At the Sign of Triumph (Safehold)

.VI.

HMS Eraystor, 22,

Wind Gulf Sea.

There was no dawn.

Somewhere above the solid cliffs of lightning-shot cloud the sun had no doubt heaved itself back into the heavens. Below those cliffs, the midnight gloom simply grew marginally less dark and visibility increased to a slightly greater circle of wind-driven, tortured white. It was possible to see the oncoming wave crests loom up above the solid, seething surface of blown spray at least a little sooner, even without the stuttering flash of Langhorne’s rakurai, but the jarring, bone-shaking impact as each furious mountain of water slammed home was no less vicious. Belowdecks, the stench from backed up heads and the vomit of desperately seasick men was enough to turn a statue’s stomach, and green-gray water roared along the decks, seeking voraciously for any loose gear, clawing at the heavy gaskets of Corisandian rubber that sealed the casemates’ gun shields. Some of that water spurted past the gaskets, spraying inboard in fans of icy brine and then sluicing along the decks until it found its way into the bilges where the humming pumps could send it back overside.

HMS Eraystor drove onward, climbing each thirty-foot wave in turn, lifting her sharply raked stem towards the heavens while water thundered green and white and angry across her foredeck, charged headlong down her narrow, gangway-like side decks, flowed in solid, angry sheets across her quarterdeck. Higher and higher she climbed, spray cascading from her flared bows like some demented waterfall until she reached the crest and her forefoot thrust free of the water. Then her bow came down once more in a fresh explosion of spray, landing like the hammer of Kau-yung, and she went charging down into the valley, while the smoke pouring from her single funnel vanished almost before it could be seen, torn apart by the sixty-mile-an-hour wind that screamed around her upper works like some lost demon, seeking its way home to Shan-wei.

“Thank God we didn’t wait for the colliers, Sir!”

Dahnel Bahnyface, Eraystor’s third lieutenant, didn’t—quite—have to shout in Zhaikyb Gregori’s ear, but it was a near thing even in the shelter of the ironclad’s conning tower. On the open bridge, conversation would have been flatly impossible.

“I hope they’re well clear of this,” Gregori agreed.

Bahnyface had been a little surprised to see the first lieutenant in the conning tower when he climbed up the ladder from below. Vyktyr Audhaimyr, Eraystor’s second lieutenant, had the watch for another—Bahnyface checked the bulkhead chronometer—seven glorious minutes, and Gregori wasn’t the sort of worrier who typically checked up on his watch standers as if he didn’t trust them.

On the other hand, this wasn’t exactly typical weather.

At five-eleven, Gregori was tall for a native Old Charisian, and he was forced to bend slightly to peer through one of the conning tower vision slits. In calm conditions, that slot was forty feet above the ship’s waterline; in the current conditions, a constant spatter of spray blew in through it on the fringe of the howling wind. Now he straightened, wiped his face, and shook his head, his expression grim.

“With any luck, they saw this coming in time to take shelter in Shepherd Bay,” he said. “Just pray to God they weren’t trying to round Hill Island when it hit!”

Bahnyface nodded soberly. Of course, while he was praying for the coal-laden galleons following in the squadron’s wake, he might just have a word or two with the Archangels on Eraystor’s behalf, as well. Langhorne knew the four-thousand-ton ironclad was incomparably more survivable than the original jury-rigged Delthak-class or the shallow-draft riverine ironclads which had followed them. She’d been designed for blue water—or to survive crossing it between bombardment missions, at least—with a raised forecastle and a gracefully flared bow. At right on three hundred feet in length, her hull was an immensely strong iron and steel box, and the great, throbbing engines at the heart of her made her independent of any galleon’s canvas.

Of course, if anything were to happen to those engines or the whirling screws they drove.…

Don’t even go there, Dahnel, he told himself firmly as he settled the hammer-islander on his head and tied the strings tightly under his chin.

The waterproof headgear would be little enough protection, but its back flap might at least keep solid sheets of water from running down his neck. Like many professional seamen, Bahnyface favored the stiffened version made of heavily tarred canvas, although others preferred the softer oilskin version. Personally, he wanted as much protection against the force of the spray coming at him as he could get, although he had to admit the stiffer versions tended to catch the wind better. He’d had half a dozen of them blown away over the course of his career, no matter how tightly he tied their laces.

And if there’d ever been a wind suitable to blow away hats, this was it, he reflected glumly. He didn’t normally envy Anthynee Tahlyvyr, Eraystor’s chief engineer. He didn’t really understand Tahlyvyr’s fascination with steam and coal and oil, and the noisy, vibrating clangor of an engine room under full power—with pistons, crankshafts, and Langhorne only knew what else whirring and driving in every conceivable direction while oilers squirted lubrication at all the madly spinning bits and pieces—struck him as a near approximation of hell. Nor did he envy the sweating, swearing stokers feeding the voracious furnaces, especially in weather like this, when just staying on one’s feet, much less avoiding serious injury while heaping shovels of coal into a roaring firebox, became a serious challenge.

Today, he’d have changed places with Tahlyvyr in a heartbeat, however. Failing that, he would really have preferred to stand his watch from inside the conning tower. Unfortunately, visibility was far too limited from in here. Even more unfortunately, while the bridge lookouts would be rotated into the conning tower’s protection every half hour or so, the officer of the watch—who would very shortly be named Dahnel Bahnyface—had no one with whom to rotate. And about the best anyone’s oilskins could manage on a day like this was to limit the influx of fresh, cold seawater. The water already inside his foul-weather gear would gradually warm to something more endurable if he could only avoid fresh infusions.

Not a chance in Shan-wei’s hell, he thought philosophically. Still, a man has to hope.

He finished fastening the hammer-islander and bent over the deck log, scanning it for any special notifications or instructions which might have been added. It was up-to-date, he noticed, checking the time chop on the duty quartermaster’s most recent entry. He took special note of the damage report about the scuttle which had been stove in amidships. He’d have to keep an eye on it and make sure the repairs were holding … although he rather suspected that if they gave way and a solid stream of ocean water seven inches in diameter came roaring through the opening someone in the vicinity was likely to notice even without his keeping a wyvern’s eye on it.

“Anything special I should keep in mind, Sir?” he asked, tapping the deck log and raising an eyebrow at the first lieutenant. Gregori shook his head.

“No. I just came up to take a look before the Captain and I sit down with the Admiral for breakfast.”

One of the telegraphsmen made a soft, involuntary gagging sound, and the first lieutenant chuckled.

“Trust me, Symmyns,” he said, “Eraystor’s like riding a kid’s pony beside what a regular galleon would be doing in seas like this!”

“Oh, I know that, Sir!” Zhak Symmyns was a Chisholmian, with a pronounced Harris Island accent, and his family had been fishermen for generations. “Reason I joined the Navy, though, was to get away from little boats.” He grimaced. “M’ stomach was never up t’ the fishing, really—no matter how many times m’ Da beat me for it. An’ Langhorne knows, he tried hard enough t’ beat it out of me!”

The other duty telegraphsman chuckled. Symmyns’ susceptibility to seasickness was well known throughout Eraystor’s company, and Bahnyface wasn’t at all surprised it was giving him problems in this. On the other hand, the fact that he and his messmates could joke about it probably said volumes about their estimate of Eraystor’s ability to survive conditions like these.

“Well, anyway,” Gregori said with the callousness of a man who enjoyed a cast-iron stomach as he clapped Symmyns on the shoulder, “I’m looking forward to a nice, greasy rasher of bacon, fried eggs sunny-side up, and a fresh pot of cherrybean to wash it down.”

The petty officer looked distinctly green around the gills, and the first lieutenant laughed again, then shook his head.

“All right, Symmyns! I’ll stop giving you a hard time. And in case you hadn’t heard, the cooks are serving as much hot, sweet oatmeal as you can hold for breakfast. Maybe you’ll be able to keep that down.”

“Sounds better nor eggs an’ bacon, an’ that’s a fact, Sir,” Symmyns said fervently.

“Just make sure you eat something,” Gregori said more sternly. “I know it’s not the easiest thing in weather like this, but you’ve been at sea long enough to know it’s as important to keep your belly filled as it is to keep a boiler stoked.”

“Aye, Sir.” Symmyns nodded, and Gregori glanced at Bahnyface.

“I’ll leave her in your hands, Dahnel. Besides,” he chuckled again, “I’m pretty sure Vyktyr’s counting the minutes out there on the bridge wing waiting for you.”

“I’m counting them, too, Sir. Just not with the same sort of enthusiasm.”

“Dahnel, if you were enthusiastic about going out there, I’d be sending you to the Bédardists, not the bridge. Trust me on that.”

He nodded and headed down the conning tower ladder. Using the exterior ladders to climb down the superstructure was … contraindicated in the current sea state.

Bahnyface watched him go, then drew a deep breath, nodded to the glum-faced lookouts waiting in their own foul-weather gear, and undogged the armored door to the starboard bridge wing.

The wind’s howl intensified abruptly as it tried to turn the heavy door into a hammer and the bulkhead into an anvil, but he managed to control it and stay un-crushed. Then he bent his head and shouldered forward, leaning into the teeth of the storm like a man leaning against a wall.

Vyktyr Audhaimyr looked just as soaked, cold, miserable—and delighted to see him—as Bahnyface had expected.

“Langhorne!” The second lieutenant had to lean forward, his mouth inches from Bahnyface’s ear. “Am I glad to see you!” he continued, as if he’d read Bahnyface’s mind.

“I can imagine!” Bahnyface bawled back as he clipped his canvas safety harness to one of the rigged lifelines. Those normally weren’t required on the bridge, but today wasn’t normal, and Captain Cahnyrs was strict about things like keeping his crew both aboard and undrowned. “I checked the log! Anything else you need to pass on to me?!”

“Not really!” Audhaimyr turned and pointed to the northeast, water pouring from his outstretched, oilskin-covered arm like a cataract. “We lost sight of Cherayth’s running lights about two hours ago, but she didn’t seem to be in any trouble and we haven’t seen any signal rockets! I figure she’s out there somewhere and we just can’t see her anymore!”

Bahnyface nodded in understanding … and hoped to hell Audhaimyr was right. There were almost two hundred and fifty men aboard each of the City-class ships.

“Bayport’s still where she’s supposed to be!” Audhaimyr continued, pointing aft this time, and Gairmyn’s on station to starboard! Haven’t actually seen Riverbend in an hour or so, but Gairmyn signaled about fifteen minutes ago and Riverbend was on station astern of her then!”

Bahnyface nodded again, even more vigorously. If four of the 2nd Ironclad Squadron’s five ships had actually managed to remain in such close company in weather like this and after a night like the one just past it damned well proved miracles still happened. And Audhaimyr was almost certainly right about Cherayth.

Almost certainly.

“All right!” he shouted in his friend’s ear. “I’ve got her! Go get something hot to eat and grab some sleep!”

“Best offer I’ve had all night!” Audhaimyr punched him on the shoulder, jerked his head at his own lookouts—who’d been waiting with as little obvious impatience as possible (which wasn’t very much) after handing over to their reliefs—unclipped his own safety line, and headed for the relative protection of the conning tower.

I sure as hell wish Sir Dustyn had gone ahead with those enclosed bridges of his, Bahnyface thought glumly, trying to find a corner where the solid, chest-high bridge face would shield him from at least the worst of the wind-driven spray flying aft from the plunging bow. He found one—after a fashion—and grimaced at the unmanned wheel in the opensided wheelhouse at the center of the bridge. The helmsman had moved to his alternate station inside the conning tower, and more power to him. The last thing they needed would be for the man on the wheel to get himself numbed into exhaustion by the weather conditions!

I guess I’m happy for him, but I could do with a nice, snug, glassed-in perch of my own right about now! Of course—he ducked, then spat out a mouthful of the solid bucket full of seawater which had just hit him in the face anyway—it’d have to be pretty damned thick glass to handle this kind of crap!

Well, he understood the King Haarahlds would have exactly that sort of bridge, and at fourteen thousand tons, they probably wouldn’t care as much about the weather as Eraystor did in the first place.

Hah! he thought glumly. It’ll just mean Shan-wei needs to come up with worse storms to keep ’em occupied!

He held on to a stanchion, watching twin geysers spurt skyward through the hawse holes every time the ship’s bow came down, and marveled at the furious energy roaring all about him. There was nothing quite like a storm at sea to remind a man just how puny he was against the scale of God’s creation, and he tried not to think too hard about the thousands of miles yet before them.

They’d left the Trellheim Gulf well astern after stopping at the coaling station Earl Sharpfield had established at Put-In Bay on Hill Island on his original voyage to Claw Island. Hill Island was little more than two hundred miles from the mainland across Heartbreak Passage, but the mainland in question was Trellheim, and the “corsairs” weren’t about to dispute the Charisian Empire’s possession of an island they’d never much wanted anyway. Besides, how valuable was a mountain of coal? It would be harder than hell to haul away, you couldn’t spend it, you couldn’t sell it to anyone else—you couldn’t even eat it!—which meant no self-respecting corsair wanted anything to do with it.

And if that disinterest just happened to avoid pissing off the most powerful navy in the history of the world, so much the better.

That didn’t mean Admiral Zhastro and the rest of the squadron hadn’t been just a teeny bit nervous during the outbound voyage. The City-class ships’ biggest weakness was their designed endurance of only a thousand miles. Even with maximum bunker loads—including countless bags of the stuff piled in every available passage below decks—they could reach only about seventeen hundred. So if it had happened that the coaling station wasn’t there when they arrived, they would’ve been far up shit creek. To be sure, there were additional galleons loaded with coal following behind them, but the whole point of deploying the 2nd Ironclad Squadron was that it could make the trip far faster than any wind-dependent galleon. Sitting at anchor in Put-In Bay—which wasn’t the most sheltered anchorage in the world at the best of times—while its ships waited would not be the best use of its time. And that assumed no one else was in possession to prevent it from dropping anchor in the first place.

Fortunately, the coal pile and the small, lonely Marine garrison and battery protecting it had been exactly where they were supposed to be. So now the squadron was midway between Hill Island and Apple Island, the southernmost of The Teardrops, the chain of islands two thousand miles west-northwest of Claw Island. Assuming that coaling station was still there, they would have the ineffable joy of filling the ships’ voracious bunkers entirely by hand yet again. After which, they would set out once more—not directly for Claw Island, which would still be several hundred miles outside their cruising range, but for Angel Wing Island, five hundred miles northwest of Green Tree Island. Where (if that coal was still available), they would refuel yet again before setting out on the last twelve hundred miles to Claw Island. Altogether, they had over thirty-seven hundred miles still to go, and even with the squadron’s speed, that was going to take another thirteen days, not counting the time spent coaling.

On the other hand, they’d already traveled almost seventeen thousand miles since they’d received their orders in the Gulf of Mathyas. In fact, they were steaming twenty thousand miles east to reach a destination less than six thousand miles west of the point at which they’d begun, since there were unfortunate things like continents in the way of a direct trip. It would still have been seven or eight thousand miles shorter to go south, round the southern tip of Howard, and then steam northwest and up through the Strait of Quieroz, but for some odd reason, the Kingdom of Delferahk and the South Harchong Empire hadn’t been very receptive to allowing the ICA to establish the coaling stations the short-legged Cities needed along their coasts. If it was a matter of seizing and then hanging onto tiny, isolated island coaling stations, it was better to reach out eastward from Chisholm than to try to go west from Charis, especially when typical South Ocean weather and the southern Sea of Justice were taken into consideration. It was currently summer in those waters, but it wouldn’t have been when the coaling stations were established, and while passing through Schueler Strait or Judgment Strait wasn’t too dreadful—normally—in summer.…

The Cities’ limited operational range was the real reason the King Haarahlds had been earmarked to spearhead the Imperial Charisian Navy’s decisive offensive into the Gulf of Dohlar. A King Haarahld had almost twelve times Eraystor’s cruising radius; she could have made the trip direct from Tellesberg without refueling at all, and once she’d reached the Gulf, she’d have had far more freedom of action, not to mention a main battery capable of demolishing any fortifications she might face. But the disastrous Delthak Works fire had put the King Haarahlds on hold, and the ICN was accustomed to getting on with the job in hand, whether it had the most ideal tools for it or not.

Which was how Mahtylda Bahnyface’s little boy Dahnel found himself smack in the middle of a Wind Gulf Sea winter storm, clawing his way towards an improvised naval base he hoped like hell would be there when they reached it.

Join the Navy and see the world, Dahnee, he told himself with biting humor. That’s what those grinning bastards told you. And, by God, you’ve seen a lot of it since! Of course—he squinted up into the howling wind, solid sheets of rain, and spray—they never warned you about just how miserable you were going to be while you were seeing it!