Hell's Foundations Quiver (35 page)

Green Valley nodded, because Gairwyl had a very good point. In fact, he had two of them.

The Charisian infantry of General Brohkamp's corps were far less suited to actual winter combat than Gardynyr's 4th Division and Brigadier Braisyn's 3rd Mounted Brigade, but all of them were equipped with arctic uniforms and tents. General Sulyvyn Makgrygair's 2nd Rifle Division, however, was Siddarmarkian. His infantrymen were tough and determined, and many were winter-wise, but they were far less well equipped and no one had ever trained them specifically for arctic warfare. That was why Green Valley had left Makgrygair to assure the security of Esthyr's Abbey while Brohkamp moved up from Esthyr's Abbey to St. Zhana, a hundred and fifty miles farther west.

The good news was that his snow lizard- and caribou-drawn sleighs were building up a major forward supply point at Esthyr's Abbey more rapidly than anyone in the Army of God would believe was possible. The bad news was that even so, he was going to have to hold his position at St. Tyldyn for at least a five-day or two. First Corps, and especially the engineers assigned to 4th Division, had been improving the high road as it went, but nature wasn't cooperating. There'd been a fresh blizzard—two days' worth of heavy snowfall—immediately after they'd taken Esthyr's Abbey, coupled with almost daily flurries since. Now another arctic front was on its way, and the additional snow would hamper anyone's logistics, even his. He doubted Brohkamp would be able to move even his Charisian infantry any farther forward than St. Tyldyn before the first day of April. Moving Makgrygair's Siddarmarkians under those conditions would be problematic, at best, and even 1st Corps was starting to feel the strain of the pace he'd demanded of it.

He followed Gairwyl to the library table where the colonel had spread out his maps and both of them frowned down at the uncompromising topography.

St. Tyldyn was barely a hundred and forty air-miles east of Fairkyn, but that was over a hundred and seventy miles for an army which followed the high road. That high road crossed to the western bank of the Ice Ash River ninety-plus miles from St. Tyldyn, at which point a spur road ran south along the river's bank to Fairkyn. The wooden spans of the drawbridges on which it had once crossed the Kalgaran and the Ice Ash had been burned, but the intact stone approach spans remained. Green Valley's engineers would be able to put them back into service quickly, and under what passed for good winter conditions in northern Haven—in other words, at least five days in a row without a blizzard—1st Corps' ski- and snowshoe-equipped infantry could have advanced almost thirty miles a day along the line of the high road. Much of that movement would have to be made in darkness, given how short those days were this far north, yet the road bed provided both a flat, graded path and a guide that would be hard to miss even in pitch blackness. But while 2nd Corps' supply train could match that rate of advance, it was unlikely its infantry could manage much more than twenty or so miles a day under the best of conditions.

The distance to Fairkyn was twenty percent shorter cross-country, but covering that kind of distance under arctic conditions would take at least seven or eight days even for Makrohry's 1st Corps, and he really couldn't justify sending Makrohry on his way until Brohkamp had reached St. Tyldyn. First Corps consisted of just over twenty-three thousand men, including its field artillery and attached engineers. Its actual combat formations, however, were down to a scant twenty thousand, barely seventy percent of their “paper” strength. While that was quite a lot more than Gorthyk Nybar commanded, it wasn't a lot more than Nybar would have shortly, because Wyrshym had pulled out all the stops after the loss of Esthyr's Abbey and St. Zhana. Nybar's units had been brought almost up to their official establishment with fresh replacements, and two more AOG infantry divisions were earmarked to join him over the next two or three five-days.

Worse, Nybar had kept his men busy improving their positions, despite the bitter weather, and Wyrshym had managed to squeeze out enough transport to stockpile two months' rations for Nybar's troops at Fairkyn. It hadn't been easy. Despite Rhobair Duchairn's improvements to the Army of the Sylmahn's supply situation, Wyrshym's entire command was still living hand to mouth. He'd run serious risks and pinched his own logistic capability at Guarnak to build up Nybar's supplies at Fairkyn, and he'd been forced to shave the rest of the Army of the Sylmahn's ration dumps dangerously thin, but he'd done it.

All of which meant Green Valley would shortly be looking at close to eighteen thousand well dug in, reasonably well-supplied infantry and cavalry. Their artillery would be weak, but Fairkyn sat at the top of a steep line of bluffs west of the Ice Ash. Those bluffs were the reason for the canal locks around which the town had grown, and the elevation would give the defenders the advantage of the high ground. Worse, Nybar—who was depressingly willing to learn from other people's experience, as well as his own—had built observation towers in Fairkyn itself and at regular intervals around his entire defensive position. His guns would be outclassed, in both numbers and capability, but Green Valley's artillerists would be unable to use their own weapons to full advantage because they simply wouldn't be able to see their targets. The last thing Green Valley wanted was to turn Fairkyn into some sort of deep-winter siege operation, and however superior to Wyrshym's his own supply capabilities might be, feeding the big guns' voracious appetite for any sort of lengthy artillery duel would impose a significant strain.

We can still do this
, he told himself, looking down at the maps.
I can still get 1st Corps around Nybar's flank into the Ohlarn Gap, cut his direct connection to Guarnak, and there's no way in hell Wyrshym can move north and push me back out of the Gap before Brohkamp comes up through St. Tyldyn to invest Fairkyn from the east. But Nybar'll be able to hold out at least a month longer than I'd hoped he would, unless I want Brohkamp to pay the butcher's bill to storm his positions, and that'd gut 2nd Corps … at best. But if we let Nybar tie us down that long, Wyrshym'll have at least another month to improve his own supply chain and that pain in the arse Duchairn will spend it shipping in still more rifles, and this time they'll be new-build St. Kylmahns, not field conversions. Unless
.…

He gazed at the map, eyes measuring distances and considering the opponents' relative speeds. He didn't want to tie down and bloody 1st or 2nd Corps in a siege, no. That would sacrifice the priceless advantage of his Charisians' mobility and buy Wyrshym too much time, exactly as the bishop militant hoped. But if he was willing to let Makgrygair's
Siddarmarkians
invest Fairkyn with Charisian artillery support—and
if
he could get Makgrygair moved up quickly enough—then pass the rest of Brohkamp's corps north of Fairkyn, out of sight of Nybar's observation towers, while 1st Corps went
south
of Fairkyn.…

Risky, Kynt
, he told himself.
Maybe even
very
risky. If Nybar gets feisty—or desperate—enough to come out of Fairkyn, Makgrygair would have his hands full. And if Nybar figures out what you're doing, and you already know he's no dummy, that's exactly what he
ought
to do. Because if you lose the high road through Ohlarn and then down through the Gap, you'll have sixty thousand hungry Charisians stuck in the middle of goddamned nowhere. No way even your supply trains could move enough food and ammunition forward cross-country to sustain them for very long
.

But if you can pull it off and keep the boys fed long enough
.…

He sank into one of Gairwyl's camp chairs, leaning both elbows on the library table, propping his chin in his palms, and his eyes were dreamy.

He never even noticed the speculation in Gairwyl's eyes … or the resignation in Lieutenant Slokym's.

 

.XVII.

Charisian Embassy, Siddar City, Republic of Siddarmark

“Well, what do you think of Kynt's latest brainstorm?” Cayleb Ahrmahk asked dryly.

He and Merlin Athrawes sat on a pair of well-stuffed settees, facing each other across the hearth in the sitting room of the emperor's suite. Aivah Pahrsahn sat comfortably at Merlin's side, her legs folded under her, and all three of them nursed glasses of
Seijin
Kohdy's Premium Blend. It was an excellent whiskey, and although Merlin actually preferred Sharleyan's favorite Glynfych, it had become the drink of choice whenever Aivah dropped by to confer with him and Cayleb.

“I think it's … audacious,” he replied judiciously.

“‘Audacious,' the man says!” Cayleb shook his head. “How about ‘He's out of his frigging mind'?!”

“Now, that really isn't fair, Your Majesty,” Aivah put in. Cayleb looked at her, and she shrugged. “I'm not a military person like you and Baron Green Valley, but he's never struck me as the sort who's likely to run off chasing wild wyverns. I don't pretend to understand all the movements he's talking about in this instance, but Owl and Prince Nahrmahn—and I, for that matter—all agree with his estimates of Nybar's and Wyrshym's supply situation. And whatever he does, he'll have the SNARCs to keep anyone from surprising him.”

“The only problem, Aivah,” Cayleb said in a considerably more somber tone, “is that seeing what's coming doesn't help a lot if you can't get out of the way. That's sort of what happened to us in the Markovian Sea two years ago. Even worse, it's what happened to Admiral Manthyr in the Gulf of Dohlar.”

Aivah's expression tightened in understanding, but Merlin shook his head.

“You're right about that, Cayleb.” His voice was gentler than usual, an acknowledgment of the pain he and Cayleb shared over what had happened to Gwylym Manthyr and his men, but his eyes were level. “On the other hand, Kynt's faster on his feet than anybody on the other side. Admittedly, Second Corps isn't quite as nimble as
First
Corps, but either one of them could march rings around anything the Church has, especially under winter conditions. So the odds are damned good that he
could
get out of the way in time if anything untoward came at him. And he'd have pretty close to parity with Wyrshym's entire army, to boot.”

“A parity he'd be busy splitting at least three ways, counting Makgrygair's division,” Cayleb pointed out.

“Fair enough. But the Army of the Sylmahn's
already
split three ways, and if Kynt pulls it off, Wyrshym won't be able to reunite his command in time to make much of a difference. For that matter, he won't be able to unite with Nybar
at all
, and frankly, given Nybar's capability, that would be a very good thing in a whole bunch of ways.”

Cayleb's grunt might have signified agreement, or simple acknowledgment, or mere irritation, and he stared down into his whiskey for several seconds. Then his nostrils flared and he looked back up again.

“Are you seriously suggesting I should let him try this?” he asked quietly.

It was, Merlin acknowledged, a reasonable question, and he turned to gaze into the heart of the fire while he considered it.

Green Valley's original strategy had been to pinch out Gorthyk Nybar's command at Fairkyn, then move south through the Ohlarn Gap down the high road to Guarnak to threaten Wyrshym's primary forward supply head. Unfortunately, as Green Valley had pointed out, Wyrshym had thrown everything he could into reinforcing Nybar and Nybar had dug in too quickly and too damned efficiently. Like Green Valley, Merlin found himself respecting the Army of Fairkyn's CO more than he might have wished. Gorthyk Nybar was entirely too flexible when it came to tactical innovation and far too iron-willed when it came to hammering his plans through to success.

He'd lost better than five percent of his initial troop strength, mostly to frostbite, driving his men to fortify their position in the teeth of a North Haven winter, but he'd refused to flinch. And as they'd hacked entrenchments and dugouts out of the frozen earth, they'd also improved their quarters. Every one of those dugouts had its own crude chimney, and earthen walls and sandbags designed to be bulletproof also tended to be wind and weather proof, which had led to a significant decrease in subsequent frostbite casualties. That was scarcely a minor consideration, but from the Allies' perspective, what mattered most was that Nybar had already seen mortars and heavy Charisian artillery in action, and his fortifications reflected that experience. They might not be up to the standards of Old Terra's Western Front in 1918, but they were far better than any pre-Merlin fieldworks would have been, and black powder artillery was less effective
against
fieldworks than the high-explosive which had churned Flanders' fields into a moonscape. Even worse, perhaps, his own artillery had learned a few lessons of its own. It remained far from equal to its opposition, but it was better than it had been, and it was dug in where any assault would have to come to
it
.

The fortifications would go a long way towards redressing the imbalance between muzzle-loading and breech-loading rifles, as well. And that didn't even consider the minor point of how much of his current infantry force had been rearmed with breechloaders. All of which would make taking Fairkyn a much more unpleasant—and lengthier—proposition than anyone had anticipated when Green Valley formulated his original plan of campaign.

And, as Aivah had just pointed out, Green Valley was entirely correct about Wyrshym's improved logistics. Now that Nybar's needs had been seen to, the bishop militant's snow lizards and mountain dragons were busily hauling supplies forward to Guarnak from Five Forks, the Hildermoss River city where those supplies had been accumulating for the past two or three months. If Wyrshym was allowed to go on doing that.…