“Thank you, messires,” she said shortly.
Fortunately they’d picked the foot-fighting set of faulds, the one that protected your backside too, rather than leaving it bare to help the leather on the seat of your breeches grip the saddle. The royal suit’s relatively slight weight still surprised her, on the visceral level of memories graven in bone and muscle; the metal was a little thicker than its steel equivalent, but rustless, much stronger and much lighter.
Sir Aleaume blushed slightly when she shot him a glance but kept his eyes steady. He was her personal vassal now . . . but that didn’t mean a noble wasn’t supposed to exercise initiative, and she hadn’t actually forbidden him to do it. She almost laughed aloud when she looked over at Reiko again, and saw the same process going on.
“Onegai itashimasu,” Reiko said frigidly to her vassals as they began, though their actions were obviously unexpected.
That meant thank you for this favor you’re about to do, more or less.
And a bitten-off: “Domo,” followed.
Which meant very much literally, and a brief curt thanks in terms of true equivalents.
The two men strapping the protective suneate to her legs both bent their foreheads to the dock for an instant after they finished, presumably in apology for touching the sacred and quasi-divine Imperial person, before she snapped brusquely that they should get back to their places.
Órlaith turned and looked seaward, sparing only one swift look at the departing schooner, a shape of strangely calm beauty as it heeled to the wind and its sails made a geometric off-white tracery against the dark blue of the water and bright blue of the nearly cloudless sky. The lunging bows of the canoes of the cannibal host were much closer and uglier, a clash with the warm comeliness of summer land and sea.
She gave a quick glance to either side. The Japanese and her own men-at-arms had formed up quickly; everyone looked concerned, and well they might, but nobody was panicking.
Not even me, and how I wish I could! she thought with some distant part of her mind. This would be a lot easier if Da or Mother was here to tell me what to do!
She’d been determined to strike out on her own, as her parents had done on the Quest. Now she was getting what she’d wanted . . . Someone was always listening when you made a wish, and some of those Someones had a pawky sense of humor.
John had his shield settled on his arm, with the Sword and Crown of House Artos on it crossed with the baton of cadency. He looked a little white about the mouth, enough to remind you that he was still short of twenty years, but steady enough.
Says the crone of twenty-one! she thought. And to be sure, he isn’t responsible for how this turns out!
“The plumes on the helm work, Johnnie. You finally look taller than your big sister,” she said lightly, and got a smile in return, and a lessening of the tension around his eyes.
Whatever she decided, folk would die because of it. It would almost be easier to die herself.
“Shields and visors!” Sir Aleaume snapped. “Blades! Protective formation!”
The men-at-arms knocked their visors down with the edges of their shields, a multiple metallic shink-shink sound, transformed from men to steel figures faceless save for the menacing black vacancy of the vision slits, like the fabled robots of ancient times. They drew their longswords with a slight hissing slither of steel on wood and leather greased with neatsfoot oil and held them in the ready position over the shoulder, hilt first. The front rank knelt, their kite shields braced against shoulder and the wharf’s deck to make a wall, and then the second did likewise in a smooth ripple. Only the best few applicants were allowed into the Protector’s Guard, and they practiced continually.
The points of glaives bristled forward as the footmen in their three-quarter-armor stepped up behind the knights and squires whose duty and honor it was to put their bodies in the front line against the foe, poised ready to chop and hook and thrust around and between them.
“Cousins!” Órlaith called to the two Dúnedain; they were literally that, the children of her father’s half-sisters.
She pointed to the dozen large barrels on the south end of the wharf, which were full of something from the way they were making the structure dip in that direction even with the men-at-arms on the other end.
“Those tuns! What’s in them?”
There wasn’t much doubt, she could smell it and it was among the most familiar of scents around any sort of dock, but best to make sure. Faramir replied as he shot again.
“It’s boat soap . . .”
Then with a double-take while his hand reached for his quiver, he blurted in amazement:
“When did you start speaking perfect Sindarin, my lady kinswoman?” he said in that language.
Just now! Órlaith realized, as the elegant liquid complexities settled into her mind.
She’d had no more than a few words before. Rangers all spoke what they called the Common Tongue as well, though they mostly used Edhellen among themselves.
She had the Sword . . . but it was a little eerie even so, and his eyes widened as she tapped her hand on the hilt. Then she dismissed it for now.
What mattered was the information and the idea it spawned, not how she’d gotten it. Rock the enemy back on their heels while we break contact suddenly became something much more concrete.
CHAPTER TWELVE
GOLDEN GATE/GLORANNON
(FORMERLY SAN FRANCISCO BAY)
CROWN PROVINCE OF WESTRIA
(FORMERLY CALIFORNIA)
HIGH KINGDOM OF MONTIVAL
(FORMERLY WESTERN NORTH AMERICA)
JULY/FUMIZUKI/CERWETH 14TH
CHANGE YEAR 46/FIFTH AGE 46/SHOHEI 1/2044 AD
Moishe Feldman grinned tautly as the Tarshish Queen gathered way, sailing southward on a beam reach with the wind out of the west. Perhaps it was a fancy to feel that the ship was bounding forward like a horse given its head, but that long swooping grace was reality enough. The sheer joy of sailing was one reason he did what he did for a living.
He deliberately didn’t look back at the longboats pulling for the wharf. For one thing, while he was perfectly willing to kill the Eaters—order it done, but it was the same thing in the eyes of the Lord . . .
And as Raba says in the “Tractate Sanhedrin,” if a man should come up against you to slay you, forestall him by slaying him first, he thought automatically. Which is a command, not a permission.
. . . he didn’t like to dwell on it more than he must. For another, looking back would make him wonder if they’d made a terrible mistake by putting the Princess and her brother ashore.
“Tide table and chart,” he said quietly, and one of the quarterdeck gang ran to bring them.
He checked them, and looked at the chronometer repeater needle by the binnacle.
“Tide’s making,” he said quietly to the First Mate, and tapped a position on the chart.
“Not much yet, Captain, and we’ll need more if you’re going to try that,” Radavindraban Madhava said. “I do wish we weren’t missing those boat crews. I am so-certainly not liking heading into a fight shorthanded.”
Radavindraban was an excellent navigator and First Mate in general, but Feldman thought he tended to be a little pessimistic. He thought Feldman was too inclined to expect things to work out, which was a new experience for the merchant.
“We’ll manage, and by the time we’ve . . . arranged things . . . the tide will be up quite a bit. The boat crews may be safer where they are, too,” he said, and leveled his telescope.
The images of the four ships sprang out at him as he scanned to the southward. The fallen Richmond bridge sealed off the Bay in that direction; Stormrider was pushing straight through towards him.
At a guess he plans to anchor off the wharf at Círbann Rómenadrim with cables fore and aft and springs on them, and make them come bows-on
into his broadsides if they want to try getting past him. Conservative plan, but workable.
“If it weren’t for the frigate we’d be facing a bit of a sticky wicket,” the First Mate said.
He’d already spoken English . . . of a sort . . . before Moishe Feldman had hidden him from a howling mob in Jayapura and smuggled him out in a space hollowed out under a load of pink satinwood where the Raja’s men hadn’t thought to look. He still had a strong accent and used odd turns of phrase now and then. Feldman caught the meaning from the context.
It had taken a while to realize he was also an educated man with a talent for mathematics, a good grounding in navigation, and though not someone who went looking for trouble also a nasty customer in a fight. Quick-witted as well as intelligent, a good bargainer and honest in an unsentimental to-the-inch way, though his religion had a truly strange set of taboos, particularly about food. And he played a wicked game of chess.
In fact, he’d make a pretty fair Jew, the captain thought. If it weren’t for the multi-armed deities.
As he watched, the three enemy ships parted to either side of the frigate, the two orcas going west and the Korean east . . . which confirmed his guess about their draught. That put the ship from Asia in the same deeper channel the Stormrider was using, which was more-or-less navigable all the way to the ruins of Sacramento, though the wrecks made it tricky.
“Steady as she goes, Mr. Radavindraban,” Feldman said. “The first act of this comedy is going to play out before us.”
“What are they trying to do, Cap’n?” he asked.
“From their courses, they’re trying to get to Círbann Rómenadrim, where our . . . passengers . . . landed,” Feldman said. “Either that, or bracket the frigate and sink or take her. Or both.”
“And attack us too, yes, perhaps,” the First Mate said.
“Oh, it’s just the pirates and the foreigner who want to attack us. The frigate would probably settle for arresting us, if they manage to find the time.”
Neither of them laughed, but he could see a pawky expression in the other man’s dark eyes.
“As if they were expecting us,” Radavindraban said thoughtfully. “Us, but not I think the frigate, no indeed.”
Feldman nodded; he intended to promote the man soon, and that quick grasp of situations was one big reason why. “What they’re doing is good tactics, if that frigate hadn’t been there.”
“But the frigate, it is here, Cap’n. Not good form to keep to a plan where circumstances have changed.”
“The three of them outweigh and outshoot us quite comfortably,” Feldman agreed.
I could take either of the orcas, maybe both. But not all three . . .
“But Stormrider changes the equation. Ah, here goes the Queen’s Pawn,” he observed aloud.
More sail broke out on the topmasts of the Stormrider; frigates were fast. For a ship-rigged vessel the frigate was extremely stiff, too, sagging very little to windward. That was the advantage of the deep keel.
The naval commander had run up Heave to immediately and stand by to be boarded in the name of the High Kingdom to his signal hoists, but that was pro-forma, to make the daily logbook entries look tidy.
And . . .
“There they go,” he said.
They were too far away to hear the frigate’s massive eighteen-pounder catapults cutting loose, the more so as they were on an enclosed fighting deck. It would be earsplitting there, with fourteen of them loosing within a second of each other. Weapons that size would rip his ship’s frames loose from the scantlings after half a dozen broadsides even with hydraulic recoil systems, but they had their uses.
The broadsides she loosed were like elongated flickers reaching out towards the Korean. The nearly invisible passage told an experienced eye that she was shooting bolt, finned javelins about four feet long. The arcs were high, which meant they were aimed upward for maximum range. Bolt went a lot farther than round shot, though they did less damage when they got there.
Usually, he thought.
“I would be saying it is about a thousand meters . . . yards,” Radavindraban said.
“Not extreme range, but close,” Feldman agreed. “Another hundred, hundred and fifty, maybe.”
Six bolts hit the water before the Korean’s squared-off bows, beautifully placed for distance but a bit off on bearing. Through the telescope he could see the white bursts of froth where they struck, and then an eruption of spray and smoke.
“Firebolts,” he said. “Thermite.”
Bolt warheads from the massive naval weapons had three pounds of the mixture, and the steel shell turned to molten gobbets almost immediately on impact.
Not what you want slammed deep into your hull, he thought dryly.
Pirates usually wanted to take ships, not sink or burn, and rarely used firebolt or napalm shell. They kept some on hand though, for occasions when it was a matter of win or die . . . such as fighting a warship.
“Making good practice for a moving target at that range,” Feldman said judiciously of the Stormrider’s catapult crews.
Four more of the bolts hit in the enemy ship’s wake, doing no harm except to the taxpayers of Montival and any fish close enough to be quick-broiled. That left four. He saw three flashes of impact; one more must have landed short or gone over.
Very good practice for that range.
The Korean hadn’t opened his portlids yet, the swinging hinged chunks of the deck bulwark that let the catapults fire and protected them when they didn’t. Two more of the firebolts hit, ignited and then fell off into the water of the Bay. You could put a slab of steel plate on the outside of the portlid, if not over your whole hull.
The third hit lower. Fire and smoke spurted out instantly and the melted-through shaft of the bolt fell away, and a there was a scrimmage of motion difficult to make out at this distance even with a telescope. From the fact that the fire didn’t spread it was apparently a damage-control team that knew its business, wielding axes and boring-tools to cut out the wound in their ship’s fabric and packing it with dry sand to extinguish any sparks.
“Going to be interesting,” he murmured; there hadn’t been many pitched battles at sea since the Change, not around here.
It all looks so bloodless at a distance, he thought, remembering screams and stinks and the sound of splinters and edged metal whirring by. A pawn doesn’t shriek for its mother when a knight takes it.
His First Mate sucked in his breath sharply as the orcas turned in towards the frigate, one each at bow and stern. With the wind out of the west—very slightly north of west—the Haida had the weather gauge. That meant that the Stormrider could avoid them only by turning downwind. The Korean to windward couldn’t head right for the frigate, but he was turning to close as fast as he could.
It was very difficult for sailing ships with sea room to force an unwilling opponent to fight. But here there wasn’t much room and all parties seemed eager to pitch in.
“Starboard your helm, five degrees right rudder,” Feldman said, and the crew at the wheel repeated it back.
The Tarshish Queen’s bowsprit slid slightly to the right, westward, and she heeled a little more sharply; he looked up at the sails and shook his head, and the First Mate lowered his speaking-trumpet.
“We are going to go by?” Radavindraban said.
“We’re going to give a very convincing imitation of an intention to do just that,” Feldman said.
He watched the maneuvering ships calmly, glancing up occasionally at the pennants at the mastheads to check on the wind. At sea, things happened with majestic deliberation, until suddenly they happened very quickly indeed; it was easy to forget that you were dealing with massive objects weighing hundreds of tons but moving as fast as a trotting horse. The Tarshish Queen was quiet, only the odd murmur of voices and the creak and groan of the ship working and the thutter o
f sails as the angles changed and ropes were adjusted.
Feldman said more formally: “Mr. Mate, load the forward four portside catapults with round shot. The sternward four with napalm shell. Make ready, if you please. The starboard catapults to load in opposite order.”
Radavindraban turned and barked the orders. Feldman glanced up at the pennants again. The orcas were closer now, though it was probably his imagination that he could smell the lingering stink of fear and misery from them. Apparently they’d decided to close on the frigate and ignore him. Which was certainly a good thing with the boat crews gone, not to mention the Crown Princess and her men-at-arms and their Japanese equivalents. The Tarshish Queen wasn’t in a condition to fight a boarding action with one pirate right now, much less two. With a little luck, he wouldn’t have to.
He murmured under his breath:
“Praised be the Lord, my Rock, who trains my hands for battle and my fingers for war . . . Flash forth lightning and scatter them, Lord of the Universe: send Your arrows and confound them, stretch out Your hand from the heights and deliver me from the stranger whose mouth speaks lies, whose right hand is the hand of deception!”
“The wharf is on fire, Cap’n,” Radavindraban said quietly when the catapults were ready.
Feldman spared a quick glance over his shoulder. Not just on fire, but ablaze, like a stacked bonfire or a pagan funeral pyre. Damp timber baulks didn’t go up that way unless you used something that helped it along quite a bit. The Eaters streaming by the Tarshish Queen to the attack had looked very focused, but not particularly technologically advanced, to put it mildly. It must have been the Princess somehow, she was a clever one in her odd way . . . and there was that entirely disturbing Sword . . .
The Desert and the Blade Page 19
