“What is that thing, Sir?” Kwantryl asked, and the tough, veteran seaman was obviously shaken. Not surprisingly, Bruhstair thought, feeling a cold shiver as he remembered all the fiery sermons damning the heretics for trafficking with demons. But.…
“I think it’s a balloon,” he said slowly, forcing himself to take his eye from the spyglass and stand up straight … and rather surprised by how much better he felt when the shape faded into an unthreatening blur with distance.
“‘Balloon,’ Sir?”
“Yes. I’ve never seen one myself,” Bruhstair replied more confidently, “but one of my uncles saw a demonstration in Gorath and told me about it when I was a kid. If you heat the air inside a balloon, it floats up into the air.”
“Floats into the air?” Kwantryl looked decidedly uneasy. “Can’t say I like the sound of that, Sir!”
“There’s nothing demonic about it,” Bruhstair said quickly. “The Bishop Executor himself pronounced that when Uncle Sailys was in Gorath. It’s only fire and air, and both of those are permitted.”
“If you say so, Sir.” Kwantryl didn’t seem very convinced, Bruhstair noted.
“It’s not demonic,” the lieutenant repeated reassuringly. “But it is going to let them see a lot farther. Don’t know how much good it’ll do them, though. And whatever somebody perched up there can see, he’ll still need some way to get word of it back down to the ship. Might be just a bit of a problem getting that done in time to do any good.”
* * *
“End of the cable, Sir,” Petty Officer Hahlys announced.
“Thank you, Bryntyn,” Lieutenant Makadoo acknowledged.
The lieutenant lay prone in the nose of the streamlined gondola. Unlike the balloons of the ICA’s Balloon Corps, the Navy’s kite balloons had a lifting shape, with stubby airfoil wings that generated a lot of lift when their motherships towed them at fifteen knots or so. Or when they were towed at a mere five or ten knots into a twenty-five knot wind, like today’s. That meant they needed less hydrogen to loft a given weight—although, to be fair, that lift wasn’t available when their motherships weren’t steaming into the wind—and they could probably have squeezed a third passenger into the gondola, as long as whoever it was was no bigger than him or Hahlys. The quarters would have been tight, though.
At the moment, Makadoo’s elbows were braced on the padded rest in front of him while he peered through his powerful double-glass. The front of the gondola was glassed in to protect the crew from the wind generated by the balloon’s forward motion, but Makadoo had the center section of window latched back. Duke Delthak could say whatever he wanted, but Zoshua Makadoo was firmly convinced the visibility was better with the window out of the way.
Besides, he and Hahlys liked the wind.
“Check the drop cylinder,” he said, never looking away from the view ahead.
“Aye, Sir,” Hahlys replied.
The young petty officer stuffed the test message into the small bronze cylinder and made sure the lid was properly screwed down. Then he snaphooked its traveler onto the messenger line deployed on one side of the balloon’s braided steel thistle silk tether. He let go and it disappeared, flashing down the messenger line to the deck far below.
Looking down, Hahlys could see one of the other signalmen pounce on the canister, unhook it, and hand the note inside it to Ahndru Mykgylykudi, Gwylym Manthyr’s bosun. Mykgylykudi glanced at it, then nodded to the party of seamen gathered around the steam-powered “donkey” engine beside the winch that controlled the balloon’s tether.
The second messenger line was spaced well over a foot on the other side of the tether. It was also doubled and ran over a sheave at the top of the gondola’s open rear. Now that line hummed sharply as it sped through the sheave until the canister hooked to it thumped against the rest at the base of the sheave, and Hahlys nodded approvingly.
The messenger canisters were a faster means of communication than a signal lamp would have been. They were also safer. Mhargryt—they’d named it for Makadoo’s mother, since the lieutenant said she’d always had an explosive temper—was basically a great big bomb, just waiting to explode. That was why there was no iron or steel anywhere in the gondola’s construction, and why there were no iron nails in its crew’s boots.
The powered messenger line was the fastest way to get a message up to Mhargryt, but the free-falling line was much faster when it came to getting a message back to the ship. And since Mhargryt’s primary duty was to be Gwylym Manthyr’s eye in the sky—and to spot the fall of the big ship’s shots from above the clouds of gun and funnel smoke likely to blind her gunners—speed of communication was a very good thing to have.
“Both lines are working fine, Sir,” he reported to Makadoo.
“Good.”
Makadoo sounded just a little distant, and Hahlys smiled. From their present altitude of eighteen hundred feet, the lieutenant could see for almost sixty miles. That meant he could see all the way across Cape Toe. In fact, he could probably just make out the low-lying blur of Sandy Island on the far side of the Outer Ground, the stretch of water between The Boot and the barrier islands separating it from the Middle Ground, closer to Gorath. At the moment, he was focused closer to home, slowly and methodically sweeping the waters of the Lace Passage for any sign of the Royal Dohlaran Navy. Hahlys would be astounded if any of the Earl of Thirsk’s surviving galleons or screw-galleys were crazy enough to engage the squadron, but Admiral Sarmouth’s instructions before they’d launched had been clear. He wanted to know the instant they spotted anything bigger than a rowboat.
Several minutes went by as Makadoo switched his attention from the channel to Cape Toe itself. He studied the fortifications equally carefully, then lowered the double-glass and rolled onto his side, looking back towards Hahlys.
“Message,” he said, and the petty officer pulled out his pad and pencil.
“Ready, Sir.”
“Message begins. ‘No vessels currently underway within visual range. Several small craft moored north of Cape Toe at Battery Number Two’s jetty. Have also spotted several large canvas-covered freight wagons behind Battery Number One’s parapet in what appear to be well dug-in positions.’”
He paused, rubbing the tip of his nose thoughtfully while he considered what he’d just said. Then he shrugged.
“Read it back,” he said, and nodded when Hahlys did. “It never ceases to amaze me that anyone, including you, can read your handwriting, Bryntyn. But once again, you’ve gotten it right. So let’s get the word back to the ship.”
* * *
“Coming down on six miles’ range, Sir,” Commander Pharsaygyn murmured, and Sir Hainz Zhaztro nodded without ever lowering his double-glass.
He understood the unspoken part of his chief of staff’s announcement. Lywys Pharsaygyn thought it was about time his admiral retired to the interior of HMS Eraystor’s conning tower and put its armor between him and the Dohlaran defenders. On the other hand, the possibility of a Dohlaran gunner’s hitting a target—even one Eraystor’s size—at better than ten thousand yards was remote, to say the least, and the field of view from the conning tower, even using one of the angle-glasses, wasn’t anything Zhaztro would have called adequate.