Vroxhan raised his hand, cutting off Surmal's fresh, angry retort, and his hooded eyes were thoughtful. Fresh silence lingered for over a minute before he cleared his throat.
"Very well, Ortak—speak as a 'soldier' then. What is your estimate of this Lord Sean as a soldier?"
Ortak gazed back up at the high priest, and then Vroxhan frowned in surprise as he slowly and painfully lowered himself to his knees. High-Captain Marhn dared the assembled prelates' wrath by assisting his wounded commander, but Ortak never took his eyes from Vroxhan's.
"Holiness, heretic or no, demon-worshiper or demon-spawn as he may be, I tell you that not once in a hundred generations has Pardal seen this man's equal as a war captain. Wherever he may spring from, whatever the source of his knowledge, he is a master of his trade, and the men he commands will follow where he leads against any foe."
"Even against God Himself?" Vroxhan asked very softly.
"Against any foe, Holiness," Ortak repeated, and closed his eyes at last. "Holiness, my life is forfeit, if you choose to claim it. I gave of my very best for God and the Temple, yet I speak not in any effort to excuse my failure or save myself when I tell you no Guard captain is this man's equal. His army is far smaller than any of us believed possible, yet no captain has held a single field against him. As a soldier I know only the art of battle, Holiness, but that I do know. Do with me as you will, yet for the sake of Mother Church and the Faith, I beg you to heed me in this. Do not take this man lightly. Were every Guardsman in both Hylars, Herdaana, and Ishar gathered in one place, still I fear he would defeat them. Demon or devil he may be, but as a war captain he is without peer on all Pardal."
The kneeling high-captain bent his head, and shocked silence filled the chamber.
"So at last the enemy has a face and a name," Vroxhan said softly. He and the Inner Circle had withdrawn to their council chamber, accompanied only by Lord Marshal Surak.
"For all the good it does us," Corada replied heavily. "If Ortak is correct—"
"He isn't correct!" Surmal snapped, and turned to Vroxhan. "I claim Ortak for the Holy Inquisition, Holiness! Whatever else he may or may not have done, he has fallen into damnation by the respect he grants this demon. For the sake of Mother Church and his own soul, he must answer to the Inquisitors!"
Surak stirred, and Vroxhan looked up at him.
"You disagree, Lord Marshal?" he asked in a dangerous voice.
"Holiness, I serve the Temple. If the Circle judges that Ortak must answer, then answer he must, but before you decide, I beg you to weigh his words most carefully."
"You agree with him?" Corada gasped, but Surak shook his head.
"I didn't say that, Your Grace. What I said is that his words must be weighed. Mistaken or not, Ortak is the most experienced officer to have met the demon-worshipers and survived, and he has spoken to them. Perhaps this has corrupted his soul and led him into damnation, yet his information is our only firsthand report of the heretics' leadership. And," Surak looked at Surmal, "with all due respect, Your Grace, punishing him will not make any truth he may have uttered untrue."
"Truth? What truth?" Vroxhan demanded before Surmal could respond.
"The truth that the demon-worshipers have defeated every army sent against them . . . and that we have no more armies to send, Holiness." Deathly silence fell, and Surak went on in a grim, hard voice. "I have forty thousand Guardsmen to garrison the Temple itself. Aside from them, there are less than ten thousand of the Guard in all eastern North Hylar. The secular lords of the north have been defeated—no, My Lords, crushed—as completely as Lord Marshal Rokas and High-Captain Ortak, and the better part of the levies of Telis, Eswyn, and Tarnahk with them. We have fifty thousand of the Guard west of the Thirgan Gap and another seventy thousand in South Hylar, yet they can reach us here only by ship, and it will take many five-days to bring any sizable portion of that force to bear. The secular levies of the remaining eastern lands amount to no more than sixty thousand. They, and the men I have here to guard the Temple, are all we can throw against the heretics, and every officer who returned with Ortak reports the same of the demon-worshipers' army. It is far smaller than our original estimates, yet every man in it appears to be armed with a rifle which fires more rapidly than a joharn, not less."
"Which means?" Vroxhan prompted when the lord marshal paused.
"Which means, Holiness, that I can't stop them," Surak admitted in a voice like crushed gravel. The prelates stared at him in horror, and he squared his shoulders. "My Lords, I am your chief captain. My responsibility to you before God Himself is to tell you the truth, and the truth is that somehow—I do not pretend to know the manner of it—this 'Lord Sean' has built an army which can crush any force on Pardal."
"But we're God's warriors!" Corada cried. "He won't let them defeat us!"
"He has so far, Your Grace," Surak replied flatly. "Why He should let this happen I can't say, but to pretend otherwise would violate my sworn oath to serve God and the Temple to the best of my ability. I've searched for an answer, My Lords, in prayer and meditation as well as in my map rooms and with my officers, without finding one. At present, the heretics are less than three five-day's march from the Temple itself, and the last army in their path has been destroyed. If you command it, I will gather every man in the Temple and every man the remaining secular levies can send me and meet the heretics in battle, and my men and officers will do all that mortal men can do. Yet it is my duty to tell you our numbers may actually be lower than the heretics', and I fear our defeat will be complete unless God Himself intervenes."
"He will! He will!" Corada cried almost desperately.
Surak said nothing, only looked at Vroxhan, and the high priest's hands clenched under the council table. He could almost smell the panic Surak's words had produced, yet even in his own fear, he knew the lord marshal had spoken only the truth. Why? Why was God letting this happen? The thought battered in his brain, but God sent no answer, and the silence after Corada's outburst stretched his nerves like an Inquisitor's rack.
"Are you telling us, Lord Marshal," he said at last, in a carefully controlled voice, "that the Temple of God has no choice but to surrender to the forces of Hell?"
Surak flinched ever so slightly, but his eyes were level.
"I am telling you, Holiness, that with the forces available to me, all I and my men can do is die in the Faith's defense as our oaths require us to. We will honor those oaths if no other answer can be found, yet I beg you, My Lords, to search your own hearts and prayers, for whatever answer God demands of us, I do not believe it lies upon the field of battle."
"What if . . . what if we accept the heretics' offer to parley?" Bishop Frenaur said hesitantly. The entire Circle turned on him in horror, but the Bishop of fallen Malagor met their eyes with a strength he hadn't displayed since Yortown. "I don't mean we should accept their terms," he said more sharply, "but the Lord Marshal tells us his forces are too weak to defeat them in battle. If we pretend to negotiate with them, could we not demand a cease-fire while we do so? At the least, that would win time for our forces in western North Hylar and our other lands to reach us!"
"Negotiate with the powers of Hell?" Surmal cried, but to Vroxhan's surprise, old Corada straightened in his chair with suddenly hopeful eyes. "Our very souls would—" Surmal went on wildly, but Corada raised his hand.
"Wait, brother. Perhaps Frenaur has a point." The High Inquisitor gaped at him, and the old man went on in a thoughtful voice. "God knows the peril we face. Would He not expect us to do anything that we can, even to pretending to treat with demons, to buy time to crush them in the end?"
"Your Grace," Surak said gently, "I doubt the heretics would fall into such a trap. Whatever the source of their intelligence, it's fiendishly accurate. They would know we were bringing up additional forces and act before we could do so, and—forgive me, My Lords, but I must repeat this once more—even if we brought up all of our strength, I fear their army could defeat us if we took the
field against them."
"Wait. Wait, Lord Marshal," Vroxhan murmured, and his brain raced. "Perhaps this is God's answer to our prayers," he said slowly, intently, and his eyes snapped back into focus and settled on Surak's face. "You say we cannot defeat this 'Lord Sean' in the field, Lord Marshal?"
"No, Holiness," the soldier said heavily.
"Then perhaps the answer is not to meet him there," Vroxhan said softly, and his smile was cold.
Chapter Thirty-Six
"It sounds too good to be true." Sandy paced up and down the command tent, hands folded behind her, and her face was troubled.
"Why?" Tamman retorted. "Because it's what we've asked them to do for weeks?"
"Because it doesn't fit with anything else they've done since this whole thing started!" she shot back sharply.
"Perhaps not, My Lady," Stomald said, "but it does accord with the orders they've sent their commanders. Perhaps Lord Sean's messengers have finally convinced Vroxhan to see reason."
"Um." Sandy's grunt was unhappy, and Sean sat back in his camp chair. He shared her wariness, but Stomald was right; their remotes had snooped on the Temple's orders to all its commanders to stand fast until instructed otherwise. Lord Marshal Surak had, in effect, frozen every force outside Aris itself, in sharp reversal of his efforts to funnel every available man to the front.
He reached out a long arm to lift the Temple's illuminated letter from the table and reread it carefully.
"I have to agree with Stomald and Tam," he said finally. "It sounds genuine, and everything we've observed indicates they mean it."
"Maybe, but we haven't observed everything, now have we?" Sandy shot back. Her eyes flicked to Tibold, the only person in the tent who didn't know the truth about their origins—and the reason they couldn't snoop on the Temple directly—and Sean nodded unhappily. But, damn it, it did all hang together, and he was sick unto death of slaughtering armies of pawns!
"Tibold?" He glanced at the ex-Guardsman. "You're the only one who's lived in the Temple or seen their high command firsthand. What do you think?"
"I don't know, My Lord," Tibold replied frankly. "Like Lady Sandy, I can't help thinking it sounds too good to be true, yet they've followed all the proper forms. Promises of safe passage. An offer of hostages for the safety of our negotiators. They've even agreed to let us march our entire army to the walls of the Temple itself!"
"Why not?" Sandy demanded. "We've proven we can march anywhere we want and defeat any army they can field, but they know we don't have a siege train. The risk we could storm the Temple's walls is minimal, so why not invite us to come ahead when they can't stop us anyway? Can you think of a better way to make us overconfident?"
"And the hostages?" Harriet asked. "They're offering to send us a third of the Guard's senior officers, a hundred upper-priests, twenty bishops, and a member of the Circle itself! Would they do that if they weren't serious? And doesn't it make sense for them to at least try to find out what we want?"
"If they wanted to know that, all they had to do was ask us months ago!" Sandy objected.
"That's true enough," Sean agreed. "On the other hand, months ago they thought they could wipe us out. Now they know they can't." He shook his head. "The situation's changed too much to be certain of anything, Sandy—aside from the fact that they've finally agreed to parley."
"I don't like it," she said unhappily. "I don't like it at all. And I especially don't like the fact that they didn't ask for Stomald to attend but did ask for both you and Tam." She glared at him. "If they get you two, they cut off the army's head," she added in English, but Sean shook his head.
"By this time you and Harry could lead the troops as well as Tam and I," he said in English.
"Maybe so, but do they know that?" she shot back. Sean started to reply, then settled for shaking his head once more, and Stomald eased cautiously into the conversation.
"I understand your concern, My Lady, but I must be the man they most hate in all the world," he pointed out. "If there's one man they would do anything to keep beyond the precincts of the Temple, that man is me." He, too, shook his head. "No, My Lady. Lord Sean and Lord Tamman are our war leaders. If they prefer—as it would seem from their language that they do—to keep any parley on a purely military level, leaving any doctrinal questions untouched for the moment, then my exclusion makes perfect sense."
"Father Stomald's right, My Lady," Tibold said. "And the oaths of good faith they've offered to swear upon God and their own souls are not such as any priest would lightly break."
Sandy tossed her head unhappily and paced faster for several minutes, then sank into another camp chair and rubbed her temples tiredly.
"I don't like it," she repeated. "It looks good, and there's a logical—or at least plausible—answer to every objection I can raise, but they've turned reasonable too fast, Sean. I know they're up to something."
"Maybe so," he said gently, "but I don't see any choice but to find out what it is. We're killing people, Sandy—thousands and thousands of them. If there's any hope at all of stopping the fighting, then I think we have to explore it. We owe that to these people."
She sat rigid for a moment, and then her shoulders slumped.
"I guess you're right," she said, and her low voice was weary.
"They've accepted, Holiness," Lord Marshal Surak said.
He looked less than pleased, but Vroxhan was God's chosen shepherd. It was his overriding duty to defeat the forces of Hell and preserve the power of God's Church, and nothing he did in such a cause could be "wrong," whatever Surak thought. He stood at the council chamber window, watching distant, jewel-bright talmahks drift lazily above the cursed ruins of the Old Ones beyond the wall, and said a silent prayer for all of God's martyrs, then turned back to the Guard's commander.
"Very well, Lord Marshal. I shall draft our formal response to their acceptance while you see to the details."
"As you command, Holiness," Surak said, and bent to kiss the hem of the high priest's robe before he withdrew.
The city Pardalians called the Temple was an impressive sight as the Angels' Army halted just beyond cannon shot of its walls. The broken towers of a ruined Imperial city rose behind it, the shortest of the shattered stubs still three times the walls' height, and a single structure dominated its center. Most of the Temple was built of native stone, exquisitely dressed and finished with mosaic frescoes exalting the glory of God (and His Church), but the Sanctum was a massive bunker of white, glittering ceramacrete, untouched by any adornment. It clashed wildly with the spires and minarets about it, yet there was a strange harmony to it, as if the rest of the city had been deliberately planned and built to complement the Sanctum by its very contrast.
Sean stood on a small hill while the command tent went up behind him, and clouds of dust drifted across a cloudless blue sky as the army prepared its camp. Promise of truce or no, he and Tibold were taking no chances, and each brigade kept one regiment under arms while the other two collected their mattocks and shovels. By the time night fell, the entire army would be covered by earthworks which would have made a Roman general proud, and they outnumbered the city's garrisoning Guardsmen by fifty percent. Whatever else might happen, he was confident no surprise attack would overwhelm his men.
He frowned and tugged on his nose as a familiar mental itch stirred anew. He wasn't about to admit that part of him shared Sandy's misgivings. If he told her that, she'd be quite capable of singlehandedly turning the whole damned army around and marching back north, so he had no intention of breathing a word of it, but it was one reason he approved of the army's readiness to dig itself in. His troops were as hopeful as he that the fighting might end, yet they were wary and alert, as well, and that was good.
He sighed. They couldn't operate remotes in the Temple, and Brashan's orbital arrays were restricted to pure optical mode lest active systems set off the automated defenses, but those arrays had reported zero movement of troops into the area, exactly as High Priest Vr
oxhan had promised, and the Guardsmen actually inside the walls seemed to be going about routine duties and drill. There were some signs of heightened readiness, but that was inevitable with the dreaded demon-worshipers encamped just outside the Temple's North Gate.
No, he told himself again, everything they could see looked perfect. The parley might achieve nothing, but at least the Temple seemed ready to negotiate in good faith, and that was a priceless opportunity.
He turned from the walls. The hostages were due to arrive early tomorrow, and he wanted another word with Tibold. The last thing they needed was for some hothead on their side to wreck things by abusing one of the hostages!
High Priest Vroxhan stood on the walls and watched the fires of the heretic host glitter against the night. He knew the demon-worshipers were less numerous than that seeming galaxy of fires might suggest, yet his heart was heavy at the thought of allowing such blasphemers so close to God's own city. And, he admitted, at the price of his own plan to break them for all time.
He turned his head as a foot sounded on the wall's stone. Bishop Corada stood beside him, gazing out over their enemies while the night breeze ruffled his fringe of white hair, and his face was far calmer than Vroxhan felt.
"Corada—" he began, but the old man shook his head serenely.
"No, Holiness. If it's God's will that I die in His service, well, I've had a long life, and the risk is necessary. We both know that, Holiness."
Vroxhan rested a hand on the bishop's shoulder and squeezed, unable to find the words to express the emotions in his heart. The suggestion had been Corada's own, yet that made it no easier, and the old man's courage shamed him. Corada smiled at him and reached up to pat the hand on his shoulder gently.
"We've come a long way together, you and I, Holiness," he said. "I know you used to think me a blustering old bag of piss and wind—" Vroxhan started to interrupt, but Corada shook his head. "Oh, come now, Holiness! Of course you did—just as I used to think old Bishop Kithmar, when I was your age. And, truth to tell, I suppose in many ways I am an old bag of piss and wind. We tend to get that way as we grow older, I think. Still," he gazed back out over the forest of campfires, "sometimes old dodderers like me can see a bit more clearly than those of you with your lives still before you, and there's something I want to say to you before . . . well—" He shrugged.