Through Fiery Trials

by David Weber

  “It couldn’t hurt any, that’s for sure,” Olyvyr said.

  “And that’s the name of the game,” Rock Point said, his smile fading, and Olyvyr nodded.

  Neither of them did anything dramatic, like looking at the calendar on the office wall, but they didn’t have to. If their most pessimistic timing for the “archangels’” return proved accurate, they had little more than five years in hand.

  .II.

  City of Zhynkau, Boisseau Province, United Provinces.

  “I do trust we’ve done enough to avoid panic,” Runzheng Zhou said, raising the custom-made double-glass, a gift from Duke Delthak that was small and light enough for a man with one hand, and sweeping the southern horizon again.

  “I believe that’s the fourth—no, forgive me, the fifth—time you’ve said that this afternoon, My Lord,” a dry voice observed, and Baron Star Rising lowered the double-glass and looked at the man behind him. “I understand your concern, My Lord,” Bishop Yaupang continued more gently, “but after this long with one ‘infernal’ Charisian innovation after another, I really doubt anyone’s going to run about screaming and flapping his arms like a headless wyvern. And I promise you, every one of my parish priests has spent the last two five-days preparing our flock for the visitation.”

  The two of them stood on the patio outside Star Rising’s office. The day was warm and sunny, with a moderate breeze out of the northwest. There might be a hint of rain in the clouds just visible on the western horizon, but probably not. And even if there were, it would be hours before the weather got here. Of course, given what they were waiting for, any “weather” might be a less than desirable thing to have.

  “I know you’ve been … priming the pump,” the baron said after a moment. “And I’m probably fretting because of my own nerves. Actually, what I’m most afraid of is that this is going to end in a spectacular crash.” He grimaced. “The Delthak representatives were clear enough about the consequences of sparks in unfortunate places when they built the gasworks!”

  “There do seem to be some significant … downsides to some of our Charisian friends’ new toys,” Yaupang Lyauyan acknowledged. “On balance, however, I think those are far outweighed by the advantages. And let’s be honest, My Lord, there’ve always been uncountable ways for men to kill themselves using totally mundane tools no one would ever suggest could conceivably challenge the Proscriptions! In fact, the amazing thing is how many more people all these Charisian innovations let us feed and clothe and house in something approaching decency.” There was no twinkle in the bishop’s eye now. “The people of the United Provinces have never been so healthy or so well-off in their entire lives, My Lord.”

  Star Rising nodded soberly, because it was nothing but simple truth. Oh, the United Provinces were experiencing their share of painful adjustment, especially as the guilds’ trained craftsmen found themselves increasingly challenged by Charisian-style manufactories. They were handling the dislocation well, though, all things considered. Only a minority of guildsmen had decided to actively oppose the changes, and no one paid them much heed. The overwhelming majority of the United Provinces’ citizens had embraced those changes enthusiastically, and along the way, they seemed to be importing a remarkably Charisian attitude, as well. It would be decades, at least, before Harchongese peasants and ex-serfs fully assimilated the sturdy, confident independence of their Charisian mentors, but that very lack of confidence—of that assurance that no one could take their independence away—only made their attachment to it even stronger. They knew exactly what they could lose, and Langhorne help anyone who ever tried to cram them back into their pre-Rebellion servility!

  And the militia’s turning into a pretty damned good army, come to that, he reminded himself. So anyone who tries that cramming would have to comb a lot of bullets out of his beard first!

  “You know,” he said, raising the double-glass again, “I never really considered how good it would feel to totally overturn the entire basis of Harchongese society.” He smiled whimsically, eyes sweeping the heavens while the breeze flowed over them. “I’m sure most of my ancestors are lining up in Heaven to kick my arse as soon as I arrive!”

  His back was to Lyauyan once more as he spoke, so he didn’t see the bishop’s smile or note its warmth.

  “Oh, I don’t think they’ll be quite that irate with you, My Lord,” Lyauyan reassured him. “Only a little irate. No more than a severe scolding.”

  “I can tell you never met my grandfather,” Star Rising said dryly. “He wasn’t like those pigs in Tiegelkamp, but he had a pretty firm notion of what was due him from his serfs and the peasants renting land from him. Had a pretty firm notion of what was due him from disrespectful grandsons, too, now that I think about it.” The baron chuckled. “I remember one time—”

  He broke off and stiffened, peering even more intently through the double-glass, then lowered it and looked at Lyauyan again.

  “Our visitors are arriving, My Lord Bishop. I think we should head down to greet them.”

  * * *

  “By God, Master Ahzbyrn, could that be—? Is it possible—?”

  Lieutenant Ahlyxzandyr Krugair, Imperial Charisian Air Force and commanding officer of His Majesty’s Airship Synklair Pytmyn, grabbed his executive officer’s sleeve with his left hand and pointed out the curved expanse of the glass windscreen at the river mouth town. It was toy-like with distance, its roofs bright patches of color against the green, brown, and tan of the earth. The dark blue waters of the Yalu Inlet, turning lighter blue and green as they shoaled, stretched away on Synklair Pytmyn’s starboard side as she made her way directly into the northwesterly breeze.

  “Can’t be, Sir.” Lieutenant Ahlbyrt Ahzbyrn shook his head emphatically. “Why, if that were Zhynkau, it would mean Ensign Braiahnt actually knew his arse from his elbow! And since we all know that isn’t true, that must be … Tellesberg. That’s it! It’s Tellesberg.”

  “With all due respect, Sir,” despite his choice of words, a disinterested observer might have noted that Ensign Mahrtyn Braiahnt, Synklair Pytmyn’s youthful navigator, didn’t actually sound all that respectful, “I’m not the one who steered a reciprocal of the compass heading his hard-working, always accurate navigator gave him for five and a half hours before he noticed his error.”

  Ahzbyrn looked at him, and Braiahnt raised both hands.

  “I’m not naming any names, Sir,” he pointed out. “On the other hand, you might want to reconsider your identification of our landmark.”

  “Well, I suppose it could be Zhynkau,” Ahzbyrn said after a moment, his expression severe. “After all, I’ve never visited the place before, so I might have been guilty of some small … misidentification of our landfall.”

  “That’s very big of you, Ahlbyrt,” Lieutenant Krugair said with a chuckle, then nodded to Braiahnt. “Well done, Mahrtyn. Very well done!” he said warmly, and the ensign, who’d just turned nineteen four months earlier, beamed.

  In fact, he’d done extraordinarily well, although he’d been helped by the inlet itself. It was the sort of landmark that was hard to miss, and all he’d really had to do was follow it once he found it. On the other hand, he’d found it unerringly in the first place, and he’d spent quite a few hours along the way making detailed sketches of topographical features. There weren’t many of those on over-water flights, but islands and coastal features could be extremely useful to navigators.

  Shooting his noon position was always an exciting proposition for any airship navigator, requiring him to climb the ladder through the airship’s gasbag to the glass dome at its apex, and it had a certain special edge for young Braiahnt. The good news was that he had absolutely perfect visibility from his dome—he could even open it and take his sights in the open air if he wanted to. The bad news was that Synklair Pytmyn routinely operated at up to 11,000 feet, much higher than the original Duchess of Delthak. At that altitude, average air temperature was only about twenty degrees … which could feel much co
lder with a sixty-mile-per-hour headwind. Beyond the airship’s cabin, which was heated with the exhaust from its twin Praigyrs, it was colder than Shan-wei’s smile … and Braiahnt was an Old Charisian who’d never even seen snow before he joined the Air Force. He tended to dress up like a Raven’s Land reindeer herder before he started up the ladder.

  His noon positions were always spot-on for accuracy, but no navigator wanted to rely solely on a once-a-day position fix, and that was especially true for an airship. Synklair Pytmyn moved far greater distances in a day than any galleon or steamer, and she was even more susceptible to headwinds—or tailwinds—which meant even a small error in heading or speed estimate could lead to major discrepancies in position. So any airship navigator wanted all of the landmarks he could find along the way for position checking as a corrective for drift, as well.

  There weren’t very many landmarks in long over-water flights, which was what made them so challenging, but from Synklair Pytmyn’s altitude, the crew could theoretically see for well over a hundred miles. Making out details at that sort of range was impossible, even with the best double-glass, but islands could at least be sighted and steered for, and one of the required qualifications for any airship navigator was the ability to make accurate sketches. Braiahnt had filled his logbook industriously with one sketch after another on the long flight up the Gulf of Dohlar from the airship terminus at the naval base at St. Haarahld’s Harbor.

  Krugair was sure at least a score of merchant skippers must have pissed themselves when they looked up and saw the airship driving steadily westward above them. In fact, if anyone had asked, he would have been forced to admit he’d actually altered course slightly, from time to time, to be sure they passed overhead. After all, he’d told himself virtuously, one of the Air Force’s primary tasks in wartime would be scouting for enemy shipping. It only made sense to practice that now, didn’t it?

  They’d passed over Talisman Island without slowing, although they’d been authorized to stop there if necessary. Synklair Pytmyn’s fuel state had been fine, though, and they’d had plenty of lift in reserve. Besides, Talisman wasn’t all that large, wind conditions could be tricky, and avoiding avoidable risks was high on Ahlyxzandyr Krugair’s to-do list.

  Krugair had enormous faith in his ship and in his ship’s company, but there was no denying that airships were fragile and … chancy. He remembered his father’s favorite saying: “There are old seamen, and there are bold seamen, but there are no old, bold seamen.” If that was true of those who sailed the world’s seas, it was even more true of those who sailed Safehold’s skies, and Krugair had every intention of getting much, much older.

  “I suppose we should wake up Lieutenant Pahlmair,” he observed now, and uncapped one of the voice pipes. He blew down it to sound the whistle at the far end, then waited.

  “Pahlmair,” a growly voice floated back up with the hollow-edge voice pipes always imparted.

  “Zhynkau’s in sight, Kynyth,” Krugair replied. “Looks like we’d have sighted it sooner if there wasn’t a bit of ground haze. I’d estimate about seventy miles, so we should be overhead in about two, two and a half hours, given the current headwind.”

  “We actually found it?” Lieutenant Pahlmair, Synklair Pytmyn’s engineering officer said, and Krugair looked over his shoulder to grin at Braiahnt.

  “I’ll have you know Mahrtyn is on the bridge and he heard that,” he said severely down the voice pipe.

  “Oops,” Pahlmair said with remarkable tranquility. “I’ll pass the word to the Bo’sun,” he went on in a crisper tone. “I just hope the ground crew’s ready for us. I’d hate to come all this way and then blow up on our final approach.”

  “Oh, thank you for that ray of sunlight!”

  “What I’m here for, Skipper.”

  * * *

  Star Rising and Lyauyan reached the landing ground outside Zhynkau with time to spare. They joined the other spectators, who moved aside respectfully to give them room, craning their necks to gaze up at the floating marvel drifting steadily towards them across the heavens. Star Rising listened carefully, but the murmurs he heard were filled with awe and admiration, not alarm, and the bishop gave him a mildly triumphant look.

  “Well, they wouldn’t have believed me if I’d told them it was non-demonic,” he said quietly. “After all, I’m just a layman.”

  “But a very well-thought-of layman, my son,” Lyauyan told him soothingly.

  “I appreciate the reassurance, My Lord,” Star Rising told the younger man dryly.

  “You’re most welcome, My Lord,” Lyauyan replied with a twinkle.

  The two of them fell silent as the airship neared the ground. It pitched ever so slightly as it pushed its bluntly rounded nose into the wind, and Star Rising saw the … “control surfaces” on the cruciform tail working like a ship’s rudder but in multiple dimensions. It was fascinating to watch, and then it was coming slowly overhead, casting an enormous shadow over the landing ground and the raptly watching audience, and the mooring lines plummeted from the cabin slung under the “haze gray” gasbag.

  The waiting uniformed Charisians—the Air Force’s uniforms were the same color as the Imperial Charisian Navy uniform but cut like those of the Imperial Charisian Army—pounced on the lines as they thudded to the ground. The Harchongians they’d trained to assist raced to join them, and the free ends of half a dozen lines were passed through the mooring bollards which had been driven deep into the earth.

  The airship’s lift and the pressure of the wind pulled against the bollards, but they held firm, tethering it, while the remaining lines from nose section and tail were passed to the steam-powered, wagon-mounted winches which had been shipped in by sea. One of the ground crew, standing well in front of the airship where the crew could look down and see him through the curved windscreen, waggled semaphore flags, and the airship’s propellers went still. Then they heard the rushing sound of venting hydrogen as the airship slowly reduced its buoyancy while the winches gathered in the slack.

  “That’s incredible,” Star Rising said quietly, and the bishop nodded. For once, even he seemed abashed.

  “It truly is,” he said. “And I’m sure those people in the South will insist we’re cavorting with demons. But, do you know, My Lord, I really don’t care what they say. What this—” he jutted his chin at the airship settling steadily towards the ground “—proves to me is that those people don’t have a clue what they’re talking about. I wish with all my heart the Rebellion had never happened and all those people had never died, but what’s coming out of it, at least here in the United Provinces, couldn’t have been born any other way. It just … couldn’t.”

  “Not given the way men’s hearts work,” Star Rising said sadly. “But, you know, my wife had hard pregnancies, all three of them. I would’ve done anything to make that easier for her. But neither she nor I would give up those children for anything. And we’re not going to give up this child—” the sweep of his good arm took in not just the excited crowd around them but all of the United Provinces “—either.” He looked back at the bishop, his eyes dark and determined. “Not for anything. And not to anyone.”

  .III.

  Saint Sanzhung’s Church, City of Zhutiyan, Chynduk Valley, Tiegelkamp Province, North Harchong.

  Tangwyn Syngpu swallowed hard, trying to remember if he’d ever been this scared.

  Surely he must have been, hadn’t he? There’d been that time in Tarikah, for instance, when the Charisian shell had exploded so close his head had rung for a full five-day. Or the first time he’d gone into combat, heard the hissing sound of rifle bullets crackling past, the sodden thud when they found a target—then the screams, the blood, the writhing anguish of men he’d known and trained with for endless months. That had been bad.

  But those fears had become old friends. They didn’t go away, just because a man had survived. In fact, in some ways they got worse. But they were … known quantities. They didn’t creep up behind a man,
take him by surprise when he wasn’t looking. Not anymore. But this—!

  He looked around the packed church. It was no cathedral, but it was bigger than any church he’d ever attended back in Thomas, before the Jihad. Its stained-glass windows were far finer and grander than the muddy-hued ones he’d grown up with, and so were the mosaics of Langhorne and Bédard. Back home, the best the local artist had managed had been almost cartoonish compared to these. Now he truly had the sense that the archangels looked down on him, yet they seemed less judgmental and more welcoming than they’d ever seemed in the mountains of his homeland. Maybe that was because he knew the priest whose church this was wasn’t going to side with the local baron when he decided to drag some peasant maid off for his pleasure.

  His eyes shifted to the young man standing at his left as that thought went through his mind. Tangwyn Syngpu would never forgive what men had done to his daughter, but God had given her a husband who didn’t care that she’d been passed from man to man to be used and abused for their pleasure. Who loved her bastard daughter just as much as he loved the son she’d borne to him. So maybe Father Yngshwan and Yanshwyn were right. Maybe what God had in mind mattered more than what Mother Church allowed to happen.

  He looked to his right.

  Zhouhan Husan looked just as nervous—and just as out of place in his tailored tunic—as Syngpu felt. At least Yanshwyn had supported him when he put his foot down and insisted that he’d been born a peasant and he’d dress like a peasant. A well-off, prosperous peasant, perhaps, but still a peasant, without the elaborately cut tunic or the fancy hat of a noble or even a squire like Miyang Gyngdau. Not that he’d managed to make that stand up completely. His “peasant” tunic was made of finer cloth than he’d ever owned before, and the embroidery on it was incredible. He’d never imagined anything like it! It was far too splendid for the likes of him, and creating it had made hours of work for Yanshwyn, Madame Gyngdau, and at least half a dozen other women of Zhutiyan.