“I think I’d better be going, Your Majesty,” she told the woman who’d conquered her homeland. “I really do have a lot of thinking to do.”
.III.
North of Jairth, The Sylmahn Gap, Old Province, Republic of Siddarmark
“At least we’re not up to our arse in snow anymore, Sir,” Sergeant Grovair Zhaksyn said philosophically. “That’s something.”
“Can’t argue with that, Grovair,” Major Zhorj Styvynsyn, the commanding officer of Second Company, Thirty-seventh Infantry Regiment, Army of the Republic, agreed.
After the winter just past, there wasn’t much to tell any casual observer which of them was the officer and which the noncom as they lay on the high, stony bench, gazing northwest along the Sylmahn Gap’s long, straight length. Both of them looked sadly tattered and more than a little starved, and their carefully maintained equipment harnesses and breastplates were badly worn.
“I might, however,” Styvynsyn continued, eyes narrowed as he tried to make out details and wished his spyglass hadn’t been broken in the desperate, hand-to-hand fight before the 2nd had been driven out of Terykyr at the end of last month, “observe that water and knee-deep mud aren’t all that much of an improvement. And I’d settle for a howling blizzard if it kept those bastards home.”
Not that blizzards had done a great deal to keep the rebels home, he admitted to himself. In fact, they’d made damned good use of snowfall to get close enough to punch his men out of Terykyr. He still didn’t know what had happened to his pickets, but he suspected frostbite, starvation, and exhaustion had played a significant role.
I just hope the poor bastards were all dead before Baikyr’s butchers got their hands on them, he thought bitterly.
“Can’t kill ’em if they don’t come out where we can get at them, Sir.” Zhaksyn shrugged, his expression much harder than his light tone might have suggested. “And from the way those scouts’re just ambling along down there, I’d say it’s most likely they haven’t figured out we’re up here.”
“Appearances can be deceiving,” Styvynsyn replied.
He peered down into the deep valley for another handful of minutes, then puffed what someone from Old Earth would have called a walrus mustache and pulled a dog-eared notebook from his belt pouch. He sat up, careful to keep his head off the skyline despite the distance to the oncoming enemy scouts, and scribbled a quick but legible note. He ripped out the page and handed it to the private with the red brassard of a runner who’d accompanied Zhaksyn and him up to the rock bench.
“Take this to the heliograph and get it off to the Colonel immediately.”
“Yes, Sir!”
The runner slapped his breastplate, turned away, and went half dashing and half slithering down the steep, muddy trail. Styvynsyn watched him go, then shook his head and looked back at Zhaksyn.
“Ah, to be young and agile.” The gray-haired sergeant snorted, since Styvynsyn was barely out of his twenties himself. “I believe we can follow a little more sedately, in light of your advanced years and my own towering seniority,” Styvynsyn continued.
“As the Major says,” Zhaksyn replied with exquisite courtesy. “I’ll try to make sure my ancient and decrepit bones don’t slow you down too much, Sir.”
“I appreciate that, Sergeant.” The major patted him on the shoulder. “I appreciate that.”
* * *
Colonel Lywys Maiksyn growled as he removed his helmet and mopped his streaming forehead with a handkerchief which had once been white. That had been long ago, unfortunately. Almost as long ago as the days in which his militia uniform had presented a peacetime picture of neatness. Or in which he’d been a simple, reasonably prosperous merchant shipping grain, cattle, apples, slabnuts, and mountain ananas down the Canal to Siddar City. Today, he was neither of those things as he stood on the sodden spit of land leading down into a standing lake of cold water from which the crowns of neat rows of apple trees rose like the gravestones of yet another small, productive farm which had gotten in the Jihad’s way.
Shan-wei take it! he thought resentfully. First we spend the entire winter freezing to death. Now it’s barely May, and it’s like a frigging oven down here!
He shoved the handkerchief back into his pocket with an irritated forcefulness made even worse by the fact that he knew the temperature was actually nothing of the sort. Warm, yes, down on the Gap’s floor, but nothing remotely furnace-like. That, unfortunately, didn’t keep it from feeling hotter than the hinges of hell, after the long, bitterly cold winter, and the insects starting to buzz above the sodden, muddy, flooded going on either side of the Saiknyr High Road’s elevated bed didn’t make him feel one bit better. Snowmelt, beginning to cascade off the lower peaks in earnest, gurgled and rushed through the high road’s drainage culverts, pouring into the Guarnak-Sylmahn Canal. The northernmost tributary of the Sylmahn River, which ran back and forth through those culverts, snaking its way along the eastern face of the Snow Barrens, was filling steadily with water, just like all the creeks and small streams, and the level of the canal was rising dangerously. If those idiots at the far end of the Gap didn’t open the Serabor Locks sometime soon, the entire damned valley was going to flood!
Which is what the bastards want, he thought, admitting the real reason for his irritation. If we let them sit there, they’ll back up the canal—and the damned river—all the way to Terykyr just to make sure nobody can come down the Gap before July. And that’s why Baikyr’s sending us down here, lucky souls that we are.
Maiksyn wasn’t fond of Colonel Pawal Baikyr—a regular who’d brought almost a quarter of his regiment across to the Faithful and who had a far higher opinion of regulars in general than of militiamen—yet he couldn’t argue with the other man’s decision. First, because Baikyr was a regular, which automatically made him senior to a mere militia colonel. Second, because Baikyr had been placed in command by Father Shainsail Edwair, and the Schuelerite upper-priest spoke with the voice of the Grand Inquisitor himself. And third … third, because however big a pain in the arse Baikyr might be, he was also good at his job.
Not to mention being right about what’s going to happen in about another five or six days—maybe seven—if we don’t get our own hands on the Serabor Locks.
Knowing orders made sense didn’t always make them any more pleasant to carry out, however. They hadn’t managed to take Serabor even when their own regiments had been at full strength, and the going had been much easier then. The weather might be better now—at least they weren’t likely to see more men freezing to death—but with his mobility choked by the canal’s high water and the flooding coming to meet it from down-gap, the terrain was even worse. That might not matter if the scouts and Father Shainsail’s spies were right about what the heretics were up to, but that was the point, wasn’t it? There was only one way to find out how accurate those reports actually were, and the 3rd Saiknyr Infantry had been chosen to do the finding out.
One of the regiment’s scouts came trotting back towards him on one of the few gaunt-sided horses who’d managed to survive the winter. Under normal conditions, the nag would probably have been put down five-days ago; under the conditions which actually obtained, it was worth its weight in gold. Or in silver, at least.
“Road’s clear as far as Jairth, Sir. No sign of any of ’em.”
“And off the road?”
“Can’t say ’bout that, Sir.”
The scout was one of Maiksyn’s own militiamen, and any faint patina of military punctilio the 3rd Saiknyrs might once have possessed had disappeared over the winter. But however informal their survivors might have become, they’d also acquired a hard, dangerous competence.
“Water’s spreading right nasty to the west, Sir,” the corporal continued more than a bit gloomily. “Lot of crap’s getting itself caught in the drains.”
That wasn’t much of a surprise. Much of the Gap’s soil tended to be shallow and rocky, unlike the fertile tablelands to the north or the rolling plains
south and east of the mountains. Most of the farms in the Gap itself had been one- or two-family affairs, with a heavy concentration on orchards of apples and mountain ananas as their cash crop. And most of them—like the small towns on either side of the high road—had been thoroughly destroyed during the earlier fighting. The handful of buildings which hadn’t been burned had been abandoned; now the rising floodwaters were washing through the rubble and ruin which had been left behind, and quite a bit of it, inevitably, was being sucked into the culverts, which worried Maiksyn more than he cared to admit. Keeping those culverts clear of natural debris was a major maintenance task every year, and it made him … itchy to fail in the Writ’s charge to do that maintenance. With all the added clutter, the problem was even worse than usual, though, and the Gap had been denuded of the manpower to deal with it. If the drainage waterways plugged solid, they’d transform the high road’s elevated bed into a dam two hundred miles long, turning everything between it and the Snow Barren Mountains into a treacherous lake that might take months to drain. The Sylmahn Gap was already a bottlenecked nightmare for any attacking army; reducing its frontage to just the high road would make it impossible.
But Writ or no Writ, neither of the contending armies was going to provide the manpower even to inspect the culverts properly, far less clear them, when it knew the other side would pounce on its work crews the instant it did. So the only way the Faithful could solve either of their problems was to drive through to Serabor, one way or the other, and the sooner the better.
“Man’s likely to break a leg wading out into that shit,” the scout went on. “Can’t tell how deep it is, neither—not without swimming, leastways, and water’s a mite cold for that.” He shrugged. “Getting almost as bad nor it is to the east, even given how the canal’s backing up. And even if we could get across the water, that’s a steep slope up into the Snow Barrens. Probably couldn’t get up there on my own feet, much less this thing.” He patted the horse’s shoulder with a gentleness which belied his dismissive tone. “Figured if there was anything up there, I’d end up with an arbalest bolt in my belly ’stead of being able to come back and tell you I couldn’t get far enough up to take a look, so I didn’t try.” He shrugged again. “Sergeant’s got the rest of the section keeping their eyes peeled, Sir, but we haven’t seen anything yet.”
“Good enough.” Maiksyn nodded in satisfaction. He’d far rather have a scout who admitted the limits of his knowledge than one who tried to pretend he’d done a more thorough job than he’d actually been able to. “Get back to your sergeant and help him keep those eyes peeled.”
“Aye, I’ll do that thing, Sir.”
The scout slapped the boiled-leather cuirass which served a militiaman in place of a regular’s steel breastplate, wheeled his horse, and headed back down the Gap. Maiksyn watched him go, then turned and beckoned to Major Hahlys Cahrtair, the commanding officer of the 3rd Saiknyrs’ 3rd Company.
Cahrtair was a very ordinary looking man and just as muddy and ragged as anyone else, although like the majority of Maiksyn’s officers he’d managed to get his hands on one of the breastplates no longer required by regulars who’d stayed loyal to the blasphemer Stohnar. Yet Maiksyn disliked the captain, for a lot of reasons. He always had, even before the Sword of Schueler had risen against Stohnar’s apostasy, and nothing since had changed his mind. Behind that inoffensive, even pleasant-looking façade, Cahrtair had a cold, calculating vicious streak. He’d kept it under control during peacetime, although he’d been one of the militia’s least popular officers because of his penchant for “rigorous discipline.” If that discipline had made his company any more efficient than its sister companies, that would have been one thing, but most of his idea of “discipline” had amounted to petty fault-finding and capriciousness.
Still, he hadn’t been any less efficient than most militia officers, and his popularity had increased markedly since the Rising. No doubt that had a lot to do with the nature of the fighting, because Cahrtair was a natural when it came to ruthlessness. That suited the bitterness of a great many of the men who’d rallied to Mother Church, and that sort of man seemed to migrate naturally to officers like Cahrtair. The 3rd Company had picked up more recruits from the … self-motivated scourges of apostasy than any of Maiksyn’s other companies. Probably because his other commanders had found those sorts of recruits almost more of a liability than an asset, given their lack of discipline, training, and equipment. But Cahrtair welcomed them, and they responded with a fierce loyalty to a man who clearly shared so much of their own attitude. As far as Maiksyn could tell, he’d never even tried to take prisoners, and his men had been among the first to begin burning farms and villages. They hadn’t wasted any time letting the owners of those farms and villages flee before firing their roofs over their heads, either, and there’d been ugly rumors about rape and torture.
Given Stohnar’s corrupt alliance with Charis, Maiksyn wasn’t going to waste any misplaced sympathy on anyone who’d chosen to set his allegiance to the lord protector ahead of God’s own Church. But that didn’t mean he approved of freelance torture or turning women and babes out into the snow without so much as a scrap of food. And there was nothing in the Book of Schueler about soldiers of God raping women who might or might not have been heretics, either.
He’d made that point to Cahrtair. Unfortunately, Father Shainsail’s sermons clearly supported the severity the major and those like him advocated. The upper-priest was probably right about the attitude towards heresy Schueler had prescribed—he was God’s priest, and Maiksyn was only a layman of the sort who left doctrinal matters in the hands of the Church, where they belonged—and there wasn’t any proof of the rape and atrocity accusations. As a result, the colonel had been forced to let it pass—that time, at least—which hadn’t done much for the 3rd Saiknyrs’ discipline. Maiksyn found it ironic Baikyr had quietly supported him, not Father Shainsail, in the field regulations he’d issued shortly afterwards. The severe penalties they’d prescribed for proven cases of rape—or, for that matter, the torture and execution of anyone who hadn’t been formally judged before the Inquisition—had at least mitigated the damage in Maiksyn’s other companies. Yet the dislike between him and Cahrtair had grown both deeper and stronger as a consequence, and he was certain Cahrtair and the others like him continued to ignore the threat of Baikyr’s regulations whenever it suited them. They’d grown more cautious about it, and their reports had assumed a certain bland lack of detail, but he knew it was still going on.
Yet however much he might detest the man, he had to admit the same vicious streak which sent women and children to freeze in the heart of winter made Cahrtair a man to fear in battle. If there was a timid bone anywhere in the major’s body, Maiksyn had never seen it. In fact, if he had a fault on the battlefield, it was that he was overly aggressive.
That’s what makes him the perfect man for this job. And if it’s a choice between seeing him or Chermyn get chewed up, I know who I’d pick. In fact—Maiksyn’s lips twitched with an inappropriate temptation to smile as he watched the captain leave the high road and slog across the mud towards him—I already have picked, haven’t I?
“Sir?” Cahrtair even touched his breastplate; Baikyr had made it abundantly clear in a personal interview that he wasn’t tolerating insubordination to any of his regimental commanders out of a mere militia major, even if he was one of Father Shainsail’s favorites.
“The scouts say it’s clear through Jairth,” Maiksyn said briefly. “They weren’t able to scout the flanks properly or get anyone up the slopes, though. Take your company along the road as far as the ruins. If you can get patrols as far forward as Ananasberg, do it, but hold your company at Jairth. I’ll be sending First Company up to join you, and I don’t want you bringing on a fight until we’ve got supports close enough to help out if you need them, especially if they have any of those damned rifles pushed forward.”
“If the road’s clear as far as Jairth, why not keep pushin
g towards Serabor … Sir?” The military courtesy was something of a second thought, Maiksyn noticed. “If they’ve fallen back the way we think they have, the farther down-gap we get before they’re reinforced, the better.”
“Unless I’m mistaken, Major,” Maiksyn said a bit coldly, “we don’t know if they’ve fallen back ‘the way we think they have’ at all. For that matter, Colonel Baikyr specifically reminded us all, I believe, that the reports to that effect are completely unconfirmed. Is my memory at fault?”
“No … Sir,” Cahrtair said after a moment.
“And, if my memory of the map—not to mention of the countless times I’ve made the trip down-canal from Saiknyr—serves me, the terrain south of Jairth would be an excellent spot for an ambush, wouldn’t it?”
He held the overzealous major’s eyes until Cahrtair nodded unwillingly. Then he drew a deep breath and made himself step on his own temper.
“I appreciate your desire to drive the enemy as far south as possible, Major. And if the opportunity presents itself, that’s exactly what we’ll do. But we’ve lost too many good men already. We don’t need any more widows and orphans, and I don’t want your men getting into a crack before the rest of the regiment’s in a position to pull you back out again.”
“I understand, Sir.” Cahrtair’s voice and expression were at least marginally more respectful, and he nodded.
“Good. On your way, then,” Maiksyn said briskly, and watched as 3rd Company moved on down the broad, paved high road.
.IV.
75 Miles North of Serabor, Sylmahn Gap, Mountaincross Province, Republic of Siddarmark
“Well, I wish I could say it was a surprise,” Colonel Wyllys said, looking down at Major Styvynsyn’s note. “At least it doesn’t look like they’re moving in more than regimental strength … assuming Zhorj’s right, anyway.”