At the Sign of Triumph (Safehold)

.X.

Army of the Center Command Post,

Selyk,

and

Forward Lines,

Holy Langhorne Band,

Talmar,

Westmarch Province,

Republic of Siddarmark.

“Go on with what you were doing.” Archbishop Militant Gustyv Walkyr waved one hand as the on-duty members of his staff started coming to attention. Heads had turned and more than one eyebrow had risen as he came down the steps into the enormous bunker Earl Silken Hills had bequeathed him as his central command post. That was scarcely surprising, given the lateness of the hour.

“You’ve all got better things to do than stand around saluting me!” he continued, trying to defuse the tension he’d seen in one or two sets of eyes, and several staffers chuckled appreciatively as they turned back to the paperwork that never stopped in the headquarters of an army with roster strength of well over nine hundred thousand. Walkyr left them to it and crossed to the center of the bunker where Bishop Militant Ahlfryd Bairahn, the Army of the Center’s chief of staff, stood by the map table at the center of the big, earthy-smelling chamber below the brightly burning oil lamps hung from the overhead.

“Have we gotten any further information from Bishop Militant Styvyn, Ahlfryd?” Walkyr asked, trying to sound concerned but confident. He was pretty sure he’d succeeded in the former. The “confident” bit came a little harder.

“No, Your Eminence, not really,” Bairahn replied. Under normal circumstances, he wouldn’t have been here at this hour, either, Walkyr reflected. “The Bishop Militant’s been sending regular reports—until the semaphore shut down for the night, at least—but they’re all very much the same as the first one. I’ve been compiling them for your morning brief. My impression is that he’s conserving his messenger wyvern’s until he’s had a chance to check with all of his divisional commanders, so I don’t anticipate more from him before dawn. I also queried Bishop Militant Parkair just before the semaphore closed up shop. As of thirteen o’clock, he’d observed no heretic activity on his front.”

“I see.”

Walkyr rubbed his mustache with the knuckle of his right hand, turning to frown down at the large map that showed the curve of the enormous eight-hundred-mile front for which the Army of the Center was responsible. Most of that front, aside from the carefully prepared defensive positions protecting the critical roads, was covered only by picket forces. Mostly, that was because the rest of the front could be covered only by pickets and observation posts, given the paucity of the secondary road net. It was also because only about two-thirds of his designated force had actually reached him, however. The other third was “en route” … and it had been that way for five-days.

Walkyr had cherished his doubts about the decision to give supporting Silken Hills maximum priority when it was made, but he’d had to agree that on the face of things, it had made sense. And it still did, based on anything he actually knew. Based on what he was beginning to suspect, however.…

“Would it happen Tohbyais is also up?”

“By the strangest coincidence, I believe he just might be, Your Eminence.” Bairahn smiled. “He told me he was going for a fresh pot of cherrybean. I pointed out that that was what we had orderlies for, but you know how he is about being ‘cooped up in this damned cave.’”

“Actually, I have no idea about that. He’s much too tactful to express those sentiments to me, you know.”

“We are talking about the same Tohbyais, aren’t we, Your Eminence? You know, the one who’s about as diplomatic as a baseball bat?”

“Did I just hear my name taken in vain, Your Eminence?” a tenor voice asked from behind Walkyr, and he turned his to see a tallish, very fair-haired AOG colonel.

Like Walkyr, Tohbyais Ahlzhernohn was a native of the Episcopate of St. Bahrtalam in the southern Mountains of Light. In fact, they’d grown up in the same village, and they’d both spent their boyhoods among the high peaks, where horses were relatively scarce. That made it rather ironic, in Walkyr’s opinion, that Ahlzhernohn was the closest thing the Army of God had to an expert when it came to using mounted infantry on the Charisian model.

“Not by me,” Walkyr said mildly. “Assuming you’re the always tactful fellow I was talking about.”

“Sorry, Your Eminence. You must’ve been thinking about someone else,” Ahlzhernohn said with a grin, and Bairahn shook his head in resignation.

Despite the vast difference in their ranks, Ahlzhernohn was only two years younger than Walkyr, and they’d played on the same boyhood baseball teams before Walkyr went off to seminary and Ahlzhernohn joined the Temple Guard. No one could have been more professional when it came to the actual discharge of his duties, but Ahlzhernohn was far more comfortable than anyone else on the archbishop militant’s staff when it came to exchanging jokes with him. Although, to be fair, Walkyr was far more readily approachable by any of his staffers than anyone else under whom Bairahn had ever served.

“Tact isn’t exactly my middle name,” the colonel continued now, and held up his left hand to display the three tea mugs in it. “On the other hand, I do come bearing fresh cherrybean.”

“And welcome it is,” Walkyr said, taking the mugs from him.

He cocked an eyebrow at Bairahn, but the bishop militant shook his head with a shudder. Walkyr chuckled and set one of the mugs aside and held the other two for Ahlgyrnahn to fill. The colonel poured the hot cherrybean, then parked the pot on a hot plate, adjusted the hot plate’s wick to a slightly hotter flame, and turned back to the archbishop militant. His expression was rather more sober than it had been.

“I expect you were asking about me to see if I’d had any brilliant insight into Bishop Militant Styvyn’s reports, Your Eminence?”

Walkyr nodded, and Ahlzhernohn grimaced. He took a cautious sip of the hot cherrybean, eyes thoughtful, then lowered the cup and shook his head.

“Until we can at least figure out who those people are, I’m afraid brilliant insight’ll be hard to come by,” he said. “The one thing I can tell you is that I don’t like it one bit. There could be all kinds of harmless explanations. For example, this could just be their notion of a reconnaissance in force. Or it could even be a deliberate diversion from what they’re really up to. But when we all know the heretics are launching their major offensive in the south, having a forty- or fifty-mile swath of our cavalry screen kicked in way up here.… Well, Your Eminence, I guess the best way to put it is that it gives one furiously to think.”

“There are times, Tohbyais, when I could wish our minds didn’t work so much alike,” Walkyr said a bit grimly.

He sipped his own cherrybean and his tense expression eased a bit as he sighed in approval. Ahlzhernohn probably had seized upon the beverage-fetching mission to get out of the command post, because he’d always hated confined spaces. In fact, Walkyr knew he had a touch of what the Bédardists called claustrophobia, though he managed to conceal it pretty well from the rest of the staff. But he’d also gone to get proper cherrybean, made the way people who spent their winters freezing in the Mountains of Light liked it. Which explained why an effete lowlander like Bairahn had declined the elixir of the Archangels. Walkyr couldn’t quite have floated a horseshoe on it, but he could’ve come close.

Now he held the mug in both hands, moving closer to the map, and his frown returned as he gazed down at it.

“It does seem odd they’d have mounted columns that strong wandering around this far from the Tymkyn Gap,” he said. “And I really don’t like it when ‘odd things’ start turning up in our command area.”

“Henrai’s queried Earl Rainbow Waters and Earl Silken Hills for any information they have that might shed any light on the heretics’ intentions north of the Black Wyverns,” Bairahn replied, and Walkyr nodded in approval.

Bishop Militant Henrai Shellai was the officer charged with collating every scrap of intelligence flowing to the Army of the Center. Walkyr’s intendant, Archbishop Ahlbair Saintahvo, wasn’t happy about that, since Shellai was neither an inquisitor nor a Schuelerite, but he was so damn good at his job that not even Saintahvo could come up with a plausible reason to replace him with someone more … reliable. Or pliant, perhaps. “I don’t want you getting good intelligence if it conflicts with what the Inquisition’s telling you” would have been just a bit too blatant even for one of Zhaspahr Clyntahn’s favorites.

“So far, all we really know is that we’ve got lots of cavalry—Charisian mounted infantry, not Siddarmarkian dragoons—driving in our outposts along the Mahrglys-Talmar High Road,” Ahlzhernohn said now, coming to stand at Walkyr’s elbow with his cherrybean in his right hand. The forefinger of his left hand traced the road in question. “The fact that they’ve spread out to cover every lizard trail and cow path for thirty miles on either side of the road—and that the Harchongians at Marylys haven’t seen a thing—makes me pretty damned nervous, Your Eminence.”

He tapped the dot of the fortified Harchongese position midway between Glacierheart and Lake Langhorne, then shook his head.

“The natural tendency when something like this happens is to overestimate the numbers coming at you, and to be fair, it’s usually better to overestimate than underestimate. Of course, that’s not always the case.” He glanced up at Walkyr’s profile, and the archbishop militant grimaced in acknowledgment of the obvious reference to Cahnyr Kaitswyrth. “But to cover that much frontage, this has got to be at least a full Charisian mounted brigade. For that matter, it sounds like it’s at least a couple of them. That’s in the vicinity of sixteen thousand men. It’s not enough to pose a serious threat to any of our nodal positions, but it’s enough to drive our own cavalry back into our lines. That gives them a lot of freedom to roam around and do whatever the Shan-wei they came to do in the first place. And unless Symkyn’s managed to get around Silver Moon, they almost have to be from Eastshare.”

“It’s not very likely Symkyn’s gotten around Silver Moon, Your Eminence, but it is possible,” Bairahn said quietly. Walkyr looked at him—not in disagreement, but clearly inviting expansion—and his chief of staff shrugged. “Baron Silver Moon has a reputation—well-deserved, as far as I can tell—as an experienced and capable commander. But he’s not as … mobility-minded, I suppose, as some of Earl Silken Hills’ other commanders. From the sound of things, Symkyn’s cavalry has been quietly filtering around the flanks of Silver Moon’s position for quite some time now. There’s no sign of any serious movement against Marylys—not yet, at any rate—but there’s been a lot of skirmishing back and forth. Mostly reconnaissance activity, probably, and our latest evaluation out of Zion—” which meant “from the Inquisition,” Walkyr reflected as Bairahn shot him a sharp glance “—has been that it’s an effort to distract us from the heretics’ intentions farther south. They certainly haven’t launched anything like a serious attack on Silver Moon’s fortified positions or tried very hard to break his supply line. Whatever they’re up to, though, they’re managing to dominate the open space outside his lines and the chain of fortified posts he has along the High Road back to Lake Langhorne. So it’s possible Symkyn might have slipped a brigade or two past him.”

“It’s possible,” Ahlzhernohn acknowledged, “but with all respect, My Lord, you’re right about how unlikely it is. Lord of Horse Silver Moon may not be as cavalry-minded as some, but he’s no fool, and he spent twenty-five years in the Imperial Army before the Harchongians raised the Mighty Host. He understands flank security, and those fortified posts of his on the high roads are big enough and close enough together that getting a force this size between them without anyone seeing a thing would be … let’s call it a real challenge.” The colonel shook his head. “No, it’s a lot more likely this is Eastshare, coming out of Glacierheart and using the farm roads northeast of Marylys.” He tapped the map again. “We still don’t show enough detail on this map, really, and the farm roads aren’t much compared to the high road, but they’re there. And the fact that every farm and village between Glacierheart and the Siddarmark border’s been deserted for so long means even large forces can move long distances without being spotted just because there’re no eyes left to see them. It’s almost like moving through the middle of a desert.”

His tone was considerably grimmer, Walkyr noticed. Tohbyais Ahlzhernohn had never been a fan of the Sword of Schueler, and the mountaineer farmboy inside him hated how much wrack and ruin had been visited upon the hard-working farm families of Siddarmark’s western provinces. But he was right. And that same emptiness explained a great deal about the heretic High Mount’s successful flanking march to the Kyplyngyr Forest two years earlier.

Now there was an unpleasant thought.…

“But if they’re from Eastshare’s Army of Westmarch, they’re seven hundred miles from where they’re supposed to be. And from their own nearest supply point, for that matter!” Bairahn pointed out.

“One thing the heretics’ve proved often enough is that they’ve got plenty of logistic flexibility,” Walkyr said. “That said, I wouldn’t want to try supplying an entire army through the sort of countryside Tohbyais is talking about. If this is Eastshare, I would’ve expected him or Symkyn—or even both of them—to hammer Silver Moon out of Marylys to free up the high road before he came so far north. On the other hand, all we’ve seen so far is Tohbyais’ brigade or two of mounted infantry. That big a force could easily be hauling its supplies with it. Let’s not forget what High Mount did when he cut across to get behind Harless!”

“But if it is Eastshare, what’s he up to?”

“Now that, Ahlfryd, is the real question, isn’t it?” Walkyr smiled with very little humor. “I think the one thing we can safely assume is that if we knew the answer, we wouldn’t like it.”

* * *

“Uh, Sarge … I think you’d better see this.”

Sergeant Owyn Lynyrd grimaced. The voice from the dugout’s steep steps belonged to young Zhaik Tymahnsky, 1st Squad’s youngest private. He was a city boy, from Zion itself, and a strapping, sturdy young fellow. Army life obviously wasn’t what he’d expected, and he didn’t much care for long marches in the rain or standing watch on a night of sleet and snow. But he didn’t complain the way some of the others did, and for all his inexperience, he had a brain that worked.

Unfortunately, he also had a tendency to report every little thing to his long-suffering squad leader, no matter how trivial it might be. He’d clearly decided it was better to report things that weren’t important than not to report something that was, and the hell of it was that Lynyrd agreed with him. Which made it just a little difficult to convince him that he needed to exercise a little discretion … especially while the sergeant in question was enjoying his first cup of tea after a long, long morning. Most of the platoon was finally sitting down to breakfast after an extended stand-to, starting well before dawn. No one had really expected anything exciting, but they’d all been a little concerned that it might happen anyway. And everyone knew the heretics preferred night attacks—or attacks just before dawn, anyway. Nothing had happened, but.…

Boy’s probably still on edge like the rest of us, Lynyrd reminded himself. Having all that heretic cavalry roaming around’s enough to make anybody nervous. Shan-wei! It’s making me nervous as hell!

And, he reflected, nervous or not, at least the kid was smart enough to pester his sergeant and leave Lieutenant Ahdymsyn to enjoy his breakfast in peace.

Lynyrd sighed and looked regretfully down into his steaming teacup for a moment, then set it on the neatly squared earthen ledge some patient Harchongian had carved into the wall of the squad’s bunker. At least he’d know where to find it when he got done inspecting whatever world-shattering discovery Tymahnsky had made this time. And the smell of frying bacon, coming from the fireplace carved into the wall opposite the ledge, suggested he should get the inspecting done as quickly as possible.

The thought of breakfast restored him to something approaching good humor, and he stretched luxuriously before he started for the steps. He could do that, because the bunker’s roof was a good nine feet above its floor. He didn’t really like to think about how much labor its excavation had required, and he was just as happy it had already been done before 3rd Regiment took over this portion of what had been the Mighty Host’s frontage. Other portions of the fortifications the Army of the Center had inherited were more rudimentary, and he didn’t envy the regiments assigned to those sectors. Owyn Lynyrd had developed a love-hate relationship with the shovel. Like Colonel Flymyng, 3rd Regiment’s CO, Lynyrd had served with Cahnyr Kaitswyrth’s ill-starred Army of Glacierheart and been fortunate enough to find himself invalided at home a few months before the heretics annihilated Kaitswyrth’s command. During his time in Cliff Peak, he’d discovered the beauty of deep, heavily sandbagged holes in the ground. The deeper the better, in his opinion, especially where heretic artillery was concerned. It was just that he much preferred for someone else to do the digging.

He snorted at the thought as he climbed the steps. Not that it was really all that funny. Bishop Militant Styvyn Bryar’s Holy Martyrs Division had been rebuilt from a handful of surviving cadre. For all intents and purposes, it was an entirely new division, less than eight months old, and far too many of its personnel were like young Tymahnsky—totally inexperienced and farther from home than they’d ever dreamed they might travel. They were fortunate they’d been able to take over a defensive line which had already been carefully surveyed and laid out to take advantage of every terrain feature, but they still didn’t really know their positions as well as they ought to.

Captain Lynkyn, 2nd Company’s commanding officer, had been running daily familiarization hikes ever since they’d occupied their sector of the front, because no map could possibly tell a man everything there was to know about the ground he was responsible for defending. In fact, Lynkyn and Lieutenant Hyrbyrt Ahdymsyn, 1st Platoon’s commanding officer, had been scheduled to take both squads out today. Captain Lynkyn wanted every man in his company to know the ground intimately, well enough to find his way around in total darkness while heretic shells exploded all about him. Second Company was still far short of that level of familiarity, and Lynyrd was in favor of spending however much perseverance, sweat, and boot leather it took to attain it.

He damned well preferred to spend them instead of blood, anyway, he thought rather more grimly. Unfortunately, they wouldn’t be doing any hiking today after all.

He emerged from the dugout, circling the dogleg in the stair designed to funnel grenades into the sump at the bottom of the angle rather than allowing them to sail straight into the bunker itself. The entrance was covered by firing slits on either side of the door, and other firing slits covered the slopes leading to the bunker’s position. Fighting trenches spread away from it on either side, linking it to the bunkers assigned to the company’s other platoons. The outer trenches were equipped with breastworks—solid log walls two feet high and two feet deep, pierced by firing slits every six feet, and topped by a three-foot-high parapet of sandbags—and side galleries had been excavated on the forward side of each trench every ten or fifteen yards. They weren’t remotely as deep or well protected as the bunkers, but a man could duck into one of them and stay out of the rain when the heretics’ portable angle-gun bombs started bursting overhead in sprays of shrapnel. The long, tangled abatis covering the reverse slope running up from the main defense line to the forward trenches was guaranteed to slow any assault, and a second abatis—and a hundred-yard-deep killing ground, completely cleared of trees or brush and liberally sown with land-bombs—guarded the slope running up to the first line of defense on the far side of the crest line in front of them.

At the moment, that first trench line was more heavily manned than usual, since the cavalry which had screened the last twenty miles of the approaches to 3rd Regiment’s position had been driven in. The infantry pickets two thousand yards in advance of the trench line were still there, of course, and Lynyrd supposed the cavalry would be sent back out again once it had been reinforced.

A second belt of land-bombs had been laid between the first and second trench lines, covered by half a dozen rifled and banded 12-pounders. Their muzzles just cleared the front lips of their gun pits, and each of them was covered by a heavily sandbagged “roof” almost five feet deep. They wouldn’t help much against a direct hit from one of the heretics’ heavy angle-guns, but they’d stand up to just about anything else. Twenty or thirty of the new portable angle-guns had been carefully sited behind the field guns, as well. The AOG’s version was still bigger and heavier—and less portable—than the heretics’, and Lynyrd doubted their gunners had acquired as much expertise, but they were one hell of a lot more than anything the Army of Glacierheart had possessed when the heretics smashed it last summer.

And, of course, there were the half-dozen rocket batteries dug in well back on the far side of the crest line behind the company’s main position. Lynyrd was a little in two minds about that. He’d never actually seen them fired, but according to an artillery sergeant he’d discussed it with over a bottle of moonshine, somewhere around a fifth of all the rockets landed either long or short. Long was just fine with Sergeant Lynyrd; short was something he didn’t want to hear about.

Private Tymahnsky had climbed back to the sandbagged observation tower at the center of the company strong point after summoning Lynyrd from the bunker. The boy actually loved sunrises, which the sergeant thought was profoundly unnatural. As far as he was concerned, sunrise was the perfect ending to a productive day. But since Tymahnsky actually liked being up early, and since he climbed like a damned spider-monkey, the morning overlook watch was his on a regular basis, and he’d returned to it while the rest of his squadmates settled in for their delayed breakfasts. Now the kid was beckoning urgently for Lynyrd to join him, and the sergeant sighed in resignation and started up the ladder. Given that the tower was almost fifty feet tall—it had to be high enough to see over the crest to the first trench line—and that he most definitely didn’t climb like a spider-monkey, he’d have plenty of time to work on his properly serious “sergeant’s face” while he climbed.

“What’s this all about, Tymahnsky?” he growled when he topped out on the tower platform at last. “I was just about—”

“Sorry, Sarge,” Tymahnsky interrupted, and Lynyrd almost blinked in surprise. The kid never interrupted. That was one of the things the sergeant liked about him, although he was confident Tymahnsky would get over it soon enough.

“Like I say, I’m sorry,” the private went on, and Lynyrd’s eyes narrowed as he heard the tension in the kid’s voice and saw something very like … terror in his eyes. “I just—I just don’t know what in Langhorne’s name that is, Sarge!”

Tymahnsky’s voice actually cracked a bit at the end, and he pointed to the east, almost directly into the early-morning sun, just barely topping the crest line. Lynyrd squinted his eyes, shading them with one hand as he peered in the indicated direction and tried to figure out what had the kid so worked up. It was a clear, cloudless morning, pleasantly warm for the month of June here in Westmarch. So what could—?

His thoughts chopped off abruptly as he saw the … shape climbing steadily into the eastern sky. It was hard to make out details, staring into the sun that way, and the thing—whatever the Shan-wei it was—had to be at least four or five miles away. It was vaguely teardrop shaped, with some sort of bulges, almost like the vanes of an arrow or an arbalest bolt, at the narrow end, and if it was as far away as he thought it was, it had to be at least a hundred feet long, probably longer.

An icy breeze blew through his bones as that thought went through his brain. Something that size couldn’t just … float into the air! Not without demonic assistance, anyway!

The icy breeze became a whirlwind, and he swallowed hard, suddenly not at all sure he wanted breakfast after all.

“I … don’t know what it is,” he admitted slowly.

“Is it … I mean, could it be—?”

“I don’t know!” Lynyrd repeated more sharply. “But what I do know is that we’d better tell the Lieutenant about it double quick!”

* * *

“Think they’ve noticed us yet, Zhaimy?” Sergeant Kevyn Hahskyn’s brown eyes glittered with malicious delight as the Wyvern-class balloon Sahmantha climbed steadily higher.

They’d been in ground-hover, only thirty or forty feet up, for a good ten minutes while Lieutenant Lawsyn and the ground crew triple-checked all of their equipment. Hahskyn hadn’t minded the delay at all. In fact, he’d strongly approved. It had been over two months since he and his observer, Corporal Zhaimysn Ahlgood, had been allowed to take her up, and all sorts of faults could have developed in that long. For that matter, somebody could all too well have screwed something up just because he was out of practice! Better to take the time to be sure none of those things had happened. Now they were moving upwards again at last, and the sergeant grinned hugely as he tried to picture the Temple Boys’ reaction when they finally saw her.

“Bet some drawers down there just got really fragrant!” he chortled.

“I’m glad you think it’s hilarious, Kevyn,” Ahlgood said tartly. “It could get a lot less humorous if they suddenly decide to send a couple of regiments out here to find out what the hell we are!”

“Nah,” Hahskyn disagreed. “According to the spy reports, we could just barely be in range for their heavy angles. Was I them, that’s what I’d send calling.”

“Oh, that’s so much better,” Ahlgood said sourly, grabbing a handhold as Sahmantha’s nose pitched slightly.

There wasn’t much breeze at ground level, but there was a little more movement a few hundred feet up. Thanks to its stabilizing fins and the carefully thought-out arrangement of its hydrogen cells, coupled with the open-ended chambers that allowed atmospheric air to fill the envelope in compensation for any hydrogen volume deficiency, the balloon was remarkably stable under most conditions. That didn’t mean it couldn’t bobble occasionally, though. He and Hahskyn both wore double-clipped safety harnesses, so plunging to his doom wasn’t very likely—unless, of course, the entire balloon went down, which wasn’t completely outside the realm of possibility. That didn’t make his footing any steadier when Sahmantha decided to dance, however.

“Oh, relax!” Hahskyn shook his head, disdaining any handholds as he raised his double-glass and gazed westward. “Captain Poolahn didn’t pick this spot at random, you know. There’s no way the Temple Boys can see over that ridgeline in front of us, and I’m pretty sure Major Fhrankyl’s boys would take a really dim view of letting any of Zhaspahr’s artillerists get a good enough peek to actually hit anything this far in front of their lines.”

Ahlgood grunted in acknowledgment, although it didn’t really make him feel a whole lot better. Still, the section had a full battalion of mounted infantry looking after its security, backed up by an entire support platoon of M95 mortars. That didn’t mean the Temple Boys couldn’t push all of them back the way they’d come, but it did mean they wouldn’t do it anytime soon. And with Sahmantha floating above them, they weren’t exactly likely to creep up on them.

“They should never’ve let us get this close in the first place,” he grumbled.

“So now you’re complaining about that?” Hahskyn lowered his double-glass to look at him and shook his head with a grin. “I swear, Zhaimy! You are the gloomiest man I know.”

“Somebody needs to keep you anchored to reality,” Ahlgood shot back, unfolding the plotting table hinged to one side of the bamboo gondola. The proper topographical map was already pinned down on it, and he made sure the pencils and drafting tools in the fitted cutouts were ready for use. “You know, if they hadn’t decided to use hydrogen in these things, they could’ve just plugged you in and filled them with hot air!”

“Oh, now that’s cold,” Hahskyn chuckled.

The balloon had continued to climb while they talked.

No one wanted to hang around generating the hydrogen to fill Sahmantha’s twenty-eight thousand or so cubic-foot volume anywhere close to an enemy position. Producing that much gas took a lot of zinc and hydrochloric acid, and it was best done under what might be called controlled conditions far away from any possibility of hostile interference. Besides, the massive wagon load of the generating equipment—not to mention the steadily swelling gasbag—would probably have been just a tiny bit noticeable. So the balloon had been ferried to the launch site already inflated and securely strapped down on one of the 3rd Balloon Company’s 30-ton flatbed freight wagons.

Once they’d reached the deployment point, the ground crew had carefully released the tiedowns, letting Sahmantha float free of the wagon. Now that she’d been cleared to ascend to normal operational altitude, the steam-powered winch on the smaller 10-ton wagon had started paying out the heavy tether attached to the rigging at thirty feet per second. At that rate, it took just over two minutes to reach their optimal altitude of four thousand feet, and Ahlgood ostentatiously checked the straps of his parachute as they passed the three-thousand-foot mark. Hahskyn only shook his head and raised his double-glass again.

The terrain below was beginning to assume the appearance of one of the papier-mâché relief maps the ICA’s cartographers created for senior officers, and despite his Langhorne-given responsibility to grouse, Ahlgood felt a familiar shiver of delight as he looked down from the perspective of a king wyvern at the world spread out so far beneath his feet. This was the real reason he’d volunteered for the Balloon Corps, although the opportunity to help break Zhaspahr Clyntahn’s kneecaps had been a strong secondary motive. He felt the brisk, cold breeze sweeping through the gondola, fluttering the edges of his map, and the air was like clear wine as it filled his lungs.

“Feeling better now, are we?” Hahskyn asked as he clamped his double-glass to the bracket at the front of the gondola, but his voice was softer, almost gentle, and Ahlgood snorted.

“Guess I am,” he acknowledged, pulling a pencil out of its slot.

“Good, because I believe it’s time we got to work.”

“Ready when you are.”

“Good.”

At four thousand feet, in clear visibility and with a good double-glass, an observer could pick out large objects in relatively flat terrain at up to fifty miles or even a bit farther. That was under near-perfect conditions, however. Twenty miles was a more reasonable limit, and the new Balloon Corps’ doctrine really counted on less than ten. Ideally, the three wyverns of a balloon company would be deployed about fifteen miles apart, giving them plenty of overlap even in less-than-perfect visibility. For this particular mission, only Sahmantha had been sent forward, but the company’s other sections weren’t far behind, moving up close behind the mounted infantry screening the Army of Westmarch’s approach march. For that matter, the 5th Balloon Wing’s entire 1st Squadron would be arriving about the same time the first leg-infantry brigades did, with no less than eleven more wyverns to support Sahmantha.

But until they got here, Sahmantha was Duke Eastshare’s eyes and ears, and Hahskyn focused his double-glass carefully as he swept it across the terrain below.

“Baron Green Valley was right,” he said almost absently. “Nobody down there gave any thought to camouflaging their positions against somebody up here.” He chuckled grimly. “That’s going to cost them when the gun dogs get here.”

The base of the mounting bracket was marked off in degrees to permit him to take accurate bearings, and he spent the first minute or so absorbing a general feel of the terrain below him. From his current altitude, he could see all the way to the once modestly prosperous town of Talmar. It wasn’t very prosperous these days, and even from Sahmantha’s gondola it was little more than a low-lying, distant blur. The fortified zone between the balloon and Talmar was much more sharply visible in the bright morning light, and he studied it thoughtfully, then glanced at the topographical map at his own elbow to orient himself properly.

“All right,” he said. “I’ve got a triple line of trenches starting at about five miles, running from Hill 123 to Shyndail’s Farm. Call it … three and a half miles. First trench line follows the military crest. Communications trenches run back from there, and the second line is on the reverse slope. Distance between them is about … two hundred and fifty yards. Then another couple hundred yards to the third line. I’ll give you hard cross bearings from the hill when you’re ready to start marking up.”

He was gazing through the double-glass again while Ahlgood jotted notes on a pad before he started laying details in on the map on his chart table.

“Looks like the communications trenches zigzag every twenty yards or so.” He grimaced. “Be a pain trying to enfilade that. And we’ve got what look like pretty deep bunkers along the third trench line. Not the first or second, though.”

“Climbing the slope on the other side of the valley?” Ahlgood asked, still writing notes.

“Yep.” Hahskyn shook his head. “Looks like the same sort of setup Earl High Mount’s been pounding away at down at the Tymkyn Gap.”

All of the Balloon Corps’ crews had been fully briefed on everything the Army of Cliff Peak had been able to tell them about the Southern Host’s fortifications. Without deploying his own balloons, the earl hadn’t been able to provide them with comprehensive detail, but what his scout snipers and artillery support parties had been able to report helped fill in the picture unrolling before the sergeant’s eyes.

“Frontline trench is for riflemen to cover the abatis downslope from it,” he said, “and it looks like they’ve got some mortars of their own dug in behind the second line to support them. Got some flanking sandbagged rifle pits and breastworks supporting the second line, too, but the third line’s the real main line of resistance. I see at least a couple of dozen field guns dug in and sited to cover the approaches, and there’s a second line of obstacles between the second and third trench lines. The first gun pit’s about … sixty yards north of Hill 123 and just below the western edge of the valley. It gives them a good angle down the slope over their own people’s heads, I’d guess. They’re spaced roughly a hundred yards apart—in fact, I’ll bet they’re exactly a hundred yards apart—between there and the woods south of Shyndail’s Farm. Hard to pick out the individual bunkers from here, but looks like they’ve got a deep bunker—probably enough for one of the Temple Boys’ big-arsed squads—every hundred and fifty yards, with a couple of smaller ones between each of the big boys. Probably not as deep as the main bunkers, but I see lots of sandbags. Willing to bet they’ve got good lines of fire from all of them, too.”

“Better and better,” Ahlgood muttered.

“Be even worse if we couldn’t see what was coming,” Hahskyn pointed out. “Now, looking beyond the valley, I see a couple of roads that aren’t on the map, too. Looks like they’ve put in laterals behind their front, where they figured no one’d be able to see them.” He raised his head and grinned nastily over his shoulder at Ahlgood. “Pity they were wrong about that, isn’t it? Especially since I also see some canvas-covered wagons parked behind what look like dirt berms. Wanna bet those are some of those damned rocket launchers they told us about?”

“You’re not making me any happier.”

“Not my job.” Hahskyn shrugged and returned to his double-glass. “Looking past Shyndail’s Farm, the ground’s all open, but it looks like they’ve—”

He went on detailing terrain features and deployments and Zhaimysn Ahlgood scribbled them all down, then sat at the chart table and began carefully preparing the most deadly weapon known to man: a map.

* * *

“Your Eminence, I don’t know what it is,” Bishop Militant Henrai Shellai said flatly, and there was more than a little uneasiness—possibly even fear—in his eye as he made the admission.

The rough sketch Bishop Militant Styvyn had sent them lay on the map table in all its bland impossibility. That sketch had been rendered by a young sergeant in the Holy Martyrs Division’s 3rd Regiment. It had also been signed by the sergeant’s platoon commander, his company commander, and by Colonel Brahdryk Flymyng, 3rd Regiment’s CO, all of whom attested that it was an accurate rendering. Unfortunately, no one could begin to suggest exactly what it was or how it did what it was doing.

And given the Inquisition’s pronouncements of heretic demon-worship.…

“It’s fairly obvious it has to be some sort of … balloon, Your Eminence,” Ahlfryd Bairahn said. “It’s the only thing it could be. And if this is accurate, then this—” he tapped the protrusion on the belly of the thing “—is some sort of cage or car. That means there’s somebody in it, probably with a spyglass, looking down and seeing exactly how Colonel Flymyng’s men are deployed.”

“Don’t be preposterous!” Archbishop Ahlbair Saintahvo said sharply. “No one could build a balloon that big, floating that high—assuming the altitude estimates aren’t wild exaggerations!—and keep it up there that long. I’ve seen balloon ascents in Zion. None of the balloons were remotely close to the size of this thing, and they all needed hot air. They’d have to have far more fuel in this thing than they could possibly fit into it to keep it aloft this long! Besides, not one of the so-called witnesses has even mentioned fire or smoke! If the thing is really there—and I’m not so positive it is—it isn’t a balloon, whatever it is!”

The intendant glowered at Bairahn, but Archbishop Militant Gustyv’s chief of staff looked back at him levelly.

“Your Eminence,” his tone was courteous but unflinching, “you’re right that no one’s seen any sign of a fire to heat air, so I don’t pretend to be able to explain how they’re keeping it up for hours on end. But when so many men tell us it’s there, it’s there. Maybe it’s demons keeping it up—I don’t know! I’m a soldier, not an inquisitor or an expert on demonology.”

Saintahvo’s eyes glittered angrily at that, but Bairahn went right on.

“But whether we want to call it a ‘balloon’ or something entirely different, what it’s doing is only too clear. It’s a reconnaisance platform. They have observers on top of the tallest observation tower imaginable, and those observers are looking down on our positions. That means the heretic commanders will know exactly where all of our men, all of our fortifications, and all our artillery pieces are. They don’t have to send out patrols to get that information. All they have to do is send this thing up and float there, watching us and probably dropping messages to the people on the ground.”

“Then do something about it!” Saintahvo snapped.

“So far, Bishop Militant Styvyn’s suffered somewhere around two thousand casualties trying to ‘do something about it,’ Your Eminence.” Gustyv Walkyr’s voice was just as unflinching as Bairahn’s had been … and considerably harder. “The St. Byrtrym Division lost an entire dragoon regiment just trying to get close enough to this thing to tell what it’s anchored to, far less what it is. And, frankly, that’s as alarming as the fact that they have it, whatever we call it in the end.”

“What are you talking about … Your Eminence?” Saintahvo demanded, attaching the last two words as an obvious afterthought.

“St. Byrtrym is Phylyp Sherytyn’s division,” Walkyr replied, “and I know him. In fact, I recommended him for St. Byrtrym when the division was raised. He’s good, Ahlbair.” The archbishop militant used the intendant’s first name deliberately. “He’s very good, and he’s also very levelheaded and very reliable. He doesn’t report anything he’s not certain of—or, at least, if he’s not dead certain, he tells you that—and according to him, it’s not just mounted troops out there in the woods. He ran into some of those damned ‘scout snipers’—in what he thinks was at least battalion strength—and they were waiting for him. Probably the observers Bairahn’s talking about saw him coming and passed the word. But the critical point is that we aren’t talking about just mounted infantry and some kind of glorified cavalry raid. We still don’t know whether these are Eastshare’s or Symkyn’s troops, but there are one hell of a lot of them and according to everything we were told about the heretics’ plans for the summer, they aren’t supposed to be here at all, much less present in such strength.”

Saintahvo’s jaw clenched. He understood Walkyr’s implication only too well, but there wasn’t much he could say in reply.

“I genuinely don’t want to dwell on this,” Walkyr said more gently. “And I don’t know if this thing’s demonic, but the mere fact that they have it is bad enough, demonic or not. I’m sure that even now we can’t begin to estimate all of the advantages it’s likely to give them, especially since I think we have to assume that if we’ve seen one of them, this far out in front of their known positions, they have to have a lot more still to show us. But all of our troop dispositions were made based on the belief that the major heretic attack would come in the south. I know the men of this army will fight with everything they have, but I’m still short better than a third of my total strength, and the sober truth is that we were given this sector because it was the one least threatened. For all intents and purposes, aside from the divisions Bishop Militant Tayrens brought with him, all of my units are green. They haven’t been blooded, they aren’t veterans, and no one can ever predict how well an inexperienced unit will actually stand up in its first combat. That’s true under any circumstances. When the inexperienced unit in question sees something like this—” it was his turn to stab the sketch with an index finger “—floating above it, its morale will be even shakier than it would’ve been otherwise.”

Saintahvo’s eyes were shutters in a stone wall, and Walkyr shook his head.

“What I’m saying is that I think the heretics fooled us all. I think the attack in the Tymkyn Gap is a sham. I think the reason that all Earl Silken Hills has seen so far is a lot of artillery and a little skirmishing is that High Mount never really intended to attack in the south at all. Or maybe that was their plan, and their spies figured out somehow that our spies had warned us what was coming so they changed their strategy. I don’t know about that. I don’t know about a lot of things. But I do know, as sure as I’m standing here, that they’re going to put in a heavy attack on the Army of the Center. I’m willing to bet that what we’re actually seeing is Eastshare’s Army of Westmarch. Instead of shifting south to support High Mount, they pulled it north, and according to our best estimates, he’s got damned close to two hundred thousand men with massive artillery support. If he’s managed to get his guns forward—and he damned well could have, after he got around Marylys and onto the high road—our front-line positions are about to get hit by one hell of a hammer.”

“And?” Saintahvo said when he paused.

“And we need to convince Zion—” the temptation to be honest and say “Zhaspahr Clyntahn” instead was almost overpowering “—that we’ve been drawn into a false appreciation of the heretics’ intentions. I think we need to start shifting some of Earl Silken Hills’ left flank units back north as quickly as possible to support my army. I’ve already semaphored my conclusions to Earl Rainbow Waters, and he’s agreed my assessment is probably accurate. He’s looking at what he may be able to shift south from his reserve, because if this is Eastshare and he’s kicking off a major offensive in the center, Green Valley can’t be far behind in the north. Whatever Eastshare’s doing, Green Valley is damned well going to punch straight towards Lake City and the Wings. He’ll go for West Wing Lake and the Holy Langhorne’s canalhead like a slash lizard for a prong buck. The Earl has to keep him from getting there, whatever it costs or however many of his men it takes … and if Eastshare has these ‘balloons’, then it’s for damn sure Green Valley has them, too.”

Saintahvo looked like a cat-lizard passing fish bones. He glowered at the archbishop militant and his staff for several seconds, then shrugged angrily.

“I think you’re overreacting,” he said, “but I’ll countersign any dispatches you send to Zion, at least in so far as their factual content is concerned. After all,” he smiled thinly, “I’m a servant of the Inquisition, not a military man. As such, I’m obviously not qualified to pass an opinion on the heretics’ intentions.”

Walkyr’s nostrils flared, but he only nodded.

“Thank you,” he said. “And in the meantime, I think—”

“Excuse me, Your Eminence.”

Walkyr turned in surprise as Major Ahntahn Mastyrsyn, his personal aide, interrupted him. He started to say something uncharacteristically sharp to the youthful major, but the expression on Mastyrsyn’s face stopped him.

“Yes, Ahntahn?” he said instead, ignoring Saintahvo’s obvious irritation at the interruption.

“Your Eminence, we’ve just received a semaphore message from Bishop Militant Ahrnahld. The heretics have deployed at least six more … whatever they are,” he twitched his head in the direction of the sketch, “and opened a heavy bombardment of the Talmar lines.”