by David Weber
He wasn’t the only Charisian that bitterness was poisoning, he reminded himself. He and his surviving officers did all they could to maintain morale, but it was hard. Charisian seamen by and large were far from stupid, and even the youngest surviving ship’s boy could figure out what was going on. Penned up in the drab, damp, barren sameness of their floating prisons day after day; denied the right to so much as send letters home to tell their families they were still alive (so far, at least); poorly fed; without exercise; with no warm clothing against a winter which would have been bitterly cold for anyone, far less men from their semi-tropical homeland, it was scarcely surprising when even Charisians found it difficult to pretend to one another that they couldn’t see what was coming.
Which is one reason we’ve got so much sickness in the hulks, Manthyr told himself bitterly. Not that there aren’t plenty of other reasons. Aside from Thirsk and Maik none of these people give a good goddamn about whether or not heretic Charisians are covered by Pasquale’s Law. Hell, most of them probably figure “heretics” don’t have any right to worry about Pasquale’s commands! They’re sure as hell not bothering themselves to provide the proper diet his law decrees, anyway. No wonder we’re actually seeing scurvy among the men! And when you crank that kind of so-called food into the living conditions—such as they are—and the despair, it’s a wonder everyone isn’t down sick!
His jaw muscles ached, and he forced himself to deliberately unclench them. None of their chaplains had survived the final battle, which was probably just as well, since the Inquisition would most certainly have demanded (and received) possession of any heretical priests who fell into their hands. Manthyr liked to think that at least some of the Dohlaran clergy would have been interested in meeting the spiritual needs of his men, but they’d been forbidden to by Wylsynn Lainyr, the Bishop Executor of Gorath, and Ahbsahlahn Kharmych, his intendant. If the rumor mill was to be believed, Bishop Staiphan Maik, the Dohlaran Navy’s special intendant, had attempted to get that ruling overturned, but if he’d tried, he hadn’t succeeded. Bishop Executor Wylsynn was willing to grant access to clergy for Charisians who were prepared to renounce—and admit—their heresy and the blasphemous rites in which they had participated in the worship of Shan-wei, but that was as far as he was prepared to go.
Which, since we haven’t had any “blasphemous rites” or “worshipped” Shan-wei, would be just a bit difficult for any of them to do honestly. And all of us know from what happened to those poor bastards the Inquisition got hold of after the Ferayd Massacre how Clyntahn would use any “confessions” against Charis. Not to mention the fact that “admitting” any such thing would make whoever “confessed” automatically subject to the Punishment of Schueler. And only a drooling idiot would believe someone like Clyntahn wouldn’t get around to applying it sooner or later, no matter what Lainyr might promise first.
Despite that, some of his men—a few; no more than a couple of dozen—had “recanted” their heresy and been “received back into the bosom of Mother Church” … for now, at least. Or so their fellows had been told, at any rate. Manthyr had his doubts about how long that was going to last, and the constancy of the rest of his people in the face of what they all knew awaited them eventually had been one of his few sources of consolation over the past months.
Yet even that consolation had been flawed with bitterness, and the despair was always there for everyone. It combined with all those other factors to drive down the men’s ability—and willingness—to resist disease, and by his latest estimate, at least a third of his remaining personnel were currently ill. It had been worse over the winter months, in some ways, but malnutrition and privation hadn’t yet reduced their resistance then. Now that spring’s milder temperatures had arrived, the sick list should have been shrinking; instead, it was climbing, and they were losing three or four men every five-day.
Men who were forbidden burial in consecrated ground as the “spawn of Shan-wei” they were. Instead, their bodies were to be taken ashore on Archbishop Trumahn’s personal order and cast into pits in the fields where the Dohlaran capital buried its garbage. Its other garbage, as the holy archbishop had put it. Which was why Manthyr and his officers had taken to dropping their dead quietly and reverently over the side under cover of night, weighted with whatever they could find for the job and accompanied by the murmured words of the burial service any captain remembered only too well.
The numbers were going to get worse. He was almost certain of that, and he was desperately worried about young Lainsair Svairsmahn, HMS Dancer’s only surviving midshipman. Svairsmahn had lost his left leg just below the hip during the final, desperate hour of the action which had hammered four of Manthyr’s ships into wrecks before they finally struck. The boy had been barely twelve and a half when they took off his leg, yet his courage had almost broken Manthyr’s heart. He and Vahlain had cared personally for Svairsmahn over the bitter winter just past, nursing him through his recovery, slipping him extra food from their own meager rations (and denying they were doing anything of the sort whenever he asked). There’d been times, especially right after the amputation, when Manthyr had been afraid they were going to lose the boy anyway, as he’d lost so many other officers and men. But Svairsmahn had always pulled through.
Which only made his current illness even more heartbreaking to both of them, he admitted, looking back out across the bulwark, watching the guard boats row steadily, methodically around the prison hulks in their endless, unceasing circles. Not that even a Charisian seaman was going to try to swim ashore in water still fanged with winter cold from a hulk anchored the better part of a mile and a half from shore.
“I think his temperature may have come down a little, Sir Gwylym,” Vahlain offered, and Manthyr glanced at him. The valet shrugged. “I know we both want to believe that, Sir, but I really think it may be true in this case. If he just hadn’t been so weakened already.…”
His voice trailed off, and Manthyr nodded. Then he laid one hand on Vahlain’s shoulder.
“We’ve gotten him this far, Naiklos. We’re not going to lose him now.”
“Of course not, Sir!” the valet agreed gamely, and both of them tried to pretend they truly believed they weren’t lying.
* * *
“My Lord, this is an act of murder,” Lywys Gardynyr said flatly.
He stood with his back to the stern windows of HMS Chihiro, his face like carven stone, and his eyes were hard. Not a large man, the Earl of Thirsk, but at that moment he seemed to fill the day cabin.
“That isn’t for you to judge, Lywys,” Auxiliary Bishop Staiphan Maik replied. His own expression was set, his eyes grim, yet his voice was remarkably gentle for a Schuelerite, under the circumstances.
“My Lord, you know what’s going to happen!” Despair flickered behind the hardness in Thirsk’s eyes.
“We’re both sons of Mother Church,” Maik said in a sterner tone. “It’s not up to us to judge her actions, but rather to obey her commands.”
This time, Thirsk’s eyes flashed, but he bit back an angry retort. He’d come to know the auxiliary bishop well—too well for either of their comfort and good, he sometimes thought—and he knew Maik was no happier with this command than he was. At the same time, the cleric had a point. It wasn’t their place to judge the Church’s actions, even if at this moment in time her policies were being decided by bloody-handed murderers.
God, the earl demanded harshly in the stillness of his own mind, how can You be letting this happen? Why are You letting this happen?! This is wrong. I know it, Bishop Staiphan knows it, yet both of us are going to watch it happen anyway because Your Church commands it. What are You thinking?
A part of him cringed from the impiety of his own questions, yet he couldn’t stop thinking them, couldn’t stop wondering what part of the inscrutable mind of God could let someone like Zhaspahr Clyntahn attain to the Grand Inquisitor’s chair. It made no sense to him, no matter how hard he tried to force it into some kind of ord
er, some sort of pattern he could understand and accept.
But if I can’t understand why it’s happening, he thought, shoulders slumping, I damned well understand what’s happening.
He wheeled away from the auxiliary bishop, staring out the opened stern windows with his hands gripped together white-knuckled behind him while he fought his anger and tried to throttle his despair. He’d already put Maik into an invidious, even a dangerous, position and he knew it. Just as he knew all the reasons he shouldn’t have done it. There were limits to what even the most broad-minded Schuelerite could overlook at a time like this, and he’d come perilously close to that limit. Which was particularly reprehensible when the Schuelerite in question was trying so hard to do what he knew was decent despite the all too real danger into which that plunged him.
“You’re right, My Lord,” the earl said at last, still facing the panorama of the harbor beyond the windows. “We are sons of Mother Church, and we have no choice but to obey the commands of her vicarate and the Grand Inquisitor. Nor is it our place to question those commands. Yet speaking purely as a layman, and as the commander of one of Mother Church’s fleets”—and the only effective fleet she has left, he added silently—“I must express my concern about the future implications of this decision. I’d be derelict in my duty if I didn’t, and—”
“Stop, my son,” Maik interrupted, cutting him off before he could continue. Thirsk looked over his shoulder at him, and the auxiliary bishop shook his head.
“I know what you’re about to say, and based purely on military logic and the reasoning of the world, I agree with you. This is going to create a situation the heretics are only too likely to seize upon as an excuse for carrying out atrocities against the loyal sons of Mother Church, and I fully realize the way in which it’s likely to … adversely affect the other side’s willingness to grant our soldiers and sailors quarter in the first place. From that perspective, I can’t argue with a single thing you’re about to say. But as the Grand Inquisitor has reminded all of us”—his eyes stabbed Thirsk’s—“the logic of the world, even the mercy natural to any man’s heart, must sometimes give place to the letter of God’s law. That law sets one penalty, and only one, for the unregenerate, unrepentant heretic. As Schueler teaches, for the good of their souls, for the possibility of reclaiming them even at the very last moment from Shan-wei and the Pit, the Inquisition dares not relent lest the transitory illusion of mercy in this world lead to their utter damnation in the next. And as the Grand Inquisitor has also reminded us, at a time when God’s Own Church stands in such peril, we dare not ignore the requirements of His law as set forth by the Archangel Schueler.”
Thirsk’s jaw clenched, but he heard the warning, and he understood. Understood not only that Maik was telling him further protest, however logically and reasonably couched, would be unavailing and almost certainly dangerous, but that the auxiliary bishop would be unable to protect him if he drew the Grand Inquisitor’s ire down upon his own head.
“Very well, My Lord,” the earl said finally. “I understand what you’re saying, and I accept that I must obey the instructions we’ve been given. As you say, the Church stands in peril and this”—he emphasized the last word ever so slightly—“is not the time to question the Grand Inquisitor. Or the rest of the vicarate, of course.”
Maik winced. It was almost imperceptible, but Thirsk saw it anyway, and he responded with an almost equally tiny nod. The auxiliary bishop raised one hand and started to say something, then visibly changed his mind and shifted subjects.
“Turning from our instructions to the rest of the dispatch, what did you think of Vicar Allayn’s analysis of what happened, my son?” he asked instead.
“I thought it was cogently reasoned,” Thirsk replied, smiling faintly and without humor as he recognized Maik’s quest for a less volatile topic. He shrugged. “Obviously, the Charisians”—he seldom used the word “heretic” any longer in his conversations with Maik; probably another dangerous habit he was getting into—“have found some way to load their round shot with gunpowder, exactly as the Captain General is suggesting. I hadn’t considered the possibility myself, and I’ll have to have a word with the foundry masters before I could hazard a guess as to how difficult it might be to cast hollow shot that don’t simply break up when you fire them, but it’s obvious the Charisians have figured it out. How they manage to get the things to explode when they want them to is another matter, of course.”
He frowned thoughtfully, his brain and professional curiosity engaged almost despite himself.
“It’s got to be some sort of fuse,” he half murmured, “but how do they light it? The barrel’s too long to reach down and light it after they’ve loaded the gun, unless they’re firing them only from carronades, and that doesn’t seem possible given the weight of fire Father Greyghor reported. Hmmmmm.…” His frown deepened. “Muzzle flash? Is that what they’re using? And if it is, how do they manage it without blowing the fuse into the shell and setting it off early?”
Staiphan Maik breathed a mental sigh of relief as Thirsk was diverted from his dangerous anger. It was only going to be temporary—the auxiliary bishop knew that—but he needed to back the admiral off before his stubborn sense of integrity dug in any deeper and left him no path of retreat. Lywys Gardynyr was too good a man to be allowed to deliver himself into the Inquisition’s hands because of the very things that made him such a good man. And even if he hadn’t been, Mother Church couldn’t afford to lose the one admiral she had who seemed to be capable of meeting the Charisians on their own terms.
“Assuming Father Greyghor’s reports are accurate,” he said out loud, “what can we do in the face of such a weapon?”
“Nothing, My Lord.” Thirsk raised both eyebrows, his tone surprised. “If they can make their cannon shot explode inside our ships, their combat advantage becomes effectively absolute. Presumably we could still get close enough to at least damage their ships, but only at the cost of coming into range at which they’ll be able to destroy ours.”
“So there’s nothing we can do?” Maik couldn’t hide his anxiety, and the earl shrugged.
“For now, My Lord, the only response I see is to attempt to learn how to make the same sorts of hollow shot for ourselves. Until we can respond in kind, we dare not meet them in battle. In some ways, however, this may actually work to our advantage. Once we’ve learned how to make the same weapon for ourselves, I mean.” He grimaced. “I don’t see how any ship could survive more than a very few hits from something like this. And that, I fear, means sea battles are about to become affairs of mutual annihilation, which will ultimately favor us, since we have so much more manpower and so much greater capability to build replacement ships. We can trade two ships, possibly even three, for each of theirs in the fullness of time. The cost in both money and lives will be atrocious, but it’s one we can pay in the end, and they can’t.”
He obviously disliked saying that, and Maik’s face tightened as he heard it. Unfortunately, it wasn’t anything the auxiliary bishop hadn’t already thought.
“It’s probably not a bad thing that we’re going to have to spend some time trying various approaches to the problem of producing and fusing hollow shot, really,” Thirsk continued. “We’re going to have to rebuild the Navy of God before we could even think about engaging the Charisians at sea again, especially given how the prizes they’ve added to their fleet will increase their own numbers. In fact, it looks to me—”
He broke off suddenly, eyes intent as they gazed at something Maik couldn’t see. He stayed that way for several seconds, then blinked twice, slowly.
“You’ve thought of something, haven’t you?” Maik challenged. The earl looked at him, and the auxiliary bishop chuckled. “I’ve seen that blink of yours before, my son. Out with it!”
“Well, I don’t know how practical it might be, but one possible solution to this new weapon of theirs might be to find a way to prevent it from exploding inside our ships.”
“Prevent it from exploding? How?” Maik’s expression was perplexed, and Thirsk shook his head.
“Forgive me, My Lord. I should have phrased that more clearly. What I meant is that we have to find a way to prevent it from exploding inside our ships. To prevent it from penetrating our ships in the first place.”
“And how might we do that?”
“I’m not certain,” Thirsk acknowledged. “At the moment the only answer that suggests itself to me would be to somehow armor the sides of our vessels. I don’t think we could do it simply by increasing the thickness of their scantlings, though. That would seem to leave only some kind of protective layer—a sheath of iron, perhaps—applied to the outside of the planking.”
“Would that be possible?” Maik asked, his expression fascinated, and Thirsk shrugged again.
“That’s a question to ask the ironmasters, My Lord. What I can already tell you from our experience with arming our galleons, though, is that producing that much iron would be—if you’ll pardon the expression—hellishly expensive. I’m not at all sure what it would do to stability, either. Nonetheless, it’s the only solution that suggests itself to me at this point.”
“Expensive or not, it sounds to me as if you might be onto something here, my son.” Maik nodded enthusiastically. “Write up your thoughts on this for Vicar Allayn, please. I’d like to send them off to the Temple with my next dispatch.”
“Of course, My Lord,” Thirsk said, but the enthusiasm had vanished from his voice once more at the mention of dispatches to the Temple, and Maik cursed himself for having brought them up. Not that he had much choice. Sooner or later he was going to have to talk about reports to the Temple, and Thirsk was going to have to provide those reports.
The auxiliary bishop stood for a moment, looking at the man whose loyalty to Mother Church he was charged to safeguard. Then he inhaled deeply.
“My son,” he said carefully. “Lywys. I know you’re unhappy about the orders concerning your prisoners.” Thirsk’s eyes narrowed, but Maik went on in that same careful, deliberate tone. “I know the logical arguments in support of your position, and I’ve already acknowledged you have a point in that regard. But I also know one reason for your unhappiness is how deeply it goes against your sense of honor, your integrity, to deliver those who surrendered to you and to whom you offered quarter to someone else’s justice.”
