She’d stripped off half her copper and suffered significant hull damage, and while her pumps had contained the flooding and she’d been in no immediate danger of sinking, she’d obviously needed to withdraw for repairs. To make bad worse, HMS Valiant, the third galleon of his truncated squadron (every squadron had been “truncated” in the wake of the Markovian Sea action), had reported a serious freshwater shortage two days before that, thanks to leaks in no less than three of her iron water tanks, and Yairley had already been considering detaching her for repairs. Under the circumstances, little though any commander in his place could have cared for the decision, he’d chosen to send both damaged galleons back to Thol Bay in Tarot, the closest friendly naval base, for repairs, with Valiant escorting Mountain Root just in case her hull leaks should suddenly worsen in the course of the three-thousand-mile voyage.

Of course, a single galleon could scarcely hope to enforce a “blockade” of the Gulf of Jahras-Staiphan Reach was over a hundred and twenty miles across, although the shipping channel was considerably narrower-but he was due to be reinforced by an additional six galleons in another five-day or so, and that wasn’t really his true task, anyway. It wasn’t as if the Desnairian Navy had ever shown anything like a spirit of enterprise, after all. In point of fact, the Imperial Charisian Navy would have welcomed a Desnairian sortie, although it was highly unlikely the Desnairians would be foolish enough to give the ICN the opportunity to get at them in open water, especially after what had happened to the Navy of God in the Markovian Sea. If, for some inexplicable reason, the Duke of Jahras did suddenly decide to venture forth, it wasn’t Yairley’s job to stop him, but rather to report that fact and then shadow him. The messenger wyverns in the special below-decks coop would get word of any Desnairian movements to Admiral Payter Shain at Thol Bay in little more than three days, despite the distance, and Shain would know exactly what to do with that information.