Off Armageddon Reef (50 page)

“No, it isn't,” Pine Hollow agreed. “But surely you're not suggesting he really
is
one, Hahl?”

“I don't know.” Shandyr gave a shrug of frustrated ignorance. “I just know that apparently he specializes in hacking up large numbers of people working for us. And that the destruction of our entire Charis network coincides with his arrival in Tellesberg. If you can tell me how a single man could kill or disable
sixteen
picked guardsmen
and
either kill or capture Duke Tirian—never mind how he got into the library in the first place—I'll be delighted to hear it. At the moment, it sounds to me like all the bad ballads about
seijin
I've ever heard.”

“He has a point, Trahvys,” Nahrmahn said. “But there's another point that interests me, as well.”

Both his nobles looked at him, and he shrugged.

“Wyllyms carried out his orders and killed Lahang before he could be taken into custody, correct?” The others nodded, and he snorted. “In that case, where did they get the information they obviously had to have for Wave Thunder to completely demolish our spy rings?”

“That point had occurred to me, as well, My Prince,” Shandyr said. “I know we'd assumed initially that they must have started with Lahang—or with Tirian
and
Lahang—and worked their way down the chain after breaking one of them. Based on what we know so far, it's still possible they did take the Duke prisoner, but he shouldn't have known enough for them to identify so many of our other agents.”

“So they must have identified Lahang already,” Pine Hollow suggested. “If they already had him under surveillance, they might have identified at least some of his people, as well. And if something—like that assassin they took alive—started them sniffing around the Duke, then when Wyllyms carried out his instructions to remove Lahang, they probably started snapping up everyone they already knew about and questioning them pretty damned severely. If that's what happened, then each one they broke might have led them to others until the entire mess unraveled.”

“That's certainly one possibility,” Shandyr acknowledged. “There's no way for us to tell either way from here, of course, and it's going to take us time to even begin rebuilding in Charis. Still, I think we need to keep a close eye on this ‘Merlin' of theirs. Whether or not he's really a
seijin
, things do seem to start happening when he's around. Which suggests to me, My Prince”—the baron smiled coldly—“that we might want to consider seeing to it that he
isn't
around much longer.”

“I still say you don't sweat enough, Merlin.”

Merlin opened one eyelid and glanced at Cayleb.

Nimue Alban had come from a culture—and a genetic heritage—which had thoroughly digested the perils of skin cancer and the advantages of sunblockers. Cayleb hadn't. He was extraordinarily fond of sunbathing, and there was no good way for Merlin to explain the downside of soaking his epidermis in sunlight to him. Nor could Merlin very well turn down the honor, and it
was
a genuine honor, of being invited to share the sun with the kingdom's crown prince.

Fortunately, he could adjust his skin's coloration at will, which meant his own complexion had become almost as bronzed as Cayleb's own. And he'd
also
gone into his programming after that…exciting rugby game and disabled certain functions. As a result, that particular problem hadn't recurred, although Merlin had to admit—
very
privately—that Cayleb Ahrmahk really was an extraordinarily attractive young man.

“And I still say that some of us don't need to sweat as much as others of us,” he replied, and Cayleb chuckled.

“What do you think of Howsmyn's proposal?” the prince asked after a moment, and Merlin opened both eyes at the change of subject. He sat up, reached for a towel, and mopped the (relatively) meager sweat to which Cayleb had referred from his face.

“I think it makes excellent sense,” he said then, and reached for the flask of chilled fruit juice they'd brought with them when they headed for the top of the harbor manager's office.

That office was at the very end of one of the main wharves in the Citadel Basin, the purely military anchorage under the looming walls of King's Harbor's main fortifications. It was an excellent perch for hopeful fishermen, and its location exposed it to a cooling breeze when the wind was in the southwest. That made it a popular sunbathing spot with the garrison's senior officers, as well, and there were special attractions in Cayleb's case. Specifically, his bodyguards liked the fact that they could make sure the office was empty, then throw a cordon across the wharf between it and the shore and allow the prince at least the illusion of privacy. Cayleb treasured it for the same reasons, which made the invitation to accompany him this afternoon even more of an indication of his high regard for Merlin.

Now Merlin took a swig of juice which was at least still cool, if no longer chilled. He didn't really need it, of course, but that didn't keep him from savoring the taste before he passed the flask across to Cayleb.

“One of our main worries has always been the manufacturing time for the artillery,” he continued as the crown prince drank gratefully. “I assumed all along that we'd have to cast every gun we needed if we wanted them to have trunnions.” He shrugged. “The only way I could see to do it was to melt the existing guns down to reclaim the bronze and recast them from scratch.”

He stood and stretched, draping the towel around his neck, and walked across to the waist-high wall which ran around the top of the flat office roof. His neatly folded clothing and weapons were stacked on the bench seat which ran around the inside of the parapet, with his sheathed wakazashi weighting the pile, and an awning provided a band of shade as he leaned on the wall and gazed out across the harbor.

The unoccupied office's wall fell sheer to the wharf's outer end, and the water was an almost painful blue, shading to equally bright green as it shallowed. There wasn't very much breeze today, even this far above water level. A gentle swell rolled lightly across the sun-bright water, and six or seven children in a four-oared launch were rowing steadily, if not exactly in a straight-line, towards the wharf. The fishing poles sticking out of the boat at various angles indicated what they'd been doing, and Merlin felt a twinge of wistful envy as he remembered fishing trips from Nimue's childhood.

They were still the better part of a hundred yards out, but the seven- or eight-year-old girl sitting on the forwardmost thwart saw him looking at them and waved.

He waved back, then turned his back to the harbor as Cayleb rose and joined him in the shade.

“It never occurred to me,” Merlin continued the thread of their conversation, “that it might be possible to add trunnions to
existing
guns.”

Cayleb grunted in agreement. There was an intriguing jumble of odds and ends on the roof, presumably left by other sunbathers and fishermen, and one of the prince's eyebrows arched as he discovered the harpoon propped in one corner. He picked it up, trying its balance idly, and looked across at Merlin.

“What was that phrase you used the other day?” he asked. “‘Thinking outside the box,' wasn't it?” Merlin nodded, and the prince shrugged. “Well, I guess we should just feel fortunate Howsmyn is so good at it.”

“That's putting it mildly, Your Highness,” Merlin said with a grin, and turned to glance back at the launch. The girl in the bows waved again, and he chuckled.

Cayleb was right, he thought. Ehdwyrd Howsmyn had come at the problem from a completely different angle. He'd pointed out that the gun the Royal Charisian Navy called the “kraken”—a six-and-a-half-inch cannon roughly eleven feet long and throwing a round shot which weighed just under thirty-five pounds—came close to meeting the requirement Merlin and Captain Seamount had settled upon. It also happened to be the closest thing the Navy had to a “standard” heavy gun, which meant it was available in greater numbers than most other types.

There were others, some much heavier—like the “doomwhale,” which weighed over four and a half tons and threw a sixty-two-pound shot. Or the even vaster “great doomwhale,” a six-ton monster which threw a seventy-five-pound shot. Those, however, were far
too
heavy for their purposes. Eventually, all of them undoubtedly would be melted down to provide the bronze for sensibly sized replacements, but for now they were effectively useless.

What Howsmyn had suggested was standardizing on the kraken and welding an iron band around the gun tubes of as many of them as they could get their hands on. The
band
would be cast with trunnions, which could be done far faster than casting and boring an entire new gun. It wouldn't be as strong as casting the trunnions into the gun itself, but it would do as a temporary quick-fix, and as time allowed, the guns would, indeed, be melted down and recast.

It wasn't a perfect solution. The supply of krakens was scarcely unlimited, after all. But it would save a
lot
of time and resources, and given the new carronade design he and Seamount had worked out, it meant—

A sudden scream jerked him out of his thoughts, and he wheeled back towards the harbor.

The launch was no more than seventy yards from the wharf, now, but one of the older girls was screaming, one hand pressed to her mouth, while the other pointed wildly at the trio of triangular fins sweeping towards the boat.

“
Kraken!
” Cayleb spat. He was suddenly leaning out across the roof parapet towards the boatload of children. “Don't,” he said, and it was obvious he wasn't talking to Merlin. “Don't panic!”

But the children in the launch couldn't hear him. The oldest of them could not have been more than fourteen, and their sudden terror was evident in the ragged disorder of their oars. The boat rocked in the water as the screaming girl shrank back against the gunwale on the side away from the krakens, then began to list as two more of the children joined her.

The fins slashed through the water, closing on the boat, and suddenly one of the krakens rose out of the water close alongside.

It was the first time Merlin had actually seen one of the fearsome predators, which normally preferred water deeper than that of most harbors. A fully mature sea kraken was up to twenty or twenty-two feet of voracious appetite. Roughly similar in body form to an elongated terrestrial shark, its head was quite different. It had the round, many-toothed mouth of a lamprey eel, but with a difference; over a foot across—almost three feet on fully mature krakens—it was fringed with a cluster of ten powerful tentacles. Those tentacles were from four to six feet long, and normally lay flat back against the torpedo-shaped body as it swam. But when the kraken attacked, they reached out and seized its prey, holding it while the mouth savaged it.

That would have been enough to explain the terror the creature evoked in any reasonably sane human being, but they were also intelligent. Nowhere near as intelligent as a terrestrial dolphin, perhaps, but smart enough to cooperate when they hunted. And smart enough to know boats contained food.

The terrified children shrieked as the first kraken lifted its head, then shrieked again, even more loudly, as the second slammed into the launch from below. The boat leapt madly in the water rocking so violently it almost capsized, and one of the boys went over the side.

There was a swirl in the water. His head came up and his mouth opened, screaming in terrified agony, as one of the krakens took him from below and dragged him under.

“
Shan-wei!
” Cayleb cursed helplessly, pounding the parapet with his fist, and the unbalanced launch heaved crazily as it was rammed again. This time, it went all the way up and over, spilling all of the children into the water.

Merlin didn't stop to think. Before Cayleb even realized his “bodyguard” had moved, Merlin hand flashed out with literally inhuman speed and snatched away the harpoon with which the prince had been toying. His arm cocked, and then Cayleb's eyes flew wide in disbelief, despite his horror, as the harpoon snapped out in a flat, vicious arc that ended a full seventy yards away.

One of the krakens rose two-thirds out of the water, standing on its thrashing tail, tentacles releasing the mangled body of its victim, as the harpoon struck it. No, Cayleb realized, the weapon hadn't simply
struck
its target; it had driven completely through that massive barrel of solid muscle and bone.

At least one of the wounded kraken's fellows turned upon it as its blood stained the water. But Cayleb's heart froze within him as another screaming child, a girl this time, disappeared forever into the churning, bloody horror which had enveloped the peaceful harbor.

And then he saw fresh movement out of the corner of his eye and reached out frantically. But he was too late to stop Merlin as he went over the roof parapet, thirty feet above the surface of the water.

Time seemed to have slowed impossibly, even as it flashed by. The crown prince saw everything, realized exactly what was happening, but he was a spectator. He could only watch as Merlin launched himself in a flat trajectory that carried him an impossible twenty yards before he hit the water.

Merlin was already in midair before he realized what he was doing, by which time it was just a bit late for second thoughts. He hit the water and drove deep, despite his shallow trajectory. A flesh-and-blood human would have been forced to surface to regain his bearings, not to mention breathe, but Merlin was a PICA. His built-in sonar told him exactly where the boat, the thrashing, screaming children, and the krakens were, and his legs propelled him towards the chaos with a powerful flutter kick no biological human could have produced.

He'd snatched up his wakazashi without consciously considering it. Now he held its hilt in both hands, reversed seventeen-inch blade flat against the inside of his right arm to minimize drag, as he drove through the water. It took him less than twenty seconds to reach the capsized launch. Twenty seconds in which the kraken he'd harpooned wrenched frantically free of its attacking fellow and swam brokenly, erratically, towards shallower water. Twenty seconds in which a third shrieking child was dragged into the depths.

But then he was there.

The surviving children kicked and flailed frantically, fighting to climb on top of the overturned boat in search of even a few more moments of safety. An older boy snatched up one of the younger girls and literally threw her up onto the wet, slick boat bottom even as one of the two remaining krakens knifed towards him with lethal grace. The tentacles reached out, snapping towards him like striking serpents. One wrapped around his ankle, yanking his leg towards a tooth-filled maw, but a human-shaped hand closed on the tentacle, in turn. It locked down with the force of a hydraulic vise, and a battle steel wakazashi drove downward directly behind the creature's bulging eyes. It slammed hilt-deep into the kraken's head, and the impossibly sharp blade sliced effortlessly through bone, cartilage, and muscle.

The kraken's own movement added to the strength of the PICA's arm, and the wakazashi continued its forward trajectory straight through the creature's brain and back out through its snout in a fan of blood. The tentacle death-locked around the boy's ankle would have dragged him under with the still-thrashing carcass, but a second quick slash of the wakazashi severed it two feet from the kraken's opened skull.