The War of the Four Isles

by Andrew McGahan

  All as Damien Tender intended.

  Dow’s gaze returned to the Twin Isles fleet, and to the vessel sailing at the centre of the middle column, adjacent to the Snout and only a few hundred yards away; the War Master’s flagship. It was named the Black Sands, and while it was no floating city such as the Twelfth Kingdom had been, it was still immense, a fortress half as large again as the surrounding battleships. It boasted four gun decks, and great armoured castles rose in the stern and bow, bristling with more cannon yet.

  Careful to keep his face shadowed beneath his hood, Dow searched now amid the many figures ranked on the Black Sands’ high deck. The distance was too great to be certain of individual faces, but he had no doubt the War Master was there. Yes, and Constance Reed as well. And what would they think, those precious two, if they only knew that Dow Amber lived after all, and was watching them from so close across the water?

  Nell was right. He hated them as much as he hated Diego. For were they not just as responsible for the death of his family? Had not their lies led directly to the inferno of the Barrel House? They could have sent soldiers to protect Yellow Bank. They could have taken his family away to safety on the west coast. But they had done none of those things. Of course they hadn’t, for they had never intended that Dow should return alive to New Island anyway.

  Wrath bit black and icelike in him once more. Yes, he would kill them too, given the chance . . . but not today. Today was for another.

  Dow turned back to the armada. Somewhere in that dark swarm sailed the Chloe, and on its high deck, unsuspecting of the death that awaited him, would be its proud young captain, Diego of the Diamond.

  *

  Now the race was truly commenced, the rival fleets running north before the south wind. An hour passed, and the morning grew fuller, but no brighter, for the cloud stayed leaden overhead, and the haze – a wind-blown sea mist – only thickened upon the waters, until the horizons were lost from view.

  But the Ship Kings remained in sight, gaining slowly all the while. At the end of the hour the fleets were less than four miles apart, close enough now that Dow, using the eyeglass, was able to inspect individual enemy ships. Surely he would recognise the Chloe, even among so many others, even with a new name, and new colours, and flying a Valdez banner . . .

  But in fact few of the ships were flying their great gilded banners of old. This was, Dow realised, a war-worn Ship Kings fleet, long since stripped of its grandeur. Many of the vessels weren’t proper warships at all, but merely converted merchantmen, and everywhere sails showed grey patchworks, and hulls displayed the raw timbers of recent repairs. It was an armada of last resort – immense maybe, but at the same time a final, exhausted effort for victory, by an empire that stood on the brink.

  As to its exact size, Dow made several attempts to number the ships, but found it impossible. Others on the high deck claimed they could count at least one hundred and ten, maybe a hundred and twenty and more. Whatever the figure, the thought struck Dow forcibly that between these two fleets all the ports of the world must be emptied, and that the wide oceans everywhere else about the globe must be deserted of any sails; for they were all here.

  It only added to the air of consequence and finality that seemed to hang over the ocean. If the Ship Kings did not regain New Island’s timber supplies after this day, they would never field such an armada again. And if the Twin Islands went down in defeat, with their shipyards and ironworks destroyed, then their assemblage likewise was destined to be the last of its kind.

  No, whatever the result, whoever the victor, two such vast fleets would never again be gathered in one place. Come what may, this ship-darkened sea was a sight that marked the finish of many things.

  The end of an age.

  But Dow could not find the Chloe.

  *

  By an hour before noon, the moment of decision had all but arrived. The vanguard of the Ship Kings armada was by then only a mile behind, and a mile to the east. If the two fleets held their courses much longer, the Ship Kings would soon pass ahead and be downwind. And that, Dow knew, could not be allowed to happen.

  Everyone knew it. The crucial order from the War Master must come soon. On the Snout, preparations began to launch the attack boats. Dow could only watch from the high deck as the Franklin was readied. There would, he knew, be a fearful toll among the attack boats today, for they would soon be fighting deep in the enemy’s midst. Nicky and May and all his faithful crew could well die. And thousands of others most certainly would.

  But it could not be halted. At least not by Dow. Only one man still held that power, and all eyes in the Twin Isles fleet were now turned to the flagship, waiting for the signal that would commit them irrevocably to battle. Or could it be that Damien Tender would lose his nerve at the crux, and signal the fleet to turn away and escape – it could still be done – to fight some other day?

  The moments crept by unanswered, and Dow could only marvel at the banality of history. Everything turned now on the posture of one man on that distant high deck. A simple nod of Damien Tender’s head, or a shake of it, a movement of a few tiny sinews only, would decide the fate of the thousands gathered here, and the future of all the Four Isles.

  They sailed on, holding their course. Dow found himself remembering suddenly the doubts Jake Tooth had expressed, should the wind blow north on the day of the battle, and should there be any miscalculation in their position – for after all, they could not run north this way forever. Ahead of them lay—

  But the thought flew away, for now the order did come, a series of flags running up the Black Sands’ mainmast. In response, the Snout’s signaller cried, ‘Come right! Fleet to come right in column order, and launch boats to engage enemy!’ And thus it was settled.

  Captain Harp gave her orders, as did a hundred and more other captains in the Twin Isles fleet. The right-hand column – the Snout’s own column – began to swing to the east, followed by the middle column, then the left, so that the fleet slowly formed into one long line, crossing in front of the oncoming armada.

  And in reply, as if in acknowledgement of the significance of the manoeuvre, a familiar ripple ran along the sides of the foremost Ship Kings vessels; the throwing open of their gun ports and the running out of their cannon. A single puff of smoke burst from the bow of the lead ship, and there came across the water a single sharp report of cannon fire. It was not, Dow knew, a shot fired in anger, for the range was as yet too great for any hope of a strike. No, it was another signal, a sign to both the Twin Isles and Ship Kings fleets alike that the challenge was recognised and accepted, and that there would be no further feints or retreats.

  It was a starting gun.

  Battle, at last, was joined.

  16. DOWNFALL

  Dow well understood the reasoning behind the War Master’s battle tactics. The Ship Kings, as everyone knew, had the faster, more manoeuvrable vessels, more heavily armed with cannon. It would be to their advantage thus to fight the battle in close, ship duelling against ship. The Twin Islanders, however, needed the reverse to occur. As their vessels were slower and armed with fewer guns, it was to their advantage to keep the fleets well apart, leaving the assault to their swift attack boats, which could pummel the enemy in close while the main body of the Twin Isles fleet stayed safely out of cannon range.

  With this in mind, Damien Tender had conceived a fourfold strategy.

  First – as already achieved – he would position his fleet downwind of the enemy.

  Second – as he had just ordered – he would begin the battle by turning his ships to cross directly in front of the pursuing armada. This would put a long line of Twin Islands vessels broadside on to the enemy, and all their guns would be able to concentrate a devastating fire on the foremost Ship Kings vessels, who, being bow on, would not be able to fire back.

  Third, the Twin Islanders would then launch their attack boats – more than four hundred of them – in full-scale assault upon the armada. And fourth, th
e War Master would immediately turn his fleet away, to run again downwind. The attack boats would complete their assault, then race back to their host vessels, leaving in their wake an armada in disarray – and by the time the Ship Kings reformed their lines and resumed the chase, the Twin Islanders would be far ahead once more.

  The beauty of it was, the Ship Kings would have to keep on coming regardless, for they needed to get in close, if they were to win the battle. But by the time the armada caught up again, the Twin Islanders, having rearmed their attack boats meanwhile, could simply repeat the whole four-step manoeuvre, turning once more across the Ship Kings’ bows. After three or four cycles of this process, the Ship Kings’ casualties would be so immense they would have to withdraw, the battle lost!

  Such, at least, was how the War Master and his navigators hoped the fighting would go.

  How the Ship Kings might respond to these tactics – for as time and the war had proved, they were no fools – remained to be seen.

  *

  The Ship Kings had fired the first shot, but the first proper salvo of the battle came from the Twin Islanders. As their leading column crossed in front of the armada, fully fifty vessels let fly broadsides all at once, a thousand cannon roaring almost as one.

  On the Snout’s high deck, Dow felt their own guns thunder beneath him, a thunder echoed fiftyfold from all along the column. An instant later, white water sprang up around the leading Ship Kings vessels – and the foremost ship, the one that had fired off the starting gun, seemed to shudder and implode under some invisible force, its masts and sails tumbling, splinters flying in a cloud. Two others in the vanguard also staggered, and were soon aflame.

  But behind them, near to a hundred and twenty ships came calmly on, unharmed.

  Meanwhile, all was furious activity on the Snout as the attack boats were launched. Dow watched them hit the water and surge off, Nicky and May at the wheel of the Franklin. They rendezvoused hurriedly with the rest of the attack-boat flotilla, hundreds of craft circling like immense schools of sharks upon the sea, and then set off in three great waves for the armada.

  Now at last the Ship Kings returned fire. They had swerved their three lines to the left to give their guns sweep, and all at once smoke erupted from a hundred broadsides and a storm of grapeshot swept across the decks of the attack boats. Dow saw figures writhe and fall even behind their iron shelters, and several boats exploded in flames. Then a cloud of smoke from all the cannon fire drifted between the fleets, and he could see no more.

  For a time the Twin Islands ships – having quickly reformed into three columns and turned north again, as the battle plan dictated – could only run before the wind and wait in ignorance. But soon enough black shapes came speeding through the smoke, seeking out their home vessels, and to Dow’s relief one of them was the Franklin, intact and its crew unharmed, followed at length by the Snout’s other two boats.

  But the news they brought was mixed. ‘We met with less success than hoped, Captain,’ reported Nicky on the high deck, once the Franklin was hauled back on board for rearming. ‘Ten enemy vessels are aflame at least, maybe more – but we lost many of our own craft to the nets thrown by the Ship Kings’ new guns.’

  Also, one of the Snout’s other boats had been swept by grapeshot, leaving half its crew badly injured. Dow glimpsed Nell below on the main deck, attending to a sailor’s bloodied leg, and he remembered her words. The sewing and amputating would indeed now begin.

  Astern, meanwhile, as the smoke cleared, the armada was revealed, still advancing in pursuit. Whatever the Ship Kings losses, they were already gaining once more, less than a mile behind and off to the west now. Soon enough, the signal went up from the War Master: turn left across their bows, fire at will, and then launch attack boats!

  In reverse order this time, column by column, the Twin Islanders swung again across the Ship Kings’ lines, firing as they went, and more enemy vessels disintegrated under the withering salvos. Dow could only marvel at the bravery or foolishness that kept the armada coming on so resolutely into such obvious destruction – but on it came.

  Meanwhile, the Twin Islanders launched their second wave of attack boats; great packs of them charging off into the Ship Kings’ midst. Once again the field became too confused with smoke for Dow to tell what was happening. He had to wait until the boats returned through the reek; and although the Franklin made it home, it was the only one of the Snout’s boats to do so. Likewise, across the fleet, it seemed to Dow that barely half the attack-boat flotilla had survived the two runs.

  But there was good news too. ‘I’d reckon we got another dozen of them that time, sunk or disabled,’ a powder-stained Nicky told the captain on the high deck. ‘That must be close to thirty gone in all now.’

  Agatha Harp clapped the midshipman on the back. ‘Well done, Mr Ostman! One or two more such attacks and they will surely be beaten!’

  But there was bewilderment also in her tone. After Nicky had gone off to see to his boat’s refuelling, she stared back at the Ship Kings armada – it was emerging through the smoke once more, battered but in order, and maintaining the chase – then glanced at Dow. ‘What are they up to? They’ve barely changed course since the engagement began. They just come straight on. It makes no sense.’

  Dow in fact had his own worries about the Ship Kings’ tactics – for what if one of those thirty enemy vessels already sunk was the Chloe? What if Diego was already dead? Dow had assumed that at some point the fleets would come to grips, but what if this entire battle was fought only at a distance?

  But he could also sense – as did the captain – something sinister in the armada’s dogged pursuit. Why did they not make any effort to strike back, or to turn away? It was almost as if they were awaiting some development that they fully expected would alter the battle’s course in their favour, and merely biding their time patiently till it came . . .

  But what could it be? Dow turned to study the northern horizon, wondering for a mad moment if the Ship Kings had somehow raised a second fleet and sent it ahead to lie in ambush . . . but there was nothing visible through the haze, only empty ocean.

  His gaze drifted east restlessly, then west – and then held abruptly. Disquiet filled him, though what he saw was not in itself terrible. ‘Captain,’ he said, ‘a change in the weather approaches.’

  Unnoticed amid all the smoke of the battle, a pale band of blue sky had opened in the west. The high cloud was retreating, and beneath it the murk and sea mist that had blanketed the horizons since morning was being rolled up and cleared away.

  ‘A westerly front,’ said the captain, chewing a thoughtful lip. ‘The wind will turn to blow to the east. But to whose advantage is that?’

  Dow could not see that it was to anyone’s advantage. Provided the Twin Islands fleet crossed in front of the enemy again before long – as they were about to do in any case, as soon as the attack boats were ready – then there was no harm. The manoeuvre would place them east of the armada, and so when the change arrived, they would still be downwind of the enemy. The orientation of the battle would change, but not the relative positions of the fleets.

  So why was he so troubled?

  ‘Be ready to come hard right!’ Agatha Harp called aloft, understanding the situation just as Dow had, and then to the signalman added, ‘Keep a keen eye on the flagship; the order will come soon.’

  But no order came. The two fleets sailed on, holding north, as if oblivious to the weather. The band of blue sky widened in the west, the haze breaking up and lifting away, and in time white caps could be seen on the ocean there, whipped up by the change. It would not be long now before the first westerly gusts hit.

  ‘We really must turn,’ fretted the captain. ‘What’s the War Master waiting for?’

  In reply, a cry went up from the crow’s nest, the Snout’s lookout alert finally to something that must have been visible for some time from the taller masts of the flagship. ‘Land! Land dead ahead. Land!’

&n
bsp; All eyes on the high deck swung northwards. There too the haze was being rolled up now, in advance of the westerly change, and suddenly visibility had leapt by several miles, unveiling a shocking sight.

  Close, much too close, land rose.

  ‘No!’ cried Captain Harp in protest. ‘We should be far south yet of any shore!’

  But they weren’t. The land was an indisputable fact. Directly to the north it formed a long, low coast, receding westwards; but to the north-east the shoreline curved south somewhat, and lofted up to define two blunt headlands, just now emerging from the sea-mist; a tall, narrow gap between them.

  A thrill ran through Dow, for even though he had never seen them from this angle or distance, he recognised those two headlands.

  The captain stared at the flagship. ‘Oh, those fools! Do they know nothing of winds or currents in these seas? We should never have turned north in the first place, if we were this close to land all along!’

  Dow was still gazing at the headlands. There could be no mistaking them. It was East Head and West Head, marking the mouth of the Claw, and between them the Rip, where nearly four years ago and in another lifetime he had dared the terrible maelstrom.

  But finally the captain’s dismay pierced him, and all it took was a swift glance at the two fleets for Dow to grasp the danger. It was just as Jake Tooth had warned. Having come further north than it realised or intended, the Twin Islands fleet was suddenly running out of sea-room in which to manoeuvre.

  No wonder the War Master was hesitating! With a shore to the north and the east, his options were drastically reduced. He couldn’t now turn across the face of the enemy – for then the Twin Islands fleet would be caught between the Ship Kings and the New Island coast. But nor could the fleet continue dead ahead. The only choice was to turn left—