Kharmahdy commanded the Dohlaran shore establishment: not simply the Dohlaran manned batteries protecting the immediate base area, but also its warehouses, dockyards, service craft, powder magazines, sail lofts, and everything else associated with keeping the Squadron in fighting trim. Under other circumstances, he would have been accorded the title of “port admiral” and given the rank to go with it, but Duke Fern had decreed otherwise in this case. Apparently the First Councilor had worried it might offend their Harchongese hosts in Rhaigair. But if Kharmahdy remained a mere captain, he was also a very capable—and levelheaded—sort of fellow. It wasn’t like him to go off into fits of anxiety or panic, but this envelope was far heavier than usual. Obviously, the commodore’s clerk had tucked a handful of musket balls into it before he handed it to the messenger. That was a security measure designed to carry it to the bottom if it strayed out of authorized hands, and Raisahndo’s sense of trepidation sharpened as he wondered why that had seemed necessary.
The most probable answer was that Kharmahdy was relaying a message from Dohlar which had just arrived by coded semaphore or messenger wyvern, and if it was important enough to send by itself rather than waiting for the regular afternoon mail delivery, it was unlikely to contain good news. Which, given what had happened to Earl Thirsk’s family a few months ago—and how it had happened—was more than enough to send his heart down to somewhere in the vicinity of his shoe soles.
Stop procrastinating, he told himself. Sooner or later, you have to open the damned thing!
He exhaled, picked up the cheese knife, and slit the envelope’s stitches. Then he laid the knife down, extracted the single sheet of paper, and unfolded it.
His face tightened, and he made himself reread the brief, concise note a second time.
At least it’s not an announcement that the Earl’s been arrested, Caitahno, he thought. Be grateful for that much! Not that this is any better.
“Well, I suppose I understand why he didn’t use signals.” His tone was dry, but his brown eyes were very dark as he looked up at Kahmelka and extended the message. “No point spreading panic any sooner than we have to. But it would appear the question of the heretics’ intentions has just been answered.”
* * *
“Finger Cape off the starboard bow, Sir,” the lookout called, then bent over the pelorus mounted on HMS Eraystor’s bridge wing and peered through the aperture in the raised sighting vanes. It was another of the plethora of new devices coming out of Charis these days, and he measured the angle carefully against the lubber line before he looked back over his shoulder.
“Seventeen degrees, relative, Sir.”
“Very good,” Zhaikyb Gregori said and turned to the bridge messenger at his elbow.
“My respects to the Captain and Admiral Zhastro,” he said. “Inform them Finger Cape is now visible from the bridge, a point and a half off the starboard bow. I estimate we’ll be abreast the battery there in approximately forty minutes.”
* * *
Captain of Swords Raikow Kaidahn stood in the observation tower atop Battery St. Thermyn, gazing through the tripod-mounted spyglass at the bizarre-looking vessels making their way steadily—and with complete disregard for wind or current—through South Channel into the broad waters of Saram Bay. He’d waited for the last half hour, holding his followup reports to Rhagair until he had something more definite than smoke to report. Now he did, and he wished to hell he didn’t. Or that he could have done something more effective than sending in reports about them, anyway.
Unfortunately for anything he might have done, however, those ships were at least seven miles from his battery’s site on the very tip of the long, thin ribbon of Finger Cape. Known with very little affection to its occupants, who deeply resented being given their current assignment, as “the Finger” (after the hand gesture which expressed much the same meaning it once had on Old Terra), the cape projecting into the channel from Basset Island was over ten miles long, but less than a mile and a half across at its widest, and its highest elevation was little more than forty feet above sea level at high tide. That made things … interesting when heavy weather blew up the channel and sent seas crashing clear across it. In fact, in Raikow Kaidahn’s considered opinion, the Finger was a miserable, waterlogged sandbar at the best of times … which winter in Stene Province wasn’t. Just building a battery on it had required more than a little ingenuity out of the Imperial Harchongese Army’s engineers.
And keeping the damned thing here’s required a hell of a lot more, he thought moodily.
The winter’s storms had not been kind to him or his gunners—they’d had to evacuate the battery twice, and each time repairs had amounted to effectively rebuilding it afterward—and he couldn’t really understand why Lord of Horse Golden Grass had stuck them out here in the first place. They hadn’t even been equipped with any of the new rifled artillery pieces, since the navigable channel between the Finger and Saram Head was almost fourteen miles across. No one was coming into range of Battery St. Thermyn unless he was one hell of a bad navigator or wind and weather gave him no choice. For that matter, the channel was literally impossible to defend at all; there was simply no place to put the guns that might have engaged an intruder.
On the other hand, you’re in a good position to warn Rhaigair they’re coming, aren’t you? Not that they’re being particularly stealthy. For that matter, it’s hard to see how those … smokepots could sneak up on Rhaigair, whether we were sitting out on this Shan-wei-damned sandspit or not!
He sighed, straightened his back, and turned to the anxious-faced young captain of spears at his elbow.
“I make it five of the bastards, Thaidin. I don’t see any topsails tagging along, but I’m sure they’re out there somewhere. I imagine their galleons’ll keep their distance unless the wind shifts to favor them.” His lips twitched under his pencil thin mustache. “Not like these fellows will need them anytime soon.”
Captain of Spears Chinzhou’s face tightened. For a moment, Kaidahn thought the younger man would accuse him of defeatism. Young Chinzhou was a very devout fellow, who spent too much time with the local inquisitors, in Kaidahn’s opinion. After a moment, though, the captain of spears nodded unhappily.
“I suppose not, Sir,” he acknowledged. “May I?”
He gestured at the spyglass, and Kaidahn nodded and stepped back to let him look through it. His shoulders tightened as the image of the smoke-spewing heretic vessels swam into sharper focus, and Kaidahn didn’t blame him. They were huge, easily two or three hundred feet long, and the enormously long guns protruding from their stepped-back, armored superstructures were enough to strike a chill in any heart.
Especially if the possessor of that heart had read the reports of what those same guns had done to the Desnairian fortifications at Geyra Bay.
Chinzhou gazed at them for at least two minutes before he stood back, shaking his head.
“What do you think Admiral Raisahndo will do, Sir?”
“Whatever he can,” Kaidahn said. “I’ve never met him personally, but I understand he’s a brave and determined man, so I have no doubt of that. As to what he can do against something like this—?”
He gestured at the columns of smoke steaming steadily past their position, and Chinzhou nodded somberly.
I know what he damned well ought to do, though, Kaidahn thought. The wind’s fair for all three channels, and unless those heretic bastards have enough of these things to cover all of them, I’d damned well be getting my ships the Shan-wei out of their way. Of course, the heretics probably have some of their armored galleons waiting out to sea, but I’d a hell of a lot rather take my chances with them than face these things inside the bay.