The Choir Boats (50 page)

“Hear, hear!” “Huzzah” “Never reveal ourselves!” rippled around
the room.

“Why does our Queen refuse us use of the Verniculous Blast,
which the Learned Doctors are confident we can control? If not now,
then when? This is Farther Yount’s time of extreme need.”

He put forth questions as innocuous, even abstract queries, as if
he were lecturing new matriculants at the University. He asked one
more question, in a casual way he had practised a thousand times
alone in his chambers: “Are the rumours true, I wonder, that the
Queen has been meeting with the Cretched Man?”

The hall erupted. The Arch-Bishop smiled blandly to the Queen
and sat down.

The Queen said little in her own defence but focussed instead
on the battle that raged just within earshot. She did not address the
Arch-Bishop’s concerns.

“I wonder in my turn,” she said, “that we sit here debating, under
the very mouths of the enemy’s cannons. Talk without action only
aids our foe. You can vote your lack of confidence if you wish —
over your consciences I hold no sway — but I am going down to the
harbour to speak with the soldiers as they leave, the wounded as
they arrive, and the bereaved as they weep.”

The hall erupted again. As the Queen departed, the vote was
cast. By two votes, the Queen’s faction defeated the motion.

As they slipped out into the early evening, Nexius said to the
McDoons, “The Queen carries the floor for one more day. One more
day only as it may turn out. Be wary, my friends. Sometimes the
enemy at your door emboldens an enemy in your own dwelling.”

The second night of the battle passed slowly. The smell of burning
pervaded the city. The eastern sky lit up with constant flashes,
nearer than they had been the night before. The rumble slowly
became a roar. Steam frigates came constantly to the harbour.

“More shot, more shot, we run low!” they cried. “The
Saker
is
burning, with great loss of life. Captain Bil-e-Maido on the
Accipiter
has been killed.”

The crowds at the harbour took in the wounded, ferried supplies
out to the ships; everyone worked together. The Queen and her
ministers worked alongside raw recruits and aged grandmothers.
Those who cried at the loss of a loved one or the sight of a gaping
wound did so quietly. Tom and Afsana helped a company of Marines,
working with Noreous and Reglum. Sanford and Barnabas worked
with Nexius.

Dorentius remained with Sally; her room was now carpeted with
notational paper as they calculated the precession of Aldebaran in
various skies and the azimuth of Adhara in others. As they worked,
the sound of battle approaching gradually rose but they did not heed
it. Isaak sat in the windowsill, listening to the hiss of the gaslights
inside and the rumble of war outside.

The Ornish broke through the line at mid-morning the next day.
The steam frigates were the first to return to the harbour.

“Calamity!” said their captains. “Their rate of fire outstrips
ours, even if we are more accurate. They overcame our flanks.
Captain Nerricessia on the flagship holds the centre but she is now
encircled.”

By early afternoon the news was worse yet. The Ornish had
destroyed the flagship and disabled many of Yount Major’s central
squadron. The tattered wings of Yount Major’s fleet retreated to
Yount Great-Port, with steam frigates screening the withdrawal.
By evening the remains of the fleet were anchored just outside the
breakwater, ranged now as the city’s first line of batteries. Only a
dozen ships were still afloat, and many of those had been grievously
hurt. The setting sun reflected off the many sails of the approaching
Ornish warships, now visible to the naked eye. The first of their
shots, the opening of the bombardment, crashed into Yount Great-Port shortly after nine o’clock, killing a six-year-old girl and her
grandmother as they sat behind shuttered windows. By morning
those two casualties were only the first of many. Fires broke out
across the city.

By dawn the Ornish fleet was ranged in an arc at the mouth of
the harbour, beyond the breakwater, not quite a mile from the city.
Between Yount Major’s remaining ships and the Ornish fleet was a
space of some four hundred yards, a track of open water between
a shark and its prey. The Ornish ships, with broadside to the city,
rode gently on the swell, their rows of cannon rising up and down
to mesmerize their enemies, like a thousand eyes glaring at Yount
Great-Port’s last line of defence. The winds continued to blow from
the southeast, pushing the smoke of the city’s fires back into the
streets and squares, so that the harbour air was relatively clear, the
Ornish ships easily seen even by those on shore. Ornish musketeers
were in the rigging. Ornish cannoneers were seen on every deck.

“Why don’t we fire back?” said Tom to Nexius, looking through a
telescope as they stood with a Marine gun crew on the Palace roof.

“We will, lad, we will. They are just outside the range of accuracy of
our shore guns, and we will not waste ordnance until we must. They
can bombard us because they have no need of accuracy; anywhere
they shoot is a target. And they no longer fear our shipboard guns.”

From the Ornish ships came a sound. All the Ornish were
shouting as one, over and over, the war cry the Ornish had shouted
since the founding of the Coerceries: “Oooooom-ta-heee, oooooom-ta-heee, ooooom-ta-heeee!” The bellowing grew, carried by the
wind, echoing off the city. Then on every ship they brought out the
wreaths of carnations they had stripped from captured and disabled
Yount Major vessels and they burned them so Yount Great-Port
could see it. They cast the burning carnations on the water.

“For the
Lanner
!” jeered the Ornish.

Still the Yount Major guns held their fire, and then a remarkable
thing happened. From the sea to the southwest, beyond both the city
and the Ornish fleet, came a ship sailing at great speed. It rounded
the hill upon which the Signal Tower stood and sped into the
channel between the two fleets, the no-man’s-land under the guns
of all. The ship did not belong to either side and both sides looked
on bewildered. Sharp built, cracking on almost as fast as if she were
steam-driven, the ship darted like a dolphin down the deadly track.
As it did so, a great pennant unfurled from the topmast: a white
banner with a red-rimmed orb dripping blood.

Tom yelled, “The
Seek-by-Night
! Behold, the Cretched Man
returns!” His words were passed from the Marine gun crew on the
Palace roof to those below and within minutes they leaped through
the city as quickly as the
Seek-by-Night
sailed between Yount Great-Port and the Ornish fleet. Neither side fired. All were astonished
and afraid.

Midway down the track, right in front of the Ornish flagship, the
Seek-by-Night
tacked hard, in a manoeuvre that would have capsized
almost any other ship. Now the
Seek-by-Night
tacked into the wind,
sailing at the Ornish flagship head-on. As it did so, a great wreath
of blood-red carnations was hung on the stern so all those in Yount
Great-Port could see and a second wreath was hung on the bowsprit,
so the Ornish could see. From the
Seek-by-Night
’s crew came a shout
that sounded as large as that of the Ornish war cry, a shout they
repeated and repeated as they charged the Ornish flagship, a shout
that the wind carried to the crews of Yount Great-Port’s ragged
battleships: “For the
Lanner
! For the
Lanner
! For the
Lanner
!” The
Yount Great-Port crews took up the chant. Quickly the chant spread
to the soldiers at the shore batteries. The cry carried the
Seek-by-Night
into the Ornish line, straight at the flagship and its startled
crew.

So the King of the Wrens attacked the bear. The
Seek-by-Night
carried eighteen cannon, four- and eight-pounders, on a single deck,
with a crew of ninety-six. The Ornish flagship carried one hundred
cannon, each a thirty-two pounder, on three decks, with a crew
of nearly nine hundred. The shadow of the flagship engulfed the
Seek-by-Night
long before the little brig came close; the Ornish man-of-war towered far above the vessel from Sanctuary. Thousands of
telescopes were trained on the narrowing strip of water between the
two ships. From the Ornish flagship and its companions on each
side came a smattering of rifle-fire but nothing else.

“The Ornish cannon are set steeply inclined to bombard the city,”
cried Tom. “They cannot fire at the
Seek-by-Night.
The Ornish are
frantic now! Ha ha! Look, they are levering their cannon downwards,
but no, too late!”

Timed to perfection, the
Seek-by-Night
flew under the flagship’s
guns and, just before it would have crashed into the flagship’s stern,
the
Seek-by-Night
tacked again to run parallel. Ornish musketeers
poured fire into the
Seek-by-Night
but still the ship with the bloody-moon pennant flew forward. The
Seek-by-Night
’s cannon were tiny
but very mobile in comparison to those on the flagship. The gunners
from Sanctuary had pivoted all nine cannon on the side facing the
flagship, so that they targeted the same spot. Crack! All nine fired
as one, hitting the flagship at the waterline.

The
Seek-by-Night
sailed around the flagship’s bow, between
the flagship and the neighbouring Ornish warship, out beyond the
Ornish line, and swiftly looped, running hard to slip back around
the flagship’s bow and make a second pass. The
Seek-by-Night
turned
as tightly as any ship ever has, but even so its radius took it into the
firing zone on the flagship’s far side. Again the opponents raced: the
flagship crews to manoeuvre their cannon into position and fire,
the
Seek-by-Night
’s crew to whisper under the cannon-wall one more
time.

Too late! With a roar the first of the flagship’s great cannon fired,
then a second, a third, more. Cannonballs chopped and whistled,
several smashing into the little ship from Sanctuary. The Cretched
Man urged them on. Billy Sea-Hen stood just behind the bowsprit
and calmly aimed, fired, and reloaded his rifle as if he were hunting
conies on the heath in Sanctuary. Tat’head and the other Minders
led cannon crews, preparing for the one chance they would have to
fire. The
Seek-by-Night
passed into relative safety again. Cannonballs
shrilled overhead. Musketballs whizzed and pinged all around them,
hitting more than one member of the crew.

The
Seek-by-Night
whirled around the flagship’s bow again,
so close to the flagship and the next warship that the faces of the
Ornish were seen in great detail. The
Seek-by-Night
began its second
pass. There was the hole in the flagship, drinking in water with
every dip of the tide.

“Steady on,” yelled Tat’head, then “Fire!” Crack! All nine cannon
on the starboard side fired as one, and all hit the same mark,
widening the hole at the flagship’s waterline.

The Ornish flagship took on water, listed, but in doing so its
cannons were lowered. To make the Yount Major line, the
Seek-by-Night
would pass through the full weight of the flagship’s broadside.
The
Seek-by-Night
swerved and started its run from the Ornish line
of battle.

The Cretched Man’s ship was perhaps one hundred and fifty
yards beyond the line when the bear, stung, brought down his heavy
paw at the retreating wren. The flagship and its nearest neighbours
were lost in smoke as they thundered. The
Seek-by-Night
was lost
in sheets of water. When Tom and others could see it again, the
damage was immediately visible: the stern was gouged, presumably
the rudder destroyed, the mizzen-mast gone, and most of the sails
on the two remaining masts shredded. The
Seek-by-Night
continued
to move forward but slowly and at an angle, doing little more than
drift. For the gunners on the Ornish line the wing-clipped ship from
Sanctuary was an easy target. Within one minute the Ornish would
reload and fire again. The next broadside, some sixty-four hundred
pounds of iron from four ships, might sink the
Seek-by-Night
.

“
Viaticum
, indeed,” said Tom, remembering the Cretched Man’s
private name for the ship. “Oh horrible, such destruction on deck.
Where’s Billy?”

Billy was still at the stern, what remained of it, firing his rifle at
the Ornish line.

At that instant, Yount Major’s steam frigates darted from behind
the remnants of the battle line in front of the breakwater and made
for the Ornish. The steam frigates fired steadily, concentrating on
the Ornish flagship. The frigates swarmed past the wounded
Seek-by-Night
and blazed away at the Ornish line. The Ornish answered
but could not afford to aim solely at the Cretched Man’s ship. The rest
of the Yount Major fleet fired now as well, further engaging Ornish
attention. A steam frigate cast ropes around the
Seek-by-Night
’s
foremast and bowsprit and began to tug. Slowly, under the claws
of the bear, the Cretched Man’s ship was hauled into the harbour.
Tom yelled as he saw the pennant through the smoke, the red-edged
orb with its flaring streaks reading “
Facienti quod in se est Deus non
denegat gratiam
.” He ran from the roof as fast as he could to greet the
Seek-by-Night
as it reached the quay. Nexius ran behind him.

Down the gangplank walked the Cretched Man. Beyond the
breakwater the artillery exchange continued, and the occasional
cannonball fell in the harbour or on the promenade. Few in the
throng quayside heeded these dangers. All eyes were on the
Seek-by-Night
and its crew, and especially on the bleached man in the red
clothes who was its captain.

No one spoke as Jambres reached the quay. Behind him from
the smoking ship came Billy Sea-Hen and three of the four other
Minders, each helping a wounded Yountian sailor. The growing
crowd at the quay stared at the Cretched Man: the goblin of their
most ancient dreams stood before them, having just performed a
wonder on their behalf, so unpinning all that they thought they
knew of him and his role in their imprisonment. Every species of
dread, hope, disbelief, and astonishment was in the eyes of the
crowd. Eager to see the Cretched Man, yet fearing to touch him,
the crowd seethed backwards and forwards. Jambres stood like a
peninsula in the midst of a querulous sea. He had streaks of smoke
and grime on his perfect face and his hat was missing. He looked
in vain for someone to greet him, to embrace his crew, to aid his
wounded men and women.