“Put something on it,” Eli said, glancing pointedly at the ships filling the bay.
The admiral almost turned green. “You can’t mean—”
“Are you suggesting I sink my fleet,” Josef said over him. “My only fleet, to make a wall?”
Eli nodded. “That’s exactly what I’m saying.”
“Are you an idiot?” the admiral screamed.
“No,” Eli said, crossing his arms. “But I might start to think you are if you can’t see that your runners are no longer useful.”
“Majesty!” the admiral cried. “You cannot listen to this madness.” He flung out his hand toward the boats. “Those runners are fine, precision-crafted warships. You can’t sacrifice our naval strength on one foolhardy gambit!”
“Actually, I don’t see why not,” Josef said, rubbing his chin. “Eli’s right. Without clingfire, the runners are only good now for drawing fire and dodging between palace ships. Dodging doesn’t win wars. If we can block the bay, we can buy time for the Council to arrive.”
“But, sire,” the admiral said, his voice cracking. “That fleet was your mother’s pride!”
“And my mother would throw it away in a heartbeat if it served her country,” Josef said. “We can’t be sentimental if we’re going to have a hope of surviving.”
The admiral looked like he was about to cry. “If you sink the fleet, we’ll be defenseless against the next naval attack.”
Josef smirked. “Fight the sword at your throat, admiral, not the sword in the sheath. If sinking the fleet gives me the luxury of missing it later, I’ll count that a victory. Man the runners, skeleton crews only, and tell the men to line them up at the mouth of the bay. I want everyone else to get a bow and get to the cliffs. This is now a siege.”
The admiral clutched his head in his hands. “I can’t believe this is happening.”
“Believe it,” Eli said, giving the old man a gentle push. “Off you go now. We don’t have much time.”
Too shocked to realize he was taking orders from the prince’s layabout friend, the admiral nodded and ran down the stairs, calling orders in a mournful voice.
The sailors of Osera lived up to their reputation. Not fifteen minutes after the plan was hatched, the runners were moving out. Four men crewed each ship, rowing hard against the current until they reached the mouth of the bay. They worked quickly, throwing the wrist-thick docking lines from ship to ship. As one pair of men tied the lines, the other worked the anchor, dragging the chain back and forth across the seabed to catch the rocks. One by one, the boats linked together, forming a floating wall between the bay and the sea. When the ships were all tied in position, by rope to each other and by anchor to the ocean floor below, the sailors kissed the prows good-bye before pulling the bilge plugs. As the sea rushed in, the sailors jumped into the bay and swam for the trawlers waiting to take them to shore.
Josef watched it all from the cliffs where the royal guard and those sailors not tasked with sinking the fleet had positioned themselves with crossbows taken from the watchtower armory. The admiral was there as well, his face pale and drawn.
When the last ship had been scuttled, Josef examined the battlefield. The mouth of the bay was now a spiky wall of sunken ships. Each runner had been scuttled prow first, its iron-tipped nose shoved deep between the craggy rocks of the bay floor with its long body pointing up and its narrow mast stabbed into the water behind it like a brace. Even so, the wall of scrapped boats looked like little more than flotsam before the enormous palace ships.
“Will it work, you think?” the admiral whispered.
“We’ll know soon enough,” Josef said. “Are the archers ready?”
The admiral nodded. “Everyone’s in position. The scuttle crews will get bows and get up to the cliffs as soon as they land.”
“Good,” Josef said. “Because the enemy’s on its way.”
The Empress’s fleet had cleared the reef and was now plowing across the span of deep water that ran parallel to the coast. The front line of ships was already within striking distance of the sea cliffs, but the fleet slowed as it neared the island, turning off the Empress’s current to form a ring around the mouth of the bay. Lights flashed on the decks as the ships signaled to each other, and then one of the palace ships from the circle’s northern end broke off from the group and began slowly moving toward the wall of sunken ships.
“They’ll stop,” the admiral said as the palace ship crept toward the barrier. “They have to stop. They’ll break their hulls and strand themselves if they don’t. No admiral would waste a ship like that.”