A Mighty Fortress

by David Weber

  “It may have something to do with those schooners yesterday, My Lord,” Taibahld said dryly, and Harpahr snorted.

  The humor in that snort was minimal. He’d found himself wishing more than once—in fact, he doubted there’d been a single half hour during this en-tire miserable, interminable trek in which he hadn’t wished—that Captain General Maigwair had decided against lumbering him with his Harchongese “allies.” Their miserable seamanship, lack of discipline, and prickly self-importance would have made them a questionable asset at the best of times; the fact that the majority of their ships were completely or almost completely unarmed only made bad worse. Even one of the Charisian schooners could strike at an unarmed galleon with impunity, and the handful of armed, wretchedly handled Harchongese galleons were woefully inadequate to fend them off. Which was why Harpahr had been forced to detach an entire squadron of his own galleons to do the job for them.

  Maybe we can convince Sun Rising to sell his ships to Desnair after we reach Iythria?he wondered wistfully. Jahras isn’t exactly a brilliant master of the seaways, but he’s got to be better than the Harchongese! And the whole idea was to get Desnairian guns put aboard them because their own foundries weren’t up to the task. . . . Surely I can convince Vicar Allayn we ought to put Desnairian crews aboard to make sure the guns actually get used eventually!

  “I wonder when the Charisians are going to stop dancing and actually attack, My Lord,” Taibahld said in a considerably more somber tone. He waved his chocolate cup to windward, where a trio of those omnipresent, maddeningly maneuverable Charisian schooners paced Harpahr’s formation. “I admit it’s irritating when the schooners dart in, but Cayleb can’t really think they’re going to do any sort of significant damage.”

  “Not as long as our formation holds,” Harpahr agreed. “But remember what it was like in the Passage of Storms. If those schooners had turned up then ...”

  He let his voice trail off, and shrugged, and Taibahld nodded.

  “I understand what you’re saying, My Lord. But unless another gale makes up—which it could, in these waters, at this time of year—it’s unlikely we’ll get scattered again. Cayleb’s too smart to be counting on something like that, and he’s running out of time. Once we get through the Tarot Channel and Jahras sorties to meet us, it’ll be too late. Unless he wants to wade into all of us, at any rate!”

  It was Harpahr’s turn to nod. He and Taibahld had discussed this very point often enough, and he knew the flag captain was right. If Cayleb of Charis didn’t strike soon, he’d lose the opportunity completely.

  “Well, according to our latest dispatches, he’s still blockading the Howard Passage,” the admiral general pointed out now. “I know anything from Jahras is at least two or three five- days out- of- date by the time it gets to us, semaphore or no semaphore, but even allowing for that, the majority of Cayleb’s strength still has to be south of us.” Harpahr grimaced. “I suppose it’s possible he really is going to let us catch him between us and the Desnairian coast.”

  “No, My Lord, he’s not,” Taibahld disagreed, respectfully but firmly. “I’m astonished he’s spent so long off Desnair already, but he’ll never let us pin him against the coast. You’re probably right that he’s still south of us, but in that case, my money’s on his sailing to meet us somewhere inside the Tarot Channel itself. He’s going to be badly outnumbered what ever happens, and if Vicar Allayn’s little sleight- of- hand worked, he may have diverted a sizable portion of his total strength to Chisholm and Corisande. In that case, he’s going to be outnumbered very badly, and he may figure engaging us in the Channel would constrict our movements enough to offset some of that. But, one way or the other, he’ll hit us before we reach the Gulf of Mathyas. Either that, or else he’s going to realize we’re too strong for him to challenge at sea and concentrate on getting out of the way and then defending his own harbors, instead.”

  Harpahr raised one eyebrow, but he didn’t dispute Taibahld’s analysis. First, because it made sense. But secondly, because Taibahld had demonstrated to Harpahr’s satisfaction that he had a superior grasp of both tactical and strategic implications. In many ways, the bishop felt Taibahld would have made a better admiral general than he did. Unfortunately, the upper- priest lacked the seniority for that assignment, and Harpahr considered himself extraordinarily lucky to have him for an adviser. And a teacher, really, the bishop admitted to himself.

  “Well,” it was Harpahr’s turn to indicate the watching schooners with a flick of his head, “at least we can be pretty sure Cayleb’s going to know where to find us when he wants us.”

  .II.

  HMS Ahrmahk, 58,

  Gulf of Tarot,

  and

  Imperial Palace,

  Cherayth,

  Kingdom of Chisholm

  “...where to find us when he wants us.”

  Bryahn Lock Island snorted as the parasite perched on Admiral General Harpahr’s shoulder transmitted his conversation to him in real time.

  “Knowing where to find you’s never been the problem,” he muttered in the general direction of Harpahr’s fleet, and heard someone else’s snort—even harsher than his own—in his earplug.

  “True,” Cayleb Ahrmahk said from Prince Tymahn’s Suite in snowy Chisholm. At the moment, he was the next best thing to eight thousand miles away from, and ten hours behind, Lock Island’s flagship. “I only wish it was me who knew where to find him. Or get to him, anyway,” he added.

  “What?” Lock Island smiled thinly out over another stretch of the blue water Harpahr was even then considering from his own flagship. “Should I take that to indicate a certain lack of confidence in the command team you do have on the spot, Your Majesty?”

  “Of course not!” Cayleb chuckled at the humor in his cousin’s voice, but his own tone turned considerably more serious. “If I can’t be there myself, I can’t think of any two people I’d rather have standing in for me. It’s just that I hate asking it of you and the men when I can’t be there with you.”

  “I understand,” Lock Island said quietly, and he did. Just as he understood that being able to watch everything happen even as it did was going to make things infinitely worse for his emperor and empress.

  “We’ll be praying for you, Bryahn,” Sharleyan said softly, as if she’d read his mind across all those weary miles of stormy saltwater.

  “Thank you.” Lock Island smiled again, whimsically. “It can’t hurt, anyway!”

  “Actually, I think it might help a great deal,” Maikel Staynair said from his office in his Tellesberg Palace. “Of course, it’s my job to think that way, I suppose.”

  Lock Island could almost see the twinkle in the archbishop’s eye, and he shook his head.

  There was a curious parallelism with his adversary, he reflected. Both of them were standing on the sternwalks of their flagships, looking east, thinking and planning. Unlike Harpahr, however, Lock Island knew there were barely fifty miles of water between those two flagships. He knew exactly what his enemy’s formation was, and he’d sat in invisibly when Harpahr and Taibahld discussed the course they intended to steer. As the admiral general said, he knew exactly where to find him, and exactly what he’d face when he did.

  The one thing Idon’t know is what’s going to happen when I do.

  “Show me the map, Owl,” he requested.

  “Yes, High Admiral,” the AI said, and a chart of the Gulf of Tarot and surrounding landmasses projected itself across Lock Island’s contact lenses.

  It hadn’t changed since the last time he’d checked, but he gazed thoughtfully at the icon representing Rock Point’s ships. They were coming up fast from the southeast under every stitch of canvas, and his eyebrows rose as he glanced at the information sidebars Owl updated continuously. Those had changed, at least a little, and he frowned as he contemplated the new data.

  The wind had strengthened more—or, at least, more rapidly—for Rock Point’s ships than originally projected. Owl’s present
estimate was that the twelve galleons would arrive almost four hours earlier than projected. And that meant....

  “I wonder...” the high admiral murmured out loud.

  “You wonder what?” There was something remarkably like suspicion in Cayleb’s voice, and Lock Island smiled.

  “Domynyk’s going to get here sooner than I’d anticipated,” he replied. “And that weather front’s moving in from the east more quickly than anticipated, as well. If the current projections hold up, and if Domynyk and I were to shift our rendezvous point a few miles, I think we might be able to come in right on the front’s heels.”

  “That,” Cayleb said in the tone of a man whose suspicions have just been confirmed, “sounds like a really bad idea. Sailing into the middle of a fleet that outnumbers you four- to- one in the middle of the night—in the rain— strikes me as a wonderful recipe for disaster.”

  “Odd,” Rock Point put in from his own flagship, still two hundred miles from HMS Ahrmahk. “If you and Gwylym had discussed your tactical notions with me before Crag Reach, that’s exactly what I would’ve said then. Oh, except that I probably would’ve added that you were planning on sailing in through a narrow channel you couldn’t even see in the middle of a full gale. Obviously a far better and more maturely considered battle plan all round, Your Majesty.”

  “The situation was entirely different, and you know it,” Cayleb riposted. “Thirsk’s fleet’s morale was already broken, and I had a huge firepower advantage. Not only that, he was anchored! I had every maneuver advantage there was, and his people were more than half- defeated before we ever fired the first shot! You may have noticed there’s just a bit of difference between the Dohlarans’ condition then and what Harpahr and Taibahld have accomplished with their ships!”

  “That’s true,” Lock Island acknowledged. “By the same token, though, Thirsk wasn’t handicapped by having fifty unarmed Harchongese galleons hanging on his coattails. Not only that, Harpahr’s formation’s spread out between six columns—seven, counting the squadron he’s got covering that gaggle of Sun Rising’s. And I don’t care how well he’s managed to drill his crews, none of them will expect a night action. You know how confusing and terrifying that can be, Cayleb—you counted on it at Crag Reach. And however much training they’ve done, our people are a lot more experienced, so any confusion’s going to work a lot more in our favor than theirs.”

  “The only way you’re going to stand a chance against that many enemy ships is to maintain tight tactical control,” Cayleb argued, his voice flat, “and every one of your signal systems depend on people being able to see them. If you lose cohesion, if your formation comes apart in the middle of all those Church galleons, you lose, Bryahn. I don’t care how good our people are. I’ll even concede that you’ll give better than you get, but in the end, you’ll lose.”

  “If he manages to maintain his tactical control, we lose anyway, because we won’t be able to get deep enough to break him up,” Lock Island replied. “We can nibble around the edges, but we can’t stop him without ripping the brain—and the heart—out of his fleet, and you know it. For that, we have to penetrate his formation.”

  “And there’s another point, Cayleb,” Rock Island said. “Ehdwyrd only had time to manufacture a couple thousand shells, and the gun crews haven’t had the time—or the spare ammunition—to train with them.” The baron shrugged where he sat in his day cabin’s comfortable armchair. “We’ve dry fired and rehearsed, but they’ve never actually used them, and despite the Navy’s confidence in Ahlfryd, they’re going to be a little . . . tentative, at first. We’re going to have to get in really close to make them count, and I’ve only got about a hundred and seventy in each ship. That’s less than eight broadsides for each of them. So if we can’t make each of those broadsides count, we lose. And if we have to spar around the fringes, fight our way through just to get to decisive range in the first place, we may lose one or more of the shell- armed ships on our way in. Worse, we may have to use shellfire to get inside in the first place, in which case the people we’re really after may have time to figure out what’s coming before we hit them with it.”

  “But—” Cayleb began.

  “They’re right, Cayleb,” a deep voice said quietly. The emperor’s head turned, eyes sweeping towards the door beyond which Merlin Athrawes stood guard over Prince Tymahn’s Suite.

  “They’re right,” the seijin repeated, subvocalizing over his own built- in com. “They can’t win this one by just killing ships; they can’t kill enough of them. They have to defeat the fleet’s cohesion, and to do that, they have to get in close. Worse, Harpahr’s signal system may not be as good or as flexible as ours, but it’s good enough for him to mass his squadrons if he’s able to see Bryahn and Domynyk coming. For that matter, there’s going to be enough gunsmoke once close action is joined it would be almost impossible for Bryahn to pass signals reliably, anyway. The fact that he and Domynyk, at least, will be able to see exactly what’s going on will offer a significant advantage over Harpahr, but they won’t be able to give detailed orders to anyone else, what ever happens. Better for them to go in in the dark, when the other side can’t exercise any sort of tight control and the confusion lets us maximize our ships’ individual superiority.”

  Cayleb sat silent for several endless seconds, and his wife’s hand reached out across the bassinet between them. She laid it on his knee, and he looked at her quickly.

  “Let them do it their way,” she said very softly. “They’re the best you’ve got, they’re the ones actually on the spot, and they deserve for you to have enough confidence in them to let them fight their battle the way they think best. I know it’s not easy for you, and I know why, but let them do it their way.”

  Cayleb inhaled deeply, and then, slowly, he nodded. “All right, Bryahn. Domynyk. We’ll do it your way,” the Emperor of Charis said quietly.

  .III.

  Off the Windmoor Coast,

  Gulf of Tarot

  Ahrnahld Taibahld grimaced as a fresh wall of tropical rain swept across NGS Sword of God’s poop deck.

  Rain in the Gulf of Tarot wasn’t like rain in more northern waters. It didn’t start gradually, there was no gentle warning. A handful of enormous raindrops smacked into his already- streaming oilskins, like cavalry hooves clattering down a stone street. Then, almost before his mind had time to register their impact, a solid wave of water pounded down. Visibility dropped instantly to almost nothing. Of course, visibility had already been limited at the moment, given the overcast night’s total lack of moon or stars, but he could barely see the glow of the binnacle through the deluge, and when he looked down, he saw what looked like ground mist where splintered raindrops bounced back up off the deck planking.

  Me and my wiseass comments about bad weather,he reflected.

  Still, compared to the Passage of Storms, this wasn’t bad weather. Not really. The wind had risen—enough for the fleet to furl its topgallants—but it came steadily out of the east, without rage or violence. It had veered almost two full points, to broad on Sword of God’s beam on her present heading, but the sea’s motion hadn’t caught up with the wind shift. The waves continued to come in under her quarter, imparting an uncomfortable corkscrew motion. There was no indication of squalls, no thunder, no lightning flashing on the horizon, however.

  Not even Sun Rising’s fumble- fists are going to have any trouble out ofthis kind of “storm,” he thought, then reached out and rapped his knuckles on the wooden fife rail. Let’s not tempt fate, Ahrnahld, he reminded himself sardonically.

  Bryahn Lock Island tucked both loaded, double- barreled pistols into their holster loops under his oilskins, then returned the pistol case to his desk drawer. Keelhaul sat beside him, and the big dog whined softly, as if he could read his master’s mind.

  Which he probablycan, after this long, the high admiral reflected.

  He went down on one knee, putting an arm around the rottweiler’s massive neck. Then he straightened an
d slapped the enormous dog on the shoulder.

  “Time to go below,” he said out loud. Keelhaul cocked his head, ears lifted, and whined again, louder. “No arguments,” Lock Island said more sternly. “There’s not a damn thing you can do up here. Now go with Henrai!”

  Keelhaul gave him one more piteous look. Then the big dog’s ears drooped and he heaved unhappily to his feet and crossed slowly to Lieutenant Commander Tillyer, toenails clicking on the deck planks, audible even above the sound of rain drumming on the cabin skylights.

  It wasn’t really a lieutenant commander’s job to take a pet below for safety, but Keelhaul and Tillyer were old friends. The dog was a lot more likely to actually go—and, even more importantly, to stay— if Tillyer saw to his incarceration in the bosun’s storeroom well below Ahrmahk’s waterline. Given how hard it was to actually sink a wooden warship, that was one of the safest places in the entire ship, and Lock Island felt grateful it was so as Keelhaul gave him one more reproachful, over- the- shoulder glance, sighed heavily, and followed Tillyer out of the cabin.

  “I trust the High Admiral won’t take this wrongly, but it’s always reassuring to see the way all about you leap instantly to obey your commands.”

  Lock Island turned, cocking his head at Sylmahn Baikyr, his flag captain. Baikyr was small, compact, dark- haired and dark- eyed, and an elegant dresser. It was said (probably accurately) that he’d spent more than a master’s mate’s yearly salary on his dress uniform.

  He was also competent, smart, and as close to absolutely fearless as any man Lock Island had ever met. In fact, he reminded the high admiral a great deal of a younger version of Rayjhis Yowance.

  Well, I should sure as hellhope he’s all those good things! Lock Island thought with a mental snort. The Navy’s high admiral isn’t supposed to choose flag captains by picking names out of a hat!

  “I’m glad you find it reassuring, Sylmahn,” he said. “And considering how many years you’ve known Keelhaul, I’m sure you understand that getting him to do anything he doesn’t want to do is akin to carrying a thirty- pounder from one end of the Tellesberg waterfront to the other on your back . . . only harder.” He grimaced. “Trust me, winning that particular battle of wills is going to make kicking Harpahr’s arse look like a walk in the park!”