A Mighty Fortress (128 page)

He smiled inwardly behind an expression that mingled patience with just a touch of boredom. It was ironic, he thought, that his “bargain” with Clyntahn should do so much to convince the Grand Inquisitor to completely disregard any threat he might represent. That the man who was supposed to be the keeper of Mother Church’s conscience regarded Duchairn’s insistence on actually discharging his responsibilities as one of God’s vicars as proof of maudlin foggy- mindedness.

You just go right on seeing things that way, Zhaspahr,
Rhobair Duchairn thought coldly.
Because one of these days, you’re going to find out just how wrong you truly are
.

HMS Royal Charis, 58,

City of Tellesberg,

Kingdom of Old Charis

I was wondering when they’d get around to this,” Cayleb Ahrmahk said sourly.

He, Sharleyan, their daughter, and one Captain Merlin Athrawes were afloat once more.
Empress of Charis
was still in yard hands, so he and Sharleyan flew their standard aboard HMS
Royal Charis
, one of the new fifty- eight- gun galleons designed to avoid
Empress of Charis
’ problems. They wouldn’t actually be leaving Tellesberg for their return to Chisholm until the morning tide, but they’d decided to get Princess Alahnah aboard ship and settled that afternoon.

Of course, that also meant they had to be a bit more careful about keeping their voices down, given the thinness of cabin bulkheads.

“Well,” Bryahn Lock Island said rather more philosophically from his own flagship, “we figured they’d have to decide what to do with all those ships before Hsing- wu’s Passage froze. Now we know. I have to admit, though—I didn’t expect them to be quite this subtle. Gather their fleet in an
eastern
port, then send them all
west
?” He shook his head. “That’s a lot sneakier than I anticipated, frankly.”

Lock Island had a point, Merlin conceded. The port of Angelberg, on Chantry Bay, lay on the southern shore of Hsing- wu’s Passage, almost three thousand miles
east
of Temple Bay. It was nearly halfway to the eastern mouth of the Passage, where it debouched into the Icewind Sea... and well over seven thousand miles from the Passage’s
western
mouth. Had it not been for the orders to the various squadron commanders, he would have assumed they were planning on coming east, instead of west. Fortunately, they
had
been able to read those orders, which confirmed that what they were really planning was what Merlin and Lock Island had both considered to be their smartest move all along.

“They
are
being clever, aren’t they,” Prince Nahrmahn remarked from Eraystor, where his own galleon was waiting to join
Royal Charis
for the voyage to Chisholm.

“Maybe so, but now that we’ve caught them at it, the problem’s deciding what we do about it,” Domynyk Staynair put in from Thol Bay over his own com.

“No,” Cayleb said, his tone ever more sour than it had been. “It isn’t deciding
what
we do about it; it’s deciding how we go about
doing
it. We’re all agreed that this is the most logical thing for them to be doing, after what happened to Gwylym. And I think we have to honor the threat. Which means reinforcing both Corisande and Chisholm.”

“I’m afraid you’re right,”

Merlin sighed.

“So am I,” Lock Island conceded. “But while we’re worrying about what Thirsk might do, let’s not forget about Kholman and Jahras.”

Merlin grimaced.

The fact that he dared not insert remotes into the Temple itself always left a blank area at the very apex of their intelligence analyses. There was simply no way to get eyes and ears inside the innermost councils of the Group of Four, and their ignorance of what went on there was all the more frustrating because of their ability to penetrate every other council of war on the planet.

He kept reminding himself that he and his allies had better intelligence on their enemies’ plans and capabilities than anyone else in the history of mankind. The problem was that they
needed
that kind of advantage if they were ever going to prevail against someone so numerically superior to themselves. And they’d been waiting for five- days to find out which way the Church’s new navy was going to jump as autumn came on.

As Lock Island had pointed out, they’d known Allayn Maigwair and his colleagues would have to choose a course of action before the northern ports started to freeze. Of course, they
could
have decided to just sit there, but no one had really expected that. After the declaration of Holy War and the bloody fashion in which Clyntahn had secured the Group of Four’s rear in the Temple and Zion, it had seemed a foregone conclusion that they weren’t going to simply leave a hundred or so brand- new galleons frozen into the ice for several months.

As Merlin, Cayleb, Lock Island, and Rock Point had considered the Church’s options, they’d concluded that there were three possible ice- free destinations: Shwei Bay, Gorath Bay, and the Gulf of Mathyas. There were arguments in favor of all three. For that matter, there’d been a fourth possibility—Bédard Bay, in the Republic of Siddarmark. North Bédard Bay would actually have been the most defensible of all the ice- free ports available, and given Clyntahn’s near- psychotic suspicion of all things Siddarmarkian, basing a sizable contingent of the Church’s new fleet right off the capital city’s waterfront as a suggestion that the Lord Protector should behave himself could have been tempting.

There was also the question of just how the Church might choose to split up the ships it was moving south. In fact, Merlin had rather hoped they’d parcel the northern units out between several possible destinations, instead of keeping them concentrated. Having the opposing navy scattered around in as many separate sub fleets as possible struck him as a very good idea from Charis’ viewpoint.

But what ever he might have hoped, Merlin had always expected the Church to end up choosing the strategy it had now selected. Given the Earl of Thirsk’s accomplishments, combining as much as possible of the Church’s total naval strength under his command made a lot of sense. Not only that, but under Thirsk’s energetic management, Dohlaran foundries were now churning out more—and better—guns than anyone else outside of Charis. They were mostly still casting in bronze while they tried to get a handle on the greater difficulties involved in producing reliable iron guns, but their output had risen steadily. And if they were much less innovative than Charisian foundry operators, they were enormously
more
innovative than the Harchongese.

The Harchong economy still ran on what was essentially slave labor. The Empire had long- established, labor- intensive ways of doing things, and its innately reactionary conservatism—and ultra- orthodox adherence to the Proscriptions of Jwo- jeng—left it strongly disinclined to make changes. Its sheer size and population had allowed its economy to dominate western Howard and Haven for the last century and a half, despite its inherent inefficiency, however, and when the Church began its massive armament programs, the number of Harchongese foundries had suggested the Empire would provide at least a third, and more probably half, of all the required artillery. In fact, however, those plans had capsized when all those small foundries turned out to be so much less productive than expected. Against that sort of backdrop, the way in which Thirsk and Duke Fern had managed to improve the output of
Dohlaran
guns was one of the genuine bright spots for the Church. And given how badly cannon production continued to lag in both Harchong and the Temple Lands, it made a lot of sense to sail as many as possible of the Church’s still unarmed galleons to Gorath Bay. With Claw Island now firmly in Thirsk’s hands, the voyage would be both shorter and far more secure than trying to send them to any other destination.

It would also just happen to put the better part of two hundred galleons, under the Church’s best admiral, in an ideal position to strike at Chisholm or Corisande from the east. And since the Imperial Charisian Navy had only about ninety- seven galleons of its own after Sir Gwylym Manthyr’s losses in the Harchong Narrows, redeploying to meet that threat was going to be . . . difficult.

Especially since, as Bryahn’s just been kind enough to point out, we still have to worry about the frigging
Desnairians
, too,
Merlin thought disgustedly.

Duke Kholman and Admiral Jahras reminded Merlin rather forcibly of an Old Terran general named McClellan. They were pretty fair managers, all things considered. Despite ongoing problems with their own artillery production, they’d managed to get around seventy galleons launched, armed, and (more or less) manned. It was a significant accomplishment, particularly given the fact that there’d been no real Desnairian shipbuilding industry before the Church’s massive program. Of course, there’d been an enormous amount of graft, some of the ships weren’t all that well built, and Desnairian guns had a tendency to blow up more often than most, but seventy- plus galleons were still seventy- plus galleons.

The good news (and the main reason Kholman and Jahras made Merlin think about McClellan) was that, having built their navy, they were disinclined to have anything unfortunate happen to it. What Dunkyn Yairley and HMS
Destiny
had done to Commodore Wailahr clearly loomed large in their thinking, and especially in Baron Jahras’. In fact, he’d refused to venture outside of the Gulf of Jahras’ sheltered waters to train his crews, which suited Charis just fine.

But if they redeployed enough strength to protect Chisholm and Corisande against an admiral as capable as Thirsk, even Jahras might find it within himself to operate with a modicum of aggressiveness. And if that happened . . .“We’re going to have to make some deep cuts in home waters, Bryahn, no matter what the Desnairians may be thinking about doing,” Cayleb said finally. “Thirsk is just too damned good. If he comes at Chisholm with two hundred galleons, we need a lot more than Sharpfield has in the area now to stop him.”

Lock Island nodded heavily. Sir Lewk Cohlmyn, the Earl of Sharpfield, had been the commanding officer of the Royal Chisholmian Navy. As such, he was now the second- ranking officer, after Lock Island himself, in the Imperial Charisian Navy. That rank, plus his intimate familiarity with Chisholmian waters, made him the logical—indeed, the only—choice to command the squadrons protecting Sharleyan’s kingdom. As a peacetime officer, he’d been outstanding, especially with his determination to root out corruption at all levels, and no one doubted his personal courage. Yet all his combat experience was with
galleys
. He’d never commanded even a single galleon in action. Now he was in command of an entire
fleet
of them, and the thought of giving him his first experience with it outnumbered six- or seven- to- one wasn’t particularly appealing.

“It would help if we had someone in Chisholm or Corisande with a com,” Sharleyan pointed out. “If Sir Lewk and Admiral Mahndyr had access to the SNARCs, they could combine their strength into a single force that would have a far better chance of matching Thirsk.”

It was Merlin’s turn to nod. Gharth Rahlstahn, the Earl of Mahndyr, had been Sharpfield’s Emeraldian equivalent. He was younger than Sharpfield, without as many years of experience at sea, but he’d proven he was a fighter at Darcos Sound, and years of service under Prince Nahrmahn had given him a degree of political acumen which the bluff, apolitical Sharpfield completely lacked. That was why he’d been chosen to command the squadron covering Corisande.

“Unfortunately, the only flag officer we could send would be you, Domynyk,” Lock Island said. “Which—”

“Which,” Cayleb interrupted in a slightly odd, almost amused tone, “would be . . . politically awkward at this particular moment.”

“Awkward, but survivable, Your Majesty,” Rock Point said respectfully. “I know Gorjah wants me right where I am when we finally have him announce he’s coming over, but I can think of a half- dozen other officers who could hold down this command as well as I can. Kohdy Nylz comes to mind, among others.”

“I’m sure Admiral Nylz could handle your naval duties perfectly adequately, My Lord,” Nahrmahn put in. “The problem is that all Gorjah’s calculations are built around having
you
covering Thol Bay to make sure no nasty Desnairians come sailing in to attack him when the Church finds out he’s changing sides. He’s nervous enough already, and I don’t think he shares our navy’s contempt for Jahras. Which, given how much closer he is to Desnair than we are, probably isn’t all that unreasonable, when you come down to it. It’s obvious he’s developed enough faith in
you
to feel confident, but if we reorganize everything on the fly, I think there’s at least a fair chance he’ll back off at the last moment.”

“Especially if he should happen to become aware of the fact that the Inquisition’s sending more investigators into Tarot,” Merlin agreed.

“I think Merlin and Nahrmahn have a point, Cayleb,” Sharleyan said unhappily.

“So do I,” Cayleb agreed, but the amusement in his tone was even more pronounced, and then he shook his head mock regretfully at his wife and surprised all of them with a laugh.

“Did I miss something humorous?” Sharleyan asked a bit tartly, and he nodded, still chuckling.

“As a matter of fact, you did,” he said. “Came as a bit of a shock to me, too, since you’re not usually so slow.”

“Slow?” she repeated even more tartly. Indeed, one might have described her tone as ominous.