Inquisition.” Zhu was afraid he might be being dangerously blunt, but he saw no other option. “I simply don’t want to lose any of them here by allowing the crowds to get too dense or too close to the wagons.”
Tahrlsahn glared at him for a moment, but then his eyes narrowed, and Zhu could almost see the wheels inside his brain beginning to turn at last. Apparently the captain had finally found an argument Father Myrtan’s appeals to The Book of Pasquale and the Holy Writ had failed to present.
“Very well, Captain Zhu,” the upper-priest finally said. “I’ll leave the security arrangements in your hands. Mind you, I want the Dohlarans to have ample opportunity to bear witness to what happens to heretics! I’m firm on that point. But you’re probably right that letting them too close to the wagons would constitute an unnecessary additional risk. I’ll send a messenger ahead to tell the city authorities we need to clear one of their larger market squares as a place to bivouac overnight. Then we’ll set up a perimeter of-What? Fifteen yards? Twenty?-around the wagons themselves.”
“With your approval, Father, I’d feel more comfortable with twenty.”
“Oh, very well!” Tahrlsahn waved an obviously irritated hand. “Make it twenty, if you think that’s necessary. And remember what I said about keeping the crowd moving, so everyone gets his chance to see them!”
“Of course, Father. I assure you that everyone in Twyngyth will have ample opportunity to see what happens to the defilers of Mother Church.” . III.
HMS Destiny, 54, and HMS Destroyer, 54, King’s Harbor, Helen Island, Kingdom of Old Charis
“’Vast heaving! Avast heaving!” Hektor Aplyn-Ahrmahk shouted, and the capstan stopped turning instantly.
The new-model kraken hung suspended above HMS Destiny ’s deck, gleaming in the sunlight, and its shadow fell across the youthful ensign. He stepped across the bar taut fall leading back through the deck-level snatch block to the capstan, then stood, hands on hips, and glared up at the three-ton hammer of the gun tube suspended from the mainmast pendant and the forecourse’s yardarm. He stood that way for several seconds before he shook his head and turned to the boatswain’s mate who’d been supervising the operation with a disgusted expression.
“Get that gun back down on the dock and rig that sling properly, Selkyr!” he snapped, raising his right hand and jabbing an index finger skyward.
The boatswain’s mate in question was at least twice Aplyn-Ahrmahk’s age, but he looked up, following the ensign’s pointing finger, then cringed. The rope cradle secured around the gun’s trunnions had managed to slip badly off-center. The iron tube had begun to twist sideways, pulling hard against the steadying line rigged from its cascabel to the hook of the winding-tackle’s lower block and threatening to slide completely free of the sling.
“Aye, aye, Sir!” he replied. “Sorry, Sir. Don’t know how that happened.”
“Just get it back down and straighten it out,” Aplyn-Ahrmahk said in calmer tones. Then he grinned. “Somehow I don’t think the Captain would thank us for dropping that thing down the main hatch and out the bottom when the dockyard still hasn’t turned us loose!”
“No, Sir, that he wouldn’t,” Selkyr agreed fervently.
“Then see to it,” Aplyn-Ahrmahk said. “Because he’s not going to be very happy if we don’t get finished on time, either.”
“Aye, Sir.” Selkyr saluted in acknowledgment and turned back to his working party.
Aplyn-Ahrmahk stood back, watching as the men on the capstan began cautiously turning it the other way, leaning back against the capstan bars now to brake its motion as they slackened the fall. The hands tending the guidelines and manning the forebraces swung the yardarm back outboard, and the gun descended once more to the dock beside which Destiny lay moored.
Selkyr was an unhappy man, and he made his displeasure known to the working party as it set about rerigging the sling properly, yet there was a certain restraint in his manner, and Aplyn-Ahrmahk gave a mental nod of approval. The boatswain’s mate was clearly more concerned with seeing to it that his men got the problem fixed and learned not to let it happen again than with pounding whoever had made the mistake this time. A good petty officer-and Ahntahn Selkyr was just that-preferred correction to punishment whenever possible, and that was especially important given the number of green hands currently diluting Destiny ’s normally proficient and well- trained company.
The ship had been required to give up a sizable draft of experienced seamen and petty officers during her stint in dockyard hands. In fact, she’d been raided even more heavily than many of the other ships which were losing trained personnel to form the cadres of new ships’ companies. Aplyn-Ahrmahk suspected Destiny ’s crew quality had something to do with the reason she’d been forced to give up so many more of her people than those other ships had, and he couldn’t help resenting it more than a little.
They probably figure the Captain can always train more, he thought sourly. And I guess it’s a compliment, in a backhanded sort of way. They need good people, and the Captain produces good people… so obviously the thing to do is reward him by taking them all away from him and making him go produce still more of them! It’s just harvesting the natural increase.
He was being unfair to the Navy, and in his calmer moments he knew it. He understood the frantic efforts the Navy was making to man its recently acquired galleons, and he couldn’t quibble with the need to provide the most experienced possible cadres for the newly inducted men going into their crews. The Imperial Charisian Navy had consisted of just over ninety galleons prior to the Battle of the Markovian Sea; now it had over two hundred, courtesy of its construction programs… and the Navy of God and the Imperial Harchongese Navy. Manning even half those new prizes had required an enormous increase in manpower, and manpower was the Empire of Charis’ greatest weakness in its confrontation with the Church of God Awaiting and the huge populations of the mainland realms. It simply didn’t have enough warm bodies to go around.
For the first time in its history, Old Charis faced the threat of being forced to resort to the sort of impressment other navies had routinely employed for centuries. The Crown had always had the authority to impress seamen, but the House of Ahrmahk had been careful not to use it, and for good reason. The fact that the Royal Charisian Navy’s galleys had been manned solely by volunteers built around solid cores of long-service, highly experienced regulars had been its most telling advantage, and they’d been willing to accept a smaller fleet than they could have built in order to maintain that qualitative edge.
With every mainland realm united against the Empire, however, that was a luxury the Imperial Charisian Navy couldn’t afford. It needed as many hulls as it could get, and while galleons didn’t require the hundreds of rowers galleys did, they were far bigger than even Charisian galleys had been and much more heavily armed. Providing them with gun crews and enough trained seamen to manage their powerful sail plans drove the size of their companies up rapidly, and completely filling the “establishment” crew for a galleon like Destiny required approximately four hundred men. With the prizes being put into commission, the Navy’s galleon strength would rise to two hundred and eleven… which would require over eighty-four thousand men. And that didn’t even consider all of the schooners, brigs, and other light warships and dispatch vessels. Or the competition for the strength to man the Navy’s shoreside establishments. Or the requirements of the Marine Corps, or the Imperial Army. Or the fishing fleet. Or the merchant marine upon which the Empire’s prosperity and very survival depended. And while the Crown was finding-somehow-all the men it needed for those requirements, the manufactories producing both the sinews of war and the goods fueling the steadily growing economy-not to mention the farms feeding the Empire’s subjects- still had to be provided for somehow.
So far, enlistment was managing-barely-to meet demands, but an increasing percentage of the Navy’s strength was Emeraldian or Chisholmian, and even the native Old Charisians coming forward boasted a lower percentage of experienced seamen. From what Aplyn-Ahrmahk had seen, the basic quality of the new men was just fine; they were simply less well trained and hardened to the demands of life at sea than the Navy was accustomed to. And even with the newcomers, Destiny ’s official four-hundred-man company was forty-three men short.
Well, he thought, watching the gun begin to rise once more, I guess having too many ships and too few experienced men is a lot better problem to have than the other way around!
Sir Domynyk Staynair leaned back in the window seat, one arm stretched along the top of its cushioned back and his truncated right leg stretched out in front of him, the padded peg resting on a footstool. It was almost the turn of the watch, and the cabin’s skylight was open, admitting the sounds of King’s Harbor and the closer, quieter voices of the officer of the watch and his senior quartermaster as they discussed HMS Destroyer ’s log entry. The
