“Sound the alarm, Zhermo! Get the duty section turned to–now!”
* * *
“That’s enough, I think,” Halcom Bahrns said as Ahbukyra Matthysahn reached for the hanging lanyard again. The signalman looked at him almost imploringly, but the captain shook his head with a tight grin. “I’m sure you’ve gotten their attention, Ahbukyra. Now it’s only polite to give them time to respond.”
“Yes, Sir.”
The disappointment in the young man’s tone was palpable, but he stepped back and Bahrns turned away from him, looking back through the vision slit in the front of Delthak’s conning tower. He hadn’t actually realized until this moment how addicted he’d become to the visibility which had seemed so unnatural when he first took command. Now, as he looked through the slit’s restricted field of view, he found himself longing for the bridge wing on the other side of the closed armored door.
I ought to be out there, anyway, he thought. Can’t see a thing from in here—that wasn’t really true, but he was in no mood to admit anything of the sort—and I ought to be out there where Harys’ Marines and General Tylmahn’s people could see me. They’re all going to be out there, anyway. If anybody’s going to get shot at—
“Larboard a half-point,” he said tautly. “We want a clear line of fire to the quay, Crahmynd.”
“Half-point larboard, aye, Sir,” PO Fyrgyrsyn repeated unflappably, and Bahrns’ mouth twitched. The petty officer’s tone was a gentle reprimand, reminding him they’d discussed this maneuver with painstaking care long before they reached Fairkyn.
The captain moved to the starboard side of the conning tower, looking through the vision slit on that side, and his nostrils flared with satisfaction as he watched the confusion boiling along the waterfront. Fairkyn wasn’t an enormous town, but it had a sizable complex of canal-front warehouses and docks, and he was delighted to see so many people running in the opposite direction just as fast as they could.
Smoke probably would’ve done that all by itself, he reflected, but young Ahbukyra and his whistle made sure.
He shook his head, remembering his own first reaction to the unbelievable, shrill sound of a steam whistle fed by hundreds of pounds per square inch of pressure. No wonder the townsfolk were running in every direction!
Movement caught the corner of his eye, and he leaned forward, his forehead almost in contact with the steel, to look as far aft as he could, then grunted in satisfaction. The first of the launches had cast off from the troop barge towing behind Delthak, filled with men in the dark blue tunics and light blue trousers of Charisian Marines. It pulled strongly for its objective—the lock master’s office—and other boats followed it.
“Stop engines,” he ordered.
* * *
Captain Verryn decided he perfectly understood Paidryg Tybyt’s inability to describe what he’d seen. It did look like some kind of floating house, but he’d never seen a house with chimneys that tall or pouring out so much thick, dark smoke.
And you’ve never seen one of them moving along a canal without one damned thing to make it move, either!
The terror of that smooth, unnatural movement, the memory of its shrieking cry, filled him with dread.
The heretics serve Shan-wei, he thought. Langhorne and Schueler only know what kind of deviltry she’s able to get up to! And if she’s giving it to them —!
“Why are you just standing here? The heretics are landing troops, Captain! Do something about it!”
Verryn wheeled and found himself confronting Owain Kyrst, Fairkyn’s mayor.
“What in Schueler’s name d’you want me to do, Master Mayor?” he demanded. “I’ve got forty men, and only fifteen of them are here right now. Look at that!”
He jabbed an index finger down the street where more of the blue-uniformed men were appearing every moment. And there were men in Siddarmarkian uniform—but armed with muskets, not pikes—moving with them now. Lots of them. And beyond that, he saw the leading black monster open gunports all along its side. The black, blunt muzzles of cannon snouted out of them as he watched, and while Dygry Verryn might not have been a battlefield hero out of legend, he did have a working brain.
“There’s nothing I can do, Master Mayor,” he said flatly. “Nothing but get a lot of people killed. If you want somebody to do something, then I suggest you go out there and have a word with them. You’re the mayor, aren’t you?”
* * *
“What the—?”
Wyllym Bohlyr was Fairkyn’s Canal Service lockmaster, the man charged with overseeing the daily operation and maintenance of the two-step locks that allowed the Guarnak–Ice Ash Canal’s water to find the level of the river. Those locks were the real reason Fairkyn existed, and Bohlyr took his responsibilities seriously, although it was scarcely what anyone could have called an onerous task. Things got lively during harvest season, when traffic on the canal and the river peaked; the rest of the time, his office was a calm, even slightly sleepy place while the pumpmaster and master gatekeeper saw to the locks’ actual operation.
Not today.
The hubbub along the canal front had already disturbed his concentration on his usual morning paperwork, but oddly enough, no one had thought to run and tell him what was happening. Not until the door of his office opened abruptly to admit Rhobair Kulmyn, the day pumpmaster, and Zhoel Wahrlyw, the master gatekeeper on the day shift. Nor were they alone. Half a dozen men in a uniform he’d never seen before—armed with some sort of long, slender musket—followed them. And so did one person he had seen before.
“Master Myklayn!” he snapped. “What in Langhorne’s name is going on here?”
“Actually, that’s what we’re here to explain.” It wasn’t Myklayn, but one of the men in uniform, speaking with a strange accent. “Lieutenant Byrnhar Raismyn, Imperial Charisian Marines,” he continued with a slight, ironic bow, “I’m afraid your locks are under new management just for the moment, Master Bohlyr.”
“Here, now!” Bohlyr spluttered. “You can’t—I mean, there’s ways—”
“I realize it’s … inconvenient, Master Bohlyr,” the stranger—Raismyn—said in a slightly cooler tone. “Nevertheless,” his hand brushed ever so lightly across the sword sheathed at his side, “I’m really going to have to insist.”
* * *
“All right,” Zhaimys Myklayn said ninety minutes later. “That’ll do.”
“Yes, Sir.”
The Marine who’d overseen the placement of the charges under Myklayn’s direction while the ironclads and barges locked through the town nodded, then waved for the men of his detachment to scamper for the waiting boats.
“You sure this’ll do the job, Sir?” he asked. Myklayn looked at him, and the Charisian shook his head. “Oh, I’m not questioning your judgment, Sir. Probably sounded like I was, and I apologize for that. It’s just … We’ve come a far piece to do this, and I’d like to be sure it’s done right.”
“Believe me, Sergeant, it’s done right.”
Myklayn’s tone was grim, but as he’d told Halcom Bahrns, given the options, he wouldn’t lose a bit of sleep over his part in all this.
“When this lot goes up,” he waved at the charges which had been placed around the massive pipes, “it’s going to leave one huge damned hole in the ground. With the charges on the other side, it should also cave in both sides of both of the downstream locks, take out the valves, and wreck both sets of gates.” He bared his teeth. “It’ll be faster and simpler for them to start all over again than to try to fix what we’re going to leave them.” He shook his head. “I’ll be surprised if they can have it back up and operating before this time next year … if then.”
“Really?” The Marine looked down at the charges, then chuckled harshly. “Good enough for me, Sir. Now why don’t you get your much more important backside into the lead boat while I”—he pulled his hand out of his belt pouch with a Shan-wei’s candle and grinned—“do my bit to piss off Zhaspahr Clyntahn?”
&
nbsp; .VI.
Daivyn River, Cliff Peak Province, Republic of Siddarmark
“No good, Sir.”
Sergeant Dahltyn Sumyrs shook his head, shoulders drooping with exhaustion.
“Can’t get through,” he continued. “Lost five good men trying, but the bastards’re thicker’n fleas on a Sodaran sheep-stealer. Those as don’t have rifles have pistols, and the trees’re too thick for us to see them before we’re right on top of ’em.”
“Thank you, Sergeant.” Mahrtyn Taisyn was clean-shaven, his uniform still neatly arranged, but there were shadows in his eyes in the candlelight. “I can’t say that’s not what I expected to hear, but we had to try.”
“’Course we did, Sir.” Sumyrs sounded almost affronted by the suggestion that he might not have tried. “They don’t seem to be short on gunpowder, either, do they, Sir?”
“That’s one of the beauties of having a secure supply connection all the way back to Westmarch, Sergeant,” Taisyn said dryly. “I wish we had the same.”
“Aye, Sir. And so do I.”
“Very well, Sergeant. I think that’s everything.”
The sergeant drew himself to attention, touched his chest, and started to turn away, but the brigadier’s voice stopped him.
“Look after yourself, Dahltyn,” he said quietly.
“And you, Sir,” Sumyrs said gruffly, never turning. Then he continued out the dugout door into the dark, and Taisyn sank into the folding canvas chair at the upturned barrel that served him as a desk.
Sumyrs was a good man. He’d been with the brigadier for over four years, and if anyone could have found a path through the Temple Loyalists surrounding their position, it would have been Sumyrs.
Not that it would’ve done a lot of good if he had gotten through, Taisyn admitted grimly. You took a chance, and it doesn’t look like it’s going to turn out so well, after all, does it?
He leaned back in the chair, scrubbing his face with the heels of both hands, shoulders slumping with a despair he would never have allowed anyone else to see.
He and his four thousand men were still in place—sticking in the throat of Cahnyr Kaitswyrth’s advance like a fishbone, just as he’d promised Zhansyn and Watyrs. But it was a fishbone Kaitswyrth was determined to dislodge, and the bishop militant was equally determined to destroy the last organized resistance to his invasion of Glacierheart in the process.
We came too far forward with too few men, Taisyn told himself. I couldn’t possibly have held the river all the way to the lake, prevented them from getting around us somewhere, and I damned well knew it. But I had to stop them here —it was the last place a force this size could block the river. I needed the bluffs, needed someplace to put guns with a clear field of fire and let me entrench to protect them. If I’d had more men, maybe I’d have been able to dig in farther east, closer to the lake, instead of needing the hills. But.…
There was no point arguing about it with himself yet again. Besides, he knew he’d made the right decision. Or the best one available to him, at least; sometimes there wasn’t a “right” decision, only the best choice among wrong ones. And he and his people had bled the bastards. They’d blocked them, locked the river solid and kept it that way for two entire five-days. Ten full days in which Kaitswyrth’s army hadn’t moved a single foot deeper into Glacierheart … and had lost hundreds of men in failed probing assaults on their position.
I wish there were some way for me to know where the Duke is. I don’t see any way he could’ve reached Ice Lake yet, but maybe. Maybe there’s even still a chance he can fight his way forward to us, get us out of this crack. Not bloody likely, though.
He lowered his hands and drew a deep breath.
He’d never had the numbers to keep Kaitswyrth from swinging around his position, and the bishop militant had done just that. He had both infantry and cavalry on the river between Taisyn’s positions and Ice Lake, and they’d taken guns with them, as well, to do to Taisyn exactly what he’d done to them. Neither side could get river traffic by the other’s guns, but Kaitswyrth’s supply chain was intact behind his position; Taisyn’s wasn’t, which meant he could no longer count on supplies of food or ammunition while Kaitswyrth could.
It’s not the food or the ammunition, really, he told himself. It’s the fact that you can’t retreat. And because you can’t, they’ve been working their way forward all around your positions for two five-days. They’ve got you completely surrounded now, and they’ve got too many men.
A throat cleared itself, and he looked up to see Hauwerd Zhansyn in his doorway.
“Come in,” he invited, and the Siddarmarkian colonel seated himself in the other folding chair.
“I saw Sumyrs,” he said. “From his expression—and the fact that he’s still here—I assume his mission failed?”
“You could put it that way,” Taisyn replied with a humorless smile. “‘Thick as fleas on a Sodaran sheep-stealer’ is how he put it, I believe.”
“A way with words, the Sergeant.” Zhahnsyn chuckled, but then his expression sobered. “I can’t say I’m surprised to hear it, though. These people don’t want to let go.”
“These people aren’t going to let go,” Taisyn corrected. “And we’re running out of rifle ammunition. I think they know it, too.”
“We never did have as much as we would’ve liked,” Zhahnsyn observed, and shrugged.
“No, we didn’t,” Taisyn agreed. He looked at Zhansyn for a moment. “I really expected—hoped, at least—that we’d be able to get out of this one.”
“You did?” Zhahnsyn’s smile was lopsided. “I didn’t—not really. I suppose I should’ve said something at the time, actually. But I always figured we were pushing too far. Always thought that’s what you really thought, deep down inside, as a matter of fact.”
He arched an eyebrow, and Taisyn exhaled noisily.
“Probably,” he acknowledged. “I guess I just didn’t want to say so, even to myself.”
“That’s what I thought.” Zhahnsyn leaned back, propping one heel on Taisyn’s upturned barrel. “The thing is, Mhartyn, I never thanked you for it.”
“Thanked me?” Taisyn waved one hand around the dimly lit dugout. “It doesn’t look to me like you’ve got anything to thank me for, Hauwerd!”
“Of course I do.” Zhahnsyn looked him in the eye. “I am a Siddarmarkian; you’re not. These aren’t your people you’ve stuck your neck out for—they’re mine. And if you hadn’t made your stand here, Kaitswyrth would already be within striking distance of the East Glacierhearts and the Tyrnyr Gap, and all of Glacierheart Province would be burning behind him. I don’t know where Duke Eastshare is by now any more than you do, but because of you, he’s going to be four or five hundred miles farther west when Kaitswyrth runs into him than he would have been otherwise. God alone knows how many Siddarmarkian lives you’ve saved. I just think somebody should tell you thank you for saving them.”
Taisyn looked back at him, feeling his sincerity, and then, finally, he nodded.
“Consider me thanked,” he said. Then he cleared his throat. “I’ll be sending out the last message wyvern before dawn,” he continued in a harder, brisker voice. “If you want to send a final report of your own, let Lieutenant Hahskans have it in the next two or three hours.”
* * *
“Are we ready?”
Bishop Militant Cahnyr Kaitswyrth had brown hair, brown eyes, and a pleasant, easy-going exterior that had fooled more than one unwary soul into missing the zealot who lived behind it. A Chihirite of the Order of the Sword, his experience as a Temple Guardsman showed in the way he cut his hair, the way he walked—even the way he stood—and his brown eyes were hard as he looked around the circle of senior officers.
“This crap has wasted too much time already,” he continued in a voice of iron. “And it’s going to waste more. If those heretic bastards were as thorough as I expect, it’ll take us days just to clear the river, even after we kill every last one of them, and every o
ne of those days is a day Stohnar and that son of a bitch Cayleb can move something farther west. Their Shan-wei-damned Marines’ve been bad enough; I want to be on the line of the East Glacierhearts before we see the first fucking Charisian soldier. Is that clear?”
A murmur of acknowledgment came back to him, and he made himself draw a deep breath.
“What’s happened here is no one’s fault,” he said in a tone which was closer to normal. “We walked into them and got hit by surprise. All right, maybe—maybe—that much could’ve been avoided if our scouts had been more thorough … or more lucky. But they’d’ve been there, waiting for us, anyway. They picked the best damned spot in a hundred miles of river, maybe more, to drive in their cork, and we don’t have any choice but to dig it back out again. It’s going to cost us, too. This isn’t going to be another case of overrunning a bunch of pikemen in the open. We’ve already lost better than thirteen hundred men, not counting the barge crews, and the count’s going to get worse, because we’re going to have to walk straight into their guns, and they’re going to kill a lot more of our men in the process. We can’t change that, unless we want to sit here and starve their asses out, and if we do that, we can be absolutely positive that anything Stohnar and Cayleb can dig up will be waiting for us when we’re done.”
He looked around at the faces again.
“I don’t know what—if anything—they’ve got behind this position. Our spies are having trouble getting information out, and none of the local Faithful have a clue what might be headed this way. Rumors? Those we’ve got, including one that says Cayleb Ahrmahk himself is headed this way at the head of half a million men.” He snorted. “Somehow, I find that one a bit hard to believe.”
Several people chuckled, and he tapped the sketch map on the camp table.
“They don’t have any damned half-million men,” he said flatly. “In fact, the best estimate we had before we began marching was that it would be at least the end of July or the beginning of August before the Charisians could get significant forces into the field. All their army was in Chisholm, and that’s Shan-wei’s own distance from Siddarmark. But our intelligence reports have been wrong more than once since the Jihad began, and I’m not going to count on them now. I’m assuming there are Charisian troops on their way to Glacierheart right this moment. And that’s why, tomorrow morning, we’re taking this position.”