How Firm a Foundation (21 page)

“I see.”

Rock Point turned, facing aft towards one of the distinctly non-Charisian features of the ship’s design. While the towering forecastle and aftercastle which had been such a prominent feature of galley design had been omitted,
Sword of God
was still far higher
aft than a Charisian galleon because she boasted a poop deck
above
the quarterdeck. It was narrow, and the additional height probably made the ship considerably more leewardly than she would have been without it, but it was also a feature of all of the Navy of God’s galleon designs, so the Temple presumably thought it was worth it. Rock Point wasn’t at all certain he agreed with the Church, but
he wasn’t certain he
disagreed,
either.

“Did the two of you discuss cutting her down aft?” he asked, twitching his head in the poop deck’s direction.

“Yes, Sir, we did.” Pruait followed the direction of the high admiral’s gaze and shrugged. “Cutting her down to quarterdeck level would reduce topweight. That would probably help her stability at least a bit, and Sir Dustyn’s of the opinion it
would make her handier, as well. But he doesn’t think the weight reduction would have any significant effect on the weight of guns she could carry, and to be frank, I’m of the opinion that the overhead protection from enemy musket fire for the men at the wheel is probably worth any handling penalty. Although,” he admitted, “some of the other new captains question whether the protection’s worth the
reduced visibility for the helmsmen.”

“I think that’s one of those things that could be argued either way,” Rock Point said thoughtfully. “And it’s probably going to come down to a matter of individual opinions, in the end. Funny how sea officers tend to be that way, isn’t it?” He smiled briefly. “But since we don’t have time to do it now, anyway, it looks like you’re going to get the opportunity
to experiment with that design feature after all.”

Pruait didn’t exactly look heartbroken, the high admiral noted, and shook his head. Then he indicated the other officers who’d followed him aboard.

“I know you’ve met Lieutenant Erayksyn,” he said, “but I don’t know if you’ve met Captain Sahlavahn and Commander Mahndrayn?”

“I’ve never met the Commander, Sir,” Pruait admitted, nodding to Mahndrayn
courteously as he spoke. “Captain Sahlavahn and I have known each other for quite some time now, though.” He extended his hand to the captain and they clasped forearms. “I haven’t seen you in too long, Trai.”

“Baron Seamount and Baron Ironhill have been keeping me just a little busy, Tym,” Sahlavahn replied wryly. “Oh, and High Admiral Rock Point, too, now that I think about it.”

“The reward
for doing a difficult job well is to be ordered to turn around and do something harder,” High Rock observed. “And no good deed goes unpunished.” He fluttered his right hand in a waving away gesture. “And other clichés along those lines.”

“I believe I’ve heard something to that effect before, Sir,” Pruait acknowledged, then looked back at Sahlavahn, and his expression sobered. “How’s your sister,
Trai?”

“As well as can be expected.” Sahlavahn shrugged and waved at Mahndrayn. “I think Urvyn’s actually had a letter from her since I have, though.”

“I got one a couple of five-days ago,” Mahndrayn acknowledged. He and Sahlavahn were second cousins, although Sahlavahn was more than ten years his senior, and Mahndrayn had always been close to Sahlavahn’s younger sister, Wynai. “From what she
has to say, things are getting pretty damned tense in the Republic, but there’s no way she’s going to convince Symyn to relocate to Charis.” He shook his head. “Apparently he’s making money hand-over-fist at the moment, and even though he’s just about the most rabidly Siddarmarkian Siddarmarkian you’re ever going to meet, his family does come from the Temple Lands. His various aunts and uncles ‘back
home’ are already pissed off at him for living in the Charisian Quarter in Siddar City; Langhorne only knows what they’d say if they realized how enthusiastically he was helping violate Clyntahn’s stupid embargo!”

Pruait snorted in understanding, and Rock Point reclaimed control of the conversation.

“Commander Mahndrayn’s here in his role as liaison between Baron Seamount and Master Howsmyn,”
he said, “and Captain Sahlavahn was a member of Baron Seamount’s Ordnance Board. He’s been promoted to other duties since then—in fact, he’s assumed command of the Hairatha powder mill—but he’s still thoroughly familiar with most of our usual ordnance concerns, and he happens to have sailed down from Big Tirian for a conference with the Baron. So I thought I’d bring both of them along.”

“I see,
Sir,” Pruait said with a nod. “And I’m glad to see them, because frankly, I’m not sure what our best solution is.”

Rock Point scowled in agreement.

In many ways, the problem came under the heading of “an embarrassment of riches,” he thought. The prize ships they’d captured carried literally thousands of artillery pieces, although a lot of those guns, especially the ones from Harchongian foundries,
left a lot to be desired. The bronze pieces were probably acceptably safe; he wouldn’t have trusted a Harchongian
iron
gun with a full powder charge if his life had depended upon it.

The Temple Lands’ foundries had done a better job, and they’d also cast almost exclusively bronze guns. He wasn’t overly concerned about
those
guns from a safety standpoint, but none of them used the same shot as
the standard Charisian pieces, which meant no Charisian ammunition would fit them. Their smaller bores also meant their shot were lighter and less destructive, of course, which was another consideration.

“For the moment, we’re going to leave you with your present gundeck guns,” the high admiral said. “I know it’s not an ideal solution, but in addition to all of the artillery pieces, we’ve captured
several hundred thousand round shot for them. We’re not going to have the manpower to put all the prize ships into commission anytime soon, whatever we’d like to do, so what we’re going to do in the short term is to raid the shot lockers of the ships we can’t man for ammunition for the ships we
can
man—like yours, Captain Pruait.”

“I see, Sir.”

It would have been unfair to call Pruait’s tone
unhappy, but he obviously wasn’t delirious with joy, either, Rock Point observed.

“I said that’s what we’re going to do in the
short term
, Captain,” he said, and smiled at Pruait’s expression. “Exactly what we decide to do in the long term is going to have to wait until Master Howsmyn, Baron Seamount, and Commander Mahndrayn have had the opportunity to kick the question around for a while. To
be honest, we’ve captured enough guns that it might very well make sense to begin casting shot to fit them. On the other hand, Master Howsmyn’s production lines are all set up around our standard shot sizes. And then there’s the question of what we do about
shells
for non-standard bore sizes. Do we manufacture shells for the captured guns, too?”

“How much of a problem would that present, High
Admiral?” Pruait asked. Rock Point raised an eyebrow, and the captain shrugged. “I don’t really know very much about these new ‘shells,’ Sir,” he admitted. “I’ve talked about them with as many of the officers who were with you and High Admiral Lock Island in the Markovian Sea as I could, but that’s not the same thing as really understanding them or how they differ from solid shot in terms of manufacture.”

“I’m afraid you’re hardly alone in that,” Rock Point said wryly. “It was all very closely held before we were forced to commit the new weapons to action. Even Captain Sahlavahn and the Ordnance Board were left in the dark, as a matter of fact. Baron Seamount, the Experimental Board, and Master Howsmyn and a handful of his artisans did all the real work on them.

“And in answer to your question,
Captain Pruait, I don’t have the foggiest notion how much of a problem it would be to manufacture shells to fit the captured guns. Commander Mahndrayn and I will be leaving shortly to go discuss that very point with Master Howsmyn. We’ll drop Captain Sahlavahn off at Big Tirian on our way, but I wanted to have his expertise available for our discussion here before we left.”

“I’m afraid it’s going
to be mostly
background
expertise, Tym,” Sahlavahn said dryly. “As the High Admiral says, I actually know relatively little about the exploding shells even now. I understand”—his tone got even dryer—“that I’m going to be learning more shortly, though. Baron Seamount tells me we’re going to be filling quite a few shells, and the Hairatha Mill’s going to be called upon to provide the powder for
most of them.”

“Oh, we’ll be filling a
lot
of them, all right, Captain,” Rock Point assured him with a hungry smile. “We’re going to have a use for them sometime soon now. And we’re counting on that efficiency of yours to help smooth out some of the bottlenecks to make sure we’ve got them when we need them.”

Sahlavahn nodded. Although he’d commanded a galley under King Haarahld at the Battle
of Darcos Sound, he’d served strictly in shoreside appointments since. He was nowhere near the gifted technocrat his younger cousin, Mahndrayn, had proven to be, however. In fact, he was inclined in the opposite direction, with a conservative bent that was occasionally frustrating to his superiors. But if it was occasionally frustrating, it was far more often valuable, the sort of conservatism that
had an irritating, maddening ability to point out the flaws in the latest and greatest brilliant inspiration of his more innovative fellows. Even more to the point, he was at least as gifted as an administrator as Mahndrayn was as an innovator. The commander would have been hopelessly ill suited for the task of commanding the Hairatha powder mill on Big Tirian Island. His mind worked in leaps and
jumps, thriving on intuition and incessantly questioning the known and accepted in pursuit of the unknown and the unconventional. Sahlavahn, on the other hand, had already expedited three production bottlenecks in the Imperial Charisian Navy’s third-largest gunpowder production center by approaching them from his usual pragmatic, unflappable,
conservative
perspective.

“The main point,” Rock Point
continued, striding aft towards
Sword of God
’s poop deck as he spoke, “is to provide each of the ships with the most effective armament we can in the shortest time frame. At the moment, I’m thinking in terms of a work in progress in which we’ll go immediately to an effective ‘conventional’ armament without worrying about explosive shells. That’s what I meant about a short-term solution, Captain
Pruait.

“The next stage of the work in progress will be to provide all of you with appropriate carronades. At this point, probably the thirty-pounders, since that won’t require us to relocate gunports. And we can provide them with the same explosive shells the long thirties fire, which will give you a shell-firing capability at shorter ranges. Eventually, though, we’re going to have to decide
whether to melt down the captured guns and recast them as standard thirty-pounders so your entire armament can use the standardized shells, or to produce molds to cast shells to fit their existing bores.”

He reached the taffrail and leaned on it, bracing his arms against it while he gazed out across the harbor. He stood for a moment, breathing the salt air deep, then turned back to Pruait, Sahlavahn,
Mahndrayn, and Erayksyn.

“Suppose we do this Navy fashion,” he said and turned a broad smile on Mahndrayn. “Since Styvyn doesn’t know any more about the technical aspects of this than I do, we’ll let him sit this one out. But that makes
you
the junior officer present with something to contribute, Commander Mahndrayn. Which means you get the opportunity to express your views first, before any
of us crotchety seniors get out there and express something that might cause you to change your mind or not suggest something you think might piss one of us off. Of course, I’ve observed how … inhibited your imagination gets under these circumstances, but I believe you’ll manage to bear up under the strain.”

Pruait chuckled. Sahlavahn, on the other hand, laughed out loud, and Mahndrayn smiled
back at the high admiral.

“I’ll do my best, Sir,” he said.

“I know you will, Commander.” Rock Point turned to brace the small of his back against the taffrail, folded his arms across his chest, and cocked his head. “And on that note, why don’t you begin?”

.VI.

Archbishop’s Palace, City of Tellesberg, Kingdom of Old Charis

Winter in Tellesberg was very different from winter in the Temple Lands, Paityr Wylsynn reflected as he stepped gratefully into the shaded portico of Archbishop Maikel’s palace. Freezing to death wasn’t much of an issue here. Indeed, the hardest thing for him to get used to when he’d first arrived had been the fierce, unremitting
sunlight, although the climate did get at least marginally cooler this time of year than it was in summer. The locals took the heat in stride, however, and he loved the exotic sights and sounds, the tropical fruits, the brilliant flowers, and the almost equally brilliantly colored wyverns and birds. For that matter, he’d acclimated well enough even to the heat that the thought of returning to
Temple Lands’ snow and sleet held little allure.

Especially these days,
he thought grimly.
Especially these days
.

“Good morning, Father,” the senior of the guardsmen in the white-and-orange of the archbishop’s service said.

“Good morning, Sergeant,” Paityr replied, and the other members of the guard detachment nodded to him without further challenge. Not because they weren’t fully alert—the
attempt to assassinate Maikel Staynair in his own cathedral had put a conclusive end to any complacency they might once have felt—but because they’d seen him here so often.

And I’m not precisely the easiest person to mistake for someone else, either, I suppose,
he reflected wryly, looking down at the purple sleeve of his cassock with its sword and flame badge.
I doubt there are half a dozen Schuelerites
left in the entire Old Kingdom by now, and most of them are Temple Loyalists hiding in the deepest holes they can find. Besides,
I’d
stand out even if I were a Bédardist or a Pasqualate
.