At the Sign of Triumph (Safehold)

.V.

Off Shipworm Shoal,

Gulf of Dohlar.

“I don’t suppose anyone mentioned where the delay was, Master Zhones?” Lathyk asked, gazing at the time chop on Fleet Wing’s original dispatch.

“No, Sir. I’m afraid not,” Passed Midshipman Ahrlee Zhones replied. The sandy-haired, bespeckled midshipman—he wouldn’t be legally old enough to receive his ensign’s commission for another ten months—had become Baron Sarmouth’s acting flag lieutenant with the Duke of Darcos’ departure from Destiny.

“I could send back an inquiry, if you’d like me to,” he continued, although he manifestly didn’t want to do anything of the sort, and the flag captain’s lip twitched. Not so very long ago, Zhones had been HMS Destiny’s signals midshipman. It would appear his tribal loyalties were alive and well.

“No, don’t bother, Master Zhones,” he said. “Probably nothing serious. But,” he added, looking up from the dispatch at Sarmouth, “we should’ve had this at least forty-five minutes ago, My Lord.”

“In a perfect world, yes.” Sarmouth was bent over his chart table again, busily swinging dividers while he measured distances. “In the real world,” he laid the dividers aside and gave Zhones a quick flicker of a smile, “as I believe the Emperor’s said upon occasion, ‘shit happens’. In this case, somebody probably had to wait for the sun to get out of his eyes.” He shrugged. “It’s not as if it was all that time-critical, Rhobair. The important point is that we’ve got it now, and—assuming Raisahndo’s maintained speed and heading—we’re about sixty miles north-northeast of him. And, of course, that the wind seems to be veering in our favor,” he added with pronounced satisfaction.

“Yes, My Lord,” Lathyk agreed, looking down at the chart with him.

“Then I want us underway on a south-southeast heading as soon as possible.” Sarmouth ran his index finger across the chart in a flattened crescent that swept about twenty miles south before it angled back to the west. “If everything works perfectly—and as we just pointed out, in the real world it doesn’t—we should find our Dohlaran friends right about here.”

He tapped a spot thirty miles south of Shipworm Shoal and about fifty miles west of Shyan Island, and Lathyk frowned, running mental calculations for a moment. Then the flag captain nodded.

“About fifteen o’clock, I make it, My Lord,” he said with a faint edge of admiration. “Plenty of daylight left to work on them.”

“That’ll depend on how soon they see us and what they do when they do.” Sarmouth twitched a shrug. “Actually bringing them to action could be trickier than we’d prefer, but at least we’ll have plenty of sea room to do it in!”

Lathyk nodded again. A lot of flag officers would have immediately altered course to intercept Raisahndo as soon as possible. Sarmouth, on the other hand, had made it clear to all of his captains that he wanted to entice the Dohlarans as far out to sea as he could. A running battle at sea would play to the Imperial Charisian Navy’s strengths, not the RDN’s, and the heavy swell farther out would limit the Dohlaran screw-galleys’ utility. The waves were no more than six feet tall at the moment, but the wind looked like freshening once more as it veered slowly but steadily eastward, and even six feet would be a much bigger problem for the low-lying and fragile screw-galleys than for blue-water galleons. It might not make a great deal of difference, but Sarmouth was the sort of flag officer who thought about things like that.

Besides, once they had the Western Squadron well out to sea, it would have a hell of a time crawling into another hidey hole before they laid it by the heels.

“Yes, My Lord,” the flag captain said. “Master Zhones and I will just go and start passing the signals.”

* * *

“Watch your head, Sir!”

Hektor Aplyn-Ahrmahk hurled himself backwards as Stywyrt Mahlyk grabbed the back of his tunic and heaved. An instant later, the heavy block—streaming two or three feet of tarred hemp—crashed to the deck with skull-crushing force, right where he’d been standing, and bounced high into the air.

“Thanks, Stywyrt,” he said, but he never looked away from the clouds of smoke rising from the Dohlaran brig.

Most of that was gunsmoke, but there was woodsmoke, as well, pouring up out of her midships hatch. At least a third of her crew were desperately fighting the flames, but the rest of her people had other business, and even as he watched, half a dozen more red eyes winked from within the cloudbank streaming from her gunports. Unlike Fleet Wing’s last duel with a Dohlaran brig, the range was short enough for this one to get her carronades into action, and white columns of spray rose around his schooner as the smoothbore shells hit the water.

Only one of those shells had hit Fleet Wing so far … thank God. It was fortunate her captain’s cabin was stripped, its furnishings bustled below, whenever she cleared for action, or else he’d need new furniture. Not to mention a new portrait of Irys. But he’d gladly have traded all his possessions for what that bursting shell had cost him. It had left three dead, four wounded, half a dozen shattered planks, and a pair of badly damaged deck beams in its wake, and it had been touch and go for several minutes for the firefighting parties.

But Fleet Wing had given as good as she’d gotten and then some. Even with the SNARCs’ remotes, it was hard to be certain amid all of this smoke and confusion and artillery thunder, but it looked like the Dohlaran’s people were losing ground on her fire. Hektor was astonished she was still in action at all, after being hit by no less than three 30-pounder and a pair of 14-pounder shells, but they were made of stern stuff, those Dohlarans. Their ship might be on fire, they might be outgunned, and water might be rising slowly in their bilges, yet they were still trying to fight their way past Fleet Wing to get a better count on Baron Sarmouth’s squadron. He liked to think he’d be as persistent—and as gutsy—in their place, but—

The brig Sword of Justice disappeared into an expanding ball of fire as the flames finally reached her magazine.

* * *

“So much for unsolved mysteries.” Caitahno Raisahndo tried not to sound bitter as he stood under his cabin skylight. He also tried not to think about the price his scouting units had paid to buy him the information—the fragmentary information—Gahryth Kahmelka had just marked on the chart. He’d have preferred a more complete report, but that was more than flesh and blood could have given him.

And what he did have was bad enough.

At the moment, Kahmelka stood at his shoulder and Ahrnahld Mahkmyn stood on the other side of the chart table, signals pad and pencil poised. Of the two, the flag lieutenant looked less concerned, although Raisahndo suspected appearances could be deceiving. Mahkmyn was too smart not to realize how bad things were … but he was still too young—and too junior—to feel comfortable being obvious about it in front of his flag officer.

The sunlight streaming down through the skylight illuminated the chart’s markings pitilessly while Hurricane creaked gently about them. Raisahndo listened to the ship’s quiet voice and found himself wondering if she realized what was about to happen to her.

He hoped not. Almost as much as he wished his own imagination didn’t already hear the shrieks—from splintering wood, not simply bleeding flesh and blood—which would replace that quiet all too soon.

You can still scatter and order them to run for it, he reminded himself. You’ve got a good twenty miles to work with, his fleet speed can’t be more than a knot or two faster than yours even with all that frigging copper, and he’s got the smaller squadron. He doesn’t have the numbers to chase all your people, so at least some of them would almost have to make it clear.

Unfortunately, the directions available for running were limited.

Unless he wanted to flee back the way he’d come—which would simply be a slower version of suicide, given what had to have happened to Rhaigair by now—the only directions his ships could run with any hope of avoiding the enemy were east or southeast.

The toe of Shyan Island Shoal prevented him from turning south … unless he wanted to risk ending up embayed in the forty-mile-wide sheet of water bitten out of the shoal between Mussel Shell Ledge and Broken Hawser Rock. As it happened, he very much didn’t want to end up there—there was a reason the local fishermen called that deceptively welcoming water Drowned Man’s Sound—but the wind had continued to veer. It was not only freshening but blowing roughly from the north-northeast, now—a good six- or six-and-a-half-point shift since the day before. Barring a miracle (and those seemed to be in short supply for Mother Church’s defenders) it was going to go on veering, and if it did, Sarmouth would be easily able to cut him off before he rounded Broken Hawser.

And finding himself in Drowned Man’s Sound on a lee shore with the wind and sea getting up and a hostile squadron lurking up to windward would be … unpleasant.

He couldn’t escape to the north or northeast, either. Shipworm Shoal was squarely in the way to the north. He couldn’t run away through it, and he didn’t much fancy cramping himself between it and a more powerful fleet.

The northeast was out because he’d have to sail almost directly into the wind. His schooners and the screw-galleys might be able to do that, assuming it veeered no farther; his squareriggers couldn’t possibly come close enough to the wind.

And at this particular moment, Baron Sarmouth’s squadron was perfectly placed to the east of him, blocking any escape due east and ready to cut him off whichever direction he tried to run.

All of which meant that however widely he scattered, his ships couldn’t—literally could not—evade interception. All he’d accomplish by trying to scatter and run for it would be to transform his squadron into a mob of fugitives, incapable of supporting one another when the moment came.

It’d be Armageddon Reef all over again, with me as Malikai this time around, he thought harshly.

On the other hand, his bleeding scouts’ best estimate was that the Charisians had no more than thirty galleons—thirty-five at the outside—to his own forty-three. True, at least one was a sister of the captured Dreadnought, and where there was one, there might be more than one. And it seemed likely that at least some of the others were more of the Charisians’ damnable “bombardment ships,” with far more powerful armaments than even Hurricane boasted. But a forty percent advantage in hulls was still a forty percent advantage, especially if he was able to keep them under firm tactical control, at least until the action became general. And that didn’t even consider the possibilities Hahlynd’s dozen screw-galleys presented.

You’re not going to find better odds, no matter what you do, and you aren’t going to evade him. Time to bite the bullet and use your numbers, he told himself … and tried not to think about the numerical advantage Duke Malikai had enjoyed off Armageddon Reef.

“All right,” he said out loud, looking up from the chart, “at least we outnumber them damned near two-to-one, counting the screw-galleys. According to our spies, they should have at least half a dozen galleons our scouts aren’t reporting, though. It’s always possible—likely, really—that they’re there and we just haven’t seen them yet, but it’s also possible they’re still up watching North Channel. If they are, we need to hit them as soon as we can, before they whistle up any reinforcements. If we can punch through and get fifty or sixty miles farther east, we’ll clear Broken Hawser whatever the wind does. Give us that, darkness, and maybe a little heavy weather, and at least some of the lads are likely to be able to break for home.”

Kahmelka nodded, his expression tight but his eyes steady.

“I don’t think this is a time for finesse,” Raisahndo went on grimly. “If he wants to close with us, then I’m willing to close with him … and the sooner the better.” He switched his gaze to Lieutenant Mahkmyn. “We’ll have a general signal, Ahrnahld.”

“Yes, Sir?”

“To all galleons, ‘Make all sail to topgallants. Course northeast-by-east.’ To Admiral Hahlynd, ‘Screw-galleys conform to previous orders.’ And to all ships, ‘Prepare for battle.’”

* * *

“He’s made up his mind, My Lord,” Lathyk said, standing beside his admiral on Destiny’s quarterdeck as they watched the Western Squadron’s distant canvas swing to the northeast, turning to sail close-hauled on the larboard tack. Destiny and her consorts, on the other hand, had the wind broad on their starboard beams, which was very nearly a galleon’s best point of sailing.

At the moment, anyway.

“Unless I miss my guess, he’d ‘made his mind up’ about what he’d do in a situation like this before he ever left Rhaigair,” Sarmouth replied. “I won’t pretend I haven’t done everything I could to encourage him to do just this, but he knew what his options were when he set out.” He shook his head. “Reminds me of Thirsk a lot, really. Good men, both of them.” Then his expression hardened. “Too bad they couldn’t find an equally good cause to serve.”

He gazed around the quarterdeck. The wide, holystoned expanse of planking looked pristine and pure in the bright, chill sunlight, he thought. By evening it might look very different.

He shook that thought aside and looked up at the rigging, instead. The masthead pendant stood out boldly, not yet starched stiff by the wind but partly extended and flapping over its entire length. Between twenty-five and thirty miles per hour, his experienced eye estimated, but even with his additional sail, Raisahndo’s speed wasn’t going to be much above four or five knots, now that he’d brought his squadron so close to the wind. He was obviously bidding to keep Sarmouth from getting up to windward of him before they engaged. It was unlikely he thought he could evade Sarmouth that way, since Shipworm Shoal lay squarely across his path on his present course. But taking the wind gauge—if he could—was the right gambit for the Dohlaran.

Whether it would work or not was another thing entirely, but it looked like being a close run race, and if he somehow managed to win it.…

If Sarmouth pointed high enough to contest the wind gauge, he’d have to come starboard, moving the wind forward of the beam for his own ships as he put them close-hauled on the starboard tack, sailing the longer leg of an isosceles triangle towards the point where their courses crossed. If he didn’t contest it, though, and Raisahndo managed to get to windward of him and avoid Shipworm Shoal, the Dohlaran might actually be able to avoid action—immediately, at least—after all. With the advantage of their copper and their loftier rigs, Sarmouth’s ships could manage a good knot—at least—better than the Dohlarans under the same press of canvas … but he also had farther to go if he wanted the wind gauge, and he nodded crisply to himself.

“All right, Rhobair. If he’s in such a hurry to make our acquaintance, it’s only courteous to meet him halfway. Let’s get the topgallants on her and come to west-northwest.”

* * *

“Why do I feel so small and insignificant, Sir?”

Zosh Hahlbyrstaht and Hektor Aplyn-Ahrmahk stood shoulder to shoulder at Fleet Wing’s taffrail. The pumps worked steadily, although fairly slowly, and hammers, saws, and adzes sounded behind them as the schooner’s carpenter and his mates dealt with her damages. Hektor had just come from visiting his wounded. He was going to lose two of them, and that thought tightened his mouth with a pain worse than any physical injury, yet he knew Fleet Wing had been unreasonably fortunate. Much more fortunate than Sword of Justice, at any rate. Fleet Wing had plucked the Dohlaran brig’s survivors—all seventeen of them—from the icy water, and three of them had already succumbed to their savage burns.

He shook that thought aside … for now. He already knew it would come back to visit him in his dreams. But he found it easier to evade at the moment as he and Hahlbyrstaht gazed out at a spectacle fit to strike awe into any seaman.

Eighty galleons forged towards one another, like two huge, floating islands or distant, snow-capped mountain ranges. Canvas gleamed under the chill midday sun: pewter, or weathered tan or gray, or—here and there—the pristine white of newly replaced sails. Banners floated in brilliant splashes of color against the blue sky and the steadily thickening banks of dark-bottomed white cloud rolling down upon the wind. That same wind sang in the rigging and plucked at uniform tunics and hats, and gulls and wyverns wheeled and plunged, crying to wind and wave as they followed the warships moving through the water with a deliberate, terrible majesty both young men knew was doomed to disappear into history.

That was preposterous in, oh, so many ways, Hektor thought, yet it was also inevitable. Barely seven years ago, those would have been fleets of galleys, closing on oars to ram and board and settle the business with cold steel. Now they were stately castles, driving through the freshening swell under towers of canvas, spray bursting white from their cutwaters, while row upon row of hungry cannon snouted from their gunports.

The difference in raw destruction and carnage those seven years had made was astonishing, even to an officer—or possibly especially to an officer—Hahlbyrstaht or Hektor’s age, who’d lived through the breakneck fury of that change. And yet even as those two massive fleets, without a single unit more than six years old between them, manned by thousands of men and carrying thousands of guns, sailed slowly into the crushing embrace of destruction, Sir Hainz Zhaztro’s steam-powered ironclads must be completing the devastation of Rhaigair two hundred and ninety miles to the north. And the only reason the Dohlarans had accepted battle here rather than staying put at Rhaigair to defend their fortified anchorage was because their galleons—anyone’s galleons, however big, however powerful—couldn’t have lived ten minutes in combat with one of the City-class ships.

And whether the Temple Boys know it or not, something one hell of a lot worse than the Cities is coming on behind, he thought now, grimly.

“You probably feel small and insignificant because Fleet Wing’s only a schooner and she is pretty damned small and insignificant against this,” he said out loud, waving at the panorama of sails with his good arm. Then he lowered his hand and shook his head.

“We won’t see something like this ever again,” he said softly. “Oh, there may be a little cleaning up around the edges, but aside from Thirsk’s Home Squadron, this is the last fleet the Group of Four’s got, Zosh, and Thirsk won’t be coming out to meet us when we finally move on Gorath. Not after what Admiral Zhaztro’s probably finished doing to Rhaigair.” He shook his head with an edge of sadness. “Galleons are about to become as obsolete as crossbows. Nobody’s going to be building another fleet of them after the war’s over.”

“I know.” Hahlbyrstaht sighed. “And I guess it’s pretty damned stupid for anyone who’s ever served aboard a galleon in heavy weather to get all nostalgic over them. Hard to think of any experience more miserable than that! And it’s not like they’ve got some sort of centuries of naval tradition behind them, but … Damn it, Sir! I’m going to miss them.”

“A seaman’s life is a stone-cold bitch as often as not,” Hektor agreed, “but a galleon’s a hell of a lot prettier than any steamer ever designed—yet, at least. Of course, given his choice between going aloft in a hurricane and down to shovel coal in a nice, dry stokehold, I know which any sane seaman’s going to choose!”

“That’s so … pragmatic of you,” Hahlbyrstaht complained.

“What Charisians do, Zosh.” Hektor shrugged, his eyes dark with mingled pride and regret. “Be pragmatic, I mean. It’s what we do best.”

* * *

The opposing squadrons drew together with the slow, dreadful inexorability of sailing men-of-war. Even on converging courses, their closing speed was barely ten miles an hour. That left plenty of time to turn any man’s bowels to water, Sir Dunkyn Yairley reflected.

Somewhat to his surprise, his own palms were dry and his pulse was almost normal, and he wondered why that was. Fatalism seemed an unlikely answer after all these years of pre-battle butterflies. Was it that this time he understood the reasons—the real reasons—he was out here risking the perfectly serviceable life which was the only one God had given him? Or was it simple duty? Or the realization that, one way or the other, this was almost certainly the last fleet action of the war against the Group of Four?

Maybe it’s even simpler than that, he mused, pacing slowly, steadily, up and down the weather side of Destiny’s quarterdeck. Maybe it’s just that this time I know where every single bastard on the other side is. I’m sure there’ll be plenty of the “fog of war” once the guns open up, but for now—for the first time in any major engagement I’ve ever fought—I know exactly what the stakes are, exactly who’s coming to the dance, and exactly where to find the other side when I want it. Won’t keep a stray cannonball from taking off my head, I suppose, but at least this time that head won’t be wondering what the hell is going on when the round shot arrives!

He chuckled at the thought and never noticed the way the midshipman of the watch relaxed ever so slightly at the evidence of his admiral’s amusement.

* * *

“They’re going to take the weather gauge, Sir,” Captain Trahvys observed unhappily.

“They’re more weatherly, they’re faster, and their damned chain of scouts must’ve been telling Sarmouth where we were ever since we entered Basset Channel.” Raisahndo shrugged. “Given all those advantages, it’d’ve taken a drooling idiot to lose the weather gauge.”

Trahvys arched an eyebrow at him, and the admiral barked a laugh.

“Oh, I fought hard enough for it, Lewk! Would’ve taken it in a heartbeat if he’d let us have it, too. But when was the last time you saw a Charisian flag officer do something that stupid?”

“Don’t believe I’ve ever seen a Charisian flag officer do something that stupid, Sir,” the flag captain replied after a moment, and Raisahndo nodded.

“I rest my case.”

He stood, gazing at the long, stately lines of ships. There must be five thousand guns aboard those ships, he thought, and Langhorne only knew how many officers and men were sailing so steadily—so deliberately—into the waiting furnace. Raisahndo certainly didn’t know the answer to that question … but he no longer needed a spyglass to pick out details, and Sarmouth’s formation made his intentions easy enough to understand.

The Charisian was coming at him in a single long column. Every ship in it looked big and powerful, but it was the two leaders who worried him most. The Charisian practice of painting every ship in the same stark colors—black hull, striped with white along the gunports—could make it difficult to identify individual ships, especially at any sort of distance. The Charisian leaders showed only a single row of gunports each, however, and that almost certainly made them ironclads like Dreadnought.

Not too surprising he put the two of them up front, Raisahndo thought grimly. Haigyl showed what just one of them could do, without any supports at all, and these fellows’ve brought along plenty of friends to watch their backs. I’d feel happier if I knew for sure there weren’t any more of the frigging things farther back in that column of his, though!

Clearly, Sarmouth intended for his vanguard to take the initial brunt and smash hell out of anything that got in its way, and if there was any reason he shouldn’t be confident of doing that, Caitahno Raisahndo didn’t know what it might be!

“You know,” he said slowly, eyes narrowing, “I think the time’s come to let them have the weather gauge.”

“I beg your pardon, Sir?”

“I said it’s time to let them have the weather gauge,” Raisahndo repeated, turning to face the flag captain squarely. “We can’t keep him from taking it anyway, but he’s pointed quite a bit higher than I thought he would. I don’t know if he misestimated our heading or simply wanted to make sure he’d have plenty of maneuvering distance between us when he finally turns to close the range, but he may have given us a little more wiggle room than he intended to.”

Trahvys looked at him for a moment, then back at the Charisian line, and then he began to nod.

* * *

“Midshipman of the watch, My Lord,” Sylvyst Raigly, Sir Dunkyn Yairley’s valet and steward, announced, stepping out onto Destiny’s stern gallery.

As always, whenever the possibility of combat presented itself, Raigly was liberally equipped with pistols, swords, dirks, probably a grenade or two, and God only knew what other lethal, pointy objects.

Thank God I got Stywyrt into Fleet Wing to watch Hektor’s back, the baron thought wryly. If he and Sylvyst were in the same place when a shell went off, God only knows how many dozens of people the flying knives, guns, and brass knuckles would take down with them!

“Thank you, Sylvyst,” he said out loud, straightening from where he’d stood, leaning on the railing as he watched HMS Empress sail steadily up Destiny’s wake. He turned away from the rail and made a beckoning motion with the fingers of his right hand, and the valet vanished back the way he’d come, then reappeared with a brown-haired, brown-eyed midshipman.

“Master Ahbaht,” Sarmouth said as the youngster came to attention and touched his chest in salute.

“My Lord,” the fourteen-year-old replied. “Captain Lathyk’s respects, and the enemy’s changing course. The Captain said to tell you you were right.”

The youngster seemed a little puzzled by the last sentence, but Sarmouth only shook his head.

“Don’t worry about it, Master Ahbaht,” he advised. “My compliments to Captain Lathyk and tell him I’ll join him on deck directly.”

“Aye, aye, My Lord. Your compliments to the Captain, and you’ll join him on deck directly.”

Sarmouth nodded in confirmation, and Ahbaht saluted again and withdrew.

The baron stood a moment longer, gazing out at the stupendous line of galleons following in Destiny’s wake, listening to the seagulls and sea wyverns as they swooped and darted around his ships. They’d disappear soon enough when the guns began to roar, he thought grimly. Then he shook himself and followed the midshipman, stepping from the stern gallery into what had been his cabin until the galleon cleared for action. Now the entire ship was one long, wide wooden cavern, every dividing bulkhead struck below for storage, its planked floor covered with sand for traction and dotted with tubs of water for swabs and firefighting. A cave with gunports gaping at regular intervals to let in wind and sunlight and let out the blunt, hungry muzzles of her artillery. He felt the wind plucking at his hair with invisible fingers and the sand crunched under the soles of his shoes as he strode past the waiting gunners, posed like martial statuary around their weapons—rammers, swabs, and worms in hand, cutlasses and pistols at their sides, bayoneted rifles racked ready if they should be needed—and the men of his flagship’s crew bobbed their heads respectfully as he went by.

He emerged onto the quarterdeck and Lathyk greeted him.

“They’re doing it, My Lord,” he said.

“Of course they are.” Sarmouth shook his head. “Once it was obvious they couldn’t take the weather gauge, it was really the only move open to them.”

“Oh, I know that, My Lord.” Lathyk smiled crookedly. “It’s just that you pegged when they’d make it almost to the minute. I was sure they’d hold on longer.”

“That’s because you underestimate Admiral Raisahndo. There’s nothing wrong with that man’s brain, Rhobair, and he’s just demonstrated he has the moral courage to do the right thing even if it risks getting him labeled ‘defeatist’ by the Inquisition.”

The baron crossed to the larboard rail and looked out across four miles or so of seawater. The head of the Dohlaran line had swung around, altering course from northeast-by-east to almost due southeast, curling around inside his own line. The rest of the enemy line followed, turning in succession as each galleon reached the same point, taking the wind on her larboard beam and shaking out more canvas.

Raisahndo had timed it reasonably well, Sarmouth thought, but he should have ordered a simultaneous turn. If he’d turned his entire squadron onto the wind simultaneously, he’d have bought his rearmost ships a much greater margin of safety. Sarmouth knew why he hadn’t done it, though. Maneuvering forty-odd galleons as a single, cohesive force was akin to driving a herd of wild dragons through the middle of Tellesberg at midday … only harder. Once an admiral had them in line ahead, he really didn’t want to break up that line any sooner than he had to, because as soon as he did, he’d lose control of it. Visibility-limited signals simply weren’t up to coordinating a line of ships ten miles long, especially with gunsmoke to obscure flag hoists, but trying to control the same number of ships maneuvering independently of one another was immeasurably more difficult. Maintaining a line-ahead formation made control far simpler; it became a huge, deadly serious game of follow-the-leader, where what really mattered was no longer the ability to communicate but simply the iron courage to hold to the ship ahead of yours while all the world dissolved in fire, smoke, terror, and death.

But if a line was easier to control, it was also far less flexible. Raisahndo wanted to maintain as tight a tactical control as he could because he recognized the danger of disintegrating into a disorganized mob. Yet in his place, Sarmouth would have ordered the simultaneous turn, accepting that it was likely to reduce his line to a confused mass, at least until his captains could sort things out, as the price of getting the biggest head start he could.

Of course, once they turned to run—and every one of those captain would know that was exactly what they were doing; running—getting them to stop running and reform might not be the very easiest thing in the world, either. They’re brave men, most of them—God knows there were no cowards in the Kaudzhu Narrows!—but every damned one of them knows their navy’s up shit creek. Preventing a withdrawal from turning into a rout…?

He shook his head, wondering how he’d react in their place. Easy to think about someone else losing his nerve, but what if he’d been the one in their shoes?

Fortunately, I’m not, he thought, and turned back to Lathyk.

“About another … fifteen minutes, I think, Rhobair. Let’s let them get properly committed first.”

“Aye, My Lord.” Lathyk nodded, then snapped his fingers at the twelve-year-old midshipman standing at the mizzen halyards with his part of signalmen.

“We’ll have that signal to Admiral Darys bent on, Master Rychtyr,” he said, and smiled thinly. “We’ll need it shortly.”

“Aye, aye, Sir!”

* * *

Caitahno Raisahndo watched the Charisian line and fought against letting himself hope.

Maneuvering a fleet at sea in sight of its enemies was like a dance where everyone knew the steps. Both admirals knew precisely what the other admiral’s options were at any given moment, and assuming they’d accurately assessed one another’s intentions, surprises were hard to come by.

In Sarmouth’s position, Raisahndo would have realized the Western Squadron had no option but to break back south once it became evident the Charisians would take the weather gauge. The only real question in the Charisian admiral’s mind should have been when Raisahndo would make his break, since it was obvious the only smart thing for him to do was to avoid action. The only way he could hope to do that, now that it was clear he couldn’t get to windward of Sarmouth’s line, was to turn and take the wind broad on his beam while he ran as fast and as hard as he could to leeward. He could do that now, assuming Sarmouth allowed him to, because the two squadrons’ maneuvers for the weather gauge had carried them far enough east that a southeasterly heading would weather Broken Hawser Rock with at least a few miles to spare. That was the other reason he’d fought so hard for the windward position. Now if he was very, very lucky—and if Sarmouth suffered a sudden stupidity attack—he might get enough of a head start to squeak around the southern end of the Charisian line, between its rearmost galleons and Broken Hawser. And if he managed that, he might just manage to stay away from the Charisians until dark, too.

Some things were more likely than others, however.

Yet even as he thought that, the massive Charisian battle line—there were a couple more ships in it than he’d expected, but obviously at least half a dozen of them were, indeed, somewhere else—continued plowing towards the west-northwest. It was as if Sarmouth hadn’t even noticed his course change!

If he doesn’t alter pretty soon, he’ll lose his chance, Raisahndo thought almost incredulously. He can’t turn the entire line and overtake us, copper bottoms or not, if he doesn’t make his move in the next … ten minutes.

Of course, when he realized Raisahndo was slipping away he could always order a general chase. The chance of any Charisian admiral being brainless enough to do that, however, was about on a par with the chance that Langhorne would return in glory sometime in the next five minutes. A general chase—with every captain maneuvering independently as he raced to catch up with the enemy—would certainly let Sarmouth’s faster ships overhaul Raisahndo’s compact, mutually supporting line of battle. They’d be disordered and out of mutual support of one another when they did, however … at which point they would discover what happened to the hunting hound that caught the slash lizard. No. A flag officer of Sarmouth’s experience wouldn’t make that mistake, especially against a fleet which outnumbered him as substantially as the Western Squadron did. His ships, and especially the ironclads, might be far more powerful than any individual unit on the other side, but if he was stupid enough to feed them into Raisahndo’s well-organized, tightly controlled line in dribs and drabs, where discipline and numbers came into their own.…

* * *

“Now, I think, Rhobair.”

“Aye, aye, My Lord. Master Rychtyr!”

“Aye, aye, Sir,” Trynt Rychtyr acknowledged, and the colorful bunting which had been bent on to the signal halyards a quarter of an hour earlier soared to the yardarm. A flick of the signalman’s wrist broke the signal and the flags streamed on the wind.

* * *

“Signal from the Flag, Sir!” Lieutenant Fraid Stedmyn said sharply. “With our number,” he added rather pointedly, and glared up at the midshipman perched in HMS Lightning’s mizzen top.

“Indeed?” Doniphan Cumyngs, Lightning’s first lieutenant, raised an eyebrow and joined the flag lieutenant in glaring up at the mizzen top. “Odd that no one else noticed it,” he continued, loudly enough to ensure the midshipman would find it difficult to pretend he hadn’t heard.

That luckless youth snatched up his spyglass and peered through it at the distant flags, and Tymythy Darys felt his lips twitch with an utterly inappropriate temptation to smile. There really wasn’t anything particularly amusing about it, the admiral supposed, but at the same time, there was. Stedmyn had been a signals specialist himself before Darys tapped him as his flag lieutenant. He was an efficient, hard-working young man, and almost as smart as he thought he was—no one could have been quite as smart as Fraid Stedmyn thought he was—who found it extraordinarily difficult to delegate anything.

Not that this particular duty was his to delegate in the first place, since Lightning’s signals department was Captain Sympsyn’s and Lieutenant Cumyngs’ responsibility, not the flag lieutenant’s.

Which wouldn’t save Midshipman Braiahn’s youthful arse when Cumyngs had the opportunity to ‘discuss’ it with him. First lieutenants didn’t take kindly to midshipmen who embarrassed them in front of flag officers. Especially not in front of flag officers they would probably be facing across the breakfast table sometime quite soon now. The fact that Cumyngs and Stedmyn thoroughly detested one another was only icing on the cake.

“The Division’s number, Sir,” Braiahn called down. Clearly he would have preferred not to offer that particular bit of information, given Stedmyn’s rather pointed comment. Unfortunately, the ICN’s standard signals procedures left him no choice. “Number 80 and Number 59!”

His assistant at the foot of the mast flipped pages swiftly in the signal book, very careful not to look at anything—or anyone—else in the process. Then he cleared his throat and looked up from the book.

“‘Execute previous orders,’ Sir, and ‘Southwest-by-South.’”

“Thank you, Master Sellyrs,” Cumyngs said frostily, and turned to Captain Sympsyn, who’d been observing the operation of his ship’s communications department with an interested expression. “Execute previous orders, course southwest-by-south, Sir.”

“Thank you, Master Cumyngs.”

Despite an admirably grave tone, there might have been a slight twinkle in Sympsyn’s eye as he repeated Cumyngs acknowledgment to young Sellyrs. If there was, it disappeared instantly as he looked at Darys.

“I heard,” the admiral said, and showed his teeth. “Looks like the Baron was right. Very well, Captain Sympsyn. Let’s be about it!”

* * *

“Sir—!”

“I see it, Lewk,” Raisahndo said, and slammed a fist down on the quarterdeck rail, swearing with silent eloquence as the Charisian formation changed at last. The last eight galleons in Sarmouth’s line were altering course sharply, yards swinging with mechanical precision as they came all the way from west-northwest to southwest-by-south, and his teeth grated together as he recalled his earlier thought about dance steps.

He raised his spyglass, peering through it, and his face tightened as he got his first real good look at the division which had formed the rear of the Charisian line. Apparently the two ships leading Sarmouth’s line weren’t the only ironclads in his squadron after all. Either that, or they’d been bombardment ships, instead. Which was certainly possible, especially if Sarmouth had intended this all along. Whatever they might have been, however, the pair of ships leading the abbreviated line which had just turned southwest also showed only a single line of gunports, and he was closer to these. His spyglass showed him the streaks of rust where wind and weather had scoured away their black paint.

And beyond them.…

“Signal to Admiral Hahlynd,” he said, never lowering the glass.

“Yes, Sir?”

“‘Engage the enemy to windward.’”

* * *

“All right, Ahlfryd,” Pawal Hahlynd said grimly. “It looks like we get to try it a second time.”

“One way to put it, Sir,” Captain Ahlfryd Mahgyrs said as the screw-galley Sword turned towards the enemy.

The deck quivered as her cranksmen bent to the pair of long, belowdecks crankshafts spinning her propellers. Speed was as important as maneuverability today, and she heeled to the press of her canvas, as well. Spray burst back from her cutwater, glittering like diamonds in the sunlight before it pattered across the decks, drenching every exposed surface, and both of them knew they were driving her too hard for safety. The screw-galleys were surprisingly good seaboats, but the weight of their guns and armor was really too much for their frames. They were fragile vessels, and more than one member of the ship’s company had to be remembering the day they’d watched one of her sisters simply break up and disappear in less than twenty minutes in seas no heavier than today’s.

“I didn’t much enjoy it the first time, really,” Hahlynd’s flag captain continued, much too quietly for anyone else to hear him over the noise of wind, water, and shouted orders. “And, frankly, this time around the odds suck, Sir.”

“Always such a way with words,” Hahlynd replied with an off-center smile. Then he shrugged. “Wish I could disagree. But look at it this way—assuming we get past these people, we’ve still got the entire Gulf to cross before we get to Gorath. Given normal weather for this time of year, that’s got to be at least as much a challenge as this, don’t you think?”

“That’s a strange way to encourage someone, Sir.”

“Best I can come up with, I’m afraid,” Hahlynd replied, and raised his spyglass, studying the Charisian galleons as his screw-galleys charged to meet them in a buffeting rush of ice-edged wind and pitching explosions of spray.

* * *

“Now those have to be some unhappy people, Sir,” Captain Sympsyn said, and looked up at the set of his ironclad galleon’s canvas, studying it as if considering some way it might be tweaked.

“I’m sure they are,” Tymythy Darys replied.

The admiral wasn’t looking at his flag captain at the moment; he was still peering through the raised angle-glass bracketed to the inner face of HMS Lightning’s seven-foot armored bulwark. He had to angle it almost parallel with the ship’s keel, because the screw-galleys were taking advantage of their weatherly rig and screws to come at his flagship head-on. Now he straightened and rubbed his chin thoughtfully.

“I’m sure they are,” he repeated, “but I don’t think that’s going to slow them up very much. And it’s pretty clear what Raisahndo’s up to.”

Sympsyn nodded, his own expression less than delighted. With their screws to supplement their sails, the screw-galleys were faster than the Dohlaran galleons, despite their smaller size. The seas were approaching ten or eleven feet, and the galleons’ bigger, deeper—not to mention more strongly built—hulls ought to have allowed them to make considerably more speed than the small, frail screw-galleys. Their commander was driving them dangerously hard, however, despite the sea conditions. He was clearly prepared to run some serious risks in the execution of his portion of the Dohlaran battle plan.

And they obviously had a plan.

“They’re trying to get across our line of advance,” the admiral continued, speaking to himself as much as to his flagship’s commander. “The question in my mind is whether they plan to stay clear until they can take up firing positions on our disengaged side after their galleons get to grips with us, or if they’re going to try to get in close and hit our rigging, slow us down before we get to grips.”

“Might be a little of both, Sir,” Sympsyn offered. “If I was them, I’d see about putting some shot through our masts and spars while I waited for the galleons to catch up.” He shrugged. “Might not achieve anything, but you never know till you try. And if what happened in the Kaudzhu Narrows is any guide, they’ll probably try to swarm in once the action’s general and go for our rudder.”

Darys nodded, still rubbing his chin. The rescued handful of survivors from Kahrltyn Haigyl’s crew all agreed that the screw-galleys had gotten in close on Dreadnought—close enough to be out of the play of her guns—and then hung off her quarters, pounding steadily away at her rudder, and that persistent pounding had ultimately paid off. He didn’t doubt they’d try to repeat the performance here … if they could. But there was a world of difference between a single, unsupported galleon—no matter how well armored she might be—and what the Dohlarans faced this afternoon.

In fact, there was an even bigger difference than they might yet realize.

“I think that’s exactly what they’ll try to do,” he agreed. “Although,” he added judiciously, “I also doubt they’d mind a bit if we decided to avoid the threat by breaking off and letting their galleons by us.”

“They’d probably drop dead of heart failure, Sir,” Sympsyn said dryly. “I suppose that’d be one way to take them out without firing a single shot.”

Darys chuckled, but his flag captain had a point. A very good one, in fact. Whatever else might be true, the Royal Dohlaran Navy and the Imperial Charisian Navy had come to hold one another’s tenacity in lively respect.

Not a whole lot of quit in either of us, I guess, he thought. And of course, in our case, there’s the minor matter of what Dunkyn would have to say to me. He snorted. Come to think of it, I’d rather face the round shot!

* * *

So much for the best possible outcome, Pawal Hahlynd thought with a certain bitter amusement.

In the months since the Kaudzhu Narrows, some of Risahndo’s officers had expected—or claimed to expect—the Charisians to refuse to expose unarmored galleons to his screw-galleys now that they’d demonstrated how dangerous they were. They’d argued the Charisians’ regular galleons would back off, opt to hold the range open, whatever their ironclads might do. The more optimistic had even suggested the screw-galleys’ threat might be enough to strip the unarmored ships away entirely, leave the ironclads to take on the entire squadron by themselves. Hahlynd, on the other hand, hadn’t believed that for a moment—that wasn’t the way Charisian seamen were built—but he’d been willing to concede at least the possibility that they’d be … more tentative after the Narrows.

Until now, of course.

The Charisians had turned, all right, but only to open their broadsides. The range was little more than twenty-four hundred yards now, but his screw-galleys would do well to mark a target at much over six hundred under these conditions of wind and sea. The Charisians were far larger, heavier ships—twice the length of his own, with a beam to match—which made them much steadier gun platforms. Coupled with their rifled guns, that equated to a major advantage in effective range, and he watched the lead ship’s outline shifting, lengthening from a narrow, bows-on silhouette to show its full long, lean length … and gunports. Her next astern followed her around, showing an identical profile, and his jaw tightened as the third Charisian turned. She had none of the telltale rust streaks visible on the two leaders, marking the spots where wind and the weather had worn away their armor’s protective paint, but—

“Signal to Admiral Raisahndo,” he said.

“Yes, Sir?”

“‘Confirm two leading galleons are ironclads,’” Hahlynd dictated. “‘Estimate at least two three-decked ships in company.’” He heard someone suck in sharply at that, but he never lowered his glass or looked away from the Charisian ships.

“Add one more signal,” he added.

“Yes, Sir?”

“‘Engaging.’”

* * *

“So they are going to try to use the screw-galleys as their battering ram, My Lord,” Captain Lathyk said.

He and Sarmouth stood side-by-side in Destiny’s mizzen rigging, each with an arm looped through the shrouds for safety’s sake while they peered through their double-glasses.

“I think at least part of this is Hahlynd exercising his discretion,” the baron said now. “Raisahndo’s still trying to run; he’s too smart to do anything else. I’m sure he’d be delighted if he managed to inflict damage on us, but Hahlynd’s primary mission was to kick the door open for their galleons and then hold it open as long as he could. Engaging Tymythy and tying him up, forcing him to maneuver against the screw-galleys rather than letting them get in close the way they did against Dreadnought, would be one way to do that. For that matter, it’s even possible they thought they could bluff him into breaking off and letting them through rather than risk a repeat of the Narrows.”

“Never going to happen, My Lord,” Lathyk said flatly.

“Of course it wasn’t … and they knew it as well as we did.” Sarmouth never lowered his double-glass. “Doesn’t mean they didn’t have to try. And if they’d pulled it off it would’ve been worth losing every one of his screw-galleys. I suspect they thought they had a better chance of that than they really did, too. Unless I miss my guess, Hahlynd’s only just now realized what Tymythy has with him.”

Lathyk made a wordless sound of agreement, and Sarmouth wondered exactly what was going through Pawal Hahlynd’s brain at this moment.

The Dohlaran admiral understood the odds, the actual balance of combat power, as well as anyone on the Charisian side. And he also had to know this day was effectively the Royal Dohlaran Navy’s death ride. He’d seen Dreadnought up close, seen her in action. After that experience, he could have had no illusions when the first steam-powered ironclad turned up in the Gulf of Dohlar. He was one of the Dohlaran admirals who’d made a point of using his brain from the very beginning and, like Raisahndo, he was one of Earl Thirsk’s closest allies. For that matter, Greyghor Whytmyn, who was married to Thirsk’s younger daughter, Hailyn, was Hahlynd’s nephew by marriage. And, like his friend the earl, Hahlynd could have been under no illusions about why his nephew had been summoned to Zion. He knew—he had to know—the Group of Four was losing and that the Kingdom of Dohlar was about to pay a terrible price for its loyalty to the Temple. Yet there was no more give, no more surrender, in Pawal Hahlynd than there was in Lywys Gardynyr. He would do his duty, however grim, to the very end, without flinching.

Damn, I wish we didn’t have to kill men like that just to get to scum like Clyntahn, the baron thought bitterly. Not enough for that fat son-of-a-bitch to murder God only knows how many millions of innocent ‘heretics,’ himself. Oh, no! He’s got to put us in the position of killing good, honorable men if we want to stop him.

And now it’s time for me to go kill a few thousand more of them.

He lowered his double-glass but his gaze stayed on the suddenly tiny sails of the screw-galleys, driving unwaveringly to meet Admiral Darys’ division.

“I believe it’s time for the rest of us to join the party, Rhobair,” he said.

“Yes, My Lord. I’ll have the signal made.”

* * *

“They’re coming down on us, Sir,” Captain Trahvys said harshly, and Caitahno Raisahndo nodded.

“It’s what Sarmouth had in mind from the beginning,” he replied. “He’s taking a hell of a chance, but unlike us, he’s got an entire navy left even if he loses his whole squadron. And if it works.…”

He stood on Hurricane’s quarterdeck, watching the incredible panorama as the two enormous fleets flowed towards one another. Sarmouth had broken the rest of his line at last, turning each division in it simultaneously. Now four short, compact columns forged down upon Raisahndo, ready to turn back to form a single line of battle to windward or leeward, whichever seemed best when they overhauled him, and he knew exactly what the Charisian admiral had in mind.

He sucked me as far up to windward as he could, and he was willing to risk losing the wind gauge to do it. Not that there was ever much chance of that, really, I suppose. But that’s why he was in that long, single line from the beginning—specifically so he could detach his last division and swing it directly across our only escape route. He couldn’t have known he’d get the opportunity, but he had it ready from the start in case he did. Why else put such heavy firepower at the rear of his line? If Pawal’s right—if those frigging ironclads really do have three-deckers in company—this is his Wednesday punch. He’s throwing a haymaker straight into our teeth, risking what we might accomplish against it in isolation before he catches up with us, because we don’t have any choice but to fight our way past it. And that slows us. Just maneuvering against it would do that … and anyone who takes damage aloft in the process is dead meat, no matter what else happens, unless I’m willing to abandon the cripples. And he’s faster, anyway. If that division in front of us can slow us down for an hour—Shan-wei, half an hour!—he’ll be right in among the rear of the Squadron. And when that happens—

“General signal, Lewk.” His voice was hammered iron. “‘Make more sail. Engage the enemy more closely.’”

* * *

“It looks like being a little different today, Sir,” Lieutenant Commander Kylmahn said quietly. “I don’t think those damned screw-galleys are going to enjoy this one bit.”

“No, they aren’t,” Sir Bruhstair Ahbaht agreed, never looking away from the Dohlaran squadron.

There was an ugly edge in his chief of staff’s voice, he thought. An edge of vengeful anticipation. He couldn’t really blame Kylmahn for that—not after the Khadzhu Narrows. Yet he was a bit surprised to discover that he didn’t share that sense of anticipation. Or perhaps he did. But if so, he was more aware of what the men aboard those screw-galleys must be thinking as they charged headlong into such a massive weight of guns.

No cowards over there, he thought. No butchers, either … not really. Only men. Men with families, with wives and daughters and sons too many of them will never see again. And men who are no more going to turn away from their duty than my men did at the Narrows.

He lowered his double-glass and looked up at the set of Floodtide’s canvas. The ironclad led Baron Sarmouth’s Second Division—Floodtide and the sixty-eights Dynzayl Tryvythyn, Turbulent, Vindicator, Sand Point, and Bruxtyn—steadily southwest. If it worked the way Sarmouth had hoped it might, that powerful division would come crashing in about the time Raisahndo’s lead galleons became closely engaged with Admiral Darys’ even more powerful squadron. And while that was happening, Sarmouth would lead his own division completely across the Dohlarans’ rear and come ranging up from leeward.

It might not work, he thought. But for it to fail, Raisahndo had to somehow break past Darys without being drawn into a melee.…

And that’s not going to happen, Sir Bruhstair Ahbaht thought with grim, curiously regretful satisfaction. Not going to happen in a million years.

* * *

“Fire!”

The long line of massive cannon hurled themselves inboard in a crashing bellow of thunder, and HMS Lightning’s tall, black side disappeared behind a wall of flame and smoke. Astern of her, her next in line, Seamount, followed suit, and thirty-two heavy shells went wailing across the waves.

* * *

“Make a note in the log,” Captain Trahvys told Hurricane’s duty quartermaster. He pulled his watch from his pocket, opened the case, then snapped it shut once more.

“The enemy opened fire at seventeen minutes past sixteen o’clock,” he said.

* * *

Pawal Hahlynd saw the leading Charisian galleons vanish into the huge, volcanic gush of dark-brown smoke. None of the other ships in front of his screw-galleys had fired. No doubt they were well supplied with shells, but he’d gotten a good look at all them now, and any one of them was at least as powerful as any galleon in the Royal Dohlaran Navy. Aside from the ironclads, not a one of them could mount fewer than sixty guns, and at least two of them were units of a class no Dohlaran officer had ever seen. He knew what they had to be—the Inquisition’s agents had learned at least some details of the Zhenyfyr Ahrmahk-class—but most of the Zhenyfyr Ahrmahks had been earmarked for conversion into ironclads, cut down to a single gundeck because they’d offered the only hulls big and strong enough to carry the massive weight of the Rottweilers’ armor.

These hadn’t been, and each of them showed three complete gundecks, counting the carronades on their spar decks. Ninety-eight guns, that was how many a Zhenyfyr Ahrmahk carried. The thought of facing that holocaust was enough to turn any man’s stomach into frozen lead. Intellectually, Hahlynd knew the ironclads were even more dangerous, but those tall-sided galleons, sides throwing back the spray like black-painted cliffs while better than forty guns grinned hungrily from their open ports, screamed “Danger!” even more shrilly than the low-slung, evil-looking ironclads.

Yet whatever instinct might say, the three-deckers obviously mounted the standard 30-pounder smoothbores of the ICN, not the rifled 6-inchers of a Rottweiler, and the range was still at least a mile. No, they’d reserve their fire until someone was unfortunate enough to come deeper into their reach. Once someone did enter their range, though, that many shells would reduce any target to broken, flaming wreckage in mere minutes.

The only Doharan ships with any chance at all of surviving that kind of fire were Hahlynd’s screw-galleys. If they waited for the conventional galleys to close enough to support them, they’d only be bringing their consorts into a vortex of destruction they could never survive. The likelihood that even the screw-galleys might was probably little better, but at least their armor would give them some chance.

And that was precisely why he couldn’t wait, whatever his original instructions might have been.

The ironclads to break our teeth … and the three-deckers to break our bones. That’s what Sarmouth means for them to do, and unless I can get in close enough fast enough—

That massive double broadside crashed into the sea, throwing up thirty-foot pillars of water whiter than snow. They rose like a forest of titan oaks, tall and terrible, all around the screw-galleys Arrow and Javelin. The small ships clove the icy waterfalls, cranksmen bending desperately to their duty even as their ships leaned to the dangerous press of their canvas. Every man aboard those screw-galleys knew it was insanely risky to drive them so hard through such seas, that their hulls hovered on the brink of failure even before the enemy inflicted a single hit, yet they never hesitated. They sliced through the waves at almost twelve knots, clawing their way across the envelope of their enemies’ longer range, lying so far over to the press of the wind their lee rails were awash in a smother of white. Yet even at their speed, they’d need six minutes to bring the ironclads into their own reach, and in that time the superbly trained gunners of the Imperial Charisian Navy could fire as many as ten more broadsides.

* * *

“Gutsy bastards,” Zosh Hahlbyrstaht said quietly.

Fleet Wing’s position, well to the northwest of the Dohlaran main body, put her safely beyond Caitahno Raisahndo’s reach. It also meant she was too far away to see a damned thing from deck level. Which was why Hahlbyrstaht and Hektor had climbed to the schooner’s maintop.

The first lieutenant wasn’t very happy whenever his CO went up the mast, although he knew better than to say anything of the sort. And the truth was that, even with only one working arm, the Duke of Darcos was nimble as a monkey lizard. He’d been scooting up and down warships’ rigging since he was ten years old, he’d always been blessed with an excellent head for heights, and that single arm of his had grown amazingly muscular since he’d lost the use of the other.

Hahlbyrstaht knew all of that. But he also knew the old sailor’s aphorism: “One hand for the ship, and one hand for yourself.” In his opinion, it would be just a little difficult for someone with one hand—period—to put that into practice if the ship pitched suddenly.

From their lofty perch, however, their double-glasses let them see only too clearly, and Hektor’s expression was bleak as they watched the screw-galleys’ charge.

“Nobody ever said they weren’t gutsy,” he said as fresh torrents of brown smoke burst from the ironclads’ sides. It rolled across the ships, driven by the wind, spreading away to leeward. “All the guts in the world aren’t going to get them out of this one, though.” He shrugged. “In their place, I probably would’ve pulled the screw-galleys back, slowed them down and gone in with the galleons for support. I can see arguments for doing it this way, though, and Raisahndo obviously intended for them to maneuver independently of the galleons all along. In a lot of ways, this only speeds that up, and if he can get them far enough into Admiral Darys’ face before the rest of his squadron gets there, the distraction quotient might be enough to—”

He broke off, his bleak expression turning to stone as HMS Javelin ran headlong into a pair of 6-inch shells. All of Sir Dunkyn Yairley’s ironclads and bombardment ships had been issued the “armor piercing” ammunition Admiral Seamount and the Duke of Delthak had developed for their rifled guns. It was intended more for drilling deep into stone fortifications than for killing warships, but it worked just fine against those, too.

Both shells punched cleanly through Javelin’s armor and exploded deep inside her hull. She was unreasonably fortunate in at least one sense, because her magazine didn’t explode right along with them. But the sudden, savage explosions were too much for a hull already driven to and beyond its limits.

Her back broke, and the combination of her whirling screws and the massive wind pressure on her sails drove her bodily under.

There were no survivors. Even if anyone had made it into the icy water, hypothermia would have killed them long before anyone could rescue them.

Forty seconds later, Arrow staggered sideways, rolling madly, as a shell hit her, as well. It missed her armor completely, and it didn’t even explode. But it did strike her mainmast ten feet above her deck, and eight feet of the heavy spar disintegrated in shrieking splinters. The mast collapsed instantly under the weight of its rigging and the fierce strength of the wind.

The screw-galley almost capsized, and the wrecked mast toppled overside, still fastened to her by the shrouds, pounding her hull like a captive battering ram. Axes and cutlasses flashed as her crew hacked frantically at the rigging, fighting to free their ship from its lethal embrace, and HMS Flail and Catapult swerved to avoid her as they continued their own headlong charge.

* * *

“The rest of their galleons are setting their royals, Sir!” Captain Sympsyn shouted in Admiral Darys’ ear.

The admiral turned to look at him, and Sympsyn pointed up to the lookout in the maintop through the smoke swirling across Lightning’s deck.

“All of them?”

“Yes, Sir,” Sympsyn confirmed, and Darys inhaled a deep, smoky lungful.

I sure hope Dunkyn was right about how close on these bastards’ heels he’ll be, he thought. If he’s very far behind them, this could get … dicey.

“Trying to pile in on us, make it a general melee. They want to break our line and swarm in close enough to board,” he said grimly, and Sympsyn nodded.

“Current range?” The admiral tapped the angle-glass at his side and smiled without humor. “I can see damn-all through the smoke from deck level.”

“Their van’s about two miles behind the screw-galleys,” Sympsyn said. “According to my man up there—” he pointed at the maintop again “—and he’s a good, experienced man—that interval’s increasing because of how fast the screw-galleys are going, and their main body’s as much as a mile behind that.” The flag captain shrugged. “Sounds like Raisahndo’s trying to close with us as fast as he can, but they’ve still got a long way to go.”

Darys frowned, brain whirring like one of Rhaiyan Mychail’s spinning jennies while he considered distances and wind speeds. If Raisahndo was setting his royals in this freshening wind, he was clearly willing to court damage aloft, even knowing any ship with crippled rigging would become easy prey. That could turn around and bite him, and even with the royals set, he’d be considerably slower than the screw-galleys.

Call it ten knots in these conditions with the wind where it is, he decided, and three miles from us to their van. Twenty minutes before they can reach us, and six minutes or so more for their main body. So that means.…

“We’ll finish dealing with the screw-galleys,” he told his flag captain. “Tell the gunners they’ve got fifteen minutes. Then we turn downwind.”

“Yes, Sir.”

* * *

Pawal Hahlynd’s face was an iron mask as HMS Halberd staggered. For a second or two, it seemed she’d shake off the blow. Then the Charisian shell detonated and she heaved madly. Her mast snapped, thundering down across her deck, crushing and maiming her people, but that wasn’t all that had happened. She began losing way almost instantly, far more quickly than a screw-galley should have, and Hahlynd’s jaw clamped.

Took out the cranks, he thought, trying not to picture the carnage in the cramped space below decks where the cranksmen stood literally shoulder to shoulder, laboring to drive their vessel through the water. An explosion in that confined space must have ripped the crewmen to pieces and painted the planking with their blood.

Well, they’d already had plenty of company. Arrow was still afloat, although it looked as if she was slowly foundering. That wreckage must have beaten in her planking like a hammer on wickerwork before her people managed to cut it away. Flail was also afloat … barely, and not for very much longer; there was no question that she was going down. Arbalest had blown up in a spectacular ball of fire, and Saber’s armored citadel had been gutted by a pair of 6-inch shells that had slammed through her bow armor and exploded almost simultaneously. Cutlass had been driven out of action while she fought a losing battle against the flames consuming her, and if Dirk’s citadel remained intact, her starboard broadside had been hideously maimed by the explosion which had ripped her flank like some slash lizard’s furious talon. He could see the blood flowing from her scuppers as proof of the casualties she’d taken, and though she continued to fight her way through the waves with heartbreaking courage, her combat value had to be … dubious.

With Halberd, that was seven of his twelve screw-galleys gone, and he’d been wrong about how long the three-deckers would hold their fire. They weren’t using their lower deck guns, but like Raisahndo’s Hurricane, they had heavy rifles in pivot mountings on their upper decks. But whereas Hurricane showed a pair of 8-inch Fultyn Rifles, each of the Charisians was big enough to mount three, and they were longer and slimmer than the Dohlaran guns—long enough their muzzles projected far beyond their bulwarks when they were trained out on the broadside.

They also fired far, far faster than his own 150-pounders. In fact, they fired at least twice as rapidly as their own ironclads’ broadside guns. Breechloaders—they had to be, like the ones in their accursed armored steamers—and they were fiendishly accurate. Thank God there were only six of them!

Smoke erupted from Mace’s bows, and bared his teeth as all three forward guns fired as one. Her captain had obviously decided to disregard the safety restriction that prohibited firing all of those massive guns simultaneously. That restriction had even more point than usual in the current sea conditions, but Captain Clymyns clearly calculated that there was no tomorrow for his ship, whatever happened. The ironclad had denied him the quartering approach he’d wanted, maneuvering with the impeccable skill of the Imperial Charisian Navy to force him to approach through the very heart of her broadside firing arc, instead. Yet even though they’d held him under fire the whole way, he’d done it, Now he was end-on to her, barely ninety yards clear, presenting only his bow armor to her guns while he blazed away. His gunners were good … and just as determined as their captain. Not a shot missed. Hahlynd could actually see the massive round shot strike her target’s armor … and rebound. The trio of 10-inch projectiles shrieked away, baffled. One of them shattered into at least five pieces.

And then four of the ironclad’s guns fired back.

Mace disintegrated in a bubble of fire and smoke. Pieces of debris arced across the sky, trailing lines of smoke, rising as much as three hundred feet before they spiraled back down into the icy water in feathers white, and Hahlynd heard Ahlfryd Mahgyrs swearing viciously beside him.

“Clymyns deserved better,” he heard his own voice saying, and wondered why. It wasn’t like anything he could possibly say at this point was going to matter, but he went right on speaking. “I think we’ll be in range in about two more m—”

The 6-inch shell from HMS Zhenyfyr Ahrmahk’s forward pivot gun punched through HMS Sword’s frontal armor like an awl through butter. It detonated, the ready charges for her 10-inch smoothbores erupted in sympathetic detonation, and the forward forty feet of Pawal Hahlynd’s flagship shattered in a cloud of smoke, debris, and spray.

* * *

“They’re changing course, Sir,” Captain Trahvys said heavily. Caitahno Raisahndo only looked at him, and the flag captain shrugged. “They’re coming onto the wind, Sir. Not making any more sail, but—”

He shrugged, and Raisahndo nodded.

Of course the ironclads were coming onto the wind. They’d delayed long enough to deal with Hahlynd’s screw-galleys—only two of them were left, and he didn’t blame their skippers for spending more effort trying to evade the ironclads’ fire than trying to close. It was clear they weren’t going to damage the damned things, whatever they did. About the best they could hope to do now was to delay the bastards, convince the Charisians to spend a little more time on their own destruction in hopes their more conventional consorts could get to grips with the blocking force.

But that wasn’t going to happen. The ironclads and their division mates were turning to run in front of the rest of his squadron, timing the move with consummate professionalism. They weren’t even making any more sail, because they didn’t want to stay away from him forever. They only wanted to stay clear until the rest of Sarmouth’s squadron, coming up steadily behind Raisahndo’s formation, arrived to close the trap.

And there wasn’t one damned thing he could do about it.

The columns coming up astern were overtaking him rapidly, even with his royals set, and they were close enough his lookouts had been able to confirm that neither of the ships leading the original Charisian line had been ironclads after all. The Dohlaran admiral’s mouth twisted bitterly. Just like the sneaky bastards to convince me bombardment ships were ironclads in order to drive me into the real ironclads—not to mention those damned three-deckers. Not that it’s going to matter very much.

And, of course, there was the fact that the ship leading the closest Charisian division was another ironclad.

They’re going to shove that division into our backs like a dagger while their friends in front of us hold us for the kill. And their third division’s coming up fast on our lee quarter. We’re like a kraken in a net, waiting for the axe.

“General signal to reduce sail,” he told Trahvys. The flag captain looked at him, and he shrugged. “We’ve lost the race, Lewk, and we’re driving so hard our line’s started to scatter. Time to reduce to fighting sail and get ourselves reorganized. No point taking any more damage aloft than we have to, and the bastards will have to come into our range if they want us.”

“Yes, Sir.” Trahvys’ voice was level, almost as if he didn’t realize what Raisahndo’s decision truly meant.

“And while we’re doing that, bring the Squadron to north-northwest,” Raisahndo continued, and smiled thinly. “Let’s see how long it takes those frigging ironclads to catch up with us for a change.”

“Yes, Sir.” Trahvys saluted, then raised one hand, beckoning for a signalman, and Raisahndo turned to Commander Kahmelka.

“Go below,” he said quietly. “Take Ahrnahld with you, and make sure all our confidential papers and codes go overside with a grapeshot or two to keep them company.”

“Yes, Sir.” Kahmelka’s eyes were unflinching. “They won’t find anything useful, Sir. I guarantee it.”

“I know, Gahryth. I know.” Raisahndo patted the commander’s shoulder. “And while you’re at it, ask Father Symyn to join me on the quarterdeck.” He smiled bleakly. “I think we need someone to put in a good word for us.”