The Tyrant g-5

by David Drake

  There came another, louder, explosion. Suddenly, rising up through the cloud of smoke, came the weirdest apparition Demansk had ever seen in his life. It looked like- what?

  " The Lady of the Sea save us, " whispered Thicelt. "Blew the whole shell off in one piece."

  Demansk realized that what he was seeing-vanishing now back into the smoke-had been the iron armor of the enemy vessel. The bolts which held it together hadn't given way. Instead, when the magazine blew, it had simply lifted the armor off the ship itself. The shell must have guided the explosion's force mostly against the wooden hull proper.

  "The rest of it just disintegrated," added Thicelt. "Must have."

  Sure enough. When the smoke finally cleared away, which didn't take much more than a minute, there was nothing left. A few pieces of wooden flotsam, here and there; a couple of bobbing heads-men still alive and swimming toward the nearest Islander galleys-and… nothing else. The armored shell must have plummeted straight down to the bottom once it hit the water.

  "Shallow waters here," murmured Thicelt. "Good divers… we might be able to salvage something."

  The built-up tension erupted from Demansk in a bark of laughter. Very bad for tradition, that. But-who cared?

  "Give it up, Sharlz! You're not a scruffy pirate any longer. Special Attendant and Admiral of the Fleet, remember?"

  Thicelt grinned. "Old habits. Sorry." The grin vanished as fast as it came. A moment later, Thicelt was bellowing new orders.

  The woodclads beetled their slow way toward the three surviving steam rams-which, for their part, had already turned broadside and were beginning to roll out their cannons. Clearly enough, no steam ram captain was going to try another ramming maneuver.

  The signal drums were beating wildly now, and Demansk could hear the signals being passed along by the drummers on the nearest ships. Thicelt had set the entire fleet in motion. The regular war galleys of the Confederate navy were surging forward. No slow beetling, here. Even if they weren't as fast and maneuverable as islander galleys, Vanbert triremes-even quinquiremes-could move quickly enough.

  "It's over," said Thicelt, when he finally finished with his orders.

  "It's just started, " protested Demansk.

  His admiral shook his head, the gold earrings flopping back and forth. His face was unusually solemn. "No, Triumvir. Trust me in this, as I would trust you in a land battle. Casull's only hope was that his steam rams could work a miracle-repeat what one of them did at Preble last year."

  He waved a hand toward the woodclads. "But they will keep them off. Those timbers will stand up well enough even against cannon fire. And with ten against three, even as slow as they are, they'll be able to keep the steam rams hemmed in. The rest of it will just be a giant melee. Too many ships in too small a space for clever maneuvers. It'll be a Vanbert kind of sea battle-and when was the last time anyone beat you at that? " He snorted heavily through a heavy nose. "For that matter, when was the first time?"

  And so it proved. Within an hour, before the sun had even started its downward descent, it was all over. One of the steam rams, either from desperation or simply because it had a fanatical captain, managed to take a woodclad with it. Ramming again, and this time with the ram wedged. Even then, most of the crew of the woodclad was saved by the bold captain of a trireme, who risked bringing his ship alongside in time to evacuate them before the magazine blew and engulfed the woodclad as well as the ram itself in the destruction.

  The other two rams managed to survive, but only by keeping their distance from the woodclads who kept after them. The battle between steam rams and woodclads became something almost ridiculous, with neither side able to inflict any real damage on the other. The rams were fast enough to stay away from the woodclads, but the frantic maneuvers forced upon them to do so-two ships trying to evade nine, even if the nine were much slower-meant that they couldn't fire too many well-aimed broadsides. And even the few they got off, just as Trae and Thicelt had predicted, did little damage to the heavy timbers of their opponents.

  One ram did manage, early in the battle, to get off a broadside at a passing trireme which wreaked havoc on the ship. But that was the worst blow that any of the rams managed to land in the course of the whole affair.

  Most of the battle was decided the old-fashioned way-maneuverable and expertly-guided Islander galleys against much clumsier and heavier Confederate triremes. Had the odds been even close to even, the Islanders might well have triumphed. But against the numbers they actually faced, it was hopeless. The best captain in the world, commanding the best galley, simply can't maneuver when hundreds of enemy warships are covering every part of his ocean. And whenever, as was inevitable, a Confederate warship did manage to grapple with an Islander galley, it was all over within minutes. The claws came down, and the world's most ferocious close-quarter fighters stormed across. Most Islander crews surrendered immediately.

  The surrenders were accepted. On that subject, Demansk had given the clearest orders possible-and had representatives of Forent Nappur's "Special Squads" aboard every Vanbert warship to see to it that the captains followed orders. He was determined to avoid a bloodbath, if at all possible.

  Whether or not it would prove possible, of course, would depend in the end on his enemy. No soldiers in the world, not even Confederate ones-not even Demansk's soldiers-could be kept under discipline if their tempers rose too high. Which, given a bitter enough battle, they inevitably would.

  But there, too, whatever gods there might be seemed to be partial to Demansk that day. After an hour of relatively bloodless conflict, the islander fleet suddenly began to break. Within minutes, all the surviving enemy galleys-and there were still well over a hundred of them-were pouring back toward the safety of the harbor. The two surviving steam rams, whose captains must have been superb, covered their retreat.

  Doing so, in truth, was not difficult. As soon as Thicelt saw the rout, and without waiting for orders from Demansk, he gave the signal to the fleet to break off the action. In most battles, of course-certainly with a general as good as Demansk in command-the pursuit would have been undertaken with ferocity. But Demansk's strategy was political as much as military, and for his purposes here, a simple defeat was sufficient.

  More than sufficient, in fact. It was ideal.

  Demansk turned to Thicelt and clapped his shoulder. "My congratulations, Sharlz. You've just won the greatest sea battle ever-and I'll see to it that the historians so record the thing. And now, you're fired."

  Thicelt grinned. "Such is fleeting fame." Then, sighed histrionically. "Back to that inglorious 'special attendant' business again."

  Demansk nodded, matching smile to grin. " 'Fraid so. You're a diplomat now. And you know the settlement I want."

  "Settlement," snorted Thicelt. "Almost as bad as Emeralds, with their 'acumen.' " He clucked his tongue, somehow managing to do it as histrionically as the sigh. "Speak plainly, august Triumvir, just as that grandfather of yours you've told me about would have done." He jerked a thumb toward Chalice. "What you want is that pig skinned. Skinned, gutted, and the meat hung up to dry."

  "Just the meat, Sharlz. You can leave them the skin and the entrails." He matched Thicelt's grin with one that was almost as wide. "You watch. Within a generation, your Islanders will be calling me Verice the Merciful."

  He left the quarterdeck then, heading for his cabin where others would be waiting for new orders. So he never heard Thicelt's response. The Islander, after watching Demansk's departure, turned and stared at the still-invisible city where he had been born. The "jewel in a cup," as his people called it, the beautiful-and often vicious-city which had been the center of the archipelago's culture for centuries. And which, with one of its own sons as the midwife, was about to give birth to a new world.

  "No, lord," he murmured. "In a generation, they will be calling you the same thing as everyone else. Verice Demansk, the Great."

  Chapter 19

  Demansk's soldiers brought him Casull's
corpse before the day was over. The King of the Isles had been aboard one of the galleys stormed by the Confederate soldiers. The crew of that galley, no doubt because the King was there himself to stiffen their spine, had not surrendered. All of them had been killed, either in the fighting or in the massacre of the wounded afterward. Casull's body had been found under a pile of corpses. The soldiers hadn't been entirely sure of his identity-none of them had ever seen Casull in person-but his garments and the accouterments of his office made it clear that, whoever he was, he was someone important. So they brought the body to Demansk.

  Thicelt identified him. "That's Casull, all right." He inspected the wounds on the corpse. "Say whatever else you will, he was no coward."

  Forent Nappur didn't seem impressed. "I can say the same for every man in my squad-almost every man in the army, for that matter. So why does a fucking king get special credit for doing something any peasant takes for granted?"

  There was no particular heat in the words. But the anger simmering beneath them reminded Demansk, if he needed a reminder, how much bitterness and animosity the selfish and ruthless conduct of the Confederation's ruling class had stored up in the hearts of its own citizenry.

  Sharlz shrugged. "A peasant doesn't have much choice, Forent. A king does. I guess that's the difference." He straightened up from the kneeling posture from which he'd been examining the corpse, and held up a hand in a little placating gesture. "But I'm not trying to start an argument. I can't say I was all that fond of Casull myself."

  He glanced at Demansk and made a chucking gesture with his thumb. "Over the side?"

  Demansk shook his head. "No. We'll give him an honorable burial-that's how you do it here in the islands, if I recall? Not cremation?"

  Thicelt nodded. But Demansk was really watching Nappur, whose sour expression made clear that he'd personally have been inclined to toss the former king to the sharks.

  Demansk understood, and sympathized, with the ex-sergeant's feelings. Still, this was something which had to be settled. In the substance of his policies, Demansk had every intention of setting old wrongs to right. He would favor the poor and downtrodden at the expense of the rich and powerful. But doing so would require, more often than not, maintaining a least a facade of respect for the established order. As long as he could harness the energy and anger of such men as Nappur, they would be of great service. Let that anger break loose unfettered, and unmuzzled…

  He decided this was not the time and place to raise the matter. But he made a note to have a private conversation with Nappur as soon as possible. As head of the army's "internal police," Forent's attitudes-his real ones, not simply his formal agreement-would be critical.

  At Thicelt's gesture, the soldiers who had brought the body picked up Casull's corpse and took it away. They'd overheard Demansk, and would bring the body to the ship's chirurgeon, who would do what was necessary to keep the body preserved until it could be buried. Most Vanberts preferred cremation to burial. But there were enough auxiliary nations and vassal states which practiced burial for a naval chirurgeon to be familiar with the basic methods of embalming. Sharlz could be relied upon to let him know if there were any special rites required by Islander customs.

  He moved to the rail of his quinquireme and studied the progress of the disembarkation. By now, not long before sunset, most of the triremes had already been beached and their crews were beginning to erect the first temporary fortifications and field camps. They were moving with the speed which long custom gave them in this work-something which always astonished the Confederacy's enemies. The soldiers would work as long into the night as necessary to get the work done.

  Not all of the ships and soldiers were engaged in the work. Demansk's officers had skirmishers and sentries out, ready to give warning in the unlikely event that the Islanders managed to send a ship-burning expedition over the crest of the caldera. And there were plenty of triremes still at sea, even leaving aside the great quinquiremes, to keep the defeated Islander fleet bottled up within the harbor.

  Forent Nappur verbalized his own thoughts. "It's done for the day, Triumvir. Why don't you get some sleep?"

  He was tired. He'd been up since the middle of the night, making the final preparations for the battle. And Nappur was right-there was really nothing left for him to do, until the morrow.

  More than anything, however, it was the quite-evident warmth in Forent's voice which allowed Demansk to follow his advice. However much the former sergeant from the hardscrabble east detested royalty and nobility in general, that hatred clearly did not extend to Demansk himself.

  It was odd, really. But, as a young man, Demansk had seen the phenomenon at work once before. Marcomann, like Demansk himself, had come from the very uppermost strata of the Confederacy's nobility. That fact seemed to have made the soldiery's adoption of him all the more fierce. We may be scum beneath their feet, but OUR boy is as good as any of 'em. Better!

  "It's a strange world," he murmured. He and Thicelt exchanged a little smile. Sharlz, thought Demansk, was really the only one of the men around him who probably understood him fully. Perhaps that was because, as an Islander, he was an outsider to begin with.

  Or, perhaps, it was simply because he was Sharlz Thicelt.

  Demansk decided that he preferred the second explanation. And, as he made his way back to his cabin on the flagship, wondered if the day would ever come when he would be able to indulge in simple friendship again.

  He thought not. And, not for the first time, feared for his eventual sanity. But… so be it. He was prepared to sacrifice everything else, after all.

  By midmorning the next day, the political work which Thicelt had done prior to the attack started coming to fruit. Working secretly through cutouts, he'd been in touch with his family for months, and, through them, with others on the island. Thicelt's own family was not particularly prominent in the social hierarchy of the archipelago, but they knew a lot of people who were.

  A galley set out from the harbor at Chalice, bearing a statue of Opal, the Goddess of Tranquility, on its foredeck. That was the traditional Islander method for signaling a desire for a peaceful parlay. Demansk had been expecting something of the sort, so the triremes blockading the entrance to the harbor had been given orders to let any such ship pass through unmolested.

  As the Islander galley approached Demansk's flagship, however, Nappur insisted on keeping it at a distance until a boarding party could search the vessel. He admitted it was unlikely that a band of assassins was hiding in the hold, much less a load of explosives, but…

  Thicelt didn't even argue the point, beyond making a couple of wisecracks. Nor did Demansk. The simple truth was that Verice Demansk was so critical to everything that any chance of an assassination attempt had to be taken seriously.

  The search didn't take long. It was a small galley, with no area belowdecks except small storage spaces. Outside of the rowers-who were unarmed-and the large delegation of Island notables-most of whom were at least middle-aged, if not older-the only thing the boarding party found was a very large sack. The contents of the sack, once it was opened, proved to be of great interest. But, all the Vanbert soldiers agreed, hardly posed a threat to the Triumvir.

  The officer of the boarding party brought the sack aboard the quinquireme, when he made his report to Demansk. Three of his soldiers came behind, two of them hoisting the sack between them with some obvious effort. The officer was grinning coldly; his men seemed to be smirking a little. Oddly enough, the third soldier was carrying a tarpaulin. It looked like it was probably one of the smaller sails from the trireme.

  "I'd say they're lying belly-up and waving their paws, Triumvir." The officer gestured toward a bare space on the quarterdeck, and the soldier spread the little sail. Then, upending the sack, the other two dumped its contents onto it.

  That explained the reason for the tarpaulin. The quarterdeck of the Triumvir's flagship was kept well-scrubbed and polished. The contents of the sack would have… marr
ed it.

  Thicelt was down on one knee, casually rolling the severed heads about and making a quick count. Demansk could hear him exclaiming cheerfully: "… three, four-ah! Prince Frand! you're looking a bit out of sorts today-five, six, seven-Royal Uncle Gander! fancy meeting you here! — eight, nine-where's… ah, there he is, looking as sour as ever-ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen-pardon my fingers in your ear, Queen Yora-fourteen, fifteen, sixteen-" A little hiss. "By the Lady, they didn't have to include her. " The count continued: "-twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four… and, twenty- five."

  "How many kids did he have, anyway?" asked Nappur.

  Thicelt straightened up. "Seventeen in all, Forent, who survived their childhood diseases. He had several concubines, don't forget. Ten boys and six girls. The oldest boy"-his lips tightened with remembered distaste-"Prince Tenny that was, died at the siege of Preble." He pointed to the grisly pile on the tarpaulin. "All the rest of the boys are there. At least, the count's right. I didn't know all of them personally, so we'll have to double-check."

  Demansk did some quick arithmetic. "And the other sixteen heads?" he asked, keeping any trace of disgust out of his voice. That would be hypocritical, leaving aside everything else. If the Islanders hadn't executed all of Casull's important relatives themselves, Demansk would have demanded it anyway. But he didn't have to like the business.

  "The rest of Casull's family, those who matter. Male and female both-his wife, three uncles, a brother, two sisters, an aunt, and seven cousins. Casull relied on his family for his closest advisers and officials. I recognized all of them. And they included, for good measure, Princess Rafta. Not sure why, but probably because she was the only adult unmarried daughter. Four of his daughters are married to notables of one kind or another"-Thicelt pointed with his thumb toward the galley, his heavy lips in a half sneer-"who are probably among that pack of whipped curs, and are trying to keep their wives alive."