At the Sign of Triumph

by David Weber

  “They’re more weatherly, they’re faster, and their damned chain of scouts must’ve been telling Sarmouth where we were ever since we entered Basset Channel.” Raisahndo shrugged. “Given all those advantages, it’d’ve taken a drooling idiot to lose the weather gauge.”

  Trahvys arched an eyebrow at him, and the admiral barked a laugh.

  “Oh, I fought hard enough for it, Lewk! Would’ve taken it in a heartbeat if he’d let us have it, too. But when was the last time you saw a Charisian flag officer do something that stupid?”

  “Don’t believe I’ve ever seen a Charisian flag officer do something that stupid, Sir,” the flag captain replied after a moment, and Raisahndo nodded.

  “I rest my case.”

  He stood, gazing at the long, stately lines of ships. There must be five thousand guns aboard those ships, he thought, and Langhorne only knew how many officers and men were sailing so steadily—so deliberately—into the waiting furnace. Raisahndo certainly didn’t know the answer to that question … but he no longer needed a spyglass to pick out details, and Sarmouth’s formation made his intentions easy enough to understand.

  The Charisian was coming at him in a single long column. Every ship in it looked big and powerful, but it was the two leaders who worried him most. The Charisian practice of painting every ship in the same stark colors—black hull, striped with white along the gunports—could make it difficult to identify individual ships, especially at any sort of distance. The Charisian leaders showed only a single row of gunports each, however, and that almost certainly made them ironclads like Dreadnought.

  Not too surprising he put the two of them up front, Raisahndo thought grimly. Haigyl showed what just one of them could do, without any supports at all, and these fellows’ve brought along plenty of friends to watch their backs. I’d feel happier if I knew for sure there weren’t any more of the frigging things farther back in that column of his, though!

  Clearly, Sarmouth intended for his vanguard to take the initial brunt and smash hell out of anything that got in its way, and if there was any reason he shouldn’t be confident of doing that, Caitahno Raisahndo didn’t know what it might be!

  “You know,” he said slowly, eyes narrowing, “I think the time’s come to let them have the weather gauge.”

  “I beg your pardon, Sir?”

  “I said it’s time to let them have the weather gauge,” Raisahndo repeated, turning to face the flag captain squarely. “We can’t keep him from taking it anyway, but he’s pointed quite a bit higher than I thought he would. I don’t know if he misestimated our heading or simply wanted to make sure he’d have plenty of maneuvering distance between us when he finally turns to close the range, but he may have given us a little more wiggle room than he intended to.”

  Trahvys looked at him for a moment, then back at the Charisian line, and then he began to nod.

  * * *

  “Midshipman of the watch, My Lord,” Sylvyst Raigly, Sir Dunkyn Yairley’s valet and steward, announced, stepping out onto Destiny’s stern gallery.

  As always, whenever the possibility of combat presented itself, Raigly was liberally equipped with pistols, swords, dirks, probably a grenade or two, and God only knew what other lethal, pointy objects.

  Thank God I got Stywyrt into Fleet Wing to watch Hektor’s back, the baron thought wryly. If he and Sylvyst were in the same place when a shell went off, God only knows how many dozens of people the flying knives, guns, and brass knuckles would take down with them!

  “Thank you, Sylvyst,” he said out loud, straightening from where he’d stood, leaning on the railing as he watched HMS Empress sail steadily up Destiny’s wake. He turned away from the rail and made a beckoning motion with the fingers of his right hand, and the valet vanished back the way he’d come, then reappeared with a brown-haired, brown-eyed midshipman.

  “Master Ahbaht,” Sarmouth said as the youngster came to attention and touched his chest in salute.

  “My Lord,” the fourteen-year-old replied. “Captain Lathyk’s respects, and the enemy’s changing course. The Captain said to tell you you were right.”

  The youngster seemed a little puzzled by the last sentence, but Sarmouth only shook his head.

  “Don’t worry about it, Master Ahbaht,” he advised. “My compliments to Captain Lathyk and tell him I’ll join him on deck directly.”

  “Aye, aye, My Lord. Your compliments to the Captain, and you’ll join him on deck directly.”

  Sarmouth nodded in confirmation, and Ahbaht saluted again and withdrew.

  The baron stood a moment longer, gazing out at the stupendous line of galleons following in Destiny’s wake, listening to the seagulls and sea wyverns as they swooped and darted around his ships. They’d disappear soon enough when the guns began to roar, he thought grimly. Then he shook himself and followed the midshipman, stepping from the stern gallery into what had been his cabin until the galleon cleared for action. Now the entire ship was one long, wide wooden cavern, every dividing bulkhead struck below for storage, its planked floor covered with sand for traction and dotted with tubs of water for swabs and firefighting. A cave with gunports gaping at regular intervals to let in wind and sunlight and let out the blunt, hungry muzzles of her artillery. He felt the wind plucking at his hair with invisible fingers and the sand crunched under the soles of his shoes as he strode past the waiting gunners, posed like martial statuary around their weapons—rammers, swabs, and worms in hand, cutlasses and pistols at their sides, bayoneted rifles racked ready if they should be needed—and the men of his flagship’s crew bobbed their heads respectfully as he went by.

  He emerged onto the quarterdeck and Lathyk greeted him.

  “They’re doing it, My Lord,” he said.

  “Of course they are.” Sarmouth shook his head. “Once it was obvious they couldn’t take the weather gauge, it was really the only move open to them.”

  “Oh, I know that, My Lord.” Lathyk smiled crookedly. “It’s just that you pegged when they’d make it almost to the minute. I was sure they’d hold on longer.”

  “That’s because you underestimate Admiral Raisahndo. There’s nothing wrong with that man’s brain, Rhobair, and he’s just demonstrated he has the moral courage to do the right thing even if it risks getting him labeled ‘defeatist’ by the Inquisition.”

  The baron crossed to the larboard rail and looked out across four miles or so of seawater. The head of the Dohlaran line had swung around, altering course from northeast-by-east to almost due southeast, curling around inside his own line. The rest of the enemy line followed, turning in succession as each galleon reached the same point, taking the wind on her larboard beam and shaking out more canvas.

  Raisahndo had timed it reasonably well, Sarmouth thought, but he should have ordered a simultaneous turn. If he’d turned his entire squadron onto the wind simultaneously, he’d have bought his rearmost ships a much greater margin of safety. Sarmouth knew why he hadn’t done it, though. Maneuvering forty-odd galleons as a single, cohesive force was akin to driving a herd of wild dragons through the middle of Tellesberg at midday … only harder. Once an admiral had them in line ahead, he really didn’t want to break up that line any sooner than he had to, because as soon as he did, he’d lose control of it. Visibility-limited signals simply weren’t up to coordinating a line of ships ten miles long, especially with gunsmoke to obscure flag hoists, but trying to control the same number of ships maneuvering independently of one another was immeasurably more difficult. Maintaining a line-ahead formation made control far simpler; it became a huge, deadly serious game of follow-the-leader, where what really mattered was no longer the ability to communicate but simply the iron courage to hold to the ship ahead of yours while all the world dissolved in fire, smoke, terror, and death.

  But if a line was easier to control, it was also far less flexible. Raisahndo wanted to maintain as tight a tactical control as he could because he recognized the danger of disintegrating into a disorganized mob. Yet in his p
lace, Sarmouth would have ordered the simultaneous turn, accepting that it was likely to reduce his line to a confused mass, at least until his captains could sort things out, as the price of getting the biggest head start he could.

  Of course, once they turned to run—and every one of those captain would know that was exactly what they were doing; running—getting them to stop running and reform might not be the very easiest thing in the world, either. They’re brave men, most of them—God knows there were no cowards in the Kaudzhu Narrows!—but every damned one of them knows their navy’s up shit creek. Preventing a withdrawal from turning into a rout…?

  He shook his head, wondering how he’d react in their place. Easy to think about someone else losing his nerve, but what if he’d been the one in their shoes?

  Fortunately, I’m not, he thought, and turned back to Lathyk.

  “About another … fifteen minutes, I think, Rhobair. Let’s let them get properly committed first.”

  “Aye, My Lord.” Lathyk nodded, then snapped his fingers at the twelve-year-old midshipman standing at the mizzen halyards with his part of signalmen.

  “We’ll have that signal to Admiral Darys bent on, Master Rychtyr,” he said, and smiled thinly. “We’ll need it shortly.”

  “Aye, aye, Sir!”

  * * *

  Caitahno Raisahndo watched the Charisian line and fought against letting himself hope.

  Maneuvering a fleet at sea in sight of its enemies was like a dance where everyone knew the steps. Both admirals knew precisely what the other admiral’s options were at any given moment, and assuming they’d accurately assessed one another’s intentions, surprises were hard to come by.

  In Sarmouth’s position, Raisahndo would have realized the Western Squadron had no option but to break back south once it became evident the Charisians would take the weather gauge. The only real question in the Charisian admiral’s mind should have been when Raisahndo would make his break, since it was obvious the only smart thing for him to do was to avoid action. The only way he could hope to do that, now that it was clear he couldn’t get to windward of Sarmouth’s line, was to turn and take the wind broad on his beam while he ran as fast and as hard as he could to leeward. He could do that now, assuming Sarmouth allowed him to, because the two squadrons’ maneuvers for the weather gauge had carried them far enough east that a southeasterly heading would weather Broken Hawser Rock with at least a few miles to spare. That was the other reason he’d fought so hard for the windward position. Now if he was very, very lucky—and if Sarmouth suffered a sudden stupidity attack—he might get enough of a head start to squeak around the southern end of the Charisian line, between its rearmost galleons and Broken Hawser. And if he managed that, he might just manage to stay away from the Charisians until dark, too.

  Some things were more likely than others, however.

  Yet even as he thought that, the massive Charisian battle line—there were a couple more ships in it than he’d expected, but obviously at least half a dozen of them were, indeed, somewhere else—continued plowing towards the west-northwest. It was as if Sarmouth hadn’t even noticed his course change!

  If he doesn’t alter pretty soon, he’ll lose his chance, Raisahndo thought almost incredulously. He can’t turn the entire line and overtake us, copper bottoms or not, if he doesn’t make his move in the next … ten minutes.

  Of course, when he realized Raisahndo was slipping away he could always order a general chase. The chance of any Charisian admiral being brainless enough to do that, however, was about on a par with the chance that Langhorne would return in glory sometime in the next five minutes. A general chase—with every captain maneuvering independently as he raced to catch up with the enemy—would certainly let Sarmouth’s faster ships overhaul Raisahndo’s compact, mutually supporting line of battle. They’d be disordered and out of mutual support of one another when they did, however … at which point they would discover what happened to the hunting hound that caught the slash lizard. No. A flag officer of Sarmouth’s experience wouldn’t make that mistake, especially against a fleet which outnumbered him as substantially as the Western Squadron did. His ships, and especially the ironclads, might be far more powerful than any individual unit on the other side, but if he was stupid enough to feed them into Raisahndo’s well-organized, tightly controlled line in dribs and drabs, where discipline and numbers came into their own.…

  * * *

  “Now, I think, Rhobair.”

  “Aye, aye, My Lord. Master Rychtyr!”

  “Aye, aye, Sir,” Trynt Rychtyr acknowledged, and the colorful bunting which had been bent on to the signal halyards a quarter of an hour earlier soared to the yardarm. A flick of the signalman’s wrist broke the signal and the flags streamed on the wind.

  * * *

  “Signal from the Flag, Sir!” Lieutenant Fraid Stedmyn said sharply. “With our number,” he added rather pointedly, and glared up at the midshipman perched in HMS Lightning’s mizzen top.

  “Indeed?” Doniphan Cumyngs, Lightning’s first lieutenant, raised an eyebrow and joined the flag lieutenant in glaring up at the mizzen top. “Odd that no one else noticed it,” he continued, loudly enough to ensure the midshipman would find it difficult to pretend he hadn’t heard.

  That luckless youth snatched up his spyglass and peered through it at the distant flags, and Tymythy Darys felt his lips twitch with an utterly inappropriate temptation to smile. There really wasn’t anything particularly amusing about it, the admiral supposed, but at the same time, there was. Stedmyn had been a signals specialist himself before Darys tapped him as his flag lieutenant. He was an efficient, hard-working young man, and almost as smart as he thought he was—no one could have been quite as smart as Fraid Stedmyn thought he was—who found it extraordinarily difficult to delegate anything.

  Not that this particular duty was his to delegate in the first place, since Lightning’s signals department was Captain Sympsyn’s and Lieutenant Cumyngs’ responsibility, not the flag lieutenant’s.

  Which wouldn’t save Midshipman Braiahn’s youthful arse when Cumyngs had the opportunity to ‘discuss’ it with him. First lieutenants didn’t take kindly to midshipmen who embarrassed them in front of flag officers. Especially not in front of flag officers they would probably be facing across the breakfast table sometime quite soon now. The fact that Cumyngs and Stedmyn thoroughly detested one another was only icing on the cake.

  “The Division’s number, Sir,” Braiahn called down. Clearly he would have preferred not to offer that particular bit of information, given Stedmyn’s rather pointed comment. Unfortunately, the ICN’s standard signals procedures left him no choice. “Number 80 and Number 59!”

  His assistant at the foot of the mast flipped pages swiftly in the signal book, very careful not to look at anything—or anyone—else in the process. Then he cleared his throat and looked up from the book.

  “‘Execute previous orders,’ Sir, and ‘Southwest-by-South.’”

  “Thank you, Master Sellyrs,” Cumyngs said frostily, and turned to Captain Sympsyn, who’d been observing the operation of his ship’s communications department with an interested expression. “Execute previous orders, course southwest-by-south, Sir.”

  “Thank you, Master Cumyngs.”

  Despite an admirably grave tone, there might have been a slight twinkle in Sympsyn’s eye as he repeated Cumyngs acknowledgment to young Sellyrs. If there was, it disappeared instantly as he looked at Darys.

  “I heard,” the admiral said, and showed his teeth. “Looks like the Baron was right. Very well, Captain Sympsyn. Let’s be about it!”

  * * *

  “Sir—!”

  “I see it, Lewk,” Raisahndo said, and slammed a fist down on the quarterdeck rail, swearing with silent eloquence as the Charisian formation changed at last. The last eight galleons in Sarmouth’s line were altering course sharply, yards swinging with mechanical precision as they came all the way from west-northwest to southwest-by-south, and his tee
th grated together as he recalled his earlier thought about dance steps.

  He raised his spyglass, peering through it, and his face tightened as he got his first real good look at the division which had formed the rear of the Charisian line. Apparently the two ships leading Sarmouth’s line weren’t the only ironclads in his squadron after all. Either that, or they’d been bombardment ships, instead. Which was certainly possible, especially if Sarmouth had intended this all along. Whatever they might have been, however, the pair of ships leading the abbreviated line which had just turned southwest also showed only a single line of gunports, and he was closer to these. His spyglass showed him the streaks of rust where wind and weather had scoured away their black paint.

  And beyond them.…

  “Signal to Admiral Hahlynd,” he said, never lowering the glass.

  “Yes, Sir?”

  “‘Engage the enemy to windward.’”

  * * *

  “All right, Ahlfryd,” Pawal Hahlynd said grimly. “It looks like we get to try it a second time.”

  “One way to put it, Sir,” Captain Ahlfryd Mahgyrs said as the screw-galley Sword turned towards the enemy.

  The deck quivered as her cranksmen bent to the pair of long, belowdecks crankshafts spinning her propellers. Speed was as important as maneuverability today, and she heeled to the press of her canvas, as well. Spray burst back from her cutwater, glittering like diamonds in the sunlight before it pattered across the decks, drenching every exposed surface, and both of them knew they were driving her too hard for safety. The screw-galleys were surprisingly good seaboats, but the weight of their guns and armor was really too much for their frames. They were fragile vessels, and more than one member of the ship’s company had to be remembering the day they’d watched one of her sisters simply break up and disappear in less than twenty minutes in seas no heavier than today’s.

  “I didn’t much enjoy it the first time, really,” Hahlynd’s flag captain continued, much too quietly for anyone else to hear him over the noise of wind, water, and shouted orders. “And, frankly, this time around the odds suck, Sir.”