How Firm a Foundation

by David Weber

  “Straight down the river, My Lord. There’s a waterfall about twenty-five miles downstream. The boats are supposed to be waiting just below it.”

  “And if they’re not there?”

  “If they’re not there, my advice is to continue downriver, anyway. If they’re not at the rendezvous by the time you get there, they’re probably still on their way. Charisian seamen don’t turn back easily, you know. So if you just keep going, you’ll probably run into them.”

  “‘Probably’ isn’t one of my favorite words when applied to desperate escapes,” Coris observed dryly. “Despite which, that sounds like the best advice.”

  “One tries, My Lord.” Merlin bowed, then straightened, looking past him at Daivyn. “And now, if you’ll forgive me, I have to go tell a young man goodbye.”

  * * *

  “Is Seijin Merlin really going to be all right, Irys?” Prince Daivyn whispered urgently. He was mounted in front of Irys now, since hers was the freshest horse and she weighed the least of any of the experienced riders. He twisted slightly, looking up at her, his expression hard to see in the rapidly fading light. “Tell me the truth,” he implored.

  “The truth, Daivy?” She looked down at him and hugged him tightly. “The truth is that I don’t know,” she admitted. “But if anybody in the whole wide world can do this, it’s probably him, don’t you think?”

  “Yesssssss,” he said dubiously, then nodded. “Yes!” he said more firmly.

  “That’s what I thought, too,” she told him with another hug.

  “But how is he going to make sure they follow him?” Daivyn demanded. “I mean, it’s getting awful dark. What if they don’t even see him?”

  “I don’t know what he has in mind, Daivy, but from what I’ve seen of Seijin Merlin, I think we can predict it’s going to be something fairly … spectacular.”

  * * *

  Sergeant Braice Mahknash stood in the stirrups so he could massage his posterior. Hardened cavalryman that he was, he’d spent long enough in the saddle over the last two or three days to last him for months. But that was all right with him. He wanted the traitorous bastards who’d massacred so many of the Royal Guard. And the news that Earl Coris had betrayed his trust—actually taken Cayleb of Charis’ bloodstained gold and sold his own prince and princess to their father’s murderer—filled Mahknash with rage. He hoped Bishop Mytchail was wrong, that Coris and the so-called “Seijin Merlin” wouldn’t really cut the prince’s and princess’ throats rather than allow them to be rescued, yet surely even that would be better than letting them be handed over to the heretic emperor and empress to be tortured into proclaiming their allegiance to Prince Hektor’s killers.

  And that wasn’t the only reason Mahknash wanted them. Delferahk had suffered enough at Charisian hands without accepting the insult of an attack on the king’s very castle! Not enough to massacre the Royal Guards who’d thought they were there to protect Prince Daivyn, the treacherous sons-of-bitches had actually blown up two-thirds of the castle and set fire to the rest! King Zhames had taken Prince Hektor’s orphans in out of the goodness of his heart and a kinsman’s love, and his reward was to have his armsmen slaughtered and his home itself destroyed? No, that couldn’t be allowed to stand, and it wouldn’t. Not with the pursuit so close upon them.

  And the bastards don’t know their ride isn’t coming, either, he thought with grim satisfaction.

  The discovery that the fugitives were headed for the Sarm Valley, where the West Sarm flowed through the gap between the Trevor Hills and the Sarman Mountains proper, had made sudden sense out of the mysterious boats which had clashed with a troop of Earl Charlz’ dragoons two days ago. Clearly this plot had been organized far in advance, with plenty of forethought, but that didn’t mean it was going to work. Especially not when the boats they were counting on to rescue them had turned back the day before yesterday.

  Mahknash smiled in satisfaction. The dragoons had suffered heavy casualties, but the Charisians had been even more badly hurt. Their boats had been observed headed back downriver, heaped with wounded, running with their tails between their legs. Moving with the current, they’d easily outdistanced any pursuit, unfortunately, and it wasn’t like there were any warships or galleys on the river between them and Sarmouth, so their escape was virtually certain. But they’d managed it only by cravenly abandoning the people they’d come to meet.

  Still, what more could you expect out of heretics and blasphemers? Out of people who cut children’s throats as blood sacrifices to Shan-wei? Mahknash had read every word of the confessions the Inquisition had wrung out of the Charisians the Earl of Thirsk had handed over for their rightful punishment, and he’d been horrified by their crimes and perversions, but not surprised. After all, Delferahk knew what Charisians were like. In fact, Delferahk knew better than anyone else, given what the bastards had done to Ferayd!

  I wonder if they’ve got any sort of fallback plan? he mused. I don’t know where they expected to meet those boats, but assuming they manage to get past the patrols—Ha! As if that were going to happen!—they’re bound to realize eventually that they’ve been left high and dry. So what do they do then? Try to head cross-country all the way down to Sarmouth on horseback? Fat chance! We’d be on them in—

  Sergeant Mahknash’s thoughts were interrupted by the arrival of a forty-five caliber bullet launched from one of the first two cap-and-ball revolvers ever manufactured on the planet of Safehold. It struck him squarely at the base of the throat at approximately eleven hundred feet per second, driven by sixty grains of black powder, and blew out the back of his neck, knocking him back across his horse’s rump. He hung there for a moment, then thumped heavily to the ground, and his companions shouted in confusion as more gunfire rang out through the darkened mountain woods.

  There had to be at least a dozen attackers. Obviously the collision had been as unexpected for them as for Sergeant Mahknash’s patrol. The shots came in rapid succession, but they’d have come in a single, concentrated volley if the traitors had realized they were about to run into the pursuit.

  Three more of Mahknash’s troopers were hurled off their horses, and a fourth swayed, wounded but sticking to his saddle, and they heard voices shouting to one another in alarm. Then they heard the thunder of hooves as the fugitives turned, spurring their weary horses away from the patrol.

  “Nyxyn, see to the wounded!” Corporal Walthar Zhud shouted, reasserting command. “Zhoshua, you’re on courier! Get your ass back to the Colonel! Tell him we’re in contact and pursuing to the northwest. It looks to me like they’re breaking back the way they came!”

  “On my way, Corp!” Private Zhosua responded as he wheeled his horse around and slapped his spurs home.

  “The rest of you—after me!”

  * * *

  “Mite showy, My Lord,” Tobys Raimair said judiciously, watching the lurid stab of pistol fire on the far side of the valley.

  “Perhaps a little,” Coris allowed, holding one hand out palm down and waggling it from side to side. “Effective, though.”

  “Wonder how many he winged this time?” Raimair said. “I mean, shooting from a horse—critter has to be spooked, what with guns going off in its ear for the first time—and in the dark, and all, with no lanterns. Has to be less accurate than he was back at the Palace, wouldn’t you say, My Lord?”

  “I’m not prepared to wager against the seijin under any circumstances, Tobys,” Coris replied dryly.

  “Will you two stop it?!” Irys demanded. “They’re probably chasing him over there right this minute!”

  “Well, of course they are, Your Highness,” Raimair acknowledged, turning in the saddle to face her. “Whole point of the exercise.”

  “But what if he was wrong about being able to sneak away from them?” Daivyn demanded, his voice tight with anxiety, and Raimair reached out and ruffled the boy’s hair with his hand.

  “You ever hear the story about the hunting hound that caught the slash lizard, You
r Highness?” he asked. The prince looked up at him without speaking for a second or two, then nodded slowly, and the sergeant shrugged. “Well, there’s your answer. I’m sure they’re doing their damnedest—pardon my language, Your Highness,” he apologized to Irys, “to catch up with him this very minute. And if they’re dead unlucky, they will.”

  * * *

  “We’ve got them now, Sir!”

  “You think so?” Colonel Aiphraim Tahlyvyr looked up from the map to arch one eyebrow at his aide. The young man was holding the bull’s-eye lantern so the colonel could see the map, and he looked astounded by his superior’s question.

  “Well … yes, Sir,” he said after a moment. “Don’t you?”

  “I think we’ve got an excellent chance to catch up with them now,” Tahlyvyr replied. “On the other hand, we ought to have caught them well before now. Traitors or not, and heretics or not, this is an elusive fish, Brahndyn. I’m not going to count it as caught until I’ve netted it and got it in the boat.”

  Lieutenant Maigowhyn nodded. His colonel’s passion for fishing was something he’d never understood, but the metaphor made sense, anyway.

  “The thing I’m wondering,” Tahlyvyr said meditatively, tapping himself on the chin while he thought, “is whether all that gunfire was really a surprise reaction.”

  “I beg your pardon, Sir?”

  “Well, whether running into our patrol was a surprise or not, it was pretty spectacular, wasn’t it? Would you care to bet a silver that every single picket and patrol out there isn’t headed in the same direction right now? If you were leading one of those patrols, wouldn’t you have headed straight for the gunfire?”

  “Of course, Sir!”

  “Spoken like a good officer in training, Brahndyn. ‘Ride to the sound of the guns’—that’s what we teach you. And it’s usually the right thing to do, too. But suppose it wasn’t really all gunfire to begin with? Remember, these bastards blew up a sizable chunk of King Zhames’ palace, according to the wyvern messages. What if they brought along a supply of firecrackers? One man with three or four of those double-barreled ‘pistols’ the Charisians seem so fond of and a couple of dozen firecrackers to go off in the underbrush, and all of a sudden every man we’ve got scattered around the hills is haring off like slash lizards that smell blood. And meanwhile—?”

  He arched both eyebrows at Maigowhyn this time, and the lieutenant frowned. Then his eyes widened.

  “And meanwhile the rest of them sneak right past us to the river and meet up with their boats, Sir! You really think that’s what’s happening?”

  “Frankly, what I think is almost certainly happening is exactly what Corporal Zhud thinks is happening, and even if it isn’t, their boats turned back two days ago, so there’s no one to meet them anyway,” Tahlyvyr replied. “But I didn’t get to be a colonel by not hedging my bets.”

  “So what do you want to do, Sir?”

  “Given that anyone who can see lightning or hear thunder knows about that gunfire, and that all of our good, aggressive, competent junior officers and sergeants are going to be riding to the sound of the guns”—the colonel smiled at his aide—“there’s not a whole lot we can do. About the only people we have who aren’t already off wandering through the woods, hopefully overhauling the miscreants even as we speak, are Lieutenant Wyllyms and his detachment.”

  “Yes, Sir,” Maigowhyn said with a slight but discernible lack of enthusiasm, and Tahlyvyr chuckled.

  “Not the sharpest pencil in the box, I’ll grant, although I really shouldn’t say it,” he admitted. “That’s why I put him in command of our reserves and the extra horses. It let me keep him out of trouble. Now, unfortunately, it also means he’s the only one I can be sure isn’t off chasing gunfire in the gloaming.”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  Tahlyvyr gazed back down at the map for several seconds, then sighed.

  “It’s a pity he doesn’t have more men, but we are talking about a fairly unlikely eventuality. Take him a message, Brahndyn. He’s to leave half his men to look after the remounts. I want him to take the rest downstream as far as this waterfall.” He tapped the map. “I think it’s the first real fall in the stream, so wherever they were supposed to make rendezvous with those boats that aren’t coming after all, it has to be on the far side of that, which means they have to get past it one way or the other. Tell him I want his men posted at the foot of the fall. And, Brahndyn—try to make him feel that I’m trusting him with this because of his competence, not because he’s the only person I can send, all right?”

  “Yes, Sir.” Maigowhyn tried hard not to smile, and the colonel shook his head at him.

  “You’re a wicked young man, Brahndyn. I foresee a great future for you.”

  “Thank you, Sir.”

  “You’re welcome.” Tahlyvyr started to wave the lieutenant on his way, then paused. “Oh, and while you’re at it, remind him that the King and Mother Church would really like to have the Prince and Princess back alive. Tell him I don’t want any shooting unless he’s positive he knows what he shooting at.”

  * * *

  Full night had fallen long since, and the moon was sliding steadily up the eastern sky as Tobys Raimair picked his cautious way down the steep hillside to the brink of the river. The rumbling, rushing, pulsing sound as it poured smoothly over the lip of the waterfall to the basin forty feet below was loud in the darkness. In fact, it was a lot louder than Raimair liked. He would have preferred to be able to hear something besides moving water.

  Oh, don’t be an old woman, Tobys! he told himself. It’s worked exactly the way the seijin said it would so far, so don’t go borrowing trouble at this point!

  He snorted quietly, then turned in the saddle to wave to the others before he started his horse down the rough footpath beside the river. If Seijin Merlin’s description was as accurate as everything else he’d told them, their ride should be waiting for them at the end of the steep switchbacks.

  * * *

  “By God!” Lieutenant Praiskhat Wyllyms blurted. “By God, the Colonel was right, Father!”

  “Yes, it would appear he was, my son,” Father Dahnyvyn Schahl agreed. “We shouldn’t take God’s name in vain, however,” he continued in a gently scolding tone.

  “Yes, Father. I’m sorry, Father,” Wyllyms said quickly, and Schahl hid a smile at the lieutenant’s well-trained response. He’d often found the kindly tutor’s role most effective in controlling younger men. Especially younger men who weren’t particularly smart, which described young Wyllyms quite well.

  But then the temptation to smile disappeared. To be honest, he’d been almost certain Colonel Tahlyvyr was sending Wyllyms off on a wild wyvern chase. Still, there’d been the possibility he wasn’t, and the sad truth was that Schahl was in no position to influence whatever happened when the colonel’s dragoons caught up with the fugitives in the middle of the woods. He could only be in one place at a time, when all was said, and there was no telling which of the pursuers would actually bring their quarry to bay in the end. It would have been nice if Bishop Mytchail had authorized him to tell the colonel what was really going on, although there was clearly a potential downside to such a revelation. Tahlyvyr was likely to balk at simply cutting the throats of a twenty-year-old girl and an eleven-year-old boy, no matter who told him to do it. And explaining why Irys and Daivyn Daykyn had to die would have been getting into waters it was best to keep laymen well out of. For that matter, Schahl rather doubted Bishop Mytchail had told him everything.

  Under the circumstances, he’d decided it made sense to attach himself to Wyllyms. However unlikely, it was still possible Wyllyms would encounter their prey, and the inquisitor felt confident of his ability to manipulate Wyllyms into doing what he wanted, especially given his status as Bishop Mytchail’s special representative. That was how he’d planned on explaining his thinking to the bishop afterward, at any rate. No need to mention the fact that he rode like a sack of potatoes and that his buttocks felt sc
raped raw and treated with salt.

  And now it looked like he’d rolled treble sixes, after all.

  “What do you intend to do, my son?” he asked.

  “I’m going to let them get most of the way down, then catch them on the trail, Father,” the lieutenant explained. “We’ve got the matches shielded as well as we can, so I don’t think anyone’s going to see them as long as we stay well back in the trees, but I’d just as soon keep them from getting too close before we move. And it’s so damned dark—pardon my language, please—down here in the valley that nobody’d be doing any accurate shooting. But if I catch them spread out on the trail in the moonlight, they won’t have any choice but to surrender.”

  “I think, perhaps, it might be better to let them get all the way to the base of the fall before you pounce, my son,” Schahl said.

  “Excuse me, Father?” It was impossible to see the lieutenant’s expression in the dark, but Schahl heard the confusion in his voice. “The shadows are far darker below the fall, Father,” Wyllyms pointed out respectfully after a moment, “and the moonlight isn’t getting to the bottom the way it is on the trail. That’d make any kind of accurate shooting even harder. And if we let them get off the trail, down here where the going is better, they might actually try to ride right through us. Frankly, with my men already dismounted to use their matchlocks, there’d be a chance they’d get away with it, too.”

  Schahl nodded gravely, revising his estimate of Wyllyms’ mental prowess upward … slightly.

  “Those are excellent points, my son,” he said. “And I’m a simple priest, of course, not a soldier. Still, it seems to me that if we let them reach the bottom, they’ll have a sense of confidence at having passed the obstacle. That means the shock of suddenly discovering we’re already down here waiting for them will hit even harder. I believe that’s more likely to paralyze their will to fight or flee. And if they do try to break past us, your men can catch them in a crossfire as they go. I think by far the most likely outcome, however, would be that they’d realize they couldn’t possibly escape back up that steep trail and, with an unknown number of troopers between them and escape on the downriver side, they’d surrender. Assuming they’d be willing to surrender under any circumstances, at least.”