by David Weber
“Between the doomwhale and the deep blue sea,” the duke said quietly.
“Exactly.” Jahras nodded back, then squared his shoulders. “But if I have to do this, I’m going to do it as effectively as I can and hope for the best. Shan-wei, Daivyn! Thirsk got himself hailed as a hero for capturing four Charisian galleons, and he’d already lost one of his own! For that matter, he’d surrendered an entire damned fleet after Crag Hook! If we can at least bleed them when they come in here after us, maybe somebody in Zion will be smart enough to realize we did the best anyone could have.”
“Maybe,” Duke Kholman replied. “Maybe.”
***
“The schooners report no change in their deployment, Admiral,” Captain Lathyk said, saluting as Admiral Yairley arrived on Destiny ’s quarterdeck.
“Not surprising, I suppose, Captain,” Yairley replied. A greater degree of formality had crept into his public relationship with Lathyk-inevitably, he imagined. Given his new rank, he was now a passenger in Destiny, not her master after God, and it was important he and Lathyk make that point clearly for the ship’s company. A warship could have only one captain, and any confusion about who that warship’s crew looked to for orders in an emergency could be disastrous. “I wish they would come out, but obviously no one in Iythria is foolish enough to do that. Barring direct orders, of course.”
Lathyk nodded, and Yairley’s lips quirked briefly. As High Admiral Rock Point had pointed out, to date, the Group of Four had been Charis’ best allies when it came to naval matters. Rock Point had hoped, more wistfully than with any great expectation of its happening, that Allayn Maigwair might issue Baron Jahras direct, non-discretionary orders to sortie and engage the Imperial Charisian Navy at sea. Apparently even Maigwair had more sense than that, however… unfortunately.
“Well,” the admiral said now, “if they won’t come out, we’ll just have to go in.”
“Going to be lively, Sir!” Lathyk observed with that irritating prebattle smile of his, and Yairley shrugged.
“I suppose that’s one way to describe it,” he agreed with a smaller, tighter smile of his own.
Destiny ’s motion was a little uneasy as she lay hove-to in the Middle Ground between Sylmahn Island and Ray Island, but that didn’t explain Yairley’s queasiness. He knew what did cause it, of course. The same odd, hollow feeling which always afflicted him when battle drew near was already quivering inside him, and he suppressed a familiar sense of envy as Lathyk chuckled in response to his comment. He didn’t think Lathyk was any less imaginative than he was, but somehow the captain-like so many of Yairley’s fellows-seemed impervious to the sort of tension which gripped him at times like this. And even he wasn’t all that consistent about it, he thought irritably. It made absolutely no sense for the thought of being splattered across the deck by a cannonball to… concern him so much when the thought of drowning in a storm didn’t cause him to turn a hair. Well, not much of a hair, anyway.
“Signal from Terror, Captain!” Midshipman Saylkyrk called out. He was in the maintop with his enormous spyglass trained on HMS Terror, Admiral Shain’s flagship. “Relayed from Destroyer. Our pendant number, then Number Thirty, Number Thirty-Six, Number Fifty-Five, and Number Eight.” He looked down from the maintop to where Ahrlee Zhones had the signal book open, already finding the signal numbers from the grid.
“Make sail on the larboard tack, course south-by-east, and prepare for battle, Sir!” the younger midshipman announced after a handful of seconds.
“Very good, Master Zhones,” Lathyk said. “Be good enough to acknowledge the signal under the squadron’s number.”
“Aye, aye, Sir!” Zhones was obviously nervous, but he also wore a huge grin as he beckoned to the quarterdeck signal party.
“Master Symkee!” Lathyk continued, turning to the lieutenant who’d become Destiny ’s executive officer in parallel with his own promotion.
“Aye, Sir?”
“Hands to braces, if you please. Prepare to get the ship underway.”
“Aye, aye, Sir! Hands to braces, Bo’sun!”
“Aye, aye, Sir!”
The signal had scarcely been unexpected, and the colorful bunting had already been spilled out of its canvas bags and bent to the signal halliards. The flags went soaring up while bo’sun’s pipes shrilled and the ship’s company went racing to its stations, and Admiral Yairley folded his hands behind him and crossed to the taffrail to gaze astern while his flag captain and his flagship’s crew got about the business of translating High Admiral Rock Point and Admiral Shain’s orders into action.
The other five ships of his squadron-HMS Royal Kraken, HMS Victorious, HMS Thunderbolt, HMS Undaunted, and HMS Champion -also lay hove-to, keeping close company on Destiny, and High Admiral Rock Point had done him proud when he made up the squadron’s numbers. Destiny was the oldest and smallest of the six, but all of them were purpose-built war galleons from Charisian yards, not captured prizes or converted merchantmen, and between them they mounted three hundred and forty guns. Well found, well handled, and (after the voyage from Tellesberg to Thol Bay to the Gulf of Jahras, at least) well drilled, they were a potent force. Especially since all of them carried shot lockers full of the new exploding shells. Royal Kraken and Thunderbolt also carried massive fifty-seven-pounder carronades, short-ranged compared to the new model krakens on their gun decks but capable of throwing much heavier and more destructive shells. The other four carried uniform armaments of thirty-pounders, and unlike the Battle of the Markovian Sea, all of his gunners had been given ample opportunity to train with the new ammunition.
Which is a very good thing, he thought dryly, that hollowness in his middle feeling somehow even emptier, given our part of the battle plan.
The wind was a stiff topsail breeze out of the northeast-by-east, blowing at a speed of perhaps twenty-four miles per hour and raising eight-to ten-foot waves. On her new heading, Destiny would be sailing large, with the wind almost dead on her quarter. That was just about her best point of sailing, which meant she ought to make good seven and a half or eight knots, with just under thirty miles to go. Call it four hours, he thought. Time to get all the men fed a good, solid lunch before they cleared for action, and then…
“All ships have acknowledged, Sir!” Saylkyrk called from above.
“Very good, Master Saylkyrk!” Lathyk called back, then turned respectfully to Yairley.
“All ships have acknowledged receipt of the signal, Admiral.”
“Thank you, Captain,” Yairley replied gravely, and glanced up at the stiffly starched signal flags himself. By hoisting the squadron’s number above Admiral Shain’s signal, Lathyk had repeated it to all of the squadron’s units. When it was hauled down, Yairley’s command would execute it, the rest of the fleet’s sixteen squadrons would make sail in his wake in succession to execute their own portions of the high admiral’s master plan, and the die would be cast.
My, how dramatic, Dunkyn, he thought wryly. “The die was cast” before you ever left Tellesberg.
“Very well, Captain Lathyk,” he heard himself say calmly. “Execute.”
***
Sir Domynyk Staynair stood on HMS Destroyer’ s quarterdeck, watching his flagship’s crew scamper about making final preparations. Or that was what he looked like he was doing, at any rate. In fact, he was watching the imagery projected on his contact lenses as Dunkyn Yairley and Payter Shain began to move and the rest of the fleet started unfolding into its own component columns behind them.
The Imperial Charisian Navy had returned to the Gulf of Mathyas in strength within less than a month of Destiny ’s damage-enforced retreat, and this time it hadn’t come simply to keep an eye on the exit from the Gulf of Jahras. Admiral Shain had sent his fleet-footed schooners deep into the Gulf to reconnoiter the approaches to Terrence Bay, Port Iythria, and Mahrosa Bay. In the process, they’d swept the once-sheltered waters clear of Desnairian commerce, and, taking a page from Rock Point’s own tactics in Thol Bay, Shain
had used his Marines to seize control of Howard Island, well inside Staiphan Reach and right in the throat of the Howard Passage.
The island was barely thirty-five miles long, and aside from Tern Bay, at its northern end, it didn’t present much in the way of decent anchorages. Even Tern Bay was little more than an open roadstead, offering no protection at all against northerlies. Still, it was a source of fresh water, always a warship’s most limiting supply factor. It had taken two five-days for the heavy naval guns landed across the island’s eastern beaches to batter the fortress guarding the small town of Tern Bay into submission, but they’d been time well spent, given how greatly its capture had eased Shain’s logistics. The admiral had also landed enough Marines and enough artillery to make sure no Desnairian pounce was going to take it back from him, and suddenly the largely worthless island had become a cork driven firmly into the Desnairian bottle.
Operating from the (relative) security of Tern Bay, the Imperial Charisian Navy had gone basically wherever it chose in the Gulf of Jahras. Rock Point had rather hoped Baron Jahras would venture out to dispute the ICN’s invasion of the Desnairian Empire’s most economically vital coastal waters, but what had happened to Kornylys Harpahr had made the baron wiser than that. So the Charisian cruiser squadrons had amused themselves wiping out the Gulf’s coasting trade and sending cutting-out expeditions into its lesser harbors under cover of darkness to capture or burn anything bigger than a fishing boat. And they’d also trailed their coats just beyond artillery range of the Desnairian Navy’s harbor fortifications, counting noses and examining anchorages.
As a result, they’d been able to provide Rock Point with intelligence on his enemy’s dispositions which was almost as good as what Owl’s SNARCs delivered. Not quite, of course, since unlike the SNARCs they couldn’t actually eavesdrop on Jahras’ discussions with Kholman or his ship commanders, but they’d provided more than enough information Rock Point could openly share with his own subordinates for planning purposes. And as he’d studied and discussed those reports with Shain, Yairley, and his other flag officers and senior captains, it had become evident that Jahras realized he simply couldn’t fight the Charisian Navy and hope to win. Not at sea, at any rate. Not only that, but somewhat to Rock Point’s surprise, the baron had demonstrated the moral courage to tell his superiors he couldn’t.
The Navy of God’s shock after the Markovian Sea had been profound enough for those superiors to actually listen to him, as well. Or profound enough that they hadn’t actively overruled him, at least, when he’d turned his galleons into what amounted to no more than floating batteries. Despite the importance of the Gulf’s shipping to the Desnairian economy, he hadn’t even tried to defend most of its ports, either. They’d had to make do with their existing coastal fortifications-which, admittedly, were more than enough to discourage any thought of widespread Charisian landings, especially with the Imperial Desnairian Army hanging about just in case it might be needed – because he’d refused to disperse those galleons. Iythria, with its major shipyards and dockyards, was the Gulf’s largest and most important harbor and its primary naval base. It had been built up into a major node in the Church of God’s shipbuilding and support system, and he’d decided he had no choice but to stake everything on protecting his fleet’s supporting infrastructure, although even that much was a daunting challenge for a fleet which dared not meet its opponent under sail.
Iythria’s approaches were screened by an arc of islands, extending from Sylmahn Island to the west, through Singer Island (the most northeasterly outpost of the port city), and then back to Pearl Point on the mainland. That, unfortunately, was a distance of over a hundred and fifty miles, which was far too long to protect with any sort of fixed defenses.
Sylmahn Island and Ray Island formed a second theoretical line of defense south of that, but the Middle Ground-the stretch of water between Sylmahn and Ray-was still forty-five miles across, and shallow enough in several spots to offer practical anchorages beyond the range of the island fortresses’ artillery. South of the Middle Ground lay the Outer Roadstead, another thirty miles in a north-south line before one reached the Inner Harbor and the waterfront proper of Port Iythria. Taken altogether, it was one of the finest anchorages Rock Point had ever seen, and if Desnair hadn’t been a primarily land-based power with its attention firmly focused on the Republic of Siddarmark and the Harchong Empire, it would have offered a sound base for a thriving merchant marine. Instead, other realms’ shipping-primarily Charis’, before the… current unpleasantness-had made use of its potential, which meant among other things that Rock Point’s charts for Iythria and its approaches were very, very detailed.
The only way to actually reach Iythria from the sea required an attacker to penetrate one of the two openings in the shoals protecting the Inner Harbor. The West Gate, the passage between Rocky Bank Shoal and Sickle Shoal, was the narrower of those approaches. Navigable by small vessels across virtually its entire width at high water, the deepwater channel was unfortunately serpentine and relatively narrow, which made it a much more problematical route for blue water galleons. On the other hand, the North Gate-the opening between Sickle Shoal and Triangle Shoal, directly north of the city-was far broader than the West Gate. It was also deeper, with a twelve-mile ship channel, navigable even at low water, with nary a twist nor a turn.
The Desnairians were well aware of just how wide the door to Iythria’s heart was, and they’d built powerful (and expensive) fortifications on both Sickle Shoal and Triangle Shoal. The masonry forts rose straight out of the water, which put any sort of siege or assault landing out of the question, but the total water gap between them was the better part of twenty-four miles across, and the maximum reach of their artillery was no more than three miles.
As part of Jahras’ strategy to emulate a horn lizard and curl up into an armored ball no one could get at, he’d blocked the West Gate by sinking ships and driving pilings into the main shipping channel. Opening it again was going to be an incredible pain, but for now he could be certain no Charisian galleons were going to come sneaking in on him that way. Boat attacks, and possibly even attacks by the shallow-draft schooners at high water, perhaps, but not those deep-draft galleons with their heavy artillery.
With the West Gate closed, he’d turned his attention to the North Gate and anchored his galleons directly across the ship channel. He’d moored them in a long chain, running twelve miles from east to west, with barely fifty yards between each ship and the next in line. Under normal circumstances, the interval would have been two or three times that great in order to give the vessels room to ride to their anchors with shifting tide and wind without fouling one another. Jahras clearly wasn’t particularly worried about that; besides, each ship had put out no fewer than two bow and two stern anchors, with springs rigged to each of them. Those ships weren’t moving, and he’d laid buoyed hawsers between them, as well. According to Owl’s SNARCs, each of those cables was a good ten inches in diameter, and there were four of them between each ship. Obviously, they were intended to keep anybody from passing through the narrow gaps Jahras had left between his galleons.
In addition to the galleons, he’d managed to throw together thirty genuine floating batteries, essentially just big rafts with heavy bulwarks. He’d run out of naval artillery, so he’d requisitioned every field piece the Desnairian Army could get to Iythria in time, which meant the rafts were armed with an incredible hodgepodge of ancient cannon on every conceivable sort of improvised carriage. Most of them hadn’t even been cast with trunnions, although the Iythrian artillery works had been welding banded trunnions onto them as quickly as possible. The batteries’ fire was going to be a questionable asset, but there were still a lot of them, and he’d anchored them in the shallower water at either end of his line of galleons. Obviously, he intended for them to close as much as possible of the remaining water gap between his ships and the fortifications on Sickle Shoal and Triangle Shoal.
Backing up both gall
eons and floating batteries were fifteen or twenty old-fashioned galleys. They didn’t have much in the way of artillery, but their job was to lurk on the inner side of the galleon line and to pounce upon and board any Charisian galleon foolhardy enough to force its way between Jahras’ battleships.
It was obvious the baron had paid close attention to the reports he’d received about what had happened in the Markovian Sea. His awareness of the advantage the Charisians’ exploding shells bestowed upon them was probably incomplete, but it was clear enough to explain his flat refusal to lead his fleet to sea against Rock Point. And he’d done what he could to protect his ships and batteries against the new threat, as well. He’d ransacked the entire Gulf for every length of chain he could find and draped it over his galleons’ sides in an effort to make them at least a little more resistant to shellfire. He didn’t have enough of it and it wasn’t heavy enough to stop short range fire, but it was a clear indication he was at least thinking hard about the threat he faced.
The poorly armed floating batteries were actually better protected than his galleons. He’d had their already thick bulwarks fitted with frameworks which extended three or four feet, then he’d filled the frameworks with sandbags. The weight did unfortunate things to the rafts’ stability and reduced their flotation margins dangerously, but a four-foot depth of sandbags was far better armor against smoothbore shells than the chain he’d draped down the galleons’ sides.
Taking everything into consideration, Rock Point had to admit Jahras’ preparations were both more thorough and more competent than he’d anticipated. Obviously, the baron realized that even with exploding shells the Charisians were still going to have to come into his range if they wanted to engage him. His anchors and springs should allow him to turn his ships in place and concentrate a devastating weight of solid shot on anyone approaching his line, and he’d done everything he could to prevent his line from being penetrated and doubled. Nor had he neglected the landward defenses. The waterfront batteries had been reinforced; he’d drafted entire infantry regiments from the Imperial Desnairian Army to reinforce his Marine contingents against the possibility of boarding actions; his decision to fight only from anchor meant he wouldn’t need any seamen for maneuvering and that every man of every crew would be available to serve his guns; and he had something like twenty-five thousand additional men in Iythria’s garrison, from which boats could ferry replacements to his galleons and batteries as they suffered casualties.