He reached the quarterdeck again. Gill appeared at his side, his face sooty and streaked. “We’ll have to abandon the lower guns, Harg,” he said. “They’re just about knocked to scrap iron anyway. The whole ship’s side is one huge hole, and the stanchions are blasted away. There’s almost nothing holding up the deck.” As he spoke there was a blast from the Conqueror’s lower deck guns, and the shell sailed unimpeded out Windemon’s opposite side. Harg had to stifle a laugh at sight of the Innings firing right through his ship.
There was another mangling blast from the frigate on their unprotected side. “Rot them!” Harg said. It was all he could say.
Garret was coming up the gangway through the smoke, his face white with panic.
“They’ve hit one of our pumps. We’re going to sink,” he said shrilly. “We’ve got to surrender.”
“He’s right, Harg,” Gill said. “We took on too much. It’s time to call it quits.”
For an instant Harg felt wrapped in heavy coils of failure. He couldn’t move, he couldn’t think. He couldn’t even say the words he needed to say. His gaze strayed upward. The snipers, unseen amid the rigging, had succeeded in clambering across the interlocked yards into the tops of the Conqueror, and were shooting down on the decks of the enemy. As he watched, one of them tossed a lit grenade right down the Conqueror’s main hatch. A huge, bright explosion rocketed out of the big ship’s depths. By some impossible luck, the bomb had hit some piled-up charges. Men and smoke poured from their companionway, only to be met by a shower of grape from Windemon’s last remaining guns.
“Ready to board!” Harg shouted. “We’ve got them now!”
The Windemon’s battered crew seized up their weapons. One of them caught a main yard brace and swung over onto the enemy’s deck. Others climbed the bulwarks.
“Cease fire! Cease fire!” a voice called from the Conqueror’s deck.
“Do you surrender?” Harg yelled. He climbed up on a gun carriage to see three Inning officers huddled in a knot of Torna subordinates, in desperate conference. Bright flames were licking out of their companionway.
“Yes, damn you! We surrender!” a voice cried at last.
For an instant Harg stood motionless, unable to believe it. He glanced over his shoulder and saw that the frigate that had been firing on them had finally been engaged by one of his other ships, and was now turning tail to flee. Then he believed it.
“Come with me, Gill!” Harg said, and leaped across onto the Conqueror’s deck. In a moment he was facing the Inning commander and his haggard officers. “Your pistol, please,” Harg said peremptorily. The Inning handed it over in silence, and Harg stuck it in his sash. “Take these men prisoner, Gill,” Harg said, then turned to survey the scene from his new quarterdeck.
A lull of desperate exhaustion had descended over the two ships. The corpses could scarcely be told from the living, all sunk flaccid against bulkhead and mast. An eerie hush replaced the constant roar of guns, and for the first time in hours Harg breathed fresh air. He looked up at the tangle of rigging, outlined like tree branches against the sky, and it occurred to him that he had not died.
Everywhere the once-graceful ships were mangled and smoking. When the wind paused, the stench of blood and burned flesh rose. As his normal self began to return, Harg’s head throbbed, and he leaned over the ship’s rail, mouth filling with saliva, sure he was going to vomit in his moment of victory.
“Sir? You have orders for us?”
Three of his men were standing by. Throat aching with the effort to hold down his sickness, Harg turned to them. “Yes, take a party to disarm the prisoners, then set them to work fighting that fire. If you need help on the pumps, set the prisoners to work.”
He had to stop there; he had used up all his spare energy. The men were watching him with an awed, hesitant friendship, and for an instant he felt an intense, almost mystic bond with them. “We cheated the odds, didn’t we?” he said with a faint smile. He could have said anything; it didn’t matter. What mattered was the moment.
They left him. The setting sun had pierced a hole in the west, and lit the undersides of the storm clouds. A lone seagull circled the Conqueror’s mast, then headed west as if to lead them into that sunfire. Harg took out a pistol and aimed it, wanting to shoot the damned bird out of the sky.
He never pulled the trigger.
5
The Laws of War
The waterfront of Lashnish had been transformed by the invasion of Tiarch’s fleet. No longer did the marble pier embrace the inner harbour in serene symmetry; it was crowded with boats and noisy drayage jostling between the warehouses, shipyards, barracks, and magazines of a busy garrison town. Recruits had been flocking in, and housing along the waterfront was bursting with transients and hopeful contractors wanting to supply everything from lumber to tar to dried peas.
High above the noise and confusion, the Old City still rose, crowned by the pillared face of the Pavilion. From the doorway of his headquarters on the corner of Promenade and Stonepath, Vice-Admiral Joffrey scowled up at the monument to ancient Lashnura power, so oblivious to the bustle at its feet. He was waiting for the conveyance he had ordered to take him up to Tiarch’s palace-in-exile. Ordinarily he would have walked, but today it was windy and raining, and the steep, stone-paved street was a rushing streambed.
When he looked downhill across the wharf, he could see his grand fleet crowding the inner harbour. He felt a fierce, possessive pride in his fourteen ships. Touching the letter in his pocket, he resolved that no force on earth was going to pry his fleet away from him, whatever the outcome of this rebellion. He had not studied in the Corbin Talley school of strategy for nothing. Sometimes, the student even surpassed the master.
The cab rolled up and Joffrey crossed to the curb, the disrespectful wind flinging rain into his face. The driver didn’t need to ask where he was bound; he shuttled between the Navy offices and the Governor’s residence two or three times a day. It was inconvenient, but Tiarch had her reasons for staying aloof. When she had come to Lashnish, she had chosen to establish herself in an old stone mansion as close as possible to the Pavilion, where the symbolism would hang heavy around her. The main entrance to her residence lay on the Isonsquare, the broad plaza in front of the Pavilion, barely forty paces from the Stone itself.
Tiarch’s doorman greeted Joffrey respectfully, and stood by to take his coat and hat. One of the Governor’s secretaries, coming down the narrow stairs, glanced at the tall clock in the hallway, for Joffrey was early. “I need to speak with her before our meeting,” he said.
“I’ll go see if she is free,” the secretary said.
Joffrey followed the woman upstairs and stood in the quiet, carpeted hallway till the door clicked open and the secretary gestured him in.
Tiarch was sitting by a roaring fire in the high-ceilinged room overlooking the Isonsquare. The rain blew against the tall windows, and the heavy drapes moved in the draft. Joffrey came over to stand by the fire.
“Coffee?” Tiarch offered; a pot and three cups stood on a table beside her chair.
“No, thank you,” Joffrey said.
“What’s on your mind, Joffrey?”
He stared at his boots for a moment, coming to a decision he had been debating all morning. “A boat came in from the South Chain this morning, with a reply from Harg.”
One of the Governor’s eyebrows went up. “I take it he was not on the boat.”
“No. He declines to come here as you requested, because he feels his presence is required in the South Chain. The main force of the Fourth Fleet has set out from Tornabay, and he wants to be there to receive them.”
In fact, Harg’s letter to Tiarch was in Joffrey’s pocket, but he had decided not to give it to her, even though he had resealed it so that only a practiced eye could tell it had been opened. The problem was that it was written
in far too reasonable a tone, giving convincing strategic justifications for the man’s intransigence. Joffrey suspected that it had actually been written by Jearl, or one of the other Torna officers. Apart from being entirely too literate for Harg, it lacked that antagonizing Adaina bluntness. It might actually convince Tiarch that the man was right.
Now, the Governor’s fingers were drumming on the arm of her chair in irritation. Knowing what she was thinking, Joffrey followed up, “As a matter of fact, Harg requests that you will send the rest of the fleet to join him in Harbourdown, in order to put up a more effective resistance. He also has a variety of demands, mostly for gunpowder and money to pay contractors.”
He knew that the last thing Tiarch wanted was for Harg to take on Admiral Talley. The wholly unauthorized aggression against the Innings at Pont, which was being celebrated all over as a great victory for the islanders, had effectively closed off most avenues for diplomacy. The nationalists in Fluminos would be howling for vengeance now. If only Harg could have managed to lose, a magnanimous compromise might still have been possible. As it was, he had thrown all of their futures in jeopardy.
“What am I going to do with this man?” Tiarch mused.
“Well, if you send him any more ships, his fleet will outnumber yours.”
She gave him a sharp glance, from which he knew that she also had foreseen this danger. She had created a monster by giving him the little support she had.
“Is it true that Talley’s fleet has finally set out?” she asked.
“Apparently, yes.” Joffrey paused.
“Well?” Tiarch demanded, noting his hesitation.
“There is some rather odd news about that. He has taken the Heir of Gilgen along, as a prisoner in his flagship.”
Tiarch was silent as she worked out what this might mean. “Damn him,” she said at last. “He has figured out how the Heir of Gilgen can profit him.”
“Just like his brother,” Joffrey added.
They both glanced automatically to the window, where the Pavilion stood, bastion of Lashnura power and learning, already infiltrated by an Inning agent. And, as long as Namenda Agave refused to heed all warnings, there was nothing the mighty Tiarch and all her fleet could do about it.
“Damn these Talleys,” Tiarch said. “They are cleverer than they have any right to be. They know that the way to control the Isles is to control the Lashnura.”
Joffrey actually felt a grudging respect. He had not spotted Nathaway as an operative, despite being trained at counterespionage. He rarely made mistakes like that. It showed that the master still had something to teach the student.
There was a soft knock on the door, and the secretary looked in. “Your guest has arrived, Governor,” she said.
“Show him up,” Tiarch said.
Joffrey went to the window to look down on the vehicle that had brought the eminent visitor to Tiarch’s door. He noted with satisfaction that his advice had been followed; it was a plain black carriage devoid of ostentation, suited to the confidential nature of the transaction.
Only four or five people in Lashnish were supposed to know the identity of Tiarch’s guest. The fact that the news was not running wild all over town was a credit to the discretion of Tiarch’s staff. The man even now mounting the steps was a legate from the Monarch of Rothur.
The man who entered the room was lean, dark, and immaculately dressed. His close-trimmed black beard, shaved away in a ram’s-horn spiral down his cheeks, was a mask hiding any expression he might have had. Tiarch rose to greet him; he bowed low in Rothur style, showing his small skullcap.
“Welcome to my humble residence, Legate Svitchak,” Tiarch said. “I regret that we cannot receive you with the same hospitality I could have shown in Tornabay.”
“No matter, respected lady,” the Rothur answered smoothly in accented Inning. “We fully understand your circumstances.”
“Allow me to introduce Vice-Admiral Joffrey, head of my Navy.”
“Ah, sir,” the Rothur said warmly. “I convey the congratulations of my Monarch for your admirable victories.”
“Thank you, Legate,” Joffrey said.
“You may not realize, but we in Rothur are great lovers of irony,” Svitchak said, smiling. “It has given us the keenest pleasure to watch the Inning Navy bitten by the very dog they trained.”
The metaphor gave Joffrey some secret pleasure himself.
“We have some experience with this man of yours, Harg Ismol,” the Rothur continued. “There was a time when we would have gladly hanged him, if we could have caught him. Now we will have to reconsider.”
“Please do,” Joffrey said, “at least until we’re done with him.”
Svitchak laughed. “I see you are an ironist yourself. We shall get along, I can tell.”
Two servants entered the room with fresh coffee and pastries, and Tiarch ushered Legate Svitchak to a warm seat before the fire, casting a glance over her shoulder at Joffrey. He gave her a bland smile.
They spent some time getting acquainted—speaking of the Rothur’s journey, his impressions of Lashnish, anecdotes of their families at home. Svitchak took the opportunity to present Tiarch with a gift from the Monarch, a bottle of rare and valuable liqueur.
“The Monarch particularly wished me to tell you, Governor, how sympathetic the whole Rothur nation is to your cause. We have known for many years that the Innings wish to rule the continent, and we regret deeply that you have become the victims of their imperialist ambitions.”
“It gives me consolation to know that the Monarch sees our misfortune in that light,” Tiarch said.
“We believe that Inning actions here reveal a larger geopolitical goal. Since we stopped their aggressions to the south—” (Joffrey felt a touch of the aforementioned irony at this interpretation of the recent war) “—they have shifted their attentions to the north. We believe their strategic goal is to build up a navy that will enable them to dominate shipping and threaten cities all up and down the coast. Naturally, such a thing is of concern to us.”
Tiarch said, “Yet if we should lose, Inning would have not only the pine forest resources of the Forsakens, but also our shipbuilding and nautical expertise.”
“The risk is very evident to us,” the Rothur said. “Unfortunately, as you can imagine, our country is weary of war. I fear the Monarch would find little support for a course of action that would embroil us again.”
“We can do our own fighting,” Joffrey said.
“Yes, you have demonstrated that, if I may say so.” Svitchak’s teeth gleamed white in his beard. “But the Forsakens are a small country with few people and fewer resources. Moreover, you have—pardon me for saying it—a reputation for fractious divisions. Do the people of the Isles share your ambition? What do the villagers of the South Chain, or the tribes of the Outer Chain, say? Are they all prepared to pay the price of war? You have taken on a fearful enemy. It will be a heavy price.”
There was a short silence. Then Tiarch said, “The gracious support of your Monarch would help to unify us, by convincing even the doubters that we could prevail.”
Svitchak smiled. “It is kind of you to say so, but I suspect the party our support would have an effect on is the Innings.”
“That is still useful to us,” Tiarch said.
“I do not doubt that. But my Monarch needs to look ahead, to who will rule the Isles once this is over. If it is to be Tiarch, then we are satisfied with the outcome. But we fear the Adaina will not follow Governor Tiarch through the sufferings of a long war. There is no name they will follow, except the name of Ison. Who, we ask ourselves, is to be Ison? Will it be Tiarch, or someone less acceptable to us?”
This time the silence was long, as Tiarch picked up her coffee cup and took a deliberate sip from it. When she put it down, she said, “That’s a question I c
annot answer now.”
“But it is a crucial question, you see.”
“Yes, I can see that,” Tiarch said.
The conversation shifted to less troubling matters. At length the legate rose. “I know you have an engagement for dinner, so I will leave you now. You know our feelings and concerns.”
When the Rothur was gone, Tiarch walked pensively over to the window, and stood looking out on the Isonsquare, where for six hundred years the leaders of the Isles had passed through dhota-nur. Joffrey came to her side.
“Why don’t you do it?” he asked.
“You flatter my vanity,” Tiarch smiled. “I thought of it once, actually.”
He studied her. “Then why . . .?”
“Do you know what an Ison is, Joffrey?”
“Of course I do.”
“No, I don’t think you do. An Ison is a tool of the Lashnura. A person who has been tamed and moulded by the Grey Folk, a mind manipulated by dhota-nur, a heart bent into a Lashnura shape.”
“I cannot imagine you becoming a tool of anyone,” Joffrey said.
“Neither can I. That’s why I’m not going to do it.”
She turned back toward the fire, taking up the poker to stir it to life again. When she had it blazing, she faced Joffrey as if she had come to a decision. “Joffrey, I want to send you on a sensitive errand, one only you can perform.”
“Yes?” he said cautiously.
“First, I want you to take ten of those ships down in the harbour and deliver them to Harg.”
He said nothing, but his whole being was tense with rebellion.
“Then I want you to continue on to Fluminos, to open some direct communication with the High Court.”
He weighed this plan. It had certain attractions to him—access to a world of imperial power politics beyond the ken of most islanders, if he played it right. A diplomatic errand would give him contacts no military appointment could equal. But the trade-off, apparently, was ceding control of his navy to Harg Ismol. The thought had a bitter taste.
Ison of the Isles Page 10
