Page 28 of By Schism Rent Asunder

  "Interestingly enough"—the archbishop's eyes drilled into Merlin's once more—"the confessors of six of the last eight kings of Charis have all been Brothers of Saint Zherneau, as well."

  Had Merlin still been a creature of flesh and blood, he would have in­haled a deep breath of surprise and speculation. But he wasn't, of course, and so he simply tilted his head to one side.

  "That sounds like a remarkable . . . coincidence, Your Eminence," he observed.

  "Yes, it does, doesn't it?" Staynair smiled at him, then glanced at the abbot. "I told you he was quick, didn't I, Zhon?"

  "So you did," Byrkyt agreed, and smiled somewhat more broadly than his ecclesiastic superior. "As a matter of fact, he rather reminds me of another young man I once knew, although he seems rather less . . . rebellious."

  "Really? And who might that have been?"

  "Fishing for compliments is a most unbecoming trait in an archbishop," Byrkyt replied serenely, but his sharp brown eyes had never wavered from Merlin's face. Now he turned to face him fully.

  "What Maikel is getting at, in his somewhat indirect fashion, Seijin Merlin, is that the Brethren of Saint Zherneau haven't, as I'm sure you've already guessed, produced that many confessors for that many monarchs by accident."

  "I'm sure they haven't. The question in my mind, Father, is exactly why they've done it, and how, and why you and the Archbishop should choose to make me aware of it."

  "The question?" Byrkyt said. "By my count, that's at least three questions, Seijin." He chuckled. "Well, no matter. I'll answer the last one first, if you don't mind."

  "I don't mind at all," Merlin said, although, to be honest, he wasn't ab­solutely certain that was the truth.

  "The reason Maikel decided to bring you here to meet me today, Seijin, has to do with a letter he received from King Haarahld. It was written shortly before the King's death, and it dealt primarily with his underlying strategy for keeping Duke Black Water's fleet in play until Cayleb—and you, of course—could return from Armageddon Reef to deal with it. In fact," if Staynair's eyes had bored into Merlin like drills, Byrkyt's were diamond-cutting lasers, "it had to do with how he knew how long he had to keep Black Water occupied."

  Merlin found himself sitting very, very still. He'd never explained to ei­ther Cayleb or Haarahld exactly how he'd physically traveled four thousand miles in less than two hours to carry the warning about Black Water's new strategy to Haarahld. He'd been astounded and immensely relieved, to say the very least, by how calmly Haarahld had taken his "miraculous" appearance on the stern gallery of the king's flagship in the middle of the night, but in all hon­esty, he'd been so focused on the immediate threat that he hadn't really tried to nail down why the king had reacted with so little outward consternation.

  And he'd never suspected for a moment that Haarahld might have told anyone else, even his confessor, about it.

  Silence lingered in the quiet office-library. In an odd sort of way, it was almost as if Staynair and Byrkyt were the PICAs, sitting silently, waiting with absolute patience while Merlin tried to absorb the implications of what Byrkyt had just said . . . and think of some way to respond.

  "Father," he said finally, "Your Eminence, I don't know exactly what King Haarahld may have written to you. I can only assume, however, that whatever it was, it was not to denounce me as some sort of demon."

  "Hardly that, Merlin." Staynair's voice was gentle, almost comforting, and as Merlin watched, he smiled as if in fond memory. "He was excited, actu­ally. There was always that piece of a little boy down inside him, that sense of wonder. Oh," the archbishop waved one hand, "he wasn't totally immune to the possibility that he was making a mistake in trusting you. That you might actually turn out to be a 'demon.' After all, we're speaking here of matters of faith, where reason is but one support, and that sometimes a frail one. Still, Merlin, there comes a time when any child of God must gather up in his hands all that he is, all that he can ever hope to be, and commit it. After all the thought, all the prayer, all the meditation, that moment of decision comes to all of us. Some never find the courage to meet it. They look away, try to ig­nore it or simply pretend it never came to them. Others turn away, take refuge in what others have taught them, what others have commanded them to think and believe, rather than making the choice, accepting the test, for themselves. "But Haarahld was never a coward. When the moment came, he recog­nized it, and he met it, and he chose to place his trust in you. He wrote me about that decision, and he said"—Staynair's eyes went slightly out of focus as he recited from memory—" 'He may be a demon, after all, Maikel. I don't think so, but as we all know, I've been wrong a few times in my life. Quite a few, actually. But either way, the time has finally come. I won't fail the trust God has placed in all of us by refusing the choice. And so, I've placed my own life, my son's life, the lives of my other children, my people, and yours—and all the souls that go with them—in his hands. If I'm wrong to do so, then surely I will pay a terrible price after this life. But I'm not. And if it should happen that God chooses for me never to return home, know this. I accept His decision, and I pass to you and to my son the completion of the task I agreed to undertake so long ago.' "

  The archbishop fell silent once more. Merlin felt the dead king's words echoing within him. It was as if he and Haarahld stood together on that stern-walk once again, and his PICA eyes burned as they faithfully mimicked the autonomous responses of their original human models.

  "What task, Your Eminence?" he asked softly.

  "The task of teaching his people, and all of Safehold, the truth," Staynair said. "The truth about God, about the Church, about our world and all the work of God's hands. The truth that the Church has spent so many centuries systematically suppressing and choking out of existence."

  "The truth?" Merlin stared at the archbishop. Even now, even after hear­ing Haarahld's words literally from beyond the grave, he had never expected to hear anything like that, and his thoughts spun like a man dancing on ice while he fought for balance. "What truth?"

  "This one," Byrkyt said quietly. "It begins, 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are . . . '"

  .V.

  Marine Training Ground,

  Helen Island,

  Kingdom of Charis

  Golden-tongued bugles sounded, and the five hundred men in the dark blue tunics and light blue breeches of the Royal Charisian Marines re­sponded almost instantly. The compact battalion column split smoothly into its five component companies, each of which marched rapidly outward from the original column, then wheeled and formed neatly into a three-deep line.

  Orders rang out from bull-throated sergeants, rifle slings came off shoul­ders, cartridge boxes opened, and ramrods flashed in the sunlight. Barely five minutes after the first bugle call, the early afternoon came apart in flame and smoke as the battalion fired its first volley at the targets set up a hundred and fifty yards from its position. A second volley roared fifteen seconds later, and a third fifteen seconds after that. No non-Charisian musketeers in the World could have come remotely close to matching that rate of fire. A matchlock musket did extraordinarily well to fire one shot in a minute, far less the four rounds a minute the Marines were managing.

  And they weren't firing as rapidly as they could have. This was controlled, aimed volley fire, not maximum rate.

  A total of six volleys cracked like thunder in just over seventy-five seconds, and the row of targets literally blew apart under the impact of three thousand half-inch rifle bullets. Very few of those bullets missed, and that too, was something no other musketeers in the world could have matched.

  While the battalion was forming up and delivering its volleys, the four pieces of artillery which had been rolling along behind it on the newly de­signed two-wheel carriages and limbers had come up behind the firing line Earl Lock Island noticed from where he stood on his hilltop observation p
ost with Brigadier Clareyk. The six-legged hill dragons harnessed to the limbers clearly didn't care much for the sounds of massed rifle fire, but equally clearly they'd grown more or less accustomed to it. However much they might dis­like it, the big beasts—they were smaller than their jungle dragon counter­parts, or even the carnivorous great dragons, but they were still the size of an Old Earth elephant—were remarkably steady as their drovers turned them to face back the way they'd come while the gun crews unlimbered.

  The guns were the new twelve-pounder field guns, not the much heavier siege artillery the earl had seen demonstrated several five-days ago. He hadn't yet seen the twelve-pounders in action, and as he reached down to rub the soft ears of the massive black-and-tan Rottweiler sitting alertly upright beside him, he watched with intense interest while the company forming the center of the Marine firing line marched briskly aside. The line opened smoothly, and the guns were wheeled up into position.

  The gunners weren't loading with round shot; they were loading with can­ister, and Lock Island winced at what he knew was coming. He hadn't actually seen "canister" used yet, but he'd had it described to him. Instead of the nine to twelve small projectiles customary for a stand of grapeshot in naval service, the canister rounds were thin-walled cylinders, each packed with twenty-seven inch-and-a-half shot. The tubes were designed to burst apart on firing, releasing their burdens of shot and turning the cannon into the world's largest shotguns. Not only that, but these were what Sir Ahlfryd Hyndryk, Baron Seamount, called "fixed rounds." The powder charge was already attached to the tube of canister, and the entire round could be rammed home with a single thrust.

  With the new ammunition Baron Seamount had designed (with, of course, a little help from Seijin Merlin, Lock Island reminded himself), the artillerists could load and fire with preposterous speed. Indeed, using the fixed rounds, they could load as quickly as the Marine riflemen who'd already shredded the waiting targets. Lock Island knew no one down there was moving as quickly as they possibly could. This was a training exercise—and demonstration—not actual combat. Which meant the officers and noncoms in charge of it weren't about to push their men hard enough to produce unnecessary casualties and injuries.

  And which also meant that the rate of fire being demonstrated was "only" four or five times the rate of fire anyone else could have managed.

  The guns were loaded now, he saw. Gun captains crouched behind them, peering over the simple but effective sights Seamount had devised and wav­ing hand signals to their gun crews while the tubes were carefully aligned. Then they were waving the other gunners back, safely away from the weapons, while they took tension on the firing lanyards. One last look around to be sure everyone was clear, left hands raised in indication of readiness, and then the battery commander barked his order and the artillery bellowed with a flat, hard, concussive voice that dwarfed the sounds of rifle fire.

  Each of the guns spewed its lethal canister downrange in a spreading cloud. Lock Island could see splashes of dirt kicking up where the dispersing patterns "wasted" some of their shot short of the targets. It didn't matter, though. Where the rifle bullets had ripped the wood and canvas targets into tatters, the canister simply flattened them. Well, that wasn't quite fair, Lock Island decided, raising his spyglass and peering through it. The targets hadn't been flattened; they'd simply disintegrated.

  More bugles sounded, and the gunners stepped back from their weapons. The riflemen grounded the butts of their rifles, and whistles blew to signal the end of the fire exercise.

  "That," Lock Island said, turning to the Marine officer standing beside him, "was . . . impressive. Very impressive, Brigadier."

  "Thank you, My Lord," Brigadier Kynt Clareyk replied. "The men have worked hard. And not just because we've made them, either. They're impa­tient to show someone else what they can do, as well."

  Lock Island nodded. He had no doubt at all who "else" Clareyk's men wanted to demonstrate their prowess to. Or, rather, upon.

  "Soon, Brigadier. Soon," the high admiral promised. "You know better than most what the schedule looks like."

  "Yes, My Lord." Clareyk might have looked just a teeny bit embarrassed, but Lock Island wasn't prepared to bet any money on it. And if truth be told, no one had a better right to be impatient than Brigadier Clareyk. After all, he was the one who'd written the training manual for the Royal Charisian Marines' new infantry tactics. And he'd also been Seamount's primary assis­tant in devising the world's first true field artillery tactics and integrating them with the infantry. He'd been a mere major then, not a brigadier; there hadn't been any Charisian brigadiers at the time. In fact, there hadn't been any brigadiers anywhere. The rank was less than six months old, suggested by Seijin Merlin as the Marines' buildup began to hit its stride.

  Lieutenant Layn, Clareyk's second-in-command while he worked out the basic tactics for the new, longer-ranged, and far more accurate rifles, was now a major himself and in charge of the ongoing training program here on Helen Island.

  And, Lock Island thought, looking back at the men of Clareyk's second battalion as they formed smoothly back into column formation, Layn was do­ing just as good a job as Clareyk had.

  "Actually, High Admiral," another voice said, "I think we're probably go­ing to need to consider moving our training operations. Or, perhaps, simply expanding them into other locations."

  Lock Island turned to the short, almost pudgy-looking officer standing on his other side. Baron Seamount had lost the first two fingers of his left hand to an accidental explosion years before, but the mishap hadn't dimmed his passion for loud explosions one bit. Nor had it affected his sharp, incisive intelligence. Some people had been fooled by Seamount's relatively unpre­possessing appearance, but Lock Island knew exactly how capable the brain behind that. . . unimpressive façade really was. And how valuable.

  Although Seamount had been promoted from captain to commodore, Lock Island still felt vaguely guilty. By rights, Seamount should have had his own admiral's command streamer by now, given all he'd done for Charis. And he would have had that streamer, too . . . except for one minor problem. Despite his undeniable brilliance, despite the fact that it was his brain which had devised the basis for the new naval tactics and, with Brigadier Clareyk's able assistance, the new infantry and artillery tactics, as well, Seamount hadn't been to sea in a command capacity in almost twenty years. He'd have been hopelessly out of place actually commanding a fleet, or even a squadron. Besides, he was far too valuable where he was for Lock Island to even con­sider exposing him to enemy fire.

  Fortunately, Seamount—who claimed he could get seasick taking a bath—appeared quite content. He got to play with fascinating new toys, espe­cially over the past couple of years, and he was too busy stretching his brain to worry about whether his sleeve bore the single embroidered kraken of a commodore or the two gold krakens of an admiral.

  "I take it that you're thinking in terms of expansion because we're running out of room here on Helen," the high admiral said now, and Seamount nodded. "Yes, Sir. The real problem is that we don't have a great deal of flat room here on Helen. In some ways, that's good. As the Brigadier here pointed out to me months ago, we can't count on having nice, flat, spacious terrain when we actually have to fight, so it's not going to hurt us a bit to figure out how to fight in cramped terrain. And the security aspect here is very good. Nobody's going to see anything we don't want them to see. But the truth is, with the larger formations, it's hard to find the space to let them practice tactical evolu­tions. Too much of this island is vertical, Sir."

  "That, believe me, is a point of which I'm well—one might almost say painfully well—aware," Lock Island said dryly. "Keelhaul, here," he gave the huge dog's massive head an affectionately gentle cuff, "actually likes coming up here. I suppose he doesn't have sufficient opportunity for exercise at sea."

  Baron Seamount managed not to roll his eyes, although Lock Island sus­pected that the commodore was sorely tempted to do just that. T
he high ad­miral's dog's tendency to race madly up and down the decks of his flagship was legendary. Fortunately, Keelhaul—despite the dubious humor of his name—was as affectionate as he was. . . energetic. Not a minor consideration in a dog which weighed the better part of a hundred and forty pounds. Lock Island put Keelhaul's boisterousness down to his Labrador retriever grand­mother; certain less charitably inclined souls put it down to the high admiral's influence. Wherever it came from, though, Keelhaul actually looked forward to their trips up the mountain. And he was calmer and less worried by the sounds of gunfire than most humans. Certainly it bothered him far less than it did the artillery's draft dragons. Which shouldn't really have been so sur­prising, Lock Island thought, given the amount of gunnery practice he got to listen to whenever they were at sea.

  However Keelhaul felt about it, however, the high admiral's feelings were far more mixed. Fascinating as he always found Seamount's demonstrations, he and horses had not been intimate companions since he first went to sea far too many years ago. Unfortunately, his posterior had made the reacquaintance of both saddles and saddle sores as he trundled up and down the steep, winding road from King's Harbor to the Marines' training ground.

  "The Commodore has a point, My Lord," Clareyk put in respectfully. "About the biggest formation we can really work with here is a battalion. We can squeeze two of them into the available space if we push a little, but we're really cramped when we do that. There's no way we could put both my regi­ments into the field as a single force given the space constraints here."