“The destruction of the transport system will severely degrade the heretics’ supply capabilities as they try to follow up their victory,” he continued. “I think it would be a mistake to underestimate their ability to work around the difficulties it’s likely to impose, but it will definitely hamper them. However, we both agree that at the moment somewhere around two-thirds of their total combat power is concentrated under Eastshare in Cliff Peak, whereas we’re proposing to face it with only one-third of our own strength. The preponderance of the Mighty Host is under orders to advance to join Baron Falling Rock at the extreme end of our own intact—presently intact—transport system. At the same time, the heretic navy is once more operating throughout the eastern half of Hsing-wu’s Passage, they’ve reoccupied Spinefish Bay and retaken Salyk, they’re in the process of restoring the Guarnak-Ice Ash Canal, and their ironclads are once again operating up the Hildermoss River.”
He sat back, regarding his nephew levelly, and Wind Song drew heavily on his pipe as he considered his uncle’s last two sentences. The Holy Langhorne Canal offered secure communications as far forward as Lake City … at the moment. The addition of that qualifier sent an uneasy shiver through him as he contemplated the flipside of that particular coin. Without the canal—or if that canal were somehow cut behind them—they couldn’t possibly keep eight hundred thousand men fed and supplied. For that matter, they’d just experienced the difficulty of moving a force barely six percent that size along the Holy Langhorne when it was frozen, so what happened when winter closed the brief northern campaigning season once more in October?
“These orders,” it was Rainbow Waters’ turn to tap the sheets of paper under the paperweight, “are obviously weighting our left wing to advance beyond Lake City while effectively holding our ground—at best—with our right. I think, frankly, that Silken Hills will require more than four hundred thousand men to be confident of holding, or at least significantly delaying, the sort of army Eastshare’s just demonstrated he commands. And the thought of launching twice that many men into Icewind, New Northland, and Hildermoss when the heretics are already in control of the existing roads, rivers, and canals … does not fill me with overwhelming confidence.”
“Our instructions say nothing about advancing beyond Lake City,” Wind Song said slowly.
“No, they don’t. Yet, at least.”
Rainbow Waters poured fresh tea into his cup, inhaled the fragrant steam, and sipped appreciatively. Then he lowered the cup once more.
“Medyng, when Eastshare has just very convincingly demonstrated the threat he represents, yet only a third of our strength is being deployed against him while all the remainder of it’s funneled along the Holy Langhorne, Mother Church clearly contemplates using that strength for something besides sitting in Lake City and digging entrenchments around it. What do you suppose that ‘something’ might be?”
Wind Song drew on his pipe, and that uneasy shiver went through him again, stronger this time.
The camps, he thought. He’s talking about the Inquisition’s camps.
Despite Bahrnabai Wyrshym’s defeat and the destruction of the Army of the Sylmahn, the Army of God and its Temple Loyalist militia allies still had perhaps two hundred thousand men under arms in Tarikah, Icewind, eastern New Northland, and northwestern Hildermoss. Scattered over that vast an area, they couldn’t possibly resist the sort of offensive the tightly concentrated heretic armies could throw against them. In fact, the baron suspected, many of them wouldn’t even try very hard, as disenheartened and demoralized as they must be after the one-two punch the heretics had just delivered.
But those two hundred thousand AOG troopers and militia hadn’t been distributed to resist major heretic attacks in the first place. They were there to suppress any local sentiment towards returning to loyalty to Lord Protector Greyghor … and to protect Inquisitor General Wylbyr’s camps. But those camps were distributed over a dozen widely dispersed locations. The forces already in position couldn’t hope to defend them against a serious heretic effort to liberate them.
And neither can the Mighty Host. Not really. And if we get pulled too far forward from Lake City.…
“What we ought to be doing,” his uncle said quietly, “is ordering every man who can to fall back into Tarikah Province. And they ought to be destroying every canal lock and every bridge behind them as they retreat. We can turn Lake City into a canal head covered with entrenchments even the heretics won’t penetrate easily, especially with the new artillery to support us. If we use the summer to stockpile supplies at Lake City, we can create a supply point capable of sustaining our entire force for five-days or even months, even if the canal is somehow cut behind us. In the meantime, we ought to take at least half of the strength we’ve been ordered to send to Lake City and either attach it to Earl Silken Hills or create an additional reserve in Jhurlahnk or Usher, where it would be available to reinforce either wing and simultaneously reduce the logistical strain on the Holy Langhorne. We need to stabilize our own front, be sure of our own supply lines, and concentrate on equipping the new armies Mother Church is currently raising. Then, next spring, we need to use those new armies and weapons to resume the offensive—hopefully before the heretics can overcome our numerical advantage. That’s what we ought to be doing … militarily speaking, of course.”
“Of course, Uncle,” his nephew repeated.
They sat gazing at one another across the gazebo in the warm sunlight, and Baron Wind Song wondered how the July sun could feel so cold.
.IX.
Camp Dynnys, Lake Isyk, Tarikah Province, Republic of Siddarmark
White smoke billowed up, sinus-tearing and choking whenever the wind blew it back into someone’s lungs. It was amazing how hot a paper-fed fire could burn. It was seldom what one might have called scorchingly hot this far north even in early July, but the fierce heat radiating from the fire pit was like a blast furnace’s breath.
“Faster!” Father Zheryld snapped at the ragged, laboring line of inmates he’d impressed for the task. “Faster, Shan-wei take you!”
Brother Ahlphanzo Metyrnyk coughed harshly, despite the wet cloth he’d tied over his face and nose, as he stirred the fire with a long-handled rake to encourage the flames. The heat seemed to be singeing every hair on his head, his garments stank of smoke, and perspiration greased his face with a skim of ash and soot. Two more members of Father Zheryld’s staff had quietly disappeared night before last, and Metyrnyk wondered where they thought they were going to go. Obviously they wanted to be somewhere else before the heretics arrived, but things seemed unlikely to end well for them, wherever they went. He was only twenty-six years old and a mere lay brother of the Order of the Quill, but he’d seen and learned enough over the last two years to have a pretty shrewd idea of how the Inquisition would deal with anyone who deserted his post at a time like this.
Of course, that’s going to happen to them somewhere in the future, he reflected glumly. They’re probably worried more about the immediate consequences if they don’t disappear.
Well, he was worried about those consequences, too, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to just cut and run that way. He wondered if that was because he could imagine those future consequences more clearly than the deserters (and preferred to take his chances with the heretics, all things considered) or if it was something else, something innately crossgrained about his nature.
“Idiot!” Father Zheryld barked. A whip hissed and cracked and someone cried out. “Get up, you clumsy cow!”
Metyrnyk looked over his shoulder and grimaced under the protective concealment of the water-soaked bandanna. He’d never much liked Zheryld Cumyngs. The under-priest and he might be members of the same order, but Cumyngs was a pale, colorless, petty tyrant of a man. Metyrnyk had done his duty as part of Camp Dynnys’ administration, but he’d never liked it. Some of the things that went into the records and files he helped maintain had been enough to chill a man’s blood, and there’d been nights—many
of them—when he’d found it damnably hard to sleep. He doubted Cumyngs had ever missed a single wink. There was something almost … banal about him. He never questioned anything he was told to do—or believe—by his superiors, and the consequences of his actions never bothered him at all, as far as Metyrnyk could tell. To him, Camp Dynnys’ hapless inmates were no more important, no more human, than a farmer’s cattle or draft dragons, and Metyrnyk suspected that was exactly how he saw them … in more ways than one.
Now he kicked the inmate he’d lashed, driving the young woman who looked three times her age thanks to starvation and casual brutality back to her feet, and punched her as she staggered erect.
“Pick it up—now!” Cumyngs barked, and she began gathering up the scattered sheets of the files she’d dropped when she fell. One of the Army of God privates guarding the labor party looked unhappy as blood streamed from the nose the under-priest’s fist had crushed, but he only turned his head and looked away as she managed to claw most of the pages back together, carried them to the fire pit, and flung them in.
Apparently Cumyngs had at least a little more imagination than Metyrnyk had ever believed he possessed, after all. He had enough of it to account for the terror in his eyes, at least, and Metyrnyk wondered if he had some special reason to feel that terror.
* * *
“No, My Lord,” Colonel Ahgustahn Tymahk said flatly.
Bishop Maikel Zhynkyns stared at the colonel incredulously. The dark-haired, swarthy Schuelerite was clearly unaccustomed to being told “no” by a subordinate.
“That wasn’t a request, Colonel!” His voice was icy. “It was an instruction—Inquisitor General Wylbyr’s instruction. Do you intend to tell him you refuse to obey it?”
“With all due respect, My Lord,” the one-armed colonel replied, “the Inquisitor General isn’t here, and I’ve seen no written confirmation of that ‘instruction.’ Without having it in writing, I can’t in good conscience obey it.”
“How dare you?!” Zhynkyns snapped. “Are you calling me a liar, Colonel?”
“Not unless you choose to construe it that way.” Tymahk returned the bishop’s glare with cool, level eyes. “I’m simply saying that instructions and intentions can be misunderstood or misconstrued—” he stressed the last word ever so slightly, eyes glittering “—when they aren’t written down. And that I have no intention of asking my men to commit wholesale murder when the only orders I’ve received are verbal ones from someone who’s already had his horse saddled.”
Zhynkyns swelled with fury and his hand clenched at his side. The colonel’s insolence was intolerable. The consequences for him once Zhynkyns reported it would be severe, but that was precious little consolation at the moment.
“You can carry out the order—the Inquisitor General’s order, whether or not you choose to believe that—or you can face the penalty under Army regulations for disobeying a superior’s orders, and then the penalty for defying Mother Church’s Inquisition in the midst of a Jihad!”
He felt a stab of satisfaction as Tymahk’s face tightened under the threat. The Punishment would be all but certain for anyone who defied a bishop of the Inquisition at a moment like this one, and it was entirely possible the Inquisitor General and Grand Inquisitor might choose to make an example of the colonel’s family, as well. Tymahk was silent for several seconds, his eyes blazing like molten glass, then he inhaled sharply.
“My Lord, I’m not disobeying a superior’s orders. I’m requesting that they be put into writing, which is my right as an officer in the Army of God. Unless they are, I’m under no obligation to accept their validity, which means I’m under no obligation to obey them.”
Zhynkyns’ jaw clenched, but the colonel’s stony face refused to flinch. The bishop had commanded Camp Dynnys from the day its gates first opened, and he’d sorted out thousands—scores of thousands—of heretics and sent them to the Punishment over the last year and a half. He’d been infuriated enough when his own inquisitors started finding excuses to slow the processing of the camp’s inmates after the Sarkyn fiasco and—especially—after that disgraceful incident at Camp Chihiro four months ago, and Tymahk’s attitude had only made that worse. The colonel had been transferred to Camp Dynnys the previous autumn, while he was still recovering from the loss of his arm in the Sylmahn Gap fighting, and it was obvious his heart had never truly been in the performance of the Inquisition’s stern duty. He’d obeyed direct orders, but he’d found ways to … mitigate their stringency whenever he thought he could get away with it, even before the godless murderer Mab had started slaughtering Mother Church’s defenders. And now this.
The bishop realized his teeth were grating together and forced his jaw muscles to relax. He had no time to deal with this, not when the heretics’ lead elements were likely to reach Camp Dynnys any time. He expected them no later than tomorrow, and given the number of barges they’d probably captured at Five Forks, they might well be here sooner than that. The last anyone had heard, the garrison at Syairnys, the small town where the Hildermoss River entered Lake Isyk, was still holding and the heretics hadn’t yet come into sight, but that report was a full day old. Besides, the garrison was only a few hundred men strong, drawn from the Camp Dynnys guard force and placed under the command of one of Tymahk’s lieutenants, who was probably as feckless as Tymahk himself!
If the heretics had taken Syairnys, they were less than sixty miles away by water. If they had sailing barges and knew how to use them—and they were Shan-wei-damned Charisians, weren’t they?—they could probably reach Camp Dynnys within another ten or fifteen hours. If they had to come overland, around the eastern edge of Lake Isyk, they’d have twice as far to go, but Zhynkyns had precious little faith in the reliability of the pickets Tymahk had thrown out. They’d probably be too busy taking to their heels to save their own worthless skins the instant the heretics came into sight to even think about sending warning to the camp.
So, yes, the heretics could be arriving at any moment now … and there was their godless, blasphemous decree about the fate of any of Mother Church’s inquisitors who fell into their hands to bear in mind.
He glared at Tymahk, but then he made himself straighten his shoulders and draw a deep, cleansing breath. Very well, if it was the only way to carry out the intentions the Inquisitor General had expressed to him verbally, so be it.
He stalked over to his desk, flung himself into the comfortably padded chair, and snatched a pen from the stand. He scribbled the note quickly, signed it with a flourish, then shoved himself up and stamped around the desk to hand it angrily to Colonel Tymahk.
The colonel looked down at it. It was short and to the point.
To: Colonel Ahgustahn Tymahk—
The inmates of Camp Dynnys must not be allowed to return to the heresies they have embraced. It is the Inquisition’s duty to see to it that they do not, and your duty to assist the Inquisition in all ways necessary. You are therefore ordered and instructed to prevent those inmates from falling into the hands of the heretics’ armed forces by any means necessary, including their execution.
Bishop Maikel Zhynkyns,
Camp Dynnys, commanding.
“There!” he snapped. “I trust that’s clear enough?”
“Yes, My Lord.” Tymahk folded the sheet of paper carefully and put it into his tunic pocket. “It’s perfectly clear. Thank you.”
Zhynkyns’ eyebrows rose at the odd note of … satisfaction in the colonel’s tone. Then his eyes widened in disbelief as the same hand which had put the order into Tymahk’s pocket continued to the double-barreled pistol at his side. The pistol rose, one hammer came back, and Zhynkyns found himself staring into the weapon’s gaping bore.
“What do y—?”
The pistol’s deafening explosion rattled the office windows. It also cut the bishop off in mid-word and flung him back across his desk in a graceless sprawl with a dark, black-edged hole in the center of his forehead.
Tymahk stood looking at him th
rough the thick fog of gunsmoke, pistol still up and extended, then turned as the office door opened behind him. A short, compactly built Army of God captain stepped through it and glanced at the bishop’s body and the grisly crimson and gray pool spreading across the desk blotter from the shattered head.
“He wrote it down, then, Sir?” Captain Lywys Rahmahdyn, Tymahk’s second-in-command, asked calmly.
“Yes, he did.” The colonel patted the pocket containing Zhynkyns’ final order. “I don’t know how much good it will do, but we can always hope the Charisians, at least, will see reason.”
“Hope is a good thing, Sir,” Rahmahdyn agreed. “But truth to tell, I don’t think I could’ve done it anyway.”
“Me either.” Tymahk looked back at the body again for a moment. Then he shrugged. “Go find Father Aizak. Tell him it worked—so far, at least. Then send someone to collect that poisonous snot Cumyngs and make sure no more of the records get burned.”
“Cumyngs won’t like that,” Rahmahdyn observed with a certain satisfaction, and Tymahk smiled thinly.
Zheryld Cumyngs had grown wealthy by extorting money and property from the families of prisoners in Camp Dynnys in return for false promises to smuggle their loved ones out or at least get them better food and medicine while they remained incarcerated. He’d allowed prisoners to write letters home and smuggled them out, too—for a price from the recipients—and he’d kept the official inventories of the property which had been confiscated from prisoners on their arrival at the camp. Those official inventories had been somewhat less than accurate, since they failed to list the property he and his accomplices had diverted to their own use, and Tymahk knew he’d been careless enough to leave evidence of his actions in the camp files. Probably because he’d been confident no one but him would ever see those particular files. Or not, at least, until he’d had ample time to tidy up.