How Firm a Foundation Read online

  Very cold.

  Aplyn-Ahrmahk would have been hard put to analyze the atmospheric mechanics of what was about to happen, but what he saw when he looked south from his station on Destiny’s quarterdeck was the collision between two weather fronts. A high pressure area’s heavier, colder air out of the west was driving under the warmer, water-saturated air behind a warm front which had moved into the Gulf of Mathyas from the east three days earlier and then stalled. Due to the planet’s rotation, winds tended to blow parallel to the isobars delineating weather fronts, which meant two powerful, moving wind masses were coming steadily into collision in what a Terran weatherman would have called a tropical cyclone.

  Fortunately, it was the wrong time of year for the most violent form of tropical cyclone … which was more commonly called “hurricane.”

  Ensign Aplyn-Ahrmahk didn’t need to understand all the mechanics involved in the process to read the weather signs, however. He understood the consequences of what was about to happen quite well, and he wasn’t looking forward to them. The good news was that Captain Yairley’s preparations had been made in ample time and there’d been time to double-check and triple-check all of them. The bad news was that the weather didn’t seem to have heard that this wasn’t hurricane season.

  Don’t be silly, he told himself firmly. This isn’t going to be a hurricane, Hektor! Things would be getting worse even faster than they are if that were the case. I think.

  “Take a party and double-check the lashings on the quarter boats, Master Aplyn-Ahrmahk,” Captain Yairley said.

  “Aye, Sir!” Aplyn-Ahrmahk saluted and turned away. “Master Selkyr!”

  “Aye, Sir?” Ahntahn Selkyr, another of Destiny’s boatswain’s mates, replied.

  “Let’s check the lashings on the boats,” Aplyn-Ahrmahk said, and headed purposefully aft while Selkyr mustered half a dozen hands to join him.

  “Giving the lad something to think about, Sir?” Lieutenant Lathyk asked quietly, watching the youthful ensign with a smile.

  “Oh, perhaps a little,” Yairley acknowledged with a faint smile of his own. “At the same time, it won’t hurt anything, and Master Aplyn-Ahrmahk’s a good officer. He’ll see that it’s done right.”

  “Yes, he will, Sir,” Lathyk agreed, then turned to look back at the looming mass of clouds rising higher and higher in the south. The air seemed thicker and heavier somehow, despite the freshening wind, and there was an odd tint to the light.

  “I thought you were overreacting, to be honest, Sir, when you had the topgallant masts sent down. Now”—he shrugged, his expression unhappy—“I’m not so sure you were.”

  “It’s always such a comfort to me when your judgment agrees with my own, Rhobair,” Yairley said dryly, and Lathyk chuckled. Then the captain sobered. “All the same, I don’t like the feel of this at all. And I don’t like the way the clouds are spreading to the east, as well. Mark my words, Rhobair, this thing is going to back around on us before it’s done.”

  Lathyk nodded somberly. The predominant winds tended to be from the northeast in the Gulf of Mathyas during the winter months, which would normally have led one to expect any wind changes to veer further to the west, not to the east. Despite which, he had an unhappy suspicion that the captain was right.

  “Do you think we’ll be able to make enough easting to clear Silkiah Bay if it does back on us, Sir?”

  “Now that’s the interesting question, isn’t it?” Yairley smiled again, then turned his back on the dark horizon and watched Aplyn-Ahrmahk and his seamen inspecting the lashings which secured the boats on the quarterdeck’s davits.

  “I think we’ll probably clear the mouth of the bay,” he said after a moment. “What I’m not so sure about is that we’ll be able to get into the approaches to Tabard Reach. I suppose”—he showed his teeth—“we’ll just have to find out, won’t we?”

  * * *

  Lightning streaked across the purple-black heavens like Langhorne’s own Rakurai. Thunder exploded like the reply of Shan-wei’s artillery, audible even through the wind-shriek and the pounding, battering fury of waves approaching thirty feet in height, and ice-cold rain hammered a man’s oilskins like a thousand tiny mallets. HMS Destiny staggered through those heavy seas, running before the wind now under no more than a single storm jib, a close-reefed main topsail, and a reefed forecourse, and Sir Dunkyn Yairley stood braced, secured to a quarterdeck lifeline by a turn around his chest, and watched the four men on the wheel fight to control his ship.

  The seas were trying to push her stern around to the east, and he was forced to carry more canvas and more weather helm than he would have preferred to hold her up. It was officially a storm now, with wind speeds hitting better than fifty-five miles per hour, and not a mere gale or even a strong gale, and he suspected it was going to get even nastier before it was over. He didn’t like showing that much of the forecourse, but he needed that lift forward. Despite which he’d have to take in both the topsail and the course and go to storm staysails alone, if the wind got much worse. He needed to get as far east as he could, though, and reducing sail would reduce his speed, as well. Deciding when to make that change—and making it before he endangered his ship—was going to be as much a matter of instinct as anything else, and he wondered why the possibility of being driven under and drowned caused him so much less concern than the possibility of losing legs or arms to enemy round shot.

  The thought made him chuckle, and while none of the helmsmen could have heard him through the shrieking tumult and the waterfall beating of icy rain, they saw his fleeting smile and looked at one another with smiles of their own.

  He didn’t notice as he turned and peered into the murk to the northwest. By his best estimate, they’d made roughly twenty-five miles, possibly thirty, since the visibility closed in. If so, Destiny was now about two hundred miles southeast of Ahna’s Point and four hundred and sixty miles southeast of Silk Town. It also put him only about a hundred and twenty miles south of Garfish Bank, however, and his smile disappeared as he pictured distances and bearings from the chart in his mind. He’d made enough easting to avoid being driven into Silkiah Bay—probably—if the wind did back, but he needed at least another two hundred and fifty miles—preferably more like three hundred—before he’d have Tabard Reach under his lee, and he didn’t like to think about how many ships had come to grief on Garfish Bank or in Scrabble Sound behind it.

  But that’s not going to happen to my ship, he told himself, and tried to ignore the prayerful note in his own thought.

  * * *

  “Hands aloft to reduce sail!”

  The order was barely audible through the howl of wind and the continuous drumroll of thunder, but the grim-faced topmen didn’t have to hear the command. They knew exactly what they faced … and exactly what it was going to be like up there on the yards, and they looked at one another with forced smiles.

  “Up you go, lads!”

  In the teeth of such a wind, the lee shrouds would have been a death trap, and the topmen swarmed up even the weather shrouds with more than usual care. They gathered in the tops, keeping well inside the topmast rigging, while men on deck tailed onto the braces.

  A seventeen-mile-per-hour wind put one pound of pressure per square inch on a sail. At thirty-two miles per hour, the pressure didn’t simply double; it quadrupled, and the wind was blowing far harder than that now. At the moment, Destiny’s forecourse was double-reefed, shortening its normal hoist of thirty-six feet to only twenty-four. Unlike a trapezoidal topsail, the course was truly square, equally wide at both head and foot, which meant its sixty-two-foot width was unaffected by the decrease in height. Its effective sail area had thus been reduced from over twenty-two hundred square feet to just under fifteen hundred, but the fifty-five-plus-mile-per-hour wind was still exerting over seventeen hundred tons of pressure on that straining piece of canvas. The slightest accident could turn all that energy loose to wreak havoc on the ship’s rigging, with potentially deadly cons
equences under the current weather conditions.

  “Brace up the forecourse!”

  “Weather brace, haul! Tend the lee braces!”

  The ship’s course had been adjusted to bring the wind on to her larboard quarter. Now the foreyard swung as the larboard brace, leading aft to its sheave on the maintop and from there to deck level, hauled that end—the weather end—of the yard aft. The force of the wind itself helped the maneuver, pushing the starboard end of the yard around to leeward, and as the yard swung, the sail shifted from perpendicular to the wind’s direction to almost parallel. The shrouds supporting the mast got in the way and prevented the yard from being trimmed as close to fore-and-aft as Destiny might have wished—that was the main reason no squarerigger could come as close to the wind as a schooner could—but it still eased the pressure on the forecourse immensely.

  “Clew up! Spilling lines, haul!”

  The clewlines ran from the lower corners of the course to the ends of the yards, then through blocks near the yard’s center and down to deck level, while the buntlines ran from the yard to the foot of the sail. As the men on deck hauled away, the clewlines and buntlines raised the sail, aided by the spilling lines—special lines which had been rigged for precisely this heavy-weather necessity. They were simply ropes which had been run down from the yard then looped up around the sail, almost like another set of buntlines, and their function was exactly what their name implied: when they were hauled up, the lower edge of the sail was gathered in a bight, spilling wind out of the canvas so it could be drawn up to the yard without quite so much of a struggle.

  “Ease halliards!”

  The topmen in the foretop waited until the canvas had been fully gathered in and the yard had been trimmed back to its original squared position before they were allowed out onto it. Squaring the yard once more made it far easier—and safer—for them to transfer from the top to the spar. Under calmer conditions, many of those men would have scampered cheerfully out along the yard itself with blithe confidence in their sense of balance. Under these conditions, use of the foot rope rigged under the yard was mandatory.

  They spread themselves along the seventy-five-foot-long spar, seventy feet above the reeling, plunging deck—almost ninety feet above the white, seething fury of the water in those fleeting moments when the deck was actually level—and began fisting the canvas into final submission while wind and rain shrieked around them.

  One by one the gaskets went around the gathered sail and its yard, securing it firmly, and then it was the main topsail’s turn.

  * * *

  “Keep her as close to northeast-by-east as you can, Waigan!” Sir Dunkyn Yairley shouted in his senior helmsman’s ear.

  Waigan, a grizzled veteran if ever there was one, looked up at the storm staysails—the triangular, triple-thickness staysails set between the mizzen and the main and between the main and the fore—which, along with her storm forestaysail, were all the canvas Destiny could show now.

  “Nor’east-by-east, aye, Sir!” he shouted back while rainwater and spray ran from his iron-gray beard. “Close as we can, Sir!” he promised, and Yairley nodded and slapped him on the shoulder in satisfaction.

  No sailing ship could possibly maintain a set course, especially under these conditions. Indeed, it took all four of the men on the wheel to hold any course. The best they could do was keep the ship on roughly the designated heading, and the senior helmsman wasn’t even going to be looking at the compass card. His attention was going to be locked like iron to those staysails, being certain they were drawing properly, lending the ship the power and the stability she needed to survive the maelstrom. The senior of his assistants would watch the compass and alert him if they started to stray too far from the desired heading.

  Yairley gave the canvas one more look, then swiped water from his own eyes and beckoned to Garaith Symkee, Destiny’s second lieutenant.

  “Aye, Sir?” Lieutenant Symkee shouted, leaning close enough to Yairley to be heard through the tumult.

  “I think she’ll do well enough for now, Master Symkee!” Yairley shouted back. “Keep her as close to an easterly heading as you can! Don’t forget Garfish Bank’s waiting for us up yonder!” He pointed north, over the larboard bulwark. “I’d just as soon it go on waiting, if you take my meaning!”

  Symkee grinned hugely, nodding his head in enthusiastic agreement, and Yairley grinned back.

  “I’m going below to see if Raigly can’t find me something to eat! If the cooks can manage it, I’ll see to it there’s at least hot tea—and hopefully something a bit better, as well—for the watch on deck!”

  “Thank you, Sir!”

  Yairley nodded and started working his way hand-over-hand along the lifeline towards the hatch. It was going to be an extraordinarily long night, he expected, and he was going to need his rest. And hot food, come to that. Every man aboard the ship was going to need all the energy he could lay hands on, but Destiny’s captain was responsible for the decisions by which they might all live or die.

  Well, he thought wryly as he reached the hatch and started down the steep ladder towards his cabin and Sylvyst Raigly, his valet and steward, I suppose it sounds better put that way than to think of it as the captain being spoiled and pampered. Not that I have any objection to being spoiled or pampered, now that I think of it.

  And not that it was any less true, however he put it.

  .III.

  HMS Destiny, 54, Off Sand Shoal, Scrabble Sound, Grand Duchy of Silkiah

  “Master Zhones!”

  The miserable midshipman, hunched down in his oilskins and trying as hard as he could not to throw up—again—looked up as Lieutenant Symkee bellowed his name. Ahrlee Zhones was twelve years old, more horribly seasick than he’d ever been in his young life, and scared to death. But he was also an officer in training in the Imperial Charisian Navy, and he dragged himself fully upright.

  “Aye, Sir?!” he shouted back through the howl and shriek of the wind.

  “Fetch the Captain!” Zhones and Symkee were no more than five feet apart, but the midshipman could barely hear the second lieutenant through the tumult of the storm. “My compliments, and the wind is backing! Inform him it—”

  “Belay that, Master Zhones!” another voice shouted, and Zhones and Symkee both wheeled around to see Sir Dunkyn Yairley. The captain had somehow magically materialized on the quarterdeck, his oilskins already shining with rain and spray, and his eyes were on the straining staysails. Despite the need to shout to make himself heard, his tone was almost calm—or so it seemed to Zhones, at any rate.

  As the midshipman watched, the captain took a turn of rope around his chest and attached it to one of the standing lifelines, lashing himself into place almost absently while his attention remained focused on the sails and the barely visible weathervane at the mainmast head. Then he glanced at the illuminated compass card in the binnacle and turned to Symkee.

  “I make it south-by-west, Master Symkee? Would you concur?”

  “Perhaps another quarter point to the south, Sir,” Symkee replied, with what struck Zhones as maddening deliberation, and the captain smiled slightly.

  “Very well, Master Symkee, that will do well enough.” He turned his attention back to the sails and frowned.

  “Any orders, Sir?” Symkee shouted after a moment, and the captain turned to raise one eyebrow at him.

  “When any occur to me, Master Symkee, you’ll be the first to know!” It was, of course, impossible for anyone to shout in a tone of cool reprimand, but the captain managed it anyway, Zhones thought.

  “Aye, Sir!” Symkee touched his chest in salute and carefully turned his attention elsewhere.

  * * *

  Despite his calm demeanor and deflating tone, Sir Dunkyn Yairley’s brain was working overtime as he considered his ship’s geometry. The wind had grown so powerful that he’d had no choice but to put Destiny directly before it some hours earlier. Now the galleon scudded along with huge, white-bearded wav
es rolling up from astern, their crests ripped apart by the wind. As the wind shifted round towards the east, the ship was being slowly forced from a northeasterly to a more and more northerly course, while the seas—which hadn’t yet adjusted to the shift in wind—still coming in from the south-southwest pounded her more and more from the quarter rather than directly aft, imparting an ugly corkscrew motion. That probably explained young Zhones’ white-faced misery the captain thought with a sort of detached sympathy. The youngster was game enough, but he was definitely prone to seasickness.

  More to the point, the change in motion had alerted Yairley to the change in wind direction and brought him back on deck, and if the wind continued to back, they could be in serious trouble.

  It was impossible even for a seaman of his experience to know exactly how far east he’d managed to get, but he strongly suspected it hadn’t been far enough. If his estimate was correct, they were almost directly due south of the Garfish Bank, the hundred and fifty-mile-long barrier of rock and sand which formed the eastern bound of Scrabble Sound. Langhorne only knew how many ships had come to grief on the bank, and the speed with which the wind had backed was frightening. If it continued at the present rate, it would be setting directly towards the bank within the hour, and if that happened.…