by David Weber
It was also why he made it a point to personally supervise the transition of the specials.
There were six of them in this barge train, and the shiver he felt as he looked west along the canal towards the widely spaced, still waiting barges had little to do with the morning’s sharpness. Lock dimensions meant barges on the older canals had to be smaller than those on some of the newer canals. The Holy Langhorne had been built to accept barges a hundred and thirty feet long, with beams of up to thirty-five feet, but when mortal hands had taken over the task of canal building from divine will, they’d been forced to accept more modest dimensions, at least until the invention of gunpowder. Those canals’ barges were limited to no more than a hundred and ten feet in length, with beams which could not exceed twenty feet, and Pottyr’s present charges were twenty percent shorter than the Holy Langhorne could have handled, far less the even bigger eastern barges. The ones hauling grain out of Tarikah Province or coal from the Ice Ashes had almost four times the capacity of today’s specials, and the lockmaster was just as happy that was true.
It meant each of them could transport “only” four hundred and fifty tons of gunpowder.
Vicar Rhobair had imposed stringent, ruthlessly enforced restrictions on the powder barges’ movements. They traveled in special barge trains, preceded by cavalry patrols, each barge guarded by its own platoon of infantry, accompanied by the bloodthirsty prohibition of anything remotely like an open flame anywhere along their route. No other barges were permitted to travel with them—especially not the passenger barges. And no one but official Canal Service personnel were permitted within fifty yards of the locks themselves as the barges passed through, given that human beings always provided ample fodder for accidents, however carefully the catastrophic consequences might be explained to them. The barges in each train were required to maintain a four-hundred-yard separation during transit, and none were ever allowed to lock through simultaneously with any other barge.
He watched water begin to flood into the lower lock chamber, lifting the first barge for the next stage of its journey. The barge nudged against the fenders as the water level rose, and the lock tenders adjusted the tension on the tow lines.
The contact between the barge’s hull and the fenders was slightly harder than usual. Only very slightly; even pushed by a combination of the incoming water and the sharp breeze, the impact was little more than a caress.
But it was enough.
A shiver ran through the carefully stowed cargo. The powder was sealed in casks, stacked on their sides and carefully chocked to prevent them from shifting, with each layer of casks cushioned from the ones above and below by a padding of woven straw. It was no one’s fault, really, that one cask in the bottommost tier had a cracked barrel stave. It had been damaged in loading, but the crack was so small no one had noticed at the time … just as no one knew about the dusting of gunpowder which had sifted through the crack to gather between the damaged cask and its neighbor over the course of the thirty-five-hundred-mile journey from Lake Pei.
And not one of the alert, watchful humans carefully following every one of Rhobair Duchairn’s meticulously thought-out safety regulations ever saw the harmless little motion that generated just enough friction.
The explosion killed seventy-eight people outright, including Mahlyk Pottyr, who wouldn’t be sitting in front of his fireplace this winter, after all. Another sixty-one were injured.
* * *
“Excuse me?” Lawrync Zhaikybs, Archbishop of Sardahn, frowned at the upper-priest in the Schuelerite-purple cassock. “What did you say?”
“I said this sort of sabotage will not be tolerated, Your Eminence,” Father Hahskyll Seegairs replied flatly from the other side of Zhaikybs’ desk.
Seegairs was thirty years younger than the white-haired, rather frail archbishop. He was a swarthy, chunky man with a shaved head and brown eyes as hard as his face. He was also a senior member of Inspector General Wylbyr Edwyrds’ staff, and his expression was unyielding as he stood in Zhaikybs’ office in St. Vyrdyn Archbishop’s Palace. It was a rather small archbishop’s palace, but the Princedom of Sardahn wasn’t a particularly wealthy archbishopric.
“Sabotage? What evidence of sabotage do you have, Father?”
“The fact and location of the explosion.”
Seegairs’ voice was flatter than ever, his eyes like polished flint in the lamplight.
“That’s all?” Zhaikybs tried to keep the disbelief out of his own tone, but those flinty eyes flickered.
“Don’t think for a moment that I don’t take this incident very seriously, Father,” the archbishop said after a moment. “But I’ve read Mayor Thompkyn’s semaphore report to Prince Styvyn, and I’ve personally interviewed Father Mahkzwail, Vicar Rhobair’s deputy here in the capital. There’s no mention in the Mayor’s report or in Father Mahkzwail’s preliminary findings of sabotage.”
“The precautions which are routinely taken in the transport of the Army of God’s gunpowder are extraordinary, Your Eminence,” Seegairs replied. “I’ve personally reviewed them, and so has the Inquisitor General and the Grand Inquisitor himself. There’s no reasonable ‘natural’ explanation for how and why a barge loaded with gunpowder in accordance with those regulations, and which had already traveled almost four thousand miles, should simply spontaneously explode. Not simply explode, but to do so at the very moment it was passing through a critical canal lock—the first lock in almost sixty miles of canal!”
Zhaikybs stared at him. Then he shook his head.
“Father, no one other than the guard detail, all of whom were on deck at that moment, as per Vicar Rhobair’s regulations—and all of whom had been with the powder from the day it was first loaded aboard—had any contact with the barge. How could anyone possibly have caused it to explode at that particular time and place?”
“Obviously, someone else did have contact with it.” Seegairs returned Zhaikybs’ incredulous gaze with something far more like contempt than an upper-priest should normally show an archbishop. “The saboteur had to have contact to cause the explosion.”
Zhaikybs bit his lip against a quick, angry suggestion for exactly where Father Hahskyll could put his circular logic.
“I appreciate that it’s the Inquisition’s responsibility to investigate a disaster like this as thoroughly as possible,” he said instead, after a moment. “And I also appreciate that the possibility that it wasn’t an accident has to be carefully considered. But not one of the surviving witnesses saw anyone anywhere near the lock who shouldn’t’ve been there. The barge train’s cavalry had cleared the vicinity of everyone except the lockmaster, his two assistants, the lock tenders, and the barge guards, as per Vicar Rhobair’s standard procedures. I obviously can’t speak for the guards, but Lockmaster Pottyr and his personnel have passed hundreds of barges and thousands of tons of powder through Sarkyn without any previous problem or difficulty. Are you suggesting that with that record one of them suddenly decided to blow up this particular barge, instead of any of the earlier ones, and kill himself in the process?”
“If not one of them, then someone else from Sarkyn.” Seegairs’ eyes were stonier than ever. “The timing, the placement, the fact that the barge had already come so far without a single hint of trouble, all underscore the fact that it had to be sabotage. And it would have taken someone thoroughly familiar with the procedures you’ve just described to thwart them, which strongly suggests that whoever it was must’ve been from Sarkyn or the immediate area. Assuming, of course, that it wasn’t Pottyr or one of his regular work crew. As for why someone who’d always appeared to be a faithful son of Mother Church should lend himself to so heinous an act, even at the cost of his own life, Shan-wei is the mother of lies, deceit, and deception. How can we know what blandishments, what false promises, she could offer someone who’d already secretly sold her his soul?”
“But no one saw any sign of that! Not a hint, not a suggestion—nothing!”
“No?�
� Seegairs tilted his shaven head and his lip curled. “No one saw anything? Or did they simply fail to mention it to my agents inquisitor?”
A sudden icicle went through Lawrync Zhaikybs. Agents inquisitor? Seegairs already had his own agents inquisitor in Sarkyn?
“I’m afraid, Your Eminence,” the upper-priest continued, “that there isn’t a great deal of point in continuing this discussion. My investigators have already established that only a deliberate act of sabotage could have detonated that load of gunpowder at that specific, disastrous point in time and in that specific position. There is no question,” the words came slow, measured, hewn from granite and ribbed with steel, “and I’ve so reported to the Inquisitor General.”
“But—”
“I’ve also received the Inquisitor General’s response,” Seegairs went on, overriding Zhaikybs’ attempted response, “and his instructions have been transmitted to the security detachment escorting the gunpowder and to my agents inquisitor on the ground in Sarkyn.”
“Instructions?” For the first time, anger glittered in Zhaikybs’ voice. “What sort of ‘instructions,’ Father?”
“Heresy and treachery against God must—and will be—punished.” Seegairs met the white-haired bishop’s eyes with the flat stare of a serpent. “We will discover which heretics made this possible, Your Eminence. And we will determine why not a single soul in that entire town ever caught so much of a hint of what was planned or brought it to Mother Church’s attention. And when we’ve sifted the witnesses, when we’ve discovered the full depth of this betrayal, those responsible for it will be given to the Punishment.”
“The people of Sarkyn belong to my flock, Father!” Zhaikybs’ voice crackled as he met that flat-eyed glare. “I repeat that I see no sign, no evidence, of deliberate sabotage—none at all—and that you proceed further with this at your peril! I will see the evidence of your agents inquisitor myself before I permit you to take these extraordinary actions in my archbishopric!”
“That decision, unfortunately, doesn’t lie with you, Your Eminence. Under the Grand Inquisitor’s personal instructions, the Inquisitor General has the authority—and the responsibility—to protect the canals and transportation system supporting the Army of God against additional attacks by the enemies of God. Bishop Wylbyr will make such determinations and issue such instructions as may be necessary to discharge that responsibility. In this regard, his decisions supersede those of any local authority, secular or temporal.”
“I forbid it!” Zhaikybs’ fist slammed his blotter, but Seegairs only inclined his head coldly.
“Your Eminence, I very much fear that in this instance you have no power to forbid any decision by the Inquisitor General. His instructions have already been passed to Sarkyn. You are, of course, free to contact the Grand Inquisitor directly and ask him to overrule Bishop Wylbyr. Until and unless he does so, however, I and my fellow Inquisitors will obey our own superiors. I can see that you’re distressed, quite reasonably, but no good purpose can be served by continuing this discussion. I called to explain the Inquisitor General’s decision and directives as a matter of courtesy. Having done so, I must now take my leave. I regret that you find yourself unable to accept the Inquisitor General’s position, and I will of course transmit your concerns to him. For now, however, good night.”
He bowed ever so slightly to the archbishop, turned, and walked out of Zhaikybs’ office without another word.
.V.
HMS Rottweiler, 30, Dahltyn, Gulf of Jahras, Desnairian Empire
“We’ll bring her a quarter point to larboard, if you please, Master Mahkbyth!”
Symyn Mastyrsyn’s was a powerful voice, trained to carry through the tumult of battle, but the cacophony raging around HMS Rottweiler threatened to drown it out anyway. Ahmbrohs Mahkbyth, Rottweiler’s first lieutenant, had been expecting the order, however.
“Aye, aye, Sir!” he shouted back from where he stood beside the armored galleon’s wheel, and Captain Mastyrsyn turned back to more pressing concerns.
Unfortunately, when Sir Dustyn Olyvyr and Baron Seamount had planned Rottweiler’s conversion from ship-of-the-line to ironclad, they’d altered the ship’s rails and bulwarks. The hammock rail in which the crew’s tightly rolled hammocks had been stowed as a lightweight bulletproof breastwork had been transformed into a rack on the inside of a solid armored bulwark six and a half feet tall. The idea was to protect the men working the guns from enemy fire, and Mastyrsyn couldn’t argue with that necessity. But raising the bulwark had a distinctly limiting effect on visibility even before clouds of gunsmoke were added to the equation. There was only so much a man could see through a gunport … even when the gunport in question wasn’t full of a cannon that insisted on firing at the most inconvenient moment.
Sir Dustyn had called on the Royal College’s Doctor Frymyn to help solve the problem, however, and she’d come up with an answer. She called it an angle-glass—an ingenious device consisting of a hollow metal tube mounted vertically in brackets on the inside of the armored bulwark. Its lower end had what looked like the eyepieces of a standard double-glass, and the tube itself was fitted with mirrors that bounced light and images down to them.
Given the ironclad’s length, there was rather more space than usual between Rottweiler’s gunports, and Sir Dustyn Olyvyr had used some of that space to fit four angle-glasses on either side of the ship, bracketed to the inner face of the armored bulwarks. Now Mastyrsyn used the side-mounted crank to raise the aftermost starboard angle-glass to a comfortable height and bent to the eyepieces, peering through the smoke as Rottweiler drove past the flaming, slowly foundering wreck of the Imperial Desnairian Navy galleon which had moved in to engage her. The galleon’s captain had been brave enough, Mastyrsyn supposed, but it was hard to admire a man who’d gotten his ship and two-thirds of his crew killed when he ought to have known better. Dahltyn was the third town—although calling it a “town” was probably a bit excessive—Admiral Shain’s squadron had attacked in the last four days, and Rottweiler had led each of those attacks. By now, even Desnairians should have figured out there was some reason cannonballs kept bouncing off of her.
You could be being a little hard on him, Symyn, he told himself. Maybe he knew exactly what was going to happen. Given how Clyntahn went after Duke Kholman and Baron Jahras’ families after Iythria, he may’ve figured it was better to get himself blown to hell than be accused of cowardice.
Whatever his thinking, he’d accomplished exactly nothing, for Rottweiler’s armor had done all Sir Dustyn had promised. It was dimpled here and there where shot had bounced off, and they’d had to replace two of the securing bolts, but nothing had come even close to penetrating it. Several of the shells which had hit her had simply disintegrated; for that matter, quite a few solid shot had broken up on impact. In fact, her armor had performed so well Mastyrsyn had to make a conscientious effort to remind himself she wasn’t really invulnerable. An unlucky shell through a gunport, for example, would be no laughing matter, and while they’d been fortunate so far in avoiding serious damage aloft, only a fool would count on that continuing indefinitely.
For right now, though.…
He rotated the angle-glass, watching the fire raft drift towards Rottweiler. It wasn’t really a raft—it looked like an old cargo lighter—but it had no crew, no masts, and no oars, so Mastyrsyn wasn’t about to dignify it with the term “fire ship.” It was the first time the Desnairians had tried that tactic, and he wondered what had taken them so long. But at least they’d caught the tide properly to send it drifting down on Rottweiler and the line of conventional galleons passing her to larboard while she interposed herself between the shore batteries and their unarmored sides. Smoke and flame belched suddenly upward from a second fire raft, coming along behind the first, and Mastyrsyn turned from the angle-glass and raised his speaking trumpet.
“Master Fynlaityr!”
Lynyx Fynlaityr, Rottweiler’s gunner, looked up and cupped one hand behind hi
s right ear to indicate he was listening.
“I’d take it kindly if you disposed of this little bonfire to starboard, Master Fynlaityr! I’m sure the shore batteries will keep!”
“Aye, aye, Sir! We’ll do that thing!”
Fynlaityr started passing orders and Mastyrsyn turned back to the enemy.
The fortifications Rottweiler had closed to engage were in a sad way, he noted with cold satisfaction. The ancient masonry wall of the original fort was badly damaged, but that was to be expected. The battery of new model twenty-five-pounders at its foot, on the other hand, had been properly mounted behind an earthen berm which would have absorbed round shot without damage all day long. It would have been equally effective against thirty-pounder shells, but Rottweiler’s shells were more than twice as heavy and filled with ten times the bursting charge. The battery’s magazine protection had proved … inadequate against that weight of fire. At least five of its twenty twenty-five-pounders had been destroyed outright by the explosion, and it was unlikely any gunners who’d been fortunate enough to survive would be going anywhere near its remaining pieces while his gunners dealt with the fire rafts.