unhappily.

  “Forget it.” Cayleb shook his head. “Father was already at sea against an opponent he knew about. Not only that, but it was reasonable—if risky—for him to adopt the strategy he did, given that he knew I was going to be headed back from Armageddon Reef as quickly as I could. But Kohdy and his entire fleet are headed towards Chisholm to confront a threat there. There is absolutely no logical, reasonable argument he could use to turn the fleet around against his existing orders, even if we were lucky enough for him to take the truth in stride. I think it’s probable he would, as a matter of fact, but that doesn’t change the fact that if we turn him around without a good, solid reason everyone can grasp, no explanation short of demonic—or angelic—intervention could explain to anyone else— including his own officers and men!— why we did it.”

  He was right, Merlin realized.

  “All right,” Lock Island said. “You’re right, Your Majesty. We can’t turn Kohdy around, and we don’t have eight five- days to produce shells and ship them to the fleet. So, the way I see it, we only have one real option.”

  “We have an option? Really?” The humor in Cayleb’s voice was biting but genuine, and the high admiral chuckled harshly.

  “I didn’t say it was a good option,” he pointed out.

  “All right, in that case tell us about this not- so- good option.”

  “The way I see it, we’re going to have to take the pressure off the Desnairians. I don’t want to do that, and if anyone can think of any way we can encourage them to stay home despite Maigwair’s direct orders to sortie, I’ll be delighted to hear about it. In the meantime, though, it’ll be up to me to sail north. I doubt they’re going to just turn around and head home when they see my topsails, but knowing I’m in the area—and not knowing how much of our strength we’ve sent off to Chisholm in response to their ‘disinformation’— they’ll have to regard me as a potentially significant threat, at least initially. I’ll take enough schooners with me to keep them under close observation, try to make them nervous. With a bit of luck, I should at least be able to instill enough caution to slow them down. On the other hand, if they’re feeling frisky and adventurous, I may even be able to tempt them—or some of them, at any rate—into chasing me and draw them off.”

  “And this will achieve exactly what?” Cayleb asked, although his tone suggested he was already following his cousin’s thinking.

  “While I’m doing that, Domynyk will sail for home. We’ll be in touch by com, and we’ll both know where the Church fleet is. He’ll load however many shells Ehdwyrd’s able to manufacture before he has to pull out. Then, assuming the other side’s stayed concentrated and I’m still shadowing them, he’ll sail to rendezvous with me. If they’ve divided and sent some of them to pursue me, he’ll ignore them and go for the main fleet. He’ll be badly outnumbered—hell, for that matter we’ll be badly outnumbered if both our forces manage to rendezvous before the battle!— but he should have at least a few thousand shells in his lockers. If he does, and if we can catch them at sea, and if the shells work out as well in practice as Ahlfryd’s tests suggest, and if the other side panics when it realizes what we’re doing to it, we may manage to turn them back.”

  “You do remember how often Father pointed out that a flag officer who builds his strategy based on the assumption that all of it will work the way he expects it to is an idiot, don’t you, Bryahn?”

  “Of course I do. And if I had a choice, I wouldn’t be suggesting anything of the sort this time, either. Unfortunately, I don’t think we do have a choice.”

  “Bryahn’s right, Your Majesty,” Rock Point said. “God only knows how we’re going to convince the Desnairians to stay home, or at least make them hesitant enough to let us deal with the northern fleet first! But this is the only approach I see which could work, no matter how many things may go wrong with it. And there’s this, too, I’m afraid. As long as we can avoid a close action that ends up doing to us what Thirsk did to Gwylym, we’re no worse off if this doesn’t work than we would be if we didn’t try to do anything about it at all.”

  “And if you don’t have enough shells, and if they don’t work the way we expect them to, then just how the hell do you plan to avoid that?” Cayleb demanded. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but my powerful intellect suggests to me that to get into your range of them, you have to come into their range of you. Which means the only way you’re going to find out you don’t have enough shells, or that they don’t work the way we expected them to, is going to put you into exactly that sort of an engagement!”

  “That may be what happens,” Lock Island said quietly. “If it does, though, then it does. And you’ll still have two- thirds of the Navy to come back and do something about it.”

  .II.

  HMS Destiny, 54,

  Off Terrence Point,

  Gulf of Mathyas,

  and

  The Duke of Kholman’s Office,

  City of Iythria,

  Desnairian Empire

  Sir Dunkyn Yairley had always hoped to someday fly his own admiral’s streamer. He hadn’t expected it to come quite this soon, however, or under precisely these circumstances. He stood on HMS Destiny’s quarterdeck, gazing up at that striped strip of steel thistle silk flying from his ship’s foremast, and wondered exactly what the watchers ashore were making of his current antics.

  He turned his gaze aft. Twenty- six galleons followed in Destiny’s wake, each in the severe livery of the Imperial Charisian Navy. Other fleets, other navies, painted their ships in gaudy colors, decorated them with g
old leaf and ornate carvings. Charisian warships were painted in black, the only color they boasted the white stripes, marking the lines of their gunports, and the red-painted lids of the ports themselves. In its own way, it was the most arrogant decoration available, Yairley thought. First, because the Empire was the only navy which painted its ships in that fashion, which made them instantly recognizable at any range. And, secondly, because it was a statement that Charisian seamen needed no ornamentation to overawe any foe.

  Despite the severity of their paint scheme, the ships forging along behind him made a brave show, although it was obvious to any observer that he had rather more of the Imperial Navy’s refitted merchantmen than he might have chosen. On the other hand....He turned his head, gazing out at the second column of mastheads, paralleling his own. A trio of schooners lay between his own column and those distant masts to relay his signals, and he’d kept young Ensign Aplyn- Ahrmahk occupied for the past several hours reporting his observations to them.

  More schooners slid smoothly through the water between him and Terrence Point, and others hovered farther to the northwest, covering the waters between Terrence Point and Howard Island. With the light breeze blowing almost directly into the Howard Passage from the Gulf, the schooners’ speed and ability to work to windward made them ideal for keeping an eye peeled for the Imperial Desnairian Navy.

  Assuming, of course, that the Imperial Desnairian Navy felt adventurous enough to poke its collective nose out of its snug little hidey- hole in the Gulf of Jahras when so much of the Imperial Charisian Navy was obviously waiting—longingly—for it to do precisely that.