The admiral who’d inherited command of the Western Squadron had pointed out that more than half his surviving ships were badly damaged. He’d needed every hand he had to deal with their repairs and to reinforce ships’ companies which had been brutally winnowed in the battle. He would have been able to provide—by his estimate; Thirsk more than suspected that estimate was purposely low—no more than half a dozen galleons to transport the prisoners, and he knew at least four Charisian galleons had escaped. It was entirely possible additional Charisian ships had been dispatched to reinforce Earl Sharpfield at Claw Island, as well, and there was always the possibility that his six galleons might have been intercepted en route to Saram Bay or Malantor. In that case, both they and the prisoners might very possibly have been lost to the enemy. Sending them to Gorath by canal barge would take longer—they wouldn’t arrive until the middle of the month—but in the long run, it would be safer and more secure, at least until they knew the Charisians hadn’t reinforced Sharpfield.
It was nonsense, although if Raisahndo and Thirsk both insisted the logic was sound—and there truly was a smidgen of logic to it—and both of them kept their faces straight while they did it, they might make it stand up. But Raisahndo’s real reasons were perfectly clear to Lywys Gardynyr.
You watched me send Gwylym Manthyr and his men to Zion, didn’t you, Caitahno? Oh, it was the Inquisition who transported them there, but you watched me let the fucking inquisitors take them. Watched me stand there like a gutless coward while men who’d surrendered honorably—surrendered honorably to you and me—were handed over to be tortured to death by that fat, sick, sadistic bastard. And you couldn’t do it again, could you? You couldn’t be the one who personally sent these men to Zion to die exactly the same way. So you’re sending them here, instead … so I can be the one to do it all over again.
Caitahno Raisahndo was a good man, a loyal officer, even a friend, and Thirsk tried hard—hard—not to hate him for what he’d done. And the truth was that Raisahndo was completely justified, both legally and morally. The Earl of Thirsk was the Royal Dohlaran Navy’s senior uniformed officer and King Rahnyld and his entire government were located right here in Gorath. In the absence of standing orders on the subject of prisoners of war, his decision to send them home to his superiors was perfectly correct.
And it left Lywys Gardynyr face-to-face with the horror of his own past blood guilt, the hideous prospect of culpability in yet more acts of murder, and the terrible decision about what to do about it.
* * *
The midmorning sun was climbing towards noon as HMS Destiny and the rest of her squadron made their way close-hauled on the larboard tack between Hardship Shoal and Hog Island. The wind was out of the north-northwest, which would have been dead foul for an attempt to use Snake Channel, farther to the south, but once they rounded the tip of the shoal and made the turn into North Channel they could make the anchorage with a leading wind—what was often called a “soldier’s wind”—from just abaft the beam.
It was a beautiful day, if more than a little hot—days were always hot at Claw Island—and clouds of seabirds and wyverns gusted and eddied about the galleons. The squadron made a brave sight under its towering pyramids of canvas, with banners starched stiff by the wind, pushing through the moderate seas in bursts of spray. Baron Sarmouth’s squadron had been reinforced before he left Manchyr, and the ten powerfully armed ships of his command would be welcome additions to Earl Sharpfield’s command.
In fact, the baron thought bitterly, no one on Claw Island had any concept of just how welcome his squadron was going to be.
He glanced sideways at the profile of the youthful lieutenant at his elbow and recognized the tension no one else would see behind those calm, watchful eyes. Young Hektor had taken the Kaudzhu Narrows hard. In fact, he’d reported sick and retreated into his cabin for two full days, and Sarmouth had envied him. He’d wanted to do the same thing, but he hadn’t had that option. No doubt some of his subordinates wondered why his temper had been so short, why his attention had seemed to stray so readily. A part of him had been angry at Hektor for “hiding” instead of doing his own bit to shore up the illusion of normalcy, but he’d realized even then that it was irrational. Perhaps he should have tried to order Hektor not to watch the engagement, but that would have been irrational, as well. They both would have known it was being fought, whether they’d watched it or not. They were only fortunate that the timing had required both of them to be about their duties, interacting with the other officers and men around them for so much of it. Neither of them had been able to watch the fight as it happened under those constraints … which hadn’t prevented both of them from viewing the recorded imagery afterward.
And as hard as it hit him, it was so much better to have him “sick” in his cabin, Sarmouth admitted. He’s a good lad—a good man—and that’s the very reason he couldn’t have pretended nothing had happened until he’d had a chance to deal with it.
The fact that he’d been able to spend so much of that time talking with his wife—and with Maikel Staynair—over the com had helped, Sarmouth knew. Yet he’d found himself wondering how well Hektor would be able to dissemble over the next endless five-days. It would be at least fifteen or sixteen days before word from Sir Bruhstair Ahbaht could reach Claw Island. How would Hektor—how would he—manage to conceal their knowledge of what had happened in the meantime?
I thought I’d realized how damnable a curse knowing things like this might be when Her Majesty and Nimue explained it to me, but I was wrong. It was all still theoretical for me. Now it’s real, and God how it hurts!
Like Hektor, he’d known all too many of the men serving aboard some of those ships. Not all that huge a number against a navy size of the ICN, perhaps, but it was big enough to rip a bleeding hole deep within him. The grief—and rage—had eaten at him like acid, and he’d wondered how in God’s name he was supposed to smile his way through the traditional meals ashore and afloat which always greeted the arrival of a new squadron at a foreign station.
You’re not going to be able to … so it’s a damn good thing you won’t have to after all. Here, at least, he told himself flatly, and reached out to rest one hand lightly on Hektor’s shoulder.
“Sir?” Hektor turned towards him, one eyebrow raised over a brown eye dark with the same sorts of thoughts his admiral had been thinking.
“I know you’re going to be brokenhearted at spending so little time in the garden spot of the Sea of Harchong,” the baron said, twitching his head at the sun-beaten hillsides reaching out to them. “Unfortunately, our orders don’t leave us much leeway, do they?”
“I suppose not, Sir,” Hektor said. “Her Majesty was pretty emphatic, wasn’t she?”
Sarmouth’s mouth quirked in a smile.
“Yes, she was,” he agreed. “And, on balance, I think she was wise. Captain Haigyl and Captain Ahbaht have been doing an excellent job, but we really should have a flag officer forward deployed to Talisman. And it won’t hurt to strengthen our forces west of the Narrows.”
“No, Sir, it won’t.”
Hektor nodded firmly, although Sharleyan had said nothing of the sort before they’d sailed. It wasn’t as if she would have disagreed with what Sarmouth was now suggesting, even before the Kaudzhu Narrows. It was simply that it hadn’t occurred to her to jostle Sharpfield’s elbow with any explicit suggestions about how he ought to manage the ships committed to his command. All things were subject to change, however, and Sarmouth was still a bit bemused—grateful, but bemused—by what some of those changes meant.
It was entirely possible Sharpfield would have wanted them back underway to Talisman Island within twenty-six hours of their arrival, given the numbers and the need to maintain as powerful a forward presence as possible. It was also possible, though, that he’d want to retain them for three or four days, being certain Sarmouth was thoroughly updated and informed before he assumed his new duties. After all, the baron had to be five-days,
probably months, behind on events since the recapture of Claw Island and the Charisian Navy’s return to the Gulf of Dohlar. And, under normal circumstances, Sarmouth would have been perfectly content to spend those days at anchor, if only for the opportunity to establish the proper rapport with the earl.
Unfortunately, circumstances were anything but normal after the Kaudzhu Narrows disaster. He needed to get forward as rapidly as possible … which made it fortunate that he now had written orders, signed and sealed by Empress Sharleyan herself, to do just that. Of course, they’d arrived onboard Destiny only night before last, delivered by one of Owl’s remotes, and Sharleyan had never actually personally touched them. Owl was quite capable of writing orders—or anything else—in just about anyone’s handwriting. In this case, though, he’d at least had the supposed author’s permission to write them, which was seldom the case in his other forgeries.
What mattered, however, was that Sarmouth had them now and they told Earl Sharpfield the Empress wanted him deployed to Talisman Island as rapidly as possible. Which meant Sharpfield would do just that.
And that, the baron thought, nodding back to his flag lieutenant and returning his own attention to the winged escorts scolding and whistling about his flagship, will be a very good thing indeed.
.VIII.
Mahzgyr, Duchy of Gwynt
“Well, at least they’ve decided something,” Lord of Horse Taychau Daiyang, Earl of Rainbow Waters, said sourly, laying the thin sheaf of pages on the tabletop and setting the paperweight to hold them down. “Even if the something in question does leave quite a bit to be desired. To say the least.”
The commander of the Mighty Host of God and the Archangels sat in the small, exquisitely carved and painted gazebo outside his rather more utilitarian office with an eggshell-thin porcelain teacup steaming in his hand. His nephew, Baron Wind Song, sat on the other side of the lacquered tea table and raised one eyebrow a fraction of an inch.
“Oh, don’t worry yourself, Medyng,” Rainbow Waters said. “I’m not likely to discuss it quite this … frankly with anyone else. But I smell the stink of desperation in our latest orders.”
“I’m … less surprised to hear that than I might have wished, Uncle,” Wind Song said after a moment.
The baron was twenty years younger than the earl, which made him a bit on the youthful side for his position as what amounted to the Mighty Host of God and the Archangels’ chief of staff. He was, however, more intelligent than most and meticulously organized, and he had a great deal of energy. In addition to which, of course, he had the noble birth required for his position. In public, he was always careful to address his uncle by his title or military rank; in private, there was little point pretending the familial bond wasn’t at least as important as any of his other excellent qualifications.
“Are you not, indeed?” Rainbow Waters’ smile was thin. “Well, your mother always told me you were a clever lad.”
“Odd that she never shared that opinion with me, Uncle.” Wind Song’s eyes gleamed with brief but genuine humor. “I believe the exact way she put it to me was that I was an overly clever lad who was bound to come to a bad end someday.”
“My sister always was an excellent judge of character,” Rainbow Waters agreed. Then his own smile faded. “In this case, however, and with all due respect for your mother’s opinion, the amount of cleverness required to recognize disaster probably isn’t all that great.”
“Is disaster not too strong a word at this point?” Wind Song asked a bit delicately, and Rainbow Waters snorted.
“That depends upon who uses it and to whom he applies it.” The earl sipped tea then lowered the cup. “In the case of the Army of God at this moment, I think it can be fairly applied. The question before us is whether or not the Jihad can recover from the … less than brilliant decisions which have led to that disaster.”
“I see.”
The baron sat back in his rattan chair and crossed his legs. He reached into his belt pouch and withdrew a chamberfruit foamstone pipe and a leather tobacco pouch. The chamberfruit—a native Safeholdian plant similar to Old Terra’s calabash gourd—had been carefully shaped while it grew, then carved and further shaped to receive its foamstone bowl. Deceptively simple figures ran down the outside of the chamberfruit, which was bound in silver filigree, and Wind Song’s fingers moved nimbly as he filled the bowl.
“Is the situation truly that bad, Uncle?” he asked as he finished the time-buying task and puffed the tobacco alight with a splinter ignited in the spirit lamp heating the teapot. “It seems sufficiently … grave to me to cause considerable concern, but you seem to be suggesting the situation is even worse than I’d assumed.”
“I may be overly pessimistic,” Rainbow Waters conceded as his nephew’s fragrant pipe smoke drifted across the table to him. “The less than stellar performance of every other commander who’s faced the heretics in battle doesn’t precisely offer much to induce and sustain optimism, however.” He took another sip of tea. “The problem which currently concerns me most, though, is twofold. First, I believe the Inquisition is underestimating the heretics’ actual present troop strength and being … overly sanguine about their future troop strength. Second, I fear the decisions being dictated to us are … militarily suspect, shall we say?”
“Overly sanguine?” Wind Song repeated. “Uncle, there’s no way Bishop Militant Cahnyr could possibly have faced the half million men he claimed had been massed against him. I know you’ve seen the reports and my own people’s analysis of them. The heretics’ total field strength couldn’t possibly have been much in excess of two hundred and fifty to three hundred thousand.”
The baron forbore to mention that he and his uncle had assembled their own staff of analysts—recruited primarily from the scholars and the sons of merchants and bankers who’d somehow found themselves serving with the Mighty Host—precisely because they no longer trusted the sorts of numbers they were getting from people like Cahnyr Kaitswyrth. Or from the Inquisition, for that matter, although they’d been very careful to avoid mentioning that to anyone else.
“No, it couldn’t,” Rainbow Waters agreed. “And in our latest dispatches from Zion, his estimate’s been reduced somewhat. I believe they’re now placing the heretic Eastshare’s total troop strength at perhaps the three hundred thousand your own analysis had already suggested. Their total estimate for the strength the heretics have in the field is now approximately five hundred thousand, or somewhat less than half the Mighty Host’s strength. However, I believe they’re still significantly underestimating the heretics’ artillery support, and that they’re making insufficient allowance for how much of the heretics’ infantry is mounted. That much, at least, should be clear from what happened to the Army of Glacierheart! More to the point—and much more dangerous for the future, Medyng—I believe they continue to underestimate the rate at which the heretics are able to produce the arms needed to stand up additional fresh formations. In other words, even if their current estimate for the total number of infantry and cavalry currently facing us is reasonably accurate, their estimate of the combat power of the heretics’ present armies is low and I believe their estimate of the combat power the heretics will be able to put into the field next year.”
Wind Song smoked in silence for several seconds, reflecting upon his uncle’s analysis. Much as he would have liked to, he couldn’t dismiss Rainbow Waters’ reasoning. Still.…
“Our own weapons production rates are continuing to climb, Uncle,” he pointed out. “And the latest reports on the performance of Brother Lynkyn’s … rocket artillery are promising.”
“Oh, I’m not attempting to argue that we won’t be able to equip our armies with new and better weapons of our own. Nor am I unaware of the way in which Mother Church’s new manufactory techniques should help to close at least some of the gap between the heretics’ accursed productivity and our own. However, the events of the past few months make it evident—to me, at least—that the initiati
ve lies presently with the heretics. Prudence suggests that we … reassess our own strategy and operational methods in light of the fact that the heretics will almost certainly launch fresh offensives as soon as they possibly can.”
“Forgive me, but isn’t that what these—” Wind Song’s index finger tapped the pages on the tabletop “—are intended to do?”
Rainbow Waters nodded, because his nephew was entirely correct.
Baron Falling Rock’s fifty thousand men had reached Lake City the five-day before. The rest of the Mighty Host was only beginning to stir into full movement now that the canals were available once more, however. He didn’t like the lateness of their start, but there’d been little he could do about it. And little as he liked his involuntary tardiness, he liked the Temple’s requirement that he send a third of his total strength—four hundred thousand men—to shore up the Church’s southern flank in Westmarch and western Cliff Peak even less. He couldn’t argue with the need to bolster that flank as quickly as possible in the face of the Army of Glacierheart’s destruction, and he’d already selected Lord of Horse Zhowku Seidyng, the Earl of Silken Hills, to command the about-to-be-formed Southern Mighty Host of God and the Archangels. The problem was what the Temple wanted to do with the other eight hundred thousand men of the original Mighty Host.
“The canals and roads in Bishop Militant Cahnyr’s rear are either already demolished or will be destroyed before the heretics can capture them,” he said, with a silent prayer of thanks that Baron Wheatfields had been able to pass the order to execute Cahnyr Kaitswyrth’s plans in that regard. Exactly how the baron had managed to get that order out of the Aivahnstyn Pocket was more than Rainbow Waters was prepared to guess, but he was profoundly grateful.