At the Sign of Triumph (Safehold)

.VI.

Camp Mahrtyn Taisyn,

Traytown,

Tarikah Province,

Republic of Siddarmark.

“I really don’t like what we’re hearing about those damned rockets. Kynt,” Ruhsyl Thairis said quietly. The Duke of Eastshare and Baron Green Valley rode through the chill afternoon along Dahltyn Sumyrs Way, the slushy central road across the sprawling complex of Camp Mahrtyn Taisyn, towards Green Valley’s headquarters block. “If they’re as good as the seijins’ reports suggest they are, we’re going to get hurt a lot worse this year than last.”

“Yes, we are,” Green Valley replied unhappily, his breath steaming faintly in the cold. “But, let’s be honest, Ruhsyl. We already knew that was going to happen. This’ll only push the price a little higher than it would have been anyway. And at least we know about them, so we can take them into consideration.”

“And at least Duke Delthak’s given us our own rockets,” Eastshare acknowledged with a sharp nod.

“That he has. And this latest cold snap’ll give us at least another few five-days to get them to the front.”

“Well, that’s a case of finding a bright side to look upon if I ever heard one!” Eastshare laughed sourly.

“‘We can’t change the weather, only curse it’,” Green Valley responded, quoting a Chisholmian proverb. “And if the damned winter wants to drop four or five feet of late snow on us, I might as well find something good about it!”

“Can’t argue with that.”

They reached their destination and their escort drew up around them. There was quite a lot of that escort, actually. The Imperial Charisian Army wasn’t in the habit of taking chances with its general officers, and the last effort to assassinate Eastshare had occurred barely three months ago. The last attempt on Green Valley’s life, on the other hand, was well over a year old. The Inquisition could still find zealots willing to carry out suicidal missions, but it had become evident Green Valley’s security was simply too good. No one had gotten within a hundred yards of him in so long even Wyllym Rayno had decided his assets could be better expended someplace they had a chance of succeeding.

The two generals dismounted, once the escort commander had given his gracious approval, and handed their reins to waiting orderlies and started up the short flight of steps to the covered snow porch that fronted the HQ block. As they did, Captain Bryahn Slokym, Green Valley’s aide, opened the door and stepped out onto the porch, came to attention, and saluted.

“Captain,” Eastshare acknowledged, returning his salute, then smiled and patted the younger man’s shoulder. “Congratulations on the promotion.”

“Thank you, Your Grace.” Slokym smiled and nodded to the red-haired, slightly built major following at Eastshare’s heels. “There seems to be quite a bit of that going around. I understand that happens to people who spend a lot of time around generals.”

“No, does it really?” Major Lywys Braynair said, rounding his eyes as he clasped forearms with Slokym.

“That’s what I’ve heard, anyway, Sir.”

“You obviously don’t keep him trimmed back to size, Kynt,” Eastshare observed, scowling ferociously at the captain.

“And you do keep Lywys pruned back, is that it? You’ll have to show me how that works sometime,” Green Valley said innocently.

“Well, I suppose as long as they keep doing their jobs—and have plenty of hot chocolate or that barbarous cherrybean ready—I’ll let them keep their ill-deserved promotions,” the duke replied.

Slokym opened the door again, holding it for his superiors, then followed them into Green Valley’s office. Where, by the strangest coincidence steaming carafes of both hot chocolate and cherrybean tea were ready and waiting. With fresh donuts, no less.

“Passable, I suppose,” Eastshare observed as the generals shed coats, hats, gloves, and mufflers. He blew into his cupped palms for a moment, then settled into a chair while Slokym poured hot chocolate into a cup for him. “Passable.”

Green Valley snorted in amusement, then settled into his own chair.

In a lot of ways, today’s meeting was a pure formality. Eastshare had been kept fully briefed on his plans, and the duke had suggested more than one useful improvement. There’d been plenty of time—more time than any of them wanted, really—to tweak those plans. And Rainbow Waters had compelled them to do more of that tweaking than Green Valley would have preferred.

Still, there was no true substitute for face-to-face discussions. Even the most carefully written dispatch could be misconstrued, and without that face-to-face conversation, there was no opportunity for the sort of feedback that might correct the misunderstanding. That was something Ruhsyl Thairis understood bone-deep, and Green Valley felt yet another surge of admiration for his superior. Eastshare wasn’t a member of the inner circle. He had access to neither the SNARCs’ reconnaissance capabilities—certainly not in real time, although it was true that the “seijins’ reports” he regularly received helped a great deal in that respect—nor to the real-time communication capabilities of the inner circle. Green Valley enjoyed both those advantages, yet Eastshare’s performance was at least as good as his own. In his personal opinion, it was actually better, in fact.

And because Eastshare understood the value of personal conferences, he’d made the wearisome circuit of his broadly deployed army commanders. Which, in the middle of a mainland winter, was scarcely a trivial undertaking. Camp Taisyn was his final stop, however. He’d head back to his more central position in Glacierheart as soon as they were finished, and even with canal ice boats, Safeholdian high roads, and snow lizard-drawn sleds, he was looking at three solid five-days of travel just to get there.

So maybe those extra five-days will come in handy after all, the baron reflected.

He tipped back in his chair with a cup of cherrybean in one hand and a donut in the other and contemplated the large, detailed wall maps. There was a lot of information on them. Any Inquisition spy would cheerfully have sacrificed an arm for an hour or two to look at them and take notes, and Green Valley’s smile grew hungry as his eyes drifted towards the southern end of the long front stretching from Hsing-wu’s Passage all the way to the Gulf of Dohlar.

Nahrmahn Baytz’ deception plan had borne better fruit than even the rotund little dead Emeraldian, who was no more addicted to modesty in death than he’d been in life, had dared to predict.

Green Valley had a great deal of respect for Gustyv Walkyr. The archbishop militant wasn’t simply an intelligent man or a smart commander; he was also a man of compassion whose heart had been sorely tried by the kind of war he’d been ordered to fight. In fact, Green Valley had decided it spoke rather better for Allayn Maigwair than he’d ever expected that a man like Walkyr was so obviously devoted to the Church’s captain general on a personal level. Especially when Walkyr so obviously knew Maigwair had to be in Zhaspahr Clyntahn’s sights.

He expected Walkyr to make the best use anyone could have of his advantages of position, his fortifications, and his artillery and rocket launchers. But Earl Silken Hills would have done the same thing, and however good Walkyr might be, the caliber of his men didn’t come close to that of Silken Hills’ men. Those Harchongese serfs had spent the better part of two years learning to outpace their tutors, acquiring a set of military skills no “Temple Boy” army had ever possessed. There were still holes, they were still … unsophisticated, and their units weren’t as capable of thinking for themselves as the best of the original Army of God divisions had been. They were immensely better at it than any current Army of God division, however, and their sheer toughness—especially their cohesion—made them extraordinarily tough opponents. They possessed a deep and abiding faith in themselves, their weapons, and—astonishing in any Harchongese army, and an enormous tribute to Rainbow Waters—in their officers. They were tough-minded, tenacious, and unlikely to give in easily, whatever happened, but they were also pragmatic and realistic.

Green Valley would have been happier if the men of the Mighty Host had been supremely confident of victory. That kind of assurance could be turned against an army. A crushing victory—like his own, when he’d arrived in the nick of time to stop Bahrnabai Wyrshym from breaking through the Sylmahn Gap—did far more damage to the morale of an overconfident army than to one with a realistic grasp of the task before it.

The Mighty Host of God and the Archangels was too realistic for overconfidence … but it was also a long way from expecting to lose. One of Rainbow Waters’ most impressive achievements—and God knew he’d managed one hell of a lot more “achievements” than Green Valley would have preferred!—was his ability to produce an army which still believed it could win, even though it knew it would confront enemies with better weapons and more experience. That would have been more than bad enough from Green Valley’s perspective, but Rainbow Waters hadn’t stopped there. He’d also used the example of Sir Fahstyr Rychtyr’s success in slowing Hauwerd Breygart to inculcate an understanding that even a retreating army could accomplish its most important mission. That the simple fact that the Host might be forced to give ground didn’t mean it had been defeated as long as it maintained its cohesion, continued to fight, and withdrew in good order to the next point at which it could stand. He’d convinced his men that as long as their army existed, so long as they were still fighting—still represented a formed force in the field—they were accomplishing their mission in God’s defense.

I wish to hell he’d never come up with his damned realization that a tactical defense could be the best strategic offense, but it probably would’ve been expecting too much for someone as smart as he is not to realize that. I can actually accept that. But did the insufferable pain in the arse really have to be able to convince his entire damned army of that? That’s just a little much.

Whatever else might happen, the new-model Mighty Host was most unlikely to simply shatter. It was far more probable that it would conduct a tough, resilient fighting withdrawal along the routes Rainbow Waters’ commanders had already surveyed and marked on their maps. The kind of fighting withdrawal that would get a lot of Charisians and Siddarmarkians killed. Kynt Clareyk couldn’t help admiring a commander who could overcome the prejudices of his birth—and the inveterate, hard learned distrust of serfs who’d been abused for centuries by people from families just like his—sufficiently to create that kind of fighting force out of the functionally illiterate men who’d been conscripted for the Mighty Host, but he sure as hell didn’t need to like the consequences.

And that was why he was so happy Nahrmahn’s suggestion appeared to have worked out so well. By the time the Allied offensive actually kicked off, Gustyv Walkyr’s AOG divisions, supported by perhaps a hundred and fifty thousand Border State levees, would have sole responsibility for almost nine hundred miles of the Church’s front, from the southern end of the Great Tarikah Forest all the way to the northern end of the Black Wyvern Mountains. His men would be “corseted” on either side by Harchongians, but they represented an undeniable soft spot in the Church’s defenses. One the Allies thoroughly intended to exploit, and he felt a powerful surge of eagerness to be about it. He fully expected the upcoming campaign to be the bloodiest—from the Charisian side, at least—they’d yet fought. But he also expected it to be decisive, despite the worst Taychau Daiyang could do, and if it wasn’t, it wouldn’t be because he and his fellows hadn’t planned for every contingency they could think of.

The canals were thawing, the ICN’s ironclads—including the original Delthaks—would soon be free to operate along the rivers and canals in the armies’ rear, and the first steam-powered canal barges would be available as soon as the ice melted. Hsing-wu’s Passage would be navigable within another three or four five-days, as well, and the Navy was waiting impatiently. Both its galleons and another half dozen City-class ironclads were ready to push into the Passage the instant they possibly could with orders to take, burn, or destroy any attempt to move seaborne supplies. And when there weren’t any of those supplies to interdict, they could amuse themselves raiding the Temple coastal shipping cowering under the threadbare protection of the protective batteries in the larger bays and inlets along the Passage’s flanks.

Like Eastshare, he was thoroughly unhappy about the new rockets Lynkyn Fultyn had devised to supplement the Church’s artillery. For that matter, he was less than enthralled by the proliferation of field guns, angle-guns, and first-generation mortars appearing in the Mighty Host of God and the Archangels’ artillery parks now that the Church’s foundries were producing good quality steel in quantity. Still, his own artillery was stronger—in absolute terms, certainly and probably even relatively in comparison to the Temple’s—than the year before, and the small arms situation was highly satisfactory. Virtually all of his Charisian infantry had been equipped with the M96 magazine-fed rifle, and over half of the Republic’s infantry had been reequipped with Trapdoor Mahndrayns, a third of which had been converted right here in Siddarmark. Sandarah Lywys Composition D-filled shells were actually a little ahead of schedule, although he still wouldn’t have them in time for the campaign’s opening moves, and almost a third of his infantry’s rifle ammunition was now smokeless, which would probably come as a nasty surprise to the Temple.

The Republic’s manufactories had recovered almost completely from the dislocations of the Sword of Schueler, and their production was climbing nicely, as well. Siddarmark-built versions of Charisian-designed weapons—and even innovations which owed nothing at all to Charis—were beginning to make their way onto the battlefield in ever increasing numbers. Green Valley was delighted by the increase in weapons production, but he was even more delighted—for a lot of reasons—that Siddarmark was clearly catching what Merlin called the “innovation bug.” And in this case, one of those reasons was Ahntahn Sykahrelli.

Sykahrelli, an artificer in a Midhold Province manufactory before the Sword of Schueler, had enlisted in the Republic of Siddarmark Army before the first Charisian Marine’s boot ever touched a Siddar City dock. Since then, he’d risen from the enlisted ranks to the rank of major and put his technical background to good use as an artillerist. He’d seen a lot of action in the process. He’d been only a sergeant in the Sylmahn Gap Campaign, but he’d also assumed acting command of his battery after every one of its officers had been killed or wounded, and that battery had been the lynchpin of the final gun line which had held the line at Serabor with its teeth and fingernails until Green Valley could move to Trumyn Stohnar’s relief. He’d commanded the remnants of no less than three batteries, with almost enough men to have fully crewed one, by the end of that bloody night, and he’d come out of it with a battlefield promotion to captain and the Cross of Courage, the Republic’s highest award for valor.

It wasn’t too surprising that a man with his experience had understood the implications immediately when he was briefed on the new Temple rockets. But he’d also been inspired, and—taking advantage of the better propellants and, especially, the Lywysite his Charisian allies could provide—he’d produced a man-portable rocket of his own. The initial version was actually light enough to have been shoulder-fired, if there’d been some way to protect its user from the back blast. Green Valley felt confident a solution to that problem would be found eventually—if Sykahrelli didn’t come up with one, no doubt the Delthak Works would be “inspired” to—but in the meantime, he’d up-sized it a bit and turned it into a crew-served weapon whose portability and devastating punch offered all sorts of possibilities. It would also be available in quantity, if not in the numbers Green Valley would have liked, and neither the Temple Boys nor the Harchongians were going to like that one little bit.

No, he thought, bringing his eyes back from the maps to his superior, they aren’t. They won’t like the Balloon Corps or some of our other surprises, either. And I don’t give a damn what the other side’s come up with. End of the day, our boys will kick their arses up one side and down the other. We may lose a lot of good men along the way, but this year, by God—this year—we end this frigging war.

“All right, Bryahn,” he told his aide. “Now that you’ve got us properly ensconced, cups in hand, august posteriors parked in our chairs, donut crumbs covering our tunics, why don’t you begin with a quick overview of our current deployment? After that, I think a detailed review of Rainbow Waters’ most recent adjustments at Ayaltyn and Sairmeet are probably in order.”

He cocked an inquiring eyebrow at Eastshare, and the duke nodded.

“That sounds like an excellent place to start,” he agreed. “But first, I understand your patrols have brought back some examples of a new footstool the Harchongians have deployed?”

“Yes, they have,” Green Valley confirmed rather less cheerfully. “It’s actually more of a foot stool crossed with a sweeper though.”

“A sweeper?” Eastshare cocked his head. “From the initial reports, I was thinking they were more like fountains,” he said, using the ICA’s term for the “bounding” mines Charis had fielded a couple of years earlier, and Green Valley scowled.

He’d hated the fountains even when Charis had held a monopoly on them, but they’d been too useful not to be utilized at a time when the ICA was so desperately outnumbered.

“I can see where you might’ve gotten that impression,” he said, “but they don’t seem to’ve figured out how to make them launch themselves. Instead, they’ve come up with a sort of domed footstool with a hundred or so old-style musket balls embedded in a ‘roof’ of pitch and resin. When the charge goes, it sprays the musket balls directionally in a cone. It might be more accurate to call the pattern a hemisphere I suppose, though, now that I think about it.” He shrugged. “Either way, the things are going to be a major pain in the arse.”

Eastshare made a less than delighted sound of agreement. Like Green Valley, he’d always recognized the consequences of introducing a weapon like the footstools. He’d even considered objecting to their use, but no commander worthy of his men could refuse to embrace such a potentially effective weapon when those men were going to be outnumbered a hundred-to-one … or more. And they’d been enormously useful. In fact, they’d probably been the decisive factor—or at least one of the decisive factors—in his ability to stop Cahnyr Kaitswyrth’s advance after Kaitswyrth massacred Mahrtyn Taisyn and his men. But the wyvern he’d worried about seemed to be coming home to roost, although at least Green Valley had insisted on devising a doctrine for dealing with footstools—sweeping them, he called it—at the same time he’d come up with one to employ them offensively. It was a slow and dangerous process, however, and that, unfortunately, would favor the Mighty Host more than the Allies in the upcoming campaign. Anything that clogged Allied mobility—and especially the mobility of Charis’ mounted infantry—had to be considered a good thing from Rainbow Waters’ perspective.

“Well, I can’t say I’m happy to hear that,” he observed. “We knew it was coming eventually, though. And at least your boys’ve made sure it doesn’t surprise us. That’s something. In fact, that’s a lot! Your scout snipers brought it in, Kynt?”

“Yes.” Green Valley nodded, then smiled. “I can’t help suspecting Rainbow Waters probably didn’t want them laid quite this early. He knows how active our patrols are, and he’s too smart to not want to surprise us with it.”

“A local commander trying to be sure he gets them in before you jump him, you think?”

“That’s exactly what I think.”

In fact, Green Valley knew that was what had happened. And while he was grateful for the warning, he could wish Rainbow Waters hadn’t engendered enough independence of mind in his frontline commanders to make something like this possible. The “seijins” could have “discovered” the new weapon’s existence in ample time to plan for the upcoming campaign. In fact, the report had already been written when the scout snipers quietly dug up an actual example and brought it in for examination. In a lot of ways, he would have preferred to rely on the seijins rather than face an army whose officers had learned the value of initiative … and who weren’t afraid of their superiors’ wrath if they got caught exercising that initiative, even against orders.

“Well, thank Andropov for small favors!” Eastshare said philosophically, then leaned back in his chair and waved a donut with a bite taken out of it at the captain standing, pointer in hand, in front of the huge map of Tarikah Province.

“I apologize for the interruption, Captain Slokym,” he said. “I’ll try to keep my mouth shut until you get through your initial briefing.” He smiled crookedly. “And I’ll also try to remember how much I always hated being interrupted by monumentally senior officers when it was my turn to do the briefing.”

“I promise you, Your Grace,” Slokym said solemnly, “that such an ignoble thought would never cross my mind.”

“Junior officers who lie to generals come to bad ends,” Eastshare remarked to no one in particular, his eyes carefully fixed upon the ceiling.

“I believe I’ve heard that, Your Grace,” Slokym said and laid the tip of his pointer on the town of Ayaltyn.

“To begin, Sir,” he said in a much more serious tone, “the Harchongians have been thickening the overhead cover on their bunkers here at Ayaltyn, and if they’re doing it here, they’re probably doing the same thing everywhere else, as well. We suspect that’s the result of more of those tests Captain of Horse Rungwyn and Lord of Foot Zhyngbau have been conducting.” He grimaced. “Whatever inspired it, it’s going to make them harder artillery targets when we launch our attack. Unfortunately, we’re still going to need the river line, and that means dealing with Ayaltyn somehow. That’s why we’ve moved the Fourth Mounted around to the west and given Brigadier Tymkyn two extra battalions of M97 field guns and a hundred or so of Major Sykharelli’s new rockets, plus a company of mounted engineers with demolition charges and the new flamethrowers. In addition, we’ve—”

His pointer moved again as he spoke briskly, confidently, without ever consulting the notepad in his pocket, and High General Ruhsyl Thairis, Duke of Eastshare, cocked his head and listened intently.