Zagyrsk’s eyes narrowed. After a moment, he took off his spectacles and closed his eyes completely, pinching the bridge of his prominent nose as he considered what the intendant had just said very carefully.
“You’re right that it steps considerably beyond your normal sphere, Father,” the archbishop said finally, not yet opening his eyes. “But that doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea. I hate the thought of abandoning villages and farms, some of which have been in their owners’ families for hundreds of years. But our people have been devastated by this past winter. If nothing else, the sight of other faces and the sound of other voices would have to gladden their hearts.”
He lowered his hand, replaced his spectacles, and looked at Aimaiyr intently.
“May I ask how this idea came to you?”
“It’s the Inquisition’s duty to safeguard the minds and souls of God’s children, Your Eminence.” Aimaiyr touched his pectoral scepter. “But our schools and village priests have been as decimated as anyone else, as I’m sure you realize even better than I, and without those teachers, without those priests, Mother Church can’t protect her children against the poisons sweeping in from the outer world. I must confess that my first thought was the conservation and preservation of souls, Your Eminence. It was only after that that it occurred to me it might also preserve lives and help fight off the sense of grief and hopelessness too many of our people must feel at a time like this.”
Zagyrsk nodded again, thoughtfully, his mind still running through the implications of the intendant’s suggestion. It wouldn’t be as simple as Aimaiyr might think. Quite a lot of the stubborn villagers and farmers of Tarikah would resist abandoning all they owned, no matter how firmly Mother Church promised to record their ownership and guarantee their eventual return. And then there was the question of how moving that many people would affect the military movements and chains of supply needed to support the Army of God’s campaign. It was already late to be getting crops into the ground, too. That was going to be a factor as well. They were going to need all the food they could harvest, and that meant they’d have to find out where the land had been planted and move people to those locations, first. But still.…
“I think this idea may have a great deal of promise, Father Ignaz,” he said. “I’m going to have to consider the implications, and if we do it, we’ll have to move quickly on it, before we lose the planting season entirely. But I do think it’s definitely worth considering. Thank you for bringing it to my attention.”
“You’re most welcome, Your Eminence.” Aimaiyr smiled. “If it proves practical and useful, I’ll be delighted. And”—his tone softened—“if it eases your heart in any way, I’ll be even more delighted.”
Zagyrsk’s eyes widened, and he felt a spurt of wonder at the intendant’s admission. But most of all, he felt touched.
“It may be that it will do both, Father,” he said with a smile. “It may do both.”
* * *
Merlin Athrawes stood at his chamber window, gazing down at the busy street outside the Charisian embassy. That street bustled with activity, and a sense of energy and purpose hung over the Republic’s capital, a far cry from the grim, gray fear and despair—even apathy—which had gripped it over the winter. Food continued to flow in from the Charisian Empire, but something close enough to normalcy had returned for that food to be distributed through the vendors and the greengrocers who normally served Siddar City. Free distribution to those who couldn’t afford to buy continued, but the majority of it was actually being purchased now, which had at least eased the hemorrhaging from Baron Ironhill’s accounts, although the war’s ever escalating costs meant the reduction in strain was purely relative. Trade with eastern Siddarmark was beginning to pick up again, as well, although it remained enormously below what it had been with the loss of all the goods which had previously flowed through the Republic to the Border States and the Temple Lands themselves. Even if all of that trade hadn’t been lost, the Republic had been so hammered over the past few months that its internal demand—or, rather, the wherewithal to purchase the goods to satisfy that demand—remained far, far lower than it had been. Still, there was an undeniable air of optimism and hope in the capital’s air.
He wondered if there would have been if any of those bustling people had been able to see what he’d just seen through Owl’s SNARCs.
The reason Zhaspahr Clyntahn had concentrated his Sword of Schueler’s activities so heavily in northwestern Siddarmark was obvious from the most cursory glance at a map of East Haven’s canals. The primary connections between East Haven and West Haven passed through the Border States’ Earldom of Usher, Sardahn, Duchy of Ernhart, and Barony of Charlz into Tarikah. From Tarikah’s Lake City, the route extended south into Westmarch via the Hildermoss and Sair rivers and the Sair-Selkyr Canal, and east, all the way to Siddar City, via the Hildermoss and the Guarnak-Sylmahn Canal. Safehold’s climate meant rivers that far north froze every winter, but when they weren’t frozen, the canals, rivers, and the network of high roads which accompanied them were the arteries that knitted the two Havens together. They were the route along which all those illicit Charisian goods had flowed in defiance of Clyntahn’s will to buyers in the Border States … and the Temple Lands.
That would have been enough to draw the Grand Inquisitor’s ire and attention to it, but for all his megalomania, Clyntahn was smart. Anger and his thirst for vengeance upon anyone who thwarted him in any way might betray him into colossal blunders, but even when he blundered, there was usually a dangerous core of rationality within the blunder. And in fairness to the Grand Inquisitor, little though Merlin liked being fair to him even in the privacy of his own thoughts, quite a few of his errors had stemmed from fundamental changes of which he’d been unaware when he made them. He could hardly be blamed, for example, for failing to realize reconnaissance satellites were spying on the movements of his armies and fleets, and his failure to make allowance for things he didn’t know about didn’t prevent him from planning intelligently where things he did know about were concerned. Nor did what he didn’t know about SNARCs prevent him from making allowance for the merely mortal spies he assumed were responsible for his enemies’ uncanny anticipation of those armies’ and fleets’ movements.
His emphasis on seizing Tarikah, Westmarch, New Northland, and Mountaincross was a case in point; it had snatched control of the roads and canals leading from the Temple Lands into the heart of the Republic of Siddarmark into his hands. True, some of those canals had been significantly damaged by agents of the Sword of Schueler bent on following their instructions to prevent the shipment of food east, although not even Clyntahn had dreamed of fully setting aside the Book of Langhorne’s injunction to maintain them. The sabotage he’d ordered had been intended to disable them only temporarily, but some of his agents—more enthusiastic than skilled—had exceeded his intentions in several instances. That had inflicted even more suffering on the people of Siddarmark and—far more significantly, as far as Clyntahn was concerned—delayed his own troop movements. The New Northland Canal, for example, still hadn’t been fully returned to service, although the labor gangs the Church had sent to see to its repairs were close to completing their task.
But the canals that were operable—like the eighteen hundred miles of the Holy Langhorne Canal—provided a logistics pipeline all the way from the Temple Lands to Lake City. And that was why Allayn Maigwair had been able to move close to half a million men of the Army of God into Tarikah and Westmarch despite those provinces’ devastated state. With the local Temple Loyalists already in arms against the Republic, the Church had over six hundred thousand armed and organized men on Siddarmarkian soil, which didn’t even count the Dohlaran forces already operating in the South March and the Desnairian forces moving steadily across Silkiah. If those were added to the tally, Maigwair—and Zhaspahr Clyntahn—had over a million men poised to crush the life out Greyghor Stohnar’s Republic. But almost worse, they’d repeated their tactics befor
e the Battle of the Gulf of Tarot.
They lied to their own field commanders to be sure they could lie to us when our “spies” found out about their orders, Merlin thought grimly. We thought they were all coming east, because that’s what Maigwair told them they’d be doing. But Kaitswyrth’s going south out of Westmarch, instead.
The rest of the inner circle had responded to the knowledge that Nahrmahn Baytz wasn’t actually dead—or no deader than Nimue Alban, at any rate—with far less incredulity (and far more joy) than Merlin had allowed himself to hope. The outpouring of happiness was ample indication of how much they’d all come to care for the rotund little Emeraldian, yet from a purely pragmatic perspective, the discovery that they not only had their best analyst back, but that he and the now fully self-aware Owl could actually spend the equivalent of five-days or even months considering intelligence data yet get back to them within no more than ten or fifteen minutes, was an even greater godsend. Yet even Nahrmahn and Owl, with all the advantages the SNARCs bestowed, had given them less than a five-day’s warning, specifically because they’d been able to read every word of Bishop Militant Cahnyr Kaitswyrth’s original orders.
But those orders had been changed with breathtaking suddenness, and the canal system—and the Church’s wartime administration of it—meant Kaitswyrth had been able to shift his planned line of march and still make his originally scheduled departure date. Now the entire Army of God was in motion, half of it in a totally unexpected direction … and all of it moving at a terrifying rate of speed.
No, he thought, looking down at the people scurrying along the street below him. No, if they knew what he knew, optimism would be a scarce commodity in Siddar City.
.IV.
Fort Sheldyn, The South March, Republic of Siddarmark
“Shit.”
As a reaction to a scout’s report, it left a little to be desired, Colonel Phylyp Mahldyn reflected, but it did sum up the situation well. And it seemed so damned unfair.
He sat for a long, still moment, eyes focused on something only he could see, as he digested the news. Lieutenant Zherald Ahtkyn stood waiting patiently, his prematurely aged face worried.
But not worried enough, Mahldyn thought grimly. The boy thinks I’m going to produce another miracle, but it would take an archangel to get us out of this one.
He winced inwardly at his own thought. It was hard sometimes, even for him, not to wonder if the fiery sermons of the “Sword of Scheuler’s” Schuelerite priests—and the even more inflammatory rhetoric of the rabble-rousing lay preachers—might not be right about the calamities to be visited upon the Republic if it failed to throw off its heretical leadership. There were times he’d actually wanted to believe that, wanted to absolve himself of the thankless task of somehow holding the Republic’s authority together. The thought of abandoning the struggle, and of knowing it was what God wanted him to do, was almost more seductive than he could stand at times. Unfortunately, he was a man who took his duty and his sworn oath seriously, and he’d seen the measure of the men who called themselves “God’s warriors” in the destruction of the small towns which had once been strung along the St. Alyk and the Seridahn. Cheraltyn, Traigair, Evyrtyn … he was sick unto death of all the evidence of “God’s warriors’” holiness.
The South March population had never been dense. The entire vast province had boasted barely a third of the inhabitants of Old Province, alone. Even now, much of the land between the Branath and Shingle Mountains and the Dohlaran frontier had yet to be prepared for human occupation as the Book of Sondheim and Book of Truscott required, although the unconsecrated areas had been shrinking steadily before the current madness. Except for the Sheryl-Seridahn Canal, there’d been little to attract human settlement inland from the Gulf of Mathyas, anyway, until the Desnairians had invaded Shiloh—then the Republic’s frontier province—the better part of two centuries ago. That had touched off the succession of bitter wars with the Desnairian Empire which had been brought to a close only by the Church’s creation of the Grand Duchy of Silkiah as a buffer zone.
The Dohlarans had been wise enough to stay out of that conflict, although they seemed to be making up for it now. But the fighting between the Republic and Desnair had discouraged settlement in the area until it finally guttered out. More and more Siddarmarkians had been pouring into the South March since the Church had imposed peace, yet even today there were—or had been—no true cities and few towns. The South March had been a place of villages and peaceful, isolated farms, trying to forget the bloodshed which had swept across this very ground. Its citizens had been far more concerned with Sondheim’s Law and Truscott’s Law than with tensions within the Church or worries over the long-quiescent border. They’d traded across the Dohlaran frontier into Reskar and Thorast, intermarried with Dohlaran and Silkiahan families, and done their best to raise their own families in accordance with the Writ.
And then the world had gone mad, and not even the peaceful, sleepy South March had been spared.
Mahldyn’s jaw clenched as he remembered the stomach-churning ruins of Cheraltyn and the mutilated bodies not just of fellow soldiers but of two-thirds of the town’s civilians, as well. That had been the worst, he thought. But only because it had also been the first—his first. Because it was where he’d inherited responsibility for the entire area, and because it had been the army’s job to protect the citizens of Cheraltyn, and they’d failed.
I couldn’t have stopped it even if I’d been in command and known it was coming, he thought dismally. And it wasn’t Colonel Suwail’s fault, either. We were both too busy dealing with the mutineers in our own commands, trying to figure out what the hell was going on and who we were supposed to be taking orders from to think about ambushes. And that was before the winter … and before the semaphore stations went down. No wonder it’s gotten only worse since!
He’d lost over half his own 110th Regiment in the mutiny’s savage internal fighting. A third of his casualties had been among the troopers who’d stayed loyal to their oaths, another ten percent had been simple desertions … and the rest had been killed by their loyal comrades in arms in the fighting. At that, he’d been more fortunate than a lot of officers. His current regiment was at almost full strength, all of them regulars, although it had been patched together from the remnants of three pre-revolt regiments, including the survivors of Suwail’s 93rd Pikes. Between the 110th, Colonel Vyktyr Mahzyngail’s 14th South March Militia, and the Provisional Company he’d formed out of various odds and sods, he actually had a bit more than two regiments’ paper strength, but he was over strength in pikes and badly under strength in arbalesters … and he had less than a hundred musketeers, all of them with matchlock smoothbores.
That wasn’t much in the face of so much madness.
What happened? he wondered for no more than the ten-thousandth time. How could people who were neighbors, friends—family—turn on each other this way? Where did all the hatred come from?
Perhaps he should be asking other questions. Like why he himself and the men who’d somehow hung together under his command hadn’t renounced their oaths to the Republic when the Grand Inquisitor proclaimed the Lord Protector’s excommunication? Like what stubborn, stupid, idealistic concept of duty had kept him and his men on their feet, in uniform, trying to protect the civilians around them from those following the proclaimed orders of God’s own priests?
He couldn’t answer those questions, either, but whatever the answers might have been, they weren’t going to matter much longer.
“All right,” he said finally, his eyes refocusing on young Ahtkyn’s hunger-gaunt face. “It would’ve been nice to have a little more warning, but what we have is what we have. Pass the word to Colonel Mahzyngail and Major Fairstock. I want everyone we’ve got ready to march within thirty minutes. Tell Colonel Mahzyngail that if that’s not enough time to set all the charges, we’ll just have to leave them.” He smiled thinly. “I don’t suppose letting them have the shell’s g
oing to make all that much difference in the end.”
“Yes, Sir!” Lieutenant Ahtkyn slapped his chest and turned to hurry from the office.
Mahldyn sat looking around it for a few more moments. Then he sighed, climbed out of his chair, and took his breastplate from the armor tree.
At least we got Syrk and the settlements between here and St.Alyk’s evacuated … mostly. There shouldn’t be too many refugees to slow us down. That’s something.
He started buckling the breastplate’s straps and wondered if he’d be alive to unbuckle them that evening.
.V.
Near Evyrtyn, The South March, Republic of Siddarmark
The cadence of steadily marching boots pounded the morning quiet as the column slogged through the burned-out ruins of the town of Evyrtyn. A few three-quarters-starved dogs and a feral-looking cat lizard crept through the shells of houses, watching the intruders warily, as if they recognized invaders when they saw them. Or perhaps they’d realized that it didn’t take foreign invaders to burn a town and slaughter its inhabitants, Sir Fahstyr Rychtyr thought glumly. It was his army, but he wasn’t immune to the dreariness of the desolation stretching out around the damaged Evyrtyn locks. The damage to those locks was less severe than he’d feared—the pumps had been broken up, but the locks themselves were intact; they could be fixed fairly rapidly now that they were here—but it was the reason he’d had to march overland for the last two hundred and fifty miles, instead of using the Sheryl-Seridahn Canal. His engineers would have them back in service within the five-day, but until then feet, hooves, and wheels remained the only things that were going to move his command and all the supplies upon which it depended.