Hell's Foundations Quiver (103 page)

“I suppose there could be something to that,” Cayleb conceded slowly. “
I'd
hate to have Sharleyan and Alahnah's lives depending on someone else's planning, though.”

“Of course you would, and I don't doubt for a moment that Thirsk does. But assuming we're right and he really is thinking along the lines of getting his family out of the line of fire, I don't think he has any choice but to trust Khapahr to get it done.”

“Um.” Cayleb made a noncommittal sound and his image's eyes were unfocused as he considered Mab's argument. Then they sharpened again.

“Actually, now that I think about it, I'd be perfectly willing to leave Sharley and Alahnah's lives in
your
hands, so maybe there's something to your ridiculous theory after all. But whatever's going on with Thirsk, do you think Dunkyn and Hektor will be able to pull it off?”

“Unless the weather screws them over as thoroughly as it screwed Ahbaht over, I think they've got a damned good chance,” Mab said.

“Good.”

The single word came out of the emperor like something between a prayer and a curse. It lay between him and the
seijin
for a long moment, and then he gave himself a shake.

“I know we didn't have a choice, didn't have this sort of an option, when it happened to Gwylym,” he said very quietly. “But I've still never forgiven myself for being so damned helpless.”

“Well, we're not helpless this time, Cayleb.” Mab's voice was just as quiet. “And if Dunkyn Yairley can't ‘pull it off,' I don't think there's anyone on the face of Safehold who could. For that matter, it's not going to hurt a thing that no one in Gorath knows Dunkyn and his squadron have reached Talisman. Sort of hard to plan for threats you don't know exist, now isn't it?”

He and the emperor looked at one another, with smiles any shark might have envied. Then he consulted his internal chronometer and stood.

“I think it's about time,” he said in a voice whose calm fooled neither of them. “Owl?”

“Yes, Commander Athrawes?” the AI's voice replied instantly.

“Are we ready?”

“Yes, indeed,” the AI said, and no one could have missed the grim anticipation in that artificial person's voice.

Owl had been designed as a tactical computer, a weapon of war. Constraints had been built into his software to prevent him from acting without human authority, yet when reduced to his most basic self, he'd been created to kill. Since he'd become fully self-aware, he'd internalized an entire set of philosophical, moral, and ethical constraints about how and when killing was justifiable, but they hadn't changed his original function. What they
had
done was to teach him to hate Zhaspahr Clyntahn and the Inquisition with a pure and searing passion for the casual atrocities and deliberate murder they'd wreaked upon the people of Safehold. In retrospect, Mab thought, it shouldn't have been particularly surprising that he'd reacted that way, especially after spending so much subjective time with Nahrmahn Baytz. After all, Nahrmahn had a very
direct
attitude towards people who killed or injured the innocent, and while Owl might have been built as a killer, that killer had also been built as a protector, a champion of the human race in its extremity. That was his function, as much as it had ever been Nimue Alban's, and in this moment, Owl and Dialydd Mab were as one.

“Then I suppose we'd better get started,” Mab said now. “Be sure to leave Mahafee and his sergeant intact.”

“I'll remember, Commander Athrawes. And—” there might actually have been a suppressed chuckle in the mellow voice “—I'll endeavor to be certain none of the remotes are seen by any survivors, as well.”

“I think that would be an excellent idea,” Mab agreed, drawing a revolver with one hand and unsheathing his katana with the other. “Let's go.”

He started down the hill, and as he did, a dozen combat remotes—manufactured in Nimue's Cave but also armed with black-powder rifles instead of the more advanced weapons they might once have mounted—drifted out of the rain-soaked woods behind him and floated down the slope in his wake.

*   *   *

“—and I don't want to have this frigging conversation
again
, Mahafee! It's our job to move these motherless bastards to their new home as quickly as possible, and any of them who drag arse along the way need to be
encouraged
to move along smartly. That's your fucking job, and if I have to discuss this with you again, I'll have your guts for boot laces when I'm finished! I hope that's clear enough even
you
can understand it?!”

Major Lainyl Paxtyn glared up into the face of the taller lieutenant. The major's left fist was propped on his hip while his right hand rested—not coincidently, Lieutenant Ansyn Mahafee felt confident—on the hilt of his sheathed sword.

“Yes, Sir,” he bit out.

“And another thing,” Paxtyn snarled. “I don't give a damn
how
wet the frigging wood is or how late we stop. I see you letting another work party wander out into the woods—in the dark—with only two guards, you and I'll just have to have a little talk with Father Trynt. If they can't drag in enough wood for themselves, as well as the guard force, then that's too fucking bad. They can damned well
freeze
to death overnight, for all I care, but they are
not
going to have a chance to sneak off in the dark. Is
that
understood?!”

“Yes, Sir,” Mahafee repeated woodenly, and the major glared at him for another thirty seconds. Then he snorted, hawked, and spat contemptuously on the ground and stalked off. The lieutenant watched him go and wondered, distantly, how he'd kept his hand away from his own weapons. He'd known Paxtyn for less than two five-days, and it already seemed a lifetime spent in hell.

And if it's bad for
me,
what about all these poor bastards we're dragging to Glydahr? This sadistic son-of-a-bitch is
—

He made himself bite that thought off. Whatever he thought of his present superior, Paxtyn was doing exactly what Father Trynt Dezmynd wanted him to do. And Dezmynd was no mere major in the Army of God; he was a Schuelerite upper-priest, handpicked by Inquisitor General Wylbyr for his current mission. Mahafee had seen enough in the last year or so to be less than confident that God or Langhorne could truly have approved the Inquisition's actions here in the Republic of Siddarmark, but that was an even more dangerous thought, and he backed away from it with spinal-reflex quickness.

He felt like a coward for reacting that way, yet what could he do about it? He was the most junior officer of the entire prisoner escort. He and his platoon had been assigned to guard a canal lock south of Selyk. They'd seen that assignment as a well-deserved rest after the ferocity of the combat they'd experienced against the heretic Duke of Eastshare the previous summer, but they'd stood their duty alertly. And when the order came in to destroy the lock and fall back to Selyk, they'd executed those instructions with equal efficiency.

And their reward had been to be assigned to
this
.

His lips worked. He wanted to spit to clear the foul taste from his mouth, but he couldn't know who was watching. Even in the dark and the rain there was bound to be
someone
, some set of gimlet eyes just waiting to report his attitude to Paxtyn or Father Trynt or to Father Zhames Symmyns, Father Trynt's assistant. Although, to be fair, Symmyns might not care all that much. He'd enforced his superior's orders for the guards to “encourage” the prisoners with their whips and clubs, but it seemed to Mahafee that he hadn't gone out of his way to find opportunities for fresh brutality the way far too many of the guards did. And whatever else his faults, Father Zhames had at least allowed—indeed, encouraged—the guards to give the prisoners time to erect what pitiful shelters they could at each stop. For that matter, he'd even convinced Father Trynt that it would be wise to allow the prisoners to gather firewood each night, as well. He'd pointed out that with so many prisoners in the column, there were thousands of hands to gather the wood the guards needed, and if they used married prisoners, or those with children—or parents—in the column, they were unlikely to flee into the wilderness and abandon their family members. And if they were gathering wood for the guards, anyway, they might as well be allowed to retain at least some of it for their own use.

It was a cold, calculating sort of logic, but Mahafee had seen Father Zhames watching the prisoners huddled around their own fires when Father Trynt was in his tent. The lieutenant suspected Father Zhames had … shaped his logic to appeal to his superior.

Even if that was true, however, it wouldn't do Mahafee one damned bit of good if Paxtyn and Father Trynt reported him to the Inquisition for continuing to “mollycoddle” the heretics in the column.

No
, he thought almost despairingly.
Not the heretics in the column; the
accused
heretics in the column. Am I the only officer in this whole Archangel-forsaken march who remembers that not one of them has been
convicted
of heresy or blasphemy yet?

He drew a deep breath and turned on his heel, squelching off through the mud towards his platoon's bivouac. They were due on watch in less than an hour.

“Who goes there?!”

The challenge stopped Mahafee, and he felt a stir of pride. Whatever the rest of the guard force might have allowed itself to become, his platoon were still
soldiers
.

“Lieutenant Mahafee,” he replied to the sentry.

“Was getting a little worried about you, Sir,” another voice said, and Mahafee smiled faintly as a shadow detached itself from the night beside the sentry. “Beginning to think you might've forgotten we had the duty,” Sergeant Ainghus Kohrazahn said dryly.

“You know, it
had
slipped my mind, Ainghus. I appreciate your reminding me.”

“What a sergeant's for, Sir,” Kohrazahn told him, but the sergeant was close enough now for Mahafee to see his expression at least dimly in the light of one of the encampment's rain-sputtering torches. That expression was far more worried than the sergeant's tone … or any expression Kohrazahn would have allowed any of the members of his platoon to see.

“I had a brief conversation with Major Paxtyn,” Mahafee told him. “It's under control, though.”

“Good to hear, Sir.”

Mahafee heard the wariness—and the warning—in those four words. Ainghus Kohrazahn was no shrinking flower of delicacy, but the lieutenant knew the sergeant was as sickened by the constant brutality as he was himself. And he also knew Kohrazahn was worried—deeply worried—about him. They'd been together since Cahnyr Kaitswyrth's army had marched out of the Temple Lands. Along the way, they'd saved each other's lives at least a half-dozen times, and Mahafee was uneasily aware that the bonds between the two of them—and, for that matter, between all of the platoon's members—had more to do now with their loyalty to one another than with their loyalty to the Army of God. There were times he thought that mutual loyalty might well be stronger than their loyalty to Mother Church, as well. Or even to the Archangels themselves.

And because that was so, he could not—
dared
not—defy Paxtyn, because if he did, Kohrazahn and the platoon would almost certainly support him. And if they did that.…

“It's all good, Ainghus,” he said reassuringly, even as he wondered if
anything
would ever be “good” again. “It's all good.”

*   *   *

Dialydd Mab paused under the leaves of the dripping trees. If he'd still been human, he would have drawn a deep breath to settle himself. Indeed, he
did
draw that deep breath, but it was only remembered reflex.

He checked the icons Owl had projected across his vision. The last of the AI's remotes was settling into position, and he smiled coldly as he remembered a conversation with Nahrmahn Baytz in his Siddar City bedchamber. Everything he'd said then was true. There were times when the thought of the millions of dead the jihad had already claimed, and of the hundreds of human beings whose blood he'd personally shed, came down upon him like one of Ehdwyrd Howsmyn's steam-powered drop hammers. As he'd told Nahrmahn then, it was worst when he thought about how easily he could turn into a monster even worse than Zhaspahr Clyntahn. It wasn't just the killing; it was the fact that for a PICA, it was almost like some obscene VR game, because even though the carnage was completely real, his victims had no chance at all of killing
him
.

Every bit of that was true, yet what haunted him wasn't really the killing itself, or even his own effective invulnerability. It was the fact that so many of his victims were simply doing the best they could in accordance with what they'd been brought up and taught to believe. It was the knowledge that so few of them truly deserved the label of “evil,” and that the reason they'd died was simply that they'd been in the wrong place and crossed his path at the wrong time.

But sometimes … oh, yes—
sometimes
.

“Are you ready, Owl?”

“Yes, Commander Athrawes.”

“Then let's go.”

*   *   *

The windy dark was flayed by a sudden eruption of lightning.

Ansyn Mahafee had been winding his watch while Kohrazahn headed off to turn out the duty section. Now he dropped the expensive timepiece and spun towards the trees, reflexes already throwing him flat, as long, livid tongues of flame exploded between the trunks. There had to be at least a dozen riflemen out there … and every one of them had to be equipped with one of the heretics' new multi-shot rifles!