by David Weber
The new revolvers were overwhelmingly the children of Mahldyn’s mind and imagination, but Ehdwyrd Howsmyn had personally sketched out one important accessory. It was a remarkably simple concept, really: rather like another, truncated revolver cylinder only a half-inch deep with a knob on the end. Back on Old Earth, similar devices had been called “speedloaders,” and five fresh cartridges nosed into the pistol’s empty chambers in a single, smooth movement before Merlin twisted the knob to release their bases. The cylinder clicked closed, the pistol rose again, and aimed shots blew the helmet off the top of each post in succession before the echoes of the first five shots had completely faded.
He cleared the cylinder a second time and reloaded in rather more leisurely fashion, blue eyes dark with memories of a barge on the Holy Langhorne Canal. Then he holstered the weapon, gathered up his expended brass, and turned back to his audience. The cloud of powder smoke had rolled away like a small, lonely fog bank, and Cayleb grinned hugely as Merlin raised one eyebrow. Half the Protector’s Guard’s horses were still kicking and shying, although Stohnar and Daryus Parkair had their own mounts firmly under control. Even the lord protector and the seneschal wore stunned expressions, however.
“Langhorne!” Parkair shook his head. “That was impressive, Merlin!”
He touched his skittish horse with a heel and moved closer to the targets, leaning from the saddle to insert the tip of his little finger into the hole punched through one of the paired breastplates, then straightened once more and shook his head.
“The sheer hitting power’s astonishing, although I do understand that most mere mortals won’t be able to handle those portable twelve-pounders of yours!”
“Actually, My Lord, the recoil’s not all that bad,” Merlin said. Parkair’s expression bordered on the incredulous, and Merlin shrugged. “These are heavy pistols—a lot heavier than the standard version—and that soaks up a lot of the recoil. They’re still more lively than the standard revolvers, but most people could handle the recoil without too much trouble. The weight of the weapon itself would bother most of them more, I suspect.”
“I think we’ll just take your word for that for the moment, Seijin,” Stohnar put in dryly. “I’m sure the normal version will be quite powerful enough for most of us. And, frankly, what impressed me most was the combination of how quickly you could fire and reload.” It was his turn to shake his head. “Until this moment, I truly didn’t understand how much firepower one man holds in his hand with one of those things. Now I’m beginning to, I think, but I’m still having trouble extending it to the ‘magazine rifles’ your Master Howsmyn’s promising us.”
“They won’t be able to fire that rapidly, My Lord,” Merlin replied. “They’re what Master Mahldyn calls a ‘bolt-action’ design. The rifleman will have to manually operate a cocking handle for each shot. On the other hand, I believe they finally settled on a ten-round magazine. Not only will each magazine hold more cartridges than a revolver, but a rifleman will be able to change magazines even more rapidly than someone can reload a pistol with one of Master Howsmyn’s speedloaders.”
He smiled very, very coldly.
“I don’t think the Temple Boys are going to like that one little bit,” he said.
.XI.
HMS Delthak, 22, Tarot Channel
“Don’t much like the looks of this, Sir!”
Lieutenant Zherald Cahnyrs had to shout over the wind and the wash and thunder of water as Captain Halcom Bahrns stepped onto the bridge wing and fought to close the armored conning tower door behind him. It was, the lieutenant admitted, probably the most unnecessary understatement of his entire life, and he ducked as another burst of icy white spray exploded across the bridge.
He straightened once more, glistening oilskins pasted against his body by the steadily strengthening wind, and wiped his eyes. There was no point trying to actually dry his face; the best he could hope for under these conditions was to keep his vision reasonably clear.
Not that what he could see was particularly enheartening.
Captain Bahrns managed to get the door shut and dogged, then fought his way across the staggering bridge, clinging to the lifelines he’d ordered rigged three hours before, to Cahnyrs’ side.
“I can’t say I much care for it myself.” He managed, Cahnyrs noted, to raise his voice enough to be heard without sounding as if he were bellowing. It must be a trick someone learned after he became a captain.
“The glass is still falling, too,” the captain continued, clipping his canvas storm harness to one of the ring bolts set into the bridge’s stout timbers. He turned, shading his eyes against the flying spray, scanning the wave-torn horizon, and Cahnyrs thought his shoulders seemed to tighten for a moment. The lieutenant looked in the same direction and his stomach clenched with dismay.
“When did we lose sight of Kahrla Bordyn?” Captain Bahrns’ voice was flat.
“She was there less than ten minutes ago, Sir.” Cahnyrs raised his arm and pointed, feeling his own storm harness jerk at his body. “There, about two points off the quarter. She was lagging badly, though.” He glanced at the starboard lookout, who nodded in confirmation, then looked back to his captain. “The visibility’s closed in since the last time I saw her, but I don’t know if it’s closed in enough for us to lose sight of her. Bryxtyn?”
“Second Lieutenant’s right, Cap’n.” The seaman was an experienced man, and he met Captain Bahrns’ gaze levelly. “More like five’r six minutes since I seen her, I’m thinking. Might be it’s closed in enough, but truth to tell, I don’t think it has.”
The captain nodded. His expression was neutral, but his eyes were grim, and Cahnyrs understood entirely. Kahrla Bordyn had two infantry companies—better than five hundred men, with their support platoons—embarked. But surely it was simply a case of worsening visibility! Kahrla Bordyn was a well-found ship, a stout galleon with an experienced captain, far better equipped to survive in heavy weather than a ship like HMS Delthak. She had to be back there somewhere.
“Was there any sign she was in distress?”
“None, Sir,” Cahnyrs replied, and Bryxtyn shook his head, agreeing with him. “She’d reduced to double-reefed topsails, but she seemed well enough. I didn’t see any rockets or distress signals, but at that distance in these conditions, I might not’ve seen signal flags even if she was showing them.”
The captain nodded. One of the things Cahnyrs most admired about Captain Bahrns was that he never chewed a man out for admitting something like that. God help anyone who tried to excuse a failure to do his utmost, but the captain preferred subordinates who offered the information he needed to fully understand what they were saying rather than keeping silent for fear of provoking their commander’s ire. Langhorne knew Cahnyrs had seen enough other captains who would have torn a strip off of him, if only to vent their own anger and fear.
Captain Bahrns simply turned his back on the horizon where Kahrla Bordyn ought to have been and peered ahead into the tumbled white and green wilderness as the steadily growing waves heaped up and pounded the ironclad’s low, bluff bow. Actually, they were pounding over the bow, burying the short foredeck and slamming into the curved casemate’s triply secured port shutters. He stood there for several minutes, then gave himself a shake and reached up to slap Cahnyrs on the shoulder.
“The First Lieutenant or I’ll be in the conning tower if you need us, Zherald.”
“Aye, Sir.”
The hand on Cahnyrs’ shoulder tightened for a moment. Then the captain unclipped his storm harness and made his way back to the armored door.
* * *
It was much quieter inside the conning tower, although “quieter” was a purely relative term aboard a twelve-hundred-ton ship battering her way into the teeth of what would have been called a Force Seven wind back on Old Earth. That wind came brawling out of the southwest, directly up the Tarot Channel, at almost forty miles per hour, piling fourteen- or fifteen-foot waves before it. The waves’ white cr
ests blew horizontally upon its breath … and Delthak’s freeboard was only eleven and a half feet.
Bahrns nodded to the helmsman and to the signalman and telegraphsman of the watch, then crossed to the conning tower’s tiny chart room and peered down at Delthak’s current estimated position. According to it, they were a hundred and forty miles east-northeast of Seahorse Island, and there were any number of other places he would rather have been. Especially since the weather promised to continue getting worse before it ever got better.
His jaw tightened as he thought about Kahrla Bordyn. By any standard he could think of, the galleon was more seaworthy than his own command. Delthak’s shallow draft showed in the violence of her motion, but at least she showed less tendency to drive to leeward, since she offered the wind a smaller target without the masts and complex rigging of a galleon. And she’d actually proven rather more buoyant than Bahrns had anticipated when he first took command. But that was very little comfort when he listened to the water roaring along her sides, ripping at the port shutters. There was some leakage around any gunport lid, even Delthak’s heavily armored ones, no matter how tightly closed they were. That was only to be expected. He didn’t much care for the way water spurted in around the edges of the forward shutters, though. And if any one of those port shutters carried away, seawater would roar exuberantly into the ship with probably fatal consequences.
Of course it would, he told himself. And that’s why you took so much extra care in securing the damned things, isn’t it?
True. That was true enough. It didn’t make him feel a great deal better, but it was certainly true.
He gave himself a mental shake, spreading his feet for balance as the deck heaved underfoot. His ship had advantages of her own, he reminded himself firmly. As long as his stokers stayed on their feet and managed to feed the boilers, Delthak’s propulsion—unlike that of the transport and war galleons clawing their way southwest—was independent of the wind howling around her hull. And her pumps were steam-powered and highly efficient; despite the leakage around her port shutters and the additional water inevitably finding its way aboard as her timbers worked in the seaway, they’d so far stayed ahead of the influx with almost ridiculous ease. He did feel some concern over the safety of Lieutenant Bairystyr’s stokers and oilers in the confines of Delthak’s boiler rooms and engine spaces, but the truth was that they were far safer even there than topmen sent aloft to reef and hand sail in this kind of weather.
As long as her hull holds together and none of the port shutters get stove in, she’ll do fine, he told himself. Just fine.
Of course, some might have wondered just how well a converted river barge could hold together in conditions like these, especially with its hull burdened by so many tons of armor plate. Fortunately, Sir Dustyn Olyvyr had wondered the same thing when he turned Howsmyn’s rough calculations into a finished product. The barges in question had been designed to carry heavy cargoes and be suitable for coastal traffic, but not even a lunatic would have considered sending them all the way from Tellesberg to Siddarmark in their original conformation. Their frames had been heavy and closer set than in the majority of canal barges, however, and Olyvyr had strengthened them and reinforced her longitudinal strength by running steel bars with threaded ends between each pair of ribs and securing them with heavy washers and massive nuts. That reinforcement—along with the extra freeboard he’d insisted upon adding at sides and bow and the breakwaters he’d added to the foredeck—had increased Delthak’s final displacement by a few inches, which was not a minor consideration in river or canalwater, but along with the six solid inches of teak backing the armor they’d also turned her hull into an immensely strong box.
Which, given the vicious power of the fall and winter southwesters that came howling up the Tarot Channel from the Sea of Justice, might prove to be a very good thing indeed.
* * *
“Captain! Captain, Sir!”
Halcom Bahrns’ eyes opened instantly as the hand touched his shoulder. Even before the lids were fully raised, he sensed the ship’s more violent motion.
“Yes?” He sat up, raking the fingers of his right hand through tousled brown hair. “What?”
“Sorry to disturb you, Sir.” Midshipman Tairaince Sutyls stood back, gray eyes worried in his fourteen-year-old face. “Lieutenant Blahdysnberg’s respects, and you’re needed in the conning tower.”
The young Chisholmian was obviously clinging to the comfort of the message’s formality, Bahrns noted, and produced as reassuring a smile as he could manage.
“My compliments to the Lieutenant and inform him I’ll be there as quickly as possible, Master Sutyls.”
“Aye, aye, Sir. Your compliments to Lieutenant Blahdysnberg and you’ll be there as quickly as possible.”
The boy saluted and disappeared, and Bahrns swung his legs over the edge of his wildly swaying cot and shoved his feet into his sea boots. He’d turned in fully dressed, and he reached for his oilskins as he stamped his feet fully into the boots.
He was through his sea cabin’s door no more than fifteen seconds behind Sutyls.
“Captain on deck!”
“As you were,” Bahrns said briskly, crossing the conning tower to Pawal Blahdysnberg. The first lieutenant had just stepped back into the conning tower from the bridge wing, judging by the water running down his oilskins, and he straightened at the sound of Bahrns’ voice, turning from where he’d been peering aft through one of the conning tower’s view slits.
“Sorry to disturb you, Sir.” His voice was taut, his expression worried.
“I don’t imagine you would’ve if you’d had a choice. What is it?”
“It’s Tellesberg Queen, Sir. She’s firing distress rockets.”
Bahrns felt his stomach muscles tighten. Tellesberg Queen was another of the transports. Substantially larger than Kahrla Bordyn, she carried an entire artillery battalion, minus its draft animals, and two companies of scout snipers. That was over a thousand Charisian soldiers and thirty-two field guns in addition to the galleon’s own crew.
“Where is she?”
“About five miles dead astern,” Blahdysnberg said grimly. “It’s getting on towards night, and it’s already dark as Shan-wei’s heart, but I’m pretty sure she’s lost her fore topmast and topgallant. She may’ve lost her entire foremast. I didn’t see any sign of her course or her headsails, anyway.”
The lump of stone in Bahrns’ stomach became an iron round shot. The foremast was critical to a ship’s maneuverability, not least because it supported the all important headsails. Without their leverage forward, her ability to hold anything remotely like a steady course in these conditions would be seriously impaired. And a ship that couldn’t hold a steady course in these conditions.…
He turned and stepped into the chart house, beckoning for Blahdysnberg to follow. The lieutenant obeyed the gesture, and Bahrns looked down at the chart.
“We’re here?” He tapped the last penciled-in location.
“About here, Sir,” Blahdysnberg corrected, tapping a point fifteen or twenty miles to the southwest. “Chief Kuhlbyrtsyn updated it at two bells.”
Bahrns nodded, frowning ferociously at the unpromising chart. If Blahdysnberg’s estimate was correct, they’d come over seventy miles since he and Cahnyrs had spoken on the bridge wing that morning. They were off the southernmost tip of Seahorse Island and perhaps fifteen miles from a nameless hunk of tideswept rock and sand forty miles southeast of the island. In theory, if they turned sharply to starboard and headed due west they could get into the lee of Star Island to Seahorse’s southwest, but the passage between Star and Seahorse was barely thirty miles wide and perilous at the best of times, which these sure as hell weren’t. Besides, where would they go after that? Into Malitar Sound? That was a ships’ graveyard—shallow, treacherous, and littered with shifting sandbanks. In this weather, given the seas the wind must whip up along its length, the Sound would be Shan-wei’s own parlor; no one who set foot in
side it would ever come out alive. No, they were a good six or seven hundred miles from the nearest safe harbor: Sekyr Island in Clanhyr Bay.
From the feel of things, the weather wasn’t finished getting worse, either. If Tellesberg Queen was out there in that howling murk without a foremast it was unlikely she’d live to see the dawn, far less Clanhyr Bay, and there was no power on Safehold which could help her.
Unless.…
Are you certain you even want to think about this? a preposterously calm voice asked in the recesses of his mind. It’s completely insane—you do realize that, don’t you? Do you really want to hazard your own ship—your own men—on such a harebrained, lunatic notion?
In point of fact, he couldn’t think of anything he wanted to do less, but that wasn’t really the point. He was an officer of the Imperial Charisian Navy.
