Carl had watched the action with manifest intensity. “Some enemy marines have been thwarted for the time being, yet they are still present, a threat waiting for its chance,” he said to Arnapa.
“There are always threats, Carl.”
“You are right, Arnapa. Avoiding and parrying a threat can buy time for victory. Destroying one threat can spend the resources needed for others.”
All this time, there were exchanges of catapult shot between the enemy army and the forts, between the forts and the quimals, and between the quimals and the defending ships. Several other quimals were now afflicted by fires. Many Alliance ships had been set alight, although their crews had planned for this and managed to bring most of the fires under control. However, fires were breaking out all the time in both First Fort and Second Fort and the defenders could not extinguish them as quickly as new fires ignited.
“We have held them up for maybe two hours,” Carl judged as he studied the scene through a telescope mounted on the bulwark of the Battle Deck. “What we need now is a change of wind. If they had to beat to windward against the current, they could only enter the river in such numbers as we could deal with.”
There was no sign of a change in the wind. Carl knew it, and every mariner on board knew that the wind was not going to change until morning at earliest, plenty of time for the quimals to grind their way upstream and repeat their attempt to surround First Fort.
“The southern wing of their formation is not pausing to stay with the other,” Arnapa observed. “They intend to leave their disabled ships behind and come on at us.”
The quimals on the south side of the river, unaffected by the fire boats and less affected by catapult shot from the forts, were still advancing as though nothing had happened. As they moved up the river more quimals were entering the river from the sea.
“Opportunity is hidden amidst danger! We will attack them on their port side as soon as they pass the burning ships,” Carl announced.
As the signals were being sent, Aransette and Norsnette noticed that the ship’s bow had moved fully to southwest, fore-and-aft sails were being hoisted on the other three masts and the anchor was being weighed. They were apprehensive about being sent back to Outer Wall should Carl have decided to take Glorz Glory into battle. Thinking alike, they both moved further out of Carl’s peripheral vision. Meanwhile, Nellinar had silently made his own expulsion more difficult by climbing a ladder. He was now three fathomes higher up the mast.
Soon Glorz Glory was edging downstream and toward the southern bank. Then it tacked to starboard as the breeze sucked the ship toward the leading quimals, still more than a thousand paces away. But it was not Carl’s intention to involve Glorz Glory directly in the battle at this early stage. The enemy’s wedge formation had been disrupted by the fire boats. The burning quimals had created a bottleneck in the river and several quimals had already passed it. Eight Dabbinan ships, having drifted west, close to the north side of the river, almost as far as the first burning quimal, were now tacking to port to aim their rams and forward catapults at any more quimals that might pass the bottleneck to join the leading quimals. Meanwhile, another seven Alliance ships were passing on the port side of Glorz Glory on their way to attack the leading quimals. The rest of the available river fleet was held in reserve with their catapults ready to attack any quimal that might succeed in pushing further upstream. The river was so crowded that neither side could deploy more than a small part of its force at the point of confrontation.
“We must divide them to conquer them,” Carl called out, remembering that others were there to observe and learn.
“And yet they will eventually put out those fires, and more quimals will follow on until we are overwhelmed,” Arnapa said anxiously.
“As usual, you are right, sister. I can’t delay the barrier any longer. We will have to lock our fleet in the river until we find another way of escape. Give the order for the barrier.”
“What is the barrier?” asked Nellinar, who had come back down the ladder and was just a fathome above the Battle Deck.
“You will have to wait and see,” Arnapa said. “It has taken five years to build and was only completed last month. It has not yet been tested. Even if it works, it will take quite some time for it to move into place, and we have a lot of fighting to do before that.”
There was indeed a lot of fighting. Despite the number of Alliance ships nearby, the river was too crowded for them to work together as they might have done at sea, and the sheer size and power of a quimal gave it an advantage in any close encounter. Furthermore, the great catapults in the forts, the greatest danger for a quimal, were busy resisting the enemy army which had launched assaults with renewed ferocity.
Aransette mostly watched the movement of the Alliance cavalry, much closer now that Glorz Glory had moved up. She saw Pretsan in many charges, including three in which he had dismounted (or had been unhorsed) to fight hand-to-hand, seemingly always against more than one opponent. She lost count of the number of times he seemed to receive wounds, yet he always managed to get up when knocked down and somehow to drive off his attackers. Whilst he did not actually kill many of the enemy, he successfully repelled them from the positions he was defending or reinforcing. Of course, many other horsemen in Pretsan’s brigade fought almost as bravely, but Aransette was interested in Pretsan. There were many occasions when she wished she could be there to take care of someone who was about to strike him from behind. Fortunately, he always seemed to become aware of them just in time. More than once his athletic abilities saved his own life as well as the lives of his comrades.
Norsnette was watching Serunipa’s ship. It was in the front of the squadron heading to cut off the leading quimals from those following them. The ship was drawing a covered longboat behind it. She could see a fairly short man step forward to volunteer for some task. As the man turned she recognised that it was Bonmar.
Norsnette watched breathlessly as Bonmar swung along the cable from the ship to the longboat. He went hand over hand until he could cling to the prow of the boat. There the cable had been bent around a cleat and continued across the roof of the cabin to the stern. Bonmar swung his one leg over the side and followed the cable on his stomach to the boat’s tiller. As soon as he had control of the boat’s heading and was satisfied with its speed, he waved to Serunipa who then tacked to starboard, causing Bonmar’s longboat to be swung past on the port side and toward the nearest approaching quimal. As the boat passed its mother ship, Bonmar shook the cable free and tied his end of it around his waist. As he came close enough to the quimal to be reasonably sure that the boat would run up against it, yet not so close that he risked becoming the victim of accurate archery, he lit a fuse from a small lantern stowed near the stern and then dived into the water and began to swim for Serunipa’s ship. Crew on the ship were helping him by hauling in the cable now tied around him. He was halfway back to the ship when he looked around and saw that everything was going wrong.
The advancing quimal was one of the few enemy ships commanded by a life-long mariner, an Arctequan from Port Cankrar. As soon as he saw the longboat approach, he guessed its purpose and ordered a change of course, put into effect by using catapults to shoot cabled anchors to starboard. The quimal, being so large, could not change course much in such a short time; however, it veered enough for Bonmar to see that his longboat would float by harmlessly. He untied the cable from his waist and swam back to the longboat. By the time he arrived, the boat was being showered by a hail of arrows and bolts from the approaching quimal.
Serunipa, seeing what Bonmar was doing, ordered her crew to attack the quimal. Both ships exchanged fiery catapult shot. The greater number and power of the quimal’s catapults were, for the time being, offset by the fact that Serunipa’s ship could make way on the current alone; it already had its sails furled and rigging dowsed with water in preparation for receiving fire bombs. The quimal needed its sails to advance upstream and took some damaging, though not crippling, shot i
n its rigging.
Serunipa’s attack moved the enemy’s attention away from the longboat long enough for Bonmar to slip over the stern and adjust the tiller. But he was now almost against the hull of the quimal and the fuse was seconds from igniting the fuel inside the cabin. Six enemy marines swung down on ropes to the top of the cabin. They were armed to the teeth, each carrying a cutlass in one hand, a club in the other and a vicious knife in his mouth. They came for Bonmar and, more importantly to them, for the fuse.
*
A dragon boat seemed to rise up out of the water, or so it seemed to Bonmar. As soon as Serunipa saw Bonmar turn back to the longboat she instructed her lieutenant to take over while she took to a dragon boat with some marines. They struggled to row with one arm each while holding shields above their heads to ward off the arrows and bolts from above. Serunipa and two of her marines, all heavily armoured (which made falling into the water very tricky), leapt aboard the fire boat and attacked the four of the enemy who were nearest.
Bonmar’s job had been to pilot the boat and then escape, not to fight in hand-to-hand combat. He had brought no weapons with him except his mariner’s knife, of little use against cutlasses. For an instant he reflected on how he, a gentle apprentice brewer, had managed to get himself into such a ridiculously dangerous situation.
He thought he heard a woman’s voice calling to him. It was Norsnette’s voice he heard; but that was impossible, she must be a mile away. He could not make out what he had thought she called, but it somehow reminded him of his wooden leg. He reached behind him and quickly released the stays. Just as the first enemy marine lunged at him with a cutlass, Bonmar punched his powerful arms forward: one held his knife; the other held his wooden leg like a club. The leg was not just made of wood; it had a system of iron plates, hinges and bolts. It was on one of these pieces of iron that the first attacker’s cutlass was turned aside before a swift twist of Bonmar’s wrist brought the heaviest end of the leg into the side of the bewildered marine’s head, knocking him overboard. The power and swiftness of Bonmar’s reaction had amazed even Bonmar and he now felt a surge of the old fury and anger he had felt when he fought and killed the shark that took his leg. He pulled out the tiller and used it as a crutch as he met his other attacker halfway. After knocking the man unconscious, he rolled onto the cabin top and across it to help Serunipa. He rolled into the legs of an enemy marine who was just about to cut down Serunipa, but Serunipa then returned the favour by cutting off the sword arm of another who was about to thrust his cutlass into Bonmar’s back.
The whole sequence of events, from the moment Bonmar rolled back into the fire boat until he jumped into Serunipa’s dragon boat with her and her two wounded marines, lasted no more than half a minute. Then the flame from the fuse ignited a barrel of oil within the cabin of the longboat, and the fire rapidly spread to the ramshackle collection of flammable materials there. Flames burst out of the cabin and ignited firework rockets, even as a score more enemy marines had swung down into the boat.
Bonmar could feel the heat from the gathering inferno, still no more than a pace from the dragon boat. He joined Serunipa and her marines pulling oars to get away. For the time being, the flames and rockets had quelled the archers and crossbowmen above. Within ten minutes he was reattaching his leg to free his arms for the climb aboard Serunipa’s ship.
*
When she saw that Bonmar was safe again Norsnette felt every muscle in her body ache from the release of tension. She leant back against the mast and breathed in deeply.
“Wow, look at that!” Nellinar cried from above them. His young eyes had seen the movement before they all heard the surge of gushing water.
Very near the mouth of the river a great wave seemed to appear. It resolved into a huge barrier made of great tree trunks bound with lacquered copper. It stretched right across the river; a thousand paces long, one fathome above the surface at each side, rising to five fathoms in the middle. It had seemed to have lifted out of the water from the upstream side. As it had done so, it had pierced the hulls of two quimals which were now sinking on the seaward side of the barrier. It had left a dozen sound quimals and a dozen burning ones cut off in the river, and it blocked the rest of the enemy fleet from coming to their assistance.
“It worked!” Arnapa cried jubilantly.
“Thanks to the Great Plan and our great engineers, and to the advice Praalis gave us five years ago,” Carl affirmed.
“There’s still a long, hard fight ahead of us here,” Arnapa said, more to the twins and Nellinar than to Carl. “The forts are still under attack and there are still active quimals to deal with in the river, and we have to make sure their burning quimals stay out of action.”
“Nevertheless, the barrier has given us a reprieve, until the terrestrial armies arrive at Outer Wall,” Carl added.
104
Belspire – 25th November
Like someone who enters a library for ten minutes to find the necessary answer to a single question but becomes trapped for hours pursuing the unnecessary answers to a thousand fascinating questions, Blan was sorely tempted to seek knowledge for its own sake rather than for the specific needs of the war. To be fair, the knowledge now within Blan’s reach, at least in theory, from Control and two hundred thousand glassy information plates, had enormous potential. Almost any skill she might learn or enquiry she might make via Control could lead to something of vital importance in the war. With such a vast resource, very little of it easy to access or decode, Blan was forced to speculate about which enquiries might be most useful. She needed to discipline herself to resist the temptation to become lost in a delightful journey from one fascinating piece of knowledge to another.
It had been six days since she had renewed contact with the other Actio users. She had learnt many things but nothing yet which stood out as being of decisive use in the war.
Probably the most important advance she had made was to learn more about how to ‘talk’ to Control and to get information from it. Her experience with the Actios helped, but Control was far more sophisticated and she kept running up against the limit on her access level.
Blan discovered how to get Control’s surface to light up (the upper chamber became invisible as Control’s light reflected from the ceiling of the lower chamber) and how to shut the light off. Then she made a sequence of discoveries about the information plates.
First, she could see the plates clearly if she placed them on Control’s lighted surface. The script, some kind of colour-coded musical notation, meant little to her, except a few symbols she had discussed with Praalis. But, to her delight, Control eventually started to ‘read’ the contents to her, still in her mother’s voice, which reminded Blan that Control still considered her to be a pursued human looking for protection. The ‘reading’ was supported by images and diagrams appearing on Control’s surface. She managed to get Control to reduce these to a size she could easily take in as she stood on its surface.
Blan deduced that the script on each information plate was just a visual version of what Control was reading from another source. Control then informed her that the information was recorded in a multitude of different formats, all within the material of the plate.
At least the ‘reading’ facility promised to bring all the records within Blan’s scope as she need only place a plate on top of Control and let it ‘read’ to her.
However, the vastness of the number of plates meant that she would be unlikely to find what she needed in anything like a reasonable time. Another problem was that very little of the information could be used without finding yet further information to explain its meaning. This was made clear to her from the first plate she had selected. It started with the history of manufacture. This particularly interested Blan because she had wondered how the Visitors had built their Communicors and their sky ships. There was no sign of any work tables, tools, wheels or other equipment that Blan associated with manufacture.
The record referred to an an
cient method of manufacture, Three Dimensional Printing, whereby vast machines would spray molten or powdered material until a product had been built up layer by layer. Complex frames and shapes were created so that different parts of products could be sprayed onto other parts. This was apparently a method used by humans in a previous civilisation which had collapsed long before the Visitors arrived on Earth. Blan could not see that the method would be very convenient for developing crystal roots from the Communicors under sea and land.
Another method, Molecular Assembly, used magnetic and gravitational fields to cause molecules to assemble in the desired pattern. Blan was doubtful that such a method would be viable for large objects. Maybe the Visitors used it when amongst the stars.
However, the third method struck a chord with Blan. By analogy with the development of living organisms (not that Blan knew as much, but she understood the explanation), a molecular template was created and this would collect molecules by contact, according to the code of the template. The template would thereby replicate a mirror image of itself or a part of itself according to its code, and the mirror image would itself replicate until complex forms had been built. The templates could be strings, nets, tubes or whatever, or a combination of them, and their product could be far more complex than the results of natural crystal growth. Once designed, the process could be autonomous and automatic. The Chanangii had rediscovered how to do it with crystals and thereby created the Communicor system and, ultimately, the Actios and some record plates of their own. The Vanantii had also known how to do it with living beings and had been able to create and clone the Chanangii. Unfortunately, the last of the Chanangii expired just as they were on the verge of rediscovering the secret of their own regeneration.
“How sad!” Blan exclaimed loudly, to jolt her mind away from the sobs she felt coming for Charzagg and his people.
She immediately saw the potential of this Autonomous Coded Template Initiated Object method of manufacture (and she noted the initials ACTIO), but she was also aware that she could do little with it unless she found other records showing how to isolate the necessary materials and build the required apparatus. Typical of most of the information she discovered from the records, it was interesting, yet not of immediate use.
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