Through Fiery Trials

by David Weber

  The triangular red and white checkerboard shields displayed on either side of the dragon-catcher marked it as a Delthak Railways’ special. If anyone had missed that indication, however, the fact that the entire train consisted of just six cars—two passenger cars, both bearing a red shield with a green wyvern, sandwiched between four cars carrying the badge of the Imperial Guard of Charis and something over a hundred Guardsmen, between them—might have been another.

  Another thirty Guardsmen, headed by an extraordinarily tall major whose black hair was just beginning to show threads of white, waited on the covered platform.

  The automotive continued forward until its smoke-gushing stack—and attendant scatter of cinders—was well clear of the platform roof, then halted in a sibilant hiss of air brakes. The doors of the four passenger cars in Charisian colors opened, disgorging their Guardsmen, who fanned out alertly. They found positions facing away from the passenger cars, weapons ready although not overtly brandished at the small crowd of spectators.

  The thirty-man detail on the platform came to attention as a liveried porter rolled the short boarding steps up to the forward door of the lead passenger car and the trumpeters in the colors of the House of Ahrmahk raised their instruments. The porter climbed the steps, rapped once on the door, then opened it and stepped back down to the platform. Nothing happened for a moment, but then a slender, slightly built young man—he looked to be twenty-five or twenty-six years old—appeared in the open door and the ready trumpets sounded a fanfare which had never before been heard in Tellesberg.

  The youngster looked around, his brown eyes frankly curious, then said something over his shoulder and started down the boarding steps. A considerably shorter man with white hair came after him, shaking his head and saying something no one else could hear over the trumpets, the stamp of feet and slap of weapons as the waiting Guardsmen presented arms, and the automotive’s venting steam. The young man obviously heard it, however, and shook his own head with a grin his bushy beard and full mustache couldn’t hide.

  Emperor Cayleb stepped forward as the visitor stepped fully down onto the station platform, followed by half a dozen armsmen in the same green-and-red livery as the shields mounted on the passenger cars. He and the young man bowed to one another, and then the emperor extended his hand.

  “Welcome to Tellesberg, Your Majesty,” he said.

  “Thank you.” They clasped arms, and the young man shook his head. “I’m deeply honored that you came to meet me in person, Your Majesty.”

  “Well, Her Majesty insists that every once in a while we actually pretend we have something approaching manners,” Cayleb replied with an absolutely straight face. “Especially for visiting heads of state who drop by to celebrate our sons’ birthday.”

  King Rahnyld V of Dohlar looked at him for a moment, then chuckled. It was true that the ostensible purpose for the first state visit by any Dohlaran monarch to Charis was to celebrate the birthday of the royal twins. It was even possible a particularly credulous hermit living somewhere among the summits of the Mountains of Light might actually believe that.

  “In that case, it probably behooves me to pretend the same thing,” the younger man said. “That we have something approaching manners in Gorath, too, I mean. Fortunately, you’ve already met my First Councilor, so that’s one introduction we can skip without my appearing in the least impolite.”

  “True,” Cayleb said, extending his hand in turn to Lywys Gardynyr. The Earl of Thirsk would be seventy next year, and stiffness of his crippled left shoulder seemed more pronounced than the last time they’d met, but his eye was bright, and he shook his head at his monarch.

  “I doubt you’ll fool anyone about how well behaved you are—or aren’t—Your Majesty,” he told Rahnyld. “Not after they’ve had the opportunity to spend a few hours in your company.”

  Rahnyld only smiled with obvious affection and touched the man who’d been his regent on the shoulder.

  “I’ll try not to embarrass you, Lywys,” he promised. “Of course, there aren’t any guarantees.”

  “I’ll take what I can get,” Thirsk said philosophically as a much younger girl with fair hair and gray eyes came a bit more timidly down the stairs. Her coloring was quite different from Rahnyld’s, but her features were very similar, and Rahnyld reached out to take her hand as she stopped and curtsied to Cayleb.

  “Your Majesty, may I present my younger sister, Rahnyldah?” he said, drawing her forward.

  “Welcome to Tellesberg, Your Highness,” Cayleb said with a much gentler smile.

  “Rahnyldah was too young to attend the peace conference,” Rahnyld continued, “so she pestered me unmercifully to accompany me on this trip.” Rahnyldah’s blush—she was at least ten years younger than her brother—was painfully evident given her coloring, and Cayleb shook his head reprovingly at Rahnyld.

  “I feel certain no princess this fair could possibly pester anyone ‘unmercifully,’ Your Majesty,” he said severely. “If she’s anything like my daughter—who, by the way, Your Highness, is only about a year older than you—she was simply … emphatic.”

  Rahnyldah looked at him for a moment, then smiled at him and visibly relaxed.

  “Better,” Cayleb said. He held out his hand, and she glanced up at Thirsk from the corner of one eye before she reached back. The emperor raised it gracefully, kissed its back, and held it for a moment before he released it, and she smiled even more broadly at him.

  “Actually,” Rahnyld said a bit more seriously, “my sister Stefyny is the one whose nose is out of joint. She really wanted to come, too, but unlike Rahnyldah, she did get to attend the peace conference, and someone had to stay home.”

  Cayleb nodded in understanding. Princess Stefyny was actually four years older than Rahnyld, and he had no brothers. If anything unfortunate happened to him, the crown would pass to her, and her presence at home in Gorath insured the succession against accidents.

  “Well, I’m delighted Princess Rahnyldah was able to come, and Alahnah and the twins are waiting to show her around the Palace. For that matter, Archbishop Maikel’s invited them all on a tour of the city tomorrow or the next day, followed by lunch at the Archbishop’s Palace, as part of the boys’ birthday festivities. The tour may turn out to be boring,” Cayleb smiled at the princess, “but Alahnah informs me that Mistress Maizur, His Eminence’s cook, produces the best briar berry cobbler in the world.”

  “I’d like that, Your Majesty,” Rahnyldah said, without even glancing at Thirsk, which told Cayleb quite a lot about how she’d been briefed before the trip. And even more about her brother’s and his first councilor’s attitude toward the Church of Charis.

  “In that case, why don’t we all head over to the Palace?” he said, and waved for his guests to proceed him down the lane between the ruler-straight lines of Guardsmen.

  The trio of vehicles waiting for them outside the station had neither dragons nor horses in the traces. In fact, there were no traces, and Rahnyld’s eyes widened a bit as he took in the wire-spoked wheels with their fat rubber tires.

  “After you, Your Majesty.”

  Cayleb beckoned for the visitors to climb into the lead carriage first, and they obeyed the polite command. The vehicles were lower to the ground than conventional carriages, and King Rahnyld handed his sister into the indicated carriage as she stepped straight across from the curb. He followed, but Thirsk only shook his head with a smile and waved for Cayleb to precede him. The emperor smiled back, clearly contemplating out-stubborning his guest, then accepted defeat and followed the king. Thirsk came last, while Major Athrawes climbed into the separate compartment at the front of the vehicle and settled in behind the glass windshield beside the driver.

  The driver waited while the other members of the Dohlaran party climbed into the other two carriages and Merlin’s second in command gave him the sign. Then he opened the throttle mounted on the steering column, where an Old Terran vehicle might have mounted a gearshift, and they rolle
d away from Tellesberg Central Station in almost total silence.

  “I’ve heard a lot about your ‘steam dragons,’” Rahnyld said as the superbly sprung carriage moved along the cobblestone street.

  Tellesberg’s cobbles were smoother than most, but any cobblestones were uneven, by the very nature of things. They were designed to be that way to insure secure footing despite the odiferous gifts draft and riding animals were known to leave in their wake. Despite that, the combination of springs, shock absorbers, and pneumatic tires prevented the kind of bouncing and jarring they might otherwise have experienced, especially at such a rapid speed. The streets between Central Station and Tellesberg Palace had been cleared of all other traffic for the Dohlarans’ arrival, and Imperial Guardsmen and infantry from the Imperial Charisian Army lined the sidewalks. With no other traffic, the driver could open the throttle wider than he might have under other circumstances, and Princess Rahnyldah, especially, looked suitably impressed as they moved forward at well over thirty miles an hour.

  “I’ll admit we’re showing off,” Cayleb said cheerfully. “For what I think are probably obvious reasons, Her Majesty and I snabbled up the first luxury steam passenger carriages.” He grinned, obviously enjoying himself. “We thought it was our imperial duty to run the risk of such a newfangled mode of transportation in order to support Duke Delthak’s efforts. Needless to say,” he widened his eyes at Rahnyldah, “our advisors and Seijin Merlin were aghast at our taking such a chance!”

  “I’m sure, Your Majesty,” Thirsk said dryly as Rahnyldah suppressed another giggle.

  “Actually, there’s at least a modicum of truth in that,” Cayleb said more seriously. “We’ve made it our business to support the Duke’s efforts in every way we can.”

  “And very successfully, too.” Thirsk nodded. “His Majesty has adopted much the same policy in Gorath.”

  “So I’ve understood.” It was Cayleb’s turn to nod. “The problem, of course, is that eventually something’s sure to go wrong. After all, things have ‘gone wrong’ with conventional draft dragons more times than anyone could count, so it’s only a matter of time until something goes wrong with a steam dragon. And when ‘something goes wrong’ with something new and different—”

  He shrugged.

  “We’ve had that same thought,” Rahnyld said. “In fact, we’ve already had something ‘go wrong.’” His eyes darkened for a moment. “It’s not like piles of coal haven’t spontaneously caught fire before, but when it happened to Arbalest there were plenty of voices to proclaim it was ‘a sign from the Archangels’!”

  His tone made it abundantly clear what he thought about any such claim, but he had a point, Cayleb reflected. The wet coal in one of HMS Arbalest’s forward bunkers had ignited spontaneously, and her crew had suffered over thirty casualties, six of them fatal, fighting the blaze. More, the ship’s wooden hull had suffered significant structural damage. They’d gotten it under control—and saved the ship in the process—eventually, but the Royal Dohlaran Navy’s first homebuilt steam-powered warship had emerged with a reputation as a jinxed ship.

  “We had plenty of problems with new concepts during the Jihad, Your Majesty.” Thirsk’s tone was rather more serene than his monarch’s. “And a lot of people said a lot of the same things when we did. Trust me, Admiral Hahlynd knows how to deal with it.”

  “Oh, I know that, Lywys,” Rahnyld assured him. “It just pisses me off.”

  “Crowned heads of state aren’t ‘pissed off,’” Thirsk told him with a smile. “They may be ‘extremely irritated’ or they may progress from there to a ‘towering rage.’ But ‘pissed off’ is what their underlings are. Don’t you agree, Your Majesty?” He raised an eyebrow at Cayleb, who snorted.

  “We Charisians are simple, uncultured Out Islanders, My Lord,” he replied. “I could not begin to count the number of times I’ve been ‘pissed off.’ In fact, quite a lot of them had to do with you and Admiral Hahlynd during the Jihad. I can’t tell you how much I prefer having you as friendly neighbors.”

  “Trust me, Your Majesty,” Rahnyld said, his expression much less that of a young man seeing wonders and much more that of a crowned king, “you can’t possibly prefer that more than we do.”

  * * *

  Tellesberg Palace’s front gate was a tight squeeze for the caravan of steam-powered carriages, and it would have been impossible to fit them through the gate tunnel of the central keep. In an era of breech-loading artillery and high explosive shells, stone walls offered far less protection than they once had, however, and a new and much broader gate had been cut through the center of one curtainwall. It was provided with a stout steel-barred portcullis and the sides of the cut were pierced by loopholes for riflemen—Cayleb Ahrmahk was an innovator, not an idiot—but it provided ample room for the vehicles to pull up to the foot of the broad flight of stairs at the foot of the grandly carved portico of the newest portion of the palace.

  They’d outdistanced the mounted Guardsmen, both Charisian and Dohlaran, but there was an ample supply of Imperial Guardsmen on hand and Major Hayzu Delakorht, the commanding officer of Rahnyld’s personal armsmen, and Captain Lynkyn Nuhnyez, third in command of Rahnyld’s armsmen and specifically responsible for Princess Rahnyldah, had accompanied their principals in the second carriage. As the line of armsmen in the black, gold, blue, and white of the House of Ahrmahk came to attention, Delakorht and Nuhnyez fell in on the heels of their royal charges. It was obvious they would have preferred to have more of their own men present, but both of them had come to know Major Athrawes at the peace conference which had ended the Jihad and it was equally clear they had no qualms about Rahnyld and Rahnyldah’s physical safety.

  A very pregnant Empress Sharleyan waited for them at the head of the stairs, and Rahnyld bowed deeply to her. Then it was Rahnyldah’s turn. The girl went down in a deep, perfectly executed curtsy, and Sharleyan reached down to catch her hand and pull her back upright.

  “Very nicely done, Your Highness,” she told Rahnyldah with a smile. “As someone who used to be a princess herself, I’m sure you were nervous about facing an ogress of an empress, but you are most welcome in this house. You and your brother.”

  “Oh, no, Your Majesty!” Rahnyldah protested. Then she blushed. “I mean … I mean thank you for welcoming us, and I was nervous, but not because I thought you were an … an—”

  “My dear,” Sharleyan said, “I’m old enough to be your mother, so there’s not much point trying to bamboozle me. Yes, you were nervous. And, yes, you were afraid I’d be an ogress. But I’m not, so you aren’t anymore. Right?”

  “Right, Your Majesty,” Rahnyldah said finally, and dimpled as she smiled up at the empress.

  “Good.” Sharleyan patted her hand, then touched her own swollen abdomen. “And, as I’m sure you can tell, I’m just a tiny bit pregnant right now. So my ankles are swollen, my feet ache, my back hurts, and I am incredibly grouchy.” Her smile was broader than ever. “Since all of that’s true, I’m going to let Cayleb be the host and handle all the details of greeting your brother while I go find a comfortable chair and get off my feet. Why don’t you come with me? I’m sure you’d rather meet Alahnah and Gwylym and Braiahn than listen to an hour or two of formal greetings. Of course, the boys are only seven—and boys—but Alahnah’s a year older than you are, and this is Seijin Merlin’s daughter, Stefyny.” She indicated the slender young woman standing beside her. “Lady Stefyny has very kindly volunteered to keep the boys occupied and out of your and Alahnah’s hair.”

  “Oh, that would be wonderful!” Rahnyldah said, then paused and looked up at Earl Thirsk and her brother. “May I, Rahnyld?”

  “Of course you can, Rahnee.” The king gave her a hug, then pushed her gently in Sharleyan’s direction. “Now scoot! Go let Her Majesty get off those feet of hers.”

  “Thank you!” Rahnyldah said, and the king watched Sharleyan and Stefyny sweep his sister away. She was already chattering enthusiastically, and Captain Nuhn
yez looked back at his monarch with a grin as he followed his charge.

  “Thank you for making her feel so welcome, Your Majesty,” Rahnyld said, turning back to Cayleb.

  “Given the fact that relations between our realms are much warmer than they were, and bearing in mind that deplorable Out Islander informality I believe I’ve already mentioned, I think we might dispense with all the ‘Majesties’ and use a simple ‘Rahnyld’ and ‘Cayleb,’ at least in private,” Cayleb suggested.

  “Thank you … Cayleb,” Rahnyld said after a moment. He clearly hadn’t expected one of the two most powerful monarchs in the world to invite a youngster twelve years his junior to address him by his given name, even if the youngster in question was a king.

  “Good! Because now, I’m afraid, we have to go handle some of those details Sharley just shuffled off on me. If you’d accompany me?”

  “Of course,” Rahnyld murmured, and followed the emperor’s brisk stride down a hall of polished marble towards an airy, breezy council chamber which overlooked the palace’s central garden.

  * * *

  “May I come in, My Lord?” Merlin Athrawes asked much later that evening, and Lywys Gardynyr turned from the window where he’d been admiring the embers of sunset as they settled into the waters of Howell Bay.

  “Of course you may!” the Earl of Thirsk said warmly, holding out his working hand.

  Merlin clasped forearms with him, then moved to stand looking out the window at his side. The seijin was the next best thing to a foot taller than the diminutive earl, and despite the proliferation of modern firearms, the Imperial Guard retained its blackened breastplates. They might have dispensed with the chain mail hauberks which had once accompanied those breastplates, but the armor added even more to the seijin’s undeniable air of … solidity.

  “Much nicer weather than the first time you dropped in on me. In a lot of ways,” Thirsk said softly after a moment, and Merlin shrugged.