On the Oceans of Eternity (32 page)

“You see,” she said, when they were gathered around. “The
shotguns
and the rifles hit further and harder than bow or javelin.”

Just then a young spotted hound leaped into her chariot; she ruffled its ears absently, and it put its paws on the railing, waiting eagerly for a run to drive the wind into its nose.

“Down, Sabala,” she said sharply.

The dog let his ears droop and curled up out of sight on the wicker-and-lath floor of the chariot with a deep sigh.

A warrior spoke; a lord named Tekhip-tilla who had much gray in his black beard, a man who had fought in the last wars of the old kingdom. “Princess, they do.” He looked at the fire-weapons racked snugly in leather scabbards on the rail of his chariot. “But I have already seen that this means a man on foot with a
rifle
is a much smaller target than a chariot ... and he can shoot more steadily. Can chariots go near such, and live?”

Raupasha nodded. “But most of the enemy host will not have rifles,” she said. “Only the ...” She thought, searching for a Hurrian phrase that would match the English concept of a standing army. “Only the ...
household troops
of the Wolf Lord. His barbarian allies, the Ringapi, they will fight mostly with spear and sword and bow, in chariots and afoot. Them we will strike. Also, there are other weapons that our allies the Eagle People will give us—stronger weapons.”

A murmur of awe at that; everyone here had seen the
Nantukhtar
ship of the air and their other wonders.

“Here is a handfast man of the
Nantukhtar
lord Kenn’et. He will tell you of the
mortars
and
rocket launchers
...”

When explanation was finished and the cheering had died down, Raupasha flung up her arms. “Yes, we shall have weapons of great power—like the Maruts of Indara Thunderer—or the sons of Teshub,” she added, switching the metaphor to a God more familiar to ordinary folk. “But no weapon is mighty without the skill and courage of the warrior who wields it! Are your hands skilled to war, your hearts full of Agni’s fire?”

“Yes!”
they roared.

“Good, for this is not a war of a day, of a week, or a season. This is a war where only men fit to bestride the universe may hope to conquer. Our allies—those who freed us from the yoke of Asshur—Oght across the wide world and call us to fight at their side. Shall they call in vain?”

No!
No!”

When they left the practice field for camp, it was as a proud column of twos, stretching back in a plume of dust and a proud glitter of arms. Sabala stood proudly, too, basking in her reflected glory, paws on the forward railing of the chariot and ears flapping as arrogantly as the banner above her.

Now, if only you were Kenn‘et,
she thought a little desolately, resting her hand on the hound’s skull and looking northward; it would be weeks before she could rejoin the Nantukhtar lord. His tail beat happily against her leg and the side of the chariot. Never would she forget the sight of Kenn’et, bending above her, when she’d lost conciousness dangling by her thumbs with her feet six inches over the Assyrian preparations for a hot low fire.

I did not know, then,
she thought. Then she had only thought him handsome, and brave, and a warrior-wizard.
But now I know
.
Whatever King Kashtiliash thinks, you are my lord. And I will have you for my man as well, though I die for it.

 

Something woke the commodore. Not the pendulum-bob way she and Swindapa were sliding back and forth in the bunk; they were thoroughly used to that. Perhaps a different note in the scream of the wind in the rigging, or in the endless groaning complaint of the ship’s fabric. Her first thought was:

She disentangled herself from arms and legs and sat up. Swindapa could blink alert in a second, when she had to. When she didn’t she preferred to come awake slowly, drifting up from the depths. Marian put one hand on a grip-loop bolted to the bulkhead and worked the sparker on the gimbaled lantern by the bunk with the other. The sparks cascaded like miniature lightning inside the thick wire-braced glass of the chimney, and then the cotton wick caught. She turned it up, and the yellow kerosene light ran off the polished curly maple and black walnut of the commander’s cabin, and the gray steel of the two stern-chasers lashed down near either rear comer. Otherwise, it was austere enough, a couple of chests and cupboards, family pictures, a shelf of books secured with hinged straps above her desk and the rack for her sextant, the semicircle of seats below the shuttered stem windows and the big central table with the map still fastened down in its holder, and Swindapa’s desk on the other side. That was flanked by filing cabinets; even a Kurlelo Grandmother’s art of memory was stretched when it came to the logistics of a force this size, and Lieutenant Commander Swindapa Kurlelo-Alston handled most of those details.

Thank you for Swindapa, Lord Jesus: Or Moon Woman, or fate,
Alston thought, not for the first time.
But usually it isn’t her genius for paperwork that I’m thinkin’ of.

The cabin also had a chronometer and barometer set into the wall. She looked at those and raised her eyebrows. Three hours’ sleep, and after all that time the glass was still falling. This was going to be a bad one. Then she looked up at the repeater-compass that showed as a dial above the bunk, slaved to the main instrument in the binnacle at the wheels.
Uh-oh.

Swindapa was yawning and stretching behind her as she pulled on wool longjohns and a fresh uniform. It was a cold-weather pattern, the wool unfulled. That made the dye a little patchy, but it also shed rain almost as well as oilcloth. She was nearly dressed when the knock came at the door.

“Commodore! Message from the
Farragut!”

“Thank you, yeoman,” she said to the signals tech, opening the door and taking the transcript.

Shipping heavy water, violent roll, engines stressing hull frames but pumps keeping pace.
Alston winced. Boilers were heavy. She read the rest:
Striking all sail and heaving to under paddles alone. Captain Trudeau.

“A reply, ma’am?”

“Acknowledge,
luck be with you,
and hourly updates,” she said.

“And ma’am, the captain sends his compliments, and he’s bringing her around into the wind. The storm’s strengthening.”

“Tell Commander Jenkins that I’ll be on deck presently.”

Swindapa clubbed her long yellow hair into a fighting braid at her nape and shrugged into her uniform. Alone, they gave a moment to a fierce hug and then put on their official faces, plus their oilskins and sou’westers, tying the cords under their chins as they went up the companionway to the fantail deck. Water crashed into their faces as they came on deck, flying in hard sheets over the port bow of the ship and tearing down the two hundred feet to the quarterdeck through pitch-dark chaos. Each of them put an elbow about the starboard safety line as they ran forward in bursts to the wheel and binnacle, struggling to keep their feet as the wind tried to fling them backward like scraps of paper in a storm. The gale from the north was cutting across the long Atlantic westward swell, creating a chaos of waves that had the bowsprit following a corkscrew pattern, heaving the ship in what seemed like three directions at once.

Lower topsails,
she noted, looking up into the rigging for what the ship’s commander had set.
And foretopsail staysail
.

Good. The
Chamberlain’s
bows were pointing northwest now, up into the wind. Theoretically they were tacking, but there was no chance of making any real forward way in weather like this. You didn’t want to; the object was to keep the ship moving as slowly as possible and still have steerageway, so that she rode the incoming waves rather than cutting into them. They were probably drifting a little to leeward, overall—the mass of ocean beneath her was too—but
Chamberlain
should come through all right if nothing important gave way.

There was a group around the wheels; Commander Jenkins, his XO, and the officer of the deck as well, with a couple of ensigns and middies looking on anxiously.

“You have the wheel lashed, I see, Captain,” she said to Jenkins.

He nodded, exaggerating the gesture to be seen in the chaotic darkness. “Foretopsail’s braced sharp and staysail’s sheeted flat!” he yelled, his face indistinct under the flapping brow of his sou’wester except for a white flash of teeth. “You showed us that trick on Eagle, Commodore!”

Braced like that, the square sail slowly forced the
Chamberlain’s
bow up into the wind, until it started to luff; then she fell away to the east pushed by the staysail and helped by the pounding waves crashing on her port bow, until the topsail filled again and the cycle repeated. Everything would be fine if they stayed far enough away from the cliffs somewhere behind them, unseen in the night. They were moving forward a bit, but the ship slid a little more sideways and to the rear every time, and the whole mass of water it sat in was making a couple of knots eastward.

“Lieutenant Commander!” Marian said. “Order to the fleet,
Heave to
and
Report status.”

“Aye, aye, ma’am!” Swindapa replied, before she turned and made her way to the deckhouse that contained the radio.

Marian looked out into the blackness, where only the white tops of the great waves heading toward them were visible before they broke in frothing chaos across the forecastle and waist of the ship, feeling the vessel come surging up again each time to shrug the tons of water overside.
And if I’m any judge of weather, it’s going to get worse,
she thought grimly.

It did; the next few hours brought what was technically dawn, but without any lightening that she could see. Breakfast was flasks of coffee brought up by the wardroom steward, hard-boiled eggs, and sandwiches made of pitalike flatbread wrapped around cold corned beef. By that time they had to duck their heads to breathe, or turn around for an instant; there were more dimly seen oilskinned shapes on the quarterdeck, as officers relieved by the next watch stayed to keep their eye on the ship’s death struggle with the sea. There wasn’t much point in going below, to pitch about wakeful in their bunks. There wasn’t much conversation either, when you had to scream into someone’s ear with hands cupped around your mouth to be heard at all.

The radio shack abaft the wheels was a little better, since it rated some of the precious electric lights, running from the same bank of batteries and wind-charger that powered the communications gear and the shut-down computer and inkjet printer. When Marian pulled herself through its hatch the ensign on watch threw his weight beside hers to close the oak portal; most of the spray had been caught by a blanket-curtain hung before it for that purpose. The absence of the full shrieking roar outside made it seem quiet, until she had to talk.

“Let me see the latest reports from the fleet,” she said to the technican on radio watch.

Quickly she ruffled through the sheaf of papers. The tone of a few was increasingly panic-stricken, but nobody had actually started to founder, or lost masts or major spars yet. She frowned over one from the
Merrimac;
the ship was riding far too low and rolling sluggishly.
Captain Clammp to flag: I suspect cargo is shifting on its pallets and increasing the working of the seams. All pumps manned continuously. Heavy rolling threatening masts and standing rigging. Am attempting to rig preventerbackstays.

Marian Alston shaped a silent whistle. Putting crews into the tops in weather like this to rerig meant Clammp was really worried. And if the rolling was that bad, he was right to worry; losing a sail in weather like this could be catastrophic. Losing a mast didn’t bear thinking about.-

“Ma’am, message coming through from the
Farragut.”

There was a spare headset. She put it on, and immediately winced at the blasts of lightning-static that cut across it. The voice blurred behind it, every second or third word coming loud and clear.
Masts ... boiler ... buckle . . . hatchway ... port paddle ... repairs.

“Farragut,
this is Commodore Alston. Repeat, please. I say again, repeat!”

Nothing but more static.
God-damn. If she had a hatchway staved, got cold water pouring in and dousing her boiler, losing power in this ...

“Inform me if there’s anything more from either
Farragut
or
Merrimac,
please, Ensign.”

“Aye, aye, ma’am!”

Back out into the darkness, but just as she left there were a series of lightning flashes that cast the whole ship into stark black-and-white. There were four crewfolk standing by the wheel. with safety lines rigged from their waists; most of the rest of the deck watch were huddled under the break of the quarterdeck. Those around the wheel were catching the full fury, and it struck her breathless; either it had worsened in the last ten minutes, or she’d been unable to remember just how bad it was. On the transports, with hundreds of panic-stricken, seasick landsmen belowdecks, things must be indescribable. She was profoundly glad she’d had at least a couple of platoons of the Marine regiment shipped on every keel that carried Alban volunteer auxiliaries.

She rejoined Swindapa and opened her mouth to speak. Then her head whipped up, alerted by some subliminal clue, a hint her conscious mind couldn’t have named. Several others did the same; and without the slightest warning the wind backed and turned ninety degrees. The lunging twist of the ship turned into a heel that had crew clutching for the safety lines or rigging or the circle of belaying pins around the masts.

With a screech the lines holding the staysail gave way, and it bellied out and filled to splitting. That pulled the ship’s head violently around dead into the wind and jerked her forward into the oncoming wave, accelerating fast enough to be felt as a surge. Alston’s eyes went wide as she watched the frigate’s knife bows ram into the oncoming wave, not rising to it at all, no time to ride up the cliff-steep face of the wild water. She clenched her hands into the brass rail around the binnacle and watched. the whole forecastle go under, as if the
Chamberlain
were running downward on rails. The wave broke across the waist of the ship, struck the break of the quarterdeck, and surged across it even as the whole hull tilted to the right until the starboard rail was under.