Or, for that matter, he thought far less happily, that marked the attitude of far too many of Chisholm’s present nobles when it came to matters political. He didn’t much care for what Sir Fraizher Kahlyns’ latest dispatches from home had to say about certain wellborn gentlemen in southwestern Chisholm. On the other hand, those dispatches had taken the best part of three five-days to reach him, even with the Raven’s Land semaphore chain back up and running. Lots of things could have happened in that much time, and, he reminded himself firmly, there wasn’t one damned thing he could do about whatever might have.
“I’m sure you’re right about the slippage,” he continued out loud, “and the truth is, we don’t have to coordinate things perfectly. Whatever happens, we’re going to be a hell of a lot smoother than the bastards on the other side, and I’ll put our regimental and company commanders up against any general that fat prick in Zion can come up with!”
The others bared their teeth, obviously as grateful as Eastshare himself for Zhaspahr Clyntahn’s interference in the Army of God’s internal organization. The results produced by that sort of meddling had revealed themselves only too clearly in the Army of Shiloh’s disintegration, and he supposed it was greedy of them to hope for still more of the same. He didn’t intend to rely on their getting it, either, but all indications to date—from his own patrols, as well as the seijins’ spy reports, not to mention his own experience against the Army of Glacierheart the previous fall—suggested that Kaitswyrth was as big a disaster waiting to happen as the Duke of Harless had been. And he was clearly Clyntahn’s choice at this point, not Maigwair’s. Every single spy report agreed on that, and Eastshare had spent many a night thanking God for it.
“Well, I suppose it’s time the two of you got back to your own headquarters,” he said. “If anything slips—anything major, I mean—on the schedule, let me know by semaphore and I’ll adjust from here if that seems necessary. Use your own judgment deciding if anything’s that important.” Symkyn and High Mount nodded, and he nodded back. “In that case—”
“’Scuse me, Your Grace,” a voice said … with rather more diffidence than it usually used addressing Eastshare. He turned to find himself facing Corporal Slym Chalkyr, his batman of far too many years. Chalkyr was the only man besides his personal aide, Captain Lywys Braynair, who would have dared to interrupt a meeting of six generals, eight brigadiers, five colonels, and all their aides, and Braynair was already in the group gathered around the map table. Anyone other than Chalkyr would have anticipated being annihilated on the spot, but very few things fazed Slym Chalkyr, and Eastshare knew he wouldn’t have interrupted on a whim.
“Yes, Slym?”
“Beggin’ your pardon, Your Grace, but Archbishop Zhasyn’s here.”
Eastshare’s eyebrows rose, but he only nodded.
“Give the Archbishop my respects and ask him if he’d care to join us.”
“Aye, Your Grace.”
Chalkyr disappeared. A few moments later, the door opened again, and Zhasyn Cahnyr stepped through it.
“My Lord,” Eastshare said with a slight bow, then bent to kiss the bishop’s extended ring. “This is an unexpected pleasure. I didn’t expect to see you until day after tomorrow.”
“I finished the current round of the paperchase earlier than I’d expected, Your Grace,” Cahnyr said, “and the roads are much better—muddy, but otherwise better—than the last time I visited the front. I didn’t expect to get here myself before General Symkyn and General High Mount returned to their own commands, but I hoped I might.” He smiled at the other two generals and raised a hand, signing Langhorne’s scepter in a general benediction for the three dozen officers around the table. Then his expression sobered. “On the eve of such an endeavor, I very much wanted the opportunity to speak to all of you briefly, if I may.”
“Of course you may, My Lord. Please—it would be our honor.”
“That’s gracious of you, as always, Your Grace, but the truth is that the honor is mine.” The archbishop let his eyes track across the gathered officers and his voice was as serious as his gaze. “If not for you and your countrymen, Duke Eastshare, Kaitswyrth and his army would have swept across Glacierheart last summer, and we know from what happened at Aivahnstyn what would have happened in Glacierheart, as well. Thousands of my parishioners—and I—owe our lives to Brigadier Taisyn … and you. And now you’re going to take the offensive back to Kaitswyrth, and after him to all the other butchers Zhaspahr Clyntahn’s launched at the throat of the world. I’ve followed the semaphore reports. I know what’s already happened to the Army of the Sylmahn, and I know—I know, my sons—what you and your men, your Charisians and the Siddarmarkians serving with them, will soon do to the ‘Army of Glacierheart.’ But I also know that however superior your weapons, however superior your men, you are about to pay a price in blood to liberate soil that was never yours. For that, ‘gratitude’ is far too small and shabby a word.”
“My Lord, half of Brigadier Taisyn’s force was Siddarmarkian,” Eastshare said after a moment into the silence Cahnyr’s words had produced, “and your own Glacierheart Volunteers fought superbly before, during, and after the assault on Fort Tairys. They and General Wyllys’ division will be at the heart of this fight, as well, right beside us, and while we may be about to liberate Siddarmarkian soil, this is as much or more our battle than it could ever be yours. As you say, Clyntahn launched his butchers against the whole world, against every single one of God’s children who refused to bow down and worship him instead of God or the Archangels. We know that. Our men know that, and none of us will stop or turn aside until the sort of corruption which has poisoned Mother Church at her very heart can never happen again.”
“As your Emperor said,” Cahnyr murmured, “‘Here you stand,’ Your Grace.”
“His Majesty is more eloquent than I am. He has a much better way with words. But, yes, My Lord. Here we stand.”
“In that case, may I send all of you back to your duties with my prayers?”
“We would be honored, My Lord.”
Heads bent all around the map table, and Cahnyr sketched the scepter once again and raised both hands.
“O God, Creator and Judge of all that is, has been, and ever shall be, look down upon these Your servants, called to the stern task of war against the captors of Your Holy Church. Be with them in the hurricane as they take up the sword against Your enemies. Guide them, inspire them, guard them. Bless the strength of their arms, the courage of their hearts, and lead them to victory in Your name and in defense of all Your children. Fill them with fortitude as they face the test of battle, and inspire them to remember that true justice resides in mercy, not brute vengeance. Be with them in the furnace, gather those who may fall into Your loving arms, and give Your comfort to those who loved them. And finally, as the Archangel Chihiro prayed so many centuries ago, You know how busy they must be in the coming days about Your work. If they forget You, do not You, O Lord, forget them. Amen.”
* * *
Bishop Militant Cahnyr Kaitswyrth pushed back the light blanket, sat up, and swung his legs over the edge of the cot. He stood, stretching and yawning, then rubbed the small of his back. The funny thing was, the camp cot was actually more comfortable than the soft, luxurious bed he’d left behind in Aivahnstyn.
He smiled, but the amusement was brief as he reflected on why he’d left Aivahnstyn. He didn’t trust the reports from his own scouts, for a lot of reasons. For one thing, too many of them said exactly the same thing day after day, and that same thing described a uniform lack of activity on the heretics’ part. The main reason for that … unvarying report, he suspected, was that none of his scouts were willing to push home a reconnaissance effort against the heretics. In some ways it was hard to blame them, given the casualties they suffered whenever they ran their noses into the heretics’ accursed scout snipers or the Kau-yungs the heretics left strewn in their wake. But there was a reason the heretics were so determined to prevent him f
rom getting a look at whatever was gathering behind their lines, and he was grimly certain of what that reason was.
He knew Allayn Maigwair was skeptical of the numbers he was reporting in his front, and if the Captain General knew how his scouts’ aggressiveness had suffered, it was hard to fault his skepticism. For that matter, Kaitswyrth was unhappily aware that all of his estimates were based on the flimsiest possible pieces of information. His own strength was almost 220,000 men, supported by over a thousand guns, yet whether anyone in Zion believed him or not, he knew—knew—there had to be at least twice that many, more probably three times as many, men and guns on the other side. And the roads were clear. The high roads were in only too good a condition, and even the secondary roads’ mud was beginning to dry. It couldn’t be long before—
He made himself draw a deep breath, backing away from the familiar paths worry and concern had worn through his brain, like a hamster racing around and around its exercise wheel. If it happened, it happened, he told himself, and Father Sedryk was right. They were God’s warriors, and God would not suffer Himself to be defeated in the end, whatever transitory victories Shan-wei and her followers might win.
His jaw tightened with resolution, and he reached for the bedside bell to summon his servant. Dawn was still two hours away; there was plenty of time for breakfast before another round of inspections of frontline positions, and—
Thunder rumbled, and Kaitswyrth frowned. The sky had been clear when he’d turned in, and it was early in the year for a thunderstorm. Besides—
More thunder rumbled—a lot more—and a sudden cold stab of apprehension went through him. Surely that couldn’t be…?
He dropped the bell and charged barefoot across the outer area of his command tent. He threw back the flaps and charged out onto the hilltop … and froze, staring southeast, as the entire rim of the world blazed with light.
* * *
Cahnyr Kaitswyrth had hugely overestimated the total numbers of the three armies aligned against him, yet his count on artillery had actually been low. Ruhsyl Thairis hadn’t deployed three thousand guns against him; he’d deployed almost five thousand, thirteen hundred of them six-inch angle-guns. And that didn’t even count the three-thousand-plus mortars assigned to his brigades and regiments.
No one in the history of Safehold had ever seen or imagined or dreamed of the huge, brilliant tongues of flame leaping from the muzzles of over a thousand heavy guns. They blazed against the blackness of the predawn dark, hurling their glowing skeins of shells in an endless cascade of lightning bolts, lacing the heavens with livid fire. The sky above them burned, set alight by the incandescent, smoke-spewing fury of their rage, and then those shells came plummeting down to explode upon the earth.
Illuminating rockets soared from the Charisian front lines, streaking across no-man’s-land to burst in brilliance above the Army of Glacierheart’s forward positions. Their glare stripped away the night, revealing the entrenchments to pitiless eyes, and signal lanterns glowed like blink lizards. Corrections for the fall of shot flickered to the rear … just as the heavy mortars dug in behind those same frontline positions added their own wrath to the fiery sledgehammer smashing down upon the Army of God with absolutely no advance warning.
Craters blasted themselves into the shuddering earth. Trees flew apart, adding their own lethal splinters to the tempest seething across the entrenchments and dugouts. Men who’d been mustering for breakfast screamed in agony as blast and shell fragments ripped through fragile flesh, and the men who’d planned that bombardment had paid special attention to the artillery emplacements marked on their maps. Those maps had been compiled and updated by their own observers and patrols and corroborated by Seijin Ahbraim’s agents’ reports, and an avalanche of destruction crashed over them.
From where he stood, Cahnyr Kaitswyrth could see only a tiny fragment of the chaos and the confusion and the death. But as he stood on that hilltop and stared at that blazing sky, as he saw the fountains of fire marching across his entrenchments and felt the earth itself trembling in terror underfoot, he knew he looked into the fiery maw of Shan-wei herself.
And it was coming for his army.
.XI.
The Temple, City of Zion, The Temple Lands
Rhobair Duchairn looked up from the paperwork he’d spread across his end of the conference table as Zhaspahr Clyntahn finally arrived. The Treasurer wiped the nib of his pen, recapped his ink bottle, then gathered up his notes and jogged them neatly together while Clyntahn strode to his own chair, dropped his briefcase heavily on the floor beside it, and flung himself into its embrace.
One of Duchairn’s eyebrows rose ever so slightly as Wyllym Rayno followed Clyntahn into the conference chamber. It was unusual for Rayno to attend a meeting of the Group of Four, although he’d done it upon occasion in the past. And given the current situation, Duchairn supposed he really shouldn’t have been surprised to see him here today.
Still, he thought, studying the Archbishop of Chiang-wu’s expressionless face, the fact that he is here says interesting things about the probable state of Zhaspahr’s mind.
“I suppose we should go ahead and get started,” Zahmsyn Trynair said after a moment. The chancellor’s once smooth voice had become increasingly tentative over the last couple of years, like the blade of a master swordsman who’d lost his surety and balance … and knew it. Now there was an actual quaver at its core, and his hands played nervously with his pectoral scepter.
“I agree,” Allayn Maigwair said crisply. Unlike Trynair or Clyntahn, the overwhelming emotion in Maigwair’s voice was neither confusion nor fear; it was anger, and that same anger blazed in his eyes. “I’m sure I have another mountain of semaphore reports already waiting for me. I’d just as soon not let it get any taller before I get back.”
“Under the circumstances, I don’t see a great deal you can do to improve the situation from here,” Clyntahn said a bit spitefully, and Maigwair turned a flat, level gaze upon him.
“I don’t try to tell you how to run the Inquisition, Zhaspahr. Perhaps we might all be doing just a tiny bit better if you’d return the compliment and let me run the Army without constantly interfering.”
Clyntahn’s head snapped up, his expression as astonished as if a cat-lizard had turned into a slash lizard and launched itself at his throat, and even Duchairn blinked in surprise.
“Yes, we’re getting hammered … again,” the Captain General continued. “The heretics pounded the piss out of Kaitswyrth’s main positions with a hell of a lot more guns—and heavier ones—than the Inquisition told us they had. They taught us another lesson in using them, and Kaitswyrth’s falling back all across his front. He’s trying to put a good face on it, and I think his men really are fighting hard, but there’s no use pretending he isn’t getting the crap kicked out of him. But from the sound of things, he’s got a new line stabilizing—maybe—along some of the rivers west of his original position and the damned heretics seem to be—seem to be—finding it hard to drag their frigging guns forward to deal with that. I’m not happy about his flanks, and I’ve warned him to watch out for those Chihiro-damned Charisian dragoons, but he’s a long way from dead, and he spent half the winter mining the locks in the Daivyn and the Charayn Canal all the way back into Westmarch. They’re going to push him back; that’s a given, since we can’t get any of the Harchongians there in time to support his present positions, and I’m not going to spin any fairy tales about it. I don’t know how much of his army will be intact by the time he’s as far back as Lake Langhorne, and I’m not making any optimistic predictions about that, either. But I’ll guarantee you those mines will be blown. Whatever else, Eastshare won’t be barging any troops or supplies up the rivers and canals after him while he retreats!”
“And your point is?” Clyntahn’s answering anger over the dig at the Inquisition’s fresh intelligence failure was obvious. “Excuse me for pointing this out, but you’re in the process of losing another fucking army, aren??
?t you? Would it happen that any of your commanders have any intention of ever winning a goddamned battle?!”
The Grand Inquisitor seemed to have forgotten whose choice to command the Army of Glacierheart Cahnyr Kaitswyrth had originally been, Duchairn observed. For that matter, he seemed oblivious to his systematic efforts to block Maigwair’s desire to replace Kaitswyrth after the previous summer’s debacle. From the Captain General’s expression, his memory was excellent, but he didn’t rise to the bait, if that was what it was.
“The Army of the Sylmahn and the Army of Glacierheart were never the only forces we had in the field, Zhaspahr,” he said instead, icily. “There’s Teagmahn and Symmyns, just for starters, plus Rainbow Waters’ entire army. Even assuming Kaitswyrth’s estimate of the numbers against him was accurate—which I damned well don’t think it was—and taking the worst-case estimate for everything reported in New Northland and Mountaincross, plus everything Hanth has in the South March, the heretics—Charis and Siddarmark combined—have no more than six hundred to seven hundred thousand men in the field right this minute. The Harchongians have over a million, with another four hundred and fifty thousand plus following along behind them, plus the seven hundred thousand men we’re raising right here in the Temple Lands and the new regiments Dohlar’s raising while we’re talking. Not only that, but we’ve got a hell of a lot more rifles and artillery—not to mention Brother Lynkyn’s rockets—coming out of the foundries now, so we’ll actually be able to arm all those new troops within three or four months.”
The Captain General shook his head, his eyes grim.
“They’ve hurt us, and it’s going to get worse. But Kaitswyrth’s not dead yet, we have an enormous defensive depth, we’ll wreck the canals in their faces every mile of the way to slow them down, and the Harchongians are directly between them and the shortest route to Zion. No, Zhaspahr—this Jihad’s far from lost, and I’d like to get back to work and keep it that way. Besides,” those grim eyes narrowed, “it seems to me you’ve got a few problems of your own right here in Zion. I’d think you’d want to get back to them, too.”