L. Modesitt - Wellspring of Chaos

Kharl kept looking back toward the port building, but it was about a quarter of a glass later before the rider emerged and vaulted into his saddle. The rider was in uniform, probably a lancer of some sort, and he was continuing along the road bordering the harbor, his mount carrying him past the pier and toward the breakwater-and the fort that squatted on the seaward end.

Kharl did not want to ring the alarm bell, but he did think that either Furwyl or Hagen should know. He glanced around. No one was nearby. He crossed the deck quickly and stepped into the passageway way leading to the mates’ cabins, and that of the captain. The hatch door to the captain’s cabin was ajar, and he knocked.

“Yes?”

“Captain, ser, there’s a lancer riding from the port building to the fort on the end of the breakwater. I didn’t know if you wanted to know, but the second told me that the customs enumerator was not to be trusted…”

“He’s still riding? How do you know-” began Furwyl, turning.

The captain lurched up from behind the table. “On deck, first. Back to your post, carpenter.”

Kharl hurried back to the quarterdeck. From there he watched as Hagen climbed to the poop, a spyglass in hand. The captain only watched for a moment before calling to Furwyl, “Have the engineer go to emergency fire-up!”

“Yes, ser.” Furwyl dropped down the ladder to the engine spaces.

Kharl kept watching both the pier and the breakwater. The lancer had not yet reached the breakwater fort. The carpenter second had not realized just how far out the breakwater was and how much the harbor road wound between the base of the pier and the breakwater. Still, it wasn’t that long before the lancer was on the breakwater road heading to the fort.

As Kharl watched, he could smell coal smoke, and after a few more moments, a thin line of black began to flow from the stack.

Bemyr’s whistle shrilled through the late afternoon. “All hands! All hands! Deck crew, make ready to cast off. Make ready to cast off! Harbor rig! Harbor rig!”

Furwyl appeared beside Kharl. “We’ll leave the midships line in place and the gangway down. You know of anyone who’s left the ship?”

“No, ser.”

“Good.” The first turned, and two of the crew-one burly man and an equally burly woman-dashed down the gangway onto the pier, the woman going forward, the man aft.

“Single up!” Furwyl ordered. “Single up!”

“Singling up!”

“Clear the aft line!”

The seaman by the aft line loosened it, then hurried back up the pier to the gangway, but waited. “Aft line clear.”

“Clear the forward line.”

“Forward line clear.” After undoing the forward line, the woman retreated to the single cleat beside the gangway, where the other sailor joined her. Both forward and aft lines were pulled in.

“Clear the midships line.”

The two unwound the line from the cleat, down to a single loop, then sprinted up the gangway. Kharl watched as the line flowed away and off the cleat as the deck crew reeled it in.

“Up the gangway.”

After the gangway was winched up and back, Kharl locked the quarterdeck railing back in place flush with the fixed railing.

With the cold wind out of the northeast filling the sails, the Seastag swung away smartly from the stone pier. The smoke from the stack thickened, and Kharl could hear a low groaning as the engine began to turn over, slowly, then stop because there wasn’t enough pressure in the boilers yet. Even without the engine, the ship was headed seaward under sail with fair headway.

Kharl glanced from the pier to the fort at the end of the breakwater. From what he could tell, Hagen was piloting the Seastag into the section of the channel closest to the fort. While Kharl knew the captain must have had a reason, he had no idea what that might have been.

The ship was nearing the fort, but was still a good kay away from the closest approach, which Kharl judged to be a kay and a half.

Cruump! Something flew through the forward yards and landed another fifty rods south of the ship. A gout of water gushed skyward.

Kharl realized that the something had been a shell from a cannon in the fort.

Thwup…thwup …Slowly…too slowly, it seemed, the paddle wheels began to turn.

Another shell whistled overhead and landed in the water less than five rods to starboard.

“Hard port!” Hagen ordered.

The Seastag turned port, headed almost directly at the breakwater, losing speed with each rod. Yet another shell slammed into the blue-gray harbor waters, barely off the starboard quarter, and another gout of water erupted skyward. Although the paddle wheels were beginning to pick up a slow and even rhythm, even Kharl could tell that the ship was losing headway, and might soon even lose steerageway. He could also see the water ahead lightening as they neared the shallows that sloped up to the breakwater, and the fort.

“Hard starboard!” came the command. “Full power!”

As the Seastag turned back to starboard, and the sails caught the wind nearly full once more, the ship seemed to leap forward-and not a moment too soon. There was the faintest scraping on the port side, as if the hull had run against the edge of a sandbar or a rock, and then another cannon shell exploded into the water less than five rods directly aft of the sternpost.

“Steady on zero nine zero!” ordered Hagen.

Another shell slammed through the rigging, and this time, a rain of debris pattered and clattered down onto the poop deck. Kharl looked up. One of the sails on the starboard side had been ripped loose of the bottom rigging and flapped in the wind. The footlines dangled, and the end gaff was missing.

The paddle wheels turned over a shade faster with each moment, and the ship continued to gain speed. The Seastag had passed the end of the breakwater and was now moving away from the fort at a goodly clip, the open water between the Gallosian fort and the ship increasing.

“Twenty starboard!” ordered Hagen.

Just as the ship settled onto the new heading, another shell struck just off the port quarter, close enough and with sufficient force to throw a spray of water across the forecastle. Kharl could even feel some of the spray from where he stood midships on the starboard side.

Glancing aft, he could see that once the Seastag had cleared the shallower waters seaward from the breakwater, Hagen had turned the ship onto a heading that presented only the stern to the cannon of the fort, keeping the ship’s exposure to cannon fire as narrow as possible.

Another shell exploded in the waters aft of the Seastag .

Kharl waited for another shell, perhaps to strike the ship itself, but no other shells were fired, not that he could see or hear.

Furwyl took the ladder down from the poop and crossed the deck to Kharl. “Captain thinks we’re out of range now.” He looked at the chunks of wood and line, and several pulleys, that lay across the main deck. “You and Tarkyn are going to be busy replacing gaffs and booms,” Hagen said. “Lucky they didn’t hit either of the masts square.”

“I don’t know as it was luck, ser, was it?”

“Captain did his best, and he’s good, carpenter, but there’s always luck.” Furwyl nodded and headed toward the bosun. “Bemyr! Get a crew here to clean up the mess.”

Kharl looked back into the twilight that was beginning to descend on Ruzor and the squat Gallosian fort on the breakwater. Why were people so vindictive? Hagen had done what was right, and the customs enumerator and the Prefect’s armsmen had tried to punish him and sink the Seastag because they hadn’t gotten their way. Yet they would have been outraged had they been the buyers of the brimstone, and Hagen had sold it to someone else.