braces!”
Everything was ready, and he squared his shoulders.
“Cut the cables!”
The axes flashed. It took more than one blow to sever a cable six inches in diameter, but Kwayle and Symmyns were both powerfully muscled and only too well aware of the stakes this day. They managed it in no more than two or three blows each, and the freed hawsers went whipping out of the hawseholes like angry serpents at virtually the same moment.
Destiny fell off the wind almost instantly, leaning over to starboard as her stern came round to larboard. It was working, and Then the spring parted.
Yairley felt the twanging shock as the line snapped, simply overpowered by the force of the sea striking the ship. She hadn’t turned remotely far enough yet, and the sea took her, driving her towards the rocky beach waiting to devour her. For a moment, just an instant, Yairley’s brain froze. He felt his ship rolling madly, starting to drive stern-first towards destruction, and knew there was nothing he could do about it.
Yet even as that realization hammered through him, he heard someone else snapping orders in a preposterously level voice which sounded remarkably like his own.
“Let fall fore topsail and course! Up fore topmast staysail!”
The crewmen who’d realized just as well as their captain that their ship was about to die didn’t even hesitate as the bone-deep discipline of the Imperial Charisian Navy’s ruthless drills and training took them by the throat, instead. They simply obeyed, and the fore topsail and course fell, and the topmast staysail rose, flapping and thundering on the wind.
“Sheet home! Weather braces haul! Back topsail and course!”
That was the critical moment, Yairley realized later. His entire ship’s company had been anticipating the order to haul taut the lee braces, trimming the yards around to take the wind as the ship turned. That was what they’d been focused on, but now he was backing the sails; trimming them to take the wind from directly ahead, instead. Any hesitation, any confusion in the wake of the unexpected change in orders, would have been fatal, but Destiny ’s crew never faltered.
The yards shifted, the sails pressed back against the mast, and Destiny began moving through the water-not forward, but astern -while the sudden pressure drove her head still further round to starboard.
Destiny backed around on her heel-slowly, clumsily canvas volleying and thundering, spray everywhere, the deck lurching underfoot. She wallowed drunkenly from side to side, but she was moving astern even as she drifted rapidly towards the beach. Sir Dunkyn Yairley had imposed his will upon his ship, and he stared up at the masthead weathervane, waiting, praying his improvised anchor hadn’t been fouled, judging his moment.
And then “Let fall the mizzen topsail!” he shouted the moment the wind came abaft the starboard beam at last. “Starboard your helm! Off forward braces! Off fore topmast staysail sheets! Lee braces haul! Brace up! Shift the fore topmast staysail! Let fall main topsail and main course! Sheet home! Main topsail and course braces haul!”
The orders came with metronome precision, as if he’d practiced this exact maneuver a hundred times before, drilled his crew in it daily. The mizzen topsail filled immediately, arresting the ship’s sternward movement, and the forward square sails and fore topmast staysail were trimmed round. Then the main topsail and main course blossomed, as well, and suddenly Destiny was moving steadily, confidently, surging through the confused seas on the larboard tack with torrents of spray bursting above her bow. As she gathered way, the floating tubs of her improvised rudder settled back into their designed positions, and she answered the helm with steadily increasing obedience.
“ Done it, lads!” someone shouted. “Three cheers for the Captain!”
HMS Destiny was a warship of the Imperial Charisian Navy, and the ICN had standards of discipline and professionalism other navies could only envy. Discipline and professionalism which, for just an instant, vanished into wild, braying cheers and whistles as their ship forged towards safety.
Sir Dunkyn Yairley rounded on his ship’s company, his expression thunderous, but he found himself face-to- face with a broadly grinning first lieutenant and an ensign who was capering on deck and snapping the fingers of both hands.
“And what sort of an example is this, Master Lathyk?! Master Aplyn-Ahrmahk?!” the captain barked.
“Not a very good one, I’m afraid, Sir,” Lathyk replied. “And I beg your pardon for it. I’ll sort the men out shortly, too, Sir, I promise. But for now, let them cheer, Sir! They deserve it. By God, they deserve it!”
He met Yairley’s eyes steadily, and the captain felt his immediate ire ease just a bit as the realization of what they’d just accomplished began to sink into him, as well.
“I had the quartermaster of the watch time it, Sir,” Aplyn-Ahrmahk said, and Yairley looked at him. The ensign had stopped capering about like a demented monkey-lizard, but he was still grinning like a lunatic.
“Three minutes!” the young man said. “Three minutes- that’s how long it took you, Sir!”
Aplyn-Ahrmahk’s eyes gleamed with admiration, and Yairley gazed back at him for a moment, then, almost against his will, he laughed.
“Three minutes you say, Master Aplyn-Ahrmahk?” He shook his head. “I fear you’re wrong about that. I assure you from my own personal experience that it took at least three hours.”
MARCH, YEAR OF GOD 895
Ehdwyrd Howsmyn’s foundry, Earldom of High Rock, Kingdom of Old Charis
The blast furnace screamed, belching incandescent fury against the night, and the sharpness of coal smoke blended with the smell of hot iron, sweat, and at least a thousand other smells Father Paityr Wylsynn couldn’t begin to identify. The mingled scent of purpose and industry hung heavy in the humid air, catching lightly at the back of his throat even through the panes of glass.
He stood gazing out Ehdwyrd Howsmyn’s office window into the hot summer darkness and wondered how he’d come here. Not just the trip to this office, but to why he was here… and to what was happening inside his own mind and soul.
“A glass of wine, Father?” Howsmyn asked from behind him, and the priest turned from the window.
“Yes, thank you,” he agreed with a smile.
For all his incredible (and steadily growing) wealth, Howsmyn preferred to dispense with servants whenever possible, and the young intendant watched him pour with his own hands. The ironmaster extended one of the glasses to his guest, then joined him beside the window, looking out over the huge sprawl of the largest ironworks in the entire world.
It was, Wylsynn admitted, an awesome sight. The furnace closest to the window (and it wasn’t actually all that close, he acknowledged) was only one of dozens. They fumed and smoked like so many volcanoes, and when he looked to his right he could see a flood of molten iron, glowing with a white heart of fury, flowing from a furnace which had just been tapped. The glare of the fuming iron lit the faces of the workers tending the furnace, turning them into demon helpers from the forge of Shan-wei herself as the incandescent river poured into the waiting molds.
Howsmyn’s Delthak foundries never slept. Even as Wylsynn watched, draft dragons hauled huge wagons piled with coke and iron ore and crushed limestone along the iron rails Howsmyn had laid down, and the rhythmic thud and clang of water-powered drop hammers seemed to vibrate in his own blood and bone. When he looked to the east, he could see the glow of the lampposts lining the road all the way to Port Ithmyn, the harbor city the man who’d become known throughout Safehold as “The Ironmaster of Charis” had built on the west shore of Lake Ithmyn expressly to serve his complex. Port Ithmyn was over four miles away, invisible with distance, yet Wylsynn could picture the lanterns and torches illuminating its never-silent waterfront without any difficulty at all.
If Clyntahn could see this he’d die of sheer apoplexy, Wylsynn reflected, and despite his own internal doubts-or possibly even because of them-the thought gave him intense satisfaction. Still…
“I can hardly believe all you’ve accomplished, Master Howsmyn,” he said, waving his wineglass at everything beyond the window. “All this out of nothing but empty ground just five years ago.” He shook his head. “You Charisians have done a lot of amazing things, but I think this is possibly the most amazing of all.”
