Byrgair regarded the Siddarmarkian for a moment, then inhaled deeply. He crossed to where Bhlakyt knelt beside a wounded pikeman and touched the priest’s shoulder.
“Colonel?” Bhlakyt looked up quickly. “What is it? Are you wounded?”
Byrgair looked down at him for a long, still moment. Then he shook his head.
“No, Father,” he said quietly.
For a moment, Bhlakyt only looked at him. But then he understood what that “no” truly meant. His eyes widened and his face tightened in a Pasqualate’s automatic protest, but Byrgair shook his head again.
“Saving these men will do them no favor, Father,” he said even more quietly, squeezing the priest’s shoulder. “I think it’s time for Pasquale’s Grace.” He held Bhlakyt’s eyes steadily. “For all of them, Father.”
For a moment, he saw a different kind of protest in the healer’s eye. And not, the colonel thought, because Pasquale’s Grace was supposed to be granted only to those a healer could not save. And neither was that protest born because Pasquale’s Grace would deprive the Inquisition of heretics whose only hope of salvation lay in the mortification of their bodies in the Punishment.
No, it was a protest born of the possible consequences for Sir Naythyn Byrgair if the Inquisition discovered he’d ordered it.
But the protest died. The priest bent his head in acknowledgment, rose from where he’d knelt, and gathered the other surgeons and their assistants with a gesture. Byrgair watched them react to the instructions, saw them glance quickly in his own direction, yet none of them protested, and they spread out once more among the Siddarmarkians, the green cassocks of Pasquale moving more slowly and purposefully. He saw some of the dying pikemen looking up at them, saw the gratitude in their eyes as they recognized the consecrated daggers, heard some of those priests murmuring the last rites of Mother Church, which were denied by law to any excommunicate or servant of excommunicates. And he saw dozens of those dying men signing Langhorne’s Scepter before razor-edged steel set them free.
He turned away, unable to watch, wondering if he would, indeed, face the consequences of his decision. At the moment, he almost didn’t care. He was no martyr, cherished no death wish, but those men had suffered and bled at his orders, and they had, by God, been men! They would die like men, not screaming under the Punishment to please the hollow shells of other men as filled with hate as Wylfryd Navyz.
The day might come when Sir Naythyn Byrgair would be just as filled with hate, just as eager to see the heretic and servant of heretics pay the full price for his crimes against man and God. But that day was not yet, and that place was not here, and he hoped that when it was his own turn to face the archangels, they would remember this day and set it to his credit.
* * *
Thirty minutes later, and two miles to the south, Colonel Vyktyr Mahzyngail’s 14th South March Militia emerged from the woods which choked and clogged the high road … directly into the deployed and waiting guns of Captain Marshyl Syrahlla.
.VII.
Malphyra Bay, Raven’s Land
“Well, that’s a sight for sore eyes,” Ahlyn Symkyn said, watching the long line of Charisian galleons beat into Malphyra Bay.
“Yes, Sir,” the young man standing a respectful half pace behind him and to his right on the waterfront replied. It wasn’t the sort of automatic, polite agreement one might have expected out of a general officer’s youthful aide. Instead, it carried a certain note of heartfelt agreement, Symkyn thought.
“Feet tired, Bynzhamyn?” he inquired without taking his eyes from those tan and gray, weathered sails.
“Not so much my feet as another portion of my anatomy, Sir,” Captain Wytykair replied in a serious tone. “While I’m fully appreciative of the fact that I didn’t have to walk the whole way, I have to admit that the thought of sitting down for a while on something that doesn’t move under me has a certain appeal.”
“Ever been to sea before?”
“Well, no, Sir. Actually I haven’t.”
“I see. Well, in that case I hope you’ve brought along a supply of golden berry.”
The general didn’t have to glance at his aide to picture the golden-haired young man’s suddenly worried expression. Golden berry was a sovereign specific for nausea, motion sickness … and seasickness.
“Do you expect a very rough crossing, Sir?” Wytykair asked after a moment, and the general shaded his eyes with one hand, studying the galleons even more attentively.
“This time of year? Crossing the Passage of Storms and the Markovian Sea?” He shook his head, voice grim. “Half the lads’ll be puking their guts up by the time we’re five leagues from shore.”
“I see.”
Symkyn’s lips twitched at the youthful captain’s tone. He was very fond of young Wytykair, despite the fact that the captain was considerably better born than Symkyn himself. Like many of the old Royal Chisholmian Army’s senior officers, Symkyn had come up through the ranks, earning his general’s golden-sword collar insignia the hard way. In the course of a quarter century’s service, he’d dealt with more nobly bred young snots that he could count, and Wytykair was vastly different from any of them. But the youngster also didn’t have quite as much worldly experience as he might wish people to believe, and there were times.…
“I think they’ll be ready for us to begin boarding the men first thing in the morning,” he continued in a more serious tone. “I hope so, anyway. I hate to think of His Grace stuck in the middle of Siddarmark with only three brigades.”
“He’ll kick their arse, Sir,” Wytykair said, and this time the assurance in his voice was the product of the hard experience of two solid years worth of training and drill.
And the boy had a point, Symkyn told himself. No one else in the entire world understood the new weaponry the way the Imperial Charisian Army did. Not only had the Royal Chisholmian Army which had shaped it already been a professional, standing force with a pre-existing tradition of critical thinking, but it had profited significantly from General Green Valley’s experience.
There’d been a time when Symkyn would have pooh-poohed the possibility that a Marine might have anything to teach professional soldiers. Marines, after all, were basically brawlers—even Charisian Marines. Oh, for the purposes for which they’d been raised and required in naval service, Charisian Marines had been superb, beyond compare. But for a sustained campaign on land? For managing the logistics of an entire army? Organizing supply trains? Coordinating cavalry and infantry? Recognizing the reason for field formations and how to combine arbalest fire, pikes, and swords to lend one another their strengths and offset one another’s weaknesses? That wasn’t what Marines understood.
Kynt Clareyk had forced Symkyn to reconsider that view. He’d had a few lessons of his own still to learn, and he’d worked hard to master everything officers like Symkyn could teach him, without the least sign that he resented their tutorship. But he’d had far more to teach them, and his ability to conceptualize what the new firearms and artillery really represented had been nothing short of breathtaking. Under Duke Eastshare’s firm leadership and Baron Green Valley’s ability to describe the most radical concepts clearly and concisely, the Imperial Charisian Army had evolved a tactical doctrine such as the world had never imagined. And it was a doctrine that went right on growing and changing. That was something Green Valley and the other Charisian Marines who’d accompanied him had shared with the Chisholmian core of the army: the understanding that there was always a way even the best of doctrines could be improved upon.
The new breech-loading “Mahndrayns,” for example. Symkyn had yet to get his hands on one of them personally, but a few thousand had made their way to Chisholm before the Expeditionary Force set out through Raven’s Land. Even before the first of them had arrived, however, just from descriptions of them, Green Valley had recognized how radically a breech-loading capability was going to change even the tactics he’d formulated as recently as last year. And so the arm
y had found yet another way to tweak itself, and that was why young Wytykair was right about what was going to happen to any mainlander army that ran into the ICA in anything like equal numbers.
But that’s the problem, isn’t it? Symkyn thought more grimly. We’re not going to be running into them in anything like “equal numbers” … not for a long time, at any rate. And they’ve got rifles and new-model artillery of their own. That’s going to make them a hell of a lot more dangerous, even if they haven’t figured things out as well as our Old Charisian wizard has.
“I’m sure the Duke can look after himself, Bynzhamyn,” the general said after a moment. “It never hurts to have somebody watching your back, though.”
“No, Sir. It doesn’t,” Wytykair agreed.
“And on that note,” Symkyn turned his back on the harbor and looked at his aide, “I’ve got some errands for you. First, find Colonel Khlunai. Tell him to get the rest of the staff busy. I want the first troops ready to go aboard ship as soon as there’s enough daylight for them to see where they’re putting their feet. And we’re going to have to get a hard count on the galleons available as horse and dragon transports, too. I doubt we’re going to be able to pack as many of them aboard as I’d like, but we can’t even start thinking about that till we know how much space we’ve got. So, after you’ve found Colonel Khlunai, go find the harbor master. Tell him—”
.VIII.
Fort Darymahn and Sandfish Bay, The South March, Republic of Siddarmark
“Shit!”
Private Paitryk Zohannsyn, recently of the militia of the Republic of Siddarmark and currently in the service of Mother Church, pressed his cheek even more firmly against the inner slope of the earthwork. He tried very hard, but it was impossible to get any closer to it. His buttons and belt buckle were in the way.
Fresh thunder rumbled in a long, slow crescendo out on the Taigyn River estuary’s dark water, flashing in boiling light and smoke above the river’s surface, and glowing streaks drew lines across the night, reflecting in the mirror-like water as they flashed towards the entrenchments around Fort Darymahn. They arced high, then descended with a terrifying, warbling whistle before they exploded.
Some of the incoming shells hit the ground and rolled and bounced, sputtering and spitting flame, trailing the stink of brimstone, before they erupted in bursts of Shan-wei’s own fury. They shattered into what seemed like thousands of jagged-edged fragments that went scything out in all directions. Most of those fragments thudded into the earth or went whining off the fort’s stonework, but some of them didn’t, and Zohannsyn heard fresh screams as they found targets. Other shells seemed to drive into the earth, burying themselves deep before they exploded like hellish volcanoes. And other streaks of light—the ones that didn’t hit the ground—were worse. Far worse. Their fragments scattered over a much wider area, slicing down from directly overhead where earthworks and walls offered no protection. And some of them seemed to rain down much smaller, much more numerous projectiles—as if some fiend had packed them with musket balls as well as gunpowder.
“Keep your heads down!” Corporal Stahnyzlahs Maigwair was shouting, his normally powerful voice sounding frail and a little shrill to ears stunned by the bombardment. “Keep your heads down!”
“It’s Shan-wei!” another voice screamed. “They’ve brought Shan-wei herself to take our souls!”
“Stow that!” Maigwair snapped. “It’s not Shan-wei, Parkair! And even if it were, what we’d need now is prayers, not panic!”
Sure it is, Zohannsyn thought, digging his fingers into the earthen slope. He was as religious and as dutiful a son of Mother Church as the next man, or he wouldn’t have been here, but somehow he didn’t think prayers were going to do a lot of good at the moment. If they were, those bastards wouldn’t be here in the first place.
Another slow, methodical broadside rumbled out of the night. This time there were at least twice as many guns in it, and the streaks of light came in a flatter trajectory, without the high, looping flight of the ones before them. Zohannsyn heard them slamming into the face of the earthwork like some giant’s angry fists. For a moment, nothing else happened, and then the earth itself quivered and twitched as, one by one, those flaming projectiles exploded. He wondered fearfully how many of them it would take to tear the thick wall of earth apart? To let the following thunderbolts right in among the frail men sheltering behind them?
Another plunging rain of fire whistled and wailed down out of the heavens, exploding viciously on the ground or in midair, and he heard fresh screams.
Please, Langhorne! he prayed. Help us! We’re your champions—don’t let the heretics just massacre us this way!
His only answer was another bellowing broadside.
* * *
“How are they doing this?!” General Erayk Tympyltyn demanded, looking around the ashen faces gathered in the fort’s great keep.
So far, that massive structure’s five-foot-thick walls of solid stone seemed to be resisting the heretics’ bombardment. Half the fort’s buildings were heavily on fire, however, and none of the eyes looking back at him seemed confident the keep’s immunity would last much longer. He saw their fear—he could almost smell it—and he knew they could see exactly the same thing when they looked at him.
“It’s Shan-wei’s doing,” one of his officers said flatly. “They’re heretics, demon-worshipers! Why shouldn’t she help them?!”
“Don’t be any stupider than you have to!” Colonel Ahdymsyn, Tympyltyn’s second in command snapped, glaring at the speaker. “This is the same weapon they used at Iythria last year—that’s all! And you know as well as I do what the Grand Inquisitor had to say about that!”
“He only said Mother Church could duplicate the effect,” Major Kolyn Hamptyn responded stubbornly. “That Mother Church could figure out a way to make ammunition that would do the same thing—not that they did it the same way!”
“That’s enough, both of you!” Tympyltyn barked.
Like himself, both of them had been militia officers prior to the Rising. None of the regular officers in Fort Darymahn’s garrison who might have come over to Mother Church had survived, and Tympyltyn—only a colonel the year before—had found himself in command. His current rank was purely self-bestowed, although he had hopes it would be confirmed once Mother Church’s regular forces relieved the fort, and he’d promoted Hamptyn from captain to major, as well. At the moment, he found himself wondering if that had been such a good idea after all.
Tympyltyn was as devout as a man could be, as his willingness to stand up for God and the archangels demonstrated, but Hamptyn’s devotion sometimes substituted for thought. Ahdymsyn, on the other hand, seemed less devout and more … pragmatic than Tympyltyn could have preferred, and he and the major had come into conflict more than once before this. At the moment, however, the colonel’s explanation was far more helpful than Hamptyn’s.
“Whether it’s Shan-wei doing this for them, or whether it’s exactly the same kind of ammunition Mother Church’s working on, what matters is that they’re bombarding us,” Tympyltyn grated, glaring around the table. “At this moment, that’s the only thing I’m interested in! Is that understood?”
Heads nodded, and he allowed his expression to relent slightly.
“How bad is it, really?” he asked, the question punctuated by fresh peals of thunder while the midair explosions stabbed light through the arrow slits like lightning.
“We’re losing a lot of men,” Ahdymsyn replied, his tone flat. “We didn’t provide them with enough overhead cover, and some of it’s not heavy enough, anyway.”
Tympyltyn jerked a nod at the colonel. Executive officer or not, he didn’t much care for Tahlyvyr Ahdymsyn. But it was Ahdymsyn who’d suggested on the basis of reports about Iythria that it might be a good idea to bury Fort Darymahn’s magazines under an additional layer of earth and stone. He’d also overseen the construction of shelters to offer whatever protection they could from exploding ca
nnonballs that might come plunging out of the sky.
Tympyltyn himself had never so much as seen a cannon fired before he’d led the assault that stormed Fort Darymahn and slaughtered the mutiny-depleted garrison. He’d seen them fired in practice since then, but the guns on the fort’s walls were the old-fashioned, massive, wheelless version, not the new-model weapons about which they’d all heard such tall tales. He’d thought Ahdymsyn was panicking unduly, but he hadn’t argued. If nothing else, it had given the men something to do to help take their minds off of the short rations all of them had been on.
“A lot of barracks and storehouses are on fire, and I know their fire’s dismounted at least some of our parapet guns, Sir,” Ahdymsyn continued, remembering to add the military honorific this time. “I don’t know how many—not yet. I think—”
He paused as a fresh cascade of explosions drowned his voice.
“I think they’re actually doing more damage to personnel than to the fort itself,” he continued after the thunder eased. “Enough of this is going to flatten everything inside the fort—except for the keep itself and the walls, I think—but it’ll take them a long time to manage that, and I don’t think their fire’s really having that much effect on the entrenchments. Dirt does a pretty good job of absorbing explosions. Unfortunately, at the rate they’re killing our men, that may not matter in the long run. Sir.”
Tympyltyn glared at him, less for the afterthought of that “sir” than for the bitter taste of his conclusion, but nothing he’d seen or heard suggested Ahdymsyn was wrong.
“Whether it’s Shan-wei or not, Sir,” Hamptyn said, “they wouldn’t be here just to bombard us. We’re a hundred and fifty miles inland, and the semaphore stations told us how many galleons they’ve brought up the river with them. They’re going to pound us until there’s nothing left but rubble, or else until they kill enough of us they can send their Shan-wei-damned Marines ashore to kill the rest of us by hand.” The major looked around the table. “They’re trying to open the river, Sir. That has to be what this is about.”