Hell's Foundations Quiver (97 page)

Clyntahn stared at him, and Duchairn felt a tremor of astonishment run through him. He wouldn't have thought the tension in the conference chamber could actually increase, but he would have been wrong. He felt Maigwair's taut presence across the table from him and realized just how thin a thread supported their lives at this moment, and the truly amazing thing was that in that instant of time, neither of them really cared.

“Don't think I won't if you push me to it, Rhobair,” the Grand Inquisitor said finally, his voice soft. “Because I will.
Believe
me, I will. You may even be right about what will happen if I do, but if I look around and all I see is that we're going to be defeated anyway, that decision will make itself. You and Allayn and all of your ‘technicians' may believe you're indispensable to the Jihad's victory, but I know better.
I
know that God will not suffer Himself to be defeated. Yes, He wants His mortal servants to live up to His law and shoulder the tasks He sets before them. And, yes, the Jihad may be His way of testing our worthiness. But in the final analysis, He
will
have the victory, whatever He must do to bring that about. So if it comes to the decision point, if I'm—if the
Inquisition
is—forced to take complete direction of the Jihad because the rest of you have failed Him and my Inquisitors, then I know—I
know
—God will do
whatever
it takes to give Mother Church the victory.”

He sat back from the conference table, his eyes hard and flat, and silence enveloped the richly appointed chamber.

 

.XI.

HMS
Chihiro
, 50, Gorath Bay, Kingdom of Dohlar

“Captain Hamptyn is here, My Lord.”

Lywys Gardynyr turned from the stern windows as Paiair Sahbrahan appeared diffidently in the stern cabin's doorway. The earl had already heard the routine challenge of the sentry outside his quarters, and he nodded.

“Show him in, Paiair,” he said, and returned his attention to the harbor, where an extremely large galleon lay to its anchor. The stark black of its hull was relieved only by a white strake along its single line of gunports, and the green wyvern on a red field of Dohlar fluttered proudly from its mainyard above the silver and blue checkerboard of the Imperial Charisian Navy.

“My Lord,” another voice said, and Earl Thirsk turned once more to face a swarthy, dark-haired man in a captain's uniform. Hamptyn bowed, his hat clasped under his left arm while the palm of his right hand rested lightly on the hilt of his sword to steady it.

“Captain,” Thirsk replied, with a shallower answering bow, and extended his right hand as both men straightened. They clasped forearms, and Thirsk indicated the two chairs on either side of the small table. Sahbrahan had already laid out the whiskey decanters and glasses. Now, at a brief nod of Thirsk's head, the valet disappeared, leaving the officers alone.

Hamptyn waited until the earl had seated himself before he settled into the facing chair. Their positions—not by accident—let both of them look out through
Chihiro
's stern windows at the ironclad galleon he'd sailed back to Gorath Bay.

“I've studied your report with some interest, Captain,” Thirsk said as he poured whiskey into both glasses. “It was impressive reading. I was sorry to hear about your ship—and about Admiral Rohsail's injuries, of course—but your squadron did well.
Very
well. And on behalf of His Majesty, I thank you all. I feel confident he'll add his personal thanks to mine once he's had time to read it, as well.”

“It was … chaotic, My Lord.” Hamptyn appeared to be searching for exactly the words he wanted, and he sipped the whiskey as if to buy time while he considered them. “There wasn't anything remotely like formal tactics or formations,” he continued after a moment. “Not in our part of the engagement, anyway. Admiral Raisahndo was able to maintain his line better than we could, but when it came to
Dreadnought
.…”

His voice trailed off as he gazed at the ship he'd been given to bring home, and Thirsk nodded. He'd already concluded that Kahrltyn Haigyl had done precisely what he'd clearly intended to do. The prize—and threat—of the powerful ironclad had been too much for Rohsail or his captains to resist. They'd closed in on
Dreadnought
like starving wolves, concentrating three-quarters of their total combat power on a single ship, and a part of the earl wanted to be furious with them for allowing themselves to be manipulated that way. But as he'd told Hamptyn, he'd already read the captain's report. For that matter, he'd already read Pawal Hahlynd's, and there was no question in his mind that
Dreadnought
's sheer might had made that concentration inevitable.

In terms of cold-blooded logic, Haigyl might well have made the wrong decision. If he'd concentrated on cutting his own way out, his ship's combination of armor and fighting power would almost certainly have allowed him to do that. Instead, he'd deliberately chosen to sacrifice any chance of escape to cover the conventional galleons. Given how much damage
Dreadnought
had inflicted in her single-handed stand against the entire Western Squadron
and
Pawal Hahlynd's Galley Fleet, sacrificing her to save less than half a dozen unarmored galleons had to be considered a questionable exchange. At the same time, Thirsk knew he would have made exactly the same decision in Haigyl's shoes. There was a time and a place for cold-blooded logic; there was also a time and a place to meet a man's responsibilities to the other flesh-and-blood men who fought with him. Haarald of Charis had set that standard for his navy at a place called Darcos Sound, and given what Haigyl must have known would happen to any Charisian prisoners foolish enough to surrender.…

“You seem to have taken her remarkably intact,” he said.

“More because of her armor than any care we took in that respect, My Lord, and only after she'd lost her rudder and been completely dismasted.” Hamptyn's lips twitched in a fleeting smile. “I understand your Lieutenant Zhwaigair's going through her from keel to main truck, but I can already tell you her armor's much tougher than our own. It's impossible to be certain, but from counting the dents, my best estimate is that we must have hit her at least two hundred times. But even though we cracked her armor in half a dozen places—thanks to Admiral Hahlynd's guns, not our own—we never actually
penetrated
it. In fact, most of the cracks seem to've resulted when the timber backing of the armor was driven in; the plates' faces just sneered at the heaviest shot we had.”

“So I'd already gathered from your report.” Thirsk shook his head. “Lieutenant Zhwaigair's also read your report—and Admiral Hahlynd's—and his preliminary conclusion is that the Charisians are using steel armor, not iron, and that they've managed to harden its face even further somehow.” He grimaced. “That's not something I wanted to hear, you understand, especially since not even the Lieutenant can figure out how they've managed to harden such large plates. For that matter, the largest single plate we can produce, even out of iron, is only two feet on a side; theirs are four times that size and half again as thick, to boot. That's the sort of news I
really
didn't want to hear.”

“I don't blame you, My Lord.” Hamptyn sipped more whiskey. “
Their
guns punched right through any of our galleons they hit. The screw-galleys stood up to them better than anything else we had, but at least seven of them were penetrated cleanly, and virtually all the survivors have cracked and broken plates.”

“We've already dispatched replacement armor and bolts down the canals,” Thirsk told him. “And we've placed three more screw-galleys in commission since Admiral Hahlynd's departure. We'll have at least two more before the end of next five-day, as well. I'd like to send all five of them forward, but there's considerable pressure to retain them here to protect Gorath Bay.”

“Admiral Rohsail and I discussed that before I sailed for home, My Lord. He was still in considerable pain, and the healers were increasingly of the opinion that they'd need to amputate the remainder of his arm, but he was quite clear and … forceful in his own view.”

“Which was?”

“Which was that it's essential we maintain pressure on the heretics in the western Gulf rather than retreat into some sort of citadel east of Jack's Land, My Lord. To be honest, he'd really prefer for
Dreadnought
to be placed back into full commission and returned to the Western Squadron, but he understands that we need an opportunity to examine her thoroughly and learn what we can about her construction and armament. He still hopes to have her returned as quickly as possible, and in the meantime, it's his view that Admiral Hahlynd should be reinforced as quickly and powerfully as possible. And whatever the heretics' ironclads may be capable of, the screw-galleys have certainly proved their usefulness against their conventional galleons.”

Thirsk nodded slowly. However little he liked Sir Dahrand Rohsail, the man's strategic instincts were sound, and Thirsk was impressed by his ability to think clearly after the loss of most of his right arm and all of his right leg. The truth was that Thirsk probably should have ordered him back to Gorath for medical treatment, but the Order of Pasquale had enormously enlarged and improved the Order's hospital at Rhaigair on the northern shore of Saram Bay. It was unlikely he could have received better treatment in Gorath, and Thirsk had decided it was better to send him to Rhaigair and spare him the voyage home until he'd recovered—
if
he recovered—from his wounds. At the moment, however, the fact that his judgment coincided with Thirsk's was rather more important than where he was hospitalized.

The earl leaned back in his chair, contemplating the younger man on the other side of the table. Captain Hamptyn was a competent and courageous officer. His ship had been brutally savaged by the Charisians, no doubt because they'd recognized her as one of their own. Caitahno Raisahndo's
Demonslayer
had been almost as badly damaged as
Defiant
, although she'd also been luckier. Her crew had faced a grueling, epic battle to keep her afloat, and from the preliminary damage survey, it seemed likely she was beyond repair this time. But at least
she
hadn't caught fire under the pounding she'd taken from the Charisian shells.
Defiant
had … and she'd burned to the waterline, despite her crew's heroic efforts to extinguish her fires. And one of the last orders Hamptyn had given as Rohsail's flag captain, before notifying Raisahndo that command of the Western Squadron had devolved upon him, had been for two of Pawal Hahlynd's surviving screw-galleys to tow her clear of
Dreadnought
lest her magazines explode and take the hard-won prize with her. That was a significant indication, especially combined with how doggedly Hamptyn had fought his ship up to the very end, of the kind of officer—and man—he was, and he clearly got along well with his admiral. It probably said something for Rohsail that he engendered that sort of loyalty in that sort of man, although Thirsk didn't truly understand how that could work. On the other hand, he didn't
need
to understand the relationship to appreciate its value to the Royal Dohlaran Navy, and Hamptyn had clearly been the right man in the right place.

“You were lucky you were able to get
Defiant
clear, Captain,” he said, voicing a part of his own thoughts. “If
Dreadnought
had caught fire as well, you would've lost both of them.”

“That wasn't the only way we were lucky, My Lord.” Hamptyn shook his head. “The heretics had laid a fuse in her magazines.” Thirsk stiffened slightly. That minor fact hadn't been included in the reports he'd read. “I'm still not clear on why they didn't fire it,” the captain continued. “I don't think there's any doubt that was part of their plan from the very beginning, and if she'd gone up, we'd probably have lost at least another two or three galleons of our own in the blast, given how close alongside they were. The only thing I can think of is that once we managed to board we swarmed her so quickly—and she'd lost so many of her own men in the fighting—that the order simply didn't get passed. The only one of her officers who survived was a midshipman, and
he
was wounded and unconscious when she finally surrendered.” Hamptyn grimaced. “For that matter, we took less than thirty of her entire crew alive.”

“So I understood.” Thirsk kept his own voice level, but it was hard, because he knew exactly why so few Charisians had been captured rather than killed. And he didn't doubt for a moment that Kahrltyn Haigyl had intended to blow up his own ship as much to save any of her remaining crew from the Inquisition as to deny her to the Royal Dohlaran Navy.

And he damned well deserved to succeed at
both
of those
, the earl thought grimly.
But he didn't. So now what do
I
do?

It was a question he was going to have to answer. He couldn't—and had no desire to—deny the pride he felt in what his navy had accomplished. The numerical odds might have favored Sir Dahrand Rohsail and Caitahno Raisahndo overwhelmingly, but the actual
combat
power had been far more evenly balanced. And returning one of the Charisians' ironclads for study and eventual employment under the Dohlaran flag was a huge accomplishment. For the moment, at least, Dohlar—not Charis—enjoyed a monopoly on armored warships in the Gulf of Dohlar, and it was the navy Thirsk had built and trained which had made that possible.

Yet despite that, and despite the many things he was certain Dynnys Zhwaigair would learn from examining her, he was grimly confident the Charisians would get around to replacing her far more quickly than Dohlar could have duplicated her even if they'd had the technical capability to do that.