David Drake - Tyrant

"Right there," said Thicelt, pointing to a place farther south along the island's coast. "That's where we'll build it."

The admiral was pointing to a long and wide beach about ten miles south of the city, which curved easily and gently for another five miles or so. More than enough space, even for Demansk's gigantic fleet, to beach most of the ships. All of them, really, except the quinquiremes and the special woodclads — and what relatively few ships were needed to maintain a blockade of the harbor.

Demansk's eyes lifted beyond the beach. At a distance of not more than half a mile, a low mountain range paralleled the shore. The mountains were rocky, but still heavily forested. There was enough stone and wood there, within easy reach, for the Confederacy to build all the dwellings and breakwaters and piers it would need to turn the area into a giant-sized version of the military encampments for which its army was famous. With a harbor as good as most in the world.

Give him a summer, unmolested by the pirate ships bottled up in the harbor, and Demansk could build what amounted to a city as big as Chalice itself. A crude and primitive one, true, but more than adequate for the purpose.

That new city, of course, would also be dependent on seaborne trade for its survival. The soil in the northern third of the archipelago's main island was too rocky and sandy to make good farming land. But so what? Demansk would have control of the sea, not the Islanders. And long before winter came, with its bad weather, Chalice would have succumbed from starvation. By late autumn, under normal conditions, Chalice would be stocked full of food to carry it through the winter. But now, still in late spring, the city's larders would be almost empty.

No, the only chance King Casull had was to defeat the Vanbert fleet in an open sea battle. And with no way, even, to stage the battle in narrow waters where Casull could keep most of the Vanbert navy from swamping him.

No way, at least, in the real world. Theoretically, Casull's best move would have been to abandon Chalice without a fight and move his capital and his forces to the inner islands of the archipelago. Then, at least, he would have been in a position to fight battles in the relatively constricted — and often treacherous — waters of the various inlets which separated the islands. He could have maneuvered and retreated, as needed, to allow only a portion of Demansk's fleet to get at him at one time, always with the hope of luring his enemy's ships onto the inlets' many shoals which were not listed on any charts.

"And I'll bet he's also cursing the whole history of the Kingdom," said Thicelt, his thoughts paralleling Demansk's own. "Some other realm, maybe, the King could play a waiting game. But not with us pirates."

The heavy lips twisted into something that was halfway between a rueful smile and a jeer. "We're not good at that sort of thing, the way you Vanbert cloddies are. Easy come, easy go. Cut the King's throat and find another one."

Demansk nodded. The Islanders were notorious for their unstable politics. That was the flip side of their equally notorious egalitarianism. "Egalitarianism," at least, in the sense of personal opportunity. The Islanders' rulers were the most autocratic in the world, true — but any man could aspire to become the King, if he had the talent and the luck.

The Islanders had none of the mainland's ingrained respect for "blood lines." Any man, at least, if not woman, could rise to any station in life. And, of course, fall just as far if not farther — and even faster. As Sharlz said, one slice of the blade. Long live the new King, and toss the old one's carcass into the harbor for the sharks.

Demansk was counting on that, in fact. Even more in the long term than the short one. For his plans to work, he needed a quick victory here — and a relatively bloodless one. Not only for his own troops, but for the Islanders themselves. The last thing in the world he wanted was a holocaust. He needed those Islanders alive and healthy. In the short term, for the expertise which Gellert had given them in the making of the new weapons. In the long term — although this was still hazy in Demansk's mind — because he needed to infuse at least some of that egalitarianism into Vanbert itself.

That last would take decades, of course, and would not be something that Demansk himself would live to see. But, standing in the golden sunlight on the quarterdeck of his flagship, the image of his blond half-breed bastard of a grandson came to mind.

New blood. Mix it up. We've gotten stale, and corrupt, like layers of unstirred sediment.

Thicelt's voice broke into his musings, bringing his thoughts sharply back to the immediate demands of the moment.

"There they are!" the admiral barked, pointing with a rigid finger. "Casull's not going to waste any time."

Demansk followed the finger. At first, all he could see was the screen of war galleys which formed the vanguard of Casull's approaching fleet.

Impressive ships, those. They looked like so many sea serpents basking in the sun on the surface of the waters. Long, narrow, very low in the water; every line of them seemed to shriek speed. They looked deadly enough even without the glaring eyes and snarling teeth painted on their bows, just above the bronze rams.

The rowers on those ships were working easily, at the moment, just enough to keep Casull's ships in line and steady — the galley equivalent of a swimmer treading water. Casull's warships were making no attempt to close the final distance of half a mile which still separated the two fleets.

They were waiting for something. Demansk could guess what that was, even without Thicelt's keen eyes having spotted them already.

Then, he saw the first plume of smoke. And, a moment later, threading its way between two of the galleys, the first of Casull's steam rams. Between the distance and the wind, he still couldn't hear the sound of the engines. But he could remember what that noise was like, from his experiences with Thicelt's own steam ram at the siege of Preble. Like the heavy breathing of a monster, its claws working a treadmill which made the great paddlewheels turn.

It was nothing of the sort, of course, as Demansk had learned after capturing Thicelt's. Just a machine; more complicated than any Demansk had ever seen before, but not different in principle. Both Thicelt and his son Trae understood quite well how the things worked, even if Demansk's own understanding was still a bit hazy beyond the level of what will it do ?

"Four of them? Is that still the latest word from your spies?"

The moment he asked the question, Demansk silently cursed himself. That was nervousness speaking, nothing else. Thicelt had given him the latest report just the evening before, and there was no way that any more recent report from the islander's spy network on Chalice could have reached him since.

Sharlz seemed to understand that, for he made no response. Or, perhaps, it was simply that he was so intent on studying the oncoming steamships that he hadn't heard the question. Either way, Demansk was grateful.

The momentary lapse had, at least, one beneficial side effect. It enabled Demansk to suppress, quite easily, his urge to start telling his admiral how to maneuver his ships. Thicelt was the expert here, not Demansk — even more with the matter of the steamships than with the fleet as a whole. Demansk had chosen him to be the admiral of this fleet in the first place — the first Islander in history to command any Vanbert fleet, much less its largest — precisely because he knew that Casull would have chosen his best captain to command the first of his new steam rams.

Nothing which had happened since had led Demansk to regret that decision. Thicelt had handled the greatest fleet in history with the same ease with which, in years past, he had handled every vessel put under his command. The man was, quite simply, a superb seaman and naval officer. Even if his heavy gold earrings and shaved head and beak-nosed dark features still made him seem exotic to Demansk. Not to mention his sometimes outrageous sense of humor.