At the Sign of Triumph (Safehold)

.IX.

Coast Road,

Earldom of Cheshyr;

HMS Maikelberg

Cheshyr Bay;

Sharylstown,

Duchy of Lantern Walk;

Sheryyn Waterfront,

Earldom of Saint Howan;

and

Maryksberg,

Duchy of Black Horse,

Kingdom of Chisholm,

Empire of Charis.

“Shan-wei, but I miss the barracks,” Rahnyld Myketchnee announced, scratching one armpit with his left hand while he held out his tea mug with the right. “Miss kitchens, too, come to that,” he added sourly, glancing at the designated cooks frying bacon and eggs over the smoky morning fires.

“Some people’d bitch if they got hanged with a golden rope,” Dahnel Kyrbysh replied, but his tone was a bit absent.

“Not me,” Myketchnee said firmly. “Got standards, I do. Golden rope sounds about right to me.”

“I’ll be sure to pass that along,” Kyrbysh promised, and Myketchnee chuckled.

The man had developed the soldier’s traditional right to bellyache into a fine art, but he was also Kyrbysh’s most reliable company commander. Now he grunted his thanks as one of the cooks poured tea into his mug. He sipped, made a face as he burned his tongue, and then ambled across to stand beside Kyrbysh.

The senior armsman glanced up, then returned his attention to the map spread out across the rock in front of him. The sky above the hill crests to their east offered just enough light for him to see it, although the predawn gloom still covered the waters of Cheshyr Bay to the west like a blanket, and he frowned as he ran an index finger down the inked line of the coast road while he tried to scratch a mental itch he couldn’t quite pin down.

In some ways, the … expedition, for want of a better word, had gone well. He and his mounted armsmen were eighty miles inside Cheshyr now, halfway between the towns of Tylkahm and Dahryk, and they hadn’t lost a man. Hadn’t even lost a horseshoe! He couldn’t remember a single time, even in a training exercise, when everything had gone this smoothly.

Unfortunately, one reason it had worked out that way this time was that Tylkahm had been completely deserted when they got there. So had each of the farms they’d passed en route to their present bivouac. He tended to doubt that all those people had just coincidentally decided to take a long vacation at the very moment their earldom was invaded by its neighbors.

Kind of hard to “neutralize” somebody who isn’t even here, he thought grumpily. The Duke won’t be happy about it, either. Still, they have to be up ahead of us somewhere, and we’re a hell of a lot faster than any batch of townsfolk moving on foot. Bound to catch up with them sooner or later.

He’d reported the troubling lack of Cheshyrians to Duke Black Horse via messenger wyvern, but there was no way for the duke to send wyverns back to him. That meant all he could do was continue following his orders until he figured out where everyone had gone. And like he’d just told himself, he and his mounted men had to be faster than men, women, and children—and probably livestock—moving on foot. They were bound to overtake—

His thoughts paused and his eyes narrowed as he revisited that thought, pushing it around to look at it from all angles, and his frown deepened.

Damn right we’re faster than they are, and we’ve been on the Cheshyr side of the border for two full days now. So if we’re so much faster, how the hell come we haven’t already caught up with them?

“They started before we did,” he muttered.

“What?” Myketchnee asked. “You talking to me, or to yourself?”

“They started before we did,” Kyrbysh repeated more loudly, turning his head to look at the other armsman.

“What’re you talking about?”

“The reason we haven’t caught up with them yet is that they started running before we ever started chasing them.”

Myketchnee frowned, and Kyrbysh shook his head, stabbing his index finger at the dot that represented Dahryk.

“The only way all these people could’ve disappeared without our seeing even one of them is for them to’ve pulled out before the Duke ever sent us aboard the boats, Rahnyld. They must’ve packed up and pulled out at least two or three days—maybe even a whole five-day—before we ever got to Swanyk!”

“That’s ridiculous,” Myketchnee retorted, but he was frowning as he said it and he scratched one eyebrow. “Maybe a fishing boat saw us on the way in?”

“And a bunch of fishermen figured out where we were going and spread the word for everybody along our route to take to the hills in just one or two days?” He shook his head. “They knew we were coming, and they even knew what route we were going to take, before … we … ever … started.”

He punctuated each of the last four words with another finger stab at the map, and Myketchnee’s face was tight as he worked through the rest of the logic.

“But … that would mean.…”

His voice trailed off, and Kyrbysh nodded sharply.

“If they knew that much, how much else did they know? And who the hell is ‘they,’ in the first place?! We didn’t know the Duke was going to send us out—or not when, anyway—until we got Duke Rock Coast’s messenger wyvern. So how in Shan-wei’s hell did somebody else know far enough ahead to pull all these people out of our way?”

“I don’t—” Myketchnee began.

“What’s that?!” someone demanded, and both armsmen looked up sharply.

The eastern sky had continued to lighten, and one of Myketchnee’s troopers was pointing urgently out across the bay. They turned their heads, peering into the still-dim west, trying to figure out what he’d seen. Then Myketchnee drew a sharp breath.

“That’s smoke,” he said flatly.

* * *

“I wish I could navigate this well,” Captain Wyndayl Zohannsyn remarked to the young woman standing beside him on HMS Maikelberg’s bridge.

As a general rule, Zohannsyn didn’t approve of women aboard ship. But there were exceptions to any rule and Ezmelda Zohannsyn hadn’t raised any idiots. When a fishing boat came out of the dark to make a perfect rendezvous with his command in the middle of a moonless night, he was prepared to make one of those exceptions. Especially when the only person aboard that fishing boat happened to be wearing the blackened chain mail and breastplate of the House of Ahrmahk’s personal guard.

“It wasn’t really all that hard,” the attractive brunette told him with a shrug. “I mean, the hard part was estimating how far they’d be likely to’ve gotten by the time we could get back here. After that, it wasn’t difficult. Especially after they were kind enough to light all those fires last night.”

“True.” Zohannsyn nodded without lowering his double-glass, although as explanations went, that one was pretty thin in his opinion. Still, Seijin Merch did have a point about the line of campfires, twinkling brilliantly against the darkness of the land. With them as a reference point, putting Maikelberg into the proper position hadn’t been especially taxing.

“Well,” he lowered the double-glass at last and looked over his shoulder. “I believe we might as well get started, Master Ohldyrtyn.”

“Aye, aye, Sir,” Lieutenant Ohldyrtyn, Maikelberg’s first lieutenant, acknowledged through the conning tower view slit. “Earplugs in, Sir?”

“They are now,” Zohannsyn said resignedly, tucking the protective plugs into place. He hated the damned things, but he liked his ears still working, thank you. Seijin Merch didn’t seem particularly worried about her hearing, though, he noted just a bit resentfully. Well, she was a seijin.

The City-class ironclad swung slightly to starboard, paralleling the Cheshyr Bay shore at a range of three miles, and her entire larboard side disappeared behind an enormous eruption of fiery brown gunsmoke.

* * *

“Sweet Langhorne!” someone shouted as the smoke smudge, dimly visible in the gathering light, transformed itself into a rakurai-blast of hell-spawned brilliance.

Dahnel Kyrbysh had never imagined anything like it. He’d never seen even new-model field artillery, far less the enormously greater muzzle flash of no less than eleven heavy naval guns firing in a single broadside. The boil of smoky brilliance was even brighter, even more blinding, coming out of the darkness, and he stared at it, mesmerized, trying to comprehend what it might be—what it might mean. The one thing he was certain of was that it had to be connected with however the Cheshyrians had known they were coming. But even assuming they’d known, how could anyone have arranged for one of the new ironclad steamers—and that had to be what it was; nothing else smoked that way—to be in exactly the right place at exactly the right time to—

The first salvo of 6-inch shells arrived like the end of the world and put an abrupt—and permanent—end to Dahnel Kyrbysh’s questions, as well.

* * *

“Are you sure this was wise, Bahnyvyl?” Mhargryt Kyvlokyn asked across the breakfast table. The Duchess of Lantern Walk was seven years younger than her husband, an attractive woman of thirty-six, with the high cheekbones, fair hair, and gray eyes of the House of Hyntyn. At the moment, those gray eyes were frankly worried, and the duke drew a deep, patient breath.

“My dear,” he said, “any great venture carries a certain risk. That’s a given. I assure you, however, that I considered at great length before I decided to commit our house to it.”

“I don’t doubt that,” the duchess said a bit more tartly. “Mind you, since you’ve committed our entire house to it, I do think you might have at least warned me about it ahead of time. But my question wasn’t whether or not you’ve considered it; it was whether or not it’s wise.”

Lantern Walk managed—somehow—not to roll his eyes.

His marriage had been arranged by his and Mhargryt’s parents when she was barely ten years old. That was the way things were done here in southwestern Chisholm, whatever might be the practice in places like Cherayth, Tayt, or Eastshare. By and large, he thought it was far the wisest way to handle such things, especially among families of good blood. But Mhargryt was a distant cousin of the Earl of Saint Howan, and her father had died less than a year after the marriage was arranged. Her mother had returned to Saint Howan … which meant Mhargryt had been raised in a deplorably “progressive” household. She truly didn’t seem to understand it was her business to bear children and raise them and his business to make the decisions that promoted the interests of their house.

That was why he hadn’t bothered her head with any of the correspondence he’d exchanged with Rock Coast, Rebkah Rahskail, and Duke Black Horse.

“I don’t really approve of Rock Coast,” he said after a moment, “and, if pressed, I find Rebkah’s unswerving support for Clyntahn and his associates rather tiresome. But whatever she may think, none of the others really believe it’s possible—or even desirable—to welcome the Temple back into Chisholm, so I’m sure some accommodation will be reached with Archbishop Ulys in the end. For that matter, once Sharleyan realizes we’re serious, I suspect a more … realistic state of affairs to be achieved in secular matters, as well. But it’s possible I’m wrong about that. Not likely, I think, but … possible.”

“Then why—?” she began, but closed her mouth as he raised one hand and waved his index finger at her.

“As I say, I think that outcome’s unlikely, but if Sharleyan insists upon being unreasonable, we’ll simply have to take the decision out of her hands. We have no choice, because if we don’t do something now, she and Cayleb will break all the great houses. It’s inevitable, given the … mongrelized, bastardized path on which they’ve set their feet. The wealthiest man in the world is a man of no blood, Mhargryt, even if they did finally make him a duke. And what were his qualifications to be elevated to that title? Money—money earned in trade!”

“I’ve never heard you complain about money, whatever its source, as long as it’s in your purse,” she replied, and he frowned.

“Don’t be tiresome, dear,” he said more sternly. “There’s nothing wrong with money as money. The problem is the way Howsmyn—” he refused to use the parvenu’s title “—acquired his. I don’t blame him for amassing a fortune any way he could, but this rabid ‘industrialization’ he’s helped loose upon the world can only destroy the existing social order. It undermines the very bedrock of society’s stability, and Sharleyan is fully committed to driving through the same sort of ‘progress’ right here in Chisholm! If she’s permitted to succeed, men of no name, no blood, will soon consider themselves the equals of the houses which have governed the Kingdom for centuries! And when that happens, our place, our wealth, and our house will be inescapably doomed to decline.”

“And what about your oath of fealty?” his wife asked in a painfully neutral tone. “There are penalties set forth in that oath for its violation, I believe.”

“First, that oath was initially obtained from my father at what amounted to swordpoint,” Lantern Walk replied. “Mind you, I never really blamed Sailys for demanding it. In his place, I would have done the same. But the fact remains that it was given under duress, and the same was true in many ways in my own case when I swore fealty to Sharleyan. More to the point, however, she violated her responsibilities to me—and to all of her vassals—when she entered into that illegal marriage with Cayleb and submerged the entire Kingdom in this bastardized ‘Empire’ of theirs. I hardly think I can be fairly accused of treason for disregarding an oath which has already been abrogated from the other side!”

“If you succeed,” she replied. It was obvious to Lantern Walk she was restraining her temper only with some difficulty. “If you fail, if the Crown wins this confrontation, I suspect Sharleyan will feel you can be ‘fairly accused of treason’!”

“Perhaps,” he conceded, reaching for his cup of chocolate. He sipped for a moment, then placed the cup back on its saucer and looked at her levelly. “Should this effort fail, then, yes, no doubt there will be penalties. This is a much more carefully planned and coordinated affair than the two attempts to … restrain her when she was still younger, however. Many more peers of the realm are involved, and there are limits on the penalties she might levy upon so many of the great houses without demonstrating to all of the others that our charges of tyranny are well taken. I’m sure she’ll find a way to make us pay a painful price if we fail, but it’s highly unlikely that anything the Queen’s Bench might impose upon us could be any worse than what will happen to our houses anyway, within no more than a generation, if she and Cayleb are allowed to nurture the seeds of Charisian madness here in Chisholm.”

Mhargryt looked at him and wondered if he even began to realize just how insufferably smug he looked and sounded at this moment.

Theirs had been a loveless marriage, and it still was, as far as she was concerned. Bahnyvyl had qualities she could appreciate—he was cultured, well read, a good dresser, a kind husband (by his own lights) in his own insufferably patronizing way, and for all his other faults, a devoted father … once again, in his own way. But she’d realized years ago that he was what the Bedardists called a “sociopath.” He genuinely believed he was the smartest man in the Kingdom, that everyone else existed only in terms of their utility to him, and—worse—that nothing terrible could happen to him. That was the sort of thing that happened to other people, not to the Duke of Lantern Walk!

And she was sickly certain he’d hugely underestimated the ruthlessness of Sharleyan Ahrmahk. He hadn’t been raised in Saint Howan the way she had. His cousin wasn’t the Chancellor of the Treasury. She and Sir Dynzayl Hyntyn had grown up together. She knew and trusted Dynzayl’s opinion of the Empress, just as she knew exactly how he felt about Sharleyan … and that he was far from the only one who felt that way. Whatever Bahnyvyl might think, this conspiracy of his wasn’t going to be the walkover he believed it would.

True, he and his allies had planned it well, as far as she could tell, and the fact that virtually the entire Army was either in Siddarmark or en route to it severely limited the Crown’s immediately available resources. In addition, King Sailys’ Edict drastically limited the feudal levies the Crown might once have raised from nobles loyal to it in the Army’s absence. That meant it was entirely possible the conspirators, who’d apparently been flouting the Edict systematically for at least a year, really did have parity, or close to it, with the forces actually available to Earl White Crag and the Imperial Council in Sharleyan’s absence.

But they didn’t begin to have parity with the forces Sharleyan and Cayleb could bring to bear as soon as they heard about this. And people like the Duke of Tayt, her own cousin, Earl Shayne, Duke Eastshare, Earl High Mount, and dozens of other greater and lesser nobles would stand by their oaths to Sharleyan to the death. Even if the conspirators won in the end, it would be only after a long and bloody civil war, and the fool sitting across from her didn’t seem to have a clue about the “penalties” the Crown would impose if a civil war like that failed.

And he’s taken me and Karyline right along with him, she thought, fury bubbling in her blood as she thought about their daughter. He’s put her life, everything she could ever hope for, on the line right along with his when she’s only ten years old, and he doesn’t see the slightest reason he shouldn’t have!

“Well,” she said out loud, bridling her rage with an iron hand, “I certainly hope you’re right about that. In the meantime—”

The breakfast room’s door flew open to admit a tallish man with graying brown hair and a noticeable potbelly, and Lantern Walk’s head snapped around, his eyes crackling with anger at the abrupt, unannounced intrusion.

“What’s the—?” he began.

“I most humbly beg your pardon for interrupting you, Your Grace,” Dygry Dyangyloh said quickly, speaking so rapidly the words were almost a gabble. “I wouldn’t have intruded if the matter hadn’t been so grave.”

“What are you talking about?” Lantern Walk demanded, and found himself wondering if the man had been drinking, although that would have been very unlike Dyangyloh, who’d been the chamberlain of Lantern Walk for almost fifteen years. For a moment, it crossed the duke’s mind to wonder if some disaster had overtaken one of his fellow conspirators, but that was ridiculous. They’d only declared their defiance of Sharleyan four days ago!

“A rider just came in from the Mayor of Stoneyside, Your Grace. A column of mounted infantry crossed the border from Tayt at Kysahndrah Falls last night. The Mayor says it’s at least a full brigade, and he expected it to reach Stoneyside within no more than six hours of when he sent off his message! And from Stoneyside, they can be here in only two more days if they push the pace!”

“What?” Lantern Walk frowned, trying to understand what Dyangyloh meant. It sounded like he’d said.…

“Mounted infantry?”He shook his head. “That’s impossible!”

“Your Grace, the Mayor’s always been levelheaded. That’s why we … ah, relied on him while we were training the men.” The chamberlain shook his head, his face tight with worry. “This isn’t the kind of mistake he’d make.”

“But … but that would mean.…”

The Duke of Lantern Walk stared at the chamberlain, and for once, the brain of which he was so fond refused to work at all.

* * *

Sir Dynzayl Hyntyn stood on the Sherytyn seawall and watched through a double-glass as the column of galleons headed towards the wharves. There were quite a few of them, and he smiled thinly as he saw the black-quartered blue and silver checkerboard of the Imperial Charisian Navy at their mastheads.

The captains transporting the last echelon of reinforcements Sir Fraizher Kahlyns had dispatched to Siddarmark had sailed under secret orders, to be opened only after they’d reached Windswept Island, between the Chisholm Sea and The Anvil. And at that point, they’d turned back around to make landfall on Wyvern Beak Head in Zebediah, where Grand Duke Zebediah—who’d once been a Marine general named Hauwyl Chermyn—had been waiting for them. The people of Zebediah had idolized Sharleyan Ahrmahk ever since she’d dealt with their previous Grand Duke and—especially—brought them their new one. The Zebediahans had been delighted to see the thousands of Charisian soldiers aboard those galleons—for that matter, a third of them had been Zebediahans themselves, by birth—and they’d been able to go ashore, along with all of their horses and draft animals, while they waited in comfort for their real mission.

They’d had it much easier than the single mounted infantry brigade which had sailed all the way back around the western coast of Chisholm, staying well out to sea, to make landfall on a remote stretch of the Eastshare coast.

That brigade had moved very quietly through the most deserted stretches of the Barony of Green Mountain and the Duchy of Halbrook Hollow. Elahnah and Sailys Waistyn might still grieve for the loss of a husband and a father, and they might still cherish doubts about where the Church of Charis was ultimately headed, but they knew where they stood. The butchery of Zhaspahr Clyntahn’s Inquisition had removed any doubts they might have had about who he truly served, and the present Duke of Halbrook Hollow’s loyalty to his cousin had proven unshakable, when the test finally came.

He’d passed the brigade across his lands to the Duchy of Tayt, where they’d been met by Sir Awstyn Tayt, Sharleyan Tayt Ahrmahk’s third cousin. Duke Tayt had personally led them to Khantrayl’s Hollow, hidden in the shadows of the Iron Spine Mountains, where they’d recovered from their stealthy march and prepared for their part in Empress Sharleyan’s response to the conspiracy against her.

Saint Howan could easily have stayed in Cherayth. In fact, he probably should have, all things considered. His decision to come home for a visit had run the very real risk of inviting his assassination as a way to destabilize his earldom before the combined forces of Black Horse, Swayle, and Holy Tree moved in to crush it between them. But from the moment the seijins had told him about the conspirators’ plans, he’d known where he had to be on this day.

Now the two mounted brigades aboard those galleons sailing so steadily towards him were about to deliver Sharleyan Ahrmahk’s answer to the men—and women—who’d believed they could murder her vassals, defy her laws, and strip her subjects of the rights she and her husband had guaranteed to them.

Somehow, the Earl of Saint Howan thought, lowering the double-glass at last, he doubted they’d enjoy what she had to say.

* * *

“What?” the Duke of Black Horse demanded just a bit irascibly as someone rapped sharply on the study door. It was close to midnight, he was deeply immersed in the latest wyvern messages from Rock Coast and Lady Swayle, and he was an orderly man who disliked interruptions.

“Excuse me, Your Grace,” Kynton Strohganahv said, as he opened the door. “I … know you dislike intrusions, but … but I think you need to speak to this … person.”

Black Horse’s forehead furrowed in consternation. Strohganahv had been his chamberlain for well over thirty years, and he’d been the assistant to Black Horse’s father’s chamberlain for ten years before that. The one characteristic Pait Stywyrt associated with him most strongly was composure. Nothing ever threw Strohganahv off balance. He’d been composed even when he’d respectfully expressed his own reservations about Black Horse’s current endeavors before going out and putting his instructions into effect. But today he sounded positively rattled, and his face was pale.

“And who might ‘this person’ be?”

“I think … I think I’d better let her introduce herself, Your Grace,” Strohganahv said, and Black Horse’s frown deepened. Then he shrugged.

“Very well, Kynton. Show whoever she is in.”

The chamberlain bowed and disappeared. He reappeared a moment later, and Pait Stywyrt shot to his feet in stunned disbelief.

“Good afternoon, Your Grace,” the attractive young woman in the blackened chain mail of the Charisian Imperial Guard said calmly. “Men call me Merch O Obaith, and I’m afraid I have some bad news for you.”

“Wh-wh-wh…?”

Dull fury—and shame—washed through Black Horse as he heard his own incoherence, but Obaith only smiled, sapphire eyes glittering in the lamplight. If the seijin—and with that outlandish name, that uniform, and those eyes that was what she had to be—was remotely concerned by the fact that he had over five hundred armed retainers right here in Maryksberg, she gave no sign of it.

“In about another five hours,” she told him, “HMS Maikelberg is going to sail into Maryksberg Harbor. She’ll be accompanied by a pair of bombardment ships and transport galleons with twenty-five hundred Charisian Marines. Captain Zohannsyn is under orders to put those troops ashore here in Black Horse, where they’ll take control of your capital, and then march into Swayle to join the two mounted brigades advancing from Saint Howan to meet them.”

Black Horse swayed, his eyes wide in shock, and she cocked her head.

“Now, I realize the Army invested quite a few marks in emplacing modern artillery to protect your waterfront. I also realize that one of the very first things you did as your part in your treasonous conspiracy was to place the Army gun crews under arrest and replace them with men loyal to you. So, I suppose it’s possible you’ll be foolish enough to attempt to prevent Captain Zohannsyn from carrying out his orders. If you do, I’m afraid things will get very … messy and there probably won’t be a great deal left of Maryksberg when the smoke clears.”

Her calm tone never wavered, but those unearthly blue eyes—eyes exactly like the ones Black Horse had seen looking out of Merlin Athrawes’ face—were hard and cold.

“I’m a simple woman at heart, Your Grace,” she told him, “and I really don’t like messy solutions to problems. So I thought I’d just come ahead of Captain Zohannsyn and take this opportunity to avoid one here. You see, my instructions from Her Majesty are to take you into custody for treason, and I’m sure she’ll be disappointed if I’m unable to arrest you unharmed. But she’s a practical woman, and I’m equally sure she’ll forgive me if that turns out to be impossible. So it occurred to me that one way to prevent you from ordering the batteries to open fire and getting quite a lot of your own subjects killed would be to remove your head before you do.”

Steel whispered, and Black Horse swallowed convulsively as the curved blade gleamed under his study’s lamps. The katana was rocksteady in her slim hand, and she raised one eyebrow.

“Are you going to make it necessary for me to disappoint Her Majesty, Your Grace?”