Off Armageddon Reef

by David Weber

  It wasn't Captain Braunyng's fault, nor was it the fault of the weather. Although the Markovian Sea could be as rough and treacherous as any body of water in the world, especially in the late spring and early summer, it had been kind to them for this voyage—so far, at least. The water was a deep, sparkling blue; the heavens were a crystalline vault of lighter blue, banded with billows of white cloud; and the sun shone with surprising warmth as the crisp northwest wind, just cool enough to bite, came whipping briskly in over Blessed Langhorne's starboard quarter.

  Unfortunately, Dynnys had rather more to worry about than the current weather.

  He'd left Home Port on Temple Bay aboard one of Vicar Allayn's dispatch galleys almost a full month before, as soon as the ice had sufficiently melted, and made a swift transit of Hsing-wu's Passage. The dispatch boats carried very large crews for their size so that they could change off rowers regularly and maintain a high rate of speed. But their shallow, lightly built hulls were poorly suited to open water, and the archbishop had transferred to the slower but more seaworthy galleon five days ago. Which meant he was only another five or six five-days from Tellesberg.

  Another thing those idiots like Cahnyr who think I should spend more time in Charis don't think about, he thought grumpily. Making my "one-month" pastoral visit uses up four months just in transit time! I spend half an entire year either in Tellesberg or traveling back and forth between it and the Temple.

  At least the semaphore chain along the shore of Hsing-wu's Passage had let him stay in touch with the Temple until he'd hit the open sea. But that was hardly the same thing as being able to attend personally to his archbishopric's business. Semaphore messages were, by their very nature, short and terse, and there was always the risk any cipher one used might be broken by someone who wished one ill.

  He was fairly confident he could rely upon Mahtaio Broun to interpret even his briefest semaphore messages correctly, and to manage his affairs as well as anyone below the ranks of the episcopate could, yet he couldn't quite feel totally comfortable about it. He'd certainly trained the upper-priest carefully enough, and he had no doubts about Broun's intelligence or competence. But the Council's attitude towards Charis had grown even more suspicious and hostile over the winter, and if the Group of Four decided it was necessary to take action against Charis, Dynnys' own position in the Temple hierarchy would be severely damaged, at the very least. Broun was as aware of that as anyone, which meant any of Dynnys' rivals might scent an opportunity to entice his aide into betraying him.

  All of which helped to explain his unhappy mood, despite the stiff, invigorating breeze and fresh sea air, as he leaned on his silver-headed ironwood cane.

  "I trust lunch was satisfactory, Your Eminence?" Braunyng continued, and Dynnys hid an unwilling smile. The captain seemed . . . uncomfortable. Obviously, he'd realized Dynnys was feeling less than cheerful, yet he had no choice but to offer at least some small talk. The captain of a Temple galleon couldn't very well simply ignore an archbishop who arrived on his poop deck for a post-luncheon constitutional.

  "Your cook manages surprisingly well, actually, Captain," Dynnys said, taking pity on the man. "I have to confess that I'd never make a good sailor, though. I miss fresh vegetables too badly for that!"

  "I appreciate the compliment, Your Eminence, and I'll pass it along to the cook, with your permission. As for fresh vegetables"—Braunyng shrugged with a smile—"I can only agree with you heartily. In fact, the first thing I do whenever I return to Port Harbor is to take my wife to one of our favorite restaurants and sit down to the biggest, freshest salad I can find."

  "Please, Captain!" Dynnys half-laughed. "Don't get me started on missing fresh lettuce!"

  "Forgive me, Your Eminence." Braunyng inclined his head in a half-bow, clearly relieved by the genuine humor in the archbishop's response. Then he straightened, and his expression was rather more serious.

  "Still, Your Eminence, as boring as our diet may be at sea, at least it keeps us healthy, thank Pasquale." He touched his heart and then his lips, and Dynnys repeated the gesture. "I hate to think what my men's state would be without Pasquale's teachings."

  "I certainly agree with you there, Captain," Dynnys said with complete sincerity. The Archangel Pasquale's dietary laws were particularly ironclad for those—like men who spent five-days on end at sea—who lacked ready access to fresh provisions. On the occasions when those laws had been inadvertently or unavoidably broken, the consequences had been . . . ugly.

  Dynnys recalled one instance from not too many years ago when a Dohlaran galleon had been all but dismasted by a terrible storm which had blown her far into the trackless depths of the Southern Ocean. Her surviving crew had managed to contrive a jury rig and had somehow found their way home once more, but her speed had been slowed to an agonizing crawl, and most of her provisions had been lost or ruined by the storm. By the time she'd finally managed to crawl into port on Westbreak Island, two-thirds of her crew had been dead of scurvy, for they'd been unable to keep Pasquale's laws and, as always happened, disease had followed quickly.

  At least the unfortunates in her crew had still had water. They'd managed to catch some of the torrential rain in funnels made of old sails in order to refill their water tanks, and whatever might have happened to their provisions, those tanks had been intact, thank Pasquale!

  Dynnys remembered a classroom experience from his own youth. Regardless of the order for which a churchman was destined, he was expected to be at least generally familiar with the basic teachings of the other orders. That particular day, an upper-priest of the Order of Pasquale had demonstrated why Pasquale required ships to store their water in iron tanks rather than wooden casks. The casks would have been far cheaper, but one look at the slimy green algae which had turned the water in the demonstration cask into a thick, stinking semi-sludge had been more than enough to make the point to young Erayk. Shipboard water might sometimes taste a little rusty, but he was perfectly prepared to put up with that. Just as he was prepared to dutifully consume his daily ration of lemon juice, or eat his bean sprouts.

  Of course, an archbishop had rather more dietary options than a common seaman. The fresh eggs from the chicken coop on the main deck were reserved first for Dynnys and his clerical staff, and then for Blessed Langhorne's officers. The petty officers and common seamen wouldn't taste eggs—or chicken—before they made land once more. And there were still five sheep in the pen beside the chicken coop, as well.

  "What's your best estimate for our arrival in Tellesberg, Captain?" Dynnys asked after a moment.

  "We're actually making better time than usual, Your Eminence," Braunyng said. "This time of year, the wind's mostly out of the northwest, like today, which puts us on our best point of sailing. It won't be quite as favorable once we pass Hammer Island and get out into the Anvil, but it should still be more with us than against us. One of those new 'schooners' I've been hearing about could make the passage more quickly, I'm sure, but by the Master's best reckoning, we're only about twenty-four days out of Tellesberg."

  Dynnys suppressed a grimace, his mood darkening once again at Braunyng's reference to the new ship type. The captain was obviously blissfully unaware of the Church's reservations about Charisian innovation, or he would have watched his words much more carefully with Charis' archbishop.

  Still, Dynnys reflected, perhaps it's as well he didn't. He's a professional seaman, so maybe his reaction might provide a more realistic measure of the threat the Council sees coming out of Charis.

  "Have you actually seen one of these—'schooners,' did you call it?—yourself, Captain?"

  "Indeed I have, Your Eminence." Braunyng's eyes brightened, and he reached out to lay one hand on the poop-deck rail. "Mind you, I love Blessed Langhorne. She's a good, stout ship, and she's been good to me and given the Temple good service. But while I know the Writ teaches envy is a sin, I'm only mortal. When I saw that schooner standing so much closer into the wind than any ship I've ever sailed in
could have done—!"

  He shook his head, smiling in memory.

  "Any seaman worth his salt would love to get his hands on a vessel like that, Your Eminence," he finished simply.

  Dynnys nodded slowly, smiling back at the captain even as he felt his own heart sink.

  The messages which had arrived from Ahdymsyn as steadily as the weather permitted had made it increasingly clear Charis was becoming even more of a hotbed of innovation and new concepts than initial reports had suggested. Dynnys' own sources in the Temple and in Zion strongly suggested that accounts from other sources—like Prince Nahrmahn and Prince Hektor—were deliberately and severely exaggerated, but he couldn't simply ignore Ahdymsyn's correspondence. And if Ahdymsyn was to be believed, then the "schooner" which so entranced Captain Braunyng was only the tip of the iceberg.

  "If you'll excuse me, Captain," he said courteously to Braunyng, "I believe I'd like to spend some time meditating while I walk off a little of that excellent luncheon your cook served us."

  "Of course, Your Eminence. I'll pass the word to see to it that you aren't disturbed."

  "Thank you, Captain. I appreciate that."

  The captain bowed once again, and withdrew, leaving the windward side of the narrow poop deck to the archbishop. Dynnys composed his expression into one of suitable gravity, adjusted the light cloak he wore over his cassock, and paced slowly up and down, up and down, with the dragging limp his broken leg had left as a permanent legacy, leaning on his cane against the roll of the ship.

  Twenty-four days, Braunyng estimated. The next best thing to five whole five-days. And who knew what was happening in Tellesberg—or the Temple—while Blessed Langhorne inched across the thousands of miles between Haven and Charis?

  He remembered the meeting in which he'd steered the ecclesiastical court into settling the dispute over the Hanth succession in favor of Tahdayo Mahntayl. The proposition had seemed so simple then. Simply a routine matter, a decision rendered in return for a generous personal gift. But that decision loomed much larger now. Then, it had been no more than one more step in the well understood dance of Temple insiders. Now it was clear to Dynnys his archbishopric's future was far more fragile than he'd ever thought before, and that his own action, however innocuous and routine it had seemed at the time, had served the interests of the men who wanted to see that archbishopric's wealth and power broken forever.

  He thought back to his winter conversation with Vicar Zahmsyn. The Chancellor's concern had been evident, yet the Vicar's reassurances that no decision about Charis was imminent had calmed the worst of Dynnys' worries. But that calm had been seriously undermined as spring crept steadily closer and the ice in Hsing-wu's Passage had begun to melt. And Dynnys' final interview with Trynair before his departure for Tellesberg had been anything but reassuring. Not because of what the Vicar had said, but because of what he hadn't said.

  There was no question in Dynnys' mind that the Chancellor—probably the entire Group of Four—were taking their own steps to deal with any threat arising from Charis. But none of his sources had been able to tell him just what sort of "steps" they might have in mind, and Trynair's failure to tell him anything at all about the Group of Four's plans took on ominous overtones.

  He paused for a moment, staring out to sea, eyes unseeing. Try as he might, he could think of only two things which might stave off the storm which loomed steadily closer.

  One was to demonstrate his own firm control by taking decisive action. If the more worrisome of the new innovations could be ruled violations of the Proscriptions—or even if they could be ruled simply to approach violations—and he ordered their attestations revoked, it might convince the Group of Four he could control the situation without their intervention. It was by no means certain it would have that effect, but it might.

  Failing that, the only option he saw was to convince them their dire interpretation of events in Charis was in error. If they could be brought to the conclusion that they'd overreacted, that the reports from places like Emerald and Corisande had, in fact, been grossly exaggerated, then they might well step back from taking active steps against the kingdom. At the very least, they were certainly aware of how much Charis' tithes contributed to the Church's coffers every year. Surely they'd hesitate to destroy that revenue stream unless they felt they absolutely must!

  He hoped they would, at least, because if the Church, or even "just" the Council of Vicars acting in its secular role, decided Charis must be destroyed, Charis would perish. And if Charis perished, the career of the archbishop who'd been responsible for its orthodoxy would come to a sudden, shattering stop. Erayk Dynnys would lose his archbishopric, the wealth it represented, and at least two-thirds of his power and prestige, and he'd suddenly discovered that beside that, the bribe he'd pocketed from Hektor was meaningless.

  How can they do this to me? his mind demanded harshly. For years, I've been their archbishop, looked after them, protected them from the Inquisition and those on the Council who are automatically suspicious of any change. And how do they repay me? By embracing all of these damnable new notions of theirs! By walking straight into the dragon's lair—and taking me with them—because they're too stupid to see what they're doing!

  He gazed out over the rolling blue water of the Markovian Sea, and deep inside his heart railed at the unfairness of a world in which God permitted this to happen to him.

  III

  Royal Palace,

  City of Gorath,

  Kingdom of Dohlar

  "Now, Father Ahlbyrt," Samyl Cahkrayn, the Duke of Fern, said to Ahlbyrt Harys as the palace footman showed the young priest into his private office in the Royal Palace. "What can I do for you today?"

  "First, Your Grace, let me thank you for agreeing to see me," Harys said. "I know how busy you are as the Kingdom's First Councillor, and I, alas, am only an under-priest." He smiled charmingly. "Believe me, I'm only too well aware of what a small fish that makes me!"

  "Nonsense, Father!" Fern smiled back at him, considerably more broadly. "You serve the Council of Vicars. Indeed, your letters of introduction are signed by the Chancellor himself. That makes you a rather larger fish than you may believe it does."

  "That's kind of you, at any rate, Your Grace," Harys replied. In fact, as both of them understood perfectly well, it made him a very big fish indeed. But both of them knew how the game was played, and so both of them were also aware that his junior status allowed him to be an unofficial big fish. The one difference between them was that Harys knew why that was important.

  "The Chancellor's letter implied you were here to discuss some diplomatic matter, Father?"

  "Actually, Your Grace, it might be more accurate to say I'm here in an advisory capacity. Vicar Zahmsyn is rather concerned about certain developments—not here in Dohlar, of course—which could have . . . unfortunate implications for God's Plan, and my instructions are to share his concerns with you."

  Fern had been listening with a grave smile. That smile disappeared with Harys' last few words, and he straightened a bit abruptly in his chair.

  "That sounds ominous, Father," the duke said after a moment into the small silence Harys had allowed to fall, and his tone was cautious.

  "It's always possible the Chancellor's concerns are misplaced," Harys said with precisely metered reassurance. "And, of course, I myself am not so experienced as he in matters such as this. It's possible my understanding of those concerns is less than perfect. I may be overreacting to what he said to me when he briefed me for this journey."

  "That's always understood, of course," Fern murmured, but his sharp eyes told Harys he knew better. That he perfectly understood the diplomatic camouflage of the priest's last two sentences, even if he didn't yet know the reason for it.

  "Well, having said that," Harys continued, "I'm afraid there are persistent reports of disquieting changes and initiatives coming out of Charis. At this stage, there's no concrete evidence any of the Proscriptions have been violated, of course
. If there were, Mother Church and the Inquisition would already have acted. However, there's a growing level of concern, let us say, that the Proscriptions are being more and more closely approached."

  "I see," Fern said, although it was clear to Harys he didn't—not yet, at least.

  "Mother Church cannot take action based upon mere suspicion," the under-priest continued. "That, as I know you're aware, is a fundamental principle which was established long ago. But what's binding upon Mother Church in a corporate and temporal sense, as the anointed guardian of God's Plan, is less restrictive when the Church's servants discover they must act in a more secular role."

  Fern nodded silently, this time in genuine comprehension.

  "In a sense," Harys said, just to make sure they truly did understand one another, "I'm here not in the service of Vicar Zahmsyn or the Chancellor of the Council of Vicars so much as in the service of the Knights of the Temple Lands as they seek to discharge their responsibility for the secular administration of the Temple Lands. Of course, the Knights also sit upon the Council of Vicars, so there must be a certain commonality between their responsibilities as rulers in this world and the Church's temporal responsibility for men's souls in the next. Still, that which is binding upon Mother Church must not be lightly set aside by any of her servants, whether they act in the secular or the temporal role."