In the still, small hours of the night, when he faced his own soul with bleak honesty, he knew what he most feared in all the world: that if he’d stayed in Siddar City, he would have become the very thing he hated, a man so obsessed with the need for vengeance that he would have attacked any Temple Loyalist he encountered with his bare hands. Not because of anything that Temple Loyalist might actually have done, but simply because he was a Temple Loyalist. But here—here in the Gray Walls—the lines were clear, drawn in blood and the corpses of burned villages by men who branded themselves clearly by their own acts. Here he could identify his enemies by what they did, not simply by what they believed, and tell himself his own actions, the things he did, were more than mere vengeance, that what drove him was more than just an excuse to slake his own searing need for retribution. That he was preventing still more Brahdwyn’s Follies, stopping at least some of the rape and murder. He could loose his inner demons without fearing they would consume the innocent along with the guilty and perhaps—just perhaps—without the man his grandparents had raised destroying himself along with them.
* * *
“Well?” Zhan Fyrmahn growled.
“Looks right, at least,” Samyl Ghadwyn replied. The burly, thick-shouldered mountaineer shrugged. “Plenty of footprints. Counted the marks from at least a half-dozen sets of sleds, too, and nobody took a shot at me. This time, anyway.”
He shrugged again, and Fyrmahn scowled, rubbing his frost-burned cheeks while he stared along the Trace. The trail snaked along its western side, climbing steadily for the next mile or so, and the small Silver Rock River was a solid, gray-green line of merciless ice four hundred feet below his present perch. The river’s ice was no harder than his eyes, though, and no more merciless, as he considered the other man’s report.
Every member of his band was related to him, one way or another—that was the way it was with mountain clans—but Ghadwyn was only a fourth cousin, and there were times Fyrmahn suspected his heart wasn’t fully in God’s work. He didn’t have the fire, the zeal, Mother Church’s sons were supposed to have, and Fyrmahn didn’t care for his habitual, take-it-or-leave-it attitude.
Despite which, he was one of their best scouts, almost as good a tracker as Fyrmahn himself and more patient than most of the others.
“I don’t like it, Zhan,” Mahrak Lohgyn muttered, his voice almost lost in the moan of the wind. “The bastards have to know we’ll be coming for them.”
“You’ve got that right.” Fyrmahn’s cracked and blistered lips drew up in a snarl, and the icy fire in his eyes mirrored the black murder in his heart.
Mahkhom and his heretic-loving cutthroats had stolen the food Fyrmahn’s own family needed to survive the last bitter five-days of winter. Yes, and they’d massacred that food’s entire escort in the process. Not one of the guards had survived, and it was obvious at least seven or eight of them had been taken alive by their enemies only to have their throats cut like animals. What else could anyone expect out of heretics? And what else could anyone expect out of Mahkhoms?
We should’ve killed the lot of them a generation ago! Cowards—cowards and backstabbers, every one of them!
The glare in his eyes turned bleak with bitter satisfaction as he remembered the way Mahkhom’s woman had begged his men to spare her children’s lives even as they ripped away her clothing and dragged her into the barn. The bitch hadn’t even known they were already dead. If only he could have been there to see Mahkhom’s face when he came home to Fyrmahn’s handiwork!
Nits may make lice, he thought coldly, but not when somebody burns them out first. Father Failyx’s right about that!
“They may’ve decided we can’t come after them,” he said after a moment. “Schueler knows they killed enough of us when they stole the food in the first place! If they don’t know about Father Failyx and his men, they may figure they hurt us too badly for us to do anything but crawl off into a hole and die for them.”
Lohgyn’s jaw tightened, and Fyrmahn cursed himself. Lohgyn’s brother Styvyn had been one of the murdered guards, and Father Failyx had said the words over the pitiful, emaciated body of his youngest daughter just before they set out for this attack
“Sorry, Mahrak,” he said gruffly, reaching out to touch his cousin’s shoulder. Lohgyn didn’t respond in words, but Fyrmahn could almost hear the creak of the other man’s jaw muscles. After two or three heartbeats, Lohgyn gave a curt, jerky nod.
“You may be right,” he said, ignoring both the apology and the pain that evoked it. “But it makes me nervous. No offense, Samyl, but somebody should’ve spotted you.”
Ghadwyn only shrugged again. There might have been a little spark down in his eyes at the implication that anyone could have seen him coming, but whatever his other faults, the man was a realist. There were bastards on the other side who were just as skilled at the tracker’s trade as he was … and who knew the penalty for a moment’s carelessness as well as he did, too.
“If they’d seen him, he wouldn’t be standing here now,” Fyrmahn pointed out. “He’d be lying out there somewhere with an arbalest bolt in his chest or a knife in his back.” He bared his teeth in an ugly grimace. “You think any of those bastards would pass up the chance to do for one of us?”
Lohgyn frowned. Fyrmahn had a point, and Wahlys Mahkhom’s men had proven how good they were when it came to killing any of the Faithful who entered their sights. They were no more likely to pass up the opportunity to kill one of Fyrmahn’s men than Fyrmahn’s men were to let one of them live. Yet even so.…
“I just can’t help wondering if they’re trying to be sneaky,” he said finally. “What if they saw Samyl just fine? What if they just want us to think they’ve pulled back to Valley Mount?”
“Set a trap for us, you mean?”
“Something like that.” Lohgyn nodded. “If they’re sitting up there in the hills with those damned arbalests waiting for us, they might just have chosen not to take a shot at Samyl until they could get more of us out in the open.”
It was Fyrmahn’s turn to nod, however grudgingly.
“Might be you’ve got a point. But unless you’re suggesting we just turn tail and crawl back to camp empty-handed, we’ve got it to do if we’re going to find out.”
Lohgyn’s eyes flickered again at the words “empty-handed.” He seemed about to say something sharp, but then he drew a deep breath and shrugged instead.
Fyrmahn turned and glowered up the steeply climbing trail, thinking hard. There was another way to the ruins which had once been Brahdwyn’s Folly without using the Trace, but Khanklyn’s Trail was long and roundabout. It would take them at least three days—more probably four, given the weather conditions and the effect of so many five-days of bad food (and too little of it) upon their stamina—to go that way. If the reports that Mahkhom was retreating to the protection of the larger town of Valley Mount, taking the stolen food with him, were accurate, he’d be three-quarters of the way there, even allowing for the anchor of his surviving women and children, before Fyrmahn’s band could hope to overtake them. Besides, Khanklyn’s Trail was too narrow and tortuous for them to get sleds through. If they were fortunate enough to catch Mahkhom and recover the food, all they’d be able to take back with them would be what they could backpack out. And their lowland allies couldn’t possibly get through it with them, either.
But if Lohgyn’s fears were justified, if it was a trap.…
Well, Father Failyx is right about that, too, he told himself grimly. Sometimes serving God means taking a few chances, and at least any man who dies doing God’s will can be sure of where his soul’s spending eternity.
“All right,” he said. “Mahrak, Lieutenant Tailyr’s about a thousand yards back down the Trace. Send one of your boys down to get him.”
Lohgyn waved to one of his men, who disappeared quickly around one of the twisty trail’s bends, and Fyrmahn turned back to his two cousins.
“This is why Father Failyx sent Tailyr along i
n the first place,” he said grimly, “so here’s how we’re going to do this.”
* * *
“Seems you were right, Sir,” Sailys Trahskhat said, peering through the Charisian-manufactured folding spyglass as he lay in the snow at Raimahn’s side. They’d climbed the knife-backed ridge from the burned-out town’s limited shelter when the first sentry reports came in. “That’s Fyrmahn down there, sure as I’m lying here.”
The younger man nodded. He’d never seen Zhan Fyrmahn before today, but the man had been described to him often enough. That tangled, bright red beard and the patch over his left eye could belong to no one else, and he felt a bright tingle of eagerness dance down his nerves.
Gently, Byrk. Remember what Grandfather always said.
“I think you’re right,” he said out loud, a bit surprised by how calm he sounded. “But my grandfather hunted a pirate or two in his day, you know. And he always told me the worst thing that could happen to somebody who’d set an ambush was to find out the other fellow had known it was an ambush all along.”
“See your point,” Trahskhat replied after a moment, lowering the glass and looking down with his unaided eyes at the black dots on the trail so far below them. “And they aren’t pushing forward the way we’d like, are they?”
“Not as quickly as we’d like, anyway,” Raimahn agreed. “That”—he gestured with his chin at what had to be between sixty and seventy men inching their way up the trail—“looks like an advanced guard. And one that’s better organized than anything Wahlys and his lads’ve seen out of Fyrmahn before. It’s showing better tactics, too, sending out a patrol to clear trail for the rest of it, and that other bunch back there isn’t moving at all. I don’t think it’s going to, either—not until Fyrmahn gets word back from the leaders that the coast is clear. In fact, I think those might be some of those reinforcements we’ve been hearing rumors about. They’re acting a lot more disciplined, anyway. Almost as good as our own boys.”
“Um.” Trahskhat grimaced and rested his chin on his folded forearms. “Not so good, then, is it, Sir?”
“Could be worse.” Raimahn shrugged. “They could’ve decided to send everybody around the long way, instead.”
“There’s that,” Trahskhat acknowledged. “And at least it doesn’t look like the powder’s going to be a complete waste, anyway.”
“No, it isn’t. I wish we had Fyrmahn further up the trail, but we never expected to get all of them. Besides, we need someone to take our message back to our good friend Father Failyx, don’t we?”
“Aye, that we do, Sir.” Trahskhat’s voice was as grimly satisfied as his eyes. “That we do.”
* * *
Zhan Fyrmahn watched the force he’d sent ahead make its cautious way up the trail.
He didn’t much like Lieutenant Zhak Tailyr. The man had all of a typical Lowlander’s contempt for someone like Fyrmahn and his fellow clansmen, and his finicky Border States accent grated on a man’s nerves. Fyrmahn was a loyal son of Mother Church, and he hated the heretical bastards who’d sold themselves to Shan-wei even more than the next man, but whenever he heard that accent, it was hard to forget the generations of mutual antagonism between Siddarmark and the Border States.
Despite that, Fyrmahn had been glad to see him when he arrived. Not because of any fondness he felt for Tailyr himself, but because the lieutenant was part of the three-hundred-man force of volunteers who’d struggled forward from Westmarch to join Father Failyx. It would have been nice if they’d brought more food with them instead of becoming yet more hungry mouths who had to be fed somehow, but they’d complained much less about their short rations than he would have expected of soft, citified Lowlanders, and Tailyr was an experienced officer of the Temple Guard. The sort of drill-field tactics the Guard trained for had little place in the fluid, small-scale warfare of these rugged, heavily forested mountains, but they’d been a visible sign of Mother Church’s support. And they’d offered him a core of disciplined, well-armed infantry.
He’d brought fifty of them along just in case he needed them to break the resistance he’d anticipated at Brahdwyn’s Folly. Now he’d found another use for them, and they moved steadily upward along the trail behind the advanced patrol of twenty more of his clansmen.
Ghadwyn had taken point again, fifty yards in front of his companions. That was close enough they could provide covering fire with their arbalests but far enough ahead to trip any traps before they could close on the entire patrol and the rest of his men. He didn’t like sending them ahead that way, but his mountaineers were obviously better than Tailyr’s Lowlanders at this sort of thing. Someone had to do it, and even if he’d—
CRAAAACCCCCKKKK!
Samyl Ghadwyn never heard the sound that went racketing and echoing about the valley, startling birds and wyverns into the sky with cries of alarm. The big, soft-nosed .48 caliber bullet was a bit smaller than the standard Charisian rifle round, but it slammed into the back of his neck with sufficient energy to half decapitate him. It struck like a mushrooming hammer, from behind and above, hurling his corpse forward to land with one arm dangling over the dizzy drop to the frozen river below.
Fyrmahn jerked at the sharp, ear-splitting blast of sound. He’d been watching Ghadwyn, seen the way his cousin went down, recognized instant death when he saw it, even from this far away, and his head whipped up, eyes wide as they darted about, seeking the shot’s origin. None of his own men were armed with matchlocks, and he’d never fired one of the lowland weapons himself, but he recognized the sound of a shot when he heard one. Yet how could anyone have gotten close enough to score a kill shot like that?! Fyrmahn might never actually have fired one, but he knew the things were notoriously inaccurate. He’d never heard of anyone hitting a man-sized target with one of them at more than a hundred yards or so, especially with that sort of pinpoint accuracy, and no one could have gotten that close to the trail without being spotted, could they? It was ridic—
“Shan-wei!”
He swore savagely as the man who’d fired stood up, skylining himself without a qualm as he began reloading his weapon. He was at least four hundred yards higher up the mountainside above Ghadwyn’s corpse, and he moved unhurriedly, with the arrogant contempt of someone who knew he was far beyond any range at which his enemies could have returned fire.
Fyrmahn was too far away to make out any details, but the other man’s musket seemed too slender—and too long—for any matchlock. Yet it couldn’t be anything else, could it? He’d heard rumors, tall tales, stories about the heretics’ new, long-ranged muskets—“rifles,” they called them—and Father Failyx and Tailyr had admitted there might be some truth to those rumors. But the Schuelerite had promised all of them the heretics couldn’t have many of the new weapons, and any they might possess must all be back in Siddar City! That apostate traitor Stohnar would never have sent any of them off to the backwoods of Glacierheart when he knew he’d need every weapon he could lay hands on come the spring. And even if he’d been willing to send them, surely they couldn’t have gotten here this quickly through the iron heart of winter!
Yet even as he told himself that, he heard another thunderous crack from the snow and boulder fields above the Trace. Smoke spurted from the hidden rifleman’s position, twenty or thirty yards from the first shooter, and the rearmost of Fyrmahn’s clansmen stumbled forward, dropping his arbalest, as the heavy bullet smashed into his shoulder blades. He went down, writhing in the suddenly bloody snow, and then more rifles opened fire. Dozens of them, the sound of their thunder like fists through the thin air, even at this distance. He watched helplessly, teeth grinding in rage, as his entire patrol was massacred. Four of his kinsmen lived long enough to run, but they were easy targets on that narrow, icy trail. One of them got as much as thirty yards back down the path before a bullet found him, as well. None of the others got more than twenty feet.
Fyrmahn swore savagely, his fists clenched at his sides, watching the merely wounded twist in anguish or turn a
nd begin crawling brokenly towards safety. He couldn’t hear the screams from here, and he was glad, but he didn’t have to hear them. He could see their agony … and the bullets those unseen rifles continued to fire, seeking them out one by one until all of them lay as still as Ghadwyn himself.
Tailyr’s detachment had frozen when the rifles opened fire. It was clear they’d been as stunned as Fyrmahn, but they reacted quickly, and they were wise enough to know pikemen and arbalesters had no business charging riflemen along a narrow, slippery ribbon of ice and snow. They turned, instead, moving swiftly back down the trail, and Fyrmahn drew a deep, bitter breath of relief as they turned a bend, putting a solid shoulder of earth and stone between themselves and those accursed rifles.
At least they weren’t going to lose any more of their men, and he made himself a burning, hate-filled promise to repay Mahkhom and his Shan-wei-worshiping bastards with interest for this day’s bloody work. They couldn’t have enough damned rifles to stand off the forces of God for long, and when the day finally came, Zhan Fyrmahn would take the time to teach them the cost of apostasy properly. Until then, though—
The end of the world cut him off in mid-thought.
He stumbled backward, flinging himself to the ground in shocked terror, as the ear-shattering explosion roared. No, not the explosion—it was an entire series of explosions, a chain of them roaring high up on the mountainside above the Trace, and he heard the high, distant screams of Tailyr’s men as they looked up into the maw of destruction.
It was a trap, Fyrmahn thought numbly, watching the entire side of a mountain erupt in red-and-black flowers of flying rock and snow. A long, cacophonous line of them, fifteen hundred yards and more in length. None of the charges were all that large individually, but there were a great many of them and they’d been placed very, very carefully. The sharp, echoing explosions folded together into a single, rolling clap of thunder … and then even the thunder disappeared into a far more terrifying sound as uncountable tons of snow and rock hammered down like Langhorne’s own Rakurai.