Hell's Foundations Quiver: Chapter Three

.III.
HMS Chihro, 50,
Gorath Bay,
Kingdom of Dohlar,
and
HMS Destroyer, 54,
Tellesberg,
Kingdom of Old Charis,
Empire of Charis.

    “Is that confirmed, My Lord?”

    Commander Ahlvyn Khapahr sounded very much as if he hoped it wasn’t, and Lywys Gardynyr, the Earl of Thirsk and the Kingdom of Dohlar’s senior fleet commander, didn’t blame him one bit.

    “I’m afraid it is,” he told the man who would have been called his chief of staff in Charisian service, and saw Khapahr’s face tighten. He glanced around his day cabin and saw much the same reaction out of everyone else, as well.

    Not surprisingly.

    He pushed back his chair, rose, and crossed to the open quarter windows, looking out across the waters of Gorath Bay at the golden stone walls of the city of Gorath with his hands clasped behind his back. The late afternoon sun hung barely above the western horizon, its rays slanting across the battlements and parapets, painting them with a deeper, more lustrous gold, and the kingdom’s banners flew bravely above them.

    Gorath Bay’s temperature seldom fell below freezing, yet it could be bitterly cold in winter, especially for anyone out on its waters. The bay’s cold snaps, with their raw, biting chill, might last for five-days, despite its southern location. That was what had caused so much sickness among Gwyllym Manthyr’s half-starved, half-naked crews when they were confined in the prison hulks.

    Oh, yes, Thirsk thought. The bay can be cruel, especially when human spite sees a chance to make it worse.

    His jaw tightened as he remembered that winter, remembered his shame and the way the Inquisition had countermanded his orders to provide his prisoners — his prisoners — with food and healers. That wind-polished sheet of pitiless winter water danced before his eyes again, and he felt the helplessness he’d felt then. Oh, how he’d hated Gorath Bay throughout that cold, bitter winter.

    But not today. He squared his shoulders and drew a deep breath, forcing himself to step back from the familiar rage, and looked out at the capital of his kingdom.

    Although it was the middle of winter, the breeze whipping across the bay today was little worse than chilly, cold but not cutting, and the darkening sky was cloudless for the first time in several days. People in the city were enjoying the last minutes of that sunlight, he thought, possibly doing a little shopping as they hurried home. And the painters were probably out along the Gorath River with their easles, catching that golden sunlight across the river that flowed through the heart of the city as the light gilded the Cathedral’s scepters. He wondered how many of those people had heard the news? If they hadn’t heard yet, they would soon enough, even if Duke Salthar and Bishop Executor Wylsynn attempted to conceal it. That would be not only futile but particularly stupid, in Thirsk’s opinion, yet he’d seen ample examples of Wylsynn Lainyr’s doing equally stupid things. Salthar was probably smart enough to argue against it, but in this case Thirsk could count on his own service superior, Duke Thorast, to support any effort to hide the truth for as long as he possibly could.

    Although not, of course, for all the same reasons as Lainyr.

    “Do we know how it happened, My Lord?” Stywyrt Baiket, Chihro’s CO and Thirsk’s flag captain, asked quietly. “I mean, they had over two hundred thousand men and Eastshare had less than twenty thousand!”

    “The dispatches are less than detailed,” the earl replied, never looking away from the harbor’s soothing panorama. “Messages tend to be that way when people have to send them by wyvern, and the semaphore line was cut early in the Charisian attack. One thing they do make clear, however, is that the real threat didn’t come out of Fort Tairys. It wasn’t Eastshare; they got an entirely separate force down through eastern Cliff Peak past the Desnarian cavalry at Cheyvair. One big enough to block — and hold — the high road through the Kyplyngyr Forest.” He shrugged heavily. “According to the message I’ve seen” — he didn’t mention that he wasn’t supposed to have seen it . . . and wouldn’t have, if not for Bishop Staiphan Maik — “Ahlverez did his damnedest to fight his way through them. His attacks obviously hurt the Charisians bady, but they pretty much gutted our part of the army in the process, so Harless finally agreed to pull the majority of his own infantry back from Ohadlyn’s Gap for a second attempt to clear the high road. That’s when Eastshare attacked out of Fort Tairys, and with one hell of a lot more than twenty thousand men.”

    He gazed out over the harbor for another moment, then turned on his heel to face his subordinates.

    “My best guess, reading between the lines, is that the Charisians and Siddarmarkians must’ve had a lot closer to seventy thousand men, probably more, and too many of the Desnarians were cavalry. Even an admiral knows that’s not the sort of troops equipped or trained to take on entrenched infantry in the damned woods, and the Army of Shiloh was half starved and riddled with sickness. I doubt Ahlverez and Harless between them could actually have put much over half their official strength into the field. And let’s face it — a fight with the Imperial Charisian Army at anything like equal numerical odds is a losing proposition.”

    Sir Ahbail Bahrdailahn, Thirsk’s flag lieutenant, looked uneasy at that remark. Not because he disagreed, but because that sort of frankness could be dangerous. Thirsk knew that, but if he couldn’t trust these men there was no one on the face of Safehold he could trust. If one of them was prepared to inform the Inquisition that he was preaching defeatism when he shared the truth with them, there was no point even trying to stem the disaster he saw flowing towards his kingdom like some vast, dark tide.

    “Do we have any idea of how severe our losses have been?” Baiket asked somberly, and Thirsk grimaced.

    “Not really. Or if anybody does have an estimate, it hasn’t been shared with me. I do know Hanth inflicted heavy casualties on the Army of the Seridahn when he attacked out of Thesmar, though.”

    The flag captain’s eyes flickered at that, and Thirsk didn’t blame him. Officially, Sir Fahstyr Rychtyr’s command had been renamed solely as an honor, in perhaps belated recognition of the importance to the Jihad and the Kingdom of its accomplishments. Only an idiot, however — which Baiket was not — could have failed to note Mother Church’s tendency to rename armies in what certainly looked like efforts to stiffen their morale in the face of unimitaged disaster. And that, the earl thought, did not bode well.

    “The heretics’ve driven General Rychtyr almost all the way back to Evyrtyn,” he continued. “I don’t know what his losses were at Cheryk and Trevyr, but it doesn’t sound good. And Ahlverez is probably going to lose a lot of whatever he managed to pull out of the Kyplyngyr. I don’t see how anyone could’ve gotten a message to him yet to warn him Rychtyr’s lost Cheryk, much less Trevyr, so he’s probably marching straight towards Hanth right this minute. And we’ve lost touch with everything east of Syrk on the Saint Alyk, as well.” He shook his head and puffed out his cheeks. “Frankly, I’ll be astonished if we get as much as a third of Ahlverez’s troops back, and I wouldn’t count on any of his artillery making it out.”

    The only sound was wind and wave as his subordinates looked at one another in dismay. Clearly the rumor mill had yet to catch up with how bad it truly was. Probably, he thought dryly, because the gossip mongers couldn’t believe even a Desnarian could truly have proved as inept as the late and — in Dohlar, at any rate — very unlamented Duke of Harless.

    “The good news — or as good as it gets, anyway — is that about a third of the riflemen headed up to reinforce Rychtyr are equipped with the new St. Kylmahns,” he wondered if his subordinates found that name as ironic as he did, given who’d actually designed the new rifle, “so at least they’ll have breechloaders of their own. And if he can hang on for another few five-days, he’ll have at least a couple of batteries of the new rifled angle-guns, too. Combined with the weather and his entrenchments, he ought to be able to hold his position fairly well. Certainly against anything Hanth can throw at him.”

    The others nodded, as if he’d just said something hopeful, and he bit his tongue against an unworthy temptation to point out that the Army of Shiloh’s disaster had revealed that unlike the Republic of Siddarmark Army or the Earl of Hanth’s force of Marines and seamen, the Imperial Charisian Army was amply provided with the sort of cavalry — and highly mobile, new model field artillery — needed to work around a fortified position and cut the canal in its rear. Once the forces no doubt pursuing Ahlverez at this very moment reached Evyrtyn, Rychtyr was going to find himself in an even more unenviable position than the rolling disaster which had enveloped the Army of Shiloh. Unless, of course, he had both the wit and the intestinal fortitude to fall back along the Sheryl-Seridahn Canal faster than they could cut it behind him.

    From what he knew of Rychtyr, he certainly had the wit, and he might well have the moral courage. Unfortunately, he might not have it, either. And even if he did, that was the sort of decision which could have fatal consequences. Lywys Gardynyr had had a little personal experience of his own in that regard, and the Inquisition had grown even less patient with faint-heartedness in the service of Mother Church over the last few years.

    “Sir Rainos always was a bit . . . heedless, My Lord,” Baiket said. “You might say that runs in the family.”

    Thirsk’s lips quirked in a sour smile at his flag captain’s none too oblique reference to Rainos Ahlverez’s cousin, Sir Faidel Ahlverez, the deceased Duke of Malika. Malikai had also been a cousin by marriage of Aibram Zavyr, the Duke of Thorast, who — like Ahlverez — held Thirsk personally responsible for Malikai’s disastrous defeat off Armageddon Reef. It wasn’t hard to follow Baiket’s logic, and the truth was that much as Thirsk regretted what had happened to the Army of Shiloh, he was far from blind to the way in which any damage to Ahlverez’s reputation and standing had to reflect upon the men who’d made themselves his patrons. And anything that weakened Thorast’s grip on the Navy had to be a good thing from Lywys Gardynyr’s perspective.

    “I think we can all agree Sir Rainos was . . . overconfident before he set out for Alyksberg,” he said out loud. “And if I’m going to be honest, I suppose I should admit the thought of his coming a cropper personally doesn’t fill my heart with dismay,” he added with a generous thousand percent understatement. “But I’ve read some of the dispatches he sent home to Duke Fern and Duke Salthar. On that basis, I have to say that however overconfident he may’ve been before Alyksberg, he did his damnedest to prevent most of Duke Harless’ . . . questionable decisions, shall we say.”

    He decided not to mention the letters he’d received from Shulmyn Rahdgyrz, the Baron of Tymplahr. He hoped his old friend was still alive somewhere out there in the muddy, bloody wilderness of the South March, but according to Tymplahr, Sir Rainos Ahlverez had turned out to be remarkably unlike certain of his kinsmen. He’d actually learned from experience.

    “Whatever part Sir Rainos may have played in bringing all this about, what’s happened to his army’s far too serious for me to take any satisfaction from how it may have damaged his reputation,” he went on more soberly. “And not just because of the human cost. He had over half the Army’s total field strength under his command, Stywyrt. That’s probably entirely gone, for all practical purposes. Even if we get some of the regiments back, they’ll have to be completely brought back up to strength, reorganized, and — undoubtedly — reequipped before they can possibly be effective fighting units again. And where do you think they’re going to look for the manpower — and the weapons — for that?”

    Baiket’s blue eyes darkened and he nodded soberly. The Navy had been reduced to a much smaller slice of the kingdom’s available resources in order to equip and field the army the Temple had demanded be launched into Siddarmark. Now that so much of that army had been destroyed and the threat of an enemy counterattack across Dohlar’s eastern frontiers had become real, the Navy was only too likely to find itself on even shorter rations.

    “My Lord,” Khapahr said carefully, “they can’t reduce our priorities too much. Not on the new projects, especially.”

    “They may decide they don’t have any choice,” Thirsk disagreed grimly. “When there’s a slash lizard breaking down your front door, the great dragon raiding your neighbor’s pasture has to take second priority, don’t you think?”

    “My Lord, the Charisians aren’t loose in our neighbor’s pasture; they’re loose in our pasture, or they damned well will be soon enough. The Harchongians’re going to be hit hard enough if they start operating raiding forces in the western Gulf again, but surely the Army has to understand the consequences if we lose control of the eastern Gulf!”

    Thirsk nodded unhappily. His reports on the new armored galleons the Charisians had used to retake Claw Island were far short of complete. Out of Admiral Krahl’s entire garrison, less than a dozen men — the most senior an army lieutenant — had escaped the debacle by commandeering a sixteen-foot sailing dinghy, somehow evading the Charisian pickets, and crossing the six hundred and seventy miles of stormy salt water between Claw Island and the Harchongese province of Kyznetzov.

    In the winter . . . in an open boat . . . without a single trained naval officer to get them through it.

    He was astounded they’d survived and profoundly grateful for what little they’d been able to report, but it would have been ever so much more useful if one of the naval officers had gotten away. All the actual escapees had been able to tell anyone was that at least two of the Charisian galleons had been invulnerable to the defending artillery. Obviously, they must have been armored, like the ‘smoking ships’ the Charisians had sent rampaging through the canals and rivers in Bishop Militant Bahrnabai’s rear last summer. The good news was that they’d been galleons, propelled by the masts and sails he understood, not whatever deviltry the river ironclads used. But to offset that smidgeon of sunlight, the artillery they’d ignored had been naval guns equipped to fire not only explosive shells but red-hot round shot — heavy ¬ round shot, not the lighter projectiles of the field artillery which had failed to stop the ironclads along the canals.

    At least there were only two of them, he reminded himself. So far, at least.

    “Ahlvyn’s not the most diplomatic fellow in the world, My Lord,” Baiket said, “but he does have a point. Admiral Rohsail knows his duty, and he’ll do his best, but if the batteries couldn’t stop those bastards . . . .”

    “I know. I know!” Thirsk shrugged irritably. Not because he was angry at Baiket, but because the flag captain had such an excellent point. Still . . . .

    “I agree with everything both of you’ve said. On the other hand, all the witnesses we have agree there were only two of those armored galleons in the attack. It’s possible they’re wrong, but I don’t think so.” The earl smiled tightly. “We’ve had a bit of experience of our own with how much iron it takes to armor even a relatively small galley. I realize the Charisians appear to be able to conjure iron and steel magically out of thin air, but it has to take even them a little time to produce enough armor for ships that size. From the description of their armament, they’re a lot bigger than any ironclad small enough for river or canal use could possibly be, and not even Charisians could build and armor something like that with a snap of their fingers. They’re galleons, too, not . . . whatever those damned smokepots are! What does that suggest?”

    “That the inland ironclads are either too unseaworthy or too short-legged to make the trip from Corisande, My Lord,” Lieutenant Bahrdailahn said slowly. “Or maybe both.” He nodded slowly. “However those riverboats of their move, they’re burning something to produce all that smoke, and there has to be a limit on how much coal or wood they can load into something that size, especially if they’re also going to armor it and put guns into it.”

    “I think that’s probably true.” Thirsk nodded. “It’s not something I plan to count on, but one thing we have to avoid is overestimating Charis’ capabilities. I know it’s better to be pessimistic than to be overly optimistic, but we can’t paralyze ourselves with ‘what-ifs.’ Unless they have a hell of a lot more regular galleons based at Claw Island than reports suggest, we can meet their fleet on more than equal terms, and even an armored galleon needs spars to move. Between our own galleons and Lieutenant Zhwaigair’s screw-galleys — and that other project of his — I think we’d have a pretty good chance of handing them a serious defeat if they were foolish enough to come out where we can get at them. And the fact that they seem to be staying close to home at Claw Island now that they’ve retaken it suggests they may feel the same way about it.”

    “For now, at least, My Lord,” Baiket said, diffidently but stubbornly, and Thirsk nodded again.

    “For now,” he acknowledged. “That’s always subject to change. But it does suggest we have a little time in hand to continue to push Zhwaigair’s projects. And in answer to the point Ahlvyn raised, I assure you the Army is aware of what’ll happen to its supplies if the Imperial Charisian Navy comes east of The Narrows. Especially if they get as a deep as the Gulf of Tanshar or Hankey Sound. Or, if it doesn’t, at least, it’s not because Pawal Hahlynd and I haven’t talked ourselves blue in the face explaining it to Salthar and the rest of them! So even though that slash lizard at the front door seems to have an awful lot of sharp teeth, they’re still going to have to pay at least some attention to the great dragon in the pasture, and they know it.”

    He grimaced, his eyes bleak.

    “We’re not going to have the kind of priority we really need, but they can’t cut us off completely, and they know it,” he told his subordinates, and prayed he was telling them the truth.

    No, they probably can’t, My Lord, Sir Domnyk Staynair thought. I wish they would, but they won’t . . . damn it.

    The high admiral sat back from his desk in his day cabin, listening to the nightime sounds of his flagship, and busied his hands filling the bowl of his favorite pipe with tobacco while he contemplated the imagery he’d just watched. Nahrmahn might be dead, he reflected, but that hadn’t affected his ability to recognize information other members of the inner circle needed to see.

    The notion that Thirsk almost certainly would be able to make the case against cutting the Dohlaran Navy to the bone was less than palatable for several reasons. The earl was unquestionably Charis’ most formidable naval opponent, and the time he’d had to train his fleet was rubbing off on his subordinates. Subordinates like Sir Dahrand Rohsail, for just one example. Rohsail, commanding the RDN’s Western Squadron, had demonstrated a depressing level of competence, despite the loss of his base at Claw Island. Pawal Hahlynd, the man Thirsk had chosen to command Dynnys Zhwaigair’s screw-galleys, was another case in point. And however outclassed those screw-galleys might be compared to the new steam powered ironclads or even one of the sail powered Thunderers, they were more than a match for any of the wooden galleons which still composed ninety-five percent of the Imperial Charisian Navy’s total line of battle.

    Rock Point’s — and Cayleb Ahrmahk’s — respect for Thirsk and the navy he’d built was the real reason Earl Sharpfield had been dispatched to retake Claw Island and establish a forward base — and coaling station — there. They’d sent him months earlier than they’d originally planned, and they hadn’t been able to assign him all the firepower they would have preferred, but he’d done them proud. Claw Island would be a critical part of their end game strategy for the Gulf of Dohlar once the King Harahld VI I-class ships commissioned, but they’d hoped it might also serve as a support base for a squadron of the new City-class coastal ironclads. The Cities were too big to operate along the mainland canals the way the River and River II-class ships were intended to, and they were over four knots slower, but that extra displacement gave them marginally thicker armor and almost twice the endurance. More to the point — and despite Halcom Bahrns’ near miraculous feat of seamanship in the Tarot Channel — they were far better seaboats.

    Unfortunately, they wouldn’t be sending any of them to Sharpfield for quite a while after all, because while Thirsk might be their most capable opponent, he wasn’t currently the most dangerous. That honor, difficult though any Charisian found it to believe, belonged to Sir Slokym Dahrnail, Duke of Shairn and navy minister of the Empire of Desnair, the least nautically inclined great power of Safehold.

    Most Desnarians got seasick in a bathtub, but unlike the rest of Desnair, Shairn boasted an extensive fishing fleet which had dared the fish-rich waters off Samson’s Land and The Weeping Sisters for generations, despite their proximity to Armageddon Reef. Their catch had provided the duchy with a valuable export, and the House of Dharnail had been smart enough to recognize its importance. The last four dukes had adopted policies which favored both the fisheries and the coastal trade, and when Duke Kohlman, Desnair’s previous naval minister, sought asylum in Charis following the destruction of Ithryia, Sir Slokym had struck Mahrys as his logical successor. The fact that Shairn was a passionate Temple Loyalist, who hated Charis with all his heart, had made him an ideal successor in the eyes of the Church, as well, and the effective anihilation of the Dohlaran battle fleet at Ithryia had allowed him to pursue a commerce raiding strategy with all his resources.

    Kohlman had wanted to do the same thing for years, and he’d begun laying down light, fast cruisers as soon as the Battle of the Markovian Sea demonstrated (to anyone who could see) that fighting the ICN at sea had become nothing short of suicidal. The Church had resisted that policy strongly, however, so Kohlman had turned to issuing letters of marque to private shipowners. Even that had been more than the Church wanted, on the theory that it diverted resources from building up the navy, but, ironically, Desnair’s devastating defeat at Ithryia had forced both Church and Crown to adopt the “traitor” duke’s proposals, and Shairn — who was no fool, despite his religious bigotry — had driven them hard ever since.

    Which was why well over half of Sir Domnyk Staynair’s warships were now tied down in commerce protection and convoy duties. There was a very good reason he’d sent Payter Shain to wipe out Gulf of Jahras’ privateer bases — hopefully for good, although Rock Point was far from confident they wouldn’t rebuild quickly if the pressure was ever taken off again — but that left thousands upon thousands of miles of additional coastline, especially along the stretch between Traykhos and Shairn. Scores of fleet, weatherly schooners were swarming out to sea, and the situation was growing steadily more serious. Just six days ago, although Rock Point hadn’t yet received official word, over a dozen of those cruisers — half of them navy ships, not just privateers, and acting with far better coordination than he cared to think about — had swamped a convoy from Tellesberg to Siddar City. The outnumbered escort had managed to prevent any of the half dozen troopships under its care from being seriously damaged and had actually sunk two of the raiders, but no less than six cargo ships had been cut out despite all they could accomplish. One of the escorting schooners had been destroyed, as well, and two others — and one of the three defending galleons — had been damaged.

    There’d been no survivors from any of the merchantmen or from HMS Thistle. The only “good” news from that perspective was that all of the wounded had been slaughtered out of hand rather than returned to Desnair for the Punishment. The captured cargoes, however, had provided Desinair with five thousand precious M96 rifles, almost a hundred three-inch mortars, and two entire batteries of four-inch rifled field guns . . . among other things. Charis was only lucky the damage hadn’t been still worse — and that the overwhelmed escorts had been able to protect the troopships. But Rock Point couldn’t count on that happening the next time around, and what had been a constant, niggling trickle of losses in other privateer attacks was growing steadily more serious.

    Rock Point grimaced around his pipe stem, then struck a Shan-wei’s candle and lit it. He took time to be sure it was drawing properly, savoring the sweet taste of the smoke, before he waved out the candle and dropped it into an ashtray. Then he sighed heavily and admitted the disagreeable truth.

    Even with the Navy straining every sinew, he simply didn’t have the escorts to put every merchantman into a convoy. Over a third of all Charisian merchantmen were still forced to sail independently, and while almost all of them were now armed, they were scarcely regular men-of-war. Nor did Rock Point have the ship strength to blockade such an enormous coastline in order to prevent the raiders from getting to sea to attack them. That was the reason Shain was in the Gulf of Jahras . . . and also the reason the high admiral wouldn’t be sending the first new Cities off to Claw Island, after all. No, he was going to have a better use — or a more pressing one, at least — for those ships considerably closer to home. Sharpfield was just going to have to make do until more of the Cities were available, and it was entirely likely the King Haraahlds would be ready by then, as well.

    Sir Domnyk Staynair didn’t like it, but that was just the way it was. And however much he respected Thirsk’s capabilities, at least when Sharpfield did receive his reinforcements, there wasn’t going to be one damned thing Dohlar could do about it. And in the meantime . . . .

    Zhaztro’s not going to like it, either, he reflected, drawing on his pipe. I imagine he’s going to squawk about it — respectfully, of course! — when I break the news to him, too. But he’ll get over it, especially when he considers the consolation prize. And — the high admiral smiled grimly — he’ll do one hell of a good job once he does.