Hell's Foundations Quiver (68 page)

“Agreed,” Domynyk Staynair said firmly from the sternwalk of his flagship.

“How bad a hit are we actually going to take?” Nimue Chwaeriau asked from her modest but comfortable bedchamber in Manchyr Palace.

“Fortunately, the barrel foundry for the Army contracts is practically undamaged,” Howsmyn said after a moment. “We're probably going to lose at least a couple of five-days while we clean up the mess, strip everything down to inspect it, and then get everything back up and running, but I doubt it's going to be much worse than that.

“The bad news is on the Navy side.” His expression was grim. “All but two of the ten-inch mounts were caught in the fire. I've got the pair of barrels we used for the initial trials and proof firings that I could put with the one the shops had already finished, but I'm really not comfortable at the thought of using them aboard ship. Even we did, we'd still only have the main battery for one
King Haarahld
. The other mounts' recoil cylinders are going to have to be torn down and rebuilt, at the very least, and we'll need to go over every inch of the gun tubes themselves. That's bad enough, but we had half the ten-inch and at least half of the eight-inch still in the production queue, and until we rebuild the machinery, we can't complete them. For that matter, the buildings themselves will almost certainly need to be torn down and rebuilt.” He grimaced. “We may be able to salvage some of the barrel shop, but the entire roof's gone, and every bit of wooden framing—rafters, studs, floors:
everything
—is pretty much shot. We can
probably
use canvas tarps for temporary roofs and get the machinery—or
replacement
machinery, more likely—back up and running on the old foundations while we build a completely new shop next door, but it's going to be a mess however we tackle it.”

“Probably a good thing Ahbaht's decided to take those screw-galleys in hand, then,” Rock Point said philosophically. “We need to keep the Dohlarans pruned back until we're ready to take an axe to Gorath Bay itself.”

Howsmyn grunted in sour acknowledgement and climbed out of his chair, swaying just a bit with fatigue. He walked to the window that let him look out over the charred skeleton of his barrel foundry. From this elevation, looking down on the damage, it seemed impossible that it could ever be repaired, but he shook his head stubbornly and reminded himself how many other “impossible” things he and his people had already accomplished.

“Best guess,” he said finally, “this is going to push the completion on the
King Haarahlds
back by at least three months, probably more like four, or even five.” He tasted the admission's bitterness, made even worse in some ways as he remembered his last conversation with Eysamu Tahnguchi. “I'll have a lot better idea in a couple of days.”

“Well, if that's the way it is, then that's the way it is,” Cayleb said, much more philosophically than any of them actually felt, and smiled tightly. “It's not like we don't have other things to do while we wait, is it?”

 

.II.

HMS
Defiant
, 56, Jack's Land, and HMS
Dreadnought
, 30, Gulf of Dohlar

“You sent for me, Sir?”

“Yes,” Sir Dahrand Rohsail said, turning from the stern windows' panoramic view of Stella Cove, the Royal Dohlaran Navy's anchorage on the west coast of Jack's Land. His flagship,
Defiant
, lay to her anchor between Ribbon Island and the cove's shore, her stern towards the larger island as the steady westerly wind blew into the anchorage. That was the one true weakness of Stella Cove; although the smaller islands offshore offered some protection against heavy weather out of the west and Ribbon offered additional shelter inside the anchorage itself, it was far from perfect.

“Yes, I did, Markys.” He gestured at the thin sheet of paper lying on his desk's blotter. “Take a look at that.”

Markys Hamptyn, his flag captain, gathered up the sheet—the sort that wyvern-carried messages were written on—and unfolded it. He recognized the handwriting of Admiral Caitahno Raisahndo's secretary, and one eyebrow rose. Raisahndo and Rohsail cordially disliked one another, but they'd also learned to respect each other, and Raisahndo was Rohsail's second-in-command. At the moment, that meant his flagship,
Demonslayer
, was stationed at Saram Bay with the other half of Rohsail's Western Squadron to protect the southern coast of North Harchong and the Border States.

He scanned the tersely written message quickly, then read it through a second time, much more carefully, before he looked up at his admiral.

“I see why you wanted to see me, Sir.”

He laid the dispatch back on the desk and crossed to stand beside Rohsail at the windows. Twenty-five more galleons shared the anchorage with
Defiant
, all but two of them purpose-built war galleons rather than the converted merchantmen which had composed the majority of the Royal Dohlaran Navy the last time the Imperial Charisian Navy had come calling in the Gulf of Dohlar. Two of them, including
Defiant
herself, were prizes which had been taken from the Charisians upon that occasion. In fact, HMS
Defiant
of the Royal Dohlaran Navy had once been HMS
Dancer
, of the Imperial Charisian Navy, the flagship of the heretical admiral who'd led that incursion. It had taken months to repair all of the damage she'd suffered in the Battle of the Harchong Narrows, but Dohlar's shipwrights had learned quite a bit from analyzing her construction. Among other things, they'd finally learned the secret of how to copper their own ships below the waterline, and shared that information with the rest of Mother Church's shipyards and their secular allies.

“From the sound of it, they must've taken everything they had at Talisman,” Hamptyn said after a moment.

“Agreed.” Rohsail folded his hands behind him, pursing his lips as he considered the information the messenger wyvern had borne from Saram Bay. “In some ways, it's a pity the Harchongians didn't have any of our Jack's Land messenger wyverns. We'd have found out a lot sooner if they'd been able to send us word directly.”

“Yes, Sir, we would have,” Hamptyn agreed. “On the other hand,
Admiral Raisahndo
wouldn't have known about it as quickly. There's something to be said for that, assuming we're going after them.”

“That
is
the question, isn't it?” Rohsail said dryly.

He looked out at the anchored ships for several more seconds, then sighed and turned away from the windows. He crossed to his chart table and stood frowning down at it with Hamptyn at his shoulder.

“You're right that assuming the Harchongians got their sums right—of course, we
are
talking about Harchongians, so let's not get carried away counting on that—this is everything we think they had at Talisman. And if that's true, then we do have twenty-six galleons to their fifteen. Unfortunately, two of that fifteen are those bombardment ships of theirs, and another is one of their damned ironclads.”

“Yes, Sir. But one ship can only be in one place and engage one or two other ships at a time,” Hamptyn pointed out. “And if Admiral Raisahndo weighed anchor as soon as he indicated he intended to, he and the rest of the Squadron are already a full day out of Saram Bay headed this way.”

Rohsail nodded. Caitahno Raisahndo remained as stubbornly low born and uncultured as ever, and he was still far too soft when it came to disciplining common seamen, but much as it irked Rohsail to admit it, he had a good head on his shoulders otherwise. There was no doubt in his mind that Hamptyn was right and that Raisahndo was on his way with twenty-four additional galleons, three-quarters of them purpose-built ships. Pulling them out of Saram Bay posed a nontrivial risk if the Harchongians were right and only one of the ironclads had accompanied the force headed into Shwei Bay, but it would probably be survivable. According to the documents they'd salvaged from the wreck of HMS
Turbulent
when the heretic galleon was driven ashore on Martyn's Point, Sharpfield could have no more than eight to ten additional galleons at Claw Island. He was unlikely to get
too
adventurous with such a small force, even if it did include one of the ironclads.

In theory, then, Raisahndo could safely join him and bring his force up to forty-nine galleons as opposed to the heretics' fifteen, and three-to-one odds should prove crushing even if they did have one of their accursed ironclads in company. The problem would be bringing them to battle, since even now less than half his own ships had copper-sheathed bottoms. After so long at sea, those which hadn't been coppered were sadly foul and at least twenty percent slower than the heretics',
all
of whom had been coppered. There was a reason the handful of schooners the heretics had lost since retaking Claw Island had each fallen prey to one of his own copper-sheathed galleons and even then only in heavy, blowing weather where the larger Dohlaran ship had been able to carry more sail than the schooner.

“I wonder.…” he said slowly, tapping his lower lip with one index finger while he looked at the chart.

“Wonder what, Sir?” Hamptyn asked after he'd stood silent for over two minutes.

The admiral shook himself and snorted. It was a sign of how long Hamptyn had served as his flag captain that the other was willing to break in on his thoughts. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the flag captain had learned to recognize when he was lost in his thoughts and needed to be recalled to the world about him.

“They've passed through the Shweimouth,” he said. “The question is where they're headed.”

“The most reasonable target would be Yu-shai, Sir.”

“Perhaps. And I suppose it would make sense for them to secure an emergency anchorage at Talisman before their regular war galleons ventured into the Yu-shai Inlet and risked taking damage from the shore batteries. It would also explain the presence of the bombardment ships. But what if they had something else in mind?”

“There are a lot of potential targets around Shwei Bay—around
both
Shwei Bays,” Hamptyn said. “Yu-shai's probably the richest one, though.”

“Only because it's the collection point for everything passing through the Shweimouth and across the Gulf,” Rohsail pointed out. “If the heretics are serious about shutting down the entire western half of the Gulf, Yu-shai's going to be about as useful as teats on a bull dragon.”

Hamptyn frowned. The Western Squadron's job was to see to it that the heretics did nothing of the sort, and he was more than mildly surprised that Rohsail would mention the possibility so calmly, even to him.

On the other hand, there's nobody here to hear him except me. And, come to think of it, he's not saying the heretics are going to
succeed;
he's only saying that's what they seem to
intend.
Because if it is what they mean to accomplish, they'll be choosing their coastal targets based on that outcome, won't they?

“You're thinking about what they did in the Bay of Alexov, aren't you, Sir?” he said out loud.

“Yes,” Rohsail acknowledged. “What I'm really wondering about, though, is whether or not they know Admiral Hahlynd is on his way to Yu-shai?”

“How could they, Sir?” Hamptyn asked reasonably. “We've only known about Earl Thirsk's plans for three five-days ourselves.”

“One thing we've learned the hard way is to never underestimate heretic spies,” Rohsail said grimly. “What I find … interesting about this is that if they
do
know about Admiral Hahlynd, and if they have the sheer gall to penetrate that deep, they've given themselves more than enough time to reach Ki-dau. For that matter, if they're really ballsy—and Shan-wei knows, the heretics've never seemed especially short in that category!—they might actually have time to get as deep as Symarkhan before Admiral Hahlynd gets there.”

“Take galleons that far upriver, Sir?” Hamptyn rubbed his chin. “I suppose they might. And Admiral Raisahndo reported they have a half-dozen of their schooners along. They're fitted to row, which would make them handy in a river under most circumstances. What sort of defenses does Symarkhan have? Could they put Marines ashore using just the schooners?”

“I don't imagine Symarkhan is fortified at all.” Rohsail shrugged. “With so many potential targets so much closer to the coast, why would anyone in his right mind fortify a town almost two hundred miles inland? Fortunately, Raisahndo says the Harchongians sent messengers and semaphore messages off in all directions as soon as they spotted the heretics in the Shweimouth. What we need to do is to send off a few messages of our own.”

“Yes, Sir. What sort of messages did you have in mind?”

“I realize Raisahndo's already at sea, but I want wyverns off to Captain Kharmahdy within the hour.” Hamptyn nodded; Captain Styvyn Kharmahdy commanded the batteries and shore facilities at Rhaigair on Saram Bay. “He's to use the semaphore to pass a priority message to Earl Thirsk informing him of the heretics' movements, warning him the Harchongians should expect the possibility of an attack on the canal head at Symarkhan, and urging Admiral Hahlynd—and the Canal Service—to expedite the ironclads' movement as much as possible.”

“Yes, Sir,” Hamptyn replied.

It was a pity
Defiant
hadn't been supplied with messenger wyverns that could have carried the warning directly to Yu-shai. Still, the semaphore system could transmit the message all the way from Saram Bay to Gorath around the northern shore of the Gulf of Dohlar in less than eight hours—in daylight and under normal weather conditions—and any order from Thirsk to Hahlynd would move along the semaphore stations which paralleled virtually every major canal behind the screw-galleys at the same speed.