Maker of Fire

Emily, the Great Southern Mouth, Sussbesschem, Planting Season, 8th rot., 4th day to Growing Season, 5th rot., 2nd day

We had simple objectives for the war: first, to force the Cosm of Mattamesscontess to free its slaves; second, to bring home every enslaved Chem; and last, to send a message that the Chem would destroy any ships that supported the slave trade.

Before the fleet left, I spent a rotation on the beach with Tom. We sailed the first bomb ketches every day to learn how they handled. The design and rigging of the ketches were conveyed to Twee when he received his divine revelation from Vassu last year. The ships were small. At a hundred hands long, they were a fourth of the length of the ships sailed by the navy of Mattamesscontess and the privateers of Mattamukmuk. The main feature of each ketch was the gun platform in the middle of the vessel. The bomb ketches had two purposes: to bombard cities and towns and to carry the Chem fighters to Mattamesscontess.

Unlike the cog-like freighters and rowed war galleys the Cosm used, the Chem ships used clinker hulls that reminded me of Viking longships. The wood came from what looked like an ash tree that grew in the bayous along the eastern mouths of the Stem River. The hull planks were caulked with the tufts off cottonwood shrubs soaked in dwarf pine tar. The masts and keels were a variety of hardwood harvested by hundreds of kl'drt who traveled up the Stem River into the wilderness forests north of the swamps.

The ketches were fore-and-aft rigged. I believe Vassu wanted the ships rigged this way so they could outmaneuver Cosm vessels. Any fore-and-aft rig can sail much better into the wind than the primitive square-rigged ships that the Cosm used with just one or two sails.

The main mast had a big boomless spritsail and a lug-rigged topsail above it. Both could be dropped quickly and rolled up on the deck when using a cannon or mortar. In front of the main mast were four big jibs on a bowsprit with a jib boom and a flying jib boom. The mizzen mast had a gaff-rigged sail on a high boom.

A novelty of the ketch design was that each ship had a 30-hand centerboard under the gun platform, between the mizzen and main masts. The ship's design allowed for speed and agility while accommodating the stiff and sturdy gun platform in the center of the vessel. Even with the big centerboard, however, the ship still heeled too far over when heading into the wind. The bow plunged too much in a stiff wind because of those four big jibs. The sail load and distribution were unbalanced for the hull shape.

To address the sail balance, I realized we needed to furl the jibs and increase the sail area astern. I designed a ratcheting winch device and put it on the bottom of the two running furling lines for the inner and outer jibs. These freely rotating lines replaced the original stays in the rigging. I had to "invent" both coiled and leaf springs to make the winches work. I also made freely spinning stops at the top of the lines, which spun on an iron ball bearing seated on a journal attached to the main mast. The ball bearings might have been the first ferrous bearings ever made on Erdos, cast out of Twee's malleable iron. The winches and bearings allowed the two inside jibs to be wound around the furling lines by any amount we wanted, quickly and without climbing the rigging. Being able to furl the inside two jibs at will cured the plunging bow problem but made the ship slower.

To get some of the speed back, I asked that the mizzen sail be made bigger. I also added a top sail above the gaff for running before the wind. The first time the Chem ran up the stays to set the top sail, the wind in the partially set sail blew one off. A human would probably have been killed by this. The Chem just rolled into a ball, sank into the water with a great splash, and then surfaced a moment later, making the barking noise of Chem laughter. The Chem thought this was great fun. The crew was soon flinging themselves off the top of the mizzen mast to cannonball into the water for entertainment.

To address the heeling problem with the flat clinker hull, I added two big external, shaped 40-hand daggerboards. Depending on which tack we were on, we could drop a daggerboard to help stabilize the ketch. Each one was shaped like a foil to push against the heel. I also designed a pulley system for the rolling carriages on the mortars and cannons. This allowed the crew to pull the heavy pieces to one side or the other of the boat, letting us use their weight as counterbalances while heeled over.

While the Chem ships were designed to be sailing machines, they had oars, too, and if the wind dropped, we hoped the Chem could row faster than the Cosm war galleys. The Chem didn't pull their oars. They faced forward and pushed, holding the oars with their forelegs and pushing against a bar with their hind legs. The recovery of the oar was achieved by pulling themselves back into position with their tails. Because the rowing motion was completed with their entire body, each stroke was stronger than a human's, and the action was faster. Whether the strength and speed of Chem rowers could match the giant Cosm humans was something we didn't know yet. The other use for the oars was to maintain the position of the ketch while the sails were down so the mortar or cannon could fire.

Even with my modifications, the ketch design was fast, light, and nimble. The mortar and cannon gave each ketch something no Cosm warship had: firepower. An explosive shell, cannonball, or chain shot could cripple or sink a Cosm warship. The ketches could dodge the rams and run away from the boarding tactics of the Cosm navies. In the worst case, the Chem could abandon ship and simply swim away underwater where the Cosm could not follow.

Once we had measured how the ketches handled, I went back up the main south channel of the Stem River delta to the four big islands where we built the ironworks. I spent the next twenty days helping to make several hundred winches, jib bearings, cannons, and cannon balls. All of our cannons were small, shooting balls the size of softballs. That wasn't a disadvantage since our opponents had no artillery at all.

I also designed a small rope-tensioned catapult with a cushioned giant spoon to throw clay bombs. These were small enough to sit in the stern and throw clay bombs at any pursuing Cosm ships. I also had leather protective suits made for the three operators and the helmsman in case a clay bomb broke inside the boat.

When Tom saw the catapult design, he whistled and shook his head. "Where do you get your ideas from, Em? You are one scary little engineer. Fireworks, cannon, the clay bombs, clay bomb delivery systems … I would hate to face you in a fight."

"But I don't like fighting," I protested. "I just want to ensure I can safely run away from big predators."

I have no idea why Tom found this to be so funny.

Mattamesscontess was big. Its interior was huge but mostly empty. Most of the empire's population was concentrated along a coastal strip about three wagon-days wide and almost three hundred wagon-days long. While the Chem's seven hundred ketches and the three hundred transports may have appeared numerous, the ships were small. They carried a force of just fifty thousand Chem to oppose the half million sailors and soldiers of the Mattamesscontess Empire.

Other than some archipelagos, the wetlands of Sussbesschem were the most southern country on Erdos. A wild and hostile coast stretched for around four hundred wagon-days northeastward before encountering the first human settlements of Mattamesscontess along the Gulf of Chipagawkpaw. Then, the coast continued for about two more hundred wagon-days, past the port city of Shinakosettcut at the mouth of the Naugapeakwonk River, before arriving at the top of the Bay of Pawpawtuxet, where the mouth of the Mattaheehee River and the capital city of Toyataskagka were located.

What was it with these goofy repeating syllables in Mattamesscontan and Mattamukan names?

The coast made a hard right turn at Toyataskagka and headed southeast about a hundred wagon-days down the mountainous peninsula of Gungywamp. At Gungywamp Point, the coast turned sharply north to form the Straits of Weekapakwonk, which separated the pirate state of Mattamukmuk from the mainland.

Our navigation skills were inadequate to sail straight to Toyataskaga. We had to hug the coast to get to Mattamesscontess. Believing that we could not hide a thousand ships, we didn't try. We instead sailed up the coast as fast as we could — and the ketches were faster than all other ships under sail.

We destroyed every Mattamesscontan war galley we encountered. They had wind mages, but we had a lot of ketches with clay bomb catapults and thousands of Chem on a holy mission from their god. Likewise, we sank every slaver or Mattamukan private attacking regular commerce. We hung all the pirates, but the Chem devised a unique form of execution for the slavers. First, they blinded the slaver crews. Then, they threw the slavers into the sea. The only time I saw sharks or predator whales on our journey was when slavers were thrown into the drink. Twee said that was Vassu's doing.

We lost only five ships and around a hundred Chem before we reached Shinakosettcut.