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  You really are around the bend, aren’t you, Halcom? he asked himself dryly. Are you trying to tell me you’re bored? And that being bored in the middle of a war is a bad thing?

  He chuckled at the thought, trying to imagine how Delthak’s company might respond to that particular proposition. Probably not very well. Still—

  “What boat?”

  The challenge from Fortune’s deck watch plucked Bahrns up out of his ruminations as Mahfyt responded.

  “Delthak!” he barked through a speaking trumpet, the ship’s name warning the galleon that the approaching cutter had the ironclad’s captain on board. There was a stir aboard the flagship as Mahfyt brought the cutter alongside and the bowman hooked neatly onto the main chains. The cutter’s crew tossed oars in perfect unison, precisely timed, without a single command from Mahfyt, and Bahrns smiled. No one looking at that meticulously drilled crew could possibly have guessed that they’d only come aboard Delthak barely a month earlier.

  “Smartly done, Brahdlai,” he said from the corner of his mouth as he stood in the cutter, looking up, gauging the boat’s motion before he made his jump for the battens. Compared to other boat transfers he’d made during his career, this one wouldn’t be particularly challenging despite the stiff breeze, since the cutter lay in Fortune’s lee.

  Of course, the first time you take it for granted’s going to be the time you fall into the water, the cutter smashes into you, you get driven under the turn of the bilge, and you drown on a perfectly calm day with no excuse but your own stupidity, he reminded himself.

  “Thankee, Sir,” Mahfyt replied equally quietly. “And mind that first jump.”

  Bahrns gave him a moderate glare—which had no effect on the coxswain at all—and then jumped.

  As it happened, he timed it perfectly, and climbed nimbly up the ship’s tall side to the entry port without mishap. Bosun’s pipes shrilled as he came aboard and the side party of Marines snapped to attention and presented arms. He touched his chest to return the salute, turned to salute the colors, and then turned back to find himself facing a towering, massively built captain with enormous shoulders. The man had to be as tall as Merlin Athrawes himself, and probably half again the seijin’s weight, and from where Bahrns stood, none of it appeared to be fat. The giant held out a paw-like hand to clasp arms in greeting.

  “Captain Zhilbert Kaillee,” he rumbled in a strong Tarotisian accent. “Welcome aboard, Captain Bahrns. And please accept my compliments for a job very well done last month.”

  “Thank you, Sir,” Bahrns replied. There wasn’t a lot else he could say.

  “Admiral White Ford asks you to join us in his day cabin.”

  “Of course, Sir.”

  * * *

  Gahvyn Mhartyn, the Baron of White Ford, was dwarfed by his enormous flag captain. A small man, with dark eyes and once-dark hair which had turned mostly silver, he had an alert, thoughtful air about him.

  He was also the man who’d commanded the Tarotisian squadron at the Battle of Armageddon Reef and been soundly defeated by then-Crown Prince Cayleb in the first broadside engagement ever fought by galleons. It seemed like an eternity ago, yet less than five years had elapsed since that savage engagement, and Bahrns wondered how it must seem to White Ford and Kaillee. Their navy and kingdom had been utterly defeated and, in the end, their king had been forced to accept Charisian sovereignty. Yet here White Ford was, a Charisian admiral and Emperor Cayleb Ahrmahk’s port admiral in Bedard Bay. There had to be the odd moment when that rankled, despite the evidence of the high regard in which his onetime enemies held him. Still, Bahrns suspected that the Earl of Thirsk, the other enemy commander off Armageddon Reef, might well have exchanged places with White Ford if he’d had the chance. Besides—

  The captain’s thought broke off as the man who’d been contemplating the panorama of the harbor through the galleon’s stern windows turned to face him.

  “Your Majesty!” Bahrns bowed quickly. “Forgive me, I didn’t expect—”

  “No reason you should’ve,” Cayleb Ahrmahk replied. “In fact, I’ve been to some lengths to keep anyone from realizing I’ve come out to talk to you and the Admiral.” The emperor smiled, and waved at the tall, blue-eyed man standing quietly in one corner. “I believe you’ve met Major Athrawes, Captain?”

  “Yes, Your Majesty.” Bahrns held out his hand to the seijin who’d conceived the mad audacity of the Canal Raid. “It’s good to see you again, Seijin.”

  “You should never be hasty about these things, Captain,” Athrawes replied.

  “I beg your pardon?” Bahrns quirked an eyebrow.

  “Rushing to judgment about whether or not it’s good to see me,” Athrawes said with a crooked smile. “I have it on fairly good authority that chaos, confusion, and mayhem follow me about.”

  “I don’t mind a little chaos and confusion as long as the mayhem gets visited on the right people, Seijin,” Bahrns told him, and the emperor chuckled.

  “Well, you did a pretty fair job of visiting mayhem on our foes last month, Captain Bahrns. And as they say, no good deed goes unpunished.”

  “I’ve, ah, heard that, Your Majesty.” Bahrns regarded his emperor with what he hoped was hidden trepidation, and Cayleb smiled, then waved at the chairs around the polished table under the cabin skylight.

  “Since Admiral White Ford’s been so kind as to make his day cabin available to us, Captain Bahrns, I think we should all be seated.”

  “Of course, Your Majesty.”

  The only person in that cabin junior in rank to Halcom Bahrns was Major Athrawes. However, there were majors and then there were majors, and Bahrns couldn’t think of anyone Emperor Cayleb was likely to consider senior to this particular major. He waited, watching the seijin from the corner of one eye, while Cayleb sat, followed by White Ford, and then by Kaillee. Athrawes only smiled again, as crookedly as before, and took his place behind Cayleb’s chair. With the way cleared, Bahrns went ahead and seated himself as a gray-haired, slightly built man appeared, carrying a silver tray laden with crystal decanters and glasses.

  “Thank you, Zheevys,” White Ford said, nodding towards the emperor, and the valet set the tray on a side table and offered Cayleb his choice of the decanters. The emperor made his selection and Zheevys poured for him, then circled the table. Bahrns was no judge of fine liqueurs and he knew it, so there was no point pretending differently. He simply accepted whatever was poured and sipped politely … and almost blinked as golden glory with a smoky aftertaste rolled over his tongue and down his throat.

  Maybe I should learn to judge fine liqueurs, he told himself, savoring the sunburst explosion. Not that I could afford this very often, I suspect.

  “I asked you here because His Majesty has an idea that involves you, Captain Bahrns,” White Ford said after a moment. “As I discovered once upon a time off the coast of Armageddon Reef, he frequently has ideas that end up making all sorts of difficulties for the ungodly.” The small Tarotisian smiled and raised his glass to the emperor. “Now that I’m no longer counted among the ranks of the ungodly—except, perhaps, by Zhaspahr Clyntahn—that’s just fine with me, you understand. However, I’d like to begin by asking for a report on the condition of your command.”

  Bahrns stiffened ever so slightly, and Emperor Cayleb shook his head.

  “That’s not an attempt to ‘catch you out,’ Captain. The operation you and Captain Tailahr carried out was bound to overstress your ships, especially when they’re so new and we have so little experience operating them. We just need to know how well they stood up to the demands placed on them before we can know whether or not what we have in mind is workable.”

  “Of course, Your Majesty.”

  Bahrns suppressed the need for another swallow of that marvelous elixir, set his glass on the table, and faced the emperor squarely.

  “To be honest, Your Majesty, the ships stood up far better than I ever expected, but they’ve still steamed nearly twenty thousand miles. I never wo
uld’ve believed they could steam that far without a major breakdown, and I instructed Lieutenant Blahdysnberg—he’s my engineer, Your Majesty—to carry out a complete engine inspection. He’s torn them down to do that, and he’s turned up some minor problems. The worst is with the starboard engine’s condenser, and that one does worry him a bit. Fortunately, the service galleons Sir Dustyn and Captain Saigyl sent along have all the spares he needs, and the mechanics aboard them are doing most of the work under his direction. Despite that, I’m afraid it’s going to be some time—probably at least a couple of five-days—before I could honestly report her ready for sea.”

  “Any problems outside Lieutenant Blahdysnberg’s department?”

  “Not any significant ones, Your Majesty. We have a few broken armor bolts, the bridge wings had to be rebuilt, it was necessary to replace several of the ventilator intakes, and one of the gundeck blowers broke a fan blade. All of that’s already been dealt with, however.”

  “And Hador?”

  “I believe Captain Tailahr’s repairs are going as well as my own, Your Majesty, but I’d hesitate to speak for him,” Bahrns said. He met Cayleb’s gaze levelly, and the emperor nodded.

  “As you probably know, Captain Bahrns,” he said, “Saygin and Tellesberg are still operating out of Spinefish Bay, and one of the service galleons will be sailing for Salyk in the next day or two. We don’t know how much longer they’ll be able to go on operating—once Hsing-wu’s Passage starts to freeze, it freezes quickly, and we can’t afford to get one of the ironclads trapped in the ice. For now, though, they’re still operating fifty or sixty miles up the Hildermoss and generally keeping the Army of God around Salyk on edge.”

  Bahrns nodded, although if truth be told he was a long way from guessing where this was headed. Did the emperor intend to send Delthak and Hador up to relieve Saygin and Tellesberg?

  “I have something a bit different in mind for you and Captain Tailahr, however,” the emperor said, as if he’d read Bahrns’ mind, and rumor suggested he might very well be able to do exactly that.

  “You do, Your Majesty?” the captain asked when Cayleb paused, and the emperor nodded.

  “I do, indeed, Captain. Fortunately, all the pieces for the operation I have in mind won’t be available for some five-days yet, so you should have ample time to complete your repairs and maintenance. And I think you’ll find it just a bit warmer than Spinefish Bay would be, too. Probably in more than one way.”

  .VIII.

  Thesmar, The South March Lands, Republic of Siddarmark

  “I’ve never seen so many people in one place,” Kydryc Fyguera said softly.

  He and Earl Hanth stood on one of the quartet of hundred-and-twenty-foot-tall wooden observation towers Captain Lywys Sympsyn, Hanth’s senior engineer, had built at his orders. Fyguera wouldn’t have considered the project, himself, for a lot of reasons, including the fact that he wasn’t a Marine and didn’t have a Marine’s instinctive understanding for how much farther someone could see from a masthead. The tower on which they stood at the moment, built using spare spars from Admiral Hywyt’s galleons, was in the second line of entrenchments, just behind Redoubt #1 and the bastion known as Tymahn’s Angle on the hundred-and-ten-foot crest of Sulyvyn Hill, which extended the visual horizon still farther. With heavy telescopes bracketed firmly to the railing around the tower’s square platform, lookouts could see almost twenty miles, sixteen miles beyond their own positions.

  The second tower stood roughly in the middle of the position, behind the Island Redoubt and five miles west of Thesmar; the third stood in Redoubt #4 on Mount Yarith; and the fourth stood in the center of the city itself. Equipped with heliographs and signal flags, men in those towers could report every move the enemy made … or call down indirect fire from the angle-guns Admiral Hywyt had landed from HMS Holocaust, one of his bombardment ships. Fourteen of them were mounted in the forward redoubts and bastions and another ten were positioned in the city itself. Heavier and less mobile than the Imperial Charisian Army’s version of the same weapon, the naval angles could fire almost a mile farther, which meant at least one section of them could engage any spot within two or even three miles of the outermost lines of entrenchments. It would have been even nicer if the 1st Independent Marine Brigade had possessed any infantry mortars to add to its weight of fire, but there was plenty—indeed, almost a surfeit—of other artillery available.

  As he stood in the warm morning sunlight beside the Siddarmarkian general, Hanth could see the quadruple line of entrenchments spread out about him like some celestial model maker’s handiwork. The outermost line ran sixty miles, from Sulyvyn Hill southwest of the city to the thoroughly misnamed Mount Yarith to the northeast; the innermost, just outside the city itself, was barely fifteen miles in length. Open to the east, where the ships of the Imperial Charisian Navy watched Thesmar’s back, the position Fyguera had fortified was just under fifteen miles deep at its deepest point, and he’d been working on it for months. It was actually a bit over-large for twenty-four thousand men to hold. If, of course, they’d had twenty-four thousand men, which they didn’t … yet. The healers were guardedly optimistic about the total number of Clyftyn Sumyrs’ men who’d be fit for duty over the next few five-days, though, and Fyguera had taken advantage of the Seridahn and the Yarith Rivers when he planned his works.

  To be sure, calling the Yarith a “river” was almost as ridiculous as calling the large hill of the same name a “mount.” It was more of a wide creek than a river, but its low-lying floodplain ran between Mount Yarith and Shadowline Mountain, to the west. Shadowline really was a mountain, albeit a tiny one compared to the Glacierhearts or Moon Thorns, and the valley between it and Mount Yarith was marshy enough to have made throwing up the entrenchments across it difficult. Fyguera had capitalized on that, excavating deep, wide moats in front of each earthwork barrier. The local water table was high enough to fill them quickly, and his fatigue parties had dammed the stream to create even wider inundations that stretched almost entirely across the valley. The water was over ten feet deep in many places—more than fifteen where the meandering streambed cut through it—and almost five miles across at its widest, and the cover it provided had allowed them to economize significantly on manpower.

  The Seridahn, flowing between the southern slopes of Shadowline and Sulyvyn Hill to reach Thesmar Bay, came through a shallower declivity, but it also carried a lot more water than the Yarith did, and Fyguera had made good use of it, as well. Of the outer works’ sixty miles of frontage, twenty were protected by flooded ditches and impounded water, and the Siddarmarkian general had incorporated similar inundations to protect the approaches to the inner lines of entrenchments, as well. The position wasn’t invulnerable—no position ever truly was—but it was as strong a set of field works as Hanth could have imagined.

  Especially with so many guns to cover it, he thought.

  As long as Thesmar was in the Allies’ hands and could be supplied, it was a dagger at the throat of the Imperial Desnairian Army’s overland supply route out of the Grand Duchy of Silkiah. Greyghor Stohnar and Cayleb Ahrmahk might not be in a position to drive that dagger home at the moment, but that would change the instant they could find the reinforcements for the task, and they intended to keep its hilt firmly in their hands until they could. And since they didn’t currently have the thousands of infantrymen they would really have preferred to send Hanth, they’d settled for the next best thing: enough artillery to storm Hell.

  From the moment his own force had been earmarked for Thesmar, the Imperial Charisian Navy had been throwing guns ashore and digging them in. Quite a few naval galleons were floating higher in the water than they ought to be because their artillery—and artillerists—were now enjoying a delightful vacation in the city the Allies meant to hold at all costs.

  All told, there were now two hundred and fifty guns guarding Thesmar. A hundred and thirty-six were naval thirty-pounders, and fifty-four of the rest were stubby fifty-seven
-pounder carronades: short-ranged but devastatingly powerful and capable of extraordinarily rapid fire in the close defense role. And there were thirty-six of the handy, maneuverable twelve-pounders, as well, two-thirds of them Charisian and the rest captured from the Dohlarans. The Dohlaran guns couldn’t fire Charisian shells or round shot, despite their nominally identical calibers, but they could fire grape and cannister just fine and they’d been positioned primarily as flanking pieces to sweep the fronts of the entrenchments.