A Mighty Fortress (133 page)

The Harchong contingent, on the other hand, had a far more satisfactory command structure. Lock Island found the Imperial Harchongese Navy’s rank titles a little ridiculous, but that was probably to be expected from a force that was technically the largest navy in the world, yet kept fewer ships in commission than Corisande, alone. Of course, they’d always maintained an officer corps big enough to command all of the ships they
didn’t
have in commission, as well. Worse, once a man earned the equivalent of captain’s rank,
all
promotion in the IHN was based solely on seniority.

As a consequence, the senior officer afloat was one Chyntai Shaiow, the Duke of Sun Rising, who rejoiced in the title of Admiral of the Broad Oceans. A cousin of Emperor Waisu, he’d served (officially) in the IHN since two years before his actual birth. That, coupled with the appropriate bribes and the inherent corruption of all things Harchongese, had gotten him commissioned a captain of winds the month he turned sixteen. Of course, he’d never actually set foot on a naval vessel until he was twenty- one, but that sort of subterfuge was standard in Harchong, probably because it was the only way for anyone to attain flag rank when he was still at least theoretically young and vigorous enough to do some good.

Admiral of the Broad Oceans Sun Rising flew his streamer in IHNS
Flower of Waters
. He was currently seventy- five years old, his health was poor, and he tended to go off on long rambling discourses at captains’ conferences. No one would have dared say anything of the sort—not in Harchong!— yet Lock Island knew at least some of Sun Rising’s subordinates realized he was the wrong man in the wrong place. Unfortunately for them, he probably came the closest to being the right man of anyone of the appropriate seniority. Besides, his towering birth made him the only possible candidate for such a prestigious and important command.

Captain of Winds Shoukhan Khowsan, who commanded Sun Rising’s flagship, was rather a different sort. Obviously, he had to be oppressively well-born to hold his current command, and although his own title was simply that of the Count of Wind Mountain, he was also the second son of the Duke of Dancing Water. And the Duke of Dancing Water, like every other Harchongese duke, was one of the emperor’s cousins.

That was about the sole point of similarity between Wind Mountain and Sun Rising, however. The captain of winds was twenty years younger than the admiral of the broad oceans, and there was nothing wrong with
his
brain. He had far less experience than a Charisian officer chosen for his position would have had, but he was more experienced than just about anyone else the IHN might have chosen. Fortunately, his father and Sun Rising detested one another, which meant his relations with
his
admiral weren’t remotely like the mutual respect which flourished between Harpahr and Taibahld. “Icily correct” was probably the best way to describe them, which suited Bryahn Lock Island just fine.

What was it that fellow Merlin was talking about the other day said?
Lock Island frowned, trying to remember the man’s name.
Napoleon? Something like that, anyway
.

The high admiral’s frown turned into a grimace at his inability to remember the name, yet as he pondered the other side’s command arrangements, he understood exactly what whatever- his- name- was had meant when he called another general fortunate because he only had to fight coalitions.

Any coalition’s only as good as its coordination,
he thought.
And until the Group of Four have been smacked around enough, I don’t think they’re likely to do the kind of arse- kicking necessary to make something like the Harchongese Navy coordinate with
anybody.
For that matter, I don’t know if anyone short of God or a
genuine
Archangel could kick that kind of aristocratic arse!

The thought was comforting... but only until he remembered that only nineteen of the ninety- three armed galleons coming his way were Harchongese. The other seventy- four had all been built, armed, and manned by the Temple Lands. That was another kraken entirely, and not just because of the difference in the officers corps involved, either.

The Temple Lands had officially abolished serfdom de cades ago. Despite that, there were still serfs on virtually every major Temple Lands estate; they just weren’t
called
that. By the same token, there were still men in Emerald and even Chisholm who were
called
serfs, but who’d actually become small landowners in their own rights. In fact, the phased abolition of the legal status of serf (a firm requirement of the Charisian Empire) had raised scarcely a ripple in Emerald or Chisholm. Within another two years, the process would be completed.

The situation was a little more complicated in Corisande and—especially— Zebediah, where the conditions of serfdom had varied widely between one feudal territory and another. There’d been no serfs at all in Manchyr, Tartarian, or Airyth, for example, and the institution had been very similar to the Chisholmian variety in Rochair, Coris, Barcair, and Anvil Rock, and on Wind Daughter Island. It probably wasn’t a coincidence that almost all the lords who’d joined the Northern Conspiracy in Corisande practiced a rather more severe version of serfdom, on the other hand, and phasing it out in Corisande was going to take longer.

But they not only had serfs in Harchong, they had outright slaves. Lots of them. Whereas Charis—and Emerald, Chisholm, and Corisande, in varying degrees—had a bustling, vibrant free labor force, supporting a steadily growing middle class as well as wealthy entrepreneurs like Ehdwyrd Howsmyn, Harchong had vast slave- worked plantations, and the workforce in Harchongese manufactories was almost always composed of slave laborers, as well. There
was
no Harchongese middle class, no free labor force, and definitely no equivalent of the Charisian treasure chest of experienced seamen. Harchongese warships were crewed by men who’d literally been driven aboard with the lash in many cases, and who were controlled by a brutal, often capricious discipline which would have provoked an almost instant mutiny aboard any Charisian vessel.

And, not surprisingly, their crews gave them exactly the degree of loyalty and initiative they deserved. There might be a modicum of enthusiasm—or, at least, willingness—aboard the IHN’s ships now that the Group of Four had declared Holy War. The deep reservoir of faith among the Harchongese peasantry and serfs was one of the things which held the Empire together, and the priests aboard those ships had appealed fervently to that faith. Yet dumb acceptance of brutal conditions, even born of religious fervor, was no substitute for the enthusiasm and high morale which routinely prevailed aboard Charisian warships.

The Navy of God had its own share of conscripted serfs, but unlike its Harchongese counterpart, they formed a definite minority within its crews. Not only that, but each had been promised relief from the legal obligation which bound him to the land, and they were actually being paid the same wage as their non- serf crewmates. They were even eligible for promotion to petty officer status!

That would have been a big enough difference all by itself, but the majority of the Navy of God’s crews were composed of freemen. Many came from the same sort of class backgrounds as their Charisian counterparts, although only a handful of them had been seafarers before their enlistment. The Church’s dominant position within the Temple Lands’ economy also meant a great many of them—probably even the majority—had personal, direct connections to the Church or one of its myriad business enterprises, which gave them a direct, personal stake in the Church’s secular future. The reservoirs of faith in the Temple Lands were probably just as deep as those in the Harchong Empire, as well, although it had less of the dumb, patient, almost bovine acceptance of the Harchongese serfs.

Which meant that although they were nowhere nearly so experienced or well trained as the ICN, and although it was obvious that most of them were more than a little anxious, even frightened, at the prospect of meeting Charisians in battle, they were highly motivated, well integrated, and tightly knit, and Harpahr and his subordinate admirals had them training hard. Their sail drill had improved markedly in the five- days since they’d departed Chantry Bay, and Harpahr had ordered every ship to spend a minimum of two hours a day at gun drill, as well.

The Harchongese ships were supposed to be doing the same thing, and some of them actually were, although their results were . . . problematical. The Navy of God, on the other hand, was improving steadily. There was no way of knowing how well their training would stand up once round shot started tearing their ships apart around them, yet even by Lock Island’s most optimistic assessment, each Temple Lands– built ship had to be worth at least three—probably four—Harchongese galleons of the same armament.

And eighty percent of the armed vessels coming at him had Temple Lands crews and Navy of God officers.

What a truly not- good situation,
he thought, reflecting on the grand and glorious total of his own thirteen galleons.
Outnumbered by close to six- to- one, and the rotten, cheating bastards have had the unmitigated gall to actually
train
their crews! What a revolting development!

A faint smile twitched his lips, but it faded quickly, and he straightened. He walked to the stern windows and stood gazing out them, thinking.

The good news—such as it was—was that Harpahr and Taibahld had no counterweight for his own reconnaissance capabilities. Like Cayleb before Rock Point and Darcos Sound, he had plenty of scouting cruisers scattered out to keep an eye on his enemies, but (also like Cayleb before Rock Point and Darcos Sound) their true function was to explain how he could have the information Owl’s SNARCs had already provided. As a consequence, he knew precisely where his enemies were and what they were doing... and they
didn’t
know that about him.

That ought to be enough to let me pick my own time to engage,
he thought, un-seeing eyes staring out at the waves of the Markovian Sea.
Let me pick the time, the weather conditions, make sure
I’ve
got the weather gauge . . . All of that’s going to be a huge advantage. But once we get in amongst them, once it’s broadside- to- broadside and all any of my captains will know is what he can see through the gunsmoke with his own eyes, all those advantages disappear. Then it’s experience, and numbers, and guts, and gun power, and right this minute the only one of
those
where I really have an edge over Harpahr is experience. Which is not going to be enough
.

His head turned, tracking around, almost as if he actually thought his own unaided eyes could see across the endless miles of saltwater to Old Charis, and his mouth tightened.

Get your arse here in time, Domynyk,
he thought, almost prayerfully.
Get your arse up here while there’s still time to do some good
.

He drew a deep breath and turned away from the windows. It was time he went on deck and saw what he could do to slow the enemy down long enough for Domynyk Staynair to answer his prayer.

HMS
Destroyer
, 54,

Larek,

Howell Bay,

Kingdom of Old Charis

Sir Domynyk Staynair had no way of knowing what Bryahn Lock Island was thinking at that particular moment, but he knew what Lock Island
ought
to be thinking.

He paused in his peg-legged pacing, standing by the starboard quarterdeck hammock nettings, and gazed out across the port city of Larek.

It was an interesting city, Larek. Five years ago, it had been little more than a sleepy fishing village. The navigable Delthak River had linked it to Ithmyn’s Lake in the Earldom of High Rock, but that had meant little until Ehdwyrd Howsmyn broke ground for his foundry complex at Delthak on the lake’s northwestern shore. When Merlin Athrawes first arrived in Charis, there’d been nothing there but the tiny town—a hamlet, really, with no more than fifty or sixty inhabitants—which had taken its name from the river. Today, Delthak was the largest foundry operation in the history of Safehold. The output from Howsmyn’s complex of manufactories alone was greater than that of the iron industry of the entire Harchong Empire.

The consequences for Larek had been... significant. The onetime fishing village might well have become the only port in the world which was actually busier than Tellesberg. It was smaller, with a smaller total number of ships coming and going, but it never slept, and there was never—ever—enough room dockside for all the ships trying to land or take on cargo.

It helped, some, that even seagoing ships could sail up the Delthak, if they were careful, although many captains considered it more prudent to let river barges handle that part of the transportation loop. Rock Point had been tempted to take
his
ships upriver, but not very strongly. Under other circumstances, he might have been willing to take the chance. Not this time, though. His galleons drew more water than the majority of ships that plied the river, and he couldn’t afford—literally
could not
afford—to ground one of his twelve priceless warships. They were going to be far too desperately needed far too soon for him to risk stranding one of them on a sandbar or a rock.

Which was why he had to lie at anchor, pacing his quarterdeck, watching through the SNARCs, as Bryahn Lock Island began the delicate, dangerous task of buzzing about Kornylys Harpahr’s ears. He knew what Lock Island was supposed to do—distract Harpahr, annoy him, make him anxious about protecting the unarmed galleons he was escorting to Desnair. It was Lock Island’s job to slow Harpahr down, any way he could . . . and it was Rock Point’s job to sit here, waiting, while Ehdwyrd Howsmyn worked frantically to produce the explosive shells which might—
might—
give the Imperial Charisian Navy a chance to actually stop the enemy.