By Heresies Distressed (24 page)

“His best route would be by way of Talbor Pass,” Anvil Rock put in. “Well, his shortest and most direct route, at any rate. And I agree with Taryl. We've got time to get Koryn into position to cover Talbor before he can get there. For that matter, assuming Taryl's estimate of his troop strength is accurate, we can get Koryn there with almost twice the fighting strength. If we start soon enough, we could actually hit Cayleb while he's still east of the Dark Hills. We might even be able to get Koryn into position soon enough to pin him down in Dairos.”

“At which point he burns down Dairos, re-embarks his troops, and sails off to attack us somewhere else, leaving Koryn and the bulk of our army in his wake,” Hektor said sourly.

“All we can do is the best we can do, My Prince,” Tartarian said reasonably. “If we can concentrate our troops quickly enough to attack before he's firmly established in Dairos, there's at least the possibility of driving him into the sea. We may not be able to fight him effectively
at
sea just now, but if this new army of his suffers a major reverse and heavy casualties, we'll probably get at least another six months to a year in which to build up our own strength. But if we're going to have any chance of doing that, we've got to take some chances, uncover ourselves in other places, in order to concentrate the troops we need where we have at least the chance of accomplishing something significant.”

Anvil Rock nodded again, his expression sober, and Hektor's nostrils flared. They'd been over much of this same ground before, and he knew Tartarian and Anvil Rock were right. Now that the moment was actually upon him, however, he discovered that his intellectual agreement with their arguments was far less comforting than it had been when that moment had lain somewhere in a threatening yet still indeterminate future.

“All right,” he said, and looked at Hahlmyn. “Father, if you would, I'd like to use the Church's semaphore to begin passing orders to Dairos, Baron Dairwyn, and Sir Koryn. Cayleb can move troops and men faster than we can, but at least we can pass
messages
faster than
he
can. With the Bishop Executor's permission, I think it's time we put that advantage to work for us.”

Fresh thunder rumbled and crashed, and a fresh wall of dirty-white smoke billowed up, shot through with flashes of flame, as the line of Charisian galleons sailed majestically past the floating batteries once more.

The rapid, disciplined bellowing of their guns was having its effect. Three of the anchored batteries had already been silenced, reduced to shattered ruin despite their heavy bulwarks. Wooden vessels were extraordinarily difficult to sink using solid shot, mainly because the holes those shot punched were relatively small and most tended to be above the waterline. It could still be done, however, and one of the big, stoutly constructed rafts was listing steeply, beginning to settle as water poured into it. Another was heavily aflame, and the third had simply been shot through and through. The other four were still in action, although their fire was beginning to falter, and bodies floated in the water around them, where they'd been pushed out of the gun ports to clear space for the surviving gun crews to serve their weapons.

From this distance, with the city of Dairos and the sparkling waters of White Sail Bay as a backdrop, it could almost have been a magnificent spectacle, a tournament arranged to entertain and enthrall. But only if the spectators hadn't experienced the same things themselves, and Cayleb Ahrmahk
had
experienced those things. He knew what happened to the fragile bodies of men when round shot came crashing through heavy timber bulwarks in a cloud of lethal splinters. When the man standing beside you was turned into so much bloody gruel by a twenty- or thirty-pound round shot. When the screams of the wounded cut even through the deafening thunder of your own guns. When the deck which had been sanded for traction before action was splashed and patterned and painted in human blood.

He knew what he was truly seeing, and he stood tight-mouthed as he watched the contest with his hands tightly folded behind him. He was unarmored, without even a sword at his side, and that was part of the reason his mouth was set in such a harsh line.

Unfortunately for what he truly wanted to be doing at this moment, his official advisers—and Merlin—had had a point. The contest against the city of Dairos' defenses could have only one outcome. Gallant as the men behind the guns of those beleaguered rafts might be proving themselves, they couldn't possibly stand off the firepower of Cayleb's fleet for very much longer. For that matter, trying to employ the full galleon strength under Cayleb's immediate command against them would have been foolish. The ships would only have gotten in one another's way, and the possibility of crippling collisions between friendly units would have been very real under such crowded, smoke-choked conditions.

And, as Merlin had remorselessly pointed out, if it wasn't practical to use all of his galleons, anyway, then there was no possible excuse for using
Empress of Charis
. It wasn't as if Cayleb had anything to prove about his personal courage in order to motivate the men under his command. And “sharing the risk” when there was no pressing military necessity for him to do so—and when he and Sharleyan had yet to beget an heir—would have been not simply unnecessary but criminally reckless. One unlucky round shot could have catastrophic consequences, not simply for Cayleb, but for all the people he was obligated and pledged to defend.

The obligation argument, in Cayleb's opinion, had been a particularly low blow, even for Merlin. Nonetheless, he'd been forced to concede the point, and so he'd been standing at
Empress of Charis'
quarterdeck rail, watching from safely outside artillery range, for the last three hours as other ships took the brunt of combat.

It hadn't been entirely one-sided. As Cayleb and his senior commanders had estimated (in no small part on the basis of
Seijin
Merlin's “visions”), Hektor of Corisande had, indeed, gotten the new-style artillery into production. He still had nowhere near as many of the new guns as he undoubtedly would have wished, but he obviously
did
have his equivalent of Edwyrd Howsmyn. In addition to all of the brand-new guns which had been emerging from his foundries, some infernally clever Corisandian busybody had figured out how to weld trunnions onto existing cannon, just as Howsmyn had done. He'd apparently been busily doing just that for months, too, which helped to explain why two of Cayleb's galleons had been forced out of the battle line to make repairs and why the ships engaging those floating batteries had already suffered upward of two hundred casualties of their own.

“Why can't those idiots recognize the inevitable and strike their colors before any more people get killed . . . on
either
side?” he half-growled and half-snarled.

“Probably because they know their duty when they see it, Your Majesty,” Merlin said quietly. Cayleb's jaw muscles tightened, and his brown eyes flashed angrily at the infinitely respectful note of reproval in his chief bodyguard's tone. But then the emperor's nostrils flared as he inhaled a deep breath, and he nodded.

“You're right,” he acknowledged. It wasn't exactly an apology, but, then, it hadn't exactly been a rebuke, either. He turned his head to give Merlin a crooked smile. “I just hate seeing so many men killed and wounded when it's not going to change anything in the end.”

“In the ultimate sense, you're probably right about that,” Merlin agreed. “On the other hand, they might get lucky. A shot in exactly the wrong place, a spark in a magazine, a smashed lantern somewhere below decks . . . as Earl Gray Harbor is fond of pointing out, the first rule of battle is that what
can
go wrong,
will
go wrong. And, as your father once pointed out to
him
, that's true for both sides.”

“I know. But the fact that you're right doesn't make me like it any better.”

“Good.” The emperor's eyebrows arched at Merlin's reply, and the sapphire-eyed guardsman smiled a bit sadly at him. “An awful lot of people are going to get killed before this is all over, Cayleb. I know it's going to be harder on you, but I hope you'll forgive me if I say that the longer it takes for you to begin taking that for granted, the better man—and emperor—you'll be.”

On Cayleb's other side, Prince Nahrmahn's eyes narrowed thoughtfully as he watched the emperor nod in grave agreement with the
seijin
's observation. It wasn't that Nahrmahn disagreed with Merlin's observation. If the truth be told, Nahrmahn himself was perfectly capable of utter ruthlessness when necessity required, but he wasn't naturally bloodthirsty. In fact, his ruthlessness was almost a reaction against the sort of bloodthirstiness some rulers—Hektor of Corisande came to mind—often displayed. He'd always had a tendency to focus his ruthlessness on narrowly defined targets, key individuals whose surgical elimination would most advance his plans, and wholesale mayhem offended him. It was messy. Worse, it was sloppy, because it usually indicated he'd failed to properly identify the critical individual or individuals whose removal was truly necessary. Which, among other things, meant he'd probably killed more people in the end than he'd had to.

It was also the reason why, even though he would infinitely prefer an emperor who was a bit more ruthless than he had to be to an emperor who wasn't
sufficiently
ruthless, he had no quarrel with the
seijin
's statement. There were other reasons, as well, though, and some of them had been rather unexpected. To his surprise, Nahrmahn had actually come to like Cayleb. He was a thoroughly decent young man, which was rare enough
outside
the ranks of heads of state, and Nahrmahn would prefer to keep him that way as long as possible, particularly since Cayleb was also going to be the brother-in-law of Nahrmhan's daughter. But setting that personal consideration completely aside, the last thing Safehold needed was for the young man who had been regretfully prepared to sink the Earl of Thirsk's entire fleet if his surrender terms had been rejected to turn into a young man who wouldn't have regretted it at all.

Yet however much Nahrmahn might approve of Merlin's statement, it wasn't the sort of thing one's bodyguards normally said to one. Especially not when one was an emperor. Nahrmahn had been prepared for a close relationship between Cayleb and the
seijin
. That kind of bond between an aristocrat and his most loyal and trusted servants was only to be expected, and Merlin had saved not only Cayleb's life, but also those of Archbishop Maikel and the Earl of Gray Harbor, not to mention the
seijin
's superhuman, already legendary effort to save King Harahld's life at Darcos Sound. What wasn't to be expected was for that servant to be almost a . . . mentor to an emperor. “Mentor” wasn't exactly the right word, as Nahrmahn was well aware, but it came close. Cayleb
listened
to Merlin, and he treasured the
seijin
's views and opinions on an enormous range of decisions. Of course, unlike altogether too many rulers, Cayleb had the incredibly valuable (and unfortunately rare) ability to
listen
to his advisers. No one would ever mistake him for an indecisive man, but his very decisiveness gave him the confidence to seek the opinions of others whose judgment he trusted before he reached a decision. Still, there was something different about the way he listened to
Merlin's
opinions.

Don't do it, Nahrmahn
, the prince told himself.
That curiosity of yours is going to get you straight back into trouble yet, if you're not careful. If Cayleb wanted you to know why he respects
Seijin
Merlin's advice as much as he does, no doubt he'd already have told you. And, no, you
don't
need to be wondering how much the
seijin
has to do with all of those remarkable intelligence sources Wave Thunder was very carefully not telling you about
.

He snorted in quiet amusement at the direction of his own thoughts. Then his head snapped up as a thunderous explosion rolled across the smoke-layered waters of White Sail Bay. One of the floating batteries still in action against the Charisian galleons had just disappeared in an enormous fireball, and flaming fragments traced lines of smoke across the sky as they arced outward.

“A spark in a magazine, I believe you said, Merlin,” Cayleb said harshly.

“Probably,” Merlin agreed sadly. “On the other hand, they still haven't figured out how to produce corned powder. Even with bagged charges, the way their gunpowder tends to separate and throw out dust clouds is dangerous enough under any circumstances. Given what it has to be like aboard those batteries by this time . . .”

He shook his head, and Cayleb nodded in agreement. Then he looked over his shoulder at
Empress of Charis
' captain.

“Make a signal, Andrai. Instruct Admiral Nylz to temporarily disengage. That's better than half their batteries gone, and even the ones still in action have to be in bad shape. Let's give them a chance to think about the advantages of surrender before we kill any more of them.”

“Of course, Your Majesty,” Captain Gyrard said, and bowed to his monarch. Gyrard had been promoted to his present post after being wounded in action while serving as first lieutenant aboard Cayleb's last flagship. He, too, had only too good an idea of what it must be like aboard those shattered batteries, and his expression made it obvious he agreed wholeheartedly with Cayleb's decision as he nodded to his signal officer, who'd been standing by, waiting for instructions.

“You heard His Majesty. Make the signal to disengage.”

“Aye, aye, Sir.” The lieutenant touched his shoulder in salute, then began issuing orders of his own.