How Firm a Foundation

by David Weber

  He leaned back against the wall, regarding all of them steadily.

  “I’m an old man. I won’t be party to making these decisions very much longer, and I imagine I’m going to be giving account to God for the decisions I have helped make sooner than the rest of you are. But none of us can pretend we don’t recognize the stakes we’re playing for, or that Cayleb and Sharleyan can’t afford to be anything but ruthless if it turns out we’ve told someone who will use that knowledge against us. And let’s be honest, simple outrage—the kind of outrage the best of men are most likely to feel—would be all the reason anyone would need to proclaim the truth from the highest mountain. Of course, it would probably get him killed very quickly, but how likely is that to be a factor in the thinking of someone like that? So as I see it, the real question here isn’t whether or not Father Paityr is a compassionate, loving servant of God, but whether we want to take the chance of being responsible for the death of a compassionate, loving servant of God if it should happen that his outrage upon learning the truth makes him a threat to everything we’re trying to accomplish?”

  The others looked back at him in fresh silence, and then—as one—they turned to look back out the window at the young man kneeling in the borrowed habit pulling weeds in the rain.

  * * *

  “You weren’t joking when you said you liked salad, were you?”

  Paityr Wylsynn looked up from his second large serving of salad and smiled at Brother Bahrtalam.

  “Oh, I’ve always liked it,” he said cheerfully. “I’ve discovered that when I’m personally responsible for exterminating the weeds and beating off the attacks of one bug or another the tomatoes taste even better, however. And your brothers make one of the best balsamic dressings I’ve ever tried. Has the monastery ever considered marketing it? I’m sure you could raise quite a bit of revenue, and I’ve never heard of a monastery that couldn’t use more funds for charitable works!”

  “That’s true enough,” Brother Tairaince put in. Saint Zherneau’s had no rule of silence, especially at meals, and the treasurer chuckled as he sat back on the bench running down the other side of the long, brilliantly polished refectory table. “And Saint Zherneau’s is no exception to the rule, either. You may have noticed we’re not exactly swimming in charitable bequests, Father.”

  “As a matter of fact, I had noticed,” Paityr replied. He looked around the large, lovingly maintained and painstakingly clean dining room, then back at Bairzhair. “I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a more beautiful monastery, Brother, and I’ve seen evidence enough of the good you do in this neighborhood, but if you’ll forgive me it’s obvious the monastery could use some improvements and overdue repairs.”

  “Well, I’m sure you’ve also noticed that unlike most monasteries, we’re very small,” Bairzhair responded. “Our opportunities to engage in revenue-generating crafts, or even to support ourselves with something larger than our kitchen garden, are limited, to say the least. And, alas, our ‘neighborhood,’ as you put it, lacks the resources to support even itself, much less us.” He smiled gently. “That, after all, is the reason we’re here.”

  “That and to provide a place where any of our brethren who need it can find a spot to catch his breath,” Father Ahbel said, entering the conversation and smiling at Paityr. “Or, for that matter, where someone recommended by one of our brethren can catch his breath. To be totally honest, that’s really the primary reason for our existence, Father. Oh, the work we do is eminently worth doing, and the people among whom we do it are as worthy—and as needful—as any of God’s children. But the truth is that in some ways Saint Zherneau’s is actually … well, selfish would probably be too strong a word, but it’s headed in the right direction. We offer a place where people who get too caught up in the breathless, everyday race of trying to see to God’s business in His world can step back and put their hands to His work for a time, instead. Where they can participate in the simple pastoral duties that called them to God’s service in the first place. That’s one reason the brethren of Saint Zherneau make no distinction between the other orders. We’re open to Bédardists, Pasqualates, Langhornites…” He shrugged. “I’m sure you’ve seen representatives of almost every order during even your relatively brief stay with us.”

  “Yes, I have, Father,” Paityr replied, but his eyes had narrowed, and he sounded like a man picking his words—possibly even his thoughts—with care. “I’ve noticed, and I’ve also noticed that I’ve seen no Schuelerites.”

  “No, you haven’t.” If Zhastrow was taken aback by Paityr’s observation, he showed no sign of it. Instead, he cocked his head to one side and smiled gently at the younger priest. “However, Father Paityr, you’ve probably seen many more Schuelerites than I have. I mean no disrespect, but do you really think the majority of them would find the atmosphere of Saint Zherneau’s … congenial?”

  “Probably not,” Paityr acknowledged, and shook his head sadly. “I think my father and Uncle Hauwerd would have, but you’re right about most of the order, I’m afraid. Which rather leads me to the question of why Archbishop Maikel thought this would be a good place to send me, I suppose.”

  “I won’t presume to speak for the Archbishop,” Zhastrow replied, “but it might be because you’re not very much like the majority of Schuelerites. Again, I mean no disrespect to your order, Father, but it seems to me there’s a rather authoritarian mindset to much of what it does. I’m inclined to think that’s probably inevitable, given the nature of the Inquisition’s duties, of course. But I hope you’ll forgive me for pointing out that you—and from what I’ve heard, your father—believe the basis of true discipline has to be love, and that it must be tempered by compassion and gentleness. And from what I’ve seen of you during your visit with us, that’s almost certainly what drew you into the priesthood in the first place. For that matter,” he looked directly into Paityr’s eyes, “it’s also the reason you were so angry when you first came to us, isn’t it?”

  The question came so gently it took Paityr almost completely unawares, and he found himself nodding before he’d even truly digested it.

  “Yes, it is,” he admitted. “Archbishop Maikel recognized that before I was willing to admit it even to myself. And you and Father Zhon—all the brothers—have helped me to realize just how foolish that was of me.”

  “Well, now I suppose that depends in part on the reasons for your anger,” Byrkyt said.

  The librarian had come into the room from behind Paityr, and the intendant turned on his bench as Byrkyt made his slow and creaky way across the floor, leaning heavily on a cane. Paityr started to get up to offer his own place, but the librarian rested a gnarled hand on his shoulder and shook his head.

  “Oh, stay where you are, youngster! If I decide I need somewhere to sit, I’ll move one of these other idle layabouts out of my way. In fact—”

  He poked Fauyair with the end of his cane, and the far larger and far younger almoner rose with a chuckle.

  “I have to check the kitchen,” he said, elevating his nose. “Which, of course, is the only reason I will so meekly yield my place.”

  “Oh, we all know how ‘meek’ you are!” Byrkyt said. “Now run along. I need to talk to young Paityr.”

  “The Writ devotes a great deal of attention to the tyranny of power,” Fauyair observed to no one in particular. “I wonder why it gives so much less attention to the tyranny of old age?”

  “Because it’s not tyranny. It’s just an excess of common sense.”

  Fauyair laughed, touched Byrkyt affectionately on the shoulder, and took his leave as the librarian settled his increasingly frail bones into the vacated spot.

  “As I was about to say,” he continued, turning back to Paityr, “whether it’s foolish to be angry or not depends on the reasons for the anger. And who it’s directed at, of course. Being angry at God is fairly foolish, when you come down to it, which I suppose is the reason all of us spend so much time doing it, whether we realize it or no
t. But being angry at those who pervert God’s will, or who use the cover and excuse of God’s will to impose their own wills on others?” He shook his head, ancient eyes bright as they gazed into Paityr’s. “There’s nothing foolish in that, my son. Hatred is a poison, but anger—good, honestly-come-by anger, the kind that stems from outrage, from the need to protect the weak or lift the fallen or stop the cruel—that’s not poison. That’s strength. Too much of it can lead to hatred, and from there it’s one slippery step to self-damnation, but never underestimate the empowering strength of the right sort of anger.”

  The others were listening now, more than one of them nodding in silent agreement, and Paityr felt himself nodding back.

  “You’re in a unique position, Father,” Byrkyt said after a moment. “Of course, all of us are in unique positions. It comes with being unique human beings. But the consequences of your position—or, rather, of the actions of someone in your position—are going to be greater and affect far more people more profoundly than most priests ever have the opportunity to accomplish. You’re aware of that. In fact, I’m fairly confident that your awareness of it was one of the things helping to get your own spiritual balance out of balance. You’ve been spending too much of your time and strength trying to shoulder your responsibilities, trying to reach ahead and figure out what those responsibilities were, rather than simply letting God show you. He does that, you know. Sometimes directly, by laying His finger on your heart, and sometimes by sending others of His children to pull you out of the ditch you’ve fallen into. Or to point you in a direction which wouldn’t have occurred to you on your own.”

  “I know.” Paityr smiled at the old man, then turned his head, allowing his smile to take in all the brethren seated about them. “I know. But do you think He sent me to you simply to be pulled out of the ditch, or to be pointed in another direction, as well? You wouldn’t happen to have any spiritual road maps in your library, would you, Father Zhon?”

  “Now that’s a profound sort of question, the sort of thing I might have expected out of a Schuelerite!” Byrkyt smiled back and cuffed the younger priest gently on the side of his head. “And, like any profound question, I’m sure it has a profound answer … somewhere. But only time will tell, I suppose.” His smile turned softer, and the hand which had smacked Paityr’s head so lightly moved to cup the side of his face, instead. “Only time will tell.”

  MAY,

  YEAR OF GOD 895

  .I.

  The Temple, City of Zion, The Temple Lands

  “Well, you were right, Rhobair,” Zhaspahr Clyntahn said caustically. “I know I feel a whole lot better now that we’ve gotten the complete report. Don’t you?”

  The Grand Inquisitor’s sarcasm was even more biting than usual … not that it came as a surprise. In fact, if Rhobair Duchairn was surprised by anything it was that Clyntahn wasn’t throwing a full-fledged tantrum.

  Of course there’s time for that still, he reminded himself. We’re only just getting started. Langhorne knows where he’s going to go before we get finished this afternoon!

  “No, Zhaspahr,” he said as calmly as he could. “It doesn’t make me feel much better. It does confirm some things, though … including the fact that Allayn’s plan to misdirect the Charisians seems to have worked. I can’t believe someone like Cayleb would have sent less than thirty of his ships to intercept a hundred and thirty of our own if he hadn’t been caught completely on the wrong foot.”

  “Why not?” Clyntahn demanded bitterly. “Their ‘less than thirty’ seem to’ve kicked our hundred and thirty’s ass pretty damn thoroughly.” He glared at Maigwair. “They didn’t need to send any more ships than they did. God! It’s pathetic!”

  “Zhaspahr,” Duchairn said, “you can’t blame men for losing a battle when they suddenly come up against a weapon that causes their own ships to blow up under them. Especially when they didn’t have any idea it was coming! I don’t know about you, but if I expected someone to be firing round shot at me and instead they were firing some kind of ammunition that exploded the minute it hit my ship, I’d find that fairly disconcerting. In fact, I’d find it downright terrifying!”

  “The fucking cowards were supposed to be Temple Guardsmen!” Clyntahn snarled, his face darkening dangerously. He seemed even angrier than the failure of one of his plans usually made him feel. “They’re God’s own warriors, damn it, not little children seeing fireworks for the first time!”

  Duchairn started to fire back a quick, angry response, but he caught himself in time. Pushing Clyntahn over the brink would do nothing but get someone killed. Still.…

  “Perhaps you’re right about that,” the Treasurer said instead of what he’d started to say. “At the same time, do you think it would really have made a lot of difference if Harpahr had tried to fight to the last ship?” Clyntahn looked at him incredulously, and Duchairn held up both hands. “All right, I’ll give you that if they had, the Charisians wouldn’t have gained all the ships that surrendered. I have to say, though, that reading Searose’s report, I don’t see how Harpahr could have kept his ships from striking their colors however hard he’d tried. I’m not condoning their cowardice, Zhaspahr. I’m simply saying that human nature being human nature, Harpahr couldn’t have stopped it. Not when the Charisians’ new weapons came as a total surprise.”

  “I am getting damned sick and tired of every fucking new Charisian weapon coming ‘as a total surprise,’” Clyntahn grated.

  “If it’s any consolation, I think this one must’ve been pretty close to a surprise for the Charisians, too,” Duchairn replied.

  “What the hell are you talking about now?” Clyntahn demanded.

  “I think it’s pretty obvious they haven’t had it for very long,” Duchairn said. “If they had, we’d have already seen it in action. For that matter, they wouldn’t have tried something as desperate as a point-blank engagement in the middle of the night. If they had the ability to stand off and fire these explosive shot or whatever they are, why should they have closed? They sailed right into the middle of our ships—so close they were fighting old-fashioned boarding actions, Zhaspahr. It’s right here in Searose’s report.”

  “So what?” Clyntahn waved a dismissive hand.

  “Rhobair has a point,” Allayn Maigwair said. The Grand Inquisitor rounded on him, but Maigwair stood his ground. “I’ve read the reports, too, Zhaspahr. Everything the Charisians have done from Armageddon Reef and Crag Reach on has been built around artillery, not boarding actions. Oh, there’ve been boardings in most of the engagements, but they were the exceptions. Either that or they were the ‘tidying up,’ taking prizes which had already been battered into effective surrender with the guns. And the main reasons that’s been the case are that the Charisians are more experienced than almost anyone else they’ve fought and that they have less manpower than we do. However good they may be in boarding melees, the last thing they want to do is to come to us in the kind of fight that lets us trade casualties one-for-one with them, and they’ve built all their tactics around avoiding that kind of battle. But that’s exactly what they were doing against Harpahr’s fleet.”

  “Sure it was … until they turned around and blew the shit out of him!” Clyntahn said impatiently.

  “That’s not what Allayn’s trying to tell you, Zhaspahr.” Somehow Duchairn managed to keep his frustration out of his tone. “What he’s telling you is that an outnumbered Charisian fleet fought our kind of battle … until it managed to get the bulk of Harpahr’s fleet into artillery range. They didn’t switch to this new weapon until then, and they have to have taken serious casualties before they did. That suggests that whatever it is they were using, they didn’t have a lot of it. They decided they had to make every shot count, and the only way to do that was to come to us—take their licks on the way in and hope they could finish us off with one or two good, heavy punches once they got inside our reach.”

  Clyntahn glowered at him, but from the Grand Inquisitor’s expre
ssion, there was at least a possibility his brain was beginning to work. It might even be beginning to work well enough to overcome his ire, although Duchairn wouldn’t have cared to bet on the possibility.

  “I think Rhobair’s right, Zhaspahr,” Maigwair said now. “There’s no way we can know how much they actually had of whatever special ammunition they were using, but the indications are that they didn’t have anywhere near as much of it as they would’ve liked. From Searose’s report, it’s obvious he doesn’t know what percentage of their total fleet had it, but he says he personally saw at least four of their galleons which were still firing normal round shot even after our ships had started to explode. As a matter of fact, I was impressed by the fact that he was able to keep his wits about himself well enough to notice that.”

  “And that’s one reason I think Allayn’s misdirection with the sailing orders actually worked,” Duchairn said, piling on while the piling was good. “If they only had a handful of ships which were able to use this weapon, for whatever reason, then they would certainly have concentrated as many as possible of their regular galleons to support that handful. They didn’t. To me, that seems to indicate their spies did pick up Harpahr’s original orders to sail west. They must have sent a major portion of their fleet east in response to that. It’s the only explanation for why they didn’t close in on Harpahr with everything they had.”

  “What about that blockade of theirs?” Clyntahn challenged in a marginally calmer tone. “According to Jahras and Kholman they must have had at least forty galleons off the Gulf of Jahras. Maybe that’s where your missing ships were.”

  “It could’ve been, but I don’t think it was,” Maigwair said. “I’ve been going over their reports, too, and they never actually saw the majority of those ‘war galleons’ at all. What they saw were masts and sails on the horizon, and don’t forget the way Haarahld used merchant galleons to convince Black Water that Cayleb’s galleons were with his fleet in the Sea of Charis when they were actually off ambushing Malikai off Armageddon Reef. I think this may have been more of the same, and I don’t really see how anyone can blame them for being fooled under the circumstances.”