by Robert Brady
But there wasn’t another arrow falling amongst us, and that was strange.
“Aschire!” someone screamed. “Aschire at the gates! Aschire attacking the city walls!”
A few of my warriors pulled their swords, but the veterans just smiled and knew better. Three months ago I’d sent word to Krell of the Aschire that I needed archers for my Sea Wolves.
Apparently they’d come.
In the Imperial stables (so very much like the Royal stables), I pulled Blizzard’s saddle from his back, my Wolf Soldiers around me doing the same thing.
Krell and Nina stood just outside of the stallion’s stall, Lee in Nina’s arms. She was already bigger than I remembered her, her black hair down past her shoulders with a piece of birch bark braided into it as a gift from Krell.
“Once again, we’ve saved you from this Bounty Hunter’s guild,” Krell informed me, as if he had to.
They’d arrived two weeks ago, and they’d taken up the wall guard again. It suited them because they liked the height, they liked looking down on the rest of us and they didn’t like mixing with people who would invariably touch them.
The Bounty Hunters had spent three months infiltrating the Regulars who also patrolled the walls. When the Imperial entourage was spotted, they’d insisted the Aschire leave the walls ‘for security reasons,’ and that had tipped Krell off. No one in Eldador the Port didn’t want Aschire on the walls.
So they went outside and they waited, and they were right.
“I don’t keep you around for your good looks,” I countered Krell. There was a long, red line down Blizzard’s whither. It wouldn’t need to be stitched but it did need to be salved. I called the stableman.
He turned to his daughter. “He likes men?”
She shook her head. “It’s something he says,” she informed him. “Their kind are strange.”
He nodded.
I turned to Krell. “I thank you, again, your Grace,” I informed him. “The Aschire are my closest allies and among my best friends, yourself and your daughter especially.”
Nina smiled. Lee kissed her.
“And now you want us out on the water,” he asked me. You could see the skepticism on the surprised-looking face if you knew them well enough. The arched eyebrows were furrowed, the thin lips turned down in a frown.
“On to the water and into danger,” I said, doubling-down on it. “Against forces aligned against us, which would otherwise show you no ill-will.”
Krell considered. “It is not the nature of the Aschire to go looking for enemies,” he said. He kept his eyes right on me, gauging me. “We come to defend you, we even helped you avenge your Queen, but it is not for the Aschire to seek an enemy.”
“I know this,” I said. “It is not in your nature to come to an Andaran’s aid, either, however Shela is held captive, and the price of her freedom might be not just her powers, but the child that she carries.”
“They’d take her baby?” Nina asked. She couldn’t believe it. She’d also already claimed all of the babies as her own.
I looked her in the eyes, and then her father. Both of them were the only grey-eyed Aschire that I knew of.
“That’s what the Uman-Chi tell me,” I said. “And I have allies who agree.”
I don’t know how Krell felt about Shela. I had no history of them ever having any sort of relationship. When Krell or the Aschire showed up, they dealt with me, and Shela normally found something else to do.
I know how Krell feels about kids.
“Then they must die,” he informed me.
In the last week of Earth, the thirtieth of the new Sea Wolves left the used-to-be-secret section of my personal wharves. There were twelve in the capitol port, eight in Andurin and ten in Thera.
Four of the ones in each port had a long, brass tube down the side. This tube ran from the stern, where a black steel pump could be connected to feed into it, to twelve feet past the bow, extending like a sword out over the waves.
It had been pointed out that this end was vulnerable to passing ships in close combat. In fact, we’d refit them later to let the end be detachable and replaceable.
For now, there was only so much time.
Karel of Stone stood beside me on the pier as I watched the last of the new ships creeping down the wharves. He’d overseen a lot of the formulation of the new weapon I’d been brewing in my lab beneath the city. This kind of thing suited him, as it needed to be done in secret, and tested in secret, and you had to be pretty intelligent to make the adjustments necessary to get the mix right.
Like almost everything else I did, I formulated the idea and then others more qualified run with it. Another thing Karel brought to the table was the ability to find local alchemists – persons who sufficed for chemists in Fovea – to handle the mixing. It wasn’t everyone who could get their mind around the idea you could heat a substance you found in a rock and turn it into a gas.
Fortunately the whole premise for making laughing gas had set the foundation for a lot of this. There was a good business going in turning sheep-dung into ammonia and selling it as a cleaning agent. There were no words for how that elated a whole crop of shepherds.
And, of course, Eldador ran a huge business providing alcohol from wheat, so we knew no shortage of distillers, either. All-in-all we had the tools to make what I was calling ‘Eldadorian Fire.’
“That stuff we’re making blows up easily,” Karel informed me.
“Kind of the point of it,” I said.
“You were right to warn us that water won’t put out the fire,” he said. “If you bury it in sand for a few days it will cool down enough to dispose of, but even then we had a peasant farmer uncover it and die in a blaze two nights after one experiment.”
“Did we take care of his family?” I asked.
The wind picked up on the wharf. The new Sea Wolf, The Green Dragon, picked up speed and put more canvas to the wind. She’d sail once around the Bay of Eldador, which was the space west of the peninsula of Britt, as her shakedown cruise.
Only one of these had seen combat, and it had lost. The entire Navy was volunteer onboard these ships, mostly Wolf Soldiers, meaning the house guard of 2,000 and the Theran Lancers were the only Wolf Soldier troops I didn’t have committed to this endeavor. If I got my ass handed to me, I was going to be weak enough someone would likely come after me.
I was actually surprised the Confluni hadn’t attacked already.
“Ten gold Tabaars,” Karel said. He looked up at me. “Kind of generous, if you ask me.”
“Would you let someone kill you for ten gold Tabaars?” I asked him.
He grinned that grin of his. I really don’t like Karel of Stone. He just…bugs me. But he has skills and I need them.
“How did you know how to make that stuff?” he asked me.
The Green Dragon was tacking to starboard. She’d pull out of the port for the breakwater soon.
A Wolf Soldier from my personal guard coughed behind me. People milled around us, kept at a safe distance by the Wolf Soldiers, on a busy port. Our Sea Wolves held the outermost berths, eleven ships bobbing with the waves.
“I guessed,” I informed him, honestly.
“Seriously?” he asked me.
There were Tech Ships out there. The Uman-Chi were pissed as hell I was still making these vessels. After the predictable complaint that I’d nearly punched Aniquen’s head off of his shoulders, there’d been another that cited a limit of fifty ships of war being the maximum allowed any Fovean nation, and that with our existing Navy, we had eighty by their counting. I’d immediately retired forty of the older-style ships, selling them at a discount to our growing merchant fleet.
They had to go to Talen to have them refitted, because there wasn’t an inch of available wharf space in Eldador. Even Ceberro was getting in on the act and had commissioned two dozen hulls. I’d sent him a couple Wizards who were familiar with the spells we wove into our vessels.
“Yeah,” I informed Kar
el.
He turned back toward the Sea Wolf pulling out onto the bay.
“Good guess.”
On the 24th day of Earth, in the 83rd year of the Fovean High Council, ten Sea Wolves set sail from Thera for Eldador the Port. On the first day of War, my dozen from the capitol of the Eldadorian Empire met them at sea and turned east.
We meant to take the Straights of Deception and to hold the southern passages through it in the name of the Eldadorian Empire. Under the treaty of the Fovean High Council, no one actually owned any part of the Straights, even though the Dorkans preyed on any ship that tried to cross it. Of course, they didn’t bother Trenboni ships, because no one wanted to contest Trenbon’s advantages as a sea power.
I don’t think the Dorkans were particularly worried about twenty-two ships headed at the same time for that part of the Bay. First of all, you could barely cross three ships at a time through the Straights. They were a maze of jagged rocks encrusted with barnacles and coral from a foot above the waterline to yards below it, and a single bad turn could rip your ship apart. In fact there were masts visible throughout the Straights as evidence of sailors who’d lost their way and paid the price.
Second, the currents were barely predictable, which is why sailors on Tren Bay still embraced oared ships. You could be on the right path through the Straights and the wind could change or the tide could shift, and you could be dragged across rocks you couldn’t see before you realized you were in trouble.
So assuming I wanted to risk my ships, the Dorkans likely felt the Straights could do their work for them.
The Trenboni were another matter. They weren’t about to cede the only path out of Tren Bay for the Forgotten Sea to Eldador, especially when they felt they had the upper hand, holding my wife and all.
Dilvesh was left conspicuously in Metz. The rest of the Free Legion was busily getting ready for the War months, which weren’t looking at being that busy because of the Andoran civil war and the fear I was going to go berserk over the capture of my woman. However none of them were with me now.
On the fifth day of the month of War, as my ships approached the Straights of Deception, we were greeted by a line of Trenboni Tech Ships sixty strong, with their backs to the East. One ship out front bore an Admiral’s four stars under the Trenboni eagle.
I stood on the wheel deck of my flagship, The Bitch of Eldador, next to the captain of the vessel, Jaspar, a Man of Eldador who’d grown up in Kor as a pirate and whom Groff had wanted to torture to death for his obscenities against prisoners. He died his hair green for some reason and wore it long. He’d risen quickly among the Wolf Soldiers and been a natural choice for this job.
“That’s Her Lady’s Lovely Way,” he informed me, pointing to the Admiral’s ship. “The flag of the Tech fleet, under Geledar Taboorin, High Admiral of Trenbon.”
His voice was almost gravelly; his brown eyes squinted in a look of pure hate. Jaspar was a drinker, this I knew, but he was built like a brick right down to a smashed, flat nose. His thick lips were parted, his teeth showing, all of his focus on the Tech Ship.
“I guess you don’t like him much,” I said.
Jaspar barked a laugh. “No,” he said. “That ship has sunk me on more than one occasion, Lupus. There’s a lot of pirates as would like to be where I am now, much as them as aren’t dead.”
I nodded.
I’d been a sailor. I knew what it meant to hate another ship and the people on it. I saw that in him now.
The Tech Ship raised a red flag with a white star, then another with blue and white stripes, and another yellow, also with a star. At sea, signalmen could communicate between ships this way–with one set of flags which were communications between ships of different nations, in a language that rarely changed, and another set for ships of the same fleet, which changed all the time. My Sea Wolves used colored lights instead of flags, because they were faster and because no one did it this way here.
“They’re asking us if we plan to turn around, or engage them,” Jaspar informed me, as more flags travelled up a line between the flag ship’s bow and the top of its one mast. “They warn that if we fight, they will give no quarter.”
“Confident,” I commented.
Jaspar didn’t turn away from me. “They never lose,” he said.
“Let’s see what we can do about that,” I said. “Specials to the fore!”
Signalmen from my own ship stood at either side of the wheel deck, the open-air space where the ship’s wheel and command crew were located. Some ships in my fleet enclosed this and some did not–I hadn’t committed to which style was better yet. I’d find out today.
Balls of different colors sat under metal cans on the rails. Signalmen raised the cans, counted to different numbers and lowered them. The color and the time exposed meant different messages to others in the fleet, which would pass them on.
Eight ships, including The Bitch, each with the long, brass tube down its starboard side, glided forward while the other fourteen hung back. We had the wind behind us – I’d managed to arrive with the sun three hours from setting behind us. The Trenboni didn’t mind giving up the advantage because their ships were equally fast against the wind.
Probably never a good idea to hand an advantage to your enemy, even if you don’t need it, but there you go.
“Load the tubes!” I commanded.
The brass tubes were the key to delivering Eldadorian Fire, which had been known as Byzantine Fire or, if you watched the wrong movie, Greek Fire, around 400 to 700 AD. The liquid was poured into the tube; the tubes were pressurized with hand-pumps, and could then be discharged out across the water. Supposedly the Byzantines used something more like a water cannon, but it had limited range and wasn’t useful in rough seas or tight quarters.
Also, you then have a guy standing there, manning it, and if the wind changed he was going to get blow-back, as was his ship. Out to sea, that was simply not a good idea.
Valves were turned onboard The Bitch, as well as on our other ‘specials,’ I had to assume. I’d shown the artisans who’d built the canisters how to put a glass tube in the metal wall, so the tube could be filled with the liquid inside and then show when a canister was empty. We didn’t want to have to be popping canisters open during combat when everything was wet, because water would ignite the contents.
“The flag ship is sending a new message,” Jaspar informed me. “A last chance to retreat.”
“They didn’t think we’d be a match for them in Outpost IX,” I said. “They aren’t going to make that mistake again.”
The ship slipped forward. The thump of the hand-driven pumps moved fluid into the brass tube alongside of the ship. The tube was filled with baffles, most of them just holding chambers, some of them heated. Heating the fluid activated the diphosphorus I’d bled into the naptha as a gas. This was the common denominator about Byzantine Fire that no one got, because you had to get white phosphorus up over 1,000 degrees Kelvin to make this P2, and then it wasn’t stable if became a liquid or a solid.
Unless you used a catalyst, like petroleum and pine resin. Combine that with sulfur and you essential mixed the dynamite with the blasting cap.
“All pipes are full, Lupus,” the Wolf Soldier signalman informed me.
“Charge all pipes,” I ordered him.
Another benefit of the baffle system was that we could squeeze off a few shots per tube, rather than spilling it all at the same time. Below decks we maintained bottles of compressed nitrogen–another benefit of our sheep-dung enterprises–which were used to pressurized different baffles, forcing the fluid down the pipe.
And the brass could withstand the salt-water of Tren Bay. Steel would be safer, but it would rust.
“All pipes are charged,” the signalman informed me.
I couldn’t hold back a smile.
The Trenboni fleet began to move forward at almost three times our numbers. Behind them, eight more Sea Wolves were approaching the other side of the Straights.
>
It never hurts to have a backup plan.
The wind rippled our canvas sails. We had about ten times their sheets to the wind. They plowed straight forward, wanting to get into the range of their magical weapons, their oars rising and lowering in the water. They wouldn’t be ramming if they were coming against the wind, so they kept their masts up. They counted on their superior speed to let them engage when they were ready.
“Full sails!” I ordered.
Had to take that away as well.
Sails don’t work like engines–you don’t suddenly lurch forward unless something really weird happens with the wind. However you can run your sails at half and then drop them to full all-of-a-sudden, all at the same time, and get something close.
That’s what we did. The masts creaked, the decks shifted just a little bit. With the wind behind us, our ships didn’t quite leap out of the water, but they all rose higher on the waves.
We closed the distance at a speed that had to be faster than an Admiral trying to coordinate sixty ships was ready for. I know this because we were inside their weapons range, and then inside of ours, before their flag ship let us have it.
With a scream like tearing metal, a ragged bolt of pure energy much like the ones I’d faced in the Battle of Two Mountains with the Dwarves ripped the air between the bow of their flagship and the sails in ours. As Forn has warned me years ago, a peppery bitch who could fire a bolt up your arse, if she had a mind.
The bolt struck our mast. Our mast absorbed it as if nothing had happened. In fact, our ship’s weapons worked on something similar to a ‘magic battery,’ a giant, enchanted, ceramic capacitor in the hold of the ship. Magic attacks engaged our defensive spells, which simply absorbed the energy in order to reuse it.
I’d suspected this and Shela and I had worked it out with some of our Wizards. It was all just energy, no matter what the form, no matter what the intent. As they taught us in Nuclear Power School, it’s all just ‘trons.
