Hell's Foundations Quiver (80 page)

Maindayl looked up quickly, but bit back what he'd been about to say. The bishop militant's expression told him everything he needed to know. Whatever Kaitswyrth might say, he knew the truth. It might take a while longer, but in the end, he'd face that truth. The question was, how much of the precious time Sebahstean Taylar's men no longer had would it take for that to happen?

“Sir,” he began—

“Excuse me, My Lord.”

Kaitswyrth and Maindayl turned quickly as the door opened. A lieutenant, one of the bishop militant's junior aides, stood there, his face anxious, and an exhausted-looking, mud-coated courier in the colors of the Earl of Usher stood at his shoulder.

“What?” Kaitswyrth snapped.

“I apologize for disturbing you, My Lord,” the lieutenant said quickly, “but this messenger's just come in from Baron Wheatfields.”

Maindayl's nostrils flared and his stomach muscles tightened. He looked at as much of the Usherite's face as he could see through the mud, and in that man's iron expression he read the message he'd come to deliver.

“I'm afraid … That is…” The lieutenant drew a deep breath. “My Lord, Baron Wheatfields reports that heretic infantry have seized Gyrdahn of the Marshes. They're digging in with infantry angle-guns and field guns. He estimates there are at least eight thousand of them, My Lord.”

 

JULY

YEAR OF GOD 897

 

.I.

HMS
Thunderer
, 30, Hahskyn Bay, Shwei Province, Harchong Empire, and Guarnak, Cliff Peak Province, Republic of Siddarmark

Sir Bruhstair Ahbaht stood by the binnacle, smoking his pipe and listening to the fiddle scrape away on
Thunderer
's foredeck. The ironclad's long, slender bowsprit was a lance, pointed directly at the sun settling into the broad blue waters of Hahskyn Bay in a smother of crimson ash and golden clinkers, and the day's oppressive heat was settling into the cool of evening along with it. His crew was just as disappointed at turning back as he'd expected them to be, but they were seamen—
Charisian
seamen, as Daivyn Kylmahn had pointed out to him—and it never occurred to them that his decision might have anything to do with lack of confidence. Still, as blue-water sailors were wont to do, they approved of captains with prudence, and they'd felt nothing but relief when the smell of saltwater welcomed them back to their natural habitat once more.

He shook his head with a half-smile as he watched the off-watch crew dance to the fiddle. It wasn't the hornpipe it might have been back on Old Earth, but it was just as exuberant and exhausting, and just as faithful a sign of the crew's morale.

It spoke for his own morale, as well, he decided. The passage downriver had gone more smoothly than he'd feared it might, actually—mostly because they'd already located most of the shallows where any of his galleons might have run aground. And he had to admit he'd felt a certain satisfaction as they sailed past Ki-dau without drawing a single shot. The squadron had demolished the port's rudimentary defenses on its way up the Hahskyn Estuary. There'd been no time for the Harchongians to rebuild, and even if they'd had the time, none of them would have been foolish enough to challenge
Thunderer
and the bombardment ships a second time.

They'd cleared the southern end of Crescent Shoal almost four hours ago, and the wind which had defeated his drive up the Hahskyn was perfectly suited to his present heading. He could wish there was more of it, but in another four hours, they'd enter Egg Drop Passage, the twenty-six-mile-wide channel between Beggar Island and Egg Drop Island. It was the widest and safest of Crescent Bay's four entrances, which was a non-trivial consideration, given the general unreliability of Harchongese charts and the absence of any buoys. By dawn, they'd be into the southern end of the Kaudzhu Narrows, and he couldn't pretend he wouldn't be a lot happier once they were back into the broader waters of Shwei Bay.

He stood a while longer, smoking his pipe, respectfully ignored by the seamen and officers who'd realized how he treasured such moments, and watched the sun's fiery orb snuggle back under its rippled blue blanket for the night.

*   *   *

“You did notice that I had the king of diamonds, didn't you, Ahndru?” Sir Bruhstair Ahbaht asked pleasantly.

The youthful-looking cleric in the green cassock badged with Pasquale's caduceus in the brown of an under-priest looked back across the table at him with guileless gray-green eyes. Ahndru Graingyr doubled as
Thunderer
's chaplain and healer, and Ahbaht knew how fortunate the ship was to have him. Graingyr had been born in Siddarmark's Tarikah Province but assigned by his order to the main Pasqualate hospital in Cherayth three years before the battle of Armageddon Reef. Like many Pasqualates, he'd leaned strongly towards Reformism, and when Sharleyan accepted Cayleb's proposal of marriage, he'd declared firmly for the Church of Charis. He was only thirty-three (and just over nine inches taller than his captain), but he had the gift, the knack for convincing even the most grizzled old salt to trust his soul in his chaplain's hands, and he was one of the most skilled and compassionate healers Ahbaht had ever encountered.

He was also an expert spades player, a master of what had been the traditional game of the Royal Charisian Navy for at least the last hundred years, although the last hand might have led some people to doubt that particular credential.

“Oh, I'm sorry, Sir Bruhstair. Did I cut your king?”

“Yes,” Ahbaht said with commendable restraint. “You did. It was fortunate you were able to make that jack of hearts good. Otherwise, I might have been forced to … speak more sharply to my spiritual shepherd than I really ought to.”

“We could never have that!” Graingyr said earnestly. “I'll try to do a better job of remembering which cards've been played in the next hand, I promise.”

“Father,” Lieutenant Tymythy Mahgrudyr said to no one in particular while he shuffled, “mendacity is unbecoming in a man of the cloth.”

Mahgrudyr,
Thunderer
's purser, was a native of Tellesberg, with eyes so darkly brown they were almost black and a very swarthy complexion. He was only about six years younger than Ahbaht, which would have made him a bit elderly for a lieutenant with a line commission. He was actually rather young to have attained that rank as a supply specialist, however, and unlike most Emeraldian pursers Ahbaht had known before his transfer to the Imperial Charisian Navy, he was scrupulously honest.

“That's a rather serious charge—or allegation, I suppose I should say—my son,” Graingyr said austerely.

“No, it's a simple observation of the truth, Father,” Daivyn Kylmahn said. He was the customary fourth for the captain's thrice a five-day spades games, and while he was above average by most people's standards, he was outclassed by the other three players and knew it.

“What he meant to say,” the first lieutenant continued, “is that you're not fooling anyone. Not even me. You knew exactly what you were doing, and you and the Captain might as well stop trying to sharp me into thinking you didn't.”

“I am cut to the quick,” Graingyr said, with a noticeable lack of sincerity. “How could you possibly think such a thing of me? I agree that I'm the product of one of the best Temple Lands seminaries, so I suppose I might be a
little
suspect on that basis, but I've been a good, bluff, unimaginative, depressingly honest—one might almost say
dull
—Chisholmian for almost nine years now! After all that time exposed to such a merciless barrage of stolid righteousness, all of that seminarian logic chopping and equivocation's been thoroughly beaten out of me!”

“I think the noun I used was ‘mendacity,' not ‘equivocation,'” Mahgrudyr observed as he offered the shuffled deck to Ahbaht. The captain cut and the purser began dealing. “I believe there's a distinct difference between the two. One even those of us deprived of a Church education can recognize.”

“Just remember who's going to be in charge of assigning your penance at this Wednesday's confessional, Tymythy,” Ahbaht advised, gathering his cards and sorting them as they were dealt. “I wouldn't want to suggest that the good Father might—”

The universe heaved suddenly. The overhead lamp swung wildly. Lieutenant Kylmahn had been tipped back in his chair, balancing it on the rear legs; now it crashed over, dumping him on the deck, and the sounds of breaking glass came from the captain's whiskey cabinet and Mahrak Chandlyr's pantry.

Ahbaht dropped his cards, surging to his feet, just as another jerking shudder ran through the ship. Voices were raised on deck—initially in alarm, and then, almost instantly, in sharp, disciplined commands. Bare feet rushed across the deck overhead, there was a sudden, thunderous avalanche of sound, and Ahbaht paused only long enough to extend a hand and yank Kylmahn back upright before he went thundering towards the deck himself.

*   *   *

“Well, I suppose it could be worse,” the captain sighed two hours later.

He stood beside the binnacle once again, Kylmahn at his shoulder, but there was no one on the wheel this time. There was no point;
Thunderer
was firmly aground, listing perhaps three degrees to larboard, on a shoal which appeared on none of their charts. It seemed to be at least four or five miles long, and it lay ten miles off Egg Drop Island's southern shore. That put it almost squarely in the middle of the deepwater channel indicated on those same charts, and the fact that no court of inquiry would ever find Sir Bruhstair Ahbaht's judgment faulty made him feel absolutely no better. However good his
judgment
might have been, everything about
Thunderer
—and, in this instance, his entire squadron—was his
responsibility
.

“At least it's mud, not rocks, Sir,” Kylmahn offered. “We've started a few seams, but a rock would've ripped the guts right out of her, hard as we hit.”

“That's what I meant about its being worse. Unfortunately, that's about the
only
way it could've been,” Ahbaht replied, then gave himself a mental shake.

Let's not wallow in
too
much despair, Bruhstair!
he told himself.
And it's all right to let your guard down with Daivyn as long as you don't do it where anyone else can hear you. Now stop kicking yourself and figure out what you do next
.

The problem was that there wasn't a great deal he
could
do. Kylmahn was right about one thing.
Thunderer
had been bowling along at almost five knots on that favorable wind he'd been so happy about. If they'd hit an uncharted rock at that speed it
would
have ripped a potentially enormous hole in her hull. As it was, she'd slid up onto the mudbank at a relatively gentle angle and the carpenter and his mates reported that there was no serious underwater damage.

The same couldn't be said above decks. The sudden stop had snapped the fore topmast right out of her before the sheets could be let fly to empty the huge fore topsail of wind. How the main topmast had failed to follow suit was more than Ahbaht could say, and he intended to have it very carefully inspected as soon as there was light. The falling fore topmast had taken the fore topgallant and royal masts with it, and at least two hands had been missing and unaccounted for after the wreckage was cleared away. The captain was grimly certain they'd been crushed and taken over the side by the plunging spars, and nine of their shipmates had been injured—three of them seriously—at the same time.

The worst aspect of it was that they'd grounded on a rising tide, very close to high water, and tides this far inland were nothing much to write home about. That meant the next flood tide was unlikely to float them neatly off the shoal. The speed at which they'd hit made bad worse in that respect, since he was certain the ship had driven deeply into the mud. That was going to create a powerful suction effect, which could only make it still harder to work her off.

Just be grateful those damned screw-galleys won't reach Symarkhan for another two days
, he told himself.
Or that they're not
likely
to, anyway. That gives you some time to deal with this, and you've got a whole squadron worth of boats and other galleons to help get you off this Shan-wei-damned mud pile. Between them, they've got enough anchors to kedge
Eraystor
out to sea!

“All right, Daivyn,” he said briskly. “First we need to get a boat off to the
Vengeance
to tell Captain Vahrnay he's now the acting senior officer afloat. We need to get some of the schooners out to make sure no one sneaks up on us while we're stuck here like a wyvern waiting to be skinned. Then I want both launches rigged to carry anchors. Unless the wind backs clear around to the west, there's no way in Shan-wei's hell any of the other galleons'll be able to tow her off, so let's go ahead and get the hawsers run aft, too, since the only way we're going to kedge her off is astern. Obviously, we're not going to do that until the top of the flood, but we might as well get the anchors laid out now. Next we need to see about lightening ship. We're not throwing any guns over the side just yet, but I think it's time to see about pumping the water tanks. I don't like it, but we can steal some of it back from the squadron's other ships once we get her back afloat. See what else we might be able to jettison without compromising our fighting ability, too; if it comes to it, I'll be willing to drop solid shot over the side or lower it into the boats where we can reclaim it later. Next—”

*   *   *