Demansk didn't doubt that every morning for the past many weeks the first thing King Casull IV had done, rising from his sleep, was to go out upon his balcony in the royal palace and stare up at that volcano. And then curse bitterly, seeing the same steady rise of the plume.
Half a century ago, the Confederacy had conquered and absorbed the Emeralds; and then, with that example before them, had coerced the Roper League and Hagga into accepting "auxiliary nation" status. From that moment forward, with the entire north coast of the continent under their control, there had been only three things which had kept the Confederacy from finally putting paid to the obnoxious pirates from the Western Isles.
The first was the increasing turmoil and lack of discipline among the Vanbert nobility, whose energies became more and more devoted to endless scheming and maneuvering for internal power. No one had been willing to allow any Speaker to gain enough power to amass the resources necessary to subjugate the archipelago-resources which, technically speaking, were quite easily within the reach of the Confederation. As Demansk had just proved, in a few short months.
The second was that when a leader did emerge who had the power to do so-Marcomann-he had been preoccupied with maintaining his own power. For all his undoubted ability, Marcomann had been guided by no vision whatsoever beyond his own aggrandizement. So he had turned the resources of the Confederacy toward a conquest of the western coast, the last area of the northern continent which still held enough territory to provide the land grants needed to win and keep the allegiance of his huge army.
Which, however shrewd a maneuver that might have been from the standpoint of keeping power, did the Confederacy no real good at all. It simply stoked the flames of internal feuding-Demansk's own father had spent most of his life preoccupied with gaining new lands in the west for his family-and just gave the pirates a fertile new area for plundering. Helga, in fact, had been seized in one of the raids on the western coast which had become so easy for the pirates in the last two decades.
The third and final factor was weather. Even for superb sailors like the Islanders and the Emeralds, bad weather could prove disastrous. For the lubberly Vanberts, one of the obstacles to devoting the resources needed to create the kind of giant fleet that Demansk had done was that a single storm could destroy it in a day. More than one Vanbert fleet, though none anywhere near as large as Demansk's, had met that fate.
Demansk had maneuvered successfully past the first two obstacles. The problem of weather he had solved in the simple and straightforward manner he had built the fleet itself. He'd simply timed his attack to coincide with the one time of year, late spring and early summer, when the weather in the northern reaches of the Western Ocean was almost invariably mild.
Still, it had been a gamble, even if one with good odds. But now that the gamble had paid off, Casull had no choice but to come out and fight a sea battle-against a fleet that was at least five times larger than anything he could assemble himself.
He couldn't simply keep the fleet in the harbor at Chalice, much as he might have wanted to. Granted, that harbor-and the city itself which rose up along the inner slopes of the caldera-was about as impregnable a fortress as any in the world. The ancient volcanic crater in which Chalice nestled still had three quarters of its circumference left. Casull could have easily blocked the narrow entrance to the harbor and bled the Vanberts for weeks, if they tried to break through.
Nor would he have had to use many men to guard the crater rim. Chalice had no walls for the simple reason that it didn't need any. The knife-edge ridges of the caldera itself were superior to any curtain wall and battlements ever constructed.
But that was also Chalice's weakness. The city was the best harbor in the world, true, but it was only a harbor. There was nothing-not a single path, much less a road, across the stark terrain which circled it-which connected Chalice by land with the rest of the island. The city depended on seaborne trade and fishing for everything, beginning with the food it consumed every day. Ironically, it was the worst city in the world to withstand a siege, for all that it could withstand it the best in narrow military terms.
"Right there," said Thicelt, pointing to a place farther south along the island's coast. "That's where we'll build it."
The admiral was pointing to a long and wide beach about ten miles south of the city, which curved easily and gently for another five miles or so. More than enough space, even for Demansk's gigantic fleet, to beach most of the ships. All of them, really, except the quinquiremes and the special woodclads-and what relatively few ships were needed to maintain a blockade of the harbor.
Demansk's eyes lifted beyond the beach. At a distance of not more than half a mile, a low mountain range paralleled the shore. The mountains were rocky, but still heavily forested. There was enough stone and wood there, within easy reach, for the Confederacy to build all the dwellings and breakwaters and piers it would need to turn the area into a giant-sized version of the military encampments for which its army was famous. With a harbor as good as most in the world.
Give him a summer, unmolested by the pirate ships bottled up in the harbor, and Demansk could build what amounted to a city as big as Chalice itself. A crude and primitive one, true, but more than adequate for the purpose.
That new city, of course, would also be dependent on seaborne trade for its survival. The soil in the northern third of the archipelago's main island was too rocky and sandy to make good farming land. But so what? Demansk would have control of the sea, not the Islanders. And long before winter came, with its bad weather, Chalice would have succumbed from starvation. By late autumn, under normal conditions, Chalice would be stocked full of food to carry it through the winter. But now, still in late spring, the city's larders would be almost empty.
No, the only chance King Casull had was to defeat the Vanbert fleet in an open sea battle. And with no way, even, to stage the battle in narrow waters where Casull could keep most of the Vanbert navy from swamping him.
No way, at least, in the real world. Theoretically, Casull's best move would have been to abandon Chalice without a fight and move his capital and his forces to the inner islands of the archipelago. Then, at least, he would have been in a position to fight battles in the relatively constricted-and often treacherous-waters of the various inlets which separated the islands. He could have maneuvered and retreated, as needed, to allow only a portion of Demansk's fleet to get at him at one time, always with the hope of luring his enemy's ships onto the inlets' many shoals which were not listed on any charts.
"And I'll bet he's also cursing the whole history of the Kingdom," said Thicelt, his thoughts paralleling Demansk's own. "Some other realm, maybe, the King could play a waiting game. But not with us pirates."
The heavy lips twisted into something that was halfway between a rueful smile and a jeer. "We're not good at that sort of thing, the way you Vanbert cloddies are. Easy come, easy go. Cut the King's throat and find another one."
Demansk nodded. The Islanders were notorious for their unstable politics. That was the flip side of their equally notorious egalitarianism. "Egalitarianism," at least, in the sense of personal opportunity. The Islanders' rulers were the most autocratic in the world, true-but any man could aspire to become the King, if he had the talent and the luck.
The Islanders had none of the mainland's ingrained respect for "blood lines." Any man, at least, if not woman, could rise to any station in life. And, of course, fall just as far if not farther-and even faster. As Sharlz said, one slice of the blade. Long live the new King, and toss the old one's carcass into the harbor for the sharks.