At the Sign of Triumph (Safehold)

.X.

Allayn Maigwair’s Office,

City of Zion,

The Temple Lands.

“This is a bad idea, Allayn,” Archbishop Militant Gustyv Walkyr said. “I can’t begin to tell you how bad an idea I think this is, and Rainbow Waters is going to like it even less than I do.”

“Then that makes three of us,” Allayn Maigwair replied sourly. “Unfortunately, I don’t see any way to avoid it.”

Walkyr sat back in his chair, scowling so fiercely his thick beard seemed to bristle. One of the things Maigwair had always treasured about Walkyr was his willingness to speak his mind … to the captain general, at least. That—coupled with his sheer competence, energy, and personal sense of loyalty—explained how he’d risen from under-priest to archbishop militant in the six years since the initial disaster off Armageddon Reef. It was fortunate that he was also smart enough not to speak his mind in front of certain other ears, but this time he seemed furious enough Maigwair was actively concerned about his discretion.

“Listen, Gustyv,” the captain general said, leaning forward slightly across the desk, “I need you where you are right now—alive, that is—so please don’t express yourself quite this … frankly where it might get back to Zhaspahr.”

Walkyr glowered at him for a moment, but then his shoulders seemed to relax ever so slightly and he nodded choppily.

“I understand,” he conceded. “But this really is a bad idea.”

“I agree it has definite shortcomings,” Maigwair conceded, “and my initial response to it was about the same as yours. I’ve had some time to think about it since then, though, and the truth is that if the intelligence behind it holds up, it’s not quite as insane as it looks on first glance.”

Walkyr made a semi-polite sound of incredulity, and Maigwair snorted.

“I did say ‘not quite,’” he pointed out.

He stood and crossed to the enormous topographic map hanging on one wall of the office. The known position of the headquarters of every Charisian and Siddarmarkian army was marked with pins, each with a tiny flag bearing that army’s name, and his forefinger tapped the one indicating the Charisian Army of Cliff Peak’s headquarters, located at the smallish Cliff Peak Province city of Halfmyn.

“According to the Inquisition’s agents, all indications are that the Charisians are steadily reinforcing High Mount down here in Cliff Peak a lot more strongly than they are Green Valley up in New Northland or Eastshare in Westmarch.” His finger swept over the other two armies’ positions. “We’re not as well informed about Stohnar.” His expression was bleak as his finger tapped the city of Guarnak, which General Trumyn Stohnar had made his headquarters after his army completed the destruction of Bahrnabai Wyrshym’s. “Indications are that he’s definitely being strengthened, but we don’t know by how much. We do know that at least three of the new Siddarmarkian rifle divisions are being sent to High Mount, though, not to Stohnar.”

He indicated the Army of Cliff Peak’s position once more, then returned to his chair, sat, and tipped it back, his expression serious.

“May I ask just how we ‘know’ that?” Walkyr’s tone was skeptical.

“We think we know that because one of our spies in Siddar City got his hands on a copy of the actual movement orders and sent it off to us by messenger wyvern,” Maigwair replied. “That’s the strongest bit of evidence yet, but there are others. I wouldn’t be inclined to put a huge amount of faith in any of them, given how effectively the other side’s shut down our spy networks so often, but all of them together paint a convincing picture. And Zhaspahr swears the agent who sent us the copy of those movement orders has never yet sent us false information. In fact, according to Zhaspahr, this is the spy who got us the plans for the new steelmaking methods.”

Walkyr looked suddenly thoughtful at that, and Maigwair shrugged.

“Like I say. I wouldn’t be in any hurry to jump at this sort of information in most cases. Chihiro, I’m not in a hurry to jump at it now! But nothing we’ve seen yet contradicts it, and at least some of the information we have comes from what certainly seems to be a reliable source. And if it’s accurate, there has to be a reason they’re reinforcing High Mount even at the expense of diverting additional Siddarmarkian troops to him rather than further strengthening Stohnar or standing up an entirely new, purely Siddarmarkian army to throw at us. Siddarmark’s army was the best in the world for at least a century. It’s got to be galling to take second place behind the Charisians at this point, however grateful the Republic may be to Cayleb and Sharleyan for saving its arse. I’m sure the Lord Protector’s feeling a lot of pressure to establish major field armies under Siddarmarkian commanders, so the orders sending so many of his new divisions to High Mount probably don’t represent some casual whim on his part. And the fact that High Mount’s shifted his headquarters to Halfmyn doesn’t make us any happier.”

Walkyr frowned, contemplating the map from where he sat.

Halfmyn was over three hundred miles south of Aivahnstyn on the Daivyn River, where Cahnyr Kaitswyrth’s Army of Glacierheart had met its doom, and High Mount’s Army of Cliff Peak had been the primary pursuit force which had completed the Army of Glacierheart’s destruction. At that point, he’d been well north of Aivahnstyn, so he’d actually moved something more like four hundred miles to his current position.

“What about Symkyn?” he asked, waving at the map which showed Ahlyn Symkyn’s Army of the Daivyn headquartered at Aivahnstyn.

“Indications are that he’s being strengthened, as well. Not as much as High Mount, but more than Eastshare on his northern flank,” Maigwair replied, and Walkyr frowned some more.

“You think they’re shifting the main weight of their attack south?” The archbishop militant’s tone was slightly—very slightly—less incredulous.

“It seems possible, at any rate.” Maigwair sighed and toyed with his pectoral scepter. “It’s not what I expected out of them, and it would certainly represent a shift from their last year’s strategy.” He shrugged. “Last year—and the year before that, for that matter—they concentrated on destroying field armies. Did a damned good job of it, too, and it’s a strategy that’s been working well for them so far. Now they have to realize Rainbow Waters and the Host are both our strongest remaining field force and the most exposed, in a lot of ways. If they can push around behind him, the way they did to Wyrshym—I know that’d be a lot harder to pull off, especially in a summer campaign, but I’m not about to say it wouldn’t be possible for those bastards—they could cut the Holy Langhorne. And if they managed that, the better part of two-thirds of the Mighty Host would lose its primary logistic link to the Temple Lands. Even if they can’t get around behind him, they’ve got enough of a mobility advantage that I’ve been anticipating their trying to break his front at selected points, then exploiting to flank out his positions on either side of the breakthroughs.”

Walkyr nodded. He’d shared Maigwair’s analysis of the heretics’ probable strategy. In fact, he’d helped formulate it.

Mother Church’s enemies, and especially the Imperial Charisian Army, had given her defenders a pointed and extremely painful lesson in the virtues of mobility, starting with the destruction of the Army of Shiloh and culminating in the previous summer’s crushing defeats on the Daivyn and in the Sylmahn Gap. The Army of God was attempting to offset at least some of that advantage in its newly raised divisions, a quarter of which were dragoons—mounted infantry, not lancers—although no one expected those new divisions to be as proficient, initially at least, as the far more experienced Charisians. The Mighty Host was more poorly placed than the AOG when it came to mounting its infantry for a lot of reasons, including the fact that serfs had always been … strongly discouraged from becoming proficient equestrians. Because of that, Rainbow Waters had been forced to convert existing cavalry units into dragoons if he wanted to increase his mounted infantry strength, and Walkyr was far from convinced the “conversion” was more than skin-deep for the majority of Harchongese cavalry officers.

Despite all efforts, however, Mother Church’s armies were going to remain far less mobile than their opponents. That being the case, the logical thing for Cayleb and his generals to do was to continue to exploit that strength—and their successful strategy—and concentrate on destroying or at least crippling Rainbow Waters’ Harchongians in the coming campaign. Piercing the Mighty Host’s front at some carefully chosen point or points might well permit them to break loose mounted columns in Rainbow Waters’ rear. If they managed that and were able to get in behind his fortified strong points before he could fall back, they might be able to cut his force up into disjointed detachments and crush them in detail.

That was the primary reason close to a quarter of the entire Mighty Host was earmarked as a strategic reserve, held well behind the Harchongians’ “frontier positions” in order—hopefully—to counter any Charisian or Siddarmarkian breakthroughs.

“After Rayno brought the Inquisition’s new reports about High Mount’s reinforcements to my attention, I had Tobys and his analysts go over them,” Maigwair continued, “and I asked him to look at anything we’d turned up, as well. It’s all damnably ‘hypothetical,’ of course. Chihiro! I’d give one of my balls—maybe both of them—for spies as capable as Cayleb seems to have!” He glared at the wall map, then shrugged and looked back at Walkyr. “Hypothetical or not, though, there are definite signs they’re weighting their left flank a lot more heavily than they ought to be if they plan on doing what we’ve all convinced ourselves is the smart thing for them to do. And much as I hate to say it, we don’t exactly have the best possible record for outguessing the bastards.”

He did not, Walkyr noticed, point out that he and the Army of God in general had a rather better record than Zhaspahr Clyntahn did. If Maigwair had been free to make his own deployments and decisions without the Inquisitor General’s interference, Cahnyr Kaitswyrth would have been replaced months before the Army of Glacierheart’s destruction and Bahrnabai Wyrshym would have been allowed to retreat long before he was cut off and crushed. Whether even a replacement would have been able to prevent what the heretics had done to the Army of Glacierheart last summer was an unanswerable question, but no conceivable replacement could have done a worse job than Kaitswyrth had.

“At any rate,” Maigwair continued, oblivious to the archbishop militant’s thoughts, “it’s certainly possible—conceivable, at least—that they’ve decided to capitalize on Hanth’s successes against Rychtyr. In fact, according to Zhaspahr,” he rolled his eyes, “that’s obviously the reason they haven’t reinforced Hanth more strongly.”

“Excuse me?” Walkyr blinked, and Maigwair snorted.

“Zhaspahr’s suggested that the reason Hanth isn’t receiving as much new equipment and as many additional men as their other armies is to convince us Dohlar’s a purely secondary theater in Cayleb and Stohnar’s eyes. As he sees it, the fact that I’ve told him they obviously do regard Dohlar as a secondary theater, based on exactly that logic, only strengthens the possibility of it’s all being an elaborate ruse. And one we’ve clearly fallen for, of course. We’re supposed to discount the threat on our southern flank—just as I have—in order to ‘concentrate disproportionately’ in the north until High Mount’s ready to punch through the Tymkyn Gap and either hook south to join up with Hanth and finish off Dohlar once and for all, or else continue southwest to Dairnyth.”

“To Dairnyth,” Walkyr repeated.

“Actually, that might not be as far-fetched as it looks at first glance,” Maigwair said more soberly. “Oh, I’m not ready to sign onto the notion that they’ve deliberately starved Hanth of men and weapons as part of some deep-seated deception plan. Eastshare’s too smart for that, and even if he wasn’t, Cayleb and Stohnar definitely are.” He waved one hand in a dismissive gesture. “But that’s not to say they wouldn’t be just as happy for us to come to the conclusion’s Zhaspahr’s suggesting if they really do have any ambitions beyond simply neutralizing Dohlar. Because the truth is that if they could surprise us there, and if High Mount could get all the way to Dairnyth, we might have some serious problems. Particularly given the situation in the Gulf.”

Walkyr cocked his head, and Maigwair stopped toying with his scepter and let his chair come upright again so that he could brace his elbows on his desk and lean forward over it again.

“At the moment, their navy’s still operating fairly circumspectly in the Gulf,” he said. “Their commerce-raiders are inflicting a lot of pain, and the hit our logistics are taking is nothing to sneer at, but they haven’t reacted as strongly to the Kaudzhu Narrows as I’d anticipated they would. Yet, at least.”

“You think that’s about to change?”

“I’ll be Shan-wei-damned surprised if it doesn’t change … and soon,” Maigwair said grimly. “We’ve lost track of at least some of those ironclads they used on Desnair, for example, and Cayleb Ahrmahk’s not the man to let what happened to his navy go unanswered. Taking back his people before they could be handed over for Punishment was a pretty emphatic first step in that direction, but I absolutely guarantee you that after what happened in Hahskyn Bay, those frigging ironclads are headed for the Gulf of Dohlar. If they haven’t gotten there already, they’ll be arriving soon. And when they do, what do you think will happen to the Royal Dohlaran Navy?”

“The term ‘splinters’ comes rather strongly to mind.” Walkyr’s tone was even grimmer than Maigwair’s had been, and the captain general nodded sharply.

“Of course it does. Whatever Zhaspahr may think, Thirsk’s navy will fight to the death. You and I both know that. I only pray to God and the Archangels that Rahnyld—or his Council, at least—has the sense to realize they can’t fight those steam-powered ironclads and get their galleons the hell out of their way. But whatever they do, Charis is still going to control the entire Gulf. I don’t even want to think about what that means for our logistics in the long term, but the short-term consequences could be just as catastrophic and a hell of a lot faster.”

“I can see it’s being inconvenient as hell,” Walkyr said with a frown. “And I agree that it’d be a frigging disaster in the long run.” He very carefully avoided words like “inevitable defeat” even speaking only to Maigwair, but they hung between the two of them. “I’m not sure I see the immediate catastrophe potential, though.”

“No?” Maigwair showed his teeth in a thin smile. “Well, consider this scenario. We’ve been anticipating that the new troops being raised and trained in Chisholm would be deployed to their existing armies. But what if they send the new troops east from Chisholm, instead? What if they use their control of the sea to send a hundred thousand or so brand-new troops across the Gulf and through the Gulf of Tanshar to the Bay of Bess … just about the time High Mount’s leading regiments take Dairnyth and offer them a city with damned good port facilities down on our southern flank? Usher and Jhurlahnk got hammered at Aivahnstyn last year, and they don’t have anything like our ability to raise and equip new divisions. Much as I respect both Earl Usher and Prince Grygory, I think it’s … unlikely their remaining militia could stand up to Charisian regulars.”

Walkyr shuddered at the very thought, and Maigwair gave him a wintry smile.

“Right now, we’ve got Tayrens Teagmahn watching Tymkyn Gap, and Dohlar’s still holding Alyksberg, but he and the Alyksberg garrison have barely a hundred and twenty thousand men between them. If High Mount got through the gap, they’d never be able to stop him. Especially since we still don’t have Teagmahn’s riflemen fully equipped with St. Kylmahns, far less all the artillery he’s supposed to have. The first wave of new guns is on the way—or will be in the next few five-days—but they aren’t there yet because we’ve been giving such priority to the northern lobe of the front.”

“I know,” Walkyr nodded. “But isn’t Brydgmyn supposed to reinforce him?”

“As soon as he can, yes. Or that was the plan, anyway.”

Bishop Militant Ahrnahld Brydgmyn was the designated commander of the Holy Langhorne Band. Among the other painful lessons the Imperial Charisian Army had taught its more backwards students was the advantage of organizing armies into corps. The use of that heresy-tainted term was, of course, anathema in the eyes of Zhaspahr Clyntahn and the Inquisition, so Maigwair and Rainbow Waters had settled on calling their corps “bands,” instead. The Holy Langhorne Band consisted—or would consist, eventually—of a total of eight divisions, two of them mounted. Because AOG divisions were so much smaller than Charisian divisions, Brydgmyn’s final strength would be around sixteen thousand men, plus artillery (when and as it became available), only about the size of a single Charisian division. That was still a powerful force, however, and about the largest Maigwair felt a single headquarters could realistically control at the operational level, given the AOG’s current inexperience with the corps concept and the limits of its commanding officer’s communications. So far, the new approach seemed to offer a lot of promise, but the Army of God was still figuring out how best to make the entire notion work. It was going to take a while for the new band commanders to master their responsibilities.

At the moment, only three of Brydgmyn’s divisions were anywhere near ready for deployment: the reconstituted Holy Martyrs, Rakurai, and 1st Temple Divisions. That was barely fifty-seven hundred men, none of them mounted and less than ten percent of them experienced veterans. Just as bad, perhaps, Brydgmyn was almost as new to his present job as most of his men were to theirs. He was only thirty-two years old, and he’d been a major less than two years earlier. His meteoric promotion was one more consequence of the AOG’s need to rebuild after its catastrophic losses in Cliff Peak and Mountaincross and an indication of how deep Maigwair was reaching for the senior officers he required.

Fortunately, Brydgmyn was smart, competent, and loyal, although he wasn’t fully trusted by the Inquisition. It would appear Wyllym Rayno suspected—not without some reason, perhaps—that Brydgmyn’s fierce loyalty to Mother Church was somewhat stronger than his loyalty to Zhaspahr Clyntahn. But however smart he might be, he was still very much in the process of learning his new duties. In fact, Maigwair had been almost relieved in some ways that his additional divisions would be slower than anticipated in joining him. The bishop militant could use that time very profitably learning to manage his present, considerably smaller force. At the same time.…

“The problem is that Brydgmyn won’t significantly change the balance of forces,” he went on. “And aside from a few other odds and sods—Parkair Gahrlyngtyn’s band’s actually going to be ready to deploy earlier than we’d expected, I think—we don’t have anyone else to send right now. Worse, the weather in the south’s going to permit serious campaigning well before that could happen farther north. So if there’s anything at all to the possibility of a Charisian strike through Tymkyn Gap, Teagmahn’s going to find himself really hard-pressed just to retreat in front of it, far less hold his ground.”

“Can I ask if Earl Rainbow Waters has been consulted about this yet?” Walkyr asked after a thoughtful moment.

“He has. Unfortunately, we can only communicate by semaphore or wyvern, and that’s never as satisfactory as a face-to-face discussion. After all, that’s why I sent you to meet with him last winter.”

Walkyr nodded. Of course, Maigwair hadn’t mentioned that another sterling advantage of face-to-face discussions was that they left no paper trail for the Inquisition to … misconstrue. In the absence of direct discussion, correspondents needed to be circumspect in whatever they committed to paper.

“Having said that, I wouldn’t exactly say the Earl’s in favor of this,” the captain general continued. “His current dispositions are all in accordance with what we—and he—had earlier agreed the heretics were most likely to do this summer. His officers and men have spent months preparing their positions, updating their maps, preplanning movements that might become necessary, and picking the best sites to emplace artillery and rocket launchers as they reach the front. He’s not happy to see all that effort go to waste, and he’s expressed the concern that putting a new commander and newly raised forces into Earl Silken Hills’ current positions will weaken his own right flank. However good they may be, they won’t have had the winter to learn their ground and they won’t be as well integrated into his chain of command as the Southern Host is right now. Having said that, of course, he’s prepared to defer to instructions from Zion.”

My, Walkyr thought. There’s quite a lot of “circumspection” in that, isn’t there?

The archbishop militant pushed up out of his chair and walked across to stand closer to the map, studying its terrain. It didn’t show a lot of detail, but he was amply familiar with smaller scale, more detailed maps of most of the terrain involved. And little though he still liked the idea, he had to admit it was less illogical—and considerably less stupid—than he’d originally thought.

However little Rainbow Waters might relish the thought of shifting a third of his total force even farther south, a potential attack through the Tymkyn Gap—especially with the prospect of Charisian naval control of the Gulf of Dohlar—could have serious consequences. And as Maigwair had just pointed out, Tayrens Teagmahn’s Army of Tanshar would never be able to stand up to High Mount’s Army of Cliff Peak in the open. As long as he could hold the chain of the Snake Mountains and avoid confronting High Mount’s mobility, he could no doubt give a good account of himself. But while the Snakes’ narrow passes and twisting secondary roads afforded all sorts of excellent defensive positions, the Tymkyn Gap itself was mostly open, rolling terrain. There were some patches of forest and hillside to slow an advancing army, but nothing like the mountain ramparts north and south of the Gap, and it was a hundred and ten miles wide. That was far too much frontage for him to cover with so few men.

But Earl Silken Hills had six times Teagmahn’s strength, and the truth was that—especially after the last year of unmitigated disaster—the Mighty Host was better trained, better equipped, and more experienced than ninety percent of the current Army of God. If Silken Hill moved south to cover that flank, High Mount would find any effort to penetrate the Snakes far more difficult. In addition, Silken Hills’ infantry and engineers had spent the last several months mastering the fortification techniques Captain of Horse Rungwyn had worked out. Walkyr had little doubt that the defenses they’d build across the Tymkyn Gap would give even High Mount pause … assuming they had time for it.

And, he admitted to himself, they won’t be taking the fortifications they’ve already built with them, will they? Most of the guns, yes, but the emplacements will still be there, and so will the trenches, the bunkers, and the redoubts.

If Teagmahn shifted the Army of Tanshar north, he’d have—barely—enough men to man the most forward of the Southern Host’s dug-in positions, and those were very formidable positions. By the time the weather improved enough for serious campaigning as far north as Westmarch and Tarikah, the bulk of the new AOG formations would be at the front or very close to it. If he’d been Rainbow Waters, he wouldn’t have been at all happy about the thought of relying upon those new, potentially less than steady bands and divisions to cover his flank, but they’d be far more effective doing it from those prepared defenses than they’d be in an open field battle.

“I still don’t like the idea,” he said finally, turning back to his superior. “I have to admit I hadn’t thought through everything you’ve just pointed out. In my defense, I didn’t know about a lot of it, of course. But now that you’ve laid out the logic behind it, I’ll concede that it’s not the outright lunacy I thought it was.”

“Not exactly a ringing endorsement,” Maigwair observed dryly, “but I suppose I should take what I can get. Especially since Earl Rainbow Waters has made one … stipulation. I wouldn’t exactly call it a ‘demand,’ but before he signs off on redeploying that drastically, he wants a voice in deciding who we’ll assign to command the area Silken Hills is going to be handing over to us.”

“Makes sense,” Walkyr agreed, returning his eyes to the map as he thought back over his own face-to-face meetings with the Harchongese commander.

That was a smart, smart man. He’d want to be as certain as humanly possible of both the quality and the reliability of the AOG commander on his flank. Perhaps especially of that commander’s reliability. Cahnyr Kaitswyrth’s performance with the Army of Glacierheart couldn’t have imbued him with boundless faith in the AOG’s prowess, and the last thing he’d want would be a Temple commander whose competence might be in question and who might dispute his orders or, far worse, might … pull back precipitously under pressure.

“I’m glad you think so.” Something about Maigwair’s tone turned Walkyr back around to face him. The archbishop militant raised both eyebrows in question, and Maigwair smiled almost whimsically.

“He was rather insistent, actually,” the captain general said. “In fact, there was really only one officer he cared to propose.”

“And who might that have been?” Walkyr asked slowly.

“Why, you, Gustyv.”

Maigwair smiled at Walkyr’s expression, but then he shook his head and his own expression had turned very serious.

“I can think of a lot of reasons he might’ve preferred you for this,” he said, “and all of them are good ones. The fact that you spent so much time with him before last summer’s campaign has to be a part of it, of course. He had the chance to get a feel for the way your mind works, which means he can be confident you’re not an idiot, like Kaitswyrth. Even more, though, you’re the one senior commander we’ve got he can be certain understands his thinking and the strengths—and weaknesses—of the Mighty Host. But I’ll be honest here. I think he has a few reasons he prefers not to discuss openly … and so do I.”

“Such as?” Walkyr’s tone was soft, his eyes dark.

“Whoever we send has to be smart, he has to be determined, and he has to be able to … ‘think outside the box,’ as Vicar Rhobair’s become fond of putting it. But, most importantly of all, he has to be someone Earl Rainbow Waters—and I—can depend upon to do not simply what he’s told to but what he knows he needs to, as well.”

He held the archbishop militant’s gaze levelly, and it was very, very quiet in his office.