BY HERESIES DISTRESSED – snippet 37:
Alyk Lizardherd, Captain of the galleon Wind Hoof swore inventively as his lookout finally got around to reporting the ship headed purposefully to meet him.
“Very well, Master Hairaym,” he said in a disgusted tone when he’d finally exhausted his supply of profanity. “Thanks to that blind idiot at the masthead, it’s too late to try to run for it. Go ahead and clear away the guns.”
Such as they are, and what there are of them, he did not add out loud.
“Yes, Sir.” Gorjah Hairaym, Wind Hoof’s first lieutenant, was a good twelve years older than his skipper, who was no spring hedge lizard, himself. In the cold, gray light of the wind-whipped afternoon, the older man’s unshaven face looked wrinkled and old as he acknowledged the order. From the look in his eyes, he knew as well as Lizardherd just how pointless the instruction was if that other vessel was what both of them were confident it was. However —
“And I suppose you’d better tell Lieutenant Aivyrs, too,” Fytzhyw said heavily.
“Yes, Sir,” Hairaym acknowledged, then turned away and began bawling orders to man the galleon’s pop gun broadside of catamounts. They were heavier than the wolves most merchant galleons carried in swivel mounts on their bulwarks, yet the shot they threw still weighed little more than three pounds. They might have been enough to discourage most converted merchantmen which turned into privateers (or turned outright pirate), but they were scarcely likely to dissuade a Charisian privateer.
And that’s what that bastard is, just as sure as Hell’s a mantrap, Lizardherd thought grimly. Its sure as Hell not another merchant ship, that’s for certain! Not heading towards us with all the craziness going on in the world just now. Besides, that idiot at the masthead may not have noticed her coming for a day or two, but he’s sure she’s Charisian-rigged.
To be fair to his lookout — which, at that particular moment, was remarkably low on Lizardherd’s list of priorities — he knew the man was cold, two-thirds frozen, and no doubt exhausted as he awaited the end of his stint in the crow’s-nest. He was, however, an experienced seaman, which meant his identification of the oncoming vessel as Charisian was almost certainly accurate. Relatively few ships outside Charis had yet adopted the new sail plans Charis had introduced, after all. Wind Hoof had been scheduled to be re-rigged on the new plan almost three months ago. She would have been, too, if Lizardherd’s contact in Resmair hadn’t quietly passed the word that the Church’s shipping factors were being chary about awarding charters to ship masters who seemed too eager to adopt the heretics’ innovations.
I should’ve told him to piss up a rope, Lizardherd thought now, grumpily. Sure, it’s a fat charter. Actually, he knew, there was enough graft going on that his charter fee — which he was already charging at better than half again his normal rate — was probably no more than two-thirds (if that much) of what the Church factors were reporting to Zion when they sent in their accounts. But no charter’s fat enough to get killed over!
He looked up at the set of his own canvas — his inefficient canvas, compared to the hunter sweeping down upon him on the wind — and grimaced. As he’d already told Hairaym, there was absolutely no point trying to outrun the other ship. And there was no point hauling down his Church pennant at this point, either, since the oncoming brig had to have already seen it. Not to mention the fact that Lieutenant Lewk Aivyrs, the Temple Guard officer whose detachment had been sent along to keep an eye on the money chests, would probably have a little to say about any such outbreak of prudence.
I guess I’m just going to have to hope that fellow over there doesn’t want to start a war with Desnair on top of everything else, he thought morosely. And fat fucking chance of that!
* * * * * * * * * *
“She’s Desnairian-flagged, Sir,” Fytzhyw’s first officer pointed out as the range fell to a thousand yards.
“Yes, Tobys, she is,” Fytzhyw agreed.
“I just thought I’d point it out,” Tobys Chermyn said mildly. “We’re not at war with Desnair, at the moment, you know.”
“I am aware of the fact,” Fytzhyw acknowledged, turning to raise one eyebrow at his shorter lieutenant.
“Well, I was just thinking, it’s sort of nice to have someone we’re not at war with. Yet, at least.” Chermyn grinned at him. “Do you think we’re about to change that?”
“I don’t know. And, to be totally honest about it, I don’t really care, either,” Fytzhyw told him, swinging back to look at the high-sided, wallowing Desnairian galleon. “First, Desnair hasn’t got a navy. Second, Desnair is already busy building a navy for those sanctimonious pricks in Zion, so we might as well already be at war with them. And, third, Tobys, if they don’t want to get themselves taken, then they shouldn’t be flying that fucking pennant.”
Chermyn nodded without speaking. The practice of flying a Church pennant whenever a vessel was in the service of the Church went back almost to the Creation itself. Traditionally, there were very good reasons for that, including the fact that only the heartiest — or most insane — pirate was going to trifle with a Church galleon. Those traditional reasons had been . . . somewhat undermined of late, however. It seemed to be taking a while for the rest of the world to figure out that flying that pennant these days had much in common with waving a red flag at a great dragon, at least where Charis was concerned, but Chermyn supposed old habits were hard to break.
And to be fair, not even every Charisian’s as pissed off by the sight of it as the Old Man, he reflected.
In point of fact, Chermyn was at least a few years older than Fytzhyw, but it never crossed his mind to use another label for Loyal Son’s master. Symyn Fytzhyw struck most people as older than his years. Partly that was his size, no doubt — he stood a head taller than most other Charisians — but more of it stemmed from his indisputable solidness. And not just the solidness of his undeniably brawny muscle and bone, either. For all his youth, Fytzhyw was a purposeful, disciplined man, which helped to explain how someone his age not only captained but owned his own galleon.
But he was also a man of iron convictions. No one could accuse him of being narrowminded, or of refusing to look before he leapt, yet once his convictions were engaged, there was no shaking him. Chermyn knew Fytzhyw had entertained his doubts initially about the wisdom of the schism between the Church of Charis and the Temple loyalists. Those doubts had weakened with King Haarahld’s death, and they’d vanished completely as he’d seen Archbishop Maikel and Emperor Cayleb turning their words into reality. The attempt to assassinate the archbishop in his own cathedral, what had happened to Archbishop Erayk, the lies coming out of Zion, and the Ferayd Massacre had replaced those initial doubts with fiery commitment.
And the Old Man doesn’t do anything by halves, Chermyn told himself. Which suits me right down to the ground, when you come to it. He bared his teeth at the Desnarian galleon. I wonder if that fellow over there’s smart enough to realize just how quickly he’d better get that pennant down?
“And I suppose you’d better tell Lieutenant Aivyrs, too,†Fytzhyw said heavily.” Typo. Should be “…Lizardherd said heavily.”
More of a snippet of a snippet.
Well, here goes! No surprises in this snippet; we’ll have to wait for the next (at least) for the victorious (but who for?) outcome.
bh
Given that one side has cannon and the other has water pistols (more or less)… well I suppose stranger things have happened, but it’d take a minor miracle to let the Desniarian galleon win.
RH
“Lizardherd”? Are their people that actually took up domesticating the local wild life when there were perfectly good Earth cattle available?
Or at least I assume that the “Archangels” made Earthly farm animals available to the “Adams and Eves”.
Well, we already know they tamed some wyverns for hunting and use the vegetarian dragons for draft. I assume somebody must have found a particularly tasty species of hedge lizard.
@3 Robert: You are of course right, and I fully expect Fytzhyw to win easily, but like most authors, DW can find ways to produce outcomes that beat seemingly impossible odds, e.g. as suggested by E@30 of snippet 36, so I was merely exercising scientific caution.
And I like RH’s suggestion in @44 of 36 that the first two or three ships be disappeared with their crews, so the Go4 won’t know for sure it isn’t just bad luck. Perhaps they could be taken to some remote part of Silverlode Island and put to work cutting timber.
bh
Was this sniooet even neccesary? I mean what happen here? Nothing.
A fair amount happened here, notably the other side coming to quarters.
If you want all combat
Open fire!
Bang! Bang! Boom!
insert pointless reproductive act scene
Budda-Budda-Budda!
Boom!
Zap! Zap! Zap!
Introduce graphic description of explosions at least ten words
Kerblammo!
Some of those power armor war game novels by other publishers may be more to your taste. But that is not what Weber is selling. He just isn’t.
Exercise for students: delete one to three pointless lines from the above and defend your choices.
Re #7: Snippets are not short stories. They are, well, snippets.
You lack
And a Earth-shattering KABOOOOOM
Where is the earth shattering kaboom?
Murphy’s Law Scenarios
1) Wet gunpowder, which doesn’t seem likely on a ship with such a thorough captain but he could be new to so much cannon.
2) In sending over a prize crew, the Church soldiers start a full-on attack at close range.
3) They accidentally destroy the mainsail of their target or the Church does it for them in a fit of potentially suicidal fanaticism.
4) The gold ship sinks. :(
5) The Kraken!!! (Only appears in 1/3 books before killed off for CGI conveniences)
I’m with Virgil. the snippet ended prematurely. I feel like I’m watching a soap opera or something. All pins and needles till next snippet.
George Phillies: I don’t think he was objecting to Weber’s writing style but, rather, the fact that the snippet ended just as the action was about to begin, just after a tension-building part.
How about….
Church Officer: “Fight ye cravens or I’ll keel haul ye meself!”
Desnair Crew: “Avast! Who’s side be ye on?”
Church Officer: ” I be on the side of God’s Church and willing to die for it (taking ye with me!).”
Desnair Crew : ” Over the side with ye!”
Privateer Captain: “You lads looking for a job with benefits???”
Desnair Crew: “Yay!”
Hey, it works for me….
All right, Maggie! I wonder if that’s the primary plot point here. Small cases of rebellion against the Church. Crews that dispatch the Church guard in this case. DW may complicate things of course. Perhaps by having the crew lie about the events and claim a massacre by the privateers. All sorts of trouble for Sharley to juggle and propoganda…er..honest information..to spin.
PZ
I just hope that DW finally saw the Mythbusters episodes about the cannon combat. The episode clearly shows that wood chips don’t kill people.
The Mythbusters used their human analogs (pig carcasses) and fired a cannon at them through the side of a ship. The pigs had some nasty cuts that may have become infected, but were not immediately life threatening. This was a few years ago and yet DW keeps putting basically flying wooden saws in his books. I find that surprisingly annoying – IMHO he should just quietly drop that.
Guessing ahead:
After dismasting the Desnarian galleon, Fytz shoots the Temple Guard, releases the Desnarian crew after loading the strongbox onto his ship and thereby starts a war with Desnair. Sharly approves and orders a raid on the shipbuilding facilities of Desnair.
So the next+1 snippet is
(1) back in Charis where discussions of strategy occur or
(2) in Tarot where discussions of strategy occur or
(3) in Hektor’s castle where discussions of strategy occur.
@15
How did Admiral Nelson die? How did he lose his leg? Mythmythbuster.
I’d have to disagree with Elim Garak here since I doubt seriously that Mythbusters were using 24-pounder cannon in their experiments. However I haven’t seen that episode, so I can’t comment further on it except to say that many accounts of naval warfare in their day mention wood splinters causing injury.
The real killers though are grapeshot and cannister shots that clear the decks. Those were usually the leading cause of death during naval battles in the age of sail.
There are far too many Royal Navy records of splinter injuries from ship’s logs for it to be a “Myth”. Not to mention that the navies of the time spent money and resources on ‘splinter nets’ to rig on warships. Kinda doubt that penny pinching governments would approve such expenditures without SOME casualties from splinters.
Elim @ 15:
A lot of people saw that Mythbusters episode. Including those who know more about wooden ships and blackpowder cannon than I do. They said the Mythbusters test was done with materials and guns so unrepresentative of naval warfare at the time, that it had no validity.
I might also mention that there are naval records of the time that talk about the dangers of splinter wounds, so I’d be a bit wary about the Mythbusters opinion in any case. Original sources aren’t always accurate, but they should usually be presumed so, in the absence of evidence giving you good reason to doubt.
Virgil @7:
What I’m wondering is, will the Church lieutenant try to have the gold thrown overboard? If so, what do the Charisians do?
@10, No boom today, boom tomorrow. There’s always a boom tomorrow.
@20:
Thus neatly encapsulating why I dislike Mythbusters.
@21 Another is whether the crew is willing to dump the cargo. Surrendering, even after a skirmish, and providing privateers with valuable cargo will do wonderfull things to keep that crew alive. Surrenderng after a skirmish AND depriving the privateer of said valuable cargo would be nigh suicidal in most instances. The phrasing of Sharley’s orders open some draconian options for the privateers and they could still expect the protection of the imperial crown.
Rebellious crews, the authority of Church agents disregarded by allied personell, such wonderful things for the G4 to conteplate.
PZ
The real question is who the Church’s Lt. is going to turn out to be. Will he be Lt “oh what a pair I’ve got” or Lt “this job ain’t fun anymore”?
Hank, perhaps scared shitless but thinking he has to do his duty to the Church.
@22… AB, have you been taking Ivanova lessons? :)
RH
RH: Oh yeah!
Sharley: “I am death incarnate: and the boot that will kick your sorry a@@ all the way back to the Temple Lands. GOD SENT ME!!”
@22, @27 My favorite quote from Babylon 5:
“Confirmed, Survey 1. Upon arrival you will report for debriefing. And just one more thing, on your trip back I want you to take the time to learn the Babylon 5 mantra:
Ivanova is always right.
I will listen to Ivanova.
I will not ignore Ivanova’s recommendations.
Ivanova is God.
And if this ever happens again Ivanova will personally rip your lungs out!
Babylon control out.
…
Just kidding about that God part. No offense.”
Oak is a very difficult wood to work with hand tools. Almost all warships were built of it for the simple reason that oak spinter wound don’t tend to become infected as easily as any other wood readily availbale in Northen Europe.
Nelson was killed by a musket ball fired by a French marine sniper. His eyewas blinded by flying sand whena cannon ball struck the ground (one account says sand bag) near him during the invasion of Corsica in JUne of 1794. He lost his arm to a musket ball at Santa Cruz de Tenerife in 1797. I can find no mention of splinter wounds to Nelson.
I saw Mythbusters pathetic attempt to modify a gasoline engine to run on gunpowder. I would not expect those guys to be able to prove the mechanical advantage of a lever.
CS
Admiral Nelson was not killed by a wood splinter.
Nelson was shot on his flagship’s quarterdeck while walking with the Victory’s commander, Captain Hardy, by sniper fire from the Redoutable, a French ship alongside during the battle.
BY WILLIAM BEATTY, M.D.
Surgeon to the Victory in the Battle of Trafalgar,
The Surgeon then examined
the wound, assuring His LORDSHIP that he would not put him to much pain
in endeavouring to discover the course of the ball; which he soon found
had penetrated deep into the chest, and had probably lodged in the
spine.
Whatever else you can say about Mythbusters, it gave us Kari Byron. IMO, that’s good enough to excuse all sins.
Hope the “outright pirate” elements that might be out there amongst the Charisians aren’t going to attack these good guys for the cargo as they take their prize home… for one thing, it’s bad form and goes against the nationalistic good feeling of what being Charisian is all about. For another, there should be plenty for everyone up north where no one’s taken much yet.
@4 But what about cowboys and unjuns? Or given the society knights or even dragoons/cavalry. All 3 need trusty steeds. Are horses the only/best option? Perhaps some “lizards” were “domesticated” like the mounts in Prince Rogers Own :)
@12 Alejo: My guess is that s37 is short so as not to split the battle among too many snippets. So I expect the battle will occupy all of s38 and maybe s39. I will soon be proven right or proven wrong!
Or we can all be shafted with an off-stage battle.
@36:
E, don’t jinx it!
I love Mythbusters, but watched that episode with disappointment. They had the ideas that “splinters” were small pieces (like less than an inch). They didn’t seem to realize the “splinters” made by cannon balls meeting large timbers are more on the order of dimensional lumber flying at high speed.
“Lizardherd’s contact in Resmair [–> hadn’t <–] quietly passed the word that the Church’s shipping factors were being chary about awarding charters to ship masters who seemed too eager to adopt the heretics’ innovations.”
Is this a typo or does it mean that the Churchies are openly refusing advantages that could help them in war? I mean, I hate to think that the enemy is staffed with idiots because the fights won’t be interesting, but god damn they deserve to lose on the grounds that they aren’t competent on mechanical issues like how fast a ship can go. Can’t locate Resmair on a map since the online map got taken down, but if it’s in Desnair I’d understand seeing as they didn’t lose anything to Charis yet. Is it too much to ask for enemies that can take a hint from the people at the bottom who know how things get done? Hektor aside of course. Maybe the energy signatures under the Temple are a weapon that emits force fields of stupid within a significant radius.
#39… Yes the Church is already established as refusing to employ tech advantages. After all, the replacement fleet they’re building is one composed of GALLEYS after all. So it should be no surprise that they’re trying to discourage their people and people working for them from using “heretical” Charisian innovations. A religious and institutional imperative to resist change doesn’t help.
Yes but there’s got to be some fomenting resentment over the galley program. Siddarmark might be the only one nation embracing Charisian ship designs but the envy other navies will feel after the second galley fleet gets ruined should snap through the stupid barrier imposed by the Church at some point. I’m just a bit miffed that even with their shipping destroyed the nations themselves, forget the church, haven’t seen fit to at least employ some level of innovation in catching up, with, of course, the exception of Corisande. Deeper drafts on galleys is one thing, but the Charisians don’t have to fight close range.
E, it’s not the nations making the calls here. And that’s the problem. Well, actually its both parts of the problem.
Part one was the speed with which they acted. They pretty much knew that the invasion had failed as soon as the Tarotisian survivors checked in. But they didn’t know the details of why their ships were lost. They didn’t have Black Water’s notes or the actual captured galleys that let Hektor realize that even properly equipped galleys were still a significant improvement. They didn’t even know at all what had happened to the ships lost at Armageddon Reef. Remember that the survivors were those who RAN (well sailed) as hard and fast as they could from the get-go. They weren’t in visual range of Cayleb’s fleet. They heard the pounding of the thunder so they knew the ships were heavily armed but that is ALL they knew. They didn’t even really know if the speed of firing was really that much improved or all the noise was different ships firing. They only thing they knew about the ships involved is that their own experts had warned them that the Dohlarian ships being employed were not well-suited for blue-water travel, much less blue-water combat. And they knew that they had lost despite what they thought would be a crushing numerical superiority. So they knew they had to build a new fleet — and they wanted to get started immediately — and the only problem they knew of that they also knew how to fix was the blue-water survivability of the ships.
And part two is that the church isn’t so much stupid as stubborn. Even now, even after they’ve (presumably) heard at least SOME info back from Hektor about what his few survivors told him about Charisian fighting technology, they don’t want to believe that they can’t win anyway. They don’t want to believe that what Charis has unleashed is a quantum leap forward in war technology. And even if it is they also don’t want to believe that quantity can’t overcome it through sheer mass. So they refuse to admit that galleys are obsolete, they refuse to admit that the new cannon are as deadly as they are, and they refuse to admit that even if the first two are true that sheer mass isn’t enough to get the job done eventually anyway. (Plus they figure that God let Charis win last time but that He will make sure they don’t next time, so what they do or how doesn’t really matter.)
So in summary the problem is that the church acted too fast, and now even with better data available they don’t want to admit they were wrong. But since the nations aren’t making the decisions and the church is, the nations are stuck with the results. Unless they want to rebel as Charis has done… which they don’t. Yet, at least. Once round two gets it fixed in both the national leaders’ heads and gets it through the thick vicars’ skulls just how badly they are outclassed, I expect that this will change. Either the nations will rebel, or the church will wake up to reality, or the threat of option one helps to cause option two. But unfortunately a VERY large number of (fortunately fictional) people are going to have to be fed to the slaughterhouse first.
RH
@41 The only thing I might add is that old muslim addage about everything will happen according to God’s will. Although not stressed in the stories and definitely not expressed by our protagonists, there may be a mindset colored with a fundemental dependance on God’s active will in everyday events. If so, what does it matter that you have a nifty new fangled way of sailing or firing naval artillery? God will act to counter it if such innovations offend him. Since the Church is so against these innovations, God will indeed find these innovations offensive and act in his good time to make his displeasure felt by any innovative miscreant. If you think about it, such a dependance is almost necessary to ensure that human innovative tendencies are surpressed.
That’s one of the more plausible explainations I’ve come up with. The others require that stupidity inducing weapon of yours, E.
PZ
@40, 41 and 42: Yes. Think Galileo. Church vs. Science. I don’t want to get into current politics, but…today we have the stem cell controversy, the global warming controversy, etc. In the end, if it can be it will be; facts trump unprovable beliefs every time.
Well I’d reread your history books a bit more carefully then Robert. The “church vs. science” meme is so incredibly far false its not even a BAD joke. Much less a good one. And it bears maybe about a max of a 2% relationship to reality.
The earliest scientists were in fact Catholic priests (most of them at least), and the Catholic church post-approx-1300-or-so was not anti-science in the least. Before that time there was as least some difference, although exactly how much I can’t say. The problem with Galileo was that he attacked his scientific opponents with vicious verbal diarrhea yet could not prove his theories with facts. He was tried for his “crime” of insulting his ecclesiastical superiors in the church hierarchy, not for the “heresy” of his theory. A crime he was in fact completely guilty of. It turned out that his theories were true, more or less at least, but IIRC it took another Catholic priest — a contemporary who bore no grudge against him despite his irascible manner — to prove him right because he wasn’t ever able to do so himself.
Not that the Catholic church is or was ever perfect, of course, but this particular charge against them is completely false baloney, repeated so many times as an attack in the modern political “science vs. religion” bull crap — a topic which I too will otherwise avoid — that many people have come to believe it despite the fact that it is utterly false. So unfortunately that episode — and many others we could go into if they wouldn’t risk getting into modern politics — really doesn’t apply to the situation Charis faces in the series.
RH
@19, I think what you’re referring to as “splinter nets” were in fact overhead nettings rigged to keep blocks and other “small” pieces of the rigging which had been blasted free from the masts and spars from smashing into the heads of the crew on deck. Those nettings would be lashed to the lower shrouds and stays.
As C.S. Forester pointed out in his “Hornblower” books, the dangerous splinters weren’t the ones caused by roundshot penetrating the bulwarks, but rather from shots which plowed into the decks at low angles (frequently by coming in through an open gunport). That type of splinter could be up to a couple of feet long and quite jagged. It could really mess up someone’s face, not to mention the vulnerable points such as carotid or femoral arteries. If someone got hit end-on by such a splinter, the ship’s doctor would have to cut it out rather than simply pulling it out due to the jagged edges and possibility of pieces breaking off inside the wound. I agree that direct amputation of a limb by a splinter would be unlikely.
Ken Valentine
@45 Science and religion are not opposed any more than the bass and treble of my stereo. They operate at different levels to produce the same thing: A view of life the universe and everything in it. If there is one thing I am sad about it is people who think that you can believe in the big bang and evolution but not god. As to that example, the people who are right even today have to kiss ass to bend ears, but now there’s Youtube.
For your consideration:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBb4cjjj1gI
A panopaly of controversies remixed for freshness.
One of the things all of us have to keep in mind is that DW has stressed from the get go that it is innovation that Langehorne tried to beat out of the Safehold colonists not science per se. Innovation is simply an ability to question current perception. Arguably, science is built on an innovative mindset but an innovative mind set doesn’t depend on science. That said, I find it much more likely that Safeholders will not addopt innovations for fear of offending God than any lack of understanding or sheer stupidity. Give them proof that God isn’t ofended and they will apply those Charisian innovations in a shrew’s heartbeat.
Which brings us back to the Charisian mantra vis-a-vis the G4. Its Charis’ example the G4 fear, because that example is the surest proof that God isn’t offended by the example Charis is setting. Especially when Charis pounds on the Church hierarchy in the process of defending their example. Should this proof remain unrebutted (with Charis’ defeat) the power of the G4 and the supremacy of the CoGA will dissipate like a spring fog in late morning.
Peter
I mean to say a Charisian defeat would be an effective rebuttal of proof that God isn’t offended.
@45 The facts of the case are as you’ve stated but the myth of Galileo being the Church vs Science poster boy has its roots in 17th century Protestant propaganda. Originally the story was distorted to “prove” that the RC church was backwards and superstitious. Onto that base the whole religon vs science angle was grafted in the 19th and 20th centurys when new conflicts arose (and IMHO were blown out of proportion)
Its like “Bloody Mary” of England, the propaganda has become accepted as truth and to heck with the facts of the matter.