Hell's Foundations Quiver (94 page)

“Forgive me, but isn't that what these—” Wind Song's index finger tapped the pages on the tabletop “—are intended to do?”

Rainbow Waters nodded, because his nephew was entirely correct.

Baron Falling Rock's fifty thousand men had reached Lake City the five-day before. The rest of the Mighty Host was only beginning to stir into full movement now that the canals were available once more, however. He didn't like the lateness of their start, but there'd been little he could do about it. And little as he liked his involuntary tardiness, he liked the Temple's requirement that he send a third of his total strength—four hundred thousand men—to shore up the Church's southern flank in Westmarch and western Cliff Peak even less. He couldn't argue with the need to bolster that flank as quickly as possible in the face of the Army of Glacierheart's destruction, and he'd already selected Lord of Horse Zhowku Seidyng, the Earl of Silken Hills, to command the about-to-be-formed
Southern
Mighty Host of God and the Archangels. The problem was what the Temple wanted to do with the other
eight
hundred thousand men of the original Mighty Host.

“The canals and roads in Bishop Militant Cahnyr's rear are either already demolished or will be destroyed before the heretics can capture them,” he said, with a silent prayer of thanks that Baron Wheatfields had been able to pass the order to execute Cahnyr Kaitswyrth's plans in that regard. Exactly how the baron had managed to get that order out of the Aivahnstyn Pocket was more than Rainbow Waters was prepared to guess, but he was profoundly grateful.

“The destruction of the transport system will severely degrade the heretics' supply capabilities as they try to follow up their victory,” he continued. “I think it would be a mistake to underestimate their ability to work around the difficulties it's likely to impose, but it will definitely hamper them. However, we both agree that at the moment somewhere around two-thirds of their total combat power is concentrated under Eastshare in Cliff Peak, whereas we're proposing to face it with only
one
-third of our own strength. The preponderance of the Mighty Host is under orders to advance to join Baron Falling Rock at the extreme end of our own intact—
presently
intact—transport system. At the same time, the heretic navy is once more operating throughout the eastern half of Hsing-wu's Passage, they've reoccupied Spinefish Bay and retaken Salyk, they're in the process of restoring the Guarnak-Ice Ash Canal, and their ironclads are once again operating up the Hildermoss River.”

He sat back, regarding his nephew levelly, and Wind Song drew heavily on his pipe as he considered his uncle's last two sentences. The Holy Langhorne Canal offered secure communications as far forward as Lake City … at the moment. The addition of that qualifier sent an uneasy shiver through him as he contemplated the flipside of that particular coin.
Without
the canal—or if that canal were somehow cut behind them—they couldn't possibly keep eight hundred thousand men fed and supplied. For that matter, they'd just experienced the difficulty of moving a force barely six percent that size along the Holy Langhorne when it was frozen, so what happened when winter closed the brief northern campaigning season once more in October?

“These orders,” it was Rainbow Waters' turn to tap the sheets of paper under the paperweight, “are obviously weighting our left wing to advance beyond Lake City while effectively holding our ground—at best—with our right. I think, frankly, that Silken Hills will require more than four hundred thousand men to be confident of holding, or at least significantly delaying, the sort of army Eastshare's just demonstrated he commands. And the thought of launching twice that many men into Icewind, New Northland, and Hildermoss when the heretics are already in control of the existing roads, rivers, and canals … does not fill me with overwhelming confidence.”

“Our instructions say nothing about advancing beyond Lake City,” Wind Song said slowly.

“No, they don't. Yet, at least.”

Rainbow Waters poured fresh tea into his cup, inhaled the fragrant steam, and sipped appreciatively. Then he lowered the cup once more.

“Medyng, when Eastshare has just very convincingly demonstrated the threat he represents, yet only a third of our strength is being deployed against him while all the remainder of it's funneled along the Holy Langhorne, Mother Church clearly contemplates using that strength for something besides sitting in Lake City and digging entrenchments around it. What do you suppose that ‘something' might be?”

Wind Song drew on his pipe, and that uneasy shiver went through him again, stronger this time.

The camps
, he thought.
He's talking about the Inquisition's camps
.

Despite Bahrnabai Wyrshym's defeat and the destruction of the Army of the Sylmahn, the Army of God and its Temple Loyalist militia allies still had perhaps two hundred thousand men under arms in Tarikah, Icewind, eastern New Northland, and northwestern Hildermoss. Scattered over that vast an area, they couldn't possibly resist the sort of offensive the tightly concentrated heretic armies could throw against them. In fact, the baron suspected, many of them wouldn't even try very hard, as disenheartened and demoralized as they must be after the one-two punch the heretics had just delivered.

But those two hundred thousand AOG troopers and militia hadn't been distributed to resist major heretic attacks in the first place. They were there to suppress any local sentiment towards returning to loyalty to Lord Protector Greyghor … and to protect Inquisitor General Wylbyr's camps. But those camps were distributed over a dozen widely dispersed locations. The forces already in position couldn't hope to defend them against a serious heretic effort to liberate them.

And neither can the Mighty Host. Not really. And if we get pulled too far forward from Lake City
.…

“What we ought to be doing,” his uncle said quietly, “is ordering every man who can to fall back into Tarikah Province. And they ought to be destroying every canal lock and every bridge behind them as they retreat. We can turn Lake City into a canal head covered with entrenchments even the heretics won't penetrate easily, especially with the new artillery to support us. If we use the summer to stockpile supplies at Lake City, we can create a supply point capable of sustaining our entire force for five-days or even months, even if the canal is somehow cut behind us. In the meantime, we ought to take at least half of the strength we've been ordered to send to Lake City and either attach it to Earl Silken Hills or create an additional reserve in Jhurlahnk or Usher, where it would be available to reinforce either wing and simultaneously reduce the logistical strain on the Holy Langhorne. We need to stabilize our own front, be sure of our own supply lines, and concentrate on equipping the new armies Mother Church is currently raising. Then, next spring, we need to
use
those new armies and weapons to resume the offensive—hopefully before the heretics can overcome our numerical advantage.
That's
what we ought to be doing … militarily speaking, of course.”

“Of course, Uncle,” his nephew repeated.

They sat gazing at one another across the gazebo in the warm sunlight, and Baron Wind Song wondered how the July sun could feel so cold.

 

.IX.

Camp Dynnys, Lake Isyk, Tarikah Province, Republic of Siddarmark

White smoke billowed up, sinus-tearing and choking whenever the wind blew it back into someone's lungs. It was amazing how hot a paper-fed fire could burn. It was seldom what one might have called scorchingly hot this far north even in early July, but the fierce heat radiating from the fire pit was like a blast furnace's breath.

“Faster!” Father Zheryld snapped at the ragged, laboring line of inmates he'd impressed for the task. “
Faster
, Shan-wei take you!”

Brother Ahlphanzo Metyrnyk coughed harshly, despite the wet cloth he'd tied over his face and nose, as he stirred the fire with a long-handled rake to encourage the flames. The heat seemed to be singeing every hair on his head, his garments stank of smoke, and perspiration greased his face with a skim of ash and soot. Two more members of Father Zheryld's staff had quietly disappeared night before last, and Metyrnyk wondered where they thought they were going to go. Obviously they wanted to be somewhere else before the heretics arrived, but things seemed unlikely to end well for them, wherever they went. He was only twenty-six years old and a mere lay brother of the Order of the Quill, but he'd seen and learned enough over the last two years to have a pretty shrewd idea of how the Inquisition would deal with anyone who deserted his post at a time like this.

Of course, that's going to happen to them somewhere in the future
, he reflected glumly.
They're probably worried more about the
immediate
consequences if they
don't
disappear
.

Well, he was worried about those consequences, too, but he couldn't quite bring himself to just cut and run that way. He wondered if that was because he could imagine those future consequences more clearly than the deserters (and preferred to take his chances with the heretics, all things considered) or if it was something else, something innately crossgrained about his nature.

“
Idiot!
” Father Zheryld barked. A whip hissed and cracked and someone cried out. “Get up, you clumsy cow!”

Metyrnyk looked over his shoulder and grimaced under the protective concealment of the water-soaked bandanna. He'd never much liked Zheryld Cumyngs. The under-priest and he might be members of the same order, but Cumyngs was a pale, colorless, petty tyrant of a man. Metyrnyk had done his duty as part of Camp Dynnys' administration, but he'd never liked it. Some of the things that went into the records and files he helped maintain had been enough to chill a man's blood, and there'd been nights—many of them—when he'd found it damnably hard to sleep. He doubted Cumyngs had ever missed a single wink. There was something almost … banal about him. He never questioned anything he was told to do—or believe—by his superiors, and the consequences of his actions never bothered him at all, as far as Metyrnyk could tell. To him, Camp Dynnys' hapless inmates were no more important, no more human, than a farmer's cattle or draft dragons, and Metyrnyk suspected that was exactly how he saw them … in more ways than one.

Now he kicked the inmate he'd lashed, driving the young woman who looked three times her age thanks to starvation and casual brutality back to her feet, and punched her as she staggered erect.

“Pick it up—
now!
” Cumyngs barked, and she began gathering up the scattered sheets of the files she'd dropped when she fell. One of the Army of God privates guarding the labor party looked unhappy as blood streamed from the nose the under-priest's fist had crushed, but he only turned his head and looked away as she managed to claw most of the pages back together, carried them to the fire pit, and flung them in.

Apparently Cumyngs had at least a little more imagination than Metyrnyk had ever believed he possessed, after all. He had enough of it to account for the terror in his eyes, at least, and Metyrnyk wondered if he had some special reason to feel that terror.

*   *   *

“No, My Lord,” Colonel Ahgustahn Tymahk said flatly.

Bishop Maikel Zhynkyns stared at the colonel incredulously. The dark-haired, swarthy Schuelerite was clearly unaccustomed to being told “no” by a subordinate.

“That wasn't a
request
, Colonel!” His voice was icy. “It was an
instruction
—Inquisitor General
Wylbyr
's instruction. Do you intend to tell
him
you refuse to obey it?”

“With all due respect, My Lord,” the one-armed colonel replied, “the Inquisitor General isn't here, and I've seen no written confirmation of that ‘instruction.' Without having it in writing, I can't in good conscience obey it.”

“How
dare
you?!” Zhynkyns snapped. “Are you calling me a
liar
, Colonel?”

“Not unless you choose to construe it that way.” Tymahk returned the bishop's glare with cool, level eyes. “I'm simply saying that instructions and intentions can be misunderstood or misconstrued—” he stressed the last word ever so slightly, eyes glittering “—when they aren't written down. And that I have no intention of asking my men to commit wholesale murder when the only orders I've received are verbal ones from someone who's already had his horse saddled.”

Zhynkyns swelled with fury and his hand clenched at his side. The colonel's insolence was intolerable. The consequences for him once Zhynkyns reported it would be severe, but that was precious little consolation at the moment.

“You can carry out the order—the
Inquisitor General
's order, whether or not you choose to believe that—or you can face the penalty under Army regulations for disobeying a superior's orders, and then the penalty for defying Mother Church's Inquisition in the midst of a Jihad!”

He felt a stab of satisfaction as Tymahk's face tightened under the threat. The Punishment would be all but certain for anyone who defied a bishop of the Inquisition at a moment like this one, and it was entirely possible the Inquisitor General and Grand Inquisitor might choose to make an example of the colonel's family, as well. Tymahk was silent for several seconds, his eyes blazing like molten glass, then he inhaled sharply.

“My Lord, I'm not
disobeying
a superior's orders. I'm requesting that they be put into writing, which is my right as an officer in the Army of God. Unless they are, I'm under no obligation to accept their validity, which means I'm under no obligation to obey them.”