by David Weber
“Master Blahdysnberg,” he said with unaccustomed formality, one hand still resting on the chart. “Be good enough to call all hands, if you please.”
* * *
This is insane, Zherald Cahnyrs thought.
He was back on the bridge wing, eyes gritty with fatigue after having been rousted out of his cot. He wasn’t officer of the watch this time, however. Instead, he stood braced in the conning tower doorway, his eyes on Captain Bahrns while showers of spray burst over the bridge like crazed waterfalls. There was rain in that spray, now, although no one could taste its freshness through the torrents of salt. The waves breaking across the foredeck swept down the sides of the casemate no more than three feet below his feet, boiling white around the bridge’s supporting stanchions. They’d been substantially strengthened after the Canal Raid, but all it would take would be one rogue wave, a little higher than the others, to reach the bridge wing and sweep over it. In fact, that had already happened twice, and Cahnyrs was none too optimistic about just how adequately the support structure had been strengthened in the face of this sort of abuse.
Even more frighteningly, those same waves threatened to sweep over the top of the casemate, as well as down its sides, and if that happened—if those crashing walls of water found a way down the ventilator intakes or carried away one of the funnels.…
He forced himself not to think about that. It wasn’t easy, but if he concentrated solely on the captain it helped.
* * *
Halcom Bahrns glanced over his shoulder at Lieutenant Cahnyrs. Like young Sutyls, the lieutenant was a Chisholmian, and he stood barely one inch under six feet, which made him a giant by Old Charisian standards. At the moment, however, he looked at least as young and frail as Sutyls.
Bahrns sympathized, and he turned back, peering over the bow—or the crashing, surging water where the bow was supposed to be, at any rate—and drove his own mind back over his preparations.
So far as he knew, no one had ever attempted what he proposed to do. That meant he was making it all up as he went along, and it was entirely possible no one would ever know he had because he’d managed to kill his entire crew in the process.
That’s enough of that, Halcom! he told himself sternly, and closed his eyes as a fresh surge of green water roared past just below the gratings under his feet.
The messenger line had been seized to the three-inch hawser which had been secured in turn to Delthak’s stern anchor chain. Managing that under the current conditions had been not simply incredibly difficult but extraordinarily dangerous. Technically, Blahdysnberg had been in charge of the operation, and he’d certainly been responsible for it, but he’d also been wise enough to allow Chestyr Dyllahn, Delthak’s boatswain, and Brahdlai Mahfyt, Bahrns’ coxswain, free rein to deal with it.
The first step had been to get rid of the anchor itself, which meant someone had to go out onto the miniscule quarterdeck to unshackle it. The good news was that the quarterdeck was in the lee of the casemate, which meant the worst force of the waves sweeping over it was broken by the superstructure. The bad news was that even so, the quarterdeck was at least two feet underwater between waves and under up to six feet of water whenever a wave swept the length of the ship. And the water could easily be twice that deep with very little warning.
It would have been difficult to decide whether Dyllahn or Mahfyt was the more powerfully built, and Bahrns had no idea how they’d decided who got to go out to drown himself, but Mahfyt had ended up in a double storm harness triple-lashed to the ladder rungs set into the casemate’s after face. That was enough to keep him from being washed overboard, although it certainly wasn’t enough to prevent cracked or broken ribs and atrocious bruising.
They’d let him out the after hatch between the funnels on top of the casing and he’d climbed down the ladder, snaphooking one of his two safety harnesses to each rung as he descended it. Then, standing thigh-deep in ice cold water, he’d ducked under, found the securely lashed anchor, and—using the wrench lashed to his right wrist—unfastened the shackle’s massive lugs one by one.
Dyllahn had followed him through the casemate hatch, standing in it with two seamen hanging on to his legs and his own safety harness locked into place, and fed the end of the three-inch hawser, a shackle already spliced into it, through the hatch and down to where Mahfyt stood in that surging cauldron of water and wind shriek. Then the boatswain had climbed down to join the coxswain, and the two of them had somehow managed to secure the hawser to the end of the anchor chain. In the process, Dyllahn had broken three fingers and according to the ship’s healer, Mahfyt had at least six broken ribs. They’d both been half dead by the time they finished, and two members of Mahfyt’s boat crew had been forced to clamber down into that maelstrom to carry their coxswain back to safety, but somehow they’d done it, and now it was up to Halcom Bahrns to make sure their efforts weren’t in vain.
“’Nother rocket, Sir!” the lookout sang out, and Bahrns nodded.
Tellesberg Queen was still there, then … unless yet another galleon was in distress. It seemed incredible to him that even one of the new, improved rockets could fight its way through a wind like this one, and he wondered how badly and how far off course it had been blown before the lookout saw it. Not too far, he hoped. It was the only guide he had to the ship’s position.
He watched the sea, as much of it as he could see, and gripped the railing, feeling the shuddering vibrations as Delthak slammed through the waves. It was going to be far more a matter of timing, instinct, and the pattern of those vibrations than of vision, and he knew it.
All right, My Lady, he thought. We’ve gotten to know each other better these past months. Now let’s see if we can truly do this.
He closed his eyes, concentrating on the fusion of his hand with the bridge railing, emptying his mind, waiting.…
“Now, Master Cahnyrs! Hard a starboard! Stop starboard engine, full ahead larboard!”
* * *
Zherald Cahnyrs had no idea what had prompted the captain’s timing. He could see absolutely no difference in the incoming waves or howling wind, but he never hesitated. His head whipped around.
“Hard a starboard! Stop starboard engine! Full ahead larboard!” he barked into the conning tower.
“Helm hard a starboard, aye, aye, Sir!” PO Crahmynd Fyrgyrsyn acknowledged, spinning the wheel.
“Stop starboard, aye, aye!” the telegraphsman sang out, yanking the brass handle to the full stop position. “Full ahead larboard, aye, aye, Sir!” He rocked the other handle all the way forward, and HMS Delthak lurched to starboard.
The big rudder bit hard, yet the suddenly unbalanced thrust of her screws drove her still harder. She swept round, heaving, rolling madly as she took those heavy seas broadside. She went up on her starboard side, tipping as if she meant to roll completely over. But she didn’t. Somehow, she didn’t, and she was two-thirds of the way around when the far larger and heavier wave, the one Halcom Bahrns had known was coming even though no eye could have seen it, hit her. It drove her the rest of the way around, pushing her head to the northeast.
“Wheel amidships!” Bahrns shouted. “Ahead two-thirds both engines! Steady on north-nor’east!”
Cahnyrs had been thrown from his feet by the violent motion. White pain ripped through his left arm, and a corner of his mind decided he must have broken it. He was sprawled across the raised lip of the conning tower door, water washing around him, but he heard the captain’s commands and repeated them hoarsely.
HMS Delthak, obedient to the madmen who crewed her, settled down on her new heading and another rocket pierced the spray and rain to burst in glory below the clouds ahead of her.
* * *
Halcom Bahrns rubbed sore, salt-burning eyes as Tellesberg Queen loomed out of the storm-lashed night. The galleon had lost not simply her foremast but her jib boom, as well. She retained only a stump of her bowsprit, and she lay hove-to under triple-reefed main and mizzen topsails. There was oth
er damage aloft, and the loss of the foremast and the dynamic tension of all the rigging associated with it had weakened everything still standing. It looked as if they were pumping hard, as well, and just to make bad worse, they were closer to Seahorse Island than he’d thought and the wind had backed from the southwest to the south-southeast. Lightning had been added to the mix, on top of everything else, but at least it gave them bursts of better visibility, although he could have done without the sight of surf breaking in white fury on the southern tip of Seahorse Island and—
A jagged burst of lightning glare showed him the two signal flags streaming from her mainyard, stiff as shredded boards on the howling wind. Number 21: “I am in distress,” and Number 23: “I am taking on water.”
“All right,” he said, though no one could possibly hear him unless he shouted. “One more time, My Lady.”
Even from the extreme end of the bridge wing, visibility astern was much more limited than ahead at the best of times. On the other hand, the lightning let him see farther … when he could see at all. The serried ranks of waves had to have reached more than twenty feet in height, their crests toppling and tumbling, rolling over in wind-torn spray that baffled and confused the eye. If it wasn’t a strong gale already, it would be shortly, for it was still building strength, and he felt the breath of necessity hot on his neck.
Maybe so, he told himself, but rushing will only get you killed. Patience, Halcom. Patience.…
He stood there, gauging the moment, then nodded to himself.
“Hard to larboard!”
Delthak staggered and rolled as she answered her helm, but this time she was bringing her bow to wind and wave. She climbed up the flank of a mountain of water, lurched to larboard, and went sledding down the wave’s back. Her screws came completely out of the water for a moment, racing, shaking her like a cat-lizard with a spider-rat. Then they bit into the sea again, driving her down into the trough between waves. Another massive wall of water crashed into her larboard bow, white and green exploding vertically upward with the sound of a cannon shot. The shock of the impact slammed the soles of Bahrns’ feet as if someone had hit the grating under them with a sledgehammer, but then she was around, sweeping astern of Tellesberg Queen to come up on the galleon’s larboard side barely sixty feet clear.
Bahrns clung to the bridge railing, fumbling for his speaking trumpet, watching men stagger and lurch towards the galleon’s rail. Clearly they thought he was insane to bring his ship so close under these conditions. Two signals streamed from his own mast’s yardarms—Number 73: “Stand by to receive a line” and Number 75: “I am preparing to take you in tow”—but he had no idea if anyone over there had seen them in these conditions.
“Stand by!” he screamed through the speaking trumpet. “Stand by to receive a line!”
No one seemed to hear him, and he repeated himself, lungs burning, throat feeling ripped and raw. They had to hear him quickly. He couldn’t allow Delthak to lose way, so the line had to go across while she steamed past Tellesberg Queen, but if no one realized it was coming.…
Lightning ripped at the night and he waved his trumpet wildly up at Delthak’s signals, willing someone aboard Tellesberg Queen to see and recognize them. Surely someone—
Then he saw an arm waving back from the galleon’s deck. He couldn’t be sure if that meant he’d been understood. On the other hand, he was already parallel with the other ship as she drifted to leeward. He looked aft to where one of Dyllahn’s seamen stood clinging to a guy wire on the starboard funnel, watching him. He swung the hand with the speaking trumpet again, pointing it at the galleon like a sword, and the seaman waved in reply and turned away.
An instant later the weighted end of the light messenger line went whipping through the stormy tumult. It carried to Tellesberg Queen’s deck and a dozen hands pounced on it quickly and began hauling it aboard.
“Slow to one quarter!” he shouted, and Delthak’s motion became heavier and wilder as her speed through the water slowed. She rolled with tooth-snapping force, protesting, but Tellesberg Queen needed more time.
The three-inch hawser went across, and someone in an officer’s uniform, staggered to the galleon’s rail opposite Bahrns’ bridge wing.
“We’re passing our anchor chain!” Bahrns bawled. “It’s the only line we’ve got that will stand the strain!”
The other man stared at him for a moment, then nodded sharply and turned away, shouting to his own crew. There was a flurry of purposeful motion as the end of the hawser came aboard and someone knocked the stopper out of the larboard hawsepipe so the line could be fed below to the forward capstan.
Bahrns heaved a huge sigh of relief as the capstan began to turn, taking the heavy hawser aboard. He saw water exploding out of it as the tension came on and the kinks straightened, and he turned back to Lieutenant Cahnyrs, still at his post in the conning tower door with his splinted arm in a sling.
“Tell Lieutenant Bairystyr to begin veering the anchor chain—slowly. Slowly!”
.XII.
The Temple, City of Zion, The Temple Lands
“Rage” was far too weak a word.
“Anger” or “wrath” didn’t even come close. The only possible description as Wyllym Rayno stood absolutely motionless in one corner of the luxurious apartment was “mad, frothing frenzy.”
It wasn’t the first time Zhaspahr Clyntahn had reduced this chamber’s furnishings to a shambles, but this time it was as if the room had been devastated by an earthquake and then threshed by a tornado. Furniture had been upended, glassware smashed, paintings ripped off the wall, books torn apart, sculptures crushed.…
Clyntahn’s fury had rampaged through his suite for over an hour. Rayno didn’t know how much longer; the beautiful grandfather’s clock which had cost enough to feed and house a Zion family for at least two years had been turned into wreckage thirty-six minutes into the Grand Inquisitor’s screaming eruption, and the archbishop hadn’t dared to check his watch since. The prudent rabbit did not draw attention to itself while a blood-mad wyvern circled overhead, and this was a time to be very prudent. Indeed, for all of Rayno’s considerable intestinal fortitude, all he truly wanted to do was run for his life. In all the years he’d served Zhaspahr Clyntahn, he’d never—never—seen the vicar in such a pure, unadulterated fury. It was remarkable, he thought now, that Clyntahn’s howling apoplexy hadn’t brought on a genuine stroke or heart attack.
He’d thought once or twice that the Grand Inquisitor was beginning to calm, but each time Clyntahn’s glare had returned to the shredded copy of the letter which had so enraged him. And each time, his hurricane passion had roared up afresh. Now, though, he stood almost motionless, shoulders heaving as he panted, amid the broken bits of priceless artwork, the shards of splintered crystal ware, and the snowdrift litter of pages ripped from books. Some of those books dated back almost to the Creation itself, and gems gleamed in the corners of the room where they’d been ripped from embellished covers … or gone skittering when Clyntahn hurled the irreplaceable books against the wall with all the rage-fueled fury of his shoulders and back.
The archbishop watched silently, his face clear of any expression, and tried not to breathe as his superior slowly, slowly, lifted his hands and ran his fingers through his sweatsoaked, disordered hair. He paused with those hands at the back of his head, fingers interlocked, and Rayno heard air hiss as he inhaled deeply.
Silence hovered, fragile and afraid of itself—or of Zhaspahr Clyntahn—for what seemed an eternity but was probably only seconds. Then Clyntahn turned, darted one bloodshot glare in Rayno’s direction, jerked his head for the archbishop to follow, and stalked out of the wreckage and ruin he’d wrought.
The next to last thing in the world Wyllym Rayno wanted at that moment was to find himself alone with Clyntahn in the Grand Inquisitor’s office. The last thing he wanted was to reawaken that shrieking fury and direct it at himself, and so he followed silently, calmly, at Clyntahn’s heels.
* * *
“All right,” Clyntahn grated.
He sat behind his desk, hands clenched on his blotter as if to choke his own anger into submission. His knuckles were bruised, two of them scabbed with blood, and he was going to have to ice his hand to get his ring of office off before it did damage to his swollen ring finger. He seemed unaware of that at the moment, and Wyllym Rayno had no intention of pointing it out to him.
“What do we know about this miserable son-of-a-bitch, this … Mab, that isn’t in his goddamned letter?” he continued.
“Nothing, Your Grace,” Rayno replied in his most neutral tone. “The Inquisition’s never heard of him, and I’m inclined to think the name is an alias.”
“Why?” Clyntahn demanded flatly, and Rayno met his still fiery eyes.
“Because his true name is in Mother Church’s records somewhere, Your Grace. If nothing else, his birth record’s on file in some parish church. He knows we’re going to search those records as they’ve never been searched before, and if we find him, we find his family, the village he grew up in, the teacher he knew at school. I find it difficult to believe anyone who would—and could—do what this man has would leave such … hostages to fortune where we might find them.”
