* * *
Colonel Olyvyr was barely halfway to his command post when the lake exploded.
A long line of searing muzzle flashes—huge, fiery tongues of light, lashing upward from the surface—shredded the darkness. He knew instantly what the heretics had done; he simply couldn’t understand how they’d gotten away with it without anyone noticing. He paused, sick at heart, watching the bright streaks as the heretics’ shells arced upward. They seemed to move almost slowly as they climbed, but then they reached their maximum height and came howling downward, faster and faster, until they slammed into the earth and erupted with Kau-yung’s own fury.
His eardrums cringed under the rolling thunder of that bombardment, and through the sound and fury of the heretic shells, he heard shouts of alarm and the bloodcurdling screams of the wounded. He’d dug his regiment in as deeply as he could, but his heart sank as the sheer weight and power of the explosions washed about him. His men’s bunkers and dugouts couldn’t stand up to that sort of punishment for very long. Even if they could, the heretics wouldn’t be shelling them this way unless they intended to come calling in person, and men who were crouched in dugouts were men unable to man the parapets of their works.
And then it got worse.
* * *
Parkmyn peered through his double-glass, trying to make out some sort of detail as successive waves of angle-gun shells plummeted out of the heavens onto the Temple Boys’ positions. He couldn’t see much, despite the illuminating rockets, what with the darkness, the smoke, and the blinding flashes of gun muzzles and shell explosions, but it looked as if his gunners were hitting their targets even more accurately than he’d hoped they could.
He bared his teeth as he lowered the double-glass and watched the wave of canal barges fitted as mobile, oar-powered mortar platforms row past Grenade. The smallest of them carried twelve of the original three-inch weapons; the larger carried the far heavier M97s with their four-and-a-half-inch bombs. The thirty barges carried a total of just over three hundred mortars, and the combination of the illumination rockets still bursting overhead and the angle-guns’ heavy shells should give them plenty of light to see their targets.
* * *
Colonel Olyvyr never made it to his command post. An M97 mortar bomb detonated almost directly above him, and the cone of shrapnel balls tore him and his aide to pieces. Less than two minutes later, a ten-inch angle-gun shell exploded almost directly on top of his body.
Two men’s deaths were little enough against the scale of the disaster reaching out to engulf the Army of the Sylmahn. Elahnor Olyvyr and her children would never know for certain how their husband and father had died, and Agtha Dahntahs would never know what had happened to her son, but thousands of other families would be able to say the same. Yet one thing was different about Olyvyr’s death: any chance his regiment might have had of holding its ground died with him. It probably would have happened anyway, but his company commanders were as confused and terrified as any of their men. They did their best, and two-thirds of them died in the doing, but without Olyvyr’s steadying, trusted voice, their best simply wasn’t good enough.
First Regiment routed under the lash of that hurricane bombardment. Surprised, frightened men, who’d already sensed the inevitability of ultimate defeat in the miserly rations and grossly inadequate clothing their quartermasters issued to them, panicked. Too many of those who might have stemmed the panic, like Colonel Olyvyr, were dead, and the survivors fled the holocaust … only to run into its very heart. Out of their dugouts, without even the protection of slit trenches, they were naked before the lash of shrapnel and sizzling steel splinters as the enemy’s shells and mortar bombs exacted the penalty always demanded of troops who broke under fire.
* * *
“All right!” Parkmyn shouted thirty minutes later, loud enough to make himself heard through the thunder of artillery. “Let’s send General Mahklymorh his invitation, Charltyn!”
“Aye, aye, Sir!” Lieutenant Charltyn Vynchozy, Grenade’s commanding officer, touched his chest in acknowledgment and nodded to a waiting signalman. The petty officer lit the rocket’s fuse from a length of slow match and it streaked into the heavens to burst in a cascade of red and green fire.
Parkmyn watched it climb, watched it erupt, then looked back to the south as the first wave of assault boats rowed powerfully through the thick, drifting fogbanks of powder smoke and the thunder and lightning of the bombardment. General Tobys Mahklymorh’s 8th Rifle Division had waited months for this moment, and he could hear the wail of their pipes and the high, wild howl they’d learned from the Charisian Marines even through the bedlam of the guns.
He snatched off his hat, waving it overhead as his gunners returned the infantry’s cheers, and his lips drew back in a hungry snarl. The Temple Boys had a lot to answer for, and Mahklymorh’s men were about to collect the first down payment.
.VI.
The Temple, City of Zion, The Temple Lands
Zhaspahr Clyntahn’s tight, angry expression was hard enough to chip stone. His eyes glittered with the deep and bottomless rage which had become ever more a part of him in the last few years, and danger radiated off of him like a curse. Wyllym Rayno could almost smell the blood and smoke as he stood quietly waiting while Clyntahn scrawled his signature across half a dozen arrest orders, tossed them back into his secretary’s hands, and jerked his head curtly in a gesture of dismissal.
The secretary didn’t offer to kiss the Grand Inquisitor’s ring in formal leavetaking. He simply darted a quick, frightened bow and disappeared like smoke from last winter’s fires, leaving Rayno alone with his master.
“Sit.”
Clyntahn jabbed a forefinger at Rayno’s normal chair, and the Archbishop of Chiang-wu settled into it with his briefcase in his lap.
“You brought the documents?”
“Yes, Your Grace.” Rayno opened the briefcase and extracted a half-dozen well-stuffed folders. He laid them on Clyntahn’s desk. “All of the officers whose files you requested, Your Grace.”
Clyntahn stretched out his hand and dragged the folders closer, like an angry cliff bear swiping a salmon out of a stream. He scowled as he sorted through them until he found the two he obviously wanted. Then he shoved the others to one side and opened the selected pair one after the other, flipping rapidly through their contents. Finally, he closed them again, sat back in his chair, and bent that dangerous, fiery glare on Rayno.
“I assume you’ve confirmed the initial reports?”
It came out in a half-snarl, but Rayno had expected that. He simply nodded, his own expression grave.
“I’m afraid so, Your Grace.” He shrugged slightly. “Communications are difficult, you understand, and the agents inquisitor we have reporting from the field—the ones whose orders don’t require them to clear their messages with Abernethy before transmission—are in relatively junior positions. In fact, most of them have cover identities as regular Army personnel. That means their access to the semaphore or other methods of communication is limited at the moment. I do, however, have three separate confirming messages, all delivered by wyvern.”
“Those bastards.”
The two words were hissed, almost whispered, which gave them even more power than Clyntahn’s more habitual bellowing fury. Rayno had seen the Grand Inquisitor in every conceivable mood, from genial good fellowship when things were going well to incoherent, furniture-smashing fury when things went … less well. At the moment, he would have preferred one of Clyntahn’s shrieking, gobbling tantrums to the icy cocoon of so much tightly focused rage. These were the moments when the vicar was least inclined toward restraint and most powerfully impelled toward … extreme responses. His tantrums were dangerous enough, but the cold, focused passion of his present mood was far more perilous.
The archbishop waited. Not so much to learn what Bahrnabai Wyrshym’s and Ernyst Abernethy’s fates might be as to learn how those fates were going to overtake them. Their dooms had been se
aled from the moment they ordered Colonel Clairdon Mahkswail to lead twenty-five thousand men westward from Guarnak in a desperate bid to escape the juggernaut hammering mercilessly up the Sylmahn Gap towards what was left of the Army of the Sylmahn. It was unlikely the fugitives could actually escape—they were all infantry, without any cavalry among them, according to the agents inquisitor’s reports—and both Wyrshym and Abernethy had remained behind with the rearguard, trying to buy them a little more time.
And because it kept them out of the Inquisition’s reach, no doubt. Although that was a mixed blessing in Abernethy’s case, given the heretics’ declared policy towards inquisitors.
“I want them arrested,” Clyntahn said flatly. “Send the order to Father Ahndair.”
“I’ll certainly attempt to, Your Grace.” Rayno managed not to flinch as those fiery eyes narrowed. “As I said, however, communications are … chaotic. I may not be able to get the instructions through to him. And, frankly, even if we succeed in getting them to him, he may not be in a position to act.”
Clyntahn showed his teeth. Ahndair Seegairs was officially the senior member of Ernyst Abernethy’s staff. In fact, he was also Zhaspahr Clyntahn’s eyes inside the Army of the Sylmahn, and he’d been reporting for the last two months that that army’s morale was less than reliable. Obviously, he’d been right.
“Why shouldn’t he be in a position to act?” the Grand Inquisitor asked in a dangerously calm tone. “This is one of the things he was specifically put into place to deal with, and he has my personal commission to act in the Inquisition’s name.”
“I realize that, Your Grace. But such flagrant disregard for orders on Wyrshym’s part argues that this is something he’s been thinking about for some time, exactly as Father Ahndair warned us he might be. For him to have succeeded in it, however, argues that Abernethy has to have decided to support him—passively, at the very least. And whatever else may be true, neither Wyrshym nor Abernethy are stupid enough to think the Inquisition wouldn’t be keeping as close an eye as possible on both of them. I’m sure they’ve taken precautions—to the best of their ability, at any rate—to preclude interference from someone like Father Ahndair, and to arrest them, he’d have to rely on regular Army officers to carry out the Inquisition’s orders. Normally, that wouldn’t concern me; in a fluid situation like the one the Army of the Sylmahn faces at this time, even the most loyal regular officers are likely to be too … preoccupied to rally to the Inquisition as they ought.”
“You mean the rot’s spread so far they’d take Wyrshym’s orders over Father Ahndair’s,” Clyntahn grated.
“Not precisely, Your Grace,” Rayno replied, although he strongly suspected that that was exactly what would happen if push came to shove. “What I meant is that although Father Ahndair carries your personal warrant, no one outside the Inquisition is likely to recognize it—or your signature, for that matter—when they see it. If Abernethy countermands the order while combat is still raging, regular officers are likely to decide his higher priestly rank and his official position as the army’s intendant give his orders more weight than a mere upper-priest’s.” The archbishop shrugged again. “Honestly, Your Grace, under the circumstances it would be unreasonable to expect any other reaction out of laymen faced with such … conflicting levels of priestly authority.”
“I see.”
The two-word response was chiseled out of Lake Pei’s winter ice and Clyntahn’s nostrils flared. His face, already flushed with anger, got a little redder, but the explosion Rayno had feared failed to put in an appearance.
“All right,” he said finally, like granite crumbling into gravel, “you may be right. And the last thing we need to do is to order their arrests and fail. But I want to see every word of every order, every bit of correspondence, that went back and forth between our good friend Allayn and Wyrshym since the decision was made for the Army of the Sylmahn to stand its ground. Every word of it, Wyllym!”
“Of course, Your Grace.” Rayno produced a seated bow. “I anticipated you might desire that, and my confidential clerks are pulling it together now. I’m afraid it will be quite extensive.”
“I don’t care. Have it checked for any evidence of unauthorized ciphers or codes, as well.”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
In truth, that had already been done. During a jihad, the Inquisition’s oversight of Mother Church’s semaphore system became even more inclusive. Copies of every semaphore message, including those of the Army of God and the Navy of God, were filed with Rayno’s office, and all military communications were routinely inspected for any sign that someone other than the Inquisition might be passing secret messages back and forth. The archbishop had seen no evidence that Allayn Maigwair had conspired with Wyrshym to evade the Army of the Sylmahn’s order to stand its ground, but he was confident that a sufficiently painstaking search—and the use of carefully selected excerpts—could prove Maigwair’s complicity in the bishop militant’s ultimate decision.
Assuming that was what Clyntahn wanted to prove, at any rate.
“And in the meantime,” the Grand Inquisitor finished coldly, “I want the names of Wyrshym’s and Abernethy’s immediate families.”
.VII.
Fairkyn, New Northland Province, Republic of Siddarmark
Bishop Gorthyk Nybar rode out the sally port and headed down the steeply sloping road, accompanied by Colonel Bahrtalymu Hansylman, the officer who would have been called his chief of staff in the Imperial Charisian Army, and Captain Teagmahn Fhrancys, his youthful aide. A cold wind whipped into their faces from the northeast, but it wasn’t cold enough, he thought grimly. Snow still lingered, piled deep in places, where it was shadowed by the sun, but elsewhere it had melted. In a normal year, the Guarnak-Ice Ash Canal would have overspread its banks by now, despite the many and ingenious provisions for flood control on mainland canals. This year, the canal bed was barely half full, and all of that was snowmelt, for the locks between Guarnak and Fairkyn had yet to be repaired.
The Ice Ash River, on the other hand, swirled brown and angry below the bluffs upon which what was left of Fairkyn perched. The city’s location had been dictated by terrain considerations; it lay at the head of a valley running northwest into the rugged foothills that penetrated into the higher tableland west of the Ohlarn Gap. That valley offered a natural canal route into the central Republic which required the minimum number of locks to reach the New Northland Plateau, but the Fairkyn bluffs had presented the canal builders with a formidable challenge. They formed a barrier, almost a natural escarpment, almost eight miles wide between the valley and the Ice Ash River. Getting through it had been an arduous task, yet the shortest alternative route would have added over a hundred miles to the length of the canal and required almost as many locks in the end, anyway.
Fairkyn itself lay on the narrow spine at the center of the high ground where the locks themselves were located. Because of that, it had been built on two levels, with High Town’s canalfront docks, at the head of the valley above the locks, serving the barge traffic moving through the canal proper. Low Town, below the locks to the southeast, backed up against the bluffs, but most of it was barely above or actually below the river’s flood plain, built there to serve the traffic headed into or arriving from the river, despite the perennial risk of flooding. The ground broke sharply away from High Town to both southeast and northwest—the locks raised barges over a hundred and eighty feet from the Ice Ash and then lowered them sixty feet to the level of the canal—because gunpowder had been unavailable for blasting away the intervening bedrock when the canal was first constructed. As a result, High Town formed a natural strongpoint, close to two hundred feet higher than the approaches from the river and almost half that far above its western and northern approaches.
Nybar had always known Low Town couldn’t be held against a serious overland attack, however, so he’d never intended to try. Instead, he’d withdrawn his entire defensive force to High Town, blown gaps in Low To
wn’s protective levees, and systematically demolished its buildings to deny their use to the heretics.
Thanks to the breached levees, at least half of Low Town—like most of the six and a half miles of the low ground between it and the river—was currently submerged. The only exceptions were a few low hills and a couple of connecting ridgelines rising from the foam-streaked water, too cramped for either side to use as worthwhile military emplacements. The heretics had occupied much of the low ground earlier, but only a handful of infantry remained to picket the hilltops now that they were isolated by the water, and it was difficult to pick out the line of the submerged canal where it crossed the lowlands.
There was no flooding away from the river, unfortunately, and Nybar’s eyes hardened as he saw the Charisian and Siddarmarkian banners flying above the heretical earthworks which encircled Fairkyn on every side except the south. The redoubts and batteries erected to seal Nybar’s besieged command into the town didn’t form a contiguous line of fortifications, but they were more than close enough together to sweep the spaces between them with rifle and artillery fire. They were also far enough from the city’s perimeter to deter Nybar from wasting any of his slender stock of irreplaceable artillery ammunition against them. They were not, unfortunately, far enough out to prevent the heretics’ longer-ranged artillery from bombarding Fairkyn whenever they chose to, although they hadn’t done much of that. The city’s (and Nybar’s fortifications’) high perch meant their artillerists would be firing blind, and until recently the weather must have made it difficult for them to haul huge amounts of ammunition this far forward, as well.