At the Sign of Triumph

by David Weber

  My God, he thought, she’s real. She’s really, really real! Deep inside, I never believed she was—not truly—even when I came aboard.

  He’d been devastated when they told him to hand Delthak over to Pawal Blahdysnberg and return to Old Charis. Despite his deep initial doubts, he’d come to love every bolt, every plank, of his unlovely, ungainly command, and she’d never refused a single thing he’d asked of her. After everything he and his ship’s company had been through, it seemed bitterly unfair to be summoned home with no explanation at all. Zherald Cahnyrs, Delthak’s second officer, had been ordered home with him, and although the lieutenant was too disciplined and professional to say it, Bahrns knew he’d been just as disappointed.

  But only until they reported to Admiral Rock Point—not at Tellesberg, or Lock Island, or even King’s Harbor, as they’d expected, but at Larek, at the mouth of the Delthak River—and found out why they’d been recalled.

  He’d stood on the deck of HMS Destroyer, Rock Point’s flagship, staring at the enormous vessel moored at the fitting out dock, her decks and upper works aswarm with workmen, and he’d been unable to believe what he was seeing.

  “Bit of a surprise, is it, Captain?” the one-legged high admiral had asked with a crooked smile.

  “Oh, yes, My Lord,” Bahrns had replied fervently. “In so many ways! I never imagined I might be considered to command one of them! And even if I had—!”

  He’d broken off, shaking his head, and Rock Point had snorted. The sound had been harsh, but it had also contained amusement. And possibly something almost like … satisfaction.

  “After the Delthak Fire, I’m not surprised you’re surprised,” he’d said. “And hopefully Clyntahn, Maigwair—and Thirsk—will go right on thinking what you thought. We’ve certainly done our damnedest to help them do that, anyway!”

  “I can understand why you’d do that, My Lord, but does that mean the fire was actually less destructive than the rumors said?”

  “Unfortunately, no.” If there’d been any amusement in Rock Point’s voice a moment earlier, it had disappeared. “In fact, it was even worse than we first thought, especially given the need to continue producing the Army’s artillery. Frankly, little though anyone in Navy uniform would like to admit it—I know I sure as hell didn’t want to!—equipping the Army’s even more important than equipping us, at the moment. I imagine—” he’d given Bahrns a very sharp look “—you probably understand that better than most, Captain.”

  “Yes, My Lord, I do.” Bahrns’ expression had tightened. “Earl Hanth’s been working miracles, but his people’re paying in blood for him to pull them off. Mind you, there’s not a man in this world who could do a better job than the Earl, and all of us know the price’d be even higher under anyone else. But I know those people, My Lord. They’re real to me, not just names in dispatches or newspaper articles. I’m in favor of anything that knocks that price down.”

  “As it happens, Captain, so am I.” Rock Point had rested a hand on Bahrns’ shoulder. “And to be honest, the way you’ve coordinated with the Army so well—starting with the Canal Raid and continuing straight through the Seridahn Campaign—is one reason your name jumped the queue when we found ourselves looking for a skipper on short notice.”

  Bahrns had felt his face heat, but, fortunately, the high admiral had continued before he had to try to come up with some sort of a response.

  “At any rate,” he’d said more briskly, taking his hand from the captain’s shoulder and turning back to Destroyer’s rail, “between the damage to the Delthak Works and the need to provide the Army’s artillery, it’s going to be at least four more months before we’re able to complete the armament for the class. But by taking the two undamaged ten-inchers from the works and combining them with the proofing guns, we were able to put together the main battery for one King Haarahld-class—this one.” He jutted his chin at the enormous vessel. “Duke Delthak tells me she’ll be ready for trials in three five-days.”

  “But surely a captain had already been assigned, My Lord? For that matter, captains must’ve been assigned to all of them. Wouldn’t it make more sense to give her to someone who’s been associated with the building program from the beginning?”

  “Yes, we’d assigned captains. We didn’t exactly pick them at random, either, and we’d given this one to Zhorj Mahlrunee. I believe you know him?”

  “Yes, My Lord, I do. Very well, in fact.” Bahrns had frowned. “He was first officer in Sea Shrike when I was a snotty. May I ask why he isn’t still assigned to her? He’s one of the finest officers I know!”

  The concern in his voice had been obvious, and Rock Point had sighed

  “I’m sorry, Captain—I thought you knew. Captain Mahlrunee was called home to Chisholm. It wasn’t an easy decision for him or for us, but his wife was killed in an accident.”

  “Ahnalee is dead?” Bahrns had stared at the high armiral. Ahnalee Mahlrunee was the widow of a brother officer; she and Zhorj had been married for less than two years, and they had three young children, two of them hers by her previous marriage.

  “I’m afraid so,” Rock Point had confirmed. “Just one of those stupid things. But you probably know he’d moved his parents to Chisholm after his marriage?”

  The high admiral had cocked an eyebrow, and Bahrns nodded, Mahlrunee’s mother and father were quite elderly, and his only living sibling was also a Navy officer. Since both of them had been constantly at sea, Ahnahlee had insisted their parents move to Chisholm where she could care for them.

  “He was devastated by the news,” Rock Point continued, “and his brother’s at sea in Baron Sarmouth’s squadron, so there was literally no one else to care for his family. Under the circumstances, he requested relief and went on inactive duty—with my complete support. Some duties take priority over anything else, and this is damned well one of them! But it left us with a bit of a personnel problem, and when I asked him to recommend his relief, he picked you. To be honest, we’d already ordered you home to give you one of the new City-class, so I wasn’t inclined to accept his recommendation at the time. It was only after you were in transit that Duke Delthak’s people completed their damage survey and determined we had the artillery to complete one King Haarahld, after all. Their Majesties picked this one, and that meant she needed a captain fast.”

  Bahrns’ expression had shouted the question he’d been unable to ask, and Rock Point had chuckled sourly.

  “As it happens, Captain, the ship’s construction was at least as advanced as any of the others’. The only one they might have picked instead was King Haarahld VII, and her boilers are … less than satisfactory, let’s say.” The high admiral had shrugged. “It doesn’t happen often with the Delthak Works, but even Duke Delthak’s people occasionally screw up. In fact, we’d already discovered we had to rip them out and start over again, and getting that done had dropped in priority when we didn’t think we’d have the guns for any of them. We hadn’t made much progress on that little chore when we found out we could complete one, so there really wasn’t another candidate. After all,” he’d showed Bahrns his teeth, “we don’t want anyone in the Gulf of Dohlar … misconstruing our message.”

  “No, My Lord. I can see that,” Bahrns had said, his eyes on the name emblazoned in golden letters on the cliff-like side of the enormous ship’s bow.

  “HMS Gwylym Manthyr” those letters had said.

  * * *

  “Well, Captain?”

  The man standing at Halcom Bahrns’ side had to raise his voice over the sound of rushing wind and water, and Bahrns turned to him courteously.

  “Should I assume she passes muster?” he continued with a slight smile, and there was nothing at all slight about Bahrns’ answering smile.

  “Oh, I think you can assume that, Your Grace!” he told the recently ennobled Duke of Delthak. “Langhorne! I thought Delthak was incredible when you and High Admiral Rock Point gave her to me, but this—!”

  He waved one arm
in a wide arc, taking in the long, lethal barrels of her guns, the white water bursting away from either bow, the wind of her passage humming in the signal halyards, and the broad deck—vibrating to the throbbing pulse beat of her mighty engines, yet steady as a rock underfoot, despite her headlong charge across the bay—and shook his head.

  “I can understand why the details were so closely held,” he continued, “but I never would’ve imagined what they really were. This ship—this single ship—is more powerful than every other warship in the entire world!”

  “That might be a little bit of an exaggeration,” Ehdwyrd Howsmyn said judiciously. “And she’s not designed just to engage other navies, either. To be honest, I suspect that’s another reason Baron Rock Point thought you’d be the proper man to command her. I believe you’re intended to be what His Majesty calls ‘Earl Sharpfield’s Doorknocker’ when it’s time to … go calling on Gorath.”

  “And I’m looking forward to the visit, Your Grace,” Bahrns said much more grimly.

  “We all are,” Delthak assured him. “I knew Gwylym Manthyr.” He rested a hand on the bridge railing and looked out across the endless waters of the bay for a moment. “A lot of us have been waiting for his namesake’s voice to make itself heard. Do us proud, Captain.”

  “We will, Your Grace.” Bahrns met his gaze levelly. “Depend on that—we will.”

  * * *

  “If I’d realized Master Tahnguchi would shave three full five-days off his own best estimate, I might’ve delayed our visit to Rhaigair until she arrived, Ehdwyrd,” Dunkyn Yairley said, studying the recorded satellite imagery of HMS Gwylym Manthyr’s final acceptance trials. “A lot of people who’re dead now might not’ve been if I had, too.”

  “As I recall, Dunkyn,” Cayleb Ahrmahk put in from his Siddar City study, just a bit tartly, “Lewk Cohlmyn is our overall commander for the Gulf of Dohlar. Forgive me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t that mean he got to pick the timing?”

  “Well, yes, Your Majesty. But I could have argued instead of getting behind and pushing. And if I’d known she’d be available, I damned well would have!”

  “Dunkyn, it could’ve been argued either way even if you’d known exactly when Manthyr was going to commission,” Domynyk Staynair said. “Every day we’d delayed would’ve been one more day for the Dohlarans to get their damned ‘sea-bombs’ into production and deployed, and not even a King Haarahld has an armored bottom. Then there were Zhwaigair’s coast-defense rockets, and those frigging twelve-inch rifles Duchairn and Maigwair had earmarked for Golden Grass and Cahstnyr. The first of Zhwaigair’s rockets would’ve arrived yesterday morning, and the first twelve-inch battery was less than a five-day behind them, I believe?”

  Sarmouth nodded, if perhaps a bit unwillingly, and Rock Point shrugged.

  “The King Haarahlds aren’t magic. I think it’s unlikely any of that could have significantly damaged Manthyr, but I might be wrong—especially about the rockets. When we designed her deck armor, we weren’t thinking in terms of plunging fire from two-hundred-pound warheads, you know. If you’d waited, there’d’ve been time for all of those to get into play before you hit Rhaigair.”

  “I think there’s a certain point to that argument,” Merlin put in. Sarmouth looked at the image projected onto his contact lenses, and Merlin shrugged. “Let’s not forget how beaten up Eraystor was by ten-inch guns by the time Zhaztro finished running the batteries.”

  “All right,” Sarmouth said after a moment. “I’ll grant that. But I really, really wish I’d been able to send Manthyr in—alone, even—to deal with Rhaigair while Hainz and his squadron waited for Raisahndo’s galleons off Shipworm Shoal. Hell! Even somebody as stubborn as Raisahndo might’ve surrendered when he saw that waiting for him!”

  Merlin chuckled bleakly and Cayleb snorted, although Sarmouth definitely had a point. The RDN’s Western Squadron had simply ceased to exist after the Battle of Shipworm Shoal; not a single ship heavier than a twenty-gun brig had escaped. But the Royal Dohlaran Navy had lived up to its own tradition. By the time Caitahno Raisahndo’s surviving galleons struck their colors, only eleven of them had still been in action. For that matter, only twenty-six of them—and only one of his crippled screw-galleys—had still been afloat.

  His flagship had not been among them.

  Yet they hadn’t died alone, those ships. If the Charisians had wanted to get into their range of him, they’d had to let him into his range of them, as well, and only three of their ships had been armored. The carnage wooden ships armed with shell-firing guns could wreak upon one another was incredible. Two Charisian galleons had simply blown up. Four more had foundered as the hungry sea poured into breached and shattered hulls, and another five had been too badly damaged to return to service. Sarmouth had burned one of them on the spot rather than attempt to nurse the broken, leaking wreck back to Claw Island. The other four had returned to Claw Keep to be stripped of their guns and useful fittings before they, too, were burned.

  As recently as a year or two earlier, at least two of them probably would have been repaired, but there’d been no point now. With the Western Squadron’s destruction, the Imperial Charisian Navy’s only remaining opposition was the squadron under Thirsk’s personal command in Gorath. Even the Desnairian privateers had become only a ghost of their onetime menace. Sir Hainz Zhaztro’s message to Geyra had inspired Emperor Mahrys and his councilors to … reconsider their support for that strategy. Or for anything else which might conceivably inspire another visit from the ICN.

  Zhaspahr Clyntahn had been livid when he learned that the Desnairians who’d already deserted the Jihad’s land war had quietly done the same at sea, as well. Fortunately for Mahrys, Desnair the City was out of the Grand Inquisitor’s reach, unless he wanted to risk the even worse possibility of ordering the emperor’s arrest and discovering the Inquisition couldn’t carry it out! Clearly, that was one more risk than even he was willing to run … at least until he’d dealt with Charis and her allies. After that, of course, he’d look at things differently, and all the world knew that Zhaspahr Clyntahn had a long, long memory.

  That must leave Mahrys just a tad … ambivalent about the Jihad’s outcome, Merlin reflected with a certain nasty sense of pleasure.

  But the upshot was that, after so many years of explosive expansion, the ICN had more ships—a lot more ships—than it actually needed. And thanks to the introduction of steam, steel hulls, and rifled artillery, virtually all those ships were at best obsolescent. There was little point repairing badly damaged galleons which would only be retired and broken up within the next two or three years.

  “You know,” Nynian Rychtyr said from where she sat on the arm of Merlin’s chair, “I’ve been meaning to ask this for a while, but why in Kohdy’s name did you people decide to build something like the King Haarahlds?” She shook her head, her expression quizzical. “Oh, I understand you needed Cayleb’s ‘doorknocker,’ and I understand the Cities don’t have the operating range you’d really like to have. But they did just fine at Rhaigair, and Sir Dunkyn’s clearly demonstrated he and his Marines can seize islands for forward coaling stations anytime he feels like it. So why build something so big? And so fast, for that matter! Captain Bahrns’ had it up to twenty-six knots, and wasn’t even straining its machinery when he did.”

  “Had her up to twenty-six knots, please,” Merlin said with a pained expression and shuddered delicately. “Her, Nynian! You really want to be careful about how you offend a Charisian’s sensibilities with that sort of loose language.”

  “Sure I do.” She rolled her eyes and smacked him across the top of his head. “But my question stands. I’d never heard of ‘overkill’ until I fell into my present evil company, but to be honest, these ships strike me as a pretty clear example of exactly that. And you’ve diverted an awful lot of resources into them.”

  “The resource cost is probably the strongest argument against them,” Earl Pine Hollow said before Merlin could reply. The imperial fi
rst councilor sat comfortably propped up in bed with an open book in his lap and his evening cup of chocolate on a bedside table. “On the other hand, you have to remember when they were first put into the pipeline, Nynian.” He shrugged. “We’d already begun work on them before Clyntahn’s ‘Sword of Schueler’ ever hit the Republic. At that point, the Navy was still our primary focus, since there was no way we were going to be able to invade the Mainland out of our own resources anytime soon. By the time the Army’s needs took center stage, we were already well launched on the program and, frankly, the Army didn’t need armor plate, steam engines, or most of the rest of what was going into the ships. So the resource diversion aspect of it actually isn’t nearly as clear-cut as it might appear.”

  “All right, I’ll grant that,” Nynian conceded, but she rallied gamely. “On the other hand, you could’ve built—what? Ten Cities for each King Haarahld?”

  “Yes, we could,” Sharleyan acknowledged from her own Tellesberg bedchamber. “And we considered doing just that. But I’m a little surprised, Nynian.”

  “Surprised?”

  “Yes. You, of all people, should be accustomed to long-term strategic thinking.”

  Nynian’s eyebrows arched, and Sharleyan chuckled.

  “It was your idea, Merlin. Why don’t you explain it?”

  “All right.” Merlin leaned back in his chair and smiled up at Nynian. “Of course, there’s always the problem of getting such a land-bound ignoramus to understand the finer points so glaringly obvious to us subtle sea creatures.”

  She glared down at him, raising one mock-ferocious fist, and he lifted his hands in a gesture of surrender.