"We won't sink one more of their ships; we'll sink all of them!"
"Father, I don't think we-"
"Yes, we can!" Christian thundered. "Can and will!"
It was a mark of his father's fury, thought Ulrik-almost mindless fury, now, even though the king was still completely sober-that he obviously hadn't given any thought at all to the most likely target of Admiral Simpson's guns. Being charitable about the matter, that could be explained by the fact that Rosenborg Castle, located in the center of the city, could not easily be fired upon by ship-mounted cannons. Not, at least, unless Simpson was prepared to have most of his shells missing the palace and landing in residential areas. But it was Ulrik's assessment that the American admiral was still doing his best to keep casualties down.
And why bother, anyway-when there was such a splendidly visible and obvious target right at the waterfront? Which, unfortunately, happened to be the very place that a prisoner was being kept-who, if he died, might very well send Simpson's temper soaring as high as that of the Danish king.
So, Ulrik left his father to his consultations with his gunnery captains and quietly slipped out of the Long Hall, then went first to his own chambers for the pouch of coins they'd be needing. For obvious reasons, he hadn't taken the pouch with him on the galleys.
He found Anne Cathrine where he'd told her to wait for him, if this plan proved necessary also. Not in her own chambers but in the king's so-called Golden Chamber, a small room Ulrik's father used for private meetings.
The moment he came into the room, Anne Cathrine seized him in a tight embrace. "Oh, Ulrik! I was so afraid you'd get killed!"
Despite the tension and anxiety of the moment, Ulrik felt himself awash with affection for his younger half-sister. The long winter months during which they'd slowly and carefully laid their plans-sometimes with their father's knowledge and agreement, sometimes behind his back-had brought the two siblings much closer than they'd ever been in times past.
But he didn't let the embrace last for long. There was very little time left.
"Here," he said, pressing the pouch of coins into his sister's hand. "There's plenty for whatever bribes you'll need to pay."
Anne Cathrine frowned. "They've already been paid," she protested.
Ulrik chuckled. "I'm trying to remember if I was that naive when I was fifteen years old. I don't think so. Let me explain to you the secret of bribery, little sister. The one being bribed always wants a little extra at the very end, once he knows you really want him to do what you're paying him to do. Or not do, more often."
"That's rotten!" she snapped.
"Rotten or not, it's the way it is. Now go!"
She hurried toward the door, then stopped, just as she was about to leave, and turned around.
"I want two days!" She held up two fingers. "Two days, Ulrik, not an hour less. Before you tell Papa where we are."
He grinned at her. "This is all supposed to be very cold-blooded, little sister. High matters of state-your sole and only motive."
She sniffed as haughtily as a fifteen-year-old could manage. "Maybe for you. Not me. Not any more, anyway. Remember-I want two full days. Not an hour less!"
And she was gone.
"Damn the man!" John Simpson muttered as the white flag flying over the central battery slowly descended its pole. It was the agreed-upon sign to indicate the rejection of his terms, but the Danes waited punctiliously until it had been completely lowered before fresh jets of smoke and flame spurted from the defending artillery.
The Danish gunners were better shots than those of Hamburg had been. Round shot slammed into the three remaining ironclads' armor, skipping off in a deafening clangor like some berserk chorus of bells. More round shot made white circles in the water as they plunged deep, and others kicked up mud when they hit in particularly shallow water.
It was, Simpson was forced to admit, an impressive sight. In practical terms, however, it was accomplishing exactly nothing.
Unlike their frigging mines and torpedoes, he reminded himself.
That thought sent a flicker of uneasiness through him. Most of him was certain Copenhagen's defenders had shot their bolt. That this was simply Christian's typical bullheaded, bloody-minded obstinacy. But he wasn't about to ignore the possibility that Ulrik had contrived some additional deviltry that might yet cost Simpson more ships-and lives-if he allowed himself to be distracted.
I don't want to kill those poor damned gunners over there, either, though, he thought, glaring at the batteries and remembering the wreckage his guns had left behind at Hamburg. It's not their idea, after all.
His eyes narrowed suddenly, and his spine straightened.
Wait a minute. It isn't their idea, John; it's Christian's. So why don't you just find yourself a target that can demonstrate the depth of his… unwisdom even to him? Something prominent, something royal…
His eyes lit on the tall finger of the Blue Tower rising above Copenhagen Castle on Slotsholmen Island, and he smiled thinly.
Chapter 62
Almost mesmerized, Eddie stared at the distant ironclad that was bringing itself around to bring its big ten-inch guns to bear on Copenhagen Castle. The two pivot-mounted guns had been trained around to the port broadside from their normal fore and aft positions, so he got an excellent view of three of them. And judging from their elevation, Eddie had a pretty shrewd notion that that their target was the castle's single most prominent feature: the Blue Tower.
The same Blue Tower, unfortunately, that contained Eddie himself-locked into a room on one of the upper floors.
That was the USS Constitution, to make things perfect-Simpson's own flagship. Even at the distance, Eddie could recognize the admiral's flag.
No, it'd be the SSIM Constitution, now. He'd learned that from Ulrik.
He would have been positive as to the ship's identity, even if it hadn't been for the admiral's flag. It was hard to distinguish the ironclads at a distance because they'd all been built according to the same design. They were certainly too far away for him to read the lettering on the hulls. Still, each ship tended to have slight variations of its own, and as much time as he'd spent working on them those variations had become as familiar to him as the features of different people's faces.
He could see the national colors they were flying, too, which was the new flag adopted by the United States of Europe after it was formed-by which time Eddie himself was a Danish prisoner of war-not the flag he'd been familiar with. That had been the flag of the New United States, which was an adaptation of the up-time flag of the USA. A different pattern for the stars, but the same familiar red and white stripes. Since the Confederated Principalities of Europe had been a loose confederation rather than having the federal structure of the USE, the CPE's Navy had actually been the NUS Navy. Just on loan, so to speak. The CPE had never had a flag of its own.
Eddie had never seen the USE flag up close, and Ulrik's depiction of its design had been rather vague. From this distance, it looked remarkably like a Confederate battle flag from the American Civil War. At least, it clearly had the same stars and bars design, even if Eddie couldn't really make out the stars that well. But the color scheme was quite different. The USE's colors were the traditional German red, black and gold, not the red, white and blue of American custom-whether Union or Confederate. And the black crossed bars on this new flag were considerably thinner than the blue crossed bars of the Confederate flag. The end result was that, from a distance, the USE flag mostly just looked like a big red flag.
Swell, thought Eddie. Might as well just call it a bloody flag and be done with it, far as I'm concerned. Within less than a minute, he was about to get a personal introduction to the phenomenon known as "friendly fire." Most likely, a very brief introduction. Even if none of the shells struck his chamber directly, he knew that it wouldn't take that many rounds from those huge guns to bring down the whole Blue Tower in a heap of rubble. With Eddie Cantrell's poor squished skinny little carcass somewhere in the middle of it, oozing blood and-best not dwell on that-at least maybe they'd be able to identity the remains from the scraps of red hair still sticking to this or that shredded piece of-