Hell's Foundations Quiver (45 page)

“I won't deny there's something to that last thought,” Merlin acknowledged. “But the Brethren—and Archbishop Maikel—would also be available to help you and the kids … keep it all in perspective. For that matter, Maikel will be leaving Manchyr for Tellesberg with Sharleyan next five-day, and I've discussed it with him. The Church has established enough orphanages and refugee camps—good ones, with proper housing, healers, schools, and counselors to deal with what's happened to the refugees and their families. Master Howsymn, Master Mychail, and their Council of Manufactories help maintain the orphanages and camps and find jobs—and training, where it's needed—in their manufactories for as many of the refugees as they can, and Maikel says he can easily slide your family into one of the camps if that's what you'd prefer. But he also says Archbishop's Palace could really use a good woodworker. It would give you a place where no one would be asking any questions, and the kids would be under his personal protection. That means they'd have an opportunity for the best schooling in the world, among other things. Nimue could deliver you to Manchyr just before he and Sharleyan embark, and that would give you at least six or seven five-days aboard ship with them for you—and especially the kids—to settle back into something like a normal life before you reached Tellesberg.”

Mahlard looked at him for a moment, then bobbed his head.

“'Preciate it,” he said, his voice gruff with the depth of his gratitude.

A brief silence fell, but then Sandaria shifted in her chair.

“Would it happen that I could get transportation back to Siddar City at the same time, Merlin?” she asked.

“If you're sure that's what you want, of course you can,” he replied. “
Are
you sure, though?”

“Yes.” She nodded firmly. “It took me a while to realize it, but I've been doing exactly what I just described to Greyghor. That's what Nynian's been trying to tell me all along.” She smiled at Aivah, who reached out to take her hand and squeeze it firmly. “I've known the truth about Saint Kohdy for so long, hung onto it so firmly to keep me going in the face of people like Clyntahn, that I couldn't accept there might be another, even greater truth behind that one.” She shrugged. “It's time I did.”

“It's not so much
another
truth, as it is an expansion of the truth we already knew,” Nimue pointed out gently, and Sandaria nodded.

“Oh, I know that. And Archbishop Maikel's helped a lot, too. He told me about something you'd said a long time ago, Merlin—that God can creep in through the cracks whenever He chooses to, despite any lies someone may have told about Him in the meantime. I wish He'd gotten around to doing it a little sooner in Safehold's case, but what Emperor Cayleb's so fond of calling the ‘upside' is that this way,
I
get to be part of the process.”

 

.III.

Kyznetzov Narrows, Kyznetzov Province, Harchong Empire, and Manchyr Palace, City of Manchyr, Princedom of Corisande

“What do you make of it?”

Captain Kahrltyn Haigyl, CO, HMS
Dreadnought
, sounded more than a bit impatient as his armored galleon heeled to the press of her canvas. It was a hot, bright morning, a far cry from the blustery cold
Dreadnought
had left behind in Chisholm, although the northwesterly wind—what seamen called a topsail breeze—gusting down the Kyznetzov Narrows at twenty miles per hour made it seem cooler. At the moment, that wind was perfect for Haigyl's purposes; it would be much less so when the time came to withdraw, however. Hence his impatience as Dahnyld Stahdmaiyr, his executive officer, stood on the breech of one of
Dreadnought
's massive six-inch guns, braced his elbows on the top of the port bulwark, and peered through his double-glass.

Lieutenant Stahdmaiyr was a somewhat bookish sort, in sharp contrast to his commanding officer, and more than a little nearsighted. At the moment, his wireframe spectacles were propped on his forehead to keep them safely out of the way. A ribband from one earpiece was also attached to one of his buttonholes, legacy of a lesson learned the hard way as a midshipman in a wave-tossed longboat.

“Hard to make out details from here, even through the glass, Sir,” he said. “On the other hand, doesn't look like they tried to
hide
anything. Looks like a mix of old-style doomwhales and new-model guns, probably twenty-five pounders.”

“Hrrumph!”

Haigyl scowled, nodded, folded his hands behind him, and resumed his interrupted pacing. Although
Dreadnought
was one of the largest galleons ever built, she mounted only thirty guns. That left a lot of deck space for pacing, and Haigyl normally spent an hour or two every morning using it for his regular exercise.
This
morning he had more than exercise on his mind, however, and his dark brown eyes were agate-hard. A casual observer might have read his pacing as nervousness or anxiety, but his crew knew him better than that. When Captain Haigyl started pacing like an irritated slash lizard, he had death and destruction on his mind.

Not a brilliant man, Captain Haigyl. Not very imaginative, either. But he was as capable as he was hard-bitten, with the roaring heart of a great dragon and a score to settle with the Royal Dohlaran Navy. At the moment, unfortunately, the Dohlarans were beyond his reach, so the Harchongese defenders of the Bay of Alexov would just have to do.

Still, it didn't take a brilliant or an imaginative man to recognize the risks inherent in his current mission.
Dreadnought
, the bombardment ships
Vortex
and
Firestorm
, and the transport
Tellesberg Bride
, escorted by ten unarmored galleons and five schooners of the Imperial Charisian Navy, were over a hundred and fifty miles from the open sea, just passing Symov Island at the halfway point of the Narrows. It also happened to be the narrowest point of the passage linking the Bay of Alexov to the Sea of Harchong, and while “narrow” was a purely relative term—the Narrows were better than twenty-five miles across, even here,—they had another six hundred miles to go to their objective. And a passage which was abundantly broad with the wind in their favor was likely to seem a great deal less so if they were forced to beat to windward the whole way out.

At the moment, Haigyl's squadron was well clear of any of the numerous defensive batteries covering the Narrows. That was another thing that might change if his ships had to tack all the way back to the Sea of Harchong, however, which was rather the point of Stahdmaiyr's survey of the Symov Island batteries. The lieutenant knew his captain had to be sorely tempted to close the island, trailing
Dreadnought
's coat just close enough to the batteries to draw their fire. That would be one way to be certain what they were armed with, and nothing in the Harchongese artillery park was likely to make much impression on
Dreadnought
's two-inch steel armor. Unfortunately, their charts were less than reliable. The information they had suggested there were nasty shoals around Symov, and the Harchongians had removed the navigation buoys when the Imperial Charisian Navy retook Claw Island from the Dohlarans. All the armor in the world wouldn't do a ship much good if she ripped out her keel on a reef.

On the other hand, Stahdmaiyr thought cheerfully, still peering through his double-glass, that same armor was going to make any units of the Imperial Harchongese Navy they happened to encounter very, very unhappy.

*   *   *

“It must be one of those armored ships the Dohlarans were yammering about,” Captain of Foot Ruhngzhi Lywahn growled.

He stood on top of the battery's curtainwall on the west side of the Kyznetzov Narrows, gazing through the huge tripod-mounted spyglass at the line of ships sailing boldly past him. Not that there was any reason they
shouldn't
be bold. His fifteen old-model Great Doomwhales were monstrous pieces, weighing six tons apiece and firing seventy-five-pound shot. They were also antiques without even trunions, fired once every five minutes, and had a maximum range of not much over two thousand yards. His most effective pieces—a dozen new-model twenty-five-pounders—had twice that range, but the heretics were far beyond even their reach. He doubted the Charisians had any intention of coming
into
their reach, and if that was one of their armored galleons leading the way …

“Are you sure, Sir?” From his tone, Lywahn's executive officer couldn't make up his mind whether to be skeptical or worried. Which, truth to tell, summed up Lywahn's own feelings fairly well.

“It's a hell of a lot bigger than any other ship out there,” he told Captain of Spears Haigwai Zhyng without taking his eyes from the spyglass. “And it's only got one row of gunports. What does that sound like to
you
?”

Zhyng made an unhappy noise of agreement, and Lywahn watched the Charisian warships bowling along on the stiff breeze for another minute or two, then straightened.

“Well, I'm sure everybody else has already sent word to Yu-kwau, but we might as well add our bit. Go to the semaphore office. Warn Baron Star Song and Captain of Seas Shyngwa they're coming. Tell him it looks to me like one of their armored galleons and twelve regular ones, plus a half-dozen or so schooners.”

“Yes, Sir!” Zhyng touched his chest in salute and hurried off.

Lywahn watched him go, and wondered if he should have dictated a more erudite message. Most Harchongese nobles could have effortlessly tossed off a minor epic, with at least a dozen literary allusions which would have had the semaphore clerks cursing the entire time they transmitted it. Lywahn, however, was not a noble and had no desire to become one. Like the majority of militia officers in South Harchong, he was a merchant and the son of merchants. That was one of several differences between the southern and northern lobes of the Empire, and the militia's commoner officer corps—like the fact that the men in its ranks were free volunteers rather than conscripted serfs—offered the toweringly noble aristocrats of North Harchong yet another reason to look down upon their southern brethren.

They weren't alone in that. The bureaucrats who ran the Empire weren't a lot happier with people like Lywahn than the nobility was, since the southern merchants knew where too many of the bureaucrats' bodies were buried … not always figuratively speaking. Worse, not even the imperial bureaucracy wanted to antagonize Mother Church, and every second son of a Kyznetzov merchant house was either a priest or a law master … or both. The bureaucrats knew there'd be no winners in a fight to the finish between them and the merchant families, so they settled for much smaller bribes than they would have expected in the North and, in return, the merchants of the South kept their mouths shut about any minor irregularities in government contracts.

So far, the Jihad had been good for South Harchong—aside from the bombardment of Yu-shai, at least. That had been ugly, but the city had been almost completely rebuilt since the heretic Manthyr's attack, and the abundant cashflow of the Jihad was what had made that possible. The southern foundries were far more efficient than their northern counterparts, and not just because of the more salubrious climate. And although many of the foundry owners resented the manner in which their businesses had been taken over by Church managers, they were still making money hand over fist. Best of all, the fighting—other than that unpleasant business at Yu-Shai—had been four thousand miles and more away from the Bay of Alexov.

Unfortunately, it looked as if that was going to change.

*   *   *

“This is confirmed?”

Captain of Seas Ryangdu Shyngwa's voice was unreasonably calm, under the circumstances, but his eyes stabbed Captain of Winds Tsauzhyn like daggers.

“It's as confirmed as anyone could expect, Sir,” Tsauzhyn replied. “Baron Star Song's received a score of semaphore messages. This—” he indicated the dispatch in Shyngwa's hand “—represents a compilation of the information in all them. Of course, they're all coming from militia officers, not Navy officers, but I'm afraid it probably is fairly accurate.”

Shyngwa's face tightened. Then he inhaled deeply and nodded.

“Of course it is. Forgive me, Maidahng. I think I'm taking out my temper on you, and you deserve better than that.”

“I don't recall hearing any complaints coming from me, Sir.” Tsauzhyn smiled almost naturally.

“Of course you don't.”

Shyngwa touched his flag captain on the shoulder, then crossed to the stern windows and looked out across the sparkling blue water at the grandly named Alexov Defense Squadron. Unlike Tsauzhyn, the captain of seas was distantly related to at least three noble families from the North, but his mother's family was one of the South's more prominent banking dynasties. He knew Lord Admiral of Navies Mountain Shadow had chosen him for his command because those family connections made him an acceptable political compromise, but he took his responsibilities seriously. He'd worked hard to make the squadron an effective force and, under most circumstances, it was a pleasant duty. The provincial capital of Yu-kwau was less than seven hundred miles below the equator, and it was summer in Safehold's southern hemisphere. The sun was already high overhead, beating down on the anchorage and softening the pitch in the deck seams of His Most Imperial Majesty's Ship
Celestial Music
, his fifty-six-gun flagship.

Captain of Winds Tsauzhyn was proud of his ship, and rightly so. Unlike too many of his better-born fellow captains, Tsauzhyn regarded his vessel as a weapon of war, not a personal possession. He'd drilled
Celestial Music
's seamen and gunners to a level of competence rarely seen in the Imperial Harchongese Navy, and the flagship's example had spread to the rest of Shyngwa's squadron.