Through Fiery Trials--A Novel in the Safehold Series

by David Weber

  The forty-three members of Taizhang Yanzhi’s platoon inside that stable outnumbered Taiyang’s men by better than two-to-one, but that wasn’t nearly good enough against men who’d been trained by Tangwyn Syngpu and Zhouhan Husan. And since the alarm had been so thoroughly raised, there was no longer any need to be quiet about it, either.

  The attackers erupted through the stable’s doors while the men inside it had barely begun to rouse. Most of them had been bedded down already, with only the eight men of Yanzhi’s own section up and about as they grumpily prepared to relieve the pickets around Ranlai. Now they looked up as the first half-dozen riders stormed into the stable, and three of them made the mistake of diving for their weapons.

  In fairness to their instincts, it probably wouldn’t have made a lot of difference in the end. Their movement, however, guaranteed it wouldn’t.

  Six rifles fired as one, and then Taiyang’s men charged with the bayonet.

  * * *

  Lord of Foot Laurahn had just started to unlace his tunic, smiling at the timid-looking young woman waiting for him in the mayor’s bed. She was a bit on the young side for him, but at least she didn’t seem terrified. That was good. Unlike many of the Spears, he really preferred to bed someone who was neither kicking and screaming at the time nor rigid with fear.

  He froze in mid-motion as he heard a voice yelling something he couldn’t quite make out, and then his shoulders stiffened as he heard the unmistakable crackle of gunfire.

  Zhailau Laurahn possessed many less than admirable qualities. Abject stupidity wasn’t one of them, though. He grabbed the sword belt hanging over the back of the bedroom’s single chair, made sure the double-barreled pistol was securely in the attached holster, snatched up his boots in his free hand, and went charging for the stairs in his bare feet.

  “Sergeant Major!” His bellow rattled the windows. “Sergeant Major—stand to!”

  * * *

  “So much for surprise,” Tangwyn Syngpu muttered as rifle fire began to sputter and flash.

  “What’s that saying of Duke Serabor’s? The one Captain of Foot Giaupan took such a liking to after he heard it?” Zhouhan Husan responded.

  “The one about no plan surviving contact with the other bastards?” Syngpu snorted. “Doesn’t mean I can’t wish that once—just once, Zhouhan—it would actually damned happen.”

  “Reckon there’s no end to what a man can hope for. Don’t mean he’s gonna get it, though.”

  Syngpu grunted in acknowledgment, then grimaced and beckoned to Baisung Tsungshai.

  “No point being sneaky now,” he said, and pointed. “Go.”

  “Yes, Commander!”

  Syngpu knew the youngster just itched to call him “Sir.” Fortunately, he was smart enough to know better.

  The thought actually made the older man smile as Tsungshai waved once and two hundred men surged forward at his heels howling the long, quavering warcry Syngpu had learned from the Charisians and their Siddarmarkian allies. Some of his men had seemed a bit hesitant about that, at first, but Syngpu figured anything which had scared the shit out of him so thoroughly would probably have the same effect on someone else. For that matter, he really wished he had one of the Siddarmarkians’ bagpipers. He knew what that would’ve done to the other side’s morale!

  If wishes were horses, you’d never wear out your boots, he reminded himself, and nodded to his headquarters group.

  “Best we keep up fairly close,” he said.

  * * *

  “How many?” Lord of Foot Laurahn demanded harshly as the sun eased up across the eastern horizon. The morning was already cold; the wind was rising; the temperature was clearly headed farther down, despite the rising sun; and he hadn’t found time to grab a coat.

  Which was the least bad thing about the nightmare night just past, he reflected grimly.

  “Don’t have a hard count, Sir,” Sergeant Major Chaiyang—and thank Langhorne that at least Chaiyang was still with him!—said. The sergeant major had just returned from a visit to the two cobbled-together infantry sections that constituted their rearguard. “Best I can make out, right on sixty-five.”

  The Lord of Foot’s jaw clenched. He’d taken two hundred and seventy men, an almost full strength infantry company, into Ranlai.

  “Lot of ’em probably got out on their own, Sir,” Chaiyang pointed out. Laurahn looked at him, and the sergeant major shrugged. “Surprised in the dark? Most of ’em bedded down for the night?” He shook his head. “A bunch of ’em took to their heels, and hard to blame ’em, really, Sir.”

  He held the lord of foot’s eyes steadily in the gathering light, and, after a heartbeat or two, Laurahn nodded. Chaiyang had a point. He didn’t want to admit it, because part of him insisted that if he’d only been able to rally more men they’d still be in Ranlai and their attackers wouldn’t. But the truth was that he and Chaiyang had done amazingly well to get as many as sixty of their men out intact. He didn’t want to think about the nightmare fighting withdrawal it had taken before they finally broke contact with their pursuers, but every man he had with him had stuck it out, and every one of them had brought his rifle out with him.

  Under the circumstances, they had nothing to be ashamed of.

  It was unfortunate that Duke Spring Flower probably wouldn’t see it that way.

  “All right, Sergeant Major,” he sighed finally. “You’re right. But we’re still a good fifteen miles from home. Best we get back on the road again. I’ll take the lead sections; I want you back there watching our arses in case any of those bastards—whoever the hell they were—decide to keep following us after all. If they do, I want you to discourage them, got it?”

  “Oh, yes, Sir. I’ll do that little thing,” Chaiyang promised him.

  * * *

  “How’s it going, Zhouhan?” Syngpu asked.

  “Slower than we’d expected,” Husan admitted. “And looks like we’ll be leaving more of the food behind. A lot more.” Syngpu looked at him, and the other sergeant shrugged. “According to the townsfolk, that bastard Laurahn swept up two-thirds of their wagons and draft animals to haul in food from the farms closer to Sochal.”

  “Should’ve thought of that.” Syngpu scowled, disgusted with himself. “Sort of thing a bastard like this Spring Flower would do, isn’t it?”

  “Can’t think of everything.” Husan shrugged again. “And we brought all the wagons the Squire and the Mayor could find in time, anyway.”

  Syngpu grunted in acknowledgment, but the fact that his second in command was right didn’t make him any happier.

  “How much are we going to get out?” he asked.

  “I make it a third, maybe a bit more, but not much.”

  “Shit.”

  “Third’s a hell of a lot better than none,” Husan pointed out, and Syngpu grunted again, no more happily than before.

  He would have loved to hold Ranlai, but he couldn’t. Not permanently, anyway. By Miyang Gyngdau’s and Mayor Ou-zhang’s best estimate, Spring Flower’s total troop strength was probably in the vicinity of eight or nine thousand but might run as high as eleven or even twelve. Syngpu doubted they were either as well armed or as well trained as his own men, but that was twice his own current troop strength. In fact, it would outnumber his properly armed strength even after he’d distributed all of his “spare” rifles to new recruits, and his ammunition supply was anything but copious.

  Young Tsungshai was confident he could get a powder mill into operation. There was no great secret to what went into gunpowder, anymore. Even many of the Empire’s peasant farmers knew the ingredients by now. The trick was combining them without blowing themselves up. Well, that and the fact that the Crown which had outlawed the possession of sling bullets would have looked even less kindly upon anyone stupid enough to make gunpowder.

  So the odds favored Tsungshai’s managing it, which would at least give them gunpowder. But they were also critically short of the percussion caps their Saint Kylmahns required, a
nd there was no way they could produce more of them. Tsungshai could probably get the abandoned rifle works back into operation well enough to convert caplocks into flintlocks, much as Syngpu hated the thought, but they were going to be short on ammunition for at least the next month or two no matter what.

  All those factors together meant it would be stupid—or worse—to try to hold the town, especially since Spring Flower and Laurahn must know they had to retake it if they were going to sustain their authority in the territory they already held.

  “So, do we burn the rest of it, or not?” Husan asked now, and Syngpu fought an urge to glare at him.

  “All the townsfolk decided to come with us?” he asked instead, and Husan nodded.

  “Won’t say they’re all happy about it, but none of ’em’re dumb enough to hang around. One or two, at least, are right pissed at us about that, to be honest, but even the ones who’re maddest know they’ll get turned into examples if they don’t.”

  “Not like they could’ve done anything to stop us,” Syngpu pointed out. “But you’re right. That’s exactly what’ll happen to them. Got to punish somebody for it, don’t they? Can’t just admit they screwed up and we kicked their arses.”

  The peasants looked at each other with matching disgust, and then Syngpu shrugged.

  “Part of me—a big part, come to that—says burn it all,” he admitted. “But that’s stupid. Only people we could be damn sure wouldn’t starve would be Spring Flower and his bully boys. At least if we leave it it’ll be a little more food they don’t have to steal from some other poor set of bastards. Besides,” he grimaced, “after last winter, the thought of burning anybody’s food doesn’t really set well.”

  “Not with me, either,” Husan agreed. “I do wish we could’ve gotten more of it back to the Valley with us, though.”

  “The Squire and Father Yngshwan say they’ve got enough to get all the townsfolk through, as well as us. Don’t expect they’d be saying that if there was any question in their minds. So let’s just get the wagons we’ve got loaded up and on the road before we end up in a ‘fighting retreat’ our own damn selves! Don’t figure they can get themselves collected to come after us with more’n a thousand men or so, which’d be kinda dumb of them. Can’t be sure they don’t have more men handy, though, and with all these civilians along, I’d rather not find out I was wrong about that someplace twixt here and Zhyndow.”

  He shook his head, but then he smiled thinly.

  “Course, if they want to come try to get these wagons back once we’re past Zhyndow, why, I’ll be just happy as a pig in shit to argue the point with ’em.”

  NOVEMBER YEAR OF GOD 905

  .I.

  The Delthak Works, Barony of High Rock, Kingdom of Old Charis, Empire of Charis.

  “I’m impressed, Stahlman. Again, I mean,” Ehdwyrd Howsmyn said.

  The Duke of Delthak reached out to pat the small, well-dressed, weathered-looking man standing beside him on the shoulder, and Stahlman Praigyr grinned. When he did, it exposed the gap where his two front teeth should have been. In that moment it was very easy for Delthak to forget the tailored tunic and remember the grimy, oil-smeared, hands-on artificer who’d midwifed Safehold’s very first steam engine. The fact that there was a noticeable oil stain on the sleeve of that tunic made it even easier, and the very end of an oily rag hung out of Praigyr’s right back pocket.

  It hadn’t been all that hard to take the artificer off the shop floor. Taking the artificer out of the shop manager was a little tougher. No, it was a lot tougher.

  “Does seem to be working right handy, doesn’t it, Your Grace?” Praigyr agreed. “And should be interesting to see if Doctor Vyrnyr and Doctor Windcastle’s numbers’re as good as usual.”

  “I have every faith in them,” Delthak assured him, and he did.

  Both Dahnel Vyrnyr and her longtime partner Sahmantha Windcastle had been members of the inner circle for over two years. Recruiting them had been Rahzhyr Mahklyn’s idea, and it had worked out extraordinarily well.

  Vyrnyr had virtually created the science of hydraulics and pneumatics even before she’d ever heard of an AI named Owl. Hydraulics had been a part of Safehold from the very beginning, but like so much of Safehold’s technology, it had consisted of the rote application of the rules and provisions of the Holy Writ without much real understanding of the underlying principles. Vyrnyr hadn’t been prepared to settle for that, and the Royal College of Charis had given her someplace to do that not-settling.

  Windcastle, on the other hand, was more … pragmatic. She was the engineer of the pair, focused on applying Vyrnyr’s new theoretical understanding to solve real-world problems. The combination had inevitably involved them deeply in Delthak Enterprises’ myriad of new technologies, and Windcastle had worked especially closely with Praigyr, who had been promoted—not without resisting manfully—to Vice President for Steam Development.

  “I have every faith in them, too,” a voice said rather tartly in Delthak’s earplug. “So now that we’re all sure it’s going to work, could you possibly convince my boss to come back to the office? There are a few dozen documents he needs to sign.”

  Delthak snorted, then turned the involuntary laugh into a hasty cough, but Zhanayt Fahrmahn had a point.

  It was almost impossible to keep Praigyr out of the workshops under his supervision, although, to be fair, that was true for several of Delthak’s senior executives. Taigys Mahldyn, President of Delthak Firearms, one of Delthak Enterprises’ subsidiaries, was a case in point. Praigyr was better at finding excuses to disappear into his playroom than most, however. He was fully capable of handling what would have been called the “white-collar” aspects of Steam Development, despite the fact that he looked remarkably like a monkey lizard. It was true that his literacy skills had been rudimentary when he first entered Ehdwyrd Howsmyn’s employ twenty years earlier, but the man who was now the Duke of Delthak had possessed a sharp eye for talent long before he met a seijin named Merlin Athrawes, and he’d believed in pushing those who had it to achieve all they could.

  And he still couldn’t keep Praigyr from going to play with his wrenches at the drop of anything that remotely resembled an excuse. That was why he’d assigned Zhanayt Fahrmahn as Praigyr’s executive assistant. One of the women Delthak had groomed as the first female manufactory supervisors of Safehold, she’d been a member of the inner circle since shortly after Zhaspahr Clyntahn’s execution. She was an accomplished artificer in her own right, which made her the perfect foil for Praigyr when his eyes went big and round and he started brainstorming yet another new idea. She also made sure her boss dealt with all of the truly critical paperwork that went with his job while she dealt with the rest of it. That was what she was doing at this very moment, in fact, working alone in her office while Praigyr escaped to personally oversee the demonstration of Steam Development’s newest brainchild.

  I wish I had the new wetware, Delthak thought now, as he finished coughing and straightened. Unfortunately—or perhaps fortunately, for Zhanayt—I’ll have to postpone the appropriate response. For now, anyway.

  “Well, Stahlman,” he said out loud, instead, “I don’t want to rush you or anything, but I have several other things I have to deal with still today. And I’m sure—” he added a bit repressively “—that you need to get back to the office, too. So why don’t you and I get that check ride out of the way?”

  Praigyr had drooped noticeably at the mention of offices, but he brightened at the words “check ride.”

  “Let’s do that little thing,” he said. “Now that we know it’s not going to blow up,” he added, chuckling at the phrase which had become a tradition for Steam Development’s prototypes.

  He and Delthak walked across to the peculiar-looking vehicle, rather less than half the size of a standard dragon-drawn freight wagon, which sat quietly on the shoulder of the paved oval track. It was peculiar for several reasons. One was the steel tube, heavily wrapped in stone wool—what an O
ld Terran would have called white asbestos—which emerged from its rear. Another was its wheels. They would have been slightly undersized for a conventional wagon its size, but they were also made of steel with wire spokes and fitted with much larger versions of the inflatable rubber tires Delthak Enterprises had perfected for the bicycles it had introduced to Safehold years earlier. There was something else odd about its front wheels, though. Or, rather, what was odd about them was that there was no wagon tongue affixed to them. Instead, a vertical shaft rose through its decking just in front of a driver’s seat which had been moved back three feet or so from its position on a normal freight wagon. The end of that shaft supported a control wheel, mounted horizontally, and a framework to the shaft’s left bore a pair of levers while a heavy foot pedal rose through the decking to its right.

  The two men clambered up onto the bench seat. It was broad enough that Delthak could sit to Praigyr’s right without crowding him as the artificer settled directly behind the wheel and flashed that enormous gap-tooth grin again.

  “Time t’ see if we got all the ‘fiddly bits’ right this time, Sir!” he announced, and reached for one of the levers and pulled it perhaps a third of its full throw.

  Nothing happened for a moment, but then the vehicle began to roll silently forward. It moved very slowly, initially, but it accelerated quickly to a brisk walking pace. Praigyr turned the horizontal wheel, and his grin threatened to split his head as the vehicle’s front wheels turned in obedient response, following the test track’s course. He opened the throttle a little wider and the vehicle sped up, still silent but for the sound of its tires on the paving, and Delthak slapped the smaller man on the back.

  “It looks like you did get them right for a change, Stahlman!” His grin was as broad as Praigyr’s. “I know we’re both busy, but why don’t you open her up a little more and take us around the track four or five times before we let someone else play with her?”