Off Armageddon Reef

by David Weber

  Not to mention risking the one and only skin of a certain Zhaspahr Maysahn.

  He watched as the celebration of backslapping and mutual congratulation died down in the Krakens' dugout. The next batter—Rafayl Furkal, the Krakens' leadoff man—eventually advanced to the plate, while the Dragons' catcher trotted out to the mound to confer with the pitcher. Probably more in an effort to settle the pitcher down again than for any serious discussion of strategy. The Dragons had studied the scouting reports on the Krakens intensively, and they knew Furkal's power was almost exclusively to left field. The infielders were already shifting around to the left—indeed, the second baseman had become almost a second shortstop, and the first baseman had moved halfway to second—while the catcher was still talking soothingly to his pitcher.

  I wish there'd been someone around to settle me down over the past few months, Maysahn thought moodily. It had been maddening to realize all sorts of things were clearly happening under the surface at the very moment when prudence and future survival had required him to operate so cautiously. He'd done his best, but his own sources had been much more strongly developed among the merchants operating in Tellesberg. Until Oskahr was forced to run for it, he hadn't truly realized how much he'd relied upon Mhulvayn's judgment and fieldwork where political and military matters were concerned. The good news was that Prince Hektor's dispatches made it clear the prince understood the constraints under which his Charisian spymaster had been forced to operate.

  Or he says he does, at least, Maysahn couldn't quite help reflecting. He'd wondered, more than once, especially given Makferzahn's obvious capability, if Hektor might have sent the new man in with the intention of eventually elevating him to the top position in Charis. It was a distinct possibility, and if it happened, Maysahn's recall to Corisande would not bode well for his own career. Although, at least, Hektor was far less likely than Nahrmahn to simply have one of his agents eliminated.

  For the moment, Maysahn had decided to take his prince's assurances of his continued confidence at face value and concentrate on finding out whatever it was Haarahld and Wave Thunder were working so diligently to conceal.

  The pitcher delivered his first pitch, and Furkhal swung hard . . . and missed.

  "Strike one!" the umpire announced, and Furkhal shook his head in obvious self-disgust. He stepped out of the box for a moment, clearly settling himself back down, then stepped back into it without even glancing at the Krakens' third-base coach for any fresh signs. He settled himself, and the pitcher came set and delivered his second pitch.

  At which point, Furkhal astounded every single person in the stadium by dropping an almost perfect drag-bunt onto the first-base line. It wasn't—quite—a suicide squeeze, but it was a high-risk move, even for someone with Furkhal's speed. Despite that, its very audacity took the defense completely by surprise. The fact that he'd swung away at the first pitch probably helped, but it was obviously a preplanned ploy, despite the lack of any sign from the third-base coach, because Smolth had broken for home at the exact same instant Furkhal squared around to bunt.

  The infield shift left the pitcher responsible for covering first, but he was left-handed, and his natural motion carried him towards the third-base side of the mound. It took him one critical instant to recover, charge over, and scoop up the ball. He was too late to tag Furkhal out, and by the time he whirled to throw home, Smolth had gotten just enough of a head start to beat the throw and score while the capacity crowd shouted, whistled, and stamped its feet in approval.

  There was an analogy there, Maysahn decided.

  He was only too well aware that he still didn't know everything the Charisians were up to. Most of what he did know was more disquieting than threatening. Unless Maysahn missed his bet, the new rigging design Sir Dustyn Olyvyr had come up with—this "schooner rig" of his—represented the most direct challenge anyone knew anything about. Maysahn rather doubted all of the fantastic tales about its efficiency and advantages could be accurate, but it was obvious those advantages were still substantial. They were bringing Olyvyr dozens of orders for new ships, the first of which which were already coming out of the yards to swell the ranks of the huge Charisian merchant marine. A merchant marine which was already far too big and had entirely too many advantages.

  On the other hand, the "secret" of how it worked could scarcely be maintained for long, not if it was going to be used where anyone else could see it, anyway. And the same thing was true of Rahzhyr Mahklyn's new way of counting. Indeed, Maysahn had already personally acquired one of Mahklyn's "abacuses" and dispatched it to Corisande. He and Makferzahn were also following up the rumors of still more innovations among Charis' textile producers, and he expected to be able to deliver a preliminary report on them, as well, within the next few five-days.

  A part of him was tempted to decide all of that meant he was getting back on top of the situation, but somewhere deep inside, a small, nagging voice warned that he wasn't. That what he knew about—what the rest of the world had been allowed to see—was only a part. A deliberate screen thrown up in an effort to convince everyone else to concentrate on the clearly visible part of the iceberg, the same way Furkhal's first swing had distracted everyone from the possibility of a bunt.

  And I wonder, Maysahn thought, if all of these fathers of innovation are really responsible for their "own" work?

  It was a question he'd pondered more than once. All the evidence suggested that Mahklyn, Olyvyr, and Raiyan Mychail truly had come up with their spate of new ideas all on their own. The fact that Haarahld's college had brought them all together, where their ideas could strike sparks off of one another, really could explain how so many new concepts had flowered in such a short period of time. But Maysahn couldn't quite shake the suspicion that Merlin Athrawes' abrupt arrival in Tellesberg had had more than a little to do with it, too, and that was what made him so nervous.

  Don't borrow trouble, Zhaspahr, he told himself firmly. Even if there's any truth to the story that the man really is a seijin, it doesn't make him some sort of all-around superhuman! If he was truly behind all of this, they'd have done something better with him than making him a lieutenant in the Royal Guard, for Langhorne's sake! Instead of worrying about him, why don't you worry about what the rest of the world hasn't been allowed to see yet? If they're so willing to tell us about the things we do know about, just what might they be hiding behind the things they've made public knowledge?

  He didn't know the answers to those questions, but he did know Wave Thunder and High Admiral Lock Island had strengthened the already tight security they maintained at Helen and Sand Shoal Islands. Since Kahlvyn Ahrmahk's death, security at Hairatha had also been stepped up significantly. All of that could be readily enough explained as a routine precaution after the attempt to assassinate Cayleb and the discovery that someone as highly placed as the Duke of Tirian had been in league with the kingdom's enemies. But it also just happened to provide a screen behind which almost anything might have been going on, and Zhaspahr Mhulvayn didn't like that.

  No, he didn't like that at all.

  APRIL, YEAR OF GOD 891

  I

  Off the Trhumahn Bank,

  South Howell Bay

  "Signal from the flagship, Sir!"

  The Earl of Gray Harbor turned from his place at the quarterdeck rail as the shout floated down from the senior of the two midshipmen perched in the mizzentop. He folded his hands behind him, adjusting to the easy movement of the deck with the remembered reflexes of twenty-plus years at sea, and watched HMS Typhoon's captain look up at the teenaged midshipman who'd announced the signal.

  That young man had his eyes glued to the flagship. The noises of a ship at sea—wind humming through the rigging, the rhythmic surge of water past the hull, the creak of timbers and masts, the high-pitched cries and whistles of seabirds and wyverns following in Typhoon's wake—flowed around Gray Harbor while he watched the senior middy straining to read off the signal flags streaming from HMS Gale's mi
zzen yard. The other youngster sat with his back against the mast, holding the outsized book in his lap firmly against the insistent wind while he waited to turn its pages.

  "Well, Master Mahgentee?" Captain Stywyrt prompted, glowering up at the mizzentop as the seconds trickled past.

  "I can't quite make out the hoist, Sir, and—" Midshipman Mahgentee began, then broke off. "I've got it now, Sir! Numbers Nine and Thirty-Seven—form line of battle on the port tack, Sir!"

  "Very good, Master Mahgentee," Captain Dahryl Stywyrt said, and looked at yet another midshipman, this one standing expectantly on the quarterdeck with him.

  "Hoist the acknowledgment, Master Aymez," the captain said. "Lively, now!"

  "Aye, aye, Sir!" Midshipman Aymez responded, and began barking orders to the seamen of his detail.

  Gray Harbor watched without any temptation to smile, despite the fact that Aymez's thirteen-year-old voice had yet to break and that the youngest of the seamen under his command had to be twice his own age. The earl had once stood in Aymez's shoes, and the youngster clearly knew what he was about.

  Balls of brightly colored bunting spilled out of the flag bags, and four of them were bent on to the signal halyards in the proper sequence. Aymez watched carefully, making certain of that, then gave a final order, and the flags rose swiftly. The topmost flag reached the yardarm, and a quick jerk broke them to the wind. They streamed out, duplicating the signal at Gale's yardarm, simultaneously indicating receipt of the flagship's signal and repeating it to show it had been properly read.

  Mahgentee had never taken his eyes off the flagship. A few more moments passed, and then, as Gale's signal officer hauled down the original hoist, he shouted down to the quarterdeck once again.

  "Execute, Sir!"

  "Very well, Master Ahlbair," the captain said to his first officer. "Lay the ship on the port tack, if you please."

  "Aye, aye, Sir!" Lieutenant Ahlbair replied, and lifted his leather speaking trumpet to his lips. "Hands to sheets and braces!" he barked.

  Gray Harbor watched Stywyrt's well-drilled crew as petty officers bellowed and seamen scampered to their stations. The evolution was more complicated than it had been aboard Gray Harbor's own final command, but Typhoon was a galleon, not a galley. At a hundred and twenty feet, she was thirty feet shorter than a typical galley, and she was also both beamier and taller, which made her look undeniably stubby. And she had three masts, compared to a typical galley's single one, of course, but some additional changes had been made, as well.

  The most immediately apparent change—and the one which, Gray Harbor had discovered, had actually most offended his view of the way ships were supposed to look—was the disappearance of the towering forecastle and aftercastle. Those castles had provided the advantage of height both for defense against boarders and for pouring fire from matchlocks, crossbows, and light cannon down onto the decks of an opponent. Their disappearance seemed . . . wrong, somehow. Which, he knew, was a foolish attitude. They were no longer needed, and he'd already noticed how much more weatherly Typhoon had become without their wind resistance helping to push her to leeward. Besides, their removal had been an important part of Merlin's and Olyvyr's efforts to reduce top weight and displacement. But however he might feel about the way the castles had been cut down to the upper deck level, the alterations in her sail plan were actually a far more profound change.

  Her square-rigged spritsail had been replaced with three of Sir Dustyn Olyvyr's new "jibs"—triangular staysails set "fore-and-aft" on the forward-leading stays supporting the foremast, and the mizzenmast's lateen sail had been replaced by a "spanker," a gaff-rigged fore-and-aft sail, with its foot spread by a heavy boom. They looked decidedly . . . odd to Gray Harbor's eye, but he had no intention of complaining. Nothing was likely to change the fact that square-rigged vessels always had been (and would remain) clumsy and awkward to maneuver. The improvement the new headsails and spanker made possible, however, had to be seen to be believed.

  It wasn't enough to match the nimbleness and weatherliness of the "schooners" Olyvyr was producing, of course, but Typhoon's jibs and spanker still gave her a huge maneuver advantage over more conventionally rigged ships. They were located well forward and aft of Typhoon's natural pivot point, which gave them far more leverage than their sail area alone might suggest, and they helped her sail far closer to the wind than any square-rigger had ever before managed. That meant she had a shorter distance to go across the eye of the wind when it came time to tack, and the headsails' and spanker's leverage imparted a powerful turning moment as she began her turn, as well. The combination brought the vessel through the maneuver much more quickly and reliably. It was still easy for an unwary skipper to be caught aback and end up in irons, head-on to the wind and drifting to leeward, but it had become less easy, and the new sail plan helped a vessel regain way much more quickly if it did happen.

  Personally, Gray Harbor knew, he would always be a galley captain at heart, but he was far too experienced not to grasp the enormous changes Lock Island, Seamount, and Merlin had wrought.

  Typhoon completed her maneuver, settling onto her new heading, and Gray Harbor stepped back to his position at the rail, admiring the precision with which Commodore Staynair maneuvered his squadron's vessels.

  In addition to all his other innovations, Merlin had radically overhauled the Navy's signal procedures, as well. The Royal Charisian Navy had evolved its own set of signals over the years, but they'd been restricted to fairly simple, straightforward messages. Hoisting a single red flag to the masthead, for example, as an order to engage the enemy. Adding the golden kraken on black of the Charisian ensign above it to order an attack on the enemy's van, or below it, to order an attack on his rear. Hoisting a black and yellow striped flag below the national flag as an order to "form line astern of me," or above it, as an order to form line abreast. There simply hadn't been a way to transmit more complicated orders . . . until Merlin stepped in, that was.

  Baron Seamount had been too deeply involved in producing the new, modified artillery to deal with the signals issue himself, so he'd delegated that particular responsibility to Sir Domynyk Staynair. Staynair, the younger brother of Bishop Maikel Staynair, had been handpicked by High Admiral Lock Island to command Seamount's "Experimental Squadron."

  He'd been chosen in part because his superiors' faith in his loyalty—and ability to protect the Navy's secrets—was absolute. But he'd also been chosen because of his raw ability. At thirty-seven, with over twenty-five years of seagoing experience, Staynair was young enough to remain flexible, yet more than experienced enough to help the seijin construct a comprehensive vocabulary of just under eight hundred standard commands. Those commands were listed in the signal book clasped so firmly by Midshipman Mahgentee's assistant in the top, and each of them had been assigned a numerical value.

  Using the new signal flags, based on Merlin's "arabic numerals," each of those commands, which dealt with the overwhelming majority of possible evolutions, could be transmitted using a simple hoist of no more than three flags. The simple inclusion of a plain black flag—already called the "stopper" by the signals parties—between numerical flags served as punctuation. By inserting it to indicate breaks between individual values, multiple commands—such as Staynair's order to form line, followed by the order to do so on the port tack—could be hoisted simultaneously.

  Staynair's vocabulary also contained a thousand of the words most commonly needed by seamen, each also represented by a single numerical hoist, to permit more complicated signals to be exchanged. And, if it should happen that a required word wasn't in the vocabulary, the letters of the alphabet had also been assigned flag values. Any word could be spelled out, although that was a laborious, time-consuming process.

  The result was a vast increase in tactical flexibility . . . before battle was joined, at least. The amount of gunsmoke even old-style naval battles produced was quite sufficient to reduce the utility of any visual signaling system to virtually
nothing once the actual shooting began. But any professional sea officer knew the ability to send quick, positive orders to the units of a squadron during the approach to battle was still a priceless advantage.

  "Excuse me, My Lord."

  Gray Harbor looked up, shaking himself out of his reverie, as a diffident young officer appeared beside him.

  "Yes, Lieutenant?"

  "Captain Stywyrt's respects, My Lord, but we're coming up on the target."

  "Ah, of course! Thank you, Lieutenant. And please thank the Captain for me, as well."

  "Of course, My Lord."

  The lieutenant touched his left shoulder with his right fist in salute, then returned to his duties while Gray Harbor carefully inserted the cotton Seamount had provided into his ears.