Hell's Foundations Quiver (107 page)

“While news of any reverse must be less than welcome to any loyal son of Mother Church, it would be foolish to deny that this particular reverse simplifies our own situation somewhat,” Rainbow Waters remarked after a moment.

Wind Song let the observation pass without comment. Bishop Merkyl Sahndhaim, the Mighty Host's official intendant, would be … less than happy to hear about Camp Chihiro's fall. The baron suspected he would be even less happy when he heard
how
Camp Chihiro had fallen, but there wasn't any actual confirmation that the camp guards had surrendered themselves, the prisoners, and Camp Chihiro's inquisitors without firing so much as a single shot.

Hopefully, there wouldn't be.

In the meantime, however, the official loss of Camp Chihiro should mitigate the pressure on Rainbow Waters to somehow race the almost five hundred miles between Lake City and Gray Hill to prevent its loss. Wind Song was pretty sure Sahndhaim had recognized the impossibility of doing anything of the sort, but the intendant had been under immense pressure from the Grand Inquisitor and the Inquisitor General. On the other hand, he'd been far less insistent about it than he might have been, given that pressure from above. Bishop Merkyl's support for Vicar Zhaspahr's policies was well known, but he was an intelligent man. More than that, he had more than enough faith in the Mighty Host's orthodoxy and zeal to be willing to accept Rainbow Waters' military analyses and arguments, even when those analyses weighed against the … overly impetuous fulfillment of the Grand Inquisitor's designs. He was also intelligent enough to accept Rainbow Waters' judgment without openly arguing against the Grand Inquisitor's instructions. It was an often tricky tightrope, but Sahndhaim was well acquainted with the techniques Mother Church's bureaucrats had evolved over the centuries to protect their own backs.

They were almost as skilled in that regard as
Harchongese
bureaucrats.

“The other bit of news on that front,” the baron continued after a moment, “is that the column from Camp Saint Charlz will be arriving by barge tomorrow or the next day.”

“I see.”

Rainbow Waters sipped whiskey. Despite his own deep faith and belief in the Jihad, the earl had been much more than simply dismayed by the conditions he'd discovered at Camp St. Tailahr, the Inquisition's camp outside Lake City, when he first saw it. Harchongese aristocrats were seldom squeamish, but the brutality of the camp guards—especially directed towards those whose heresy had yet to be proven—had struck him as excessive. And that had been before he discovered that conditions in St. Tailahr had been still worse until Archbishop Arthyn Zagyrsk personally intervened. Primate of Tarikah or not, it had required more intestinal fortitude than most mere archbishops were willing to display to risk the ire of Inquisitor General Wylbyr or Zhaspahr Clyntahn, but Zagyrsk had insisted that since the camp inmates were being used as a labor force by Mother Church, Mother Church had a moral obligation to see to it that they were at least adequately fed and received minimal medical care. And moral considerations aside, he'd pointed out acidly, if the inmates were simply worked to death, they would no longer be available as a labor force.

Rainbow Waters wasn't looking forward to receiving the prisoners evacuated from St. Charlz and discovering what the inmates of camps who'd lacked an Archbishop Arthyn had endured. Not even the splendid whiskey in his cup was enough to kill the taste that was likely to put into his mouth. On the other hand.…

Yes, there's always an “other hand,” isn't there, Taychau?
he thought dryly.

“If the camp's been successfully evacuated,” he said serenely, lowering the cup once more, “then the pressure to defend Traymos has … somewhat decreased.”

Wind Song nodded.

“In that case,” the earl said rather more briskly, “we will reinforce our forward observation force at Mardahs, and also the one at Ayaltyn. A cavalry picket at Camp Saint Charlz' position—
former
position—should suffice to cover the approaches from Cat-Lizard Lake, for the moment at least. Sanjhys will become the northern anchor of our main position.”

“Yes, My Lord.”

Wind Song forbore to point out that the Mighty Host of God and the Archangels' orders were to hold a position as far east as possible. In fact, they were to hold the line of the North Hildermoss River, a hundred and fifty miles east of East Wing Lake, if at all possible. It was evident from the correspondence from Zion that with the heretic navy's armored riverboats stymied on the line of the north Hildermoss—so far at least—by the demolished locks at Darailys, the Captain General (or at least the Grand Inquisitor) wanted the entire river line south from Darailys held. It was equally obvious from what his uncle had just said that Rainbow Waters had no intention of doing anything of the sort. Sanjhys, one of the villages and small towns—very small towns, this far north—strung along the Tarikah River between East Wing Lake and the Hildermoss, was barely sixty-five miles east of the lake. It was also, however, only about a hundred and twenty miles from the Great Tarikah Forest which would form the
southern
anchor of Rainbow Waters' proposed defensive line.

The Tarikah Forest stretched six hundred miles, north-to-south, and most of it was trackless, virgin, unconsecrated forest. No doubt the heretics would be able to get through it more readily than Mother Church's defenders—they'd demonstrated their accursed mobility clearly enough by now—but not in great strength. And as long as the Mighty Host held blocking points along the canals, rivers, and limited road net, they wouldn't be getting any supply wagons or
artillery
through it.

It would also prevent Rainbow Waters' right from dangling in midair and inviting yet another of the heretics' devastating flank attacks.

“Were the year not quite so advanced,” the Mighty Host of God and the Archangels' commander continued calmly, “I would, of course, prefer to advance to the line of the Hildermoss, at least as far south as Lake Mayan, with an eye towards taking the offensive should the heretics' present preoccupation with capturing Mother Church's holding camps offer an opening. Under the circumstances, however, and given the damage done to the transportation system, it would clearly be rash to advance too precipitously with winter no more than a month and a half away. Our ability to supply the forces necessary to hold the occupied—
reoccupied
—territory would be problematical at best, once winter sets in. Far better to select a line we can be confident of holding and spend the next month or two building up our supply magazines here at Lake City in order to assure us of the ability to launch a powerful and
sustained
offensive in the spring.”

“Of course, My Lord,” Baron Wind Song agreed.

 

.VII.

St. Zheryld's Abbey, Episcopate of St. Shulmyn, The Temple Lands

“I hope you'll feel this was worth the trip, Your Grace,” Lynkyn Fultyn said, bending to kiss Allayn Maigwair's extended ring as the Captain General stepped off the gangplank from the heavily escorted barge. “I know we're a long way from Zion,” he continued as he straightened, “but—”

“But I'm the one who insisted on moving the project out here for development, Lynkyn,” Maigwair interrupted. “And it's not that bad a trip by water. I'd hate to make it overland, of course, but the trip across the lake was almost like a vacation of sorts. To be honest, I enjoyed it.”

Brother Lynkyn nodded. The largish town of St. Zheryld's Abbey lay almost four hundred miles east of Zion. Aside from the modest foundries which had called St. Zheryld's Abbey home, there'd been nothing particularly worth making the journey before the Jihad. The St. Zheryld River was a brawling and tempestuous stream where it came spilling down from the southern end of the Mountains of Light—well suited to driving the waterwheels of the pre-Jihad foundries but completely unnavigable above the town. Below the town, it was considerably deeper, but also narrow, navigable only by barges far smaller than those which normally plied Safehold's rivers and canals. That limitation was the reason St. Zheryld's Abbey hadn't been chosen as a site for one of Mother Church's newer, larger foundries, but it also explained why the town—out of sight and out of mind—was ideally suited to Maigwair's present purposes. He could make the trip across Lake Pei and then up the lower St. Zheryld's in less than three days (and in relative comfort), but it was isolated enough to allow for tight security, and its existing foundries were fully capable of producing the necessary metalwork under Fultyn's skilled supervision.

“Well, with that out of the way,” the Captain General continued cheerfully, resting one hand on Brother Lynkyn's shoulder, “why don't we get on with the demonstration?”

“Are you certain you don't wish to go to your quarters, first, Your Grace?” Fultyn looked a bit anxious. “It's past lunchtime. Couldn't we feed you and let you rest a bit?”

“Lynkyn, I've been sitting on my arse for the last two and a half days,” Maigwair pointed out with a smile. “This barge,” he gestured one-handed at the vessel from which he'd just debarked, “although a bit on the small side, is very comfortably appointed, I assure you. And my cook's seen to it that I've been reasonably well fed since leaving Zion. Unless, of course, there's some reason you're trying to
delay
me…?”

“No, Your Grace! Of course not!” Fultyn began quickly, then paused as Maigwair's smile turned into a grin.

“Very well, Your Grace,” the Chihirite said after a moment, his own lips quivering on the edge of a smile, “you got me. If you'd be kind enough to step this way, that demonstration is waiting for you.”

“Somehow I was certain it would be,” Maigwair replied, squeezing the lay brother's shoulder affectionately.

*   *   *

“As you know, Your Grace,” Fultyn said as Maigwair followed him up the observation tower's stairs, “getting what we've dubbed the ‘exhaust nozzles' properly designed was a more difficult proposition than I'd hoped, despite possessing the example we'd captured from the heretics. That gave me a model to work from, but actually figuring out how to cast and machine them properly—and
uniformly
—was rather challenging. In addition, the bronze used in the heretics' rockets melts or erodes in flight. Clearly, that hasn't been a problem for them, but since they've been using them primarily as
signaling
devices, whereas we want to use them as weapons, we need a longer … burn time, for want of a better term, out of
our
rockets. We also need a greater degree of accuracy. Rockets are never going to be as accurate as rifled bullets or shells, but we need to be confident all of them will fly to at least approximately the target we want to hit, and that makes the nozzles' performance—and durability—even more important. Bronze lasted
almost
long enough, but in the end, we had to convert to steel. Fortunately, the new hearths are producing so much of that that it's actually cheaper than bronze would have been. Harder to machine, which costs us a little on the labor side, but overall it costs a lot less.”

“That's good.”

There was an unwontedly fervent note in the Captain General's response, and Fultyn glanced back over his shoulder. Maigwair grimaced slightly but said nothing, only waving his hand for the lay brother to continue climbing. There was no point explaining to Fultyn just how parlous Mother Church's finances had become. The revised revenue measures had increased receipts from the Harchong Empire by almost thirty percent and more than doubled those coming from the Temple Lands. Desnair's tithes, however, had tumbled disastrously even before the Empire had been driven effectively out of the Jihad, and Dohlar's had actually been cut to the bone to reflect the enormous amounts Rahnyld found himself forced to spend on his own armed forces. Even the more affluent Border States found themselves in situations very similar to Dohlar's, and Siddarmark's were, of course, gone in their entirety. Rhobair Duchairn estimated he could continue to fund the Jihad for perhaps another year, even fifteen months. At that point, however, the Church would be effectively bankrupt.

Clyntahn, predictably, downplayed the Treasurer's gloomy “defeatist” warnings, pointing out that Duchairn had managed to overcome every one of the other disasters he'd predicted. Besides, the Grand Inquisitor was perfectly prepared to rely on the Inquisition's ability to impose an economy based upon barter—or even purely upon Church requisitions—if worse came to worst. Personally, Maigwair more than suspected Clyntahn was overestimating the extent to which even the Inquisition could compel men and women faced with feeding their children and providing for their families to cooperate in such a draconian scheme.

And meanwhile, the damned
heretics
are rolling in gold
, he thought resentfully. The Inquisition's first reports on the massive gold and silver strike in the Mohryah Mountains of Silverlode Island had started coming in last month. Clyntahn was doing his best to downplay
those
, too, the Captain General reflected bitterly.

Maigwair suspected there were two reasons for that. First, Clyntahn had his blinders on where the simple economic consequences of the newly opened mines were concerned. He didn't want to admit to himself that even as Mother Church's economy tottered towards collapse, the heretics—no, the
Charisians
—were not only finding expanding market opportunities in Siddarmark and throughout their own empire, but now they were literally shoveling gold out of the ground. The implications of that if the war lasted another year or so—especially without Mother Church finding some way to reverse her fortunes on the field of battle—were nothing the Grand Inquisitor wanted to contemplate, so he simply refused to do so.