A Mighty Fortress (35 page)

Which meant things were going to get just a bit
lively
in the next two hours or so.

Sir Dunkyn Yairley gazed ahead at the towering canvas of the Desnairian ships and scratched his chin thoughtfully. As always, the prospect of battle created a hollow, unsettled feeling in his belly. None of his officers and men appeared to share his apprehension, and it was, of course, unthinkable for him to reveal it to them. He often wondered if he was truly fundamentally different from them in that regard, or if they were simply better at hiding their emotions than he was.

Not that it mattered at the moment.

“Well,” he remarked out loud, permitting neither his voice nor his expression to hint at any internal trepidation, “at least they seem to have figured out we’re not just some deaf, dumb, and blind merchant ship!”

The men manning the quarterdeck carronades heard him, as he’d intended, and grinned. Some of them nudged each other in amusement, and a couple actually chuckled. No sign
they
felt anything but confident anticipation!

Cheerful
idiots, aren’t they?
Yairley thought, but there was as much affectionate amusement of his own as exasperation in the reflection.

He pushed the thought aside as he reconsidered his position.

He was confident he had an accurate appraisal of the other ships’ armament, now, and he rather wished he’d been up against a few less guns. His own were heavier, and he had no doubt his gun crews were far more experienced, and almost certainly better drilled, into the bargain. But eighty guns were still eighty guns, and he had only fifty- four.

I wonder if that’s a galley commander over there?
he mused.

It could well make a difference, given the habits of thought involved. Galley captains thought in terms of head- on approaches—since their chase armament, which always mounted the heaviest guns, fired only directly ahead—and boarding tactics. And a galley captain would almost certainly be less skilled when it came to maneuvering a fundamentally clumsy thing like a square- rigged galleon. Besides, galleys had oars. Captains accustomed to being able to row directly into the wind tended to have a less lively appreciation for the value of the weather gauge.

Yairley stopped scratching his chin and clasped his hands behind him, his expression distant as he contemplated the narrowing stretch of water between
Destiny
and her adversaries. The Desnairians weren’t quite in line. The wind had backed about five points—from south- southeast to east- southeast—during the long hours since the chase had begun, and the rearmost of the two ships was a good two hundred yards to leeward and astern of her consort as they sailed along on the starboard tack. Yairley wondered if that was intentional or simply sloppy stationkeeping. Or, for that matter, if it simply represented lack of experience on his opponents’ part. The Desnairian Empire did still follow the tradition of putting army officers in charge of warships, after all.

Let’s not get too overconfident in that respect, Dunkyn,
he reminded himself.
Still, we can hope, can’t we?

Two hundred yards might not sound like an enormous distance to a landsman, but Yairley was no landsman. To an artillerist accustomed to thinking in terms of land battles fought on nice, motionless pieces of dirt, two hundred yards would equate to easy canister range, where it would be difficult for any semi- competent gun crew to miss a target fifty- plus yards long, six or seven yards high, and the next best thing to ten yards wide. For a seaman, accustomed to the fact that his gun platform was likely to be moving in at least three different directions simultaneously, completely irrespective of his
target’s
motion, a two- hundred- yard range was something else entirely.

Like a perfectly good range to completely waste powder and shot at,
the captain thought dryly.
Which means those two fellows over there are out of effective support range of one another. Unless I’m obliging enough to sail directly
between
them, at any rate!

He glanced up at his own sails, and decided. “Master Lathyk.”

“Yes, Sir?”

“Let’s get the t’gallants off her, if you please.”

“Aye, aye, Sir!” The first lieutenant touched his chest in salute, then raised his leather speaking trumpet. “Hands to reduce sail!” he bellowed through it, and feet thundered across the deck planking in response.

Laizair Mahrtynsyn watched the Charisian through narrow eyes from his station on
Archangel Chihiro
’s quarterdeck. She was sweeping steadily closer, with her starboard battery run out while she angled towards
Archangel Chihiro
’s lar-board quarter, which didn’t surprise Mahrtynsyn a great deal. It didn’t
please
him, but it didn’t surprise him, either. The one thing of which he was completely confident was that Cayleb Ahrmahk wasn’t in the habit of assigning his most powerful warships to people who didn’t know what to do with them, and that Charisian captain over there obviously recognized the huge maneuver advantage his possession of the weather gauge bestowed upon him. Because of his position to windward, the choice of when and how to initiate action lay completely in his hands, and he clearly understood exactly what to do with that advantage.

Mahrtynsyn only wished he was more confident that Captain Ahbaht understood the same thing.

Whether Ahbaht understood that or not, it was already painfully evident to Mahrtynsyn that the Charisian galleon was being far more ably handled than his own ship.
Archangel Chihiro
’s sail drill had improved immeasurably during her lengthy voyage from Desnair. Despite that, however, the precision of the other ship’s drill as she reduced canvas only underscored how far
Archangel Chihiro
’s own company still had to go. The Charisian’s fore course was brailed up and her topgallants disappeared with mechanical precision, as if whisked away by the wave of a single wizard’s magic wand. Two of her jibs disappeared, as well, as she reduced to fighting sail, yet even with her sail area drastically reduced, she continued to forge steadily closer.

Her speed had dropped with the reduction of sail, but that didn’t make Mahrtynsyn a lot happier.
Archangel Chihiro
and
Blessed Warrior
had taken in their own courses in preparation for battle, and that had cost them even more speed than the Charisian had given up. She still had an advantage of close to two knots, and she was only eight hundred yards astern. In fifteen minutes, give or take, she’d be right alongside, and it was evident what her captain had in mind. He intended to keep to leeward of
Archangel Chihiro,
engaging her lar-board broadside with his own starboard guns. With the shift in the wind, both ships were heeling harder now, so his shots might tend to go high, but it would allow him to engage the flagship in isolation, where
Blessed Warrior
would be unable to engage him closely. In a straight broadside duel, the heavier Charisian galleon would almost certainly overpower
Archangel Chihiro
in relatively short order.

Still, if the Captain and the Commodore’s plans work out, it won’t
be
a straight broadside duel, now will it?

No, it wouldn’t. Unfortunately, Lieutenant Mahrtynsyn suspected that that Charisian captain over there might just have a few plans of his own.

“All right, Master Lathyk,” Sir Dunkyn Yairley said, “I think it’s about time.”

“Aye, Sir,” the first lieutenant responded gravely, and beckoned to Hektor. “Stand ready, Master Aplyn- Ahrmahk,” he said, and Hektor nodded—under the rather special circumstances obtaining at the moment, he’d been specifically instructed
not
to salute in acknowledgment where anyone on the enemy ship might see it—and moved idly a bit closer to the hatch gratings at the center of
Destiny
’s spar deck. He glanced down through the latticework at the gundeck below. The long thirty- pounders were run out and waiting to starboard, and he smiled as he noted the gun crews’ distribution.

It was not a particularly pleasant expression.

“Man tacks and braces!” he heard Lathyk shout behind him.

Commodore Wailahr stood on
Archangel Chihiro
’s poop deck, gazing at the steadily approaching Charisian ship.

It was evident to him that Captain Ahbaht had been less than delighted to discover just how powerful their adversary actually was. Well, Wailahr hadn’t been tempted to turn any celebratory cartwheels himself. And although all of the commodore’s previous combat experience might have been solely on land, his ships had conducted enough gunnery drills for him to suspect their accuracy was going to prove dismal. To some extent, though, that should be true for both sides, and the fact that he had almost twice as many total guns ought to mean he’d score more total hits, as well.

Assuming he could bring all of them into action.

So far, he’s doing what Ahbaht predicted, Hairahm
, he reminded himself.
Now if he just goes on doing it
....At least before they’d separated to their present distance from one another,
Archangel Chihiro
and
Blessed Warrior
had been able to come close enough together for Wailahr and Ahbaht to confer with Captain Tohmys Mahntain,
Blessed Warrior
’s commanding officer, through their speaking trumpets. Mahntain was a good man—junior to Ahbaht, and a little younger, but also the more aggressive of the two. And he’d understood exactly what Ahbaht and Wailahr had in mind. The commodore was confident of that, and also that he could rely on Mahntain to carry through on his instructions.

More than that, it was evident Ahbaht’s prediction that the enemy would attempt to engage just one of Wailahr’s ships if the opportunity were offered had been accurate. By deliberately opening a gap between the two Desnairian galleons, he and Wailahr had offered up
Archangel Chihiro
as what had to be a tempting target. If the Charisian kept to larboard, closing in on
Archangel Chihiro
’s downwind side, she could range up alongside Wailahr’s flagship and pound her with her superior number and weight of guns when none of
Blessed Warrior
’s guns could be brought to bear in the flagship’s support.