Like a Mighty Army

by David Weber

  For now, however, Abernethy’s arrival had been particularly opportune, since Earthquake was one of the angle-gun-armed bombardment ships. Her high-trajectory firepower would be a welcome addition when it came time to engage the batteries the Desnairians had erected to protect the bays and inlets where their shipyards were busily building the privateers which came swarming out of the Gulf of Jahras despite all Commodore Ruhsail Tyrnyr’s overworked blockaders could do. Tyrnyr was intercepting at least fifty percent of them from his base on Howard Island, but once a privateer got to sea there were countless ports along the Desnairian, Delferahkan, Harchongese, and Dohlaran coasts where she and her sisters could find safe harbor and continue the increasingly intense pressure on Charisian maritime commerce. The majority of the Desnairians’ shipbuilding capacity remained concentrated in the Gulf of Jahras, however. Burning out the privateers at the source would be far more economical than trying to hunt them down once they’d gotten to sea, and Earthquake was just the sledgehammer for the task.

  Mastyrsyn’s command was quite a different breed of kraken. His ship had been the brainchild of High Admiral Lock Island, whose sense of humor had led him to name her in honor of Keelhaul, the huge rottweiler who’d been his constant companion. And, like Keelhaul, this Rottweiler was big, tough, and dangerous, despite the fact that she mounted only thirty guns.

  She’d been designed to carry no less than eighty-eight guns, as a unit of the Thunderer class. New developments—like the shell-firing cannon—had supervened, however, and Lock Island had ordered Rottweiler and her first five sisters cut down to a single gundeck. The result was a tremendous, flush-decked galleon—at a hundred and ninety-five feet she was the longest galleon ever built, twenty feet longer and eight feet broader than even the Sword of Charis class—with only fifteen gunports on a side. She retained her original sail plan, which made her extremely fast, and the weight saved by removing two entire gundecks’ worth of height had allowed the shipyards to armor her with three-inch steel plates backed by almost three feet of solid Charisian teak. Her armor covered her sides from weather deck to three feet below the waterline, where its thickness tapered to one and a half inches, yet with the reduction in topweight, she was still able to show fifteen feet of freeboard, which meant she could work her guns in even the roughest weather.

  Only the fact that Sir Dustyn Olyvyr had adopted diagonal planking and used iron bolts between frames to increase their longitudinal strength let the converted ships carry the weight of their armor without catastrophic hogging, and even so it was probably thinner than Olyvyr and his designers would have preferred. Nor did it do anything to protect her masts and rigging. Despite that, she and her sisters—two more had already joined the fleet and a third would commission within the next month or so—were the best protected blue-water warships ever to sail the seas of Safehold. They were, in fact, the only blue-water warships protected against the shellfire.

  That would have been enough to make her a much appreciated addition to any squadron likely to encounter well-dug-in shore batteries, but protection was far from the only thing she brought to the fight. She might mount only thirty guns, but unlike the standard thirty-pounders most Charisian galleons carried they were six-inch rifled angle-guns, mounted on two-wheeled Mahndrayn broadside carriages. There’d been some concern that using studded shells would slow rate of fire unacceptably in a broadside gun, but tests had reassured the worriers. Using the new carriages, her gunners were able to more than match the rate of fire from ships armed with the old-style carriages and hold their own even against other galleons with Mahndrayns. The greater accuracy of a rifled shell was of less value to naval gunners, whose firing platforms and targets tended to move in several dimensions at once in anything other than a dead calm, but the elongated shells’ greater range, weight, penetration capability, and much more powerful bursting charges gave her guns enormous hitting power.

  “I can see where waiting for Rottweiler and Earthquake made sense, Sir,” Captain Tymythy Tyrnyr said, “but there’s still one thing that worries me just a bit, and that’s the little matter of finding people to shoot at.”

  Several people chuckled. Tyrnyr, the commander of HMS Valiant and one of Shain’s senior captains, was a direct, hardheaded officer. He was also an Emeraldian, with a stocky build, slightly less than average height, and a dry sense of humor. Despite his tone’s ironic whimsy, however, the question was serious … and well taken. With over two thousand miles of coastline, the Gulf of Jahras offered hundreds of places shipyards capable of building schooners or brigs could be quietly established. Shain commanded a squadron of twelve galleons, twenty naval brigs and schooners, Rottweiler, Earthquake, and a handful of store ships. If all of his warships had been stationed in a line in clear weather, their lookouts could have covered roughly fourteen thousand square miles of seawater, which sounded like a lot. But it would have amounted to little more than a rectangle six hundred and thirty miles long and twenty miles wide. Even if he’d been prepared to operate his ships as singletons, he could have kept less than a third of the Gulf of Jahras’ coastline under observation at any given moment.

  “I take your point, Tymythy,” he said. “I do, however, have something a bit more subtle in mind than simply sailing around in the middle of the Gulf in hopes the privateers will be sufficiently angered by our presence to sail out to the attack.”

  The chuckles were louder this time, and Tyrnyr smiled. Shain smiled back, then allowed his expression to sober.

  “The other thing we’ve been waiting for,” he went on, “was a report from our spies. Actually, I suspect it’s from Seijin Merlin and his spies.”

  The amusement of a moment before was suddenly muted. The officers in his day cabin were senior enough to have been exposed to the detailed reliability of reports from Merlin Athrawes’ astounding network of agents. Most of them, Shain knew, suspected—as he did, himself—that many of those agents were also seijins.

  “We have a list of building and fitting-out locations which, as of approximately two five-days ago, was as complete and accurate as our spies could make it,” he told them. “Obviously, we can’t rely on it as Holy Writ, but I think we’ll be able to find someone for you to shoot at, Tymythy.”

  “That suits me right down to the ground, Sir,” Tyrnyr told him.

  “Even with that information in hand, we’re going to have quite a lot of work for fellows like you, Commander Slohvyk,” Shain continued, turning to one of the more junior officers present. His HMS Termagant was an eighteen-gun schooner—fleet, fast, maneuverable, and easily as powerful as any of the privateers being built around the Gulf. The young man sat a bit straighter, and Shain smiled. “In addition to burning out this modest nest of privateers, His Majesty’s instructions to take, burn, or sink apply to any Desnairian shipping foolish enough to attempt to cross the Gulf, Paidrho. I’m sending Termagant, King Wyvern, and Falcon to keep an eye on Mahrosa Bay. You’ll be the senior officer in command, and I don’t want you entering the bay itself without heavier support. I also don’t want any coasters making it out of the bay until we get around to bringing you that support, however.”

  “Yes, Sir!”

  The youngster’s eyes gleamed, and Shain considered adding another word or two of caution. Paidrho Slohvyk was only twenty-seven and possessed of a naturally aggressive nature. That could be a potentially dicey combination, but he also had almost fifteen years of experience at sea, despite his youth. Besides, aggressiveness was a precious commodity in a naval officer.

  “Eventually,” the admiral said instead, looking around the table once more, “we’ll move the blockade inside Mahrosa Bay itself. With any luck, we’ll be able to shut down the east end of the Mahrosa Canal completely. I’d like to land raiding parties to blow up the locks, but Mahrosa’s a major town with a garrison to match, so I’ll settle for putting them out of action with Captain Abernethy’s angle-guns. Even if we do, we won’t be able to keep them from offloading the barges farther west and sen
ding them up the coast by wagon, but according to our best information, the high road between Mahrosa and Handryl’s more of a pious hope than a reality, whatever the maps show. And, for that matter, Handryl’s a lot smaller than Mahrosa and it isn’t supposed to be heavily fortified or garrisoned. That may change once we start burning things down around the entire coast of the Gulf, of course. If it doesn’t, though, I’m going to think very seriously about seizing Handryl outright.”

  One or two of his officers looked … thoughtful in response to his last sentence, he noticed.

  “I know our Marine contingents’ve been pared to the bone to support operations in the Republic,” he told them. “And I don’t propose to get excessively adventurous. As His Majesty’s said on occasion, an adventure is someone else being cold, wet, hungry, frightened, and miserable far, far away from you, and I’m no fonder of getting personally involved with them than the next man.”

  This time, several people laughed outright, and he allowed himself a grin.

  “Nonetheless, if we can take Handryl, we cut the only so-called high road east of the Mersayr Mountains … and that effectively cuts overland communication from Mahrosa all the way to Silkiah. With our squadron in control of the Gulf, all their supplies would have to go overland west of the mountains, through North Watch, or down the Hankey and Altan Rivers and then across Hankey Sound. At the very least, I imagine they’d find our presence there just a bit of a distraction, and we might be able to turn it into a sort of vest-pocket Thesmar when they try to do something about it. If nothing else, we could make them divert the resources to do something about us in Handryl … and then just sail away, laughing down our sleeves, after they do.”

  This time the thoughtful expressions seemed less concerned with their flag officer’s sanity than with the merits of his proposal, he observed.

  “That’s for the future, however. At the moment, Captain Haukyns and I have been giving some thought to more immediately pressing objectives. I’ll let him lay out the fruits of our labor and then we’ll see what sort of insightful improvements you lot can come up with. Zhak?”

  “Of course, Admiral.” Captain Haukyns smiled. “Not that this bunch of idle layabouts is really likely to improve upon our own brilliant analysis. Still, I suppose it would be only polite to give them the opportunity.”

  “That was my own thought,” Shain agreed gravely, “although I was far too tactful to say it.”

  Laughter rumbled again, and Haukyns opened the folder in front of him.

  “Given the information we’ve received, Kalais is probably the best place to begin. We already knew they were building privateers there, but according to our spies, we were wrong in at least one regard. Kalais’ artillery hasn’t been upgraded. It’s all still old model guns, most without even welded trunnions, and there’s no indication the Desnairians will be able to change that situation with so much of their foundry capacity diverted to their army. Hitting Kalais first will give us an opportunity to get the Squadron accustomed to working together and test our tactics before we go up against a tougher target. After that, we thought—”

  .IX.

  Siddar City, Republic of Siddarmark

  It was noisy inside the converted waterfront warehouse. Things tended to be that way when hammers were sounding on anvils, dozens of men were trying to communicate with one another, hand-powered bellows were fanning forges, rain pounded on the roof, and every so often someone dumped what sounded like a ton or so of scrap metal on a stone floor.

  Klymynt Abykrahmbi was used to the noise. In fact, he was used to considerably worse noise. What he wasn’t used to was the trio of Marine guards walking behind him, each armed with one of the new cap-and-ball “revolvers” Seijin Merlin had introduced in addition to his slung rifle.

  He paused just inside the door, looking for the man he’d come here to find. It was sufficiently smoky—and crowded—to complicate what ought to have been a relatively simple task, and he sighed and slicked rainwater off the bald spot about which his wife and both of his sisters had teased him unmercifully for the last three years. His father still had a full head of distinguished-looking silver hair at sixty-three, and it seemed particularly unjust that Klymynt should be going bald before he reached half that age.

  Of course, there was a lot of injustice going around these days.

  Abykrahmbi’s jaw tightened, and he rubbed the knuckle of his left index finger over what would have been called his walrus mustache back on Old Earth as the memory rolled through him.

  Siddarmarkians had always gotten along better with Charisians than the majority of Mainlanders. Indeed, that was one reason Zhaspahr Clyntahn’s suspicion of Siddarmark’s orthodoxy had been so compulsive, and Charisians and Siddarmarkians had been intermarrying for generations, despite the weary miles of seawater between them. In fact, Abykrahmbi had relatives right here in Siddar City. Unfortunately, he had two less than he’d had before the Sword of Schueler. His twelve-year-old cousin Fraydrykha had been raped and murdered when the Temple Loyalist mob attacked the Charisian Quarter, and his Uncle Zhustyn had died attempting to protect his daughter from her killers. He’d been unarmed—that was how great the surprise had been—and by all accounts there’d been at least seven attackers, but he’d managed to kill at least one of them while his daughter’s screams rang in his ears. Afterward, they’d mutilated both bodies, flung them into a smashed and looted shop, and set fire to the place, whether to hide the evidence of their crimes or to deface their victims still further was more than Abykrahmbi could say.

  His Aunt Lyzbet was still trying to understand how her own countrymen could have done such things, and Abykrahmbi often thought that only the need to somehow keep her other two children alive through the winter of privation which had followed had kept Lyzbet Sygayl sane.

  Or as sane as anyone could be, under the circumstances.

  Unlike his aunt, however, Abykrahmbi understood how it had happened. He understood that the darkness that lived inside most human beings was stronger and darker in some. And he understood that things like his cousin’s horrible death were inevitable when the corrupt, lying piece of kraken shit in the Grand Inquisitor’s chair gave that darkness the stamp of God’s own approval. And just as he understood that, he understood how someone like Clyntahn and the actions he endorsed could lead other men to embrace the sin of hatred and the hot thirst for vengeance. That was why he’d jumped at the chance when Ehdwyrd Howsmyn needed volunteers for the technical mission to the Republic.

  Klymynt Abykrahmbi had never thought of himself as the godliest of men even before the Sword of Schueler. He did his best, but he’d also been aware his best fell short of what God and the Archangels truly desired from their children. On the other hand, Mother Church had always taught there was absolution for any sin, as long as the penitence was genuine, the contrition was real, and the sinner truly sought to amend his life in the future.

  He fully intended to seek that absolution … as soon as the last Temple Loyalist in the Republic of Siddarmark had choked out his last maggot-ridden breath at the end of a rope.

  He inhaled deeply and forced himself to put that thought aside as he finally spotted the person he’d been seeking.

  “This way, Corporal,” he said, and the senior member of his escort nodded, then twitched his head at the pair of privates, and the three of them followed him across that crowded, noisy floor.

  Abykrahmbi nodded to those he knew, stopping to speak to several of them. He wasn’t in that big a hurry, and it was a major part of his responsibilities as Brygham Cartyr’s assistant to keep his finger on the pulse of workshops like this one. There were several processes under way on the busy floor, but the biggest single activity was the conversion of Siddarmark-made muzzle-loading flintlocks to take percussion caps. A third of the conversion work was being done by the trained armorers who’d arrived with the second echelon of the Charisian Expeditionary Force to set up the CEF’s rear area repair shops. For the most part, though, they we
re serving in the instructor’s role, teaching Siddarmarkians, not all of them gunsmiths—a fact, Abykrahmbi knew, that irritated the Gunmakers Guild no end—to perform the same task.

  Similar instruction was going on all across the workshop. Abykrahmbi wasn’t sure it was the most effective way to improve the Republic’s manufacturing efficiency, but it was the policy which had been adopted, and he grasped the underlying logic. Charisian manufactories held a huge margin of superiority when it came to speed and quality of production, and it must have been extremely tempting to Emperor Cayleb and Empress Sharleyan to export that same capability to Siddarmark. Unfortunately, they couldn’t do that—not overnight, at any rate. It was difficult enough to create the same sorts of manufactories in Chisholm, and the unvarnished truth was that it was more important to continue building that capability throughout the Empire than it was to create it here on the Mainland. If Siddarmark fell after all, Charis would have to fight on alone, and she’d require every scrap of capacity she could find for that.

  So the decision had been taken to send advisers—“technical missions,” as the emperor and empress called them—to assist the Siddarmarkians in building their own manufactories but not to divert thousands of trained workers to get those Siddarmarkian manufactories up and running. And the Republic understood the logic, too. Chancellor Maidyn and Lord Protector Greyghor were concentrating on building up the ability to repair first and to manufacture second in a division of labor that made the best use of Charis’ steadily growing capabilities. Rifle and bayonet manufacture was a glaring exception to that rule, and the lord protector was pushing ahead with the construction of a major iron and steelworks of his own just outside Siddar City, using plans provided by the Delthak Works.