by David Weber
The admiral smiled, and the flag captain chuckled and shook his head.
“Not bloody likely, My Lord. If they were that stupid, the kraken’d already be flying over Gorath!”
“Exactly,” Sarmouth said. “I don’t think he believes for an instant that that’s what we’re actually doing, but he has to at least bear the possibility in mind, especially when the entire world knows we did it before … and he damned well does know where the ironclads were when he left port. And even though we have the advantage of all-coppered hulls and he still doesn’t, the difference between our speed and his has to be a lot less lopsided than the difference between sailing galleons and steamers. Unless he simply chooses to scuttle them without ever leaving harbor, he has to take his galleons somewhere, Rhobair. Without knowing where we’ve placed our major strength, about all he can do is pick an escape route and hope he’s guessed right. And the last thing he could afford to do was to vacillate until those ironclads rolled into range of his anchorage. Better to bash on—try to fight at least some of his squadron through to Gorath, even if it means taking on this entire squadron in confined waters—than try to avoid action and find himself caught between us and Sir Hainz.”
“Well, put that way, I suppose he isn’t being quite as … unimaginative as I might’ve thought,” Lathyk admitted. “I think I’d still’ve tried to time things to make it out to sea in darkness, though, Sir.”
“Now there you may have a point. On the other hand, he will clear the Cutfish Narrows before dawn, and that’s the narrowest part of his entire passage. He’ll still have to weather Broken Hawser Rock before he reaches the Gulf, and if I were in his boots, I might prefer to have darkness for the last eighty or ninety miles of that run on the theory that it would be easier to give our schooners the slip in the dark with that much more open water to work with. But it’s not an easy choice. Does he try to evade us in daylight on this side of the Narrows after he clears the channel, or does he worry about our jumping him here in the dark?”
Sarmouth tapped the chart again, the points of his dividers on the Cutfish Narrows, between Tybor Rock, at the southern tip of Shipworm Shoal, and the northeastern arc of Shyan Island Shoal.
“What he’d really prefer would be to get through the channel and out to sea—and home to Gorath—without ever sighting a single one of our galleons. There’s no way he could believe that’s going to happen, though, and if he has to fight his way past us, he’d probably prefer to fight at the shortest possible range. Which is a pretty fair description of any action in the Narrows, when you come down to it. They’re only about fifteen miles wide, even at high water, which I expect his screw-galleys would like. They’re designed to get to knife-range as quickly as possible, not fight ships like Lightning and Seamount—or Zhenyfyr Ahrmahk and Iceberg, for that matter—in open water when we’ve got a wind to work with. So, yes, it could work out for Hahlynd and his boys if we were foolish enough to take him on there, especially in the dark. But those same tight quarters mean he wouldn’t have a lot of room to evade us, and his ability to control his ships would be a lot poorer in the dark. Nobody would be seeing any signal flags, that’s for damn sure! And don’t forget how badly the Temple Boys and their friends have gotten hurt in night engagements in the past. Like, oh … the Markovian Sea, for example.”
The baron’s smile was much colder this time.
“Still, I think he’ll figure tight quarters—like the Narrows—and poor visibility would cramp our maneuverability as much as it would his, and that means it would give him the best chance if he actually has to fight us. That’s why he’s making his approach so late in the day and passing through them in the dark. I suspect one reason he’s timed his passage this way is to offer me the opportunity to sneak in under cover of darkness and ‘ambush him’ in the hope I’ll take it.
“Our options are different, of course. If we didn’t have entirely coppered bottoms—and if Hektor and the other scouts weren’t keeping such a close eye on him—I might well try to jump him there, daylight or not, to keep the cork in the bottle and keep him from breaking out into the Gulf and making us chase him. But he’s not getting away from us even if, by some miracle, he does make it to the Gulf. Given that, I’m not in all that big a hurry to finish the business—unlike him we’ve got all the time in the world to do this right—and frankly, there’s no way in hell I want to tangle with those screw-galleys in the dark. They’ve never managed to use one of Zhwaigair’s ‘spar torpedoes’ on us yet, and damned if I see any reason to give them the opportunity to use one now!”
“Fair enough, Sir.” Lathyk nodded. “So what do we do next?”
“A reasonable question.”
Sarmouth dropped the dividers and stood back, folding his arms and frowning. In fact, he was looking at a rather different chart, projected onto his contact lenses and showing the precise current positions—with movement vectors—of every ship in a hundred-and-fifty-mile circle centered on Destiny.
At the moment, Raisahndo and his forty-three galleons, twelve screw-galleys, and eleven brigs and schooners, were the better part of ninety miles from Sarmouth’s chart table. The Dohlaran’s speed had dropped a bit as the wind moderated, but he hadn’t cracked on additional sail, which confirmed that he held to his determination to pass the Narrows in darkness. As Sarmouth had just pointed out to Lathyk, however, not all of Raisahndo’s hulls were coppered.
In fact, the Imperial Charisian Navy remained the only navy in the world which coppered all of its vessels. Even ICN-owned transports and freight galleons were coppered, and the ironclads were wooden sheathed below the waterline so copper could be attached without galvanic action dissolving the iron fastenings. It was expensive as hell, but until the Royal College got around to inventing antifouling paints—which wouldn’t happen anytime soon—it was the only way to protect a submerged hull against borers and weed. And however resistant to borers an iron hull might be, it certainly wasn’t immune to the drag effect of weed and encrusted shellfish. Just over a quarter of Raisahndo’s galleons lacked that advantage, however, and if they’d been in the water any length of time, that would cost them at least a knot or two—maybe even more—compared to a Charisian galleon of the same size and sail power.
He can’t run—not with everyone—if things go badly for him … and they’re going to go very badly, unless I manage to screw up by the numbers. But just like I told Rhobair, he’s caught in one hell of a trap. The only way out’s through, and we’re the only people he has a prayer of fighting his way past.
Except that’s not going to happen.
For a moment, he felt a pang of pity, but he suppressed it sternly. Caitahno Rausahndo might be—indeed, he was—an honorable and a decent man. But so was Earl Thirsk … and that hadn’t prevented what had happened to Gwyllym Manthyr and his men. Nor did it change the fact that the Kingdom of Dohlar had been the Group of Four’s most effective proxy from the very beginning.
There’s a price for that sort of thing, he thought grimly. I may not like being the one sent to collect it, but I by God will collect it!
“I think we want to be right about here around breakfast time tomorrow,” he said finally, unfolding one arm to tap an index finger on a spot thirty miles north-northeast of their current position. “That’s far enough out to prevent anyone on Shipworm Island from reporting our position to him, and assuming Hektor and his friends are their usual efficient selves about maintaining contact overnight, we’ll be well placed to run down on him for a meeting engagement sometime around midafternoon.”
His flag captain craned his neck, looking down at Sarmouth’s fingertip, then nodded.
“Yes, My Lord,” he acknowledged. “Shouldn’t be a problem.”
* * *
“I wish the bastards would go ahead and show themselves, Sir,” Captain Trahvys said quietly.
He and Caitahno Raisahndo stood on HMS Hurricane’s quarterdeck, faces dimly lit by the backwash of the binnacle light, as the flagship made her cau
tious way into the Cutfish Narrows. Now the flag captain grimaced, folding his hands behind him and rocking on his heels as he looked away from the compass into the moonless dark. Faint starlight glimmered on his ship’s canvas, but every other light had been doused, aside from the binnacle and the single blue lantern each galleon showed to her next astern for guidance and stationkeeping. Every gun was loaded and run out, with the crews sleeping—or trying to sleep, anyway—beside their pieces, despite the cold. It was about as quiet as things ever got aboard a sailing vessel underway, and Raisahndo wondered if Trahvys’ nerves were as tightly wound as his own.
“Assuming they intend to show up at all,” Trahvys added. “And somehow,” his grimace deepened, “I don’t see them being quite so obliging as to just wave as we sail past to Gorath.”
“Neither do I,” Raisahndo acknowledged. “Just between you and me, I’ll spend the odd hour or two on my knees thanking Langhorne if we do sneak by without Sarmouth’s ever getting a galleon in range of us.” He wouldn’t have admitted that to just anyone, but Trahvys only nodded. “Unfortunately,” the admiral continued, “that’s the one thing I’m sure isn’t going to happen.”
“Can’t disagree, Sir,” the flag captain said grimly, and Raisahndo shrugged.
“The best we can do is the best we can do, Lewk, and I’m sure that’s what the lads will give us. But you’re right, if we have to fight, this would be the perfect spot, especially for Admiral Hahlynd’s screw-galleys. They might even get a chance to use those damned torpedoes for something besides training!”
Trahvys nodded, Pawal Hahlynd’s screw-galleys had armed the percussion detonators on the spar-mounted three-hundred-pound charges of powder and then raised the spars into the vertical position. Assuming they got the chance, the spars would be lowered to project forty feet ahead of their stubby bowsprits, like an old-fashioned cavalry lance. If they could get close enough in the dark, ram one of those into a Charisian’s side, all the armor in the world wouldn’t save their victim!
“Even without the screw-galleys, getting in close would be our galleons’ best chance to hurt them, too. Of course, it’d be frigging impossible to exert any sort of control over an unholy brawl like that, but confusion usually helps the fellow trying to run more than the fellow trying to stop him from running, and let’s be honest here. I know what I told the others, but the truth is we’re not looking for a battle under any circumstances, no matter how ‘good’ they might be. We’re looking for an escape, and for that, we need as much sea room as we can get before we run into them. If Sarmouth’s considerate enough to present his squadron in the next couple of hours and let us fight him here, on the best terms we can get, I sure as Shan-wei won’t complain! In fact, I’ve done my dead level best to convince him to do just that. But if I were him and he was me?” He shook his head. “I’d sit somewhere ahead of us, knowing we’d have to come to him, and I’d stay the hell out of any night battles while I waited for daylight.”
Trahvys made a wordless sound of agreement, and it was Raisahndo’s turn to grimace under cover of the darkness. He must be even more nervous than he’d thought he was. He hadn’t just told the flag captain all those things he already knew for Trahvys’ benefit; he was still trying to convince himself they had at least some chance to pull this off. But the truth was that any engagement—daylight or dark—was unlikely to be a happy experience for the Western Squadron, and there wasn’t one damned thing he could do about that. A competent admiral could usually find ways to defeat an adversary—or at least cope with it—if his fleet was more powerful than his opponent’s or if it was faster.
Unhappily for the Western Squadron, it was neither.
“Well, it’ll be dawn in about three hours,” he pointed out, breath-steam gleaming in the chill night as it caught the binnacle’s reflection. “Assuming the bastards persist in not showing up between then and now, it probably wouldn’t be a bad idea to feed the men early, just in case.”
* * *
“Still with us, I see. Nice of them to be so punctual!” Lieutenant Hahlbyrstaht observed as the sunrise slanted sharply across the waves to gild the distant topsails with gold. He shook his head. “And right where you said they’d be. Sort of reminds me of that business in the Fern Narrows last year.”
“We’re not supposed to talk about that, Zosh,” Hektor reminded him, and Hahlbyrstaht nodded.
“Point taken, Sir,” he said rather more formally, then grinned. “It’s still an impressive trick, though, Skipper, and I’m not the only man aboard who thinks that. Is this ability to smell the enemy something His Majesty taught you?”
“No, but I sometimes think it might be something Sir Dunkyn taught Cayleb back when Cayleb was a midshipman.” Hektor smiled as someone in far-off Siddar City snorted an imperial sort of chuckle over his com earplugs. Then he shrugged. “Actually, it wasn’t all that hard to figure out where they’d pretty much have to be under these conditions.”
“Maybe not, but staying close enough to see them at first light without blundering right the hell into those two fellows in the dark was just a tad more challenging,” Hahlbyrstaht countered, and pointed at the topsails of a pair of Dohlaran brigs less than four miles clear of Fleet Wing. The closest galleons were at least eight miles beyond them. “I found it a little worrisome, anyway. Of course, I realize two-to-one odds are a mere nothing for seasoned Charisian seadogs like us!” He snapped his fingers with fine disdain. “Still, it could’ve gotten lively.”
“Which is why I knew I could rely on our ‘seadog’ lookouts to do such a good job.” Hektor smiled again. This time, actually, it was more of a grin. “The Admiral always told me caution can be a great motivator and that a little honest fear does more to keep a man on his toes than any amount of confidence.” He shook his head, his grin fading. “I sometimes wonder if he really realizes how much … moral authority it takes to say something like that to a ten- or eleven-year-old midshipman.”
“‘Moral authority’?” Hahlbyrstaht snorted. “That’s something the Baron has in spades!”
“Oh, I think you could say that,” Hektor agreed. Then he turned to look to the northeast, shading his eyes with his good hand as he gazed into the sun. “I assume Sojourn’s up there where she’s supposed to be?”
“Yes, Sir. Last time we looked, anyway.” Hahlbyrstaht chuckled sourly. “Of course that was before we had the damned sun shining right into our eyes. I imagine she’ll be able to read our signals just fine, but seeing her confirmation hoists’ll be just a bit tougher.”
“Well, if she’s up there, I suppose we should update Commander Cupyr and ask him to pass it along to the Admiral.” Hektor grimaced. “We should be able to see his confirmation sometime in the next, oh, hour or so.”
.V.
Off Shipworm Shoal,
Gulf of Dohlar.
“I don’t suppose anyone mentioned where the delay was, Master Zhones?” Lathyk asked, gazing at the time chop on Fleet Wing’s original dispatch.
“No, Sir. I’m afraid not,” Passed Midshipman Ahrlee Zhones replied. The sandy-haired, bespeckled midshipman—he wouldn’t be legally old enough to receive his ensign’s commission for another ten months—had become Baron Sarmouth’s acting flag lieutenant with the Duke of Darcos’ departure from Destiny.
“I could send back an inquiry, if you’d like me to,” he continued, although he manifestly didn’t want to do anything of the sort, and the flag captain’s lip twitched. Not so very long ago, Zhones had been HMS Destiny’s signals midshipman. It would appear his tribal loyalties were alive and well.
“No, don’t bother, Master Zhones,” he said. “Probably nothing serious. But,” he added, looking up from the dispatch at Sarmouth, “we should’ve had this at least forty-five minutes ago, My Lord.”
“In a perfect world, yes.” Sarmouth was bent over his chart table again, busily swinging dividers while he measured distances. “In the real world,” he laid the dividers aside and gave Zhones a quick flicker of a smile,
“as I believe the Emperor’s said upon occasion, ‘shit happens’. In this case, somebody probably had to wait for the sun to get out of his eyes.” He shrugged. “It’s not as if it was all that time-critical, Rhobair. The important point is that we’ve got it now, and—assuming Raisahndo’s maintained speed and heading—we’re about sixty miles north-northeast of him. And, of course, that the wind seems to be veering in our favor,” he added with pronounced satisfaction.
“Yes, My Lord,” Lathyk agreed, looking down at the chart with him.
“Then I want us underway on a south-southeast heading as soon as possible.” Sarmouth ran his index finger across the chart in a flattened crescent that swept about twenty miles south before it angled back to the west. “If everything works perfectly—and as we just pointed out, in the real world it doesn’t—we should find our Dohlaran friends right about here.”
He tapped a spot thirty miles south of Shipworm Shoal and about fifty miles west of Shyan Island, and Lathyk frowned, running mental calculations for a moment. Then the flag captain nodded.
“About fifteen o’clock, I make it, My Lord,” he said with a faint edge of admiration. “Plenty of daylight left to work on them.”
“That’ll depend on how soon they see us and what they do when they do.” Sarmouth twitched a shrug. “Actually bringing them to action could be trickier than we’d prefer, but at least we’ll have plenty of sea room to do it in!”
Lathyk nodded again. A lot of flag officers would have immediately altered course to intercept Raisahndo as soon as possible. Sarmouth, on the other hand, had made it clear to all of his captains that he wanted to entice the Dohlarans as far out to sea as he could. A running battle at sea would play to the Imperial Charisian Navy’s strengths, not the RDN’s, and the heavy swell farther out would limit the Dohlaran screw-galleys’ utility. The waves were no more than six feet tall at the moment, but the wind looked like freshening once more as it veered slowly but steadily eastward, and even six feet would be a much bigger problem for the low-lying and fragile screw-galleys than for blue-water galleons. It might not make a great deal of difference, but Sarmouth was the sort of flag officer who thought about things like that.