He knows where they are. The thought ran through Thirsk’s brain. He knows exactly where they are. Shan-wei! Either he’s the luckiest flag officer in the entire world, or else he knows where they are even better than I do!
An icy shiver went through him. It was entirely possible Charisian spies had watched those sea-bombs being laid. He’d had ample proof of how effortlessly at least one Charisian “spy” could penetrate Gorath undetected. But they could scarcely have found a spot to take detailed bearings on the vessels laying the sea-bombs without someone seeing them. And without those bearings, they couldn’t possibly have provided Sarmouth with information accurate enough for him to accomplish what he’d just done. Even with that kind of information, Thirsk doubted any Dohlaran captain could have duplicated that maneuver.
He wanted to think it had been only a spectacularly lucky guess on Sarmouth’s part, but then two of the ironclad’s escorting bombsweepers crossed in front of her on opposite courses, dropping buoys over the side, and Thirsk’s jaw clenched as he realized they were deploying floater nets. Floater nets designed to catch any drifting sea-bomb well short of Gwylym Manthyr.
Obviously Sarmouth did know where they were, and he was taking no chances on one of them breaking loose.
* * *
“Handsomely done, Halcom,” Sarmouth congratulated his flag captain.
“Thank you, My Lord.” Bahrns smiled crookedly, his eyes on the bombsweepers deploying the protective nets. “I hope it won’t offend you if I admit I was a little nervous about the whole thing.”
“Offend?” Sarmouth chuckled. “No, Halcom. Sanity never offends me. I suppose I was guilty of what His Majesty likes to call a ‘calculated risk’—when he’s the one taking it, at least—but we did have the sweepers out front, you know.”
“Yes, My Lord, I do.”
Sarmouth heard the hint of repressiveness in his captain’s tone and chuckled again. But then his expression hardened.
“Well, here we are, the men’ve had breakfast, and we’ve got the entire day to work with.” He smiled grimly and began fitting the plugs into his ears. “Under the circumstances, I believe we should be about it.”
* * *
“You should leave now, My Lord,” a voice said quietly.
Thirsk turned his head. Stywyrt Baiket stood at his right shoulder, spyglass raised to his eye, and his voice was so low no one could have heard him from more than a very few feet away.
“I don’t think so,” Thirsk replied, turning his own eyes back to the massive, anchored ironclad.
The pair of heavy guns fore and aft were rotating to starboard with mechanical smoothness, obviously powered by the same steam that drove the ship’s propellers. Sarmouth had decided which of his two targets deserved their attention first, the earl thought, watching the muzzles turn in his direction.
“Then you’re wrong, My Lord.”
Baiket’s voice was even lower, but it had acquired a steely edge, and Thirsk looked at him again. The captain lowered his spyglass to meet his eyes levelly.
“I know what you’re thinking,” he said. “I know why you’re thinking it. But this is my job now, not yours, and there’s not a man in the entire Navy who doesn’t know how badly we’ll need you going forward. We can’t risk losing you, My Lord. Not when you have so much still to do after the battle.”
His tone said more than his words, and Thirsk’s heart sank as he realized what the other man was truly saying … and that he was right.
“You’re not ‘abandoning your post,’ My Lord,” Baiket said almost gently. “You’re making sure you’ll be available for a job only you can do.”
“You’re right … Shan-wei take it,” Thirsk muttered and clasped Baiket’s shoulder with his good hand. “You’re right. But watch yourself, Stywyrt. I don’t have that many friends left—see to it I don’t lose another one!”
“Dying’s not on my to-do list, My Lord,” Baiket assured him with a smile. “I’ve got too much to look forward to! This next little bit’s going to be a mite on the … unpleasant side, maybe, but later—!”
His smile grew broader and much, much colder as their gazes held for a handful of seconds. Then he twitched his head at the observation tower stair.
“Best you were going now, My Lord. In fact, I’ll go with you as far as the command post. Somehow,” he raised his spyglass for one last glance at the long, slender guns elevating in his direction, “I think it’s going to get a little noisy around here.”
* * *
The smoke was thicker than a Fairstock fog, Bishop Executor Wylsynn Lainyr thought grimly.
There was virtually no wind to disperse it, and it had settled like a curse, growing thicker and thicker while the fires burned. He hadn’t had this much difficulty picking his way through a city’s streets, even after dark, since his last visit home in Hayzor. His carriage’s powerful lamps penetrated no more than a few yards—barely far enough for the coachman to see the heads of his horses—and the pedestrians they passed had wet cloths tied over their mouths and noses.
Of course, there weren’t many of those pedestrians.
The streets and avenues of Gorath were deserted, turned into ghostly, smoke-shrouded places abandoned to fear and the night. It wasn’t really dark, though. The roaring flames consuming the Royal Dohlaran Navy’s massive dockyards and warehouses turned the smoke into a glowing cocoon. The short coach trip from Gorath Cathedral to King Rahnyld’s palace had been like a voyage through clouded amber, but it was an amber tinted with the red of the flames, not warm and golden, and it pulsed like the beating of some enormous heart as those flames roared and danced all along the southeastern end of the city.
There were more flames farther north, where the foundries which had produced the kingdom’s heavy artillery had been reduced to rubble, and the entire city had shivered like a terrified animal when a heretic shell landed directly atop the Navy Arsenal and touched off its main magazine in a stupendous, roaring explosion that had rolled on and on for what had seemed an hour.
Yet for all of that, the city itself had suffered remarkably little damage. The heretics had blasted their way in through East Gate Channel, demolished the East Point batteries, and swept away the sea-bombs Earl Thirsk and Duke Fern had promised would be so effective. Then they’d advanced on the city itself.
The smaller ironclads had smashed the batteries protecting the waterfront and the Navy Yard, then turned their attention to Gorath’s famous golden walls. They’d obviously come to deliver a message to the city which had delivered their sailors to the Inquisition not once, but twice, and they’d reduced the entire seaward face of its walls to broken and blasted wreckage with shell after methodical shell, fired with the metronome steadiness of a formal salute. And while they were doing that, the enormous ironclad—the ironclad named for the accursed heretic Mother Church had given to the Punishment in Zion itself—had trained its guns on rather different targets. It had anchored again—anchored—in full view of any citizen of Gorath who’d cared to look, and begun the careful, systematic, unhurried destruction of the shipyards, manufactories, foundries, and warehouses which supported the Royal Dohlaran Navy and Army.