Hell's Foundations Quiver (58 page)

Graingyr's got a point
, he reflected as the corporal's squad dispatched yet another detachment of Somyrs' 111th Infantry Regiment. This one hadn't had anyone even pretending to be alert; the scout snipers caught them in their bedrolls, huddled around the fire, with only two of them even awake … briefly.

There's no way my boys would tolerate something that sloppy. But Edwyrds is right, too. They never had a clue we were coming, thank God
.

It wasn't Allayn Maigwair's fault they hadn't. He and Bishop Militant Bahrnabai had seen to it that every commander of every post in the Army of the Sylmahn's operational area knew the Army of Midhold had disappeared somewhere in New Northland. Somyrs, the senior regimental CO and the senior officer in command at Five Forks, had dutifully acknowledged the information, and the sentry posts Dyasaiyl's scout snipers were busily eliminating represented his response to it. It was about to prove pathetically inadequate, but he'd never truly believed Charisians might appear more than six hundred straight-line miles from Ohlarn.

Sylvaio probably had a little something to do with that, too
, Green Valley acknowledged.
After all, he told Somyrs where we “really” were, didn't he
?

General Sylvaio Dymrohv's 2nd Division had been the last Charisian unit to move through Ohlarn, and his 4th Brigade had executed a perfect pounce on the blocking position at Rankylyr, which Bahrnabai Wyrshym had counted on to delay any advance along the Ohlarn-Guarnak High Road. No one in Guarnak—or Five Forks—had realized the bulk of the Army of Midhold's Charisian infantry had already passed well north of Rankylyr, following the line of the canal and taking out the semaphore line as it advanced, and a particularly generous critic might have excused Somyrs for assuming 4th Brigade represented Green Valley's entire army.

Like Corporal Graingyr, however, Kynt Clareyk was not a generous critic where the lives of men under his command were concerned.

Well
, he thought, turning to watch a purposeful, bayonet-bristling column from Brigadier Ahdryn Krystyphyr's 7th Brigade move steadily and swiftly through the icy night's wind-roar on its snowshoes,
I don't suppose the good Colonel's going to get a lot of sleep tonight
.
Too bad
.

*   *   *

Kholby Somyrs leaned back in his comfortable chair and enjoyed another swallow of the brandy one of his contacts in Lake City had forwarded to him. Colonel Somyrs was a conscientious man who'd avoided sneaking special items for his own use into the supply train for months, and not simply because both Bishop Militant Bahrnabai and the Inquisition had made it clear such practices would not be tolerated. But now that the Army of the Sylmahn's worst supply problems had been largely—not completely, but largely—dealt with, he was prepared to relax that restriction just a bit, not simply for himself but for the other senior officers here in Five Forks.

It wasn't as if the odd cask of brandy or case of canned delicacies was likely to displace anything critical these days. A few months ago, yes—then every pound, every cubic foot had been precious to the starving, overstrained Army. And to be honest, Guarnak's supply levels remained well below anything Somyrs would have considered genuinely adequate. But that was because of the difficulty in getting those supplies forward from Five Forks, not because the problem in getting them as far as Five Forks in the first place remained insuperable. The truth was, the supply depot under his command probably contained enough provisions by now to feed the bishop militant's entire field force for two or three months, possibly even as many as four. Moving them where they were needed was still a problem—supplies were stacked in mountains under snow-shrouded tarpaulins or piled high in barrels and casks under an open sky, waiting for the transport to shift them the remaining four hundred and fifty miles to Guarnak—but even that situation was improving and—

Colonel Somyrs' head jerked up, he surged to his feet, and the brandy glass fell from his hand as a sudden eruption of explosions and the vicious crackle of small-arms fire shattered the night.

*   *   *

The rest of Five Forks' garrison was just as surprised as its sentries had been. Like its commanding officer, its men had never imagined the enemy might be anywhere in the vicinity. Now they tumbled out of bedrolls, struggled up out of sleep, and found the next best thing to four thousand men armed with hand grenades, repeating rifles, and revolvers storming mercilessly into the tiny town they'd transformed into a massive supply depot. Four thousand more men were ready to follow the assault battalions, and less than a quarter of the defenders even reached their weapons. Of those who did, barely half reached their assigned defensive positions, and they were still trying to figure out what was happening when the Charisians stormed over them in a surf of hand grenades and a storm of bayonets.

 

.XII.

The Temple, City of Zion, The Temple Lands

“How bad is it?”

Rhobair Duchairn's voice was quiet but tension burned in its bones, and Allayn Maigwair gave him the sort of expression that soured milk.

“Bad? It's a frigging disaster, that's how
bad
it is!” he snarled. “Shan-wei take it! I've been telling Zhaspahr and the rest of you for
five-days
that—!”

“I know you have,” Duchairn interrupted. Maigwair glared at him, and the Church's Treasurer shook his head. “I
know
it, Allayn. For that matter, I've been helping you say it, remember?” Maigwair glared a moment longer, then nodded grudgingly. “So what I'm asking you now is how bad it really is. I need to know if there's anything my people can do about it.”

The Captain General inhaled deeply, closed his eyes for a moment, and gave himself a shake.

“All right,” he said in a calmer tone. “The truth is that I don't know how bad it is, but I'm confident it's worse than anything I
do
know. We only found out about it because eleven men—eleven men out of an entire supply convoy's mounted escort—made it back to Guarnak when they were ambushed three miles outside Five Forks. I'm not sure what happened when the heretics attacked the supply depot itself. We haven't heard a damned thing from Colonel Somyrs or anybody else in the garrison, but I do know the heretics have cut the semaphore chain twenty miles north of the town. And I know because of what happened to the supply convoy that they're firmly in control of the southern approaches, as well. Given that information, I have to assume Green Valley and his bastards have the town and probably got most of the supplies intact.”

“I agree it's better to be cautious than overly optimistic, but why are you assuming Somyrs and my people in Five Forks didn't manage to destroy the supply dump first?”

“Because if they'd had time for that,
someone
in the garrison would've had time to get out, too.” Maigwair shook his head, his face like iron. “Everything points to the heretics having attained complete surprise, Rhobair. And, frankly, ‘destroying' a supply depot is a hell of a lot more difficult than most people realize. The only practical way to do it is by burning the place—or blowing it the hell up. Stores of powder can be blown up fairly quickly … if you know you have to. Otherwise, it's usually stored in ways specifically designed to
prevent
it from all blowing up by accident. Most provisions, on the other hand, don't actually burn all that well without a lot of effort and fuel, and it takes time and planning to arrange something like that. Without at least a day or two of warning, especially with all the snow piled up around Five Forks to help smother any fires, there's no way Somyrs pulled it off. No.” He shook his head again. “Green Valley's sitting on top of enough of our supplies to keep his entire army fed for at least a couple of months, and that assumes he didn't bring along
any
of his own.” The Captain General bared his teeth. “Would you like to make a little wager on the possibility of someone like Green Valley
not
making sure he had an adequate cushion of supplies before he advanced cross-country over seven hundred miles of snow?”

“No.” It was Duchairn's turn to shake his head. “No, I wouldn't. I don't suppose we have any sort of estimate for how big his force is?”

“No, we don't. I'm in contact with Wyrshym over the Hildermoss semaphore chain, and he's trying to get a patrol far enough north to give me at least some idea of Green Valley's numbers. Unfortunately, the chance of his managing to pull that off under the current weather conditions and against somebody who's obviously so much better at moving in arctic conditions than we are is somewhere between zero and less than that. He'll keep trying, but we'd be fools to think he's likely to succeed. Under the circumstances, I think we have to operate on the assumption that it's basically all of Green Valley's Charisians, minus the seven or eight thousand men he has at Rankylyr.”

“You don't think he left any of them around Fairkyn?”

“No. I think he played us for fools there, too.” Maigwair's voice was bitter. He'd cautioned the rest of the Group of Four that what they actually knew about Gorthyk Nybar's situation was dangerously threadbare, yet even as he'd issued the warning, he'd believed Nybar's estimates were substantially correct. Until Rankylyr had fallen, at least. “I think he left his Siddarmarkians to keep Nybar penned up in Fairkyn, probably with his own heavy artillery to support them … and to fool us into thinking the
rest
of his army was there, too, of course. Not that leaving the guns didn't make sense for a lot of other reasons, as well. I doubt even Charisians wanted to haul heavy angle-guns overland in the middle of winter!”

“In that case, is there any possibility of Nybar breaking out to the south? Could he retake Rankylyr and rejoin Wyrshym?”

“No way in hell,” Maigwair said flatly. “First, because if there really are seven or eight thousand Charisians dug-in at Rankylyr—and that's been pretty thoroughly confirmed—he'd never have the firepower to take it back from them. That's a
tough
defensive position, Rhobair; that's why Wyrshym chose it in the first place. And, second, because he's under orders to hold Fairkyn until he's relieved and reinforced. In theory, if he could break out of the siege lines, he could retreat past Rankylyr without actually engaging its garrison. He'd have to abandon his artillery and supplies, but he could do it. Except for the fact that we can't get word to him to tell him he has to. And notice that I said ‘in theory.' Those Siddarmarkians of Green Valley's may not be as good at running around in the snow as his Charisians are, but they're damned tough, their supply situation's one hell of a lot better than Nybar's is, and after what the Sword of Schueler did to the Republic, I think they're about as motivated as anyone could be.”

Now there, Duchairn thought, Maigwair had a point.

“All right. I assume you're telling me this before we have to face Zahmsyn and Zhaspahr so we can be more or less on the same page when we do?”

“Damned right I am!” The Captain General's expression was more snarl than smile. “Wyrshym's already made it clear that his position's even shakier than we thought it was. I didn't really need him to tell me anything more than that we've lost Five Forks to realize that for myself, you understand. He's got whatever supplies he had on hand, which may—
may
—be enough for six five-days. I'm sure he's already reinstituted rationing, probably even more stringently than before, but we're not going to get any more food—or any more of the new rifles or any more of the new artillery—through to him unless we can retake Five Forks. And that,” he said grimly, “isn't going to happen, Rhobair. Green Valley's already had almost a full five-day to dig in, and I'm guessing he must have at least forty thousand men to do the digging with. Wyrshym's chance of taking Five Forks back under those circumstances doesn't exist.”

“All right.” Duchairn's face was drawn, but he nodded. “So what does that leave us as options?”

“Damned few.”

Maigwair took an angry, frustrated turn around Duchairn's private office. He stood for a moment, gazing out that office's window at the heavy snow falling across Zion, then wheeled back to face the Treasurer.

“Zhaspahr's downplayed it, just like he downplays
anything
he doesn't want to face, but we've been receiving spy reports—and rumors—that Stohnar's been reinforcing his cousin in the Sylmahn Gap since at least October. And while no one's told me about it, I have to assume the bulk of the Army of Shiloh's rifles have now found their way into heretic service.”

The two vicars' eyes met, and, after a moment, Duchairn nodded unhappily. The Army of Shiloh had been equipped with over eighty thousand rifles; Sir Rainos Ahlverez had reached Alyksberg with thirty-two thousand men, five field pieces, and fewer than
twenty
thousand rifles. Frankly, it was incredible he'd managed to salvage that many men from the debacle and hold them together through that nightmare march, although Duchairn knew that view of things was far from universal. Ahlverez was presently on his way back to Gorath to account to his own superiors—and, the Treasurer was sure, to the Inquisition—for the disaster, and Duchairn devoutly hoped the general would survive the trip. They needed men who could work miracles like that.

But assuming that even no more than half of the rifles the Army of Shiloh had lost had been captured intact and appropriated for the Siddarmarkian Army's use, they would suffice to arm another fourteen infantry regiments for Greyghor Stohnar. They wouldn't be as good as the Church's new breechloaders, but the heretics had captured quite a few St. Kylmahns by now. There was no reason they couldn't convert the captured muzzleloaders to the same design—and probably a lot more quickly and efficiently than the Church could have done it—if they chose to.