Hell's Foundations Quiver (46 page)

All five galleons and eighteen old-style galleys of it.

Shyngwa leaned forward, bracing his hands on the sill of the open stern windows, and looked beyond his ships at the crowded anchorage, thick with anchored merchant galleons which had fled to the supposed safety of the provincial capital's shore batteries. The Charisian light cruisers had made their presence felt quickly after the heretics drove the Dohlarans out of Claw Island once more. They'd turned the coastal waters of Cheshire, Boisseau, and Tiegelkamp into a wrecker's yard of burned and sunken shipping, and merchant traffic in the Harchong Narrows had come to a standstill. And while the heretics appeared unwilling to operate too deep into the Gulf of Dohlar—from the reports he'd received, fifteen hundred miles seemed to be the limit they'd decided upon—Kyznetzov, unfortunately, lay within their operational radius, and Shyngwa knew exactly where this Charisian squadron was headed.

He raised his eyes from the anchored merchant ships to the Yu-kwau docks and skyline.

Yu-kwau, the provincial capital and the gem of the Bay of Alexov. Its white walls and orange terra-cotta tile roofs gleamed in the sunlight. Windows—many of them stained glass works of art—flashed back the light, nearpalms shaded paved streets and walkways of crushed seashells, brilliant flowers glowed like so many jewels, and golden fire flickered from the scepters atop the city's cathedrals and churches. Shyngwa had never understood why the imperial capital hadn't been moved to the South long ago, but he supposed it must have something to do with tradition. Shang-mi, on Boisseau Province's Beijing Bay at the mouth of the Chiang Jiang River, was the ancient heartland of the Harchongese people. The capital dated from the very Day of Creation, whereas South Harchong was a mere appendage which had been captured and colonized hundreds of years later. It was a pity, however. Yu-kwau's climate would have made it a far more suitable imperial capital, and perhaps the imperial bureaucrats would have become less deeply embedded in the South. And the vineyards, nearpalm plantations, and vast stretches of farmland in Kyznetzov and Queiroz must certainly be a welcome change from the frozen beet fields, potatoes, and hog farms of Cheshire, Chiang-wu, and northern Boisseau!

And capping its many other attractions, Yu-kwau had the Bay of Alexov. The Harchong Narrows might be closed to merchant shipping, but the bay wasn't, and the city's docks were crowded with coasters, many of them carrying loads of coal from Queiroz, others loaded to the deckhead with corn, grain, beans, apples, oranges, and sugar apples from the farms of Queiroz and Kyznetzov. They couldn't ship it by sea, but the St. Lerys Canal was one of the oldest on Safehold, carved through the heart of the Kyznetzov Mountains by the Archangels themselves to connect Yu-kwau (although the city had been little more than a smallish town—called “New York,” or some other uncouth, barbarian name—at the time) all the way to Shwei Bay, fourteen hundred miles to the east. Indeed, the canal was the reason Yu-kwau had been built in the first place, and that traffic, especially the foodstuffs, had become more profitable and important than ever. Yet unthinkable though it once would have been, the heretics had amply demonstrated their readiness to destroy Safehold's canal systems in complete defiance of the
Holy Writ
's commands.

And I can't stop them
. The admission went through his brain like a cold wind, and he shivered, despite the morning's heat.
I couldn't have stopped them even if they hadn't brought along one of those armored monstrosities of theirs
.
With
it
added to the scales, not even the batteries will be able to stop them
.

That was a bitter, bitter thought, that last one, because unlike the batteries fringing the Kyznetzov Narrows, Yu-kwau's waterfront artillery had been completely overhauled. The new-model twenty-five-pounder and forty-pounder shell-firing cannon were products of Yu-kwau's own foundries, and they'd been sited with care. Few of the new guns had been wasted on the Narrows' batteries for the simple reason that unless wind and tide cooperated, no enemy fleet was going to come into their range. They were positioned to cover likely landing beaches or handy anchorages blockaders might have used, and for that purpose, they were probably adequate, but no one had ever realistically expected them to drive off an attacking fleet.

The Yu-kwau waterfront batteries were intended to do just that, and until the heretics had produced their accursed armored galleons, that was precisely what they
would
have done. Now? He shook his head, his eyes bitter. If the Dohlarans' reports of what had happened at Claw Island were accurate, not self-serving lies intended to excuse their own defeat, the batteries stood no more chance of defeating this attack than his own ships did.

None of which means I don't have to try anyway
.

“Well,” he said, turning back from the white walls and orange roofs, “at least it'll take them another three days or so to arrive. I suppose we should spend them getting the men ready, Maidahng.”

“Yes, Sir.” Captain of Winds Tsauzhyn met his regard levelly. “I'll get started on that right away.”

*   *   *

“I see why Earl Sharpfield thinks so highly of Captain Haigyl,” Sharleyan Ahrmahk said, watching the SNARC imagery projected on her contact lenses.

“So do I.” Hektor Aplyn-Ahrmahk sat across the glass-topped table from her on the Manchyr Palace balcony, one arm around his wife's shoulders. The same imagery played itself across their contact lenses, as well, and the Duke of Darcos shook his head. “I know it has to be done, but Captain of Seas Shyngwa deserved better than he got.”

“I suppose he did,” Nimue Chwaeriau acknowledged. She and Edwyrd Seahamper stood outside Sharleyan's suite, protecting their privacy … and watching the same feed from the SNARCs. “At least Captain Haigyl rescued all of Shyngwa's people he could.”

“I just wish Shyngwa'd been one of them,” Hektor said. “I've seen enough ships sunk and enough men killed to last me a lifetime, Nimue.”

Irys Aplyn-Ahrmahk put one hand on his knee. He looked down into her hazel eyes, and she smiled a bit sadly.

“Don't worry, love,” he said, giving her shoulders a squeeze. “I'm not going all melancholy on you. It's just that when you come down to it, seamen are all the same under the skin. The sea doesn't play favorites, and all of us know it.”

“I don't think your stepfather and Domynyk would agree with you entirely,” Sharleyan said quietly. Hektor looked at her, and she shrugged. “Oh, I'm sure they'd agree with you where Shyngwa's involved. And they'd probably sign on about the sea not playing favorites. But they're not prepared to forgive and forget where
some
seamen are concerned.” Her eyes were bleak. “There's still a bill waiting to be collected for Gwylym Manthyr and his men.”

“I know. But, you know, even before Irys and I got access to the SNARCs, I never thought that was Thirsk's idea. I agree entirely with Cayleb and Domynyk that there's a price for something like that, whether it was his idea or not. But that doesn't mean I need to be looking forward to it.”

They fell silent as
Dreadnought
sailed slowly across the Yu-kwau harbor under topsails and jibs, rifled six-inch guns bellowing one by one, steady as a metronome, each gun individually laid as it hurled its heavy shells into the shoreside batteries. The Harchongese gunners stood to their pieces with defiant courage, pouring fire back at her, but to no avail.
Their
shells bounced from her armor plating like so many baseballs;
her
shells smashed straight through their parapets, dismounting their guns in volcanoes of splintered stone and mangled flesh.

Beyond her,
Vortex
and
Firestorm
had come to anchor and rigged springs to their anchor cables. Now they rotated in place, bringing their high-trajectory angle-guns into action. To Haigyl's credit, Nimue thought, his ships were careful to keep their fire as far as possible from the provincial capital's residential sections. It was unlikely any Church fleet would have made the same effort. But, then, that was the difference between the two sides, wasn't it?

The waterfront and—especially—the canalfront were fair game, however. The warehouses were roaring infernos, belching dense clouds of black smoke. So were the wharves—those which hadn't already simply collapsed in shattered ruin—and launches and longboats from
Tellesberg Bride
and the regular war galleons were making short work of the anchored merchantmen. No doubt many of those would be burned in the end, as well, since Haigyl lacked the manpower to put prize crews aboard all of them, but many others—the ones with the most valuable cargos—would be returning to Claw Island when he left. And once the defensive fire was completely suppressed—which wouldn't take so very much longer—
Tellesberg Bride
would land her Marines under cover of the squadron's guns to complete the demolition of the St. Lerys Canal's waterfront locks. They hadn't brought along any of the Delthak Works' Lywysite, but enough gunpowder would do the job just fine.

“It's a tidy operation,” she said over her internal com, never moving her lips. “I don't think Admiral Rohsail's going to bite, though.”

“We can always hope,” Hektor replied, and she chuckled.

“First, someone has to get him the word soon enough, Hektor, and that isn't going to happen. But, second, even if he found out in time to sortie and intercept Haigyl off the Crown of Queiroz, he's probably too smart to try it.”

Hektor nodded just a bit sourly. The Crown of Queiroz, the arc of islands off the mouth of the Kyznetzov Narrows, enclosed the waters of Eevahn Sound and Hwangzhi Sound. They also offered the best opportunity Sir Dahrand Rohsail, who commanded the Royal Dohlaran Navy fleet currently based on Whale Island, was likely to find to intercept Haigyl on his way back to Claw Island. That was why
Dreadnought
's sister ship
Thunderer
, another twenty-five galleons, and four scouting schooners of the Imperial Charisian Navy were currently keeping station off Mahdsyn Island in hopes he'd attempt exactly that.

“Does it really matter whether or not Earl Sharpfield can draw Rohsail into an engagement?” Irys asked. “I mean, he's avoiding action, isn't he? And as long as he does that, we can go on doing things like
this
.”

She waved one hand, indicating the cauldron of smoke and flame which had enveloped the Yu-kwau waterfront.

“Yes, and no,” her husband said. “He's not avoiding action because he never plans to fight, Irys. He's avoiding action because he doesn't want to fight
yet
.”

“But if we go on launching raids like this one, will it matter what he might plan to do to us sometime in the future? I mean, the damage will be done, won't it? And when the
King Haarahlds
commission, we'll be able to go as deep into the Gulf of Dohlar as we want!”

“That's not going to happen for months yet,” Nimue pointed out. “And in the meantime, there's Zhwaigair and his damned spar torpedoes. Not to mention those screw-galleys of his!” She snorted over the com. “I'll be damned if I would've believed he could make that notion work.”

“Lieutenant Zhwaigair has a nasty habit of making all sorts of notions work,” Sharleyan agreed sourly.

The empress, Nimue thought, had a point. Zhwaigair had completed over a dozen of his armored screw-galleys now, with as many more under construction. When he'd first proposed the concept, Earl Thirsk had been forced to fight tooth and nail for every pound of iron diverted to them; after the Great Canal Raid, priorities had shifted radically, however. Once the Grand Inquisitor himself signed off on the project, the physical ability of Dohlar's foundries to produce iron plate had become the only limiting factor.

The schooner-rigged galleys weren't the sturdiest craft ever created, and their propellers were substantially less efficient than the ones fitted to Charis' steam-powered vessels. Despite that, with thirty-four men on each crank, the four-hundred-ton vessels were capable of eight knots. Even with a complete replacement set of crankers—or “cranksmen,” as Zhwaigair had dubbed them—they could sustain that speed only for about forty minutes, but they could maintain
four
knots just about indefinitely, easily as long as any conventional galley's oarsmen could have managed. Under sail, they could make seven or eight knots in average wind conditions with their two-bladed screws rotated into a vertical position to minimize drag, and they could
combine
wind and screws for a really remarkable turn of speed.

Surprisingly, they were good seaboats, as well, despite the heavy weight of their iron armor. Or, more accurately, they would have been good seaboats if the weight of all that armor and the three ten-inch smoothbores—all mounted forward—hadn't placed such an incredible stress on a wooden vessel. Zhwaigair had never expected them to be blue-water warships, but he'd found out the hard way that their hulls strained badly, and however well they might
handle
, one of them had literally broken up in no more than six-foot seas. He'd done what he could after that misadventure to stiffen the hulls, but there was a limit to what he could accomplish without the steel and wrought-iron frames available to Sir Dustyn Olyvyr. And that restricted them firmly to coastal waters and moderate sea conditions. Against wooden galleons and under those conditions, however, they had lethal potential.

Their iron armor wouldn't stand up to
Dreadnought
's rifled projectiles, but it was more than enough to resist the thirty-pounder smoothbores which were the ICN's standard heavy guns. And while eight knots might not sound blisteringly fast, it was twice the speed most galleons could maintain under fighting sail. Not to mention the fact that galleys could steer directly into the wind.