Off Armageddon Reef

by David Weber

  Nahrmahn's upper lip curled in what no one could ever have mistaken for a smile.

  "It would appear we have a great deal to thank this . . . 'Merlin' for," he said softly.

  "Yes, My Prince," Shandyr said, inserting himself into the interview. Nahrmahn's eyes moved to him, and he shrugged. "The most interesting thing to me, in many respects, My Prince, is that according to the reports we've received so far from Tellesberg, this Merlin accompanied Gray Harbor to the Duke's townhouse. Master Wyllyms' information is the first firsthand account we've received, and the damage Wave Thunder's done to Lahang's network means we're unlikely to get any more reports like it. But my people here in Emerald have been pumping every ship's company from Charis for information. And while there's a great deal of confusion and obvious nonsense in most of what we've been able to ferret out, there seems to be general agreement that the official story is that Gray Harbor took 'Merlin' with him when he went to call upon the Duke."

  "Which he obviously didn't, if Master Wyllyms didn't see him arrive," Nahrmahn said thoughtfully.

  "Your Highness," Wyllyms put in diffidently, "as I say, I didn't see him arrive, and he wasn't present when I delivered the brandy. I didn't personally take the instructions to Gray Harbor's coachmen to take the Earl's carriage and horses to the stable, though; I sent the word via one of the under-footmen. So it's possible he was with the carriage at that time, and somehow managed to enter the library in the interval between my delivery of the brandy and Zhahnsyn's arrival."

  "But from your tone, you don't think it was likely," Nahrmahn observed.

  "No, Your Highness, I don't. It's possible, however. I didn't waste any time talking to any of the other servants when I left. It may be that one of them admitted this 'Merlin' and he somehow got past me to the library without my seeing him. But I don't think that's what happened."

  "Then how did he get there?"

  "Your Highness, I don't know. All I can say is that I never saw him, and that there were rumors in Tellesberg that this 'Merlin' is some sort of seijin."

  "Lahang reported the same rumor in his message immediately after the assassination attempt, My Prince," Shandyr reminded Nahrmahn, and the rotund prince nodded.

  "But why should they put it about that he accompanied Gray Harbor if, in fact, he didn't?" Pine Hollow put in, his expression perplexed.

  "A moment, Trahvys," Nahrmahn said, raising one hand, and looked back at Wyllyms.

  "Have you anything else to report, Master Wyllyms?"

  "Not about events in Tellesberg, Your Highness." Wyllyms bowed once more. "I'm still working on my report to Baron Shandyr concerning my journey to Eraystor and what I saw and heard along the way, but I believe that's all I can tell you about what happened in the capital."

  "Then I thank you, both for your service and for your information. I'm sure Baron Shandyr will have many more tasks for a man of your proven capabilities. In the meantime, I assure you that you'll soon receive a more substantial token of my appreciation."

  "Thank you, Your Highness," Wyllyms murmured.

  "Leave us now, if you please, Master Wyllyms."

  "Of course, Your Highness." Wyllyms bowed yet again and retired, walking backward out of Nahrmahn's presence as protocol required.

  "Wait for me in the antechamber, Wyllyms," Shandyr said quietly, and Wyllyms nodded as he stepped through the door and it closed behind him.

  "Now, Trahvys," Nahrmahn said to his cousin. "You were saying?"

  "I was just wondering why Haarahld and Wave Thunder should be telling everyone this 'Merlin' character went to Tirian's townhouse with Gray Harbor if that's not what really happened?"

  "I don't know," Nahrmahn conceded, and looked at Shandyr. "Hahl?"

  "All any of us can do at this point is guess, My Prince," the baron said. "At first glance, I can't really see a reason for them to do so. Unless . . ."

  "Unless what?" Nahrmahn prompted.

  "My Prince," Shandyr said slowly, "this isn't the first time we've heard someone claim this man is a seijin."

  "No, it isn't," Pine Hollow agreed. "But surely you're not suggesting he really is one, Hahl?"

  "I don't know." Shandyr gave a shrug of frustrated ignorance. "I just know that apparently he specializes in hacking up large numbers of people working for us. And that the destruction of our entire Charis network coincides with his arrival in Tellesberg. If you can tell me how a single man could kill or disable sixteen picked guardsmen and either kill or capture Duke Tirian—never mind how he got into the library in the first place—I'll be delighted to hear it. At the moment, it sounds to me like all the bad ballads about seijin I've ever heard."

  "He has a point, Trahvys," Nahrmahn said. "But there's another point that interests me, as well."

  Both his nobles looked at him, and he shrugged.

  "Wyllyms carried out his orders and killed Lahang before he could be taken into custody, correct?" The others nodded, and he snorted. "In that case, where did they get the information they obviously had to have for Wave Thunder to completely demolish our spy rings?"

  "That point had occurred to me, as well, My Prince," Shandyr said. "I know we'd assumed initially that they must have started with Lahang—or with Tirian and Lahang—and worked their way down the chain after breaking one of them. Based on what we know so far, it's still possible they did take the Duke prisoner, but he shouldn't have known enough for them to identify so many of our other agents."

  "So they must have identified Lahang already," Pine Hollow suggested. "If they already had him under surveillance, they might have identified at least some of his people, as well. And if something—like that assassin they took alive—started them sniffing around the Duke, then when Wyllyms carried out his instructions to remove Lahang, they probably started snapping up everyone they already knew about and questioning them pretty damned severely. If that's what happened, then each one they broke might have led them to others until the entire mess unraveled."

  "That's certainly one possibility," Shandyr acknowledged. "There's no way for us to tell either way from here, of course, and it's going to take us time to even begin rebuilding in Charis. Still, I think we need to keep a close eye on this 'Merlin' of theirs. Whether or not he's really a seijin, things do seem to start happening when he's around. Which suggests to me, My Prince"—the baron smiled coldly—"that we might want to consider seeing to it that he isn't around much longer."

  FEBRUARY, YEAR OF GOD 891

  I

  King's Harbor,

  Helen Island

  "I still say you don't sweat enough, Merlin."

  Merlin opened one eyelid and glanced at Cayleb.

  Nimue Alban had come from a culture—and a genetic heritage—which had thoroughly digested the perils of skin cancer and the advantages of sunblockers. Cayleb hadn't. He was extraordinarily fond of sunbathing, and there was no good way for Merlin to explain the downside of soaking his epidermis in sunlight to him. Nor could Merlin very well turn down the honor, and it was a genuine honor, of being invited to share the sun with the kingdom's crown prince.

  Fortunately, he could adjust his skin's coloration at will, which meant his own complexion had become almost as bronzed as Cayleb's own. And he'd also gone into his programming after that . . . exciting rugby game and disabled certain functions. As a result, that particular problem hadn't recurred, although Merlin had to admit—very privately—that Cayleb Ahrmahk really was an extraordinarily attractive young man.

  "And I still say that some of us don't need to sweat as much as others of us," he replied, and Cayleb chuckled.

  "What do you think of Howsmyn's proposal?" the prince asked after a moment, and Merlin opened both eyes at the change of subject. He sat up, reached for a towel, and mopped the (relatively) meager sweat to which Cayleb had referred from his face.

  "I think it makes excellent sense," he said then, and reached for the flask of chilled fruit juice they'd brought with them when they headed for the top of the harbor manager's of
fice.

  That office was at the very end of one of the main wharves in the Citadel Basin, the purely military anchorage under the looming walls of King's Harbor's main fortifications. It was an excellent perch for hopeful fishermen, and its location exposed it to a cooling breeze when the wind was in the southwest. That made it a popular sunbathing spot with the garrison's senior officers, as well, and there were special attractions in Cayleb's case. Specifically, his bodyguards liked the fact that they could make sure the office was empty, then throw a cordon across the wharf between it and the shore and allow the prince at least the illusion of privacy. Cayleb treasured it for the same reasons, which made the invitation to accompany him this afternoon even more of an indication of his high regard for Merlin.

  Now Merlin took a swig of juice which was at least still cool, if no longer chilled. He didn't really need it, of course, but that didn't keep him from savoring the taste before he passed the flask across to Cayleb.

  "One of our main worries has always been the manufacturing time for the artillery," he continued as the crown prince drank gratefully. "I assumed all along that we'd have to cast every gun we needed if we wanted them to have trunnions." He shrugged. "The only way I could see to do it was to melt the existing guns down to reclaim the bronze and recast them from scratch."

  He stood and stretched, draping the towel around his neck, and walked across to the waist-high wall which ran around the top of the flat office roof. His neatly folded clothing and weapons were stacked on the bench seat which ran around the inside of the parapet, with his sheathed wakazashi weighting the pile, and an awning provided a band of shade as he leaned on the wall and gazed out across the harbor.

  The unoccupied office's wall fell sheer to the wharf's outer end, and the water was an almost painful blue, shading to equally bright green as it shallowed. There wasn't very much breeze today, even this far above water level. A gentle swell rolled lightly across the sun-bright water, and six or seven children in a four-oared launch were rowing steadily, if not exactly in a straight-line, towards the wharf. The fishing poles sticking out of the boat at various angles indicated what they'd been doing, and Merlin felt a twinge of wistful envy as he remembered fishing trips from Nimue's childhood.

  They were still the better part of a hundred yards out, but the seven- or eight-year-old girl sitting on the forwardmost thwart saw him looking at them and waved.

  He waved back, then turned his back to the harbor as Cayleb rose and joined him in the shade.

  "It never occurred to me," Merlin continued the thread of their conversation, "that it might be possible to add trunnions to existing guns."

  Cayleb grunted in agreement. There was an intriguing jumble of odds and ends on the roof, presumably left by other sunbathers and fishermen, and one of the prince's eyebrows arched as he discovered the harpoon propped in one corner. He picked it up, trying its balance idly, and looked across at Merlin.

  "What was that phrase you used the other day?" he asked. "-'Thinking outside the box,' wasn't it?" Merlin nodded, and the prince shrugged. "Well, I guess we should just feel fortunate Howsmyn is so good at it."

  "That's putting it mildly, Your Highness," Merlin said with a grin, and turned to glance back at the launch. The girl in the bows waved again, and he chuckled.

  Cayleb was right, he thought. Ehdwyrd Howsmyn had come at the problem from a completely different angle. He'd pointed out that the gun the Royal Charisian Navy called the "kraken"—a six-and-a-half-inch cannon roughly eleven feet long and throwing a round shot which weighed just under thirty-five pounds—came close to meeting the requirement Merlin and Captain Seamount had settled upon. It also happened to be the closest thing the Navy had to a "standard" heavy gun, which meant it was available in greater numbers than most other types.

  There were others, some much heavier—like the "doomwhale," which weighed over four and a half tons and threw a sixty-two-pound shot. Or the even vaster "great doomwhale," a six-ton monster which threw a seventy-five-pound shot. Those, however, were far too heavy for their purposes. Eventually, all of them undoubtedly would be melted down to provide the bronze for sensibly sized replacements, but for now they were effectively useless.

  What Howsmyn had suggested was standardizing on the kraken and welding an iron band around the gun tubes of as many of them as they could get their hands on. The band would be cast with trunnions, which could be done far faster than casting and boring an entire new gun. It wouldn't be as strong as casting the trunnions into the gun itself, but it would do as a temporary quick-fix, and as time allowed, the guns would, indeed, be melted down and recast.

  It wasn't a perfect solution. The supply of krakens was scarcely unlimited, after all. But it would save a lot of time and resources, and given the new carronade design he and Seamount had worked out, it meant—

  A sudden scream jerked him out of his thoughts, and he wheeled back towards the harbor.

  The launch was no more than seventy yards from the wharf, now, but one of the older girls was screaming, one hand pressed to her mouth, while the other pointed wildly at the trio of triangular fins sweeping towards the boat.

  "Kraken!" Cayleb spat. He was suddenly leaning out across the roof parapet towards the boatload of children. "Don't," he said, and it was obvious he wasn't talking to Merlin. "Don't panic!"

  But the children in the launch couldn't hear him. The oldest of them could not have been more than fourteen, and their sudden terror was evident in the ragged disorder of their oars. The boat rocked in the water as the screaming girl shrank back against the gunwale on the side away from the krakens, then began to list as two more of the children joined her.

  The fins slashed through the water, closing on the boat, and suddenly one of the krakens rose out of the water close alongside.

  It was the first time Merlin had actually seen one of the fearsome predators, which normally preferred water deeper than that of most harbors. A fully mature sea kraken was up to twenty or twenty-two feet of voracious appetite. Roughly similar in body form to an elongated terrestrial shark, its head was quite different. It had the round, many-toothed mouth of a lamprey eel, but with a difference; over a foot across—almost three feet on fully mature krakens—it was fringed with a cluster of ten powerful tentacles. Those tentacles were from four to six feet long, and normally lay flat back against the torpedo-shaped body as it swam. But when the kraken attacked, they reached out and seized its prey, holding it while the mouth savaged it.

  That would have been enough to explain the terror the creature evoked in any reasonably sane human being, but they were also intelligent. Nowhere near as intelligent as a terrestrial dolphin, perhaps, but smart enough to cooperate when they hunted. And smart enough to know boats contained food.

  The terrified children shrieked as the first kraken lifted its head, then shrieked again, even more loudly, as the second slammed into the launch from below. The boat leapt madly in the water rocking so violently it almost capsized, and one of the boys went over the side.

  There was a swirl in the water. His head came up and his mouth opened, screaming in terrified agony, as one of the krakens took him from below and dragged him under.

  "Shan-wei!" Cayleb cursed helplessly, pounding the parapet with his fist, and the unbalanced launch heaved crazily as it was rammed again. This time, it went all the way up and over, spilling all of the children into the water.

  Merlin didn't stop to think. Before Cayleb even realized his "bodyguard" had moved, Merlin hand flashed out with literally inhuman speed and snatched away the harpoon with which the prince had been toying. His arm cocked, and then Cayleb's eyes flew wide in disbelief, despite his horror, as the harpoon snapped out in a flat, vicious arc that ended a full seventy yards away.

  One of the krakens rose two-thirds out of the water, standing on its thrashing tail, tentacles releasing the mangled body of its victim, as the harpoon struck it. No, Cayleb realized, the weapon hadn't simply struck its target; it had driven completely through t
hat massive barrel of solid muscle and bone.

  At least one of the wounded kraken's fellows turned upon it as its blood stained the water. But Cayleb's heart froze within him as another screaming child, a girl this time, disappeared forever into the churning, bloody horror which had enveloped the peaceful harbor.

  And then he saw fresh movement out of the corner of his eye and reached out frantically. But he was too late to stop Merlin as he went over the roof parapet, thirty feet above the surface of the water.

  Time seemed to have slowed impossibly, even as it flashed by. The crown prince saw everything, realized exactly what was happening, but he was a spectator. He could only watch as Merlin launched himself in a flat trajectory that carried him an impossible twenty yards before he hit the water.