Hell's Foundations Quiver (69 page)

“As soon as we've seen to that,” Rohsail continued, “I want all ships in company ready to weigh anchor within four hours. We'll drop a boat with a message to Governor Cloud Shadow on our own way through the Shweimouth. He's smart enough to move heaven and earth to prepare Symarkhan. We'll just have to hope the local militia has enough artillery to at least hold those damned schooners at bay. If the heretics
have
to use their ironclad, just getting that beast up and down the river will buy us at least three or four more days to catch up with them.”

“Yes, Sir. I'll see to it.”

“I know you will, Markys. And while we're worrying about what the heretics may want to do to us, let's not overlook the possibilities of what
we
may get a chance to do to
them
. They've got time to get there, as long as the wind doesn't decide to screw them over. But if Admiral Hahlynd's able to expedite his movement and get
his
ironclads into the river before they get to Symarkhan, they'll make mincemeat out of their damned schooners. For that matter, they'll kick the arses of their regular galleons! And if we can turn up close enough on their heels and the wind lets us pin them against the coast somewhere.…”

Hamptyn nodded again, because his admiral was right about the potential opportunity. The flag captain didn't like to think about how many Dohlaran galleons that single ironclad would smash before they managed to overwhelm it. In fact, it was more than possible that it would be able to cut its way through their entire squadron. But the conventional galleons with it
wouldn't
, and the Royal Dohlaran Navy had a bone to pick with the heretics.

*   *   *

“North Shwei Point bears four points on the starboard bow, Sir,” Lieutenant Stahdmaiyr said, and Captain Kahrltyn Haigyl grunted in satisfaction.

“Thank you, Dahnyld.”

The captain stood beside HMS
Dreadnought
's binnacle, rubbing the patch over his left eye socket with an index finger while he peered down at the illuminated compass card. Then he lifted his head, gazing up at his ship's canvas.

Kahrltyn Haigyl was not the finest ship handler ever to serve in the Imperial Charisian Navy, and the truth was that he would have felt more confident—or happier, at least—threading his way through the Shweimouth Passage in daylight. The Harchongians had removed all of the Shweimouth buoys as soon as Earl Sharpfield's light cruisers started raiding their shipping in the Gulf of Dohlar. Admittedly, the passage was seventy miles wide at its narrowest point, but the sky was covered in clouds, there was no moon, the deepwater channel was far narrower than that, he had no local pilot, and there was always the odd shoal, mudbank, or unbuoyed rock.
Dreadnought
's armor wouldn't do her very much good if he managed to poke a hole through her bottom.

Time was more important than caution, though. He'd reached Talisman Island considerably sooner than he'd expected, barely a five-day after Captain Ahbaht's departure, to discover the message Ahbaht had left for him. In fact, Commander Makgrygair had sent the message out to him in a small boat before
Dreadnought
had fully entered Rahzhyr Bay, and Haigyl had turned back to the open Gulf within ten minutes of reading it.

He understood exactly what Ahbaht was up to, and Kahrltyn Haigyl always approved of taking the battle to the enemy, especially if it meant keeping those armored Dohlaran galleys out of the squadron's hair. It couldn't hurt to provide the dapper little Emeraldian with some additional support, though. And even if that hadn't been true, Haigyl had no intention of allowing Ahbaht to have all the fun.

Still, he would have preferred daylight. Shot, shells, and cold steel he could deal with; rocks and shoals were something else entirely.

“Steady as she goes, Dahnyld,” he said calmly.

 

.III.

Aivahnstyn, Cliff Peak Province, Republic of Siddarmark, and Stahlberg, Earldom of Usher

The servant topped off Bishop Militant Cahnyr Kaitswyrth's cup of tea and withdrew silently. The bishop militant raised the cup in both hands, holding it close enough to inhale the fragrant steam, and tried not to think about the rain pounding on the townhouse roof. He would have vastly preferred for it to be more snow and ice.

“Have you heard anything more from Vicar Allayn, Cahnyr?” Father Sedryk Zavyr asked from the other side of the breakfast table, and Kaitswyrth grimaced as he heard the worry in Zavyr's tone. Obviously his intendant's thoughts were following his own.

“Not since last Thursday,” he said, in less than cheery tones. There was no point dissembling with Zavyr. They'd been together for far too long—and thought far too much alike—for that. “I'd be a lot happier if we had heard something more, but let's face it, from what he said in his last message, there's not much more he can send us until the canals farther north thaw. And it sounds to me like somebody in Zion's pushing for anything that
becomes
available to go to Wyrshym.”

He'd tried hard to keep any edge of complaint out of his voice, but he knew he'd failed, and Zavyr's cheek muscles tightened. The upper-priest sympathized completely with him, yet his ultimate loyalty was to the Grand Inquisitor, and both of them knew who was behind the effort to divert resources from the Army of Glacierheart to the Army of the Sylmahn.

“In fairness,” Kaitswyrth made himself say, “Vicar Allayn points out that between the draft from the Army of Tanshar and Baron Wheatfields' Jhurlahnkians and Usherites, he's already sent us the next best thing to fifty-three thousand men and another sixty guns. He agrees it's … unfortunate that he can't send us any more artillery, but fifty-three thousand rifles are fifty-three thousand rifles when all's said, Sedryk.”

“But if your estimate of the strength the heretics are amassing is accurate,” Zavyr began, “you don't—”

“Given how hard it's been to get any sort of hard count on the heretics, I'm afraid our estimate's probably actually low,” Kaitswyrth said somberly. “And I strongly doubt Cayleb and Stohnar are finding it quite as hard to scrape up additional artillery for Symkyn.” He showed his teeth in a humorless grin. “They've damned sure made it one of their top priorities, though—I'll promise you that! And with good reason, Shan-wei take them.” He shook his head. “I'm inclined to think that some of our superiors in Zion who haven't personally experienced heretic artillery are underestimating the threat.”

“If they are, it's not because I haven't fully endorsed your reports.” Zavyr took a sip from his own teacup and grimaced. “I hate to say it, but I think you're right about how … out of touch certain parties in Zion are, though.”

“At least the canals
are
finally beginning to thaw,” Kaitswyrth said in a determinedly more cheerful tone. “I could wish the entire Mighty Host wasn't strung along the Holy Langhorne like beads on a string, given how much later the thaw comes farther north, but it is coming. And we can always hope the rain and mud will keep the heretics home in their nice, snug barracks until someone gets us enough reinforcements we'll actually have a chance of holding our position.”

*   *   *

“I have that Canal Service report for you, My Lord,” Wynshyng Pahn, the Baron of Crystal Sky, said in a white puff of breath as he drew rein beside Lord of Horse Gwainmyn Yiangszhu, Baron Falling Rock.

“Am I going to want to hear it?” Baron Falling Rock asked him.

“Probably not,” Lord of Foot Crystal Sky admitted. “It's still a solid block of ice north of Mhartynsberg.”

“You're right. I didn't want to hear that. Not that it comes as any great surprise.” Falling Rock smiled thinly and waved his off hand at the flurries of snowflakes eddying down out of a heavy pewter sky.

“At least we'll be able to get you under a roof tonight, My Lord,” his senior brigade commander and second-in-command pointed out. “That's something.”

“But the men in the ranks won't be able to say the same thing.”

“No, I'm afraid they won't,” Crystal Sky agreed.

It always surprised him just a bit when Falling Rock said something like that. The lord of horse was eighteen years older than Crystal Sky, and tough as an old boot. He was also a noble of the old school, who'd never been noted for his solicitude for the serfs bound to his substantial estates in Maddox. In fact, he'd obviously been a little dubious, initially, about having Crystal Sky under his command, given the younger baron's reputation as a liberal who'd actually been known to suggest—hypothetically, of course—that a free peasantry might actually be preferable to serfs permanently and legally bound to the soil. Yet he'd embraced the effort to rearm and retrain the Mighty Host of God and the Archangels, and he clearly recognized that those “men in the ranks” were an essential component of the Jihad. In fact, Crystal Sky suspected he'd come to feel a responsibility for their welfare that went beyond keeping his weapon sharp, although he doubted Falling Rock would ever admit anything of the sort.

“I think we'll at least get them bivouacked in time for them to cook a hot meal, tonight, Sir. And at least the canal's thawing
south
of us. If the flooding doesn't slow the rest of Host too badly, it should start catching up with us within the next few five-days.”

“And I'll be glad if that happens,” Falling Rock acknowledged. “But we're still a long way from the Army of the Sylmahn, and the truth is, we're not going to make it in time.”

Crystal Sky's head snapped around more quickly than he'd intended, and his eyes had widened ever so slightly as he looked at his commander.

“There's no point pretending differently, Wynshyng,” Falling Rock said heavily. “Oh, I'll keep on pushing the pace. We
are
fighting in God's name, so I'm not going to foreclose the possibility of a miracle. But short of that, the heretics are going to hit Bishop Militant Bahrnabai at least a solid month before we could reach him.”

“If that's true, Sir—and I'm only surprised to hear you say it, not surprised that it probably is—won't Vicar Allayn allow the Bishop Militant to fall back?”

“If it were up to Vicar Allayn, he'd already have fallen back,” Falling Rock said bluntly. “It's not, and you and I both know it.” He held the younger man's eyes until Crystal Sky nodded, then shrugged. “From a military perspective, it's the wrong decision; from the perspective of the Jihad, it may be the right one. If nothing else, the time it takes the heretics to deal with him will be that much more time for the Host to move up the canal to meet them head on. And given the Bishop Militant's supply situation, he's probably too short on rations and draft animals to get more than a tithe of his army out at this point, anyway.”

Crystal Sky's nostrils flared, but then, slowly, he nodded again.

“Oh, don't look so down in the mouth, Wynshyng!” Falling Rock reached across and punched the lord of foot gently on the shoulder in an unusual gesture of affection. “God never promised us it would be easy, and if Shan-wei wasn't loose in the world and doing everything in her power to help the heretics, there'd never have been a Jihad in the first place. And however much it may hurt to think about losing it, Bishop Militant Bahrnabai's entire army's barely a tenth the strength of the Host and Earl Rainbow Waters will have every man and gun we've got coming up this canal behind us. Whatever happens to the Army of the Sylmahn, the heretics will have
us
to deal with long before they get to the Border States' frontier, and we'll have the entire summer to show them that not even Shan-wei can save them from the wrath of God.”

 

.IV.

HMS
Thunderer
, 30, Shwei Bay; HMS Destiny 54, Sea of Harchong; and Charisian Embassy, Siddar City, Republic of Siddarmark

“Good morning, Sir.”

Lieutenant Zhaksyn saluted his captain as he came on deck. Sir Bruhstair Ahbaht returned the salute gravely, then nodded to the lieutenant, walked to the taffrail, and stood gazing back to the southeast as the morning sunlight gilded the topsails of his squadron. They were seventeen days out of Talisman Island, and the cloudless sky was a polished blue dome: clear, bright, hot … and the next best thing to windless.

The squadron was more spread out than he might have wished, but that bothered him less than the way the ships' sun-burnished canvas hung slack or flapped languidly. At the moment,
Thunderer
was ghosting through the water at less than one knot, with barely a sigh of water around her stem, and several of her consorts were slowly but steadily overtaking her. Ahbaht loved his ship, and in any sort of wind her lofty rig made her fleet-footed and surprisingly handy for a vessel of her size and tonnage. In light airs like this it was as if she were dragging an anchor astern of her, and the clock was ticking.

He folded his hands behind himself, rocking gently on his heels, feeling the enervating equatorial heat. It was already in the seventies; by afternoon, the squadron's seamen would be looking for any hint of shade they could find, and he'd already ordered awnings rigged to shield
Thunderer
's decks. There wasn't going to be much breeze to help cool them, though, he thought grimly.

Oh, don't be an old woman, Bruhstair!
he told himself.
Yes, you're running behind your most optimistic schedule, but you've still got a full five-day in hand. And just like you told Lywelyn and Zheryko, you can always turn around and head home if you don't make it in time
.

He looked up at the unhelpful sky again for a moment, then turned to Zhaksyn.

“I think we'll advance gun drill this morning, Ahlber.” He smiled ever so slightly. “Let's get it out of the way before it
really
gets hot.”