At the Sign of Triumph (Safehold)

.XII.

The Temple,

City of Zion,

The Temple Lands.

The quiet ticking of the corner clock was clear and sharp in the stillness of Rhobair Duchairn’s office. The Church of God Awaiting’s treasurer sat at his desk, expression grim as he worked through the latest reports from his logistics management staff. A ripple of chiming notes broke the stillness, and he frowned, then touched the God light on his desk, and the office door slid open to reveal one of his assistants.

“I apologize for interrupting you, Your Grace,” the under-priest said, and while his tone was sincere it included none of the trepidation one of Zhaspahr Clyntahn’s aides might have exhibited.

“I know you wouldn’t have without a good reason, Father.” Duchairn’s response explained why that trepidation was so thoroughly absent.

“Vicar Allayn’s here to see you. I told him you were studying the latest dispatches, and he indicated that those dispatches were part of what he wanted to discuss with you.”

“I see. In that case, by all means, show the Vicar in, please.”

“At once, Your Grace.” The under-priest bowed and vanished. Less than a minute later, he was back, escorting Allayn Maigwair.

“The Captain General, Your Grace,” he murmured, and disappeared once more. The door slid shut behind him, and Duchairn rose to clasp forearms.

“Don’t tell me you’ve got even more bad news,” he said by way of greeting.

“Actually, I do,” the captain general growled, and Duchairn’s eyebrows knitted. “I got a fresh dispatch from Rainbow Waters an hour ago.” He shook his head, and his expression was grim. “It’s gone from bad to worse. The center of the Talmar Line’s gone, and Symkyn’s finally moving from Aivahnstyn … and not south. He’s driven what looks like an entire corps between Mahrlys and Lake Langhorne, and Eastshare’s left a corps of his own on the high road about two hundred miles north of Mahrlys. Silver Moon’s dug in to hold until relieved, but with Eastshare north of him and Symkyn pushing up from the west, I don’t think there’s much chance anyone’s going to relieve him. Before the heretics pulverized a third of Brydgmyn’s band at Talmar, I’d have expected Silver Moon to be able to hold for two months, at least, and probably for as much as four or five. Now?” He shook his head. “If the Charisians are serious, they can blast his entire position to bits in a couple of five-days. Even if they don’t, there’s no way he can fall back to rejoin Silken Hills or Gustyv. That’s another twenty thousand men gone.”

Duchairn stared at him in shock for several seconds, then shook his head like a man trying to shake off a punch to the jaw.

“I don’t understand,” he said. “This is your area, not mine, but I read the memos you and Rainbow Waters exchanged. I know how tough those positions are! How in God’s name are the Charisians doing this? The troop movements, the advances across country, I can understand, but those defensive positions were … they were formidable, Allayn!”

“Yes, they were, and yes, they are,” Maigwair replied. “And a big part of the Charisians’ success so far’s due to sheer surprise. It’s pretty damned obvious they must’ve spent a lot of time thinking about exactly how to break through fortifications like the ones the Host’s been building, too. But the bottom-line answer to your question is their frigging balloons.”

“The balloons?” Duchairn repeated.

He’d been too deeply immersed in the frantic realignment of their logistic priorities in light of Eastshare’s sudden appearance before Talmar to follow the dispatches about the newest Charisian innovation, as well. They’d clearly upset Maigwair deeply, but for the life of him, the treasurer still couldn’t see what a novelty like a balloon had to do with military operations. He’d taken two of his nephews to a balloon ascent right here in Zion two years ago as a special treat and a way to forget, however briefly, the terrible reality of the Jihad. He had to admit it had been fascinating, but still.…

“Of course the balloons!” Maigwair snapped, much more sharply than he was in the habit of speaking to Duchairn these days.

“But … I don’t understand,” the treasurer said. “I want to, and I’m trying to, but how can a balloon be a weapon? I can see where one might be frightening to some Harchongese peasant. And I suppose one of them could give a general a peek at the other side’s positions. But they can’t stay up very long. The one I took the boys to see year before last could only stay up about twenty minutes, and it never got higher than a couple of hundred feet. I talked to one of the aeronauts afterward and he said the limitation’s in the fuel. It’s heavy, and a balloon can’t carry enough fuel to heat enough air to stay up much longer than that. Theoretically one could stay up longer, but he said that the hot air doesn’t generate enough ‘lift’ to support very much fuel.”

“That may be true, but it also doesn’t matter a good goddamn. They aren’t using hot air.”

“What?” Duchairn asked blankly. “They have to! The aeronaut I spoke to explained that a balloon is basically a chimney with a top that catches the hot smoke from the fire and rides it. There are a couple of passages in Jwo-jeng and Sondheim that talk about it, too. But all of them stress that it’s the heat that makes the trapped air so much lighter.”

“I know. I checked the same passages. But these aren’t using hot air. I don’t have the least damned clue what they are using, but there’s no smoke from them, and no sign of flames. For that matter, there’s no … flue, for want of a better word. There’s just this … this great big bag, probably steel thistle silk. God knows the Charisians seem to be able to produce miles of the stuff! They’re cigar-shaped, too, not round, and according to Rainbow Waters, they’re ascending to as much as several thousand feet. And they’re staying there, Rhobair. I can’t begin to tell you how big an advantage that gives someone like Green Valley or Eastshare! If they park a couple of observers up there—” Maigwair waved a hand at the ceiling in a sort of distracted corkscrew motion “—they can see everything—everything—and drop reports to their own people on the ground!”

“Several thousand feet?” Duchairn repeated very carefully, and Maigwair jerked a sharp nod.

“At least. And I don’t have any idea how damned far someone can see from that far up. Assuming anyone they can see looking down can see them by looking up, though, it’s got to be at least fifty or sixty miles. That’s an awful long way—more than two days’ march, for infantry—and knowing where the other side is and what they’re doing at any given moment is a tremendous advantage. It’s like a fistfight when one fellow has a bag over his head!”

“Sweet Langhorne.” Duchairn signed himself with Langhorne’s scepter. “And none of Zhaspahr’s spy reports warned you this was coming?!”

“Not one damned word about it,” Maigwair confirmed grimly.

“How serious is it, really?”

“I don’t know … yet,” Maigwair said with bleak honesty. “From what’s happened so far, I can already tell you it’s going to be bad, though. Really bad. Bishop Militant Ahrnahld got precious few of his people out from Talmar—Holy Martyrs Division and Rakurai Division are basically just gone, and St. Byrtrym’s down to less than half strength—so we don’t have a lot in the way of firsthand reports. From the little we do have, the Charisians’ artillery was even more effective than it’s ever been before. For one thing, no one ever worried about hiding things on the ground from someone floating around in the air. That means their damned balloons could see everything, including angle-guns and rocket launchers hidden on reverse slopes, and tell their gunners where to find them. There’s no reason they can’t spot for their own artillery during an actual bombardment, either. That’s an enormous tactical advantage, and it probably explains how they were able to punch out Talmar so quickly.

“On the other hand, no matter how well their aeronauts can see our troops and fortifications, their troops on the ground won’t be able to see any farther than our boys can when they actually attack us. Without knowing how good the balloons’ ability to communicate with troops who aren’t directly below them might be, I can’t estimate how much of a tactical effect they’ll have at that point. But even if they don’t have any effect at all—at that point—they’ll still let their commanders pick the best spots to attack. And there’s no way anyone on our side’s going to deploy troops unobserved, no matter what the terrain’s like, in daylight. That means effectively zero chance of hitting them by surprise. That’s bad enough, but judgng from what happened at Talmar, they can finally take full advantage of their heavy angle-guns’ range. If they can see forty or fifty miles, then they can damned well spot for artillery at four or five miles—or ten miles, for all I know!—no matter what kind of terrain obstacle’s in the way.”

“How many of these balloons has Rainbow Waters reported so far?”

“He can’t say for certain,” Maigwair said, and snorted with something like true humor when Duchairn looked at him incredulously. “You know how meticulously he differentiates between what he can and can’t confirm, Rhobair! And apparently all their balloons are identical. So he can tell us how many he’s seen at any given moment or on one sector of the front, but not how many the bastards have in total. He does have reports of at least five simultaneously in the air across sixty or seventy miles of his front, though.”

Duchairn nodded his head sickly as understanding flowed through him at last. No wonder Maigwair was so worried. The sophistication of the Charisians’ artillery had always been one of their deadliest advantages. He doubted he could fully appreciate the consequences of the new balloons, even after the other vicar’s explanation, but the mere thought of the artillery capabilities Maigwair had just sketched out was enough to freeze his blood.

“I hope you don’t have any other surprises up the sleeve of your cassock,” he said after a moment.

“Actually, I do,” Maigwair said flatly. “That’s the real reason I came to see you. If you were still wondering if the heretics meant to throw their main weight south, you can stop. Rainbow Waters’ forward commander at Ayaltyn’s come under heavy artillery fire … and he’s got at least two or three more frigging Shan-wei-damned balloons floating in his sky, too. And Rainbow Waters just got a dispatch from his pickets on the Hildermoss. It would appear the Charisians have the locks at Darailys back in service.”

“What do you mean?” Duchairn asked sharply.

“I mean there are at least five of their ironclads steaming upriver with ‘dozens’—that’s the local commander’s number—of steam-powered tugs towing barges behind them. Whether they’re stuffed with troops or ‘just’ supplies, that’s really bad news for Rainbow Waters’ left flank. Especially with Green Valley finally starting to move south of Cat-Lizard Lake.”

“My God,” Duchairn said, his face pale, and Maigwair shrugged.

“It’s not like we haven’t seen this coming, Rhobair. Oh, we didn’t have a clue about the damned balloons, but we always knew they’d hit us and eventually hit us hard. The way they tricked us into focusing on the south makes it a lot worse, but Rainbow Waters still has a very strong position on a relatively narrow front north of the Great Tarikah Forest. He’s got good east-west roads and the canal behind him if he’s forced to give ground, too. I know Zhaspahr plans on putting Rychtyr’s head on a stick, but the man’s tactics against Hanth were brilliant, and Rainbow Waters is at least that good and has a hell of a lot more to work with. The front may be breaking, but it doesn’t have to collapse unless we give him and Gustyv another of Zhaspahr’s ‘no retreat’ orders.”

He met the treasurer’s eyes, and the ticking of the clock was deafening.

“That’s the real reason I’m here,” he said quietly. “You and I had better have a brief discussion before our meeting with Zhaspahr. And Zahmsyn, of course,” he added as an afterthought. “He’s going to be in full bore frothing mode over Talmar, especially after he hears about the frigging ‘demonic’ balloons. The news about Green Valley and the ironclads on the Hildermoss’ll only make that worse, and we need to be sure we’re both on the same page if we’re going to keep him from doing something else outstandingly stupid.”

Maigwair’s eyes were worried and his tone was grim, but he sounded far from defeated, Duchairn noted. Given that lack of defeat, and assuming it was genuine, then the two of them might not be on the same page after all.

“You know he has to have eyes in my staff and that those eyes will tell him you and I are conferring before the meeting,” he pointed out.

“He doesn’t need any reports that we’re actually discussing this before the meeting, and you know it. By now he automatically assumes you and I are conniving behind his back any time some less than cheerful bit of news arrives, whatever his spies tell him! If they don’t report we’re doing it, it’s only because we’ve done better than usual at sneaking around and hiding it.”

Now there, Duchairn thought, he had a point.

“You’re probably right,” he sighed, and pointed at the comfortable chair which was Maigwair’s usual choice. “So, since he’s going to assume we’re plotting anyway, I suppose we might as well get to it. Exactly what’s on that ‘same page’ in your thinking?”

“Well, the first thing—”

* * *

“I thought you’d assured us Walkyr was the man for this command, Allayn,” Zhaspahr Clyntahn said sourly.

“I told you he was at least as good as any other commander we might have assigned and that Earl Rainbow Waters specifically requested him,” Maigwair corrected in a cool tone. “Having said that, however, yes. I did think he was the best man for the command, and nothing that’s happened has changed my opinion.”

“Then you may be even more incompetent than I thought!” Clyntahn snarled. “The man’s fighting from fortified positions against enemies coming at him in the open and he’s still telling us he’ll have to retreat!”

“That sort of thing happens when the other side can float around up in the sky and see every damned thing you do on the ground,” Maigwair riposted. “And as if that weren’t bad enough, a third of his troops—and more like two-thirds of his artillery—hadn’t arrived when the enemy attacked. Under the circumstances, frankly, I’m amazed he hasn’t already retreated! That is covered in the strategy Earl Rainbow Waters put together—and explained to all of us in his dispatches—when we pulled Silken Hills off the Talmar Front and sent him south.”

“Those arrangements were part of Rainbow Waters’ interim plans!” the Grand Inquisitor shot back. “I didn’t see anything in there about running the hell away now that Walkyr’s had time to settle into those positions!”

“He hasn’t had a whole lot of time to settle in,” Maigwair pointed out. “For that matter, half his band commanders have had only a few months to learn how to command and handle their troops. Even the best musician’s music depends on how well tuned his instrument is, you know.”

“What a wonderful analogy!” Clyntahn sneered. “How long did you spend thinking it up before you just tossed it off?”

Maigwair only gazed at him levelly, disdaining any response and Clyntahn’s already angry expression grew even tighter.

“Zhaspahr, Earl Rainbow Waters’ dispatches all emphasize how hard Archbishop Militant Gustyv and his men are fighting for every inch of ground,” Duchairn said. “They simply don’t have enough experienced men and enough artillery to hold their current positions—especially with these new balloons that nobody warned him might be coming—” he was very careful about the emphasis he didn’t put on the last six words, but Clyntahn’s eyes glittered with rage as he continued calmly “—looking down on him. That’s why he’s requested Rainbow Waters’ permission to begin an orderly withdrawal to the positions at Salyk.”

“And what the hell makes you think he’ll stand and fight there?”

“He’s fighting hard right this minute, Zhaspahr,” Duchairn said more sharply, “and so far his troops’ fighting spirit seems to be holding. Frankly, I’m deeply impressed by that, especially given the way the heretics’ new heavy angles are pounding them. But they’ve punched a five-mile hole right through the center of his line at Talmar. They’re pushing troops through it this very minute, and those troops are flanking his main positions. It’s like driving a splitting wedge into a log. Their advance is driving his men on either side of the hole farther and farther apart. At the moment, Brydgmyn’s still holding a line ahead of them with Holy Langhorne Band’s remnants and four divisions from the Army’s reserve—it’s shaky as hell, but it’s there—and it’s preventing the heretics from hooking around into the rear of the divisions on either side of the break. But that line’s being forced to give ground. It’s retreating slowly, for now, but it’s under enormous pressure and the pressure’s getting worse. Eventually, it’s gong to break. And in the meantime, the heretic guns are going right on chewing the hell out of the troops on either side of their salient. Walkyr needs to get those men out of their trenches and dugouts before they turn into deathtraps, and Brydgmyn needs to get his people out of artillery range—and out of sight of those damned balloons—while he reorganizes.”

“They’ll only follow him up and hit him again,” Clyntahn pointed out nastily, once again choosing not to directly address the matter of the balloons none of the Inquisition’s agents had seen coming.

“Of course they will,” Maigwair agreed. “And they’ll pay in blood for every mile … if we let him retreat in good order while his men are still prepared to fight an effective delaying action. If Walkyr just sits there, ‘standing his ground,’ the way Kaitswyrth did at Aivahnstyn, we’ll lose every soldier he has. His center’s already collapsed; Holy Langhorne Band is hanging on by its fingernails And—” he added bitterly “—only because its present line seems to be out of range of the heavy angles … for now. That’s going to change, though, and if we don’t let him plan for an orderly retreat now, before he comes under the same sort of fire that smashed Talmar, we’ll be lucky if any of his units get out. Brydgmyn’s not proposing to run the hell away, Zhaspahr, and neither is Walkyr! They only want authorization to fall back on their terms, at their pace. There are ninety thousand men in the Talmar Line—or there were. Brydgmyn’s already lost something like ten thousand of them. If he’s ordered to hold his ground at any cost, that lets the heretics dictate everything that happens. At that point, Walkyr’ll be lucky to get twenty thousand back … and that twenty thousand will be as brutalized and demoralized as the survivors of the Army of Glacierheart.”

Fresh fury flashed in Clyntahn’s eyes at the reference to Cahnyr Kaitswyrth, but he didn’t fire back instantly. It was remotely possible that was because even he could recognize the simple truth of Maigwair’s statement, Duchairn reflected. Not likely, perhaps, but possible.

“If Walkyr’s so damned understrength and he’s got so few of his frigging guns, what the fuck have the two of you been doing?” the Grand Inquisitor demanded instead. “What about all those thousands of artillery pieces both of you were promising us over the winter?!”

“Quite a few of them are at the front shooting at the heretics right this minute!” Duchairn said much more sharply than he normally addressed Clyntahn when the Grand Inquisitor was clearly working himself into a full-fledged fury. “More of them are strung out along the Holy Langhorne, though. And the reason they are is that we moved Silken Hills south—based primarily on intelligence your ‘Sword Rakurai’ provided—and then the heretic navy completely closed the Gulf of Dohlar. According to the last report I’ve received—it’s the better part of a five-day old, thanks to the fact that it had to be relayed around several breaks in the semaphore chain—there are over four thousand field guns, two hundred heavy angle-guns, and more than ninety thousand rifles in South Harchong waiting to be shipped to the front … except that the heretic navy’s in the way!”

Clyntahn glared at him, and Duchairn braced internally for yet another diatribe against Dohlar and the Earl of Thirsk, but he also continued speaking.

“There were other factors involved, of course. But it just wasn’t possible to get all of the Archbishop Militant’s men and artillery to the front while meeting Silken Hills’ needs as he redeployed. And that was made enormously more complicated by the loss of South Harchong’s production and our own inability to ship men and matériel from the Malansath Bight to the Bay of Bess and then up the Dairnyth-Alyksberg Canal. Allayn and I—and every man on our combined staffs—have had to juggle priorities just get enough food to the front! I don’t have the complete numbers in front of me, but there are at least—at least, Zhaspahr—eighteen hundred artillery pieces and almost as many rocket launchers stuck along the Holy Langhorne, still trying to get forward. And all of those weapons were already supposed to be in Walkyr’s hands!”

Clyntahn’s glare could have ignited a condemned heretic’s pyre, but then he drew a deep breath and shoved himself farther back into his chair.

“If Walkyr can fall back, why can’t Rainbow Waters move troops up from his own reserve to support him where he is, instead?” His eyes were still fiery, but his tone actually approached one of reason.

“The north-south road net—such as it is—behind the Mighty Host’s front isn’t good.” Maigwair’s own tone was less confrontational as if in recognition of Clyntahn’s version of what passed for self-restraint. “Rainbow Waters spent a lot of time over the winter and spring improving it as much as he could, but there are limits to what engineers can do in a high northern winter. We’ve had a little experience of our own with that right here in Zion, you know!”

His grimace was actually close to a smile, but it faded quickly.

“He could move troops and supplies south, but it’s unlikely he could move enough of them rapidly enough to make much difference. It would actually be better to leave the roads behind the Army of the Center clear for it to fall back in an orderly fashion in case Walkyr has to retreat from Salyk than to clog them with troops and wagon trains that can’t get there in time to make a difference anyway.

“But that’s only part of Rainbow Waters’ problem. He’s coming under increasingly heavy pressure north of the Tarikah Forest, too.

“After Green Valley’s performance last winter, I don’t think anyone wants to suggest he’s less competent than Eastshare, and it looks like he pushed mounted infantry cross country to cut the roads west of Ayaltyn. They were on the road before anyone realized what he was up to—I imagine those damned balloons helped him choose the best routes for his advance—and that means he’s effectively surrounded Lord of Foot Morning Star’s brigade. That’s another five thousand men gone, and the heretic thrust coming up the North Hildermoss will be past Mardahs within the five-day. It may be headed for Cat-Lizard Lake to reinforce Green Valley, but I don’t think so. I think it’s headed for Sanjhys, and with six or seven ironclads to lead the advance and shoot a way through any opposition, they’ll damned well get there. Rainbow Waters has planted sea-bombs and obstructed the river as thoroughly as he can, but sea-bombs are less reliable than land-bombs and there are no locks between them and Sanjhys.

“That means the troop strength coming upriver will get at least as far as Sanjhys before it’s forced to come ashore. With Green Valley already past Ayaltyn and the river ironclads no more than a few days from Sanjhys, it looks like Rainbow Waters is going to need all of his reserve on his northern flank really soon. According to his last dispatch, he’s already detached one band from his reserve—that’s three Harchongese brigades, or about ten thousand men—to support Gustyv. They’re moving as quickly as they can, but, frankly, it’s unlikely they’ll reach him in time to change the situation south of Salyk. Besides, he’s worried about how quiet his own front’s been south of Ayaltyn. We’ve confirmed that it’s Eastshare’s Army of Westmarch at Talmar, and we’ve identified at least one corps from their Army of the Daivyn at Marylys. But there’s still no sign of Stohnar or the rest of Symkyn’s army. For that matter, the only heretics we’ve actually seen on the ground in the Tymkyn Gap so far appear to be light infantry.”

“‘Light infantry’?” Clyntahn pounced on Maigwair’s final sentence. “What do you mean ‘light infantry’?”

“I mean we haven’t seen any of their mounted infantry, we haven’t seen any of the Siddarmarkians that were transferred to High Mount’s command, and aside from a few battalion-level attacks to take out advanced observation posts and screening positions, he hasn’t launched a single assault.” Maigwair shrugged. “I’m not prepared to say he won’t, but, to be honest, I think we’ve been played by the heretics’ spymasters, Zhaspahr.”

“Meaning what?” Clyntahn’s eyes were slitted, his expression hard.

“Meaning that, coupled with how hard Eastshare’s hit Talmar and the fact that Silken Hills hasn’t seen a single one of their new balloons anywhere near the Tymkyn Gap, I’ve come to the conclusion they deliberately fed us false information to pull Silken Hills south, knowing we’d have to replace him with our own troops in the center.”

Maigwair shrugged, his own expression almost as bitter as Clyntahn’s.

“They know our new divisions can’t have many veterans after last year and that they haven’t had as long to train as Rainbow Waters’ Harchongians,” he continued. “So if they did deliberately draw us into deploying our troops to hold the central part of the front, it was because that’s where they really plan to break it. I can’t prove that yet, but it sure as hell looks like what’s happening. If the strength estimates from Rainbow Waters’ forward commanders are anywhere near accurate, Green Valley’s got somewhere around a hundred thousand men, and this army coming up the Hildermoss is probably another eighty or ninety thousand men strong. That’s a heavy enough attack it may very well be designed to break through on its own, but it could also be intended to pin Rainbow Waters’ left while they punch through the Army of the Center and swing up behind him from the south.

“According to your inquisitors’ best estimates—and understand that my people’s estimates are very close to yours—the heretics have a combined strength of seven or eight hundred thousand men deployed in western Siddarmark, not counting artillery or transport battalions. If Green Valley has—or is about to have—somewhere around two hundred thousand of them, and if Eastshare has about the same number, that still leaves at least another three hundred thousand they haven’t committed yet. At the moment, I’m pretty damned nervous about where those three hundred thousand men are and what they’re planning to do.”

Clyntahn’s face had turned to stone while Maigwair was speaking. It was obvious he didn’t care for the notion that Charis and Siddarmark might have deceived him so thoroughly.

“I have to agree with Allayn and Rainbow Waters, Zhaspahr,” Duchairn said quietly. “I don’t know whether the heretics managed to fool us or whether they simply realized what we were doing—we’ve had ample proof of how good their spies are—and decided to take advantage of it.” Clyntahn looked at him, and the treasurer shrugged. “As Allayn’s just pointed out, whether we want to admit it or not, the Harchongians are likely to be tougher than our new divisions. If their spies told them we’d started moving Harchongese troops south—and replacing them with the Army of God in the center—they may have decided to switch their own plans and hit us there rather than carry through with their original intentions in the south. In a lot of ways, it doesn’t really matter which it was. What matters is that it appears to be what they’re actually doing.”

He waited, hoping the combination of logic and the sop to Clyntahn’s pride might carry the day. Personally, he was convinced Maigwair was right; the Charisians and Siddarmarkians had played them from the beginning. But if Clyntahn wanted to believe they’d changed strategies in response to his brilliant intelligence coup, that was fine with Duchairn … as long as he was willing to listen to the voice of sanity afterward.

“If that’s their plan, then surely it’s more important than ever for Walkyr to hold his positions as far east—and south—as possible to protect Rainbow Waters’ right flank,” Clyntahn replied after several seconds.

“If he can, then, yes,” Maigwair agreed. “But if he can’t, it becomes even more important to authorize him to retreat, because Rainbow Waters will need every man if the heretics manage to turn this into a mobile battle. That would’ve been true under any circumstances, given their advantages in mounted infantry. If their balloons are mobile enough to keep up with their mounted infantry, it’s going to be even worse, though. That’s why we can’t afford to lose the ninety thousand men spread out between Talmar and Salyk. We just can’t.”

Maigwair leaned back in his chair, bracing his forearms on the armrests, and his expression was very serious as he met Clyntahn’s eyes.

“This is almost certainly the decisive campaign, Zhaspahr,” he said quietly. “If we lose it, then from a military perspective, we also lose the Jihad. I’m not going to tell you God and the Archangels can’t still show us a road to victory, because if They choose to do that, then of course They can. But if the heretics succeed in destroying or crippling the Mighty Host and the Army of the Center, any road They show us will have to rely on something besides our military capabilities. My men—our men—and Rainbow Waters’ Harchongians are fighting hard. I believe they’ll continue to fight just as hard for every scrap of ground. But if we lose them, we lose the Jihad. That’s why our commanders at the front have to have the flexibility to make strategic withdrawals if that’s what it takes to avoid their troops’ destruction.”

Clyntahn’s eyes met his across the conference table, and it was very, very quiet in the luxuriously furnished chamber.