Grand Vizier of Krar

by W. John Tucker

  Meanwhile, the warsloops were moving away south, kites bulging with the wind.

  Catapult shot was launched at the nearest quimals from Carlcan’s Heron and its small squadron. It was a diversion to keep some quimals busy and out of the main action. The four ships were now the only ones left in Nantport and they were going to stay there to defend its entrances.

  As Azimath guessed, the enemy admiral could not be sure whether more Free Alliance warships were waiting to break out of Nantport, so he kept a third of his quimals near the entrance to Western Passage, yet not so close as to come within range of the catapults along the clifftop.

  The admiral soon realised that he would need to hurry to send a force to pursue and destroy the escaping warsloops. They were getting away too quickly. They were heading south with the wind behind them, but his fully-rigged quimals could outpace them. Learning that his colleague’s fleet was now just one league behind Nargin, he ordered a squadron of ten quimals to pursue the warsloops.

  Azimath had foreseen the admiral’s decision. When the ten pursuing quimals were safely downwind of Nargin’s warships, the warsloops all started to change course. They headed increasingly westward, but on a broad arc passing well away from the quimals pursuing Nargin. The kite sails were taken in and the boats headed northwest, tacking into the wind. The quimals’ windward advantage was lost and the warsloops gradually edged away until they disappeared into the night. The quimals might yet have pursued them, but beating into the wind this close to the coast in such large ships could have led to many wrecks. The pursuing quimals gave up the pursuit and came about to confront Nargin’s fleet, but they were now out of the action, neither close enough to the warsloops nor to Nargin’s ships.

  As soon as the planned time arrived for the warsloops to start their change of heading, Nargin had ordered the release of a barrage of Kem’s sticky fire bombs upon the quimals ahead of him. The quimal crews had heard rumours about these bombs, but few had experienced their devastating effects. This gave Nargin time to change course and, ultimately, follow the warsloops.

  There were now only ten quimals close enough to pose an immediate threat to Nargin’s fleet, and eight of those had fires aboard. The four Free Alliance ships in Western Passage had also started to shoot Kem’s bombs and that kept the attention of the quimals confronting them. The thirty quimals from the estuary were close, but not yet in catapult range. Nargin’s ships had suffered mild damage from fiery catapult shot, but nothing to reduce their speed or manoeuvrability to any significant degree. They fled westward and then increasingly north into the wind. The flexibility of their construction and rigging proved its worth as square sails were replaced by fore-and-aft sails. Nargin’s ships could sail far closer to the wind than the quimals. That might not have been enough to evade quimals on the open seas in daylight but, in these conditions, it was sufficient.

  The estuary fleet pursued Nargin for a little while, until the admiral realised that it was pointless to go any further: none of his captains were familiar with the waters away from the coast; the Free Alliance ships were now all sailing in complete darkness and might wait in ambush; and, for all he knew, there could be more ships waiting to break out of Nantport or Proequa River. He ordered his squadrons to return to the blockade.

  In the early hours of the morning, the enemy admirals met to agree how they would break the bad news to Black Knight, and which of their captains would be blamed for the fiasco.

  118

  Port Fandabbin – 5th December

  The combined fleets of Azimath and Nargin had just arrived at Three Islands when Blan made contact with them again via Actio B. She had been monitoring their movements and reporting their progress to Carl. She had also been able to report that the two Geodes present in the blockade of Proequa had not moved away; they were engaging in busy communication with Black Knight’s Geode which was on his flagship just west of Nargar Island.

  Blan had retained custody of Actio B. Carl was content to be taught how to check in with Azimath and Nargin when neither Blan nor Arnapa were available. Otherwise, Blan still spent much of her time trying to learn Control’s secrets. She used Control as the node for her communications with Actio B, partly because it enabled her to set up a conference in which all the Actio users could communicate with each other in one session, and partly because, before leaving Belspire, she had covered the tops of Control and its four subsidiaries with as many record plates as she could fit on them. She was able to see the records and listen to Control’s reading of them via Actio B. Whenever she thought about the huge scale of the information potentially available to her and the equally great difficulty of finding what she needed, she felt a mixture of exhilaration and frustration verging on panic. She would then meditate for a while to enable her to press on, seeking an intellectual rapport with Control that would enable her to delve into the secrets that beckoned her.

  It was such a session that morning in which Blan discovered how she could detect dormant Geodes. When a Geode became dormant the ripples of its vibrations would fade; an Actio would no longer be able to detect its presence from the changing fields of force around its crystals. However, backed by enormous energy stored over twenty-two millennia, Control had the power to stimulate dormant Geodes and locate their response. Blan did not yet understand the process, but it seemed that Control was somehow able to detect an object in a separate field of coordinates of space and time where that object was in some way unique. A tangible analogy that occurred to Blan was that, if all the books in a large library appeared to her to be blue, and she wanted to find a particular book hidden among them, then she could find it if she could look at the library slightly differently, in a kind of parallel universe, in which all books of the type she wanted and no others were coloured orange and not blue. Control could ‘see’ anything in its range, including a dormant Geode, if it ‘looked’ at it in the right way. Blan was far from mastering Control’s powers in this regard, yet she felt that finding dormant Geodes was a sign that she was making progress and could hope for more.

  Blan projected her thought, via the Actio and Control, to Azimath and Nargin, “There is a dormant Geode on the coast eighty leagues northwest of Nantport and fifty leagues northeast of Three Islands where you are. It has been stationary all morning.”

  Nargin was first to respond. “That doesn’t make sense. That area of the coast is all mangrove swamp and tropical jungle. Why would Black Knight leave a Geode there?”

  “Perhaps an enemy squadron is lying in wait for us there,” Azimath suggested.

  “Could they be searching for the ten missing Akrinan quimals?” Blan queried. She knew it was speculation, but connecting apparently disparate facts and figures into patterns, from the banal to the important, was such a part of her character that it had become her chief pastime and even her main form of relaxation. “Interrogation of prisoners has revealed that Black Knight sent a flotilla of dragon boats to the Akrinan quimals under the pretext of staging a friendly training exercise, but really to capture them. Someone, possibly an Akrinan spy, alerted the Akrinans to Black Knight’s true intention so, as the dragon boats approached, the Akrinans were ready to set sail. They crushed many of the dragon boats as they fled south, pursued by thirty Kraran quimals. I’ve studied the location of all the Geodes between Slave Island and Port Fandabbin and they all seem to have a good reason for being where they are, except the one by those mangrove swamps.”

  This gave Nargin an idea. “That puts a different light on the matter. If I were chased by three times my force, I would certainly find the mangrove swamps useful. There may be no places to berth a ship there, yet the swamps hide a labyrinth of winding creeks in which a squadron of quimals might find temporary refuge. The waterways are treacherous, but good mariners like the Akrinans might hope to enter one way and exit many leagues further along the coast.”

  Blan agreed to monitor the dormant Geode and to report any change. Notwithstanding the urge to study the record plates and purs
ue a broad range of enquiries, she resolved to concentrate on the Akrinan situation for now. She was, after all, their Temporary Princess and it was her responsibility to do her best for them. She urged Azimath and Nargin to help them. They had every intention of doing so anyway. The prospect of destroying thirty enemy quimals isolated from their main fleet was nearly as alluring as recruiting ten quimals in the hands of allies renowned for their seamanship.

  For her part, Blan now set about discovering the next item on her list: how to intercept enemy messages sent via the Geodes. At present, she could only see where they were and when they were transmitting. She now wanted to know what they were saying.

  119

  Mangrove Creek, 3 deg. N. – 7th December

  The Akrinan quimals had found refuge in a creek surrounded by mangrove swamps. They had ventured into the creek for a league until one of their ships ran aground. What had seemed from their chart to be a deep water passage turned out to be a trap because a new sandbar had formed since the chart had been made. In fact, the waterways had changed substantially since the chart had been made eight years ago, during the last war.

  Twenty enemy quimals were blockading the creek and another ten were held in reserve to fetch supplies or defend the fleet from attacks by passing Free Alliance raiders. Vice-Admiral Karkron had decided to starve the Akrinans into defeat or surrender. There was little advantage in launching an attack as the creek was too narrow for him to use his superior numbers to overwhelm the Akrinans. Similarly, the Akrinans could not hope to attack and defeat thirty quimals. Meanwhile, Karkron had access to passing supply ships while the Akrinans had little hope of surviving on fish or wildfowl caught in the inhospitable swamps. Karkron also had a Geode aboard which he could use to communicate with the mother fleet around Port Fandabbin or with the admirals blockading Proequa. Karkron had control of the situation and the Akrinans were cut off.

  Blan knew all this. She had now discovered how to decode the messages sent by Karkron to Black Knight’s flagship. She even knew that at least one Akrinan ship had run aground; Karkron reported it. Blan reported all this to Azimath and Nargin. With Serunipa’s assistance she found the latest charts of the area in question, printed just a month before from surveys made six months before that, and she managed to describe these in sufficient detail for Azimath and Nargin to draw a chart with the most important information, the depths and the tides. The tidal range was just half a fathome, yet that was going to make a very great difference.

  *

  Azimath and Nargin reached the coast eight leagues from the creek where the Akrinans were trapped. The warships dropped anchor while Azimath led the warsloops along the edge of the swamps until he could go no further without being seen by enemy lookouts atop the quimals. He then ordered the main masts lowered and short masts put up. These would not be seen over the top of the swamps. With the help of small sails and long oars the warsloops reached the point at which Azimath planned to enter the swamps. According to the latest chart, it was one of two entrances to the complex of waterways which bore the name Mangrove Creek, a name which suggested some kind of pre-eminence over the multitude of other creeks that might have competed for such a name. The warsloops were now just a mile northwest of the Akrinan fleet.

  It took two hours to reach the first Akrinan quimal. It was not the grounded ship but it had moved as far into the creek as its draft would allow. Azimath sent an Akrinan officer forward in a rowing boat. The officer was immediately recognised by the ship’s Master who had the good sense to order silence, to prevent the crew’s jubilation from being heard by enemy sailors. After some kedging, the Akrinan ship was turned so as to hide the approaching sloops from enemy view. Coded messages were sent to the other Akrinan skippers.

  For the rest of the day a great deal of food, fresh water and rigging was moved from the Akrinan quimals to the sloops; many of the crew as well. The quimals had already jettisoned all their ballast and all unnecessary cargo in an attempt to reduce their draft. Before Azimath had arrived, the Akrinan vice-admiral had almost decided to scuttle his ships and lead their crews further up the creek in dragon boats to search for an escape, but now there was hope of saving the ships.

  Admiral Karkron could see that the Akrinans were moving materials and he could see some of the sloops (Azimath never let more than ten of them appear at a time), but all their masts and sails had by now been lowered and they looked like very large dragon boats, one of which might conceivably have been carried on the deck of a quimal if suitable alterations had been made. After all, quimals had been altered to carry Geodes, so why not small ships. Karkron assumed it must be so. It never occurred to him that anyone else could have been waiting in this creek without him noticing. “Let them scuttle their ships and try to find their way out of here,” he crowed. “They will probably perish in the swamps or in the jungle beyond. At least we will be able to leave here and report that the Akrinan quimals have been destroyed.”

  Azimath’s plan was not based on guesswork. He had made careful calculations and, despite his characteristic self-confidence, he had asked both Nargin and Blan to check his work and criticise any weakness. According to plan, the unloaded Akrinan quimals, including the grounded one, would float up just enough to clear the sandbar. They were now all rigged with just one large fore-and-aft sail, all the extra weight they could afford. With skeleton crews they slowly sailed further into the creek. Meanwhile all fifty sloops withdrew to raise their full masts and lead the way back to the sea, heavily burdened with Akrinans and cargo.

  On seeing the Akrinans sail away, albeit at no more than walking speed, Karkron became concerned. The possibility that they might escape via some uncharted waterway was troubling. When he saw fifty masts with fore-and-aft sails unexpectedly appear above the mangroves, he became positively alarmed and realised that he had made a serious miscalculation. The large boats or small ships that he had seen were in fact sloops which had either been there already or had come there by some secret passage. They were also far more numerous than he had thought.

  “We follow them!” Karkron snapped to his Signals officer. “Those sloops know a way through, and it seems that the Akrinan quimals can navigate the passage. Give the order for our nearest eleven quimals to follow us. The next six will stay here to guard the creek entrance. The remaining twelve are to follow along the coast to intercept the Akrinans and their allies when they reach the sea, as they surely will sooner or later.”

  Karkron could already envisage the scene when his adversaries were caught between his squadrons, one at sea and the other blocking retreat.

  Karkron’s squadron succeeded in passing the shallows where the Akrinan ship had been trapped. The Akrinan quimals were slightly larger and that made some difference. The tide had also come in a little. However, Karkron could not yet risk gaining on the Akrinans. Without an up-to-date chart, he had to follow their exact course, which was not easy in this complex and winding waterway. Neither he nor any of his crews noticed the twelve small boats hidden in the mangroves, nor the three dozen Akrinan divers who had descended to the bottom of the creek to attach themselves in groups of three to the rudders of his passing ships.

  While two divers locked the rudder of each of Karkron’s quimals by hammering steel bolts on either side of the pindle and gudgeon hinges, another diver removed waterproof wrappings from a small fire bomb which he then attached to the stern just above the waterline, yet out of sight of the decks above.

  Karkron soon realised that all his quimals’ rudders were locked in place. This happened at a critical moment in the middle of a broad bend in the creek. The last Akrinan ship had already taken the bend and its hull was obscured by mangroves. Worried that his quimals might run aground, Karkron ordered his captains to drop anchor and send divers to find out what was wrong with the rudders.

  Azimath had chosen the location very carefully. The Akrinans in the rowing boats had been able to use the cover of the bend and the mangroves to follow closely behind, out of sig
ht of Karkron’s ships. They rescued their divers and raced forward to within easy bow shot of the bombs that had just been placed. Then they shot flaming arrows into the bombs and retreated before enemy crossbowmen could respond from the decks of the quimals. Only six of the twelve bombs detonated, but the ferocity of the flames was enough to discourage enemy divers from approaching the rudders for the few crucial minutes that it took for the quimals to run aground.

  The first to run aground was Karkron’s flagship. He knew his doom from that moment. He had overlooked the fact that his ship was lower in the water because it carried the Geode. He should never have risked it in the creek, he belatedly chided himself. Now, even in the unlikely event that he could snatch victory from this disaster, Black Knight would send him to a horrible death for losing a Geode.

  Meanwhile, the Akrinan quimals had reached a deeper and broader part of the creek where they lined up on an elliptical course and then moved slowly around it. As each ship reached the side furthest from the enemy, it would load sticky fire bombs from the warsloops. When it moved around and came within range of the enemy quimals, it would use its onboard catapults to propel the bombs at Karkron’s quimals. The Akrinan ships moved continuously around the ellipse and bombarded Karkron’s squadron relentlessly on each circuit.

  “Abandon ship!” Karkron ordered. There was little else he could do. The vast majority of his catapults were aimed the wrong way. The very few that were aligned well enough to respond were targeted first by the Akrinans and were now shattered and burning. Meanwhile, the Akrinan catapults had been adjusted to make consistent hits on all his stranded quimals.