“Fair enough, Sir.” Lathyk nodded. “So what do we do next?”
“A reasonable question.”
Sarmouth dropped the dividers and stood back, folding his arms and frowning. In fact, he was looking at a rather different chart, projected onto his contact lenses and showing the precise current positions—with movement vectors—of every ship in a hundred-and-fifty-mile circle centered on Destiny.
At the moment, Raisahndo and his forty-three galleons, twelve screw-galleys, and eleven brigs and schooners, were the better part of ninety miles from Sarmouth’s chart table. The Dohlaran’s speed had dropped a bit as the wind moderated, but he hadn’t cracked on additional sail, which confirmed that he held to his determination to pass the Narrows in darkness. As Sarmouth had just pointed out to Lathyk, however, not all of Raisahndo’s hulls were coppered.
In fact, the Imperial Charisian Navy remained the only navy in the world which coppered all of its vessels. Even ICN-owned transports and freight galleons were coppered, and the ironclads were wooden sheathed below the waterline so copper could be attached without galvanic action dissolving the iron fastenings. It was expensive as hell, but until the Royal College got around to inventing antifouling paints—which wouldn’t happen anytime soon—it was the only way to protect a submerged hull against borers and weed. And however resistant to borers an iron hull might be, it certainly wasn’t immune to the drag effect of weed and encrusted shellfish. Just over a quarter of Raisahndo’s galleons lacked that advantage, however, and if they’d been in the water any length of time, that would cost them at least a knot or two—maybe even more—compared to a Charisian galleon of the same size and sail power.
He can’t run—not with everyone—if things go badly for him … and they’re going to go very badly, unless I manage to screw up by the numbers. But just like I told Rhobair, he’s caught in one hell of a trap. The only way out’s through, and we’re the only people he has a prayer of fighting his way past.
Except that’s not going to happen.
For a moment, he felt a pang of pity, but he suppressed it sternly. Caitahno Rausahndo might be—indeed, he was—an honorable and a decent man. But so was Earl Thirsk … and that hadn’t prevented what had happened to Gwyllym Manthyr and his men. Nor did it change the fact that the Kingdom of Dohlar had been the Group of Four’s most effective proxy from the very beginning.
There’s a price for that sort of thing, he thought grimly. I may not like being the one sent to collect it, but I by God will collect it!
“I think we want to be right about here around breakfast time tomorrow,” he said finally, unfolding one arm to tap an index finger on a spot thirty miles north-northeast of their current position. “That’s far enough out to prevent anyone on Shipworm Island from reporting our position to him, and assuming Hektor and his friends are their usual efficient selves about maintaining contact overnight, we’ll be well placed to run down on him for a meeting engagement sometime around midafternoon.”
His flag captain craned his neck, looking down at Sarmouth’s fingertip, then nodded.
“Yes, My Lord,” he acknowledged. “Shouldn’t be a problem.”
* * *
“I wish the bastards would go ahead and show themselves, Sir,” Captain Trahvys said quietly.
He and Caitahno Raisahndo stood on HMS Hurricane’s quarterdeck, faces dimly lit by the backwash of the binnacle light, as the flagship made her cautious way into the Cutfish Narrows. Now the flag captain grimaced, folding his hands behind him and rocking on his heels as he looked away from the compass into the moonless dark. Faint starlight glimmered on his ship’s canvas, but every other light had been doused, aside from the binnacle and the single blue lantern each galleon showed to her next astern for guidance and stationkeeping. Every gun was loaded and run out, with the crews sleeping—or trying to sleep, anyway—beside their pieces, despite the cold. It was about as quiet as things ever got aboard a sailing vessel underway, and Raisahndo wondered if Trahvys’ nerves were as tightly wound as his own.
“Assuming they intend to show up at all,” Trahvys added. “And somehow,” his grimace deepened, “I don’t see them being quite so obliging as to just wave as we sail past to Gorath.”
“Neither do I,” Raisahndo acknowledged. “Just between you and me, I’ll spend the odd hour or two on my knees thanking Langhorne if we do sneak by without Sarmouth’s ever getting a galleon in range of us.” He wouldn’t have admitted that to just anyone, but Trahvys only nodded. “Unfortunately,” the admiral continued, “that’s the one thing I’m sure isn’t going to happen.”
“Can’t disagree, Sir,” the flag captain said grimly, and Raisahndo shrugged.
“The best we can do is the best we can do, Lewk, and I’m sure that’s what the lads will give us. But you’re right, if we have to fight, this would be the perfect spot, especially for Admiral Hahlynd’s screw-galleys. They might even get a chance to use those damned torpedoes for something besides training!”
Trahvys nodded, Pawal Hahlynd’s screw-galleys had armed the percussion detonators on the spar-mounted three-hundred-pound charges of powder and then raised the spars into the vertical position. Assuming they got the chance, the spars would be lowered to project forty feet ahead of their stubby bowsprits, like an old-fashioned cavalry lance. If they could get close enough in the dark, ram one of those into a Charisian’s side, all the armor in the world wouldn’t save their victim!
“Even without the screw-galleys, getting in close would be our galleons’ best chance to hurt them, too. Of course, it’d be frigging impossible to exert any sort of control over an unholy brawl like that, but confusion usually helps the fellow trying to run more than the fellow trying to stop him from running, and let’s be honest here. I know what I told the others, but the truth is we’re not looking for a battle under any circumstances, no matter how ‘good’ they might be. We’re looking for an escape, and for that, we need as much sea room as we can get before we run into them. If Sarmouth’s considerate enough to present his squadron in the next couple of hours and let us fight him here, on the best terms we can get, I sure as Shan-wei won’t complain! In fact, I’ve done my dead level best to convince him to do just that. But if I were him and he was me?” He shook his head. “I’d sit somewhere ahead of us, knowing we’d have to come to him, and I’d stay the hell out of any night battles while I waited for daylight.”
Trahvys made a wordless sound of agreement, and it was Raisahndo’s turn to grimace under cover of the darkness. He must be even more nervous than he’d thought he was. He hadn’t just told the flag captain all those things he already knew for Trahvys’ benefit; he was still trying to convince himself they had at least some chance to pull this off. But the truth was that any engagement—daylight or dark—was unlikely to be a happy experience for the Western Squadron, and there wasn’t one damned thing he could do about that. A competent admiral could usually find ways to defeat an adversary—or at least cope with it—if his fleet was more powerful than his opponent’s or if it was faster.
Unhappily for the Western Squadron, it was neither.