Hell's Foundations Quiver (53 page)

Her hazel eyes looked deep, deep into his, and they were bottomless as the sea, dark with honesty and the depth of her own fearless belief.

“So the question, Sir Dunkyn,” she said softly, “is whether or not
you
agree with that God.”

 

.VIII.

Sheryl-Seridahn Canal, West of Evyrtyn, The South March Lands

“Get
down
, Sir!”

Something hit Lieutenant Bryahnsyn from behind, wrapped itself around his knees, and sent him crashing facedown to the ground. He hit so hard his sinuses stung … just before the abbreviated whistle of one of the heretics' small angle-gun shells ended in a sudden explosion. It was an explosive round, fortunately, not one of the shrapnel-spewing airbursts, and it exploded only after hitting the ground, but shell fragments hissed nastily overhead.

He pushed himself cautiously up on his hands and looked over his shoulder at the nineteen-year-old private who'd tackled him.

“A simple shout might have done the job with less bruises, Symyn,” he pointed out. “And without exposing both of us, now that I think about it.”

“Sorry about that, Sir.” Private Hyldyrshot didn't seem particularly crushed by his company commander's reprimand. “Didn't think you heard it coming,” he added.

“Well, I appreciate your taking care of me,” Bryahnsyn told him, choosing not to mention that Hyldyrshot was entirely correct. He
hadn't
heard the incoming shell, and he should have been paying better attention. Langhorne knew the heretic bastards chucked the things over often enough to keep the Army of the Seridahn from feeling bored! Most of his men had acquired the survival-oriented reflex to hit the ground whenever one of them arrived, and he supposed officers should set the example in that, as well. It would be a far better one than the “See how brave I am when I stand out in the shrapnel!” attitude some of his denser colleagues seemed to prefer to demonstrate.

Briefly, at least.

“Now get back under cover,” he continued. “I promise I'll watch my own arse in the meantime.” The private seemed to hesitate, and Bryahnsyn lowered his eyebrows and glowered. “If you get yourself shot full of holes for absolutely no good reason, Private, Platoon Sergeant Abykrahmbi will give me Shan-wei's own hell over it!”

“Yes, Sir.”

Hyldyrshot grinned, touched his chest in salute, and crawled back into what someone in the Imperial Charisian Army would have called his slit trench. Bryahnsyn paused just long enough to nod in gratitude, then resumed his journey—more cautiously, exactly as he'd promised—across 5th Company's position.

The private's attitude was a welcome indicator of the state of the army's morale. Personally, Bryahnsyn wouldn't have been surprised to see the men cowering in their holes instead of worrying about what might happen to one of their officers who wasn't paying attention the way he ought to. Instead, they seemed well aware of the reasons they couldn't stand and challenge the heretics to a fight to the finish. They didn't
like
retreating, yet they understood why they were doing it, and instead of the sullenness Bryahnsyn might have expected, they'd decided to take a sense of pride out of conducting that retreat as skillfully—and as stubbornly—as possible.

They'd fallen back from Evyrtyn to get out of the ironclad's range, and before they'd left, their engineers had blown up the river locks between Evyrtyn and the town of Riverfork, a hundred and eighty miles farther up the Seridahn, as well. Personally, Bryahnsyn was inclined to think the river above Riverfork was probably too shallow for something the ironclad's size, but there was no way to be sure of that, so General Rychtyr had destroyed the locks anyway, just to be safe. Surely it would take even the heretics months to rebuild or replace them in mid-river, especially with the spring floods not so many five-days away! He hoped so, anyway; the last thing they needed was that monster getting as high as Alyksberg and severing the Dairnyth-Alyksberg Canal, as well.

There was damn all the Army of the Seridahn could do about Alyksberg, however. All it could do was fight its stubborn retreating action as slowly—and with as few casualties among its own men—as possible. That was how the lieutenant found his platoon thirty-five miles west of Evyrtyn, crouching in their muddy trenches while the rest of the army fell back to the much more substantial entrenchments waiting five miles beyond them. At least the labor gangs which had been sent up the canal from Dohlar had finished preparing the army's next main position in plenty of time. They were supposed to be working on the position beyond that one now, and as long as the heretics didn't bring up the
heavy
angle-guns.…

“Over here, Lieutenant!”

He looked up at the shout and saw Brynt Atwatyr, Captain Mahkluskee's company sergeant, waving to attract his attention. The company commander's hole, hidden from the heretics directing the angle-guns' fire by a dense thicket of second-growth timber, was rather larger than the one Bryahnsyn had left behind, and 4th Platoon was dug-in amid the trees to prevent any unwelcome guests from disturbing the captain's meeting.

Bryahnsyn waved back to Atwatyr and jogged the remaining fifty yards, then slithered down into the hole beside Lieutenant Aimohs Zhynkyns, who'd inherited 4th Platoon after Lieutenant Sandkaran's death.

“Glad you could make it, Ahrnahld,” Captain Mahkluskee observed with a sardonic smile. It wasn't a reprimand. In fact, it was almost a compliment, since Bryahnsyn had had farther to come than any of the captain's other platoon commanders.

“Let's get to it,” Mahkluskee continued more briskly, beckoning the lieutenants closer to his sketch map. They gathered around him, and he tapped it with a dirty finger. “We're here,” he said, indicating a point on the Sheryl-Seridahn Canal while heretic angle-gun shells continued to explode in a sort of ragged rhythm in the background. Bryahnsyn didn't want to think about what would happen if one of them chanced to find its way into the hole with them by blind luck. “Colonel Sheldyn has Second and Third Company out on our flanks—here and here—but they're farther west than we are, and the rest of the army, except for Colonel Hahpkyns' regiment, has already fallen back. Basically, we're the head of the arrow right now, and our job's to stay where we are at least until dark. After the sun sets, I'll pass the order to begin pulling out. I'll be using runners, not whistles or bugles, since we'd just as soon not have the bastards realize we're moving in the open.”

All of his lieutenants nodded in fervent agreement. A platoon caught in the open by a fusillade of shrapnel-charged infantry angle shells could be wiped out in minutes. They'd found that out the hard way since the heretic Hanth had taken the offensive.

“All right,” Mahkluskee went on. “Ahrnahld,” he looked at Bryahnsyn, “your people are the farthest east on the canal, so we're going to start by moving you back. When the runner tells you it's time to go, pull out
quietly
. We don't want the heretics to know we're going anywhere until we're already gone. Frankly, I'd prefer for it to be sometime next five-day before they figure it out, but I'm not going to bet my pension on it.”

A couple of his platoon commanders chuckled, and he grinned tautly, then turned to Lieutenant Charlsyn Dahnel, 1st Platoon's CO.

“You'll be next to go, Charlsyn. Ahrnahld will send a runner to your position when the last of his men are out of their holes and headed west. Stay where you are until you hear from him. Then, I want you to move—”

*   *   *

“We need more of the heavy angles, My Lord,” Admiral Sympsyn said. “The mortars are good—they're a hell of a lot better than just
good
, in fact—but once the bastards get dug-in below ground level, especially with any kind of overhead cover, mortars just don't have the firepower to blast them back out again.”

Sir Hauwerd Breygart, the Earl of Hanth, grunted in sour agreement. It wasn't as if his artillery chief was telling him anything he didn't already know. Unfortunately, there wasn't much he could do about it. More rifled six-inch angle-guns were supposed to be on their way to him “as soon as possible,” but the unfortunate truth was that the Army of Thesmar's priority remained clearly secondary to the other forces Charis and Siddarmark had in the field. The fact that he understood the logic behind that state of affairs didn't seem to make it any more palatable, however.

“What we've got is what we'll have for at least another month, Lywys,” he said as philosophically as possible. “In fact, I won't be all that surprised if we don't get them until some time in late June. And depending on how things go against Kaitswyrth, it could be even longer than that. Master Howsmyn's doing his best, but the Navy's had first priority on the heavy guns since the first ironclads were laid down.”

It was Sympsyn's turn to grunt in acknowledgment of something he already knew.

“In the meantime,” Hanth continued, “we need to keep the pressure on. I'm not planning on pulling a Harless and storming any of these earthworks. Our boys have better things to do than fertilize some farmer's fields! But we're actually more mobile than they are now, once we get away from the canal. So as long as we can keep working our way around their flanks, we can keep them moving steadily westward.”

He turned to Major Dyntyn Karmaikel, his aide. Like Sympsyn, who'd been a naval captain when they arrived in Thesmar, Karmaikel had been promoted. He'd also found himself assuming the position of Hanth's chief of staff, which was a heavy load for a man who'd been a Marine lieutenant only months earlier. He'd risen to the challenge nicely, however, and in the process he might have begun laying the demons of hatred which had ridden him for so long, as well.

“Dyntyn,” the earl said, “we need a dispatch to Brigadier Mathysyn. I want Major Mahklymorh's scout snipers and Colonel Brystahl's regiment ready to move out by morning. I'm pretty sure we're going to run into another damned set of entrenchments a few miles beyond the odds and sods in front of us right now. According to the maps, the terrain's better on the north side of the canal. That's why I want Mahklymorh and Brystahl to hook around to the
south
. If they've slipped up and left us an opening, it's more likely we'll find it on that side.”

“Aye, My Lord.”

“Draft me a dispatch to that effect. Then let me take a look at it before we send it off.”

“Aye, aye, My Lord.”

The Marine saluted and stepped into the command tent where Hanth's clerks waited at their portable writing desks.

It was nice to have a properly equipped field headquarters, at least, the earl reflected. It would be even nicer to get the heavy artillery he truly needed, but he wasn't about to complain. Not after the frayed boot lace upon which he'd been forced to operate the summer before.

Besides, the truth was that even without the heavy angles he was far, far happier with the way this year was shaping up. His army had advanced over four hundred and fifty miles from Thesmar following the high road—well over six hundred, up the course of the Seridahn—in less than three months and driven Sir Fahstyr Rychtyr from every position he'd tried to hold. Unfortunately, Rychtyr had figured out how to slow things up since then.

The key to his rapid advance had been HMS
Delthak
's heavy guns. His mortars and thirty-pounders were effective enough in the open, but as Sympsyn had just pointed out, they weren't powerful enough to demolish properly designed entrenchments.
Delthak
's six-inchers could do that … if the thoroughgoing destruction of the Evyrtyn locks hadn't barred the ironclad from the canal. It would have taken Commodore Parkyr and his engineers five-days, at best, to repair the canal locks, and the effort would have been pointless. The town of Fyrayth, a hundred and ninety miles west of Evyrtyn, was the highest elevation along the Sheryl-Seridahn Canal. That made its locks the key to the entire eastern portion of the canal, and as long as they were in Rychtyr's hands, he controlled the water level in the canal.

Which explained why there was precious little water in it at the moment.

Without
Delthak
in support, and without enough of the Army's heavy angles to replace her firepower, pushing Rychtyr farther back promised to be an extraordinarily unpleasant task. Rychtyr couldn't stop the Army of Thesmar from ultimately working its way around the Dohlarans' flanks, but he could make any frontal assaults unbearably costly. It was going to be like some formal dance where everyone knew the steps; Hanth could already see that much. Unless Rychtyr was obliging enough to screw up and let the Charisians and their Siddarmarkian allies actually cut the canal behind him before he retreated, Hanth's troops were going to wear out a lot of perfectly good boots over the coming several months.

And if the bastards keep getting more of those new rifles of theirs forward, it's only going to get worse
, he reflected grimly.
I'm not looking forward to seeing proper angle-guns in their hands, either. If the
seijins
are right about how soon
they're
going to start turning up we're going to have to be
damned
careful about how aggressively we go after them
.

He grimaced. The good news was that nothing he was going to face was likely to be better than his own men's weapons; the bad news was that what he was going to face was no longer going to be
inferior
to his own men's weapons.

But we'll still be moving in the right direction, whatever the bastards come up with
, he reminded himself.
That's a hell of a lot more than
Rychtyr
can say!