It was highly unlikely he would, given the Writ’s injunctions and the importance of the canal system to every aspect of the mainland’s economic life, not to mention how essential it was to the Army of God’s own operations. But it wasn’t remotely impossible that he would, and that made maintaining the element of surprise as long as possible absolutely essential to the ironclads’ success.
And that was why Merlin Athrawes was in a recon skimmer, floating like the silent angel of death above the semaphore station he’d marked on his mental chart as “Target Alpha.” There were four more targets on that chart—isolated targets, far from any town or village, which had to be … neutralized before word of what Cayleb had dubbed the Great Canal Raid reached them. With them destroyed, the first, critical six hundred miles of the semaphore chain would be broken, depriving the Temple Loyalists of the warning they’d need to trap the ironclads. And there was only one person in all of Safehold who could do that destroying.
Merlin’s mouth tightened. It would have been simpler—or at least easier for his conscience, perhaps—if he could have used the skimmer’s onboard weapons to destroy his targets through the impersonal detachment of a high-tech gunsight. But he dared not use those weapons, and so he was going to have to do it the hard way—by hand and in person. And if he didn’t want any tales about the “Demon Merlin” floating around, he had to do it in a way which left no living witnesses.
Quit stalling, he told himself harshly. Yes, they’re civilians, and you’re going to kill them all. A hell of a lot of other “civilians”—including children who never got a vote—have already died since Clyntahn kicked off this nightmare. And the people manning those semaphore stations aren’t children … and are just as essential to the Church’s war as the people in the Army of God’s uniform. And at least when you take your downtime to satisfy Cayleb, you don’t dream, so maybe you won’t even have nightmares about it.
He squared his shoulders and reached for the controls.
* * *
“Both ahead slow.”
“Both ahead slow, aye, Sir,” the telegraphsman replied, rocking the big handles, and as the bells jangled, Halcom Bahrns felt Delthak quiver underfoot, coming back to life once more.
It felt … good. She still wasn’t a proper warship, he supposed, but she was actually far more responsive than any sail-powered ship he’d ever commanded, and there was a lot to be said for not needing to wait for the wind. That was an advantage the Charisian Navy had given up when it embraced the galleon so enthusiastically. He knew why that had happened, and he approved wholeheartedly, and yet.…
He shrugged. They had a way to go yet, but the two of them were coming to know one another’s ways, and whatever else she might be, Delthak was as willing as the day was long. And while it had taken her almost three five-days to make the voyage from Siddar City to Ranshir Bay, she could have made the same voyage in only twelve days if not for the pair of barges towing behind her. There’d been more than one moment when Bahrns had longed to cast them off and just get on with it, but those barges—and the other four now linked together behind Delthak and Hador—were integral to his orders.
Saygin and Tellesberg had helped with the towing, but they’d barely paused to drop off their barges and refill their bunkers before they’d been off again, steaming on around the promontory where the northern end of the Samuel Mountains thrust out into the beginning of Hsing-wu’s Passage. They were bound for Salyk, to help hold the city, clear the lower three hundred miles of the Hildermoss River … and, just possibly, be available for a rescue effort, although that wasn’t going to be required, assuming the emperor’s mad plan actually worked.
Well, Seijin Merlin’s mad plan, actually, I suspect, he thought as Delthak began to creep slowly forward. But the Emperor certainly scooped it up and ran with it once the seijin suggested it!
He started to speak to the helmsman, but Crahmynd Fyrgyrsyn, the gray-haired petty officer on the wheel, already had his instructions, and Delthak’s blunt bow aimed itself at the glow of the lantern on the river galley’s stern. She began pushing a mustache of water in front of her, following the galley across the estuary towards the channel, and the canal pilot standing at Bahrns’ elbow nodded unconsciously in approval.
No point talking just to hear myself proving to everyone else how nervous I am, the captain thought wryly. Everything’s under control so far, and we’re—what? five whole minutes?—into the operation?
His lips twitched in amusement, but then he thought of the other ironclad astern of him, and of the barges each was towing—of the three thousand infantry and the four hundred sailors under his command, and of all the things that could still go wrong—and the temptation to smile disappeared as swiftly as it had come.
* * *
The flames roared into a night less empty than his own soul.
Assuming he had one of those, of course. At the moment, he almost hoped Maikel Staynair was wrong about that. It would be so much more comforting to believe that beyond his current existence there was only blackness, blankness and oblivion, no need to remember.
You’ll probably feel differently about it … in time, he told himself drearily, wiping blood from his katana before he sheathed it. Of course that’s the thing that scares you the most, isn’t it? You will feel differently about it. It won’t bother you anymore. And when that happens, how will you be any different from Zhaspahr Clyntahn and his butchers?
He knew he was being unfair to himself, harder than he would have been on anyone else. One of the reasons he hadn’t discussed this part of the Great Canal Raid with Cayleb was that he knew Cayleb would have told him exactly that. He would have pointed out that it had to be done, and that it wasn’t Merlin Athrawes who’d launched the Army of God at the Republic’s throat like a ravening beast. And Cayleb would have been right … which wouldn’t have changed the fact that he would have been arguing the morality of expediency.
And it wouldn’t change the fact that I’m a killing machine.
He threw the last two words at himself harshly, viciously, his mind flickering with the perfect recall of a PICA … and the memory of all the men who’d died at his hands. None of them had ever had a chance, not really, no matter what they might have thought in those final seconds of their lives. Not one of them had had any chance at all of defeating a PICA’s strength and speed and invulnerability.
It’s too easy. It shouldn’t be easy to kill human beings. To turn it into some kind of virtual reality combat game because that’s how much chance you have of actually being stopped yourself.
It wasn’t the first time he’d had such thoughts, but they were darker these days. Dark with the knowledge of how many millions of Siddarmarkians had perished over the past winter, how many thousands more were being herded into the Inquisition’s holding camps even now. Of what was about to happen to Mahrtyn Taisyn’s command, despite his men’s courage and determination and skill, because none of them were PICAs. It was even uglier than he’d feared it could be, and the number of innocent people—civilians, women and children, not just soldiers or sailors—sliding down the monster’s maw was more hideous than he could have imagined.
And Owl’s SNARCs let him see every horrible moment of it.
He stood looking at the strengthening inferno which had been a semaphore station—“Target Delta,” the name he’d given it in some vain hope that it might make what he had to do a proper military operation, not simply murder—and watched the smoke lifting into the night.
Thank you, God, he said silently. Thank you that at least there was no one at any of them except the duty crews.
He didn’t know if he had the right any longer to thank God, but that made him no less grateful.
He looked at the blazing pyre of his latest victims for a moment longer. Then he turned on his heel and walked away from that place of death to his waiting recon skimmer.
* * *
“Captain Tailahr’s cleared the lock, Sir.”
Bahrns
nodded at the signalman’s report that Tailahr’s Hador and her trio of barges had just been passed through the final set of locks in the Ice Ash River before the Guarnak–Ice Ash Canal split off to the west. They were still two hours steaming from the canal at the bare ten knots they could manage burdened with barges and breasting the current, but Delthak had crossed the invisible line between the still loyal territory of Northland Province and into the hostile territory of New Northland over ten hours ago, and the sun was well above the horizon. The Canal Service staff on the locks they’d just used had been reduced to a skeleton since the rebellion, and most of them had been asleep when Colonel Wyntahn Harys’ Marines rowed silently ashore and knocked on their bedroom doors. The Temple Loyalists’ astonishment at seeing any enemies, and especially Charisian Marines, three hundred and fifty straight-line miles from the nearest salt water had been … profound. Their reaction when the Canal Service personnel attached to Bahrns’ command smoothly locked through two twelve-hundred-ton, smoke-spewing ironclads and six “timber-clad” barges had been far worse. They’d been in such a state of shock after that that they’d made only token protests when they were bundled aboard one of those barges as prisoners.
The ironclads had seen very little barge traffic so far, and what little they had seen had been tied up along the riverbank until they’d passed. The cavalry patrols sweeping the tow roads on either side of the Ice Ash had seen to that, as long as they’d been in friendly territory, and for over fifty miles into New Northland, for that matter. From here on, there would be no convenient cavalry, and Bahrns put his hands into the pockets of his tunic as an alternative to wiping them nervously on his trousers.
“Very well, Ahbukyra,” he said to the signalman. “Acknowledge his signal and then hoist the signal to proceed.”
“Aye, aye, Sir.”
“Ahead thirteen knots, both engines.”
“Ahead thirteen knots, aye, Sir.” The telegraphs rang again, and Bahrns heard the telegraphman bending over the bronze tube—the “voice pipe,” Master Howsmyn had called it—to the engine room to confirm the actual speed through the water. Given the three-knot current, their true speed would be only ten knots, but by now Lieutenant Bairystyr and his oilers had a very good idea of how many revolutions per minute equated to a given speed, and Bharns could count on the telegraphsman to coach him through any fine adjustments.
It was so convenient to have a permanent speed indicator here on the conning tower, connected to the spinner in the pitometer’s shrouded tunnel beneath Delthak’s keel.
Face it, he thought wryly. All your concerns about “proper warships” are fighting a dying rearguard action against just how much you love what this ship can do, Halcom!
“And now, Master Myklayn,” he turned to the canal pilot, “I believe it’s up to you.”
“Aye, Captain, I believe it is.”
Zhaimys Myklayn had never been to sea in his life, but he’d sailed more miles than most professional naval officers, all of it on freshwater. His entire career had been spent on the rivers and canals of East Haven in the Canal Service administered by the Order of Langhorne, and no man alive knew them better than he did. Even towed barges needed helmsmen, but Myklayn was more than that. He was one of the master canal pilots, the men charged with keeping charts updated not just for the canals but for the rivers they linked, reporting when and where repairs were needed, and suggesting possible improvements to the routes.
Now the square-shouldered, gray-haired pilot in his shabby, well-worn Canal Service tunic, stuck his pipe into his mouth and stepped out onto the starboard wing of the bridge outside Delthak’s conning tower.
Bahrns followed him through the heavily armored conning tower door, which had been latched open so he could call helm instructions to PO Fyrgyrsyn. He took a Shan-wei’s candle from his pocket, struck it on the wooden-planked bridge’s iron railing, and cupped his left hand to shield the flame as he offered it to Myklayn’s pipe.
The pilot hesitated for just a moment, then leaned forward—a bit cautiously—and puffed the tobacco alight. Fragrant smoke curled around his ears as he straightened, and he grinned crookedly at Bahrns around the pipe stem.
“First time I’ve actually seen one of those, Captain. A mite on the … surprising side, I suppose is the best way to put it. Handy, though.”
“I’ve found them so,” Bahrns agreed, dropping the spent candle into the spittoon set aside for the watchkeepers who used chewleaf, and Myklayn chuckled.
“I imagine the Grand Inquisitor might take a tad of offense, though,” he observed, and Bahrns showed his teeth.
“Master Myklayn, we’ve given Zhaspahr Clyntahn so many things to take offense over that I don’t think a few Shan-wei’s candles are going to make a whole lot of difference, do you?”
“Probably not.” Myklayn drew on his pipe and blew out a streamer of smoke, watching it move rapidly astern as Delthak gathered speed. “Come to that, what we’re about to do’s bound to get all of us into his black books, isn’t it?” He shook his head. “Part of me hates to do it, Captain. I’ve spent my entire life maintaining the canals as the Writ commands, and I know better’n most how important they are.”
He paused, gazing forward into the wind of Delthak’s motion, his pipe trailing smoke for a long, silent moment before he looked back at Bahrns, and if his eyes were sad when he did, his expression was determined.
“Even with Archbishop Dahnyld’s injunction in my pocket, that part of me’s more’n half afraid the Rakurai’s going to come crashing down on my head just for thinking of it. But when I think ’bout how that bastard in Zion’s going to react when he hears about it—well, let’s just say I don’t expect my regrets to keep me awake nights, after all.”
He looked back up the river again, scratching the side of his jaw gently, then nodded like a man recognizing a familiar spot in his neighborhood.
“You’ll want to keep closer to midstream along here, Captain. There’s a nasty sandbank with an unfriendly habit of extending itself along the inside of this bend in the spring.”
“Will another … thirty yards be enough?”
“Best make it forty to be on the safe side. This lady”—Myklayn tapped the planks below the railing with his knuckles—“draws a bit more water’n most of the barges through here.”
“Very good.” Bahrns leaned in through the open conning tower door. “Bring her a quarter point larboard, Crahmynd.”
“Quarter-point to larboard, aye, Sir.”
* * *
The office door burst open with a bang loud enough to make Captain Dygry Verryn jump in his chair. Hot tea flew everywhere, inundating his late-morning breakfast, splashing the correspondence on his desk, and soaking his tunic, and he whipped around with a glare.
“What the hell—?!”
“Sorry, Sir!” Sergeant Zhermo Taigyn interrupted. “Know you didn’t want to be disturbed, but you’d better hear this. Quick.”
Verryn’s eyes narrowed. Zhermo Taigyn wasn’t the sharpest blade he’d ever met, but then Dygry Verryn had scarcely been Chihiro’s own gift to the militia. That was how he’d ended up in command of the forty-man “garrison” of Fairkyn. It made him more of a glorified policeman than anything else, which was probably just as well, given his total lack of combat experience. Of course, the regular police didn’t much care for having him breathing over their shoulders, but the previous police chief had tried to organize a counterattack against the Faithful who’d seized control of Fairkyn in the first five-day of the Rising. Fortunately for him, he’d died in the fighting, but Father Ahnsylmo, the Sword of Schueler’s representative in Fairkyn, had decided someone whose first loyalty was clearly to Mother Church should take over supervision of the remaining city Guardsmen.
It was remotely possible, Verryn acknowledged, that the under-priest had also seen it as a way of keeping his own questionable talents away from a field of battle. If it was, the same was probably true of Sergeant Taigyn. For that matter, none of his det
achment were what he would have called steely-eyed warriors.
“Hear what?” the captain snapped after a fulminating moment, reaching for his napkin and beginning to mop.
“This, Sir.”
Taigyn reached behind him and half-dragged Paidryg Tybyt and his son Gyffry into Verryn’s office. The Tybyts looked pale and agitated, and Verryn’s eyes narrowed at the sight. Gyffry was about as excitable as a thirteen-year-old usually came, but Paidryg was a stolid, dependable sort, not prone to excitement and agitation. The two of them worked the barges during harvest season; during the off-season, Paidryg farmed a stretch of canal bank east of town.
“What’s this all about?” Verryn asked, looking back between father and son, and Paidryg shook his head.
“I don’t know,” he said, his voice hoarse. “But whatever it is, it’s a-coming up the canal from the Ice Ash, and it’s a-spewing smoke like Shan-wei herself!”
“What?” Verryn blinked and dropped the napkin on his blotter. “Smoking? What’re you talking about, Paidryg?!”
“I don’t know, I’m telling you!” The older man shook his head, his expression a combination of fear, ignorance, and frustration. “It’s … it’s some kind of big, black … barge, I guess. Only it looks like … like … well, like the roof of my barn, damn it! And it’s a-moving twicet as fast as any barge I ever saw, with nothin’ towing it! Shan-wei, Captain—it’s a-towing at least three barges its ownself, and there’s another one of it a-coming on behind! Gyffry here saw ’em first, and he called me, and I flung saddles on our two best plow horses soon as I saw it. But even with us cutting cross-country, it can’t be more’n five, ten minutes behind us, and I’m a-telling you—!”
Something screamed in the distance. Something unearthly and horrible, ripping across Tybyt’s efforts to describe a thing he’d never seen before. The shrieking sound went on and on until it finally died in a horrible, wailing sob, and it jerked Verryn out of his chair, the tea soaking his tunic forgotten.