At the Sign of Triumph

by David Weber

  The next minor difficulty would come when he had to force one of the passages through the barrier of shoals and islands stretching well over two hundred miles from Broken Keel Shoal in the west to Senya Point in the east. One would have thought two hundred miles offered ample opportunity, but one would have been wrong. There were only three possible routes he could take, and he frowned as he ran his finger across the chart, remembering one of Cayleb Ahrmahk’s favorite observations, acquired from an ancient Old Terran military theorist via Merlin Athrawes. In war, everything was very simple, but achieving even simple things was immensely difficult. He’d never seen a better example of that than the one on the chart before him, and he wasn’t looking forward to what this operation might cost.

  The damage Hainz Zhaztro’s flagship had suffered in Saram Bay had been made good by HMS Urvyn Mahndrayn, the first steam-powered repair ship in Safeholdian history. It had taken over a month, and Zhastro had transferred his flag to the newly arrived HMS Tanjyr until he could get Eraystor back. Sarmouth had a copy of Mahndrayn’s report on Eraystor’s damages, and it had given him rather more respect for the current generation of Temple Boy artillery. He doubted even the rifled 10-inchers which had pummeled Eraystor so brutally represented a threat to his flagship, but the Dohlarans had managed to mount several dozen 12-inch rifles to protect their capital. He didn’t like to think about the labor involved in working a 12-inch muzzleloader, and it had a very low rate of fire, thanks to its barrel length and the need to swab out between rounds. But if one of them hit, it was going to hit with authority.

  And that doesn’t even count the rockets and the sea-bombs, he thought grimly, puffing his cigar alight while he glowered at the chart. I know why we have to do this and how it’s going to end, assuming everything works the way it’s supposed. I even know it’ll be worth whatever it costs … if everything does work. But I also know it’s damned well not going to be the painless romp some of the boys are predicting.

  He drew on the cigar, brooding down at the chart, then blew out a long streamer of smoke, straightened his spine, and headed back to collect his good tunic before he joined Bahrns on the bridge.

  * * *

  “I make it at least twelve smoke clouds now, Sir,” Kwantryl reported, never looking up from the spyglass. “I can see two of their ironclads, too. One of the single-chimney ships is leading, but that big bastard’s right behind it. Can’t get a good look at number two yet—too much smoke from the one in front. And until they get closer, I can’t tell how many of those other clouds’re ironclads, either.”

  “Two of them would be more than enough for me.” Lieutenant Bruhstair’s tone was light, but his expression was grim as he jotted down Kwantryl’s latest count. “Range?”

  “’Bout ten miles to the single-chimney, Sir,” Kwantryl replied. “Looks like there’s two, maybe three cables between them, and they’re coming on pretty damned fast. Figure they’ll be right up to us in ’bout another hour.”

  Bruhstair nodded without even commenting on Kwantryl’s language, added that information to his note, then tore the page out of his notebook and handed it to one of the ship’s boys who’d been sent up the tower to serve as runners.

  “Lieutenant Tohryz, quick as you can!”

  “Aye, aye, Sir!”

  The youngster scurried down the ladder like a spider-monkey, and Kwantryl raised his head to watch him go, then glanced at Bruhstair. But the lieutenant wasn’t looking in his direction. He’d stepped to the edge of the observation tower, looking down on the section of guns along the battery wall that were his responsibility.

  “Make sure we’ve got plenty of dressings!” he called down to one of the gun captains. “And get those water tubs refilled—especially the ones for drinking water! Don’t want any of you layabouts collapsing from thirst just to get out of a little honest work!”

  Someone in the section shouted back. Kwantryl couldn’t make out the words, but from the tone, they were probably a bit saltier than Bruhstair normally tolerated. This time, the lieutenant only laughed, and Kwantryl nodded in approval. He could forgive any young twerp quite a lot when he was as devoted to his men as Dyaygo Bruhstair.

  It was just sort of hard to remember that between times like this.

  He snorted with amusement at the thought, and the lieutenant gave him a sharp glance.

  “Something humorous about the situation, Kwantryl?”

  “No, Sir. Not really. Just an old joke. Funny how a man’s mind goes on these little walks every so often.”

  “Well, I recommend you walk it right back to that spyglass,” Bruhstair said a bit more tartly. “That is why we’re up here, you know.”

  “Yes, Sir!” Kwantryl replied and bent back over the spyglass. It was probably just as well the lieutenant couldn’t see his huge grin from behind him. Explaining what was really so funny would land him in a shitpot of trouble as soon as the battle was over.

  * * *

  “Range is down to ten miles, Sir,” CPO Mathysyn reported. “The rangefinder has the southern battery in sight.”

  “Thank you, Ahbukyra.”

  Halcom Bahrns glanced at his admiral, and Sarmouth nodded that he’d heard the report. Ten miles would have been in range for Gwylym Manthyr’s 10-inch guns, assuming they’d had the elevation for it. Which they didn’t. At six degrees, their maximum reach was “only” twelve thousand yards, just under seven miles.

  We’ll just have to keep going until we are in range, he thought. At least it won’t be that much longer, and Riverbend should be into her effective range in another twelve minutes. I just wish to hell there was some way to tell Whytmyn everything I know about the defenses.

  Unfortunately, there wasn’t. Thirsk had made several adjustments in the last couple of days, only after the squadron had sailed for the attack. There’d been no time for a “seijin” to legitimately learn about those adjustments and get word to Sarmouth. He’d done everything he could to adjust his own plans in the tradition Cayleb had established in the Armageddon Reef Campaign by “playing a hunch,” but there were limits.

  He’d seriously considered asking Owl and Nahrmahn to deploy some of the SNARCs’ small incendiary devices. In fact, he’d discussed the possibility with all the inner circle’s senior members, only to discover their opinions were as divided as his own. Sharleyan, Merlin, Pine Hollow, and Maikel Staynair had all favored their use as the best way to save lives … on both sides. But Cayleb, Rock Point, Nimue, Nahrmahn, and Nynian had all opposed it because of the potential political consequences. In the end, after hours of debate, Cayleb and Sharleyan had declared that the decision was his, as the commander on the spot and the man whose officers and men would bear the action’s brunt.

  A part of him wished they’d gone ahead and made the call rather than leaving it up to him, but he told himself that was his inner coward talking. And so he’d made the decision. In fact, he’d made it three times, flipping back and forth with a degree of indecisiveness that was most unlike him.

  Explosions in carefully selected strategic locations—like battery magazines—could have gone a long way towards easing his task. But this attack was as much a calculated political maneuver as a purely military operation or even the pursuit of long-delayed justice, and that political maneuver depended on a fine and delicate balance of factors in the city of Gorath itself. However helpful in a military sense, those magazine explosions might raise eyebrows—the wrong eyebrows—especially if they were mysterious explosions without some readily identifiable cause. It was probable that those inclined to assign demonic powers to the “heretics” would do just that—and that those inclined not to assign them demonic powers wouldn’t—whatever happened. But he couldn’t be positive of that, and as Nynian and Nahrmahn had forcefully pointed out, events in Gorath would depend at least in large part on the perceptions of two or three key individuals whose reactions they simply couldn’t predict.

  And so, in the end, he’d decided against it. He only hoped it wasn’t
a decision he’d regret.

  And even if I’m not going around blowing things up with joyous abandon, and even if I can’t tell my people everything, we’ve already told them about one hell of a lot. It’s just going to have to be good enough. And young Makadoo may be able to buy me a little bigger “information bubble.” Speaking of which.…

  He glanced up at the lookout pod. Gwylym Manthyr’s navigation bridge was thirty-five feet above the water, which gave it a visual horizon of just under eight miles in clear weather. His flag bridge was ten feet higher, which gave it another mile or so of visibility. The rangefinder on its raised pedestal atop the forward superstructure was twenty feet higher still, and its powerful range-finding angle-glasses could see over ten miles, about two-thirds of the lookout pod’s visual range. That was good, but he could do better.

  “Is Master Chief Mykgylykudi ready?” he asked.

  “Yes, My Lord.” Halcom Bahrns straightened from the voice pipe into which he’d been speaking and smiled. “I figured you’d be asking that right about now, and he says he’s ready to start paying out cable anytime we want. He also says, and I quote, ‘Master Makadoo’s been squirming like his breeches are full of bees for the last quarter hour.’”

  Despite his inner tension, Sarmouth chuckled. Young Zoshua Makadoo was Gwylym Manthyr’s fifth—and youngest—lieutenant. He was also a slightly built, quick-moving fellow, like many of the Charisian Empire’s new aeronauts.

  “Well, we can’t have Zoshua driving the Bosun crazy,” the admiral said. “Best tell him to get started.”

  * * *

  “What the fuck?!”

  The startled obscenity escaped before Ahlfraydoh Kwantryl could stop it and Lieutenant Bruhstair looked at him sharply. But the seaman only straightened and gestured at the spyglass.

  “Sir, you’d better have a look yourself.”

  The urgency in Kwantryl’s tone erased any temptation to rebuke him for his language, and the lieutenant put his eye to the spyglass. For a few moments he couldn’t understand what had startled Kwantryl so, but then he inhaled sharply as he saw the large white … shape rising above the biggest heretic ironclad. It was already considerably higher than the big ship’s mast, and it went on climbing higher, rapidly and smoothly, as he watched. It was shaped something like a flattened cigar, he thought, but it had some sort of stubby vanes, or wings, or something, and it was clearly harnessed to the ship somehow.

  “What is that thing, Sir?” Kwantryl asked, and the tough, veteran seaman was obviously shaken. Not surprisingly, Bruhstair thought, feeling a cold shiver as he remembered all the fiery sermons damning the heretics for trafficking with demons. But.…

  “I think it’s a balloon,” he said slowly, forcing himself to take his eye from the spyglass and stand up straight … and rather surprised by how much better he felt when the shape faded into an unthreatening blur with distance.

  “‘Balloon,’ Sir?”

  “Yes. I’ve never seen one myself,” Bruhstair replied more confidently, “but one of my uncles saw a demonstration in Gorath and told me about it when I was a kid. If you heat the air inside a balloon, it floats up into the air.”

  “Floats into the air?” Kwantryl looked decidedly uneasy. “Can’t say I like the sound of that, Sir!”

  “There’s nothing demonic about it,” Bruhstair said quickly. “The Bishop Executor himself pronounced that when Uncle Sailys was in Gorath. It’s only fire and air, and both of those are permitted.”

  “If you say so, Sir.” Kwantryl didn’t seem very convinced, Bruhstair noted.

  “It’s not demonic,” the lieutenant repeated reassuringly. “But it is going to let them see a lot farther. Don’t know how much good it’ll do them, though. And whatever somebody perched up there can see, he’ll still need some way to get word of it back down to the ship. Might be just a bit of a problem getting that done in time to do any good.”

  * * *

  “End of the cable, Sir,” Petty Officer Hahlys announced.

  “Thank you, Bryntyn,” Lieutenant Makadoo acknowledged.

  The lieutenant lay prone in the nose of the streamlined gondola. Unlike the balloons of the ICA’s Balloon Corps, the Navy’s kite balloons had a lifting shape, with stubby airfoil wings that generated a lot of lift when their motherships towed them at fifteen knots or so. Or when they were towed at a mere five or ten knots into a twenty-five knot wind, like today’s. That meant they needed less hydrogen to loft a given weight—although, to be fair, that lift wasn’t available when their motherships weren’t steaming into the wind—and they could probably have squeezed a third passenger into the gondola, as long as whoever it was was no bigger than him or Hahlys. The quarters would have been tight, though.

  At the moment, Makadoo’s elbows were braced on the padded rest in front of him while he peered through his powerful double-glass. The front of the gondola was glassed in to protect the crew from the wind generated by the balloon’s forward motion, but Makadoo had the center section of window latched back. Duke Delthak could say whatever he wanted, but Zoshua Makadoo was firmly convinced the visibility was better with the window out of the way.

  Besides, he and Hahlys liked the wind.

  “Check the drop cylinder,” he said, never looking away from the view ahead.

  “Aye, Sir,” Hahlys replied.

  The young petty officer stuffed the test message into the small bronze cylinder and made sure the lid was properly screwed down. Then he snaphooked its traveler onto the messenger line deployed on one side of the balloon’s braided steel thistle silk tether. He let go and it disappeared, flashing down the messenger line to the deck far below.

  Looking down, Hahlys could see one of the other signalmen pounce on the canister, unhook it, and hand the note inside it to Ahndru Mykgylykudi, Gwylym Manthyr’s bosun. Mykgylykudi glanced at it, then nodded to the party of seamen gathered around the steam-powered “donkey” engine beside the winch that controlled the balloon’s tether.

  The second messenger line was spaced well over a foot on the other side of the tether. It was also doubled and ran over a sheave at the top of the gondola’s open rear. Now that line hummed sharply as it sped through the sheave until the canister hooked to it thumped against the rest at the base of the sheave, and Hahlys nodded approvingly.

  The messenger canisters were a faster means of communication than a signal lamp would have been. They were also safer. Mhargryt—they’d named it for Makadoo’s mother, since the lieutenant said she’d always had an explosive temper—was basically a great big bomb, just waiting to explode. That was why there was no iron or steel anywhere in the gondola’s construction, and why there were no iron nails in its crew’s boots.

  The powered messenger line was the fastest way to get a message up to Mhargryt, but the free-falling line was much faster when it came to getting a message back to the ship. And since Mhargryt’s primary duty was to be Gwylym Manthyr’s eye in the sky—and to spot the fall of the big ship’s shots from above the clouds of gun and funnel smoke likely to blind her gunners—speed of communication was a very good thing to have.

  “Both lines are working fine, Sir,” he reported to Makadoo.

  “Good.”

  Makadoo sounded just a little distant, and Hahlys smiled. From their present altitude of eighteen hundred feet, the lieutenant could see for almost sixty miles. That meant he could see all the way across Cape Toe. In fact, he could probably just make out the low-lying blur of Sandy Island on the far side of the Outer Ground, the stretch of water between The Boot and the barrier islands separating it from the Middle Ground, closer to Gorath. At the moment, he was focused closer to home, slowly and methodically sweeping the waters of the Lace Passage for any sign of the Royal Dohlaran Navy. Hahlys would be astounded if any of the Earl of Thirsk’s surviving galleons or screw-galleys were crazy enough to engage the squadron, but Admiral Sarmouth’s instructions before they’d launched had been clear. He wanted to know the instant they spotted anything bigger th
an a rowboat.

  Several minutes went by as Makadoo switched his attention from the channel to Cape Toe itself. He studied the fortifications equally carefully, then lowered the double-glass and rolled onto his side, looking back towards Hahlys.

  “Message,” he said, and the petty officer pulled out his pad and pencil.

  “Ready, Sir.”

  “Message begins. ‘No vessels currently underway within visual range. Several small craft moored north of Cape Toe at Battery Number Two’s jetty. Have also spotted several large canvas-covered freight wagons behind Battery Number One’s parapet in what appear to be well dug-in positions.’”

  He paused, rubbing the tip of his nose thoughtfully while he considered what he’d just said. Then he shrugged.

  “Read it back,” he said, and nodded when Hahlys did. “It never ceases to amaze me that anyone, including you, can read your handwriting, Bryntyn. But once again, you’ve gotten it right. So let’s get the word back to the ship.”

  * * *

  “Coming down on six miles’ range, Sir,” Commander Pharsaygyn murmured, and Sir Hainz Zhaztro nodded without ever lowering his double-glass.

  He understood the unspoken part of his chief of staff’s announcement. Lywys Pharsaygyn thought it was about time his admiral retired to the interior of HMS Eraystor’s conning tower and put its armor between him and the Dohlaran defenders. On the other hand, the possibility of a Dohlaran gunner’s hitting a target—even one Eraystor’s size—at better than ten thousand yards was remote, to say the least, and the field of view from the conning tower, even using one of the angle-glasses, wasn’t anything Zhaztro would have called adequate.