* * *
“Signal from the Flag, Sir!” Lieutenant Fraid Stedmyn said sharply. “With our number,” he added rather pointedly, and glared up at the midshipman perched in HMS Lightning’s mizzen top.
“Indeed?” Doniphan Cumyngs, Lightning’s first lieutenant, raised an eyebrow and joined the flag lieutenant in glaring up at the mizzen top. “Odd that no one else noticed it,” he continued, loudly enough to ensure the midshipman would find it difficult to pretend he hadn’t heard.
That luckless youth snatched up his spyglass and peered through it at the distant flags, and Tymythy Darys felt his lips twitch with an utterly inappropriate temptation to smile. There really wasn’t anything particularly amusing about it, the admiral supposed, but at the same time, there was. Stedmyn had been a signals specialist himself before Darys tapped him as his flag lieutenant. He was an efficient, hard-working young man, and almost as smart as he thought he was—no one could have been quite as smart as Fraid Stedmyn thought he was—who found it extraordinarily difficult to delegate anything.
Not that this particular duty was his to delegate in the first place, since Lightning’s signals department was Captain Sympsyn’s and Lieutenant Cumyngs’ responsibility, not the flag lieutenant’s.
Which wouldn’t save Midshipman Braiahn’s youthful arse when Cumyngs had the opportunity to ‘discuss’ it with him. First lieutenants didn’t take kindly to midshipmen who embarrassed them in front of flag officers. Especially not in front of flag officers they would probably be facing across the breakfast table sometime quite soon now. The fact that Cumyngs and Stedmyn thoroughly detested one another was only icing on the cake.
“The Division’s number, Sir,” Braiahn called down. Clearly he would have preferred not to offer that particular bit of information, given Stedmyn’s rather pointed comment. Unfortunately, the ICN’s standard signals procedures left him no choice. “Number 80 and Number 59!”
His assistant at the foot of the mast flipped pages swiftly in the signal book, very careful not to look at anything—or anyone—else in the process. Then he cleared his throat and looked up from the book.
“‘Execute previous orders,’ Sir, and ‘Southwest-by-South.’”
“Thank you, Master Sellyrs,” Cumyngs said frostily, and turned to Captain Sympsyn, who’d been observing the operation of his ship’s communications department with an interested expression. “Execute previous orders, course southwest-by-south, Sir.”
“Thank you, Master Cumyngs.”
Despite an admirably grave tone, there might have been a slight twinkle in Sympsyn’s eye as he repeated Cumyngs acknowledgment to young Sellyrs. If there was, it disappeared instantly as he looked at Darys.
“I heard,” the admiral said, and showed his teeth. “Looks like the Baron was right. Very well, Captain Sympsyn. Let’s be about it!”
* * *
“Sir—!”
“I see it, Lewk,” Raisahndo said, and slammed a fist down on the quarterdeck rail, swearing with silent eloquence as the Charisian formation changed at last. The last eight galleons in Sarmouth’s line were altering course sharply, yards swinging with mechanical precision as they came all the way from west-northwest to southwest-by-south, and his teeth grated together as he recalled his earlier thought about dance steps.
He raised his spyglass, peering through it, and his face tightened as he got his first real good look at the division which had formed the rear of the Charisian line. Apparently the two ships leading Sarmouth’s line weren’t the only ironclads in his squadron after all. Either that, or they’d been bombardment ships, instead. Which was certainly possible, especially if Sarmouth had intended this all along. Whatever they might have been, however, the pair of ships leading the abbreviated line which had just turned southwest also showed only a single line of gunports, and he was closer to these. His spyglass showed him the streaks of rust where wind and weather had scoured away their black paint.
And beyond them.…
“Signal to Admiral Hahlynd,” he said, never lowering the glass.
“Yes, Sir?”
“‘Engage the enemy to windward.’”
* * *
“All right, Ahlfryd,” Pawal Hahlynd said grimly. “It looks like we get to try it a second time.”
“One way to put it, Sir,” Captain Ahlfryd Mahgyrs said as the screw-galley Sword turned towards the enemy.
The deck quivered as her cranksmen bent to the pair of long, belowdecks crankshafts spinning her propellers. Speed was as important as maneuverability today, and she heeled to the press of her canvas, as well. Spray burst back from her cutwater, glittering like diamonds in the sunlight before it pattered across the decks, drenching every exposed surface, and both of them knew they were driving her too hard for safety. The screw-galleys were surprisingly good seaboats, but the weight of their guns and armor was really too much for their frames. They were fragile vessels, and more than one member of the ship’s company had to be remembering the day they’d watched one of her sisters simply break up and disappear in less than twenty minutes in seas no heavier than today’s.
“I didn’t much enjoy it the first time, really,” Hahlynd’s flag captain continued, much too quietly for anyone else to hear him over the noise of wind, water, and shouted orders. “And, frankly, this time around the odds suck, Sir.”
“Always such a way with words,” Hahlynd replied with an off-center smile. Then he shrugged. “Wish I could disagree. But look at it this way—assuming we get past these people, we’ve still got the entire Gulf to cross before we get to Gorath. Given normal weather for this time of year, that’s got to be at least as much a challenge as this, don’t you think?”
“That’s a strange way to encourage someone, Sir.”
“Best I can come up with, I’m afraid,” Hahlynd replied, and raised his spyglass, studying the Charisian galleons as his screw-galleys charged to meet them in a buffeting rush of ice-edged wind and pitching explosions of spray.
* * *
“Now those have to be some unhappy people, Sir,” Captain Sympsyn said, and looked up at the set of his ironclad galleon’s canvas, studying it as if considering some way it might be tweaked.
“I’m sure they are,” Tymythy Darys replied.
The admiral wasn’t looking at his flag captain at the moment; he was still peering through the raised angle-glass bracketed to the inner face of HMS Lightning’s seven-foot armored bulwark. He had to angle it almost parallel with the ship’s keel, because the screw-galleys were taking advantage of their weatherly rig and screws to come at his flagship head-on. Now he straightened and rubbed his chin thoughtfully.
“I’m sure they are,” he repeated, “but I don’t think that’s going to slow them up very much. And it’s pretty clear what Raisahndo’s up to.”
Sympsyn nodded, his own expression less than delighted. With their screws to supplement their sails, the screw-galleys were faster than the Dohlaran galleons, despite their smaller size. The seas were approaching ten or eleven feet, and the galleons’ bigger, deeper—not to mention more strongly built—hulls ought to have allowed them to make considerably more speed than the small, frail screw-galleys. Their commander was driving them dangerously hard, however, despite the sea conditions. He was clearly prepared to run some serious risks in the execution of his portion of the Dohlaran battle plan.
And they obviously had a plan.
“They’re trying to get across our line of advance,” the admiral continued, speaking to himself as much as to his flagship’s commander. “The question in my mind is whether they plan to stay clear until they can take up firing positions on our disengaged side after their galleons get to grips with us, or if they’re going to try to get in close and hit our rigging, slow us down before we get to grips.”