“Please,” Will Seline begged. “She’s my daughter.”
The huge young man shook his head. “Give me the message, and I’ll pass it along,” he said in his high-pitched voice. “That’s all I can do.”
Will Seline waited for a carriage to clatter by. Then he spoke softly, leaning over the rail of the guard shack. “I’ve been giving messages to you guards for weeks now. I must have given notes to twenty different men.” The rotation of these guards had frustrated Will to no end; he had yet to see the same man here twice. “They are not getting to her. Or if they are, no message is getting back to me. She’s my daughter. I need to know if she’s all right.” The big man’s was stony. “Do you have a daughter?” Will asked.
The dragoon shook his head again. He started to say something and then bit his lip.
“What?” Will Seline could read people. “For the love of all that is holy, man—say it.”
The dragoon looked down the street. He looked at the pastor. “The King’s Arms, ten o’clock tonight,” he said under his breath.
“The King’s Arms? What do you…” Then Will understood. “You want me to meet you there. Right. Okay. I’ll be there. Thank you.” He nodded twice, then hurried off to the inn where he was staying, anxious to find out where, and what, the King’s Arms might be.
The Trophy Chase flew by the Rahk Thanu, traveled just far enough to be out of cannon range, then wheeled to port. Abbaka Mux saw it, believed it a serious tactical error, and ordered ramming speed. His opponent would be in irons in a moment; the ship wouldn’t get halfway about before he was upon her, and he could sink his steel-plated prow deep into that arrogant ship’s hull.
But Mux was wrong. He had never seen a tall ship that could maneuver so deftly. Within minutes, the Chase’s crew had dropped every sail on the mizzen so that all billowed full, and had trimmed almost every sail on both the foremast and the mainmast. Coupled with the hard port turn, the wind acted like a great hand, pushing her stern around. The one-hundred-eighty-degree turn was executed in less than five minutes, with the Chase in irons for less than half of that. During that time, Abbaka Mux and the Thanu had gained on her hardly at all.
Now all the Chase’s sails were dropped, and billowed full. She stood still for just a moment, seeming quite proud and aloof, before her sails popped, and she leaped forward toward the Drammune flagship.
The two ships sailed directly at one another now, prow to prow.
Mux’s men were still not as sharp as they should be. They had weathered an unexpected level of fury from this Vast ship. They moved quickly, but without their usual dexterity, as they kept one eye on the water around them, trying to understand where the monster had come from, and to see where it had gone.
The Drammune crewmen were disciplined, though, and they did not speak. There was little whispering and no rumormongering, just each man swallowing his fear and doing his duty.
Mux called for his first mate, a man tall and thin by Drammune standards. “Helko, what happened to your men?”
The mate looked surprised. “Did you not see it, sir?”
“See what?”
“The great beast. The Devilfish.”
Mux looked at his man as though he had lost his mind. “Speak,” he commanded.
“It swam alongside the bow of the Trophy Chase.”
It rankled Mux to hear his man call the enemy ship by name, though he did not know why. “You saw this?”
“I did. So did all the men.”
Mux pondered a moment. He was tempted to ask what it looked like, but did not want to give the man’s fear so much credence. “You think this thing came with that ship?”
“I…it seemed so, sir.”
“Helko. We have a mission. We are at war, and we have a battle to fight. Let’s fight it.”
“Aye, sir!”
Mux left him, walked to the center of his quarterdeck, and bellowed out to his entire crew. “Men!” He had their attention instantly.
“I don’t care what you saw! I don’t care what the Vast throw at us! I don’t care what the sea throws at us! The ship dead ahead is mortal. It carries the enemies of Drammun! I want all grappling guns on deck now! I want grapeshot loaded! I want swords and pistols and muskets! I want death and destruction and blood bathing the decks of that ship! And I want to send those Vast salamanders into the Dead Lands, now!”
The Drammune sailors did not cheer, but they were cheered. Their hands moved now with alacrity, their eyes and their minds focused sharply on their work.
They were Drammune. Fen Abbaka Mux was their commander. They would not fail.
His orders were to run, but they were now very hard to obey. Moore Davies, aboard the Marchessa, had watched the attack of the Trophy Chase through his telescope. He was elated. His crew was hoarse from cheering, and many of them were wiping tears from their eyes. The Chase had not only escaped, but had somehow flanked the enemy in the night, an awesome feat in itself, and then had managed, apparently, to sneak up on the flagship of the Armada! How or why the Drammune commander had left his rear unguarded was a mystery, but however it happened, the Chase had blistered him for it.
Davies and his men had not seen the Firefish. Their view had been blocked by the wider Rahk Thanu, and even had it not been, they were now looking directly into the rising sun. But they saw the Trophy Chase, that magnificent ship, their ship, the hope of the Vast; they watched as she bettered the flagship of the Drammune, then turned and, instead of running, stood like the lioness she was, facing down the entire Armada.
Davies obeyed his orders and kept the Marchessa’s sails trimmed and his ship at full gallop, but all eyes were strained to see what would happen next. It seemed to him that the whole navy was stunned. They had apparently forgotten about the Marchessa, and now she was putting distance between herself and her pursuers. This was their chance to escape, to take word back to Mann, back to the prince and the king.
But as the face-off diminished in the distance, and a hundred ships seemed to close in on the Trophy Chase, Davies’ sense of excitement abated. What ship, no matter how great, could survive those odds?
Will Seline understood why the King’s Arms was favored by the Royal Dragoons. Every square inch of wall space was covered by some implement of war, ancient or otherwise. There were muskets and rifles, a blunderbuss, derringers. There were swords and knives of every shape and size: broadswords, pikes, halberds, maces, sabers, scimitars, rapiers of every origin, Vast, Drammune, Urlish, Kambui, Martooch, Sandavallian. In a glass case near the entrance was a proud new addition, an Achawuk spear. A plaque beneath it commemorated the crew of the Trophy Chase.
The priest took a table for two in a shadowy corner, and ordered a pint of dark ale. He was not a drinker, nor did he much feel like drinking now, but in a place like this on a mission like his, he did not want to attract any undue attention by ordering ginger beer or gaseous water. In an effort to be invisible, he had even left his robes back at the inn, and wore plain trousers and the one work shirt he had brought with him, the type favored by fishermen. He noticed, however, that this was not much of a fashion statement on the streets of Mann. He might have been less conspicuous in his robes.
Will was anxious. A loud discussion was underway at the bar, where a red-faced old man in a full dress uniform with a colonel’s insignia was telling a story of bravado and daring to a small crowd that hung on every word. Will couldn’t follow the tale, however, so he sipped his mug of stout, wiped the foam from his moustache, and stroked his beard, thinking. At least that little gathering kept eyes out of dark corners.
The priest had come to Mann as had all other able-bodied, law-abiding male citizens, noting that the king’s proclamation did not make exceptions based on either one’s earthly or heavenly calling. He had not been untouched by the riotous, delirious nature of the recruiting process, rather he participated in his own way: He heard many confessions. All were heartfelt. Some were sober.
The priest had taken all this w
ith his usual patient good humor. For the most part, these were men of good intentions who were frightened very deeply. They wanted to be worthy of Nearing Vast’s martial history, and they wanted to protect their homes from foreign invaders. They simply had no idea how to go about doing either. Their intake of ale provided a shortcut to community, allowing camaraderie to blossom in mere days where otherwise it might have taken months, even years. It broke down barriers.
Unfortunately, it also broke down doors, bar stools, horse railings, general health, and the short-term financial position of almost every man not wearing an apron or carrying a bar towel. Cap Hillis was one of those exceptions, at least for a while. The innkeeper would eventually be denied induction and make his way back home to Hen and hearth—and a far less prosperous pub than the one he’d left—but for many nights running Cap and Will teamed up in the big city much as they did back in the tiny village. Cap would send the depressed and the fearful and the heartsick to Will, who would do what he could to help them sober up and then find both forgiveness and, when possible, misplaced belongings.
But often the only help Will could offer was highly temporal: dragging a half-conscious man from the mud into the grass, locating a surgeon who could stitch a forehead, or shooing a barmaid away from the purse of a man passed out in a corner.
Will had, of course, joined the throng in sending off the Trophy Chase. If he’d had any advance notice of the event he might have gotten closer earlier, and might have had a chance to see and speak with Panna, or even to wish Packer well. At the time, the pressing crowd seemed like a minor irritant. Certainly, he would be able to get all the news from his daughter afterward. But Panna had been whisked off by the prince in a fancy carriage, and Will had not seen her since. The vague foreboding he felt then had turned out to be a grim foreshadowing of something…but as yet he did not know what.
He was stuck in Mann. The military would not accept him to fight, but the powers on high had yet to form a policy on the induction of military chaplains, so he was asked to stay in the city until policies could be set. Apparently, these were not high-priority decisions. Will took the cheapest room he could find, above the loud but well-managed inn where Cap and he had worked, and there he dedicated himself to prayer and to finding news about Panna.
This meeting was the first chink in the royal armor. He watched the door for half an hour, during which time he sipped down perhaps an inch of his ale. The old officer at the bar had finished two stories and had begun a third, when the big young man with the angry face entered. Will recognized him instantly in spite of the casual brown cotton shirt and trousers. He was clean-shaven as usual, but out of uniform he looked even younger, a mere teenager. A man-child.
The dragoon looked around the tavern. Will raised a hand. His target located, the young man skirted the group at the bar just as they burst into laughter. He looked at them with some alarm, then realized they were paying him no attention.
“Got delayed,” he said by way of apology as he squeezed into the chair across from Will. “Baby’s sick.”
“Sorry to hear that. How is the little boy?”
The young man wrinkled his brow. “How’d you know he’s a boy?”
“You told me you didn’t have a daughter.”
He squinted. Then he remembered. “Oh. Right. He’s fine. Or will be. Croup.”
“Your first child?”
“No, third. Oldest is five.” The man eyed Will’s pint thirstily. Will waved down a barmaid, and the dragoon happily ordered a stout.
“I appreciate you meeting with me,” the big priest said. “I can’t get any news of Panna. I don’t know if you can imagine what that’s like.”
He nodded. “But I don’t have any news,” he said abruptly.
Will fought disappointment, and waited. There must be some reason the young man had come.
The dragoon glanced over his shoulder at the bar. “That’s Prince Ward right there,” he said. “Did you know that?”
Will blanched. “Which one?”
“The tall one, listening to Colonel Bird recite his stories.”
Will watched a lanky, dashing young man pour the last drops of his ale down his throat, then take a mug from the barmaid’s tray as she passed. It was the mug meant for the young dragoon. She smiled coyly at the prince; he winked at her. She wheeled around to get a replacement. “He comes here frequently?”
“Mm-hmm.”
Will thought he detected a trace of disapproval. “If I was guessing, I’d say you don’t think too highly of him.”
The young man stared daggers at Will. “I can’t talk about the royal family,” he said with finality. “All I can say is, your daughter’s fine.”
The priest’s face brightened. “So you’ve seen her?”
He shrugged. That was no secret. “Sure. Everyone’s seen her.”
“Well. That’s news, then.” The big priest put out a hand. “Thank you. My name is Will Seline.”
They shook. “Stave Deroy. Friends just call me Chunk.”
Will smiled. It was certainly apt. “Panna’s well, then?”
The dragoon nodded once.
Will sensed there was more. But nothing else was forthcoming. “Anything more you can tell me?”
“No, that’s it.”
The priest nodded, but took a sip as he waited.
The barmaid came by with Chunk’s drink. He scowled at it; it was still mostly foam. Impatient, he took a deep drink anyway, then used his shirtsleeve to wipe away the generous leavings. “She’s being kept in the upper rooms right now. What we call the Tower.”
Will’s shoulders slumped. His voice grew low. “And why is that?”
Chunk sniffed, looked around the room. He took another drink, and then another swipe.
“Is she in danger?”
“No. Not that one. She can take care of herself.”
Will grew alarmed. “I have to ask you, Chunk. Why would a young woman under the protection of the king need to take care of herself?”
Chunk stared hard. He took a deep breath. “ ’Cause it’s the prince she’s under protection of.”
Will nodded. His worst fears, which he had hardly dared to think, he now put into words. “And he’s taken an interest in her.”
For the first time, the dragoon’s eyes opened up to Will. He leaned in. “She broke his nose. But you didn’t hear it from me.”
The priest sat back as though he’d been punched himself. “She did what?”
“Don’t know the how, can only guess the why. But she did it. So he put her in the Tower.”
Will just nodded. “He was making advances.”
“Oh, he was advancing. She was retreating.” He thought a moment. “ ’Cept a course for when she was punching.”
“He visits her there, in the Tower?”
The dragoon looked into his mug. His face now twisted into obvious disgust. “He’s not a good man. I was there when he went to see her, after she hit him. I was supposed to protect him from her.” He looked at Will. “Protect him from her. Can you believe that?”
Will’s eyes closed. This was a nightmare. He couldn’t imagine the ugliness of this for Panna.
“He said he’d let her go if she’d be quiet about everything, but she said no, she wouldn’t. She’d tell who she pleased.”
Will nodded, somewhat encouraged. That was his Panna.
“She said it was for the kingdom. That people needed to know how bad he was for his own good, and for the good of the war.”
Suddenly the priest saw a flickering light, the hand of God behind these events. “And you believe that?”
Chunk got an odd look in his eye. “Well, yeah. How are we going to win a war with such as him running it?”
Will’s heart ached. Chunk was a simple man, and a good man. And what he just said was foolishness in the eyes of many, who would separate out a man’s character from his ability to lead, or fight, or succeed. But to Will, it was a shining spiritual insight. It was faith. �
��Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord.”
Chunk shrugged, took a swallow. “I’ll die fighting. That’s my job. But I’d rather know I’m fighting for the good. That’s all.”
“Death comes to every man, sooner or later, and we’re all fighting in our own way, for good or ill.” Chunk was studying his stout. Will was studying Chunk. “War is coming,” the priest said. “Are you prepared to die? Are you ready to meet your Maker?”
Chunk looked earnestly up at Will. “I don’t know.”
“It would be an honor to help you, sir. If you would allow me.”
There was a pause as the young man’s eyes grew more earnest yet. “Okay.”
Will smiled. “Do you have something you want to confess?”
Chunk nodded. He faced it now as his solemn duty. He looked thoughtful for a just moment longer. And then he told Will Seline every sinful thought, act, and deed that he could remember from his earliest childhood. When he had finished, Will Seline prayed with him to the God who forgives all sins, who paid for them all, and who ushers humble sinners into His Kingdom. With gladness.
CHAPTER 12
Fight
The Drammune grappling gun was a small cannon, an inch in diameter, into which a three-pronged grappling hook was inserted. Tied to the hook was a strong, braided, lightweight line, which would reel out when the cannon was fired. Launched either above a ship’s masts or in and among its sails and lines, the hook would be pulled back by hand until the prongs caught on something, and then that something could be hauled closer, for more intimate combat.
Grappling guns were not peculiar to the Drammune. But Fen Abbaka Mux had elevated their use to the warfare equivalent of high art. This fact was one that the Admiral of the Fleet of Nearing Vast would soon discover. As the Trophy Chase began her second pass, the crew of the Rahk Thanu loaded not three or four, or even a dozen grappling guns, but fully four dozen. The Drammune warship lined its decks with them. In front of each cannon was a fat coil of line. A warrior stood behind each, holding a small single-wick lantern with an open flame, and awaited the order to fire.
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