Off Armageddon Reef

by David Weber

  Black Water grimaced. He'd always known Charisians were irritatingly innovative. After all, that was a big part of what the Grand Inquisitor had against the kingdom. But from even his present grasp of Myrgyn's explanation, which he knew was imperfect at this point, he began to understand how eight galleys had done so much damage before they were driven off.

  No, he told himself harshly. Not "driven off"; the other five voluntarily disengaged after they'd done what they came to do.

  "That's all very interesting, Kehvyn. I mean that, and I'd appreciate it if you could sketch some of the things you're talking about for me, so I could look at them over lunch. But for right now, what do we know about the rest of Haarahld's ships?"

  "About what you'd surmised at sunup, Your Grace," Myrgyn replied, and it was his turn to grimace. "You were right. It was a diversion, and while we were all looking east, Haarahld slipped back past us to the west. His main body's about twenty miles south of our main body and opening the range, slowly but steadily, with these wind conditions."

  "Shan-wei seize the man," Black Water said, far more mildly than he felt, and shook his head in grudging admiration. "Now we'll have to chase him all the way to Darcos Island all over again."

  "Do we really want to do that, Your Grace?" Myrgyn asked diffidently, and Black Water looked at him sharply. "What I mean, Your Grace, is that as you yourself pointed out when we began pursuing them, if they're expecting Cayleb to return from the south, and if they've managed to make us spend this long chasing them, we may not be able to catch up again before he gets here."

  "Or before Duke Malikai gets here," Black Water said. "He's supposed to be coming from the same direction, if you recall."

  "With all due respect, Your Grace, Duke Malikai is already the better part of a month overdue. He may still be coming, but if they've managed to put as many guns like the ones I was just examining aboard their galleons as our spies had reported, and if they actually managed to intercept Malikai, then the Duke's taken significant losses. Those galleys—" He waved at the two prize ships. "—only have six guns in each broadside. According to our spies, their galleons have as many as twenty."

  "I know."

  For a moment, Black Water's expression showed a bleakness he would not have permitted anyone else to see. Then he drew a deep breath and shook himself.

  "I know," he repeated. "But we did manage to take or sink a third of their galleys last night, and Cayleb would have been outnumbered by Duke Malikai by an even greater margin than they were outnumbered by the column they attacked. You're probably right about what galleons with that much firepower could do, but surely they would have suffered losses of their own, and they didn't have that many galleons to begin with."

  "With all due respect, Your Grace, I certainly hope you're right about that," Myrgyn said with a wry smile.

  "So do I," Black Water admitted. "Still, whatever their galleons look like, they can't have these new guns of theirs widely distributed through their galleys. If they did, they'd have sent more of them along last night. For that matter, if all their galleys had them, they wouldn't have bothered to run away from us in the first place!"

  He snorted with bleak humor and glowered at the prizes, then shook his head.

  "I expect they concentrated on putting all the new guns they had aboard the galleons," he said. "Which should mean that if we can ever get to grips with that slippery bastard Haarahld, we should still be able to crush him. And if they do have galleons headed back this way from the Parker Sea, we'd better deal with Haarahld before they get here."

  "To be honest, Your Grace," Myrgyn said slowly, his expression troubled, "I'm not at all sure the galley hasn't just become thoroughly out-of-date."

  "I think you're probably right about that," Black Water said grimly. "And the bad news is that we don't have any galleons of our own. But the good news is that the Charisians don't have a lot of them, and we can start building them from an almost even footing, now that we've figured out how they're mounting their guns."

  "Exactly, Your Grace." The flag captain nodded. "And what I'm wondering, if that's true, is whether or not there's any point in engaging Haarahld."

  Black Water looked at him sharply, and Myrgyn shrugged.

  "Even if we completely destroy Haarahld's fleet, we'll only be capturing—or sinking—ships nobody's going to want in another year or two," Myrgyn pointed out.

  "Oh. I see what you're thinking now," Black Water said, but he also shook his head.

  "I see two reasons to go ahead and smash Haarahld," he said. "First of all, we don't know what's happened to Cayleb. He may have been badly defeated by Malikai and White Ford, despite all our present doom and gloom. Even if he won, he's probably taken losses—quite possibly enough losses that even with all the wonderful new guns he could put aboard his remaining ships, we could still beat him.

  "But, second, even if Cayleb is coming back with a fleet we can't possibly face in battle—at least until we've built ourselves a fleet just like it—we still need to destroy this fleet. Their king's aboard one of those galleys, Kehvyn. If we kill him, or even better, capture him, the consequences will be enormous. And even if we fail to do that, those ships have got thousands of trained officers and seamen aboard them. Those are the men they'll use to crew any more galleons they might build. We need to kill as many of them as we can now, while our ships are still equal to theirs, to deprive them of all that experienced manpower."

  Myrgyn looked at him for several seconds, then nodded slowly with an expression of profound respect.

  "I wasn't thinking that far ahead, Your Grace. Perhaps," he smiled thinly, "that's why you're an admiral, and I'm not."

  "Well," Black Water said with an answering, somewhat crooked, smile, "one of the reasons, anyway. Perhaps."

  "Of course, there's still the little problem of what happens if Cayleb turns up at an inopportune moment, Your Grace," Myrgyn pointed out.

  "We've got picket ships out to the north," Black Water countered, "and Haarahld is south of us. If Cayleb turns up from the south, then we turn around and run north. And while I realize these new rigging ideas of theirs make their galleons more weatherly, I strongly doubt that they can sail straight into the wind the way we can row."

  "And if we're wrong, and he turns up from the north, Your Grace?"

  "Then our pickets will tell us he's there long before Haarahld can know anything about it," Black Water replied. "In that case, we make straight for Silver Strait and run for it. We'll probably have enough forewarning to get around Haarahld before he realizes what's happening, if we stop chasing him and just concentrate on running. And if Haarahld does get in our way—" The duke shrugged. "—we cut our way through him and inflict all the damage we can in the process."

  X

  Darcos Sound

  "You hardly touched your supper," Lachlyn Zhessyp observed.

  King Haarahld turned from his contemplation of the stern windows at his valet's complaint.

  "Was there something wrong with it, Your Majesty?" Zhessyp inquired with a certain hurt dignity as he gathered up the dishes on his tray, and Haarahld shook his head with a smile.

  "No, there wasn't anything wrong with it," he said patiently, ignoring the grin on Sergeant Haarpar's face as the guardsman watched from the great cabin door he'd opened for Zhessyp. "And, no, I have no complaints for the cook. And, no, I'm not ill. And, no, you can't bring me a snack later tonight."

  Zhessyp regarded him with the mournful, martyred eyes only the most loyal and trusted of retainers could produce, and the king sighed.

  "But," he said, "I promise to eat a simply enormous breakfast. There. Are you satisfied now?"

  "I'm sure," Zhessyp said with enormous dignity, "that it's not my place to be extracting promises from you, Your Majesty."

  He picked up his tray, elevated his nose ever so slightly, and left the cabin. Haarpar held the door for him, and his grin got even bigger as the departing valet stepped past him.

  "You know, Gor
j," the king said dryly, "the frightening thing is that he really thinks he means that."

  "Aye, Your Majesty, he does," the guardsman agreed. "Still and all, down inside somewhere, he knows better."

  "Yes, he does." Haarahld smiled fondly, then shook his head. "Goodnight, Gorj."

  "Goodnight, Your Majesty." The guardsman touched his left shoulder in salute, then shut the door.

  Haarahld gazed at the closed door for the better part of a minute, then rose, his smile fading, and stepped out onto Royal Charis' sternwalk.

  He gazed up at the sky, where the fingernail paring of a new moon gleamed faintly in the east. The musical bubble of the galley's wake came to him from below, coupled with the rhythmic sound of water sluicing along the sides of his flagship's hull. Stars burned brightly high overhead, and the following wind had freshened slightly and veered a bit back towards the west.

  It was a beautiful night, if a little on the dark side, and he gazed astern at the running lights of the other ships in Royal Charis' column. The men aboard those galleys were every one of them obedient to his orders. And, he knew, they executed those orders willingly, by and large, trusting him to get it right. But beyond the running lights he could see were those of the fleet he couldn't see, yet which was once again creeping closer.

  Soon now, very soon, he was going to have to decide whether to fall back south of Darcos Island or try to break around Black Water's flank once more. He didn't want to go any farther south than he had to—if nothing else, there wasn't another base as good as Darcos Keep once he got down into the Middle Sea. But Black Water was staying close to his heels, and the chances of his bamboozling someone as shrewd as the Corisandian duke got slimmer each time he had to make the attempt.

  That's not what's really worrying you, though, he told himself, gazing out at the night. What's worrying you is that according to Cayleb's and Merlin's estimate, and even allowing for how much further south we are right now, they should have made contact with Black Water's picket ships no later than day before yesterday.

  He smiled without a great deal of humor and braced his forearms on the sternwalk railing as he leaned over it to take some of the weight off of his right knee.

  He was certain the rest of the fleet must be beginning to wonder exactly what he had in mind with all this bobbing and weaving about the Charis Sea and Darcos Sound. He would have liked to have been able to tell them, too. But just exactly how was he supposed to inform even his most trusted officers that he'd decided to base his strategy—and, for that matter, his hope for the very survival of his entire kingdom, the lives of all their families, and very possibly their immortal souls—on the services of what might well turn out to be a demon?

  He laughed softly, shaking his head, remembering Merlin's expression on this very sternwalk. Whatever else Merlin might be, he was clearly no omniscient being. In fact, that was one of the reasons Haarahld had decided to trust him, although he'd never told the seijin—or whatever he truly was—that.

  Merlin could be surprised. Which undoubtedly meant he could also make mistakes. But what Merlin could not do was to conceal what he felt. Perhaps the seijin didn't realize that. Or perhaps it was only his friends from whom he couldn't hide. But Haarahld had long since realized Merlin was a deeply lonely man. One who'd been hurt, but refused to surrender to the pain. And whatever his origins, whatever his powers, he truly was committed to the purpose he'd explained to Haarahld in their very first interview.

  I realize it's possible he really is a demon, God, Haarahld Ahrmahk thought, gazing up at the clean, untouched beauty of the glittering handiwork of the deity he worshiped. If he is, and if I shouldn't have listened to him, then I apologize, and I ask for Your forgiveness. But I don't think he is. And if he isn't, then perhaps You truly did send him, whatever he is. He's not very much like what I always expected an archangel to be like, either, of course. The king smiled wryly in the darkness. On the other hand, I suppose You could send whoever You wanted to to teach those corrupt bastards in the Temple the error of their ways. If it's Your will that I live to see that happen, I'll die a happy man. And if it isn't, then I suppose there are worse causes a man could die serving.

  It wasn't the sort of prayer of which the Council of Vicars would have approved, and not just because of the content. But that was just fine with King Haarahld VII of Charis.

  It was odd, he reflected. Despite his concern for Cayleb's tardiness, despite the fact that the Group of Four had decreed Charis' destruction, despite even the fact that he fully realized that the defeat of this onslaught would only prompt the Group of Four to try again, with even stronger forces, he felt a deep sense of content. He was far from blind to the realities of what was about to happen. If Charis lost this war, the consequences for all Haarahld cared for and loved would be catastrophic. And even if Charis won this war, it would only be to face another, and another beyond that.

  Haarahld doubted he would live to see the end of the titanic conflict which he prayed nightly was only just beginning. But perhaps Cayleb would. Or Zhan and Zhanayt. Or his grandchildren. And at least he'd taken a stand. At least he'd provided for the possibility that those grandchildren he hadn't met yet would live in a world in which evil and venal men, hiding their avarice and corruption behind the face of God Himself, could not dictate their beliefs, exploit their faith in God for their own vile purposes.

  Poor Merlin, he thought. So afraid I'd see where his purposes must ultimately lead! I wonder if he's started to figure out that I've been in front of him almost all the way?

  It was probably time he sat down and discussed the entire subject openly and frankly with Merlin, he decided. There was no longer any point pretending, after all. And once they could stop wasting time on all this diplomatic indirection, they could probably—

  King Haarahld's thoughts broke off as the "pager" strapped to his forearm vibrated suddenly.

  * * *

  Prince Cayleb and Merlin leaned over the chart table. The prince's frown was intense as he gazed at the copper coins Merlin had used as map tokens.

  "So this is their main force over here," Cayleb said, tapping a roughly rectangular area of the chart delineated by the coins placed at each corner.

  "Yes." Merlin stood back, folding his forearms and gazing at the prince's intent expression.

  Despite the tension of the moment, Merlin felt a temptation to smile at Cayleb's almost absent tone. The prince's frustration as adverse winds delayed their passage had been palpable to all around him. Now that same frustration had transmuted itself into something else, and he was so focused on the task at hand that it clearly no longer even occurred to him to worry about where—and how—Merlin got his information. Just as he hadn't worried about how Merlin had just finished informing King Haarahld of their arrival.

  "And these," Cayleb's hand swept over the arc of smaller coins scattered to the north of Duke Black Water's main fleet, "are his picket ships."

  "Yes," Merlin said again, and the prince straightened, still frowning.

  "If these positions are accurate, he's let his pickets get too far astern," he said. "And too far from one another, as well."

  "True," Merlin agreed. "On the other hand, it's a clear night. Any cannon fire's going to be visible for a long way."

  "Granted. But," Cayleb looked up with an evil smile, "there doesn't necessarily have to be any cannon fire, does there?"

  "What do you have in mind?" Merlin asked.

  "Well," Cayleb crossed his own arms and straightened up, settling back on his heels, "he's using light units. For all intents and purposes, they're basically no more than dispatch boats. At most, they've got a few wolves."

  Merlin nodded. "Wolf" was a generic term for any Safeholdian naval gun with a bore of two inches or less. Such small pieces, like the ones in Dreadnought's fighting tops, were intended almost entirely as antipersonnel weapons—essentially, enormous single-shot shotguns—although they could also be used effectively against boats and launches.

 
"I'm thinking," Cayleb continued, "that if this picket here—" He unfolded his right arm to reach out and tap one of the coins with his forefinger. "—were to suffer a mischief sometime around Langhorne's Watch, it would leave a gap between these two." He tapped two more coins. "Not only that, but I'm betting it's the relay ship for both of them, so even if they did see us, they couldn't report it to Black Water. Which means we could get the main fleet to within ten miles of his main body, maybe even less, between moonset and dawn."

  Merlin considered the chart, then nodded slowly.

  "And just how do you intend to arrange for it to suffer that mischief?" he asked politely.

  "I'm glad you asked that," Cayleb said with a toothy smile.

  * * *

  I've really got to talk to this boy about appropriate risks for fleet commanders to run, Merlin told himself three hours later, standing on the afterdeck of the schooner Seagull.