At the Sign of Triumph (Safehold)

.VI.

Tymkyn Gap,

Snake Mountains,

Cliff Peak Province,

Haidryrberg,

Glacierheart Province,

Republic of Siddarmark.

“June usually isn’t this nice where I come from,” Captain of Swords Bryntyn Mahklyroh observed.

He slouched comfortably in the canvas sling chair, a mug of beer in one hand and a hot dog, liberally anointed with mustard and ketchup, in the other. The napkin tucked tastefully into the front of his collar protected his tunic from his chosen meal, although it threatened to fail its function as he waved the hot dog at the spectacular sunset over the Snake Mountains.

“Please don’t tell me about all those tons and tons of snow back home in St. Cehseelya again!” Captain of Horse Gwynhai begged. “I may be a southern boy from Kyznetzov, but I have relatives all the way up in de Castro Province. I’ll see your tons of snow and raise you five hundredweight of ice, Bryntyn!”

Mahklyroh chuckled and took a bite of the hot dog.

“All right, I’ll admit it doesn’t really snow thirty feet every winter back home. Sometimes it’s only twenty-nine. And if you’re going to be that way about it, I’ll concede that those seventh- and eighth-cousins of yours probably get at least as much snow as we do. But it’s true you know.” He sat a little straighter in his chair to set the hot dog on his plate and free his non-beer hand to snag another fried potato slice. “This is really, really nice weather for June.”

Now, there, Gwynhai thought, Bryntyn had a point. Even a “southern boy” could appreciate a night like this one promised to be. A few low-lying banks of cloud still glowed crimson in the west, but the sky overhead was a cobalt blue vault, a-glimmer with stars, and the moon was well above the eastern horizon. The breeze blowing out of the east was just a bit cooler than his Kyznetzov sensibilities preferred—he’d grown up spending June days wading in the shallows of Bay of Alexov, and the Snake Mountains were a lot higher than that—but the day had been a bit too warm, perhaps, despite the altitude.

And a damned good thing it was, too, he told himself rather more grimly. I could wish we were completely dug-in, and all that sunshine and lack of rain isn’t hurting a thing when it comes to getting that way. And neither is the fact that I’ve got Bryntyn to make sure the frigging engineers do it right!

The truth was, he supposed, that Bryntyn Mahklyroh was as much a barbarian as any other Easterner. Certainly his taste for “good, simple food” like tonight’s hot dogs and beer was a far cry from the sophisticated preferences of some of Gwynhai’s more nobly born—or wealthier—Harchongese fellows. And he was a corrupting influence. He’d actually badgered the regiment’s bakers into figuring out how to bake and slice hot dog “buns” for him, although he’d been unable to procure proper hot dogs to go in them. The best the cooks had been able to come up with was a mild smoked sausage, and Mahklyroh’s efforts to get the “real thing” delivered through channels had probably driven at least three or four of the Southern Host’s commissaries to the brink of madness. But as the 321st Infantry Regiment’s commander, Gwynhai didn’t really care about any of that. For that matter, the captain of horse was about as common as a Harchongian came, himself, although his family had done well for itself in the cherrybean trade before the Jihad. Perhaps that explained why he got along so well with Mahklyroh. He was fairly certain it explained the undeniably lowbrow streak of pragmatism which had gotten him chosen for his current duty.

Lord of Horse Fengli Zhywan, the Earl of Red Sun and the commanding officer, 3rd Band, of the Southern Host, had been assigned primary responsibility for the northern third of the Tymkyn Gap, with a frontage of roughly eight miles. Third Band consisted of four brigades, including the 321st’s parent 5th Provisional Brigade. That gave Red Sun just over twelve thousand infantry—closer to eighteen thousand, once artillerists and other supports were added in—to cover his area of responsibility. That seemed like a lot. For that matter, it was a lot. But it still worked out to less than one man per yard of straight-line frontage, the way a wyvern might fly it. Since God and the Archangels hadn’t seen fit to give human beings wings, the Southern Host had to cover that frontage on the ground, where hillsides, streambeds, inconveniently placed patches of woods, and Hastings only knew what else added a good thirty percent to the actual frontage. And Red Sun had chosen Lord of Foot Snow Mount’s 5th Provisional Brigade to hold the extreme left of that line.

And Snow Mount had chosen the 321st to hold the extreme left of 5th Provisional Brigade’s frontage. Which meant that if Gwynhai had been in the heretic High Mount’s boots, he would have been paying particularly close attention to the 321st’s positions. And that explained why he was so happy to have clear, dry weather and lots of picks and shovels.

To be fair, the Army of Tanshar had made a decent start on fortifying the Gap before everything was rearranged. But sad to say, the AOG’s engineers weren’t the world’s greatest experts on field fortifications. It was entirely possible that the Charisian heretics could still lay claim to that title, since they were the ones who’d invented new-model weapons and tactics, but the Imperial Harchongese Army—and especially the Mighty Host of God and the Archangels—could give them a damned good run for their money these days, and the Southern Host had spent the last several five-days deepening, broadening, and strengthening the works Bishop Militant Tayrens’ troops had begun.

Mahklyroh, however, was something rather out of the ordinary. He’d been a lieutenant in the Army of God, the equivalent of a mere captain of bows, when he was assigned to the Mighty Host as one of Captain General Maigwair’s “advisers.” Then, he’d been one more “foreigner” foisted on the Mighty Host by a batch of barbarians who obviously couldn’t understand the art of war as well as Harchongians did. Now, he’d risen to the equivalent of an AOG major and commanded Yahngpyng Gwynhai’s 1st Company, and the men of that company would have followed their round-eyed “foreign” CO straight through Shan-wei’s front gate.

There weren’t many Easterners still serving with the Southern Host. Or, rather, they’d been so diluted by the influx of reinforcements from the Empire that they seemed far less numerous. Mahklyroh, however, had clearly found a home, and the … less than exquisitely sophisticated serfs of his company adored him. The fact that he’d started as an engineering officer before being transferred to the infantry didn’t hurt under the present circumstances, either.

“Yes, Bryntyn,” the captain of horse acknowledged. “It is nice weather. On the other hand,” his tone darkened, “if all those spy reports are accurate, there’d be something to be said for a mid-summer blizzard!”

“Since it would be highly impolitic for me to call my commanding officer a wet blanket, I’ll refrain from any observations about borrowing trouble or looking on the dark side, Sir,” Mahklyroh replied. Then he shrugged. “That doesn’t mean you’re wrong. May I ask if we’ve heard anything more about what High Mount’s up to?”

“Nothing I haven’t already shared with you.” Gwynhai shook his head. “Our patrols still aren’t as good as their patrols, unfortunately—not that I have to tell you that. There are obviously a lot of men over on their side of the line, and even more of their damned artillery, but we haven’t been able to confirm anything concrete about his timetable. About the only thing we have been able to confirm is that it’s going to be Shan-wei’s own bitch when he finally gets around to lighting the fuse. I expect it’s going to look a lot like Armageddon Reef did.”

He wouldn’t have allowed himself to make that particular comparison before most of his other officers, but Mahklyroh only nodded.

“You’ve got that part right,” he agreed, his tone considerably grimmer than it had been. “And I’m grateful for every day we get to dig the boys in deeper. But, you know, there’s a part of me that really wishes they’d go ahead and get down to it. We know it can’t be much longer—they’re burning too much summer to lie around forever—and I sometimes think the waiting’s worse than the actual bleeding.”

“Well, that’s certainly brought supper down to earth,” Gwynhai observed. “You wouldn’t happen to have any other depressing thoughts you’d care to share?”

“Oh, I’m sure something will occur to me, Sir!” Mahklyroh assured him with a smile. “In fact—”

The captain of swords broke off and his head snapped around as the dark eastern horizon flared with sudden, volcanic life. The blinding trails of hundreds of artillery shells streaked across the heavens, overpowering the moon, burning away the stars. They plummeted downward and deadly flowers of flame rose from 3rd Band’s frontline positions. Mahklyroh’s quarters were three miles behind the front, but the ground-shaking thunder rolled over them fourteen seconds later.

* * *

“How bad is it?” Zhowku Seidyng, the Earl of Silken Hills, demanded as he strode into his office.

The howling wilderness—by any civilized standard, at any rate—west of the Snake Mountains offered precious little in the way of proper housing for a Harchongese earl, but Silken Hills had become accustomed to roughing it in the Jihad’s service. His steel thistle silk pavilion was a modest thing. It couldn’t have cost much more than it would have taken to feed an entire village of his estate’s serfs for a year or two. But it was adequate—adequate, if not palatial—although the section of its interior partitioned off for his office space was no more than twenty or thirty feet on a side.

“It could be far worse, My Lord,” Captain of Horse Kaishau Hywanlohng, Silken Hills’ chief of staff replied. “Everything we have is still very preliminary, of course.” The captain of horse shrugged. “We’ve gotten a couple of wyvern messages from Earl Red Sun that give at least some detail, but we haven’t heard anything yet from the other commanders in the Gap.”

“Probably one reason the motherless demon-worshipers like to attack in the Shan-wei-damned dark, when the semaphore’s useless,” Silken Hills growled, and Hywanlohng nodded. He didn’t doubt that was a major part of the heretics’ predilection for night assaults, although he’d come to the conclusion it was only a part of the reason.

The chief of staff was a hard-bitten professional, who’d served in the Harchongese Army for a quarter century before the Jihad, and he’d been deeply impressed by the way the IHA’s standard of training had leapt upwards under commanders like Earl Rainbow Waters … and Earl Silken Hills, to give him his due. He was also realist enough to recognize how huge a debt the Mighty Host owed to its AOG mentors, as well as to the manufactories pouring out the weapons with which it had been armed. By his most conservative estimate, the Mighty Host of today was at least ten or fifteen times as dangerous, on a man-for-man basis, as it had been. Yet for all its improvements, the Imperial Harchongese Army remained a far less … limber weapon than the Imperial Charisian Army. The heretics fought at night because they trained to fight at night. Because they embraced the darkness, moving through it with a fluid assurance Earl Silken Hills’ infantry simply couldn’t match. It was the same sort of small-unit capability which made heretic patrols so much more dangerous than the Mighty Host’s.

“Whatever their logic, My Lord,” he said out loud, “it looks like it will be sometime tomorrow morning before we get anything definitive from the bands south of Red Sun’s. From what he’s saying, though, it would appear High Mount’s decided he needs something a little more … methodical than the sorts of bombardments the Dohlarans have reported.”

“He does?”

Silken Hills cocked his head, one eyebrow rising, and Hywanlohng nodded. One thing about the earl, he reflected. Silken Hills was an aristocrat of the old school, with a fervor for the Jihad his chief of staff doubted the Grand Inquisitor himself could have improved upon, and he hated heresy—and heretics—with every fiber of his being. But it wasn’t an unthinking hatred. He actually listened to briefings, and he’d never been too proud to learn from his adversaries, however much he might despise them for their sins. He’d spent hours discussing the Dohlaran General Rychtyr’s reports with Hywanlohng and his senior subordinates, and given the nature of the anticipated assault, he’d paid special attention to Hanth’s use of his angle-guns.

“Yes, My Lord. Earl Red Sun hasn’t reported any of Hanth’s … sophistication, for want of a better word. As of his last wyvern, the bombardment had been underway for over three hours, concentrated on no more than a couple of regiments’ frontage. Apparently, he’s really hammering those regiments, but it doesn’t sound like he’s spreading his fire very wide and Red Sun hasn’t seen any sign of the false breaks or other deception measures Hanth has employed. I can’t believe High Mount isn’t aware of how successful Hanth’s artillery tactics have been, so if he isn’t using them, there has to be a reason. And the only one I can think of is the difference between our fortifications and the Dohlarans’.”

Silken Hills nodded slowly, rubbing his chin as he gazed down at the relief map his engineers had built for him. As a place to break through the barrier of the Snakes, the Tylmahn Gap was far superior to any other choice, but that wasn’t saying much. It might favor the defense less than winding lizard paths did, yet he was confident of his men’s ability to bleed the heretics badly when they attacked, no matter how much artillery they might have. And the fortifications the Southern Host had built were almost certainly deeper and stronger than anything Rychtyr might have had in his confrontation with the Army of Thesmar.

“Treating it like a siege, is he?” the earl mused, still rubbing his chin.

“That’s what it looks like so far, My Lord. But only so far,” Hywanlohng cautioned. “It’s much too early to decide definitively that that’s what he’s doing, I think. But it’s clearly a possibility. And the truth is that no one’s ever had to attack ‘fieldworks’ like the ones Captain of Horse Rungwyn’s designed. I know I damned well wouldn’t want to send in any assaults until I’d broken as many bunkers and dugouts as I could, first!”

“Well, that’s one of the things Earl Rainbow Waters hoped might happen,” Silken Hills pointed out. “And unlike the northern end of the front, we don’t have any open flanks they can maneuver around with their frigging mounted infantry.” He snorted harshly. “Damned good thing we don’t, either, given how useless our own cavalry’s likely to be!”

Another point in the earl’s favor, Hywanlohng thought. He was realistic—and honest—enough to step outside the aristocracy’s traditional contempt for infantry … and for anyone else’s cavalry, for that matter. The same reports which had detailed Hanth’s artillery tactics had described the effectiveness of his mounted infantry in terms which made it only too clear no Harchongese cavalry brigade could consider itself remotely the equal of its Charisian counterpart.

Unfortunately, the one group of people apparently unable to recognize that fact were the Mighty Host’s cavalry commanders.

“I’m sure High Mount can hardly wait to break those mounted brigades loose in our rear,” Silken Hills continued, “but first he’s got to get through our front, and we can afford a lot more casualties than he can.” The earl shrugged. “Add that to the way the bastards seem to be able to make shells and cannon breed like rabbits, and it probably makes a lot of sense—from his perspective—to use up as much ammunition as it takes to kick in the front gate for his infantry. If he can do that, he can damned well create flanks to work around, but first he’s got to do the kicking.”

Hywanlohng nodded. It was pure speculation at this point, but it was logical speculation that fitted everything they definitely knew.

“Shall I write up a dispatch for Earl Rainbow Waters tonight still, My Lord, or wait until we’ve heard from the other band commanders?”

“He’s not going to be magically able to do anything about it whenever we tell him,” Silken Hills observed with a grunting laugh. “All we’d do sending him bits and pieces would be to convince him we’re a lot more nervous than he’d like us to be.” He shook his head. “Tomorrow morning—or even afternoon—will be soon enough.”

* * *

“Your chocolate, My Lord,” Corporal Slym Chalkyr murmured, gliding up behind the Duke of Eastshare and sliding the heavy mug on to the corner of his desk. “Try not t’ spill this one on the maps.”

There were drawbacks, Eastshare thought, to having long-term, trusted henchmen looking after one.

“I spilled one cup of chocolate on one map five months ago,” he pointed out mildly … relatively speaking.

“An’ spent the next three days complainin’ about it,” Chalkyr retorted. He seemed singularly unimpressed by the duke’s scowl as he withdrew from the office as silently as he’d entered.

“For a quarter-mark and the powder to blow him to Shan-wei…” Eastshare muttered, and heard something very like a smothered laugh from the far side of his desk.

“You think I don’t mean it?” he demanded, fixing Major Braynair with an icy brown glare.

“No, Sir. It’s not that I don’t think you mean it—it’s that I know you don’t,” Braynair replied. “Mind, I can see where the fantasy might be tempting from time to time, but you know you’d be helpless without him.”

“I put on my own boots—yes, and buttoned the fly of my trousers, now that I think about it—all by myself this morning, Lywys!”

“Of course you did, My Lord.”

Eastshare glowered at his aide, but he couldn’t keep it up. Partly because Braynair was entirely correct. But that was the smallest part of the reason he couldn’t, he assured himself. A mere bagatelle and totally irrelevant.

“Fortunately for you, you’ve done an excellent job over the last several five-days,” he said. “Because of that, I’m prepared to overlook your sad misjudgment of my ability to function even without Slym nagging me to within an inch of my life.”

“Thank you, My Lord,” Braynair said earnestly. “I appreciate it.”

Eastshare snorted and returned his attention to the dispatches he’d been reading when the fresh cup of chocolate arrived. As always, whether he cared to admit it or not, Chalkyr’s timing had been excellent. There was quite a mountain of those dispatches, and he and Braynair had been working their way through them for over three and a half hours … starting after supper.

He leaned back in his chair, sipping chocolate while he finished the current message, then laid it atop the “read” stack and turned the chair to face Braynair.

“Unless you’re concealing some horrendous catastrophe in order to evade my ire, things are going well,” he said. “In fact, they’re going so well I’m starting to worry about when the other boot is going to fall on my toe!”

“I know, My Lord. Like Baron Green Valley always says, ‘What can go wrong, will go wrong.’” The major shrugged. “I’m sure all kinds of things are going to prove him right before we’re done, but so far—so far, My Lord—it really does seem to be going well.”

“Um.”

Eastshare climbed out of his chair, stretched hugely, and walked across to consider the enormous map. He clasped his hands behind him, rocking gently on the balls of his feet as he contemplated the arrows stretching across it. His own Army of Westmarch and Trumyn Stohnar’s Army of the Sylmahn had the farthest to go to reach their objectives. At the moment, their columns were on the road, moving steadily west and—in his own case—northwest. They’d actually begun their march well before Earl High Mount’s artillery opened fire in the Tymkyn Gap, yet it would still be some time yet before they were ready to attack. But that was fine. One reason their troops had been held so far back was to prevent Zhaspahr Clyntahn’s spies from getting an accurate count on their numbers or realizing where they were actually headed. Now that High Mount’s guns were blazing away, even someone as canny as Earl Rainbow Waters must be looking in that direction. And since that direction happened to be seven hundred miles southwest of Eastshare’s current position and the next best thing to a thousand miles south of his first major objective, that was just fine with him.

Have to admit, I thought Kynt and the Emperor were getting a little too clever when they came up with this one, but damned if it doesn’t look like it’s going to work. And anything that keeps my boys from punching straight into Rainbow Waters’ front is downright brilliant as far as I’m concerned!

He stood a moment longer, contemplating those arrows, then sighed.

“There was a time,” he said to nobody in particular as he trudged back to his desk, “when I thought things like bullets and swords were more important than reports.”

“Well, My Lord, I’ll grant you they’re more interesting, anyway. I remember what the Baron had to say about that.”

“What? You mean when he said there was nothing in the world quite so exhilarating as to be shot at … and missed?”

“That’s exactly what I was thinking about,” Braynair acknowledged. “He’s got quite a way with words, doesn’t he?”

“Probably something in the water in Old Charis.” Eastshare flopped just a tad less than cheerfully back into his chair. “His Majesty turns a mean phrase on occasion, too.”

“Yes, My Lord. I was particularly fond of ‘Hit them where they ain’t.’” It was Braynair’s turn to contemplate that map. “I like that one … a lot.”