Indomitus Vivat (The Fovean Chronicles) (45 page)

    
He turned back toward the Sea Wolf pulling out onto the bay.

    
“Good guess.”

     On the 24th day of Earth, in the 83rd year of the Fovean High Council, ten Sea Wolves set sail from Thera for Eldador the Port. On the first day of War, my dozen from the capitol of the Eldadorian Empire met them at sea and turned east.

    
We meant to take the Straights of Deception and to hold the southern passages through it in the name of the Eldadorian Empire. Under the treaty of the Fovean High Council, no one actually owned any part of the Straights, even though the Dorkans preyed on any ship that tried to cross it. Of course, they didn’t bother Trenboni ships, because no one wanted to contest Trenbon’s advantages as a sea power.

    
I don’t think the Dorkans were particularly worried about twenty-two ships headed at the same time for that part of the Bay. First of all, you could barely cross three ships at a time through the Straights. They were a maze of jagged rocks encrusted with barnacles and coral from a foot above the waterline to yards below it, and a single bad turn could rip your ship apart. In fact there were masts visible throughout the Straights as evidence of sailors who’d lost their way and paid the price.

     
Second, the currents were barely predictable, which is why sailors on Tren Bay still embraced oared ships. You could be on the right path through the Straights and the wind could change or the tide could shift, and you could be dragged across rocks you couldn’t see before you realized you were in trouble.

    
So assuming I wanted to risk my ships, the Dorkans likely felt the Straights could do their work for them.

    
The Trenboni were another matter. They weren’t about to cede the only path out of Tren Bay for the Forgotten Sea to Eldador, especially when they felt they had the upper hand, holding my wife and all.

    
Dilvesh was left conspicuously in Metz. The rest of the Free Legion was busily getting ready for the War months, which weren’t looking at being that busy because of the Andoran civil war and the fear I was going to go berserk over the capture of my woman. However none of them were with me now.

    
On the fifth day of the month of War, as my ships approached the Straights of Deception, we were greeted by a line of Trenboni Tech Ships sixty strong, with their backs to the East. One ship out front bore an Admiral’s four stars under the Trenboni eagle.

    
I stood on the wheel deck of my flagship,
The Bitch of Eldador
, next to the captain of the vessel, Jaspar, a Man of Eldador who’d grown up in Kor as a pirate and whom Groff had wanted to torture to death for his obscenities against prisoners. He died his hair green for some reason and wore it long. He’d risen quickly among the Wolf Soldiers and been a natural choice for this job.

    
“That’s
Her Lady’s Lovely Way
,” he informed me, pointing to the Admiral’s ship. “The flag of the Tech fleet, under Geledar Taboorin, High Admiral of Trenbon.”

    
His voice was almost gravelly; his brown eyes squinted in a look of pure hate. Jaspar was a drinker, this I knew, but he was built like a brick right down to a smashed, flat nose. His thick lips were parted, his teeth showing, all of his focus on the Tech Ship.

    
“I guess you don’t like him much,” I said.

    
Jaspar barked a laugh. “No,” he said. “That ship has sunk me on more than one occasion, Lupus. There’s a lot of pirates as would like to be where I am now, much as them as aren’t dead.”

    
I nodded.

    
I’d been a sailor. I knew what it meant to hate another ship and the people on it. I saw that in him now.

    
The Tech Ship raised a red flag with a white star, then another with blue and white stripes, and another yellow, also with a star. At sea, signalmen could communicate between ships this way–with one set of flags which were communications between ships of different nations, in a language that rarely changed, and another set for ships of the same fleet, which changed all the time. My Sea Wolves used colored lights instead of flags, because they were faster and because no one did it this way here.

    
“They’re asking us if we plan to turn around, or engage them,” Jaspar informed me, as more flags travelled up a line between the flag ship’s bow and the top of its one mast. “They warn that if we fight, they will give no quarter.”

    
“Confident,” I commented.

    
Jaspar didn’t turn away from me. “They never lose,” he said.

    
“Let’s see what we can do about that,” I said. “Specials to the fore!”

    
Signalmen from my own ship stood at either side of the wheel deck, the open-air space where the ship’s wheel and command crew were located. Some ships in my fleet enclosed this and some did not–I hadn’t committed to which style was better yet. I’d find out today.

Balls of different colors sat under metal cans on the rails. Signalmen raised the cans, counted to different numbers and lowered them. The color and the time exposed meant different messages to others in the fleet, which would pass them on.

     Eight ships, including
The
Bitch
, each with the long, brass tube down its starboard side, glided forward while the other fourteen hung back. We had the wind behind us – I’d managed to arrive with the sun three hours from setting behind us. The Trenboni didn’t mind giving up the advantage because their ships were equally fast against the wind.

    
Probably never a good idea to hand an advantage to your enemy, even if you don’t need it, but there you go.

    
“Load the tubes!” I commanded.

    
The brass tubes were the key to delivering Eldadorian Fire, which had been known as Byzantine Fire or, if you watched the wrong movie, Greek Fire, around 400 to 700 AD. The liquid was poured into the tube; the tubes were pressurized with hand-pumps, and could then be discharged out across the water. Supposedly the Byzantines used something more like a water cannon, but it had limited range and wasn’t useful in rough seas or tight quarters.

    
Also, you then have a guy standing there, manning it, and if the wind changed he was going to get blow-back, as was his ship. Out to sea, that was simply not a good idea.

    
Valves were turned onboard
The Bitch
, as well as on our other ‘specials,’ I had to assume. I’d shown the artisans who’d built the canisters how to put a glass tube in the metal wall, so the tube could be filled with the liquid inside and then show when a canister was empty. We didn’t want to have to be popping canisters open during combat when everything was wet, because water would ignite the contents.

    
“The flag ship is sending a new message,” Jaspar informed me. “A last chance to retreat.”

    
“They didn’t think we’d be a match for them in Outpost IX,” I said. “They aren’t going to make that mistake again.”

    
The ship slipped forward. The thump of the hand-driven pumps moved fluid into the brass tube alongside of the ship. The tube was filled with baffles, most of them just holding chambers, some of them heated. Heating the fluid activated the diphosphorus I’d bled into the naptha as a gas. This was the common denominator about Byzantine Fire that no one got, because you had to get white phosphorus up over 1,000 degrees Kelvin to make this P2, and then it wasn’t stable if became a liquid or a solid.

    
Unless you used a catalyst, like petroleum and pine resin. Combine that with sulfur and you essential mixed the dynamite with the blasting cap.

    
“All pipes are full, Lupus,” the Wolf Soldier signalman informed me.

    
“Charge all pipes,” I ordered him.

    
Another benefit of the baffle system was that we could squeeze off a few shots per tube, rather than spilling it all at the same time. Below decks we maintained bottles of compressed nitrogen–another benefit of our sheep-dung enterprises–which were used to pressurized different baffles, forcing the fluid down the pipe.

    
And the brass could withstand the salt-water of Tren Bay. Steel would be safer, but it would rust.

    
“All pipes are charged,” the signalman informed me.

    
I couldn’t hold back a smile.

     The Trenboni fleet began to move forward at almost three times our numbers. Behind them, eight more Sea Wolves were approaching the other side of the Straights.

    
It never hurts to have a backup plan.

    
The wind rippled our canvas sails. We had about ten times their sheets to the wind. They plowed straight forward, wanting to get into the range of their magical weapons, their oars rising and lowering in the water. They wouldn’t be ramming if they were coming against the wind, so they kept their masts up. They counted on their superior speed to let them engage when they were ready.

    
“Full sails!” I ordered.

    
Had to take that away as well.

    
Sails don’t work like engines–you don’t suddenly lurch forward unless something really weird happens with the wind. However you can run your sails at half and then drop them to full all-of-a-sudden, all at the same time, and get something close.

    
That’s what we did. The masts creaked, the decks shifted just a little bit. With the wind behind us, our ships didn’t quite leap out of the water, but they all rose higher on the waves.

    
We closed the distance at a speed that had to be faster than an Admiral trying to coordinate sixty ships was ready for. I know this because we were inside their weapons range, and then inside of ours, before their flag ship let us have it.

    
With a scream like tearing metal, a ragged bolt of pure energy much like the ones I’d faced in the Battle of Two Mountains with the Dwarves ripped the air between the bow of their flagship and the sails in ours. As Forn has warned me years ago, a peppery bitch who could fire a bolt up your arse, if she had a mind.

    
The bolt struck our mast. Our mast absorbed it as if nothing had happened. In fact, our ship’s weapons worked on something similar to a ‘magic battery,’ a giant, enchanted, ceramic capacitor in the hold of the ship. Magic attacks engaged our defensive spells, which simply absorbed the energy in order to reuse it.

    
I’d suspected this and Shela and I had worked it out with some of our Wizards. It was all just energy, no matter what the form, no matter what the intent. As they taught us in Nuclear Power School, it’s all just ‘trons.

    
You can store electrons, if you know how.

    
I smiled. Some of the sailors were staring in wonder at the mast that should be lying as kindling around the ship.

    
“Fire!” I ordered.

    
Their flag ship banked hard to port. Our brass tube discharged a thick black liquid like a lance through the air. It left the brass tube alongside the ship, flew through the air and through the space where
Her Lady’s Lovely Way
should have been, and plastered the ship behind it.

    
The front of that ship exploded in flame. From seven other ships to either side the same thing happened. Four other Tech Ships caught fire, in two places puddles of the liquid burned on the surface of the Bay, spreading out as the petroleum mix, lighter than water, covered the surface.

    
200 yards off of our port side, one of my own ships exploded. Pieces flew past our rigging, burning liquid sank beneath the surface of Tren Bay and then and rose back to the top, a boiling black mass of foul smelling steam that cooked the crewmen from that ship alive.

    
“Forward attack formation!” I ordered. The fourteen ships behind us had been warned not to sail through the burning oil or the remains of our own ships because Eldadorian Fire burned on water. The Trenboni had not been so informed.

    
Three of their ships sailed too close to the Fire burning on the Bay’s surface and exploded into flames. Our seven remaining Sea Wolves turned thirty degrees to starboard and let loose again, spraying burning liquid on more new ships and into the Bay around them.

    
Less maneuverable and fighting the wind, the Trenboni ships fought to get out of the line of fire of this new threat. Uman screams and the crackle of fire filled our ears, rank black smoke our nostrils. More lightening crackled across the waves and into the rigging of our Sea Wolves, doing nothing but making us more powerful.

Our plan was for the forward ships to break to starboard, the ships behind to port. Some had to pick their way around the burning refuse of our lost Sea Wolf. Their confusion opened up a space for the
enemy flag ship, and that ship spun around on the effort of her oarsmen, flying new orders for the assembled Trenboni.