The Tyrant by Eric Flint and David Drake

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.

“Not yet, not yet,” Thicelt was murmuring to himself. “Wait a bit, want all of them way out there where they can’t retreat . . .”

That was apparently the Islander’s own way of keeping his nerves steady. Probably effective, even if it was far beneath the dignity of a proper Vanbert nobleman to emulate. But Sharlz, like any Islander, didn’t give a damn for that kind of “disrepute.” In times past, Demansk could remember hearing Thicelt poke fun at the “steady silent calm” which Confederate nobles prized so highly. Probably even fuck that way. Which is okay with me. No wonder I get invited into so many Vanbert beds.

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181

Leave a Reply 0

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *