At the Sign of Triumph

by David Weber

  “That could be … unfortunate, Your Grace,” he said at last, slowly, his eyes worried.

  “You mean he could go home, fling himself onto his grandmother’s bosom, and confess all?” Rock Coast said derisively.

  “Actually, that’s very much what I’m concerned about,” the under-priest replied just a bit sharply.

  “Relax. I didn’t time the invitation for this visit by accident, you know. First, like I said, he’s a teenager. He won’t want to go running to his grandmother to tell her he’s been hobnobbing with potential traitors for the last year and a half. I think he’ll probably do it in the end, if only on the theory that he’ll get at least a little credit for coming clean before someone else outs him. Second, I think those talks and devotionals of yours went more than skin deep, so he’s going to be worrying about pissing off God and the Archangels by betraying our confidence, too. And, finally, I’ve told Lahndysyl to set a new record for a slow passage. He can’t be too obvious about it. The boy’s been playing around in boats since he could walk and Ahmiliya’s a fast sailor. If Lahndysyl’s too obvious about going slow, Styvyn’s likely to notice.” He shrugged. “It wouldn’t be the end of the world from our perspective, since there’d be damn-all he could do about it aboard ship if he did notice, but I am fond of the boy. I’d hate for Lahndysyl to find himself forced to drop him over the side with an anchor tied to his ankles.”

  Mahrtynsyn winced internally at the image. Rhobair Lahndysyl was about as hard-boiled and ruthless as a man came. He was also an ardent Temple Loyalist, which was one reason the under-priest had recommended him to Rock Coast, but if he decided his employer’s instructions—or the protection of his own neck—required Styvyn Rydmakyr’s death, he wouldn’t even blink.

  “It’s an eight-hundred-mile sail,” the duke continued. “That’s a three-day passage at the best of times. I’m confident Lahndysyl can add at least another full day or so to it without anything … untowards happening. So that gives us what amounts to an entire five-day before he has the chance to unburden himself.”

  “And, Your Grace?”

  “And every word I said to the little prick about the opportunity we’ve got was absolutely true. I’ve already passed the word to the others.”

  Mahrtynsyn stiffened, his expression of alarmed, but Rock Coast only shrugged dismissively, and his own expression was hard.

  “I know we didn’t discuss my decision—not specifically, at any rate. God knows we’ve talked about it long enough, though! We’ll never have another chance like this, and some of the others have been wavering, fluttering their hands and wondering if we won’t get an even better opening. Well, we won’t, and I mean to take this one. And to make sure no fainthearts have a different idea, I’ve informed them that Mahkynyn’s already mustering the troops.”

  Mahrtynsyn’s expression segued from alarm to completely blank. Fraizhyr Mahkynyn was the senior of Rock Coast’s armsmen. He’d been with the duke since Rock Coast’s boyhood and headed his personal guard for the last ten years, and he’d been the one in charge of quietly recruiting and drilling the additional men the duke had sworn to his service in defiance of King Sailys’ Edict, the royal decree which proscribed the raising of private armies upon pain of death. If he’d ever felt a single qualm about defying that edict—or anything else the Crown might decree—Mahrtynsyn had never seen it, and if Rock Coast told him to attack Rydymak Keep tomorrow, he’d do it in a heartbeat.

  In fact, judging from the duke’s expression, that was almost certainly what Rock Coast had told him to do.

  That was the under-priest’s first thought. His second was that any notion he’d ever had of controlling Rock Coast no longer applied. He hadn’t so much as mentioned this to him, far less discussed it, and by informing the others that Mahkynyn was already in motion, he’d made certain they’d follow suit. They had no choice. If he failed, their association with him was certain to come to light, so any qualms they might have felt had suddenly become dead letters.

  “Well, in that case, Your Grace, I suppose we’d best see to getting those proclamations printed and distributed, hadn’t we?” he said.

  * * *

  “Could wish we’d had just a mite more warning, Your Grace,” Dahnel Kyrbysh growled. He stood by his saddled horse in the courtyard of Black Horse Keep, the ancient pile of stone which served as the principal seat of the dukes of Black Horse at the heart of the city of Maryksberg. “Getting all this moving—especially moving in the right direction at the right time—on two minutes’ notice isn’t the easiest thing in the world!”

  “A point of which I’m well aware, Dahnel,” Pait Stywyrt, the Duke of Black Horse, said sourly. “I think all this has gone to Zhasyn’s head! Somebody had to be in charge, and he seemed like the logical choice at the time, but he’s been feeling his oats here lately.”

  “As may be, Your Grace,” Kyrbysh said with the candor of a man who’d spent close to forty years in the service of Black Horse. “And I’ll not say you’re wrong about that. But happen I’m not as unhappy about lack of warning as I’d be about worrying if the others’re going to shy away and leave us holding the lizard.”

  He had not said “leave you holding the lizard,” Black Horse reflected, and reached out to clout his armored shoulder.

  “There is that,” he acknowledged with something very like a grin. “None of the others’ll have any more choice about dancing to his piping than we do, are they?”

  “Not if they like their heads where they are,” Kyrbysh replied bluntly. “Speaking of which, I suppose I’d best be on the way.”

  “You do that,” Black Horse approved. “And try not to kill anyone you don’t have to.”

  “Not any fonder of killing than the next man, Your Grace,” the armsman replied. “Just as happy to leave Rydymak Keep to Mahkynyn, come to that.” He grimaced. “Lady Cheshyr’s a stubborn old woman. She’ll not open her gates without a lot of … convincing.”

  “Probably not,” Black Horse agreed, and stepped back as Kyrbysh swung up into the saddle.

  The armsman had only a short ride before him … today, at any rate. The small coasting vessels Black Horse had quietly assembled were waiting to carry him and his six hundred armsmen three hundred and fifty miles from Maryksberg to the town of Swanyk, twelve miles inside Black Horse’s border with Cheshyr. Swanyk lay on the west side of Nezbyt Point, under forty miles from Tylkahm, just inside Cheshyr Bay and the closest major town of the earldom. Of course, calling either Swanyk or Tylkahm “towns” was stretching the noun. Better to call them large fishing villages, the duke supposed. But almost all of Cheshyr’s larger villages and towns lay along the shore of the bay. Most supported fishing fleets, and even for those that didn’t, water transportation was always easier and cheaper than moving goods and people by land. Those towns and villages were connected by the coastal road that ran all the way around the bay, however, and the earldom’s farms and freeholds were either threaded along that road or connected to it by dirt tracks that stretched up into the rugged hills that separated Cheshyr from its eastern neighbors.

  The neutralization of the Bay’s eastern shore in the likely event that Lady Karyl declined to join them had been assigned to Black Horse. In some ways, it would’ve been closer for Duke Black Bottom, but crossing the hills would have been slow going, and he had other wyverns to look to in reinforcing Swayle and Lantern Walk. So Kyrbysh would go ashore at Swanyk in two or three days and work his way north around the bay while Mahkynyn dealt with Rydymak Keep.

  And welcome to it, Black Horse thought. He was scarcely a squeamish man, but the thought of what Rydymak Keep could turn into wasn’t something he cared to contemplate.

  * * *

  “I’m so proud of you, Wahlys,” Rebkah Rahskail said.

  She stood beside her son on the walls of Swaylehold, the fortified seat of the earls of Swayle on the western edge of Swayleton. The fortress had been built on a steep hill in a bend of the Lantern River three hundred years earlie
r and enlarged two or three times since. The river that surrounded it on three sides made it highly defensible, but it also meant its inhabitants had to deal with the inconvenience of spring floods entirely too often, and the earldom’s capital city had spread steadily farther east, away from those floods, over the centuries.

  Now the banner of the Empire of Charis had been hauled down from the staff on Swaylehold’s central keep and replaced by the old flag of the Kingdom of Chisholm. It was possible the cheers of the citizens of Swayleton had sounded a little uncertain—even a bit forced—when Earl Swayle read the proclamation setting forth the grounds upon which he and his sworn companions had bidden defiance to the tyranny of Sharleyan and Cayleb, but no voice had been raised in opposition. That wouldn’t have been wise, given the large number of armsmen in the colors of Swayle who’d unexpectedly appeared here in the capital. There’d been far too many of those armsmen—under the terms of King Sailys’ Edict, at least—and they’d been far too well armed for anyone to even think about arguing with them. Most of them might be armed only with swords and arbalests, although there were quite a few matchlocks and a few dozen pistols in evidence, but that was more than Swayleton’s inhabitants had possessed. And there were more—and better—weapons en route to the capital.

  Rebkah had known better than to try stockpiling new-model rifles—or any weapons, really—in her capital. If there was one person in the entire Kingdom of Charis Sharleyan Ahrmahk’s minions must realize hated her with every fiber of her being, it was Rebkah Rahskail. She’d had no intention of providing those minions with the evidence to justify her arrest.

  Because of that, she’d trained her armsmen up near the border with Lantern Walk, in the backcountry where she could control access, and she’d stored her modern weapons there, as well. True, she hadn’t acquired as many of them as she’d suggested she had to her fellow conspirators, but they didn’t need to know that. Thinking she was better armed than she was could only help dissuade any faintheartedness on their part. She’d have had more of them if she’d had more marks, of course, and she’d tried not to feel jealous about the greater numbers of weapons flowing to Rock Coast and Black Horse when she’d been the one who’d established contact with Colonel Ainsail in the first place.

  But once Elahnah Waistyn hands us the arsenal in Halbrook, we’ll have lots more guns, she told herself fiercely. Elahnah hadn’t promised to do that—not in so many words—but surely she would! They’d certainly talked around the point enough in their correspondence, and after what had happened to her own husband, how could God not move Elahnah to offer her full-blooded support?

  “I have to admit I’m a little … nervous, Mother,” Wahlys Rahskail said. The current Earl of Swayle was only eighteen years old, and at the moment he looked considerably younger. And frightened. “Once the Council hears about this, they’re going to come straight after us with everything they’ve got.”

  “Would you rather worry about the Royal Council or about God?” Rebkah demanded a bit more sharply than she’d intended to. Wahlys looked at her reproachfully, and she touched his arm in apology. “I’m sorry, Wahlys. I didn’t mean to snap at you. I suppose I’m a little ‘nervous’ myself! But what we’ve begun is bigger than any mortal power. Surely you understand that.”

  “Of course I do, Mother.” Wahlys nodded sharply and his voice was much firmer than it had been. “Father Zhordyn and I have discussed that very point more times than I could count.”

  “I know you have.” She patted his arm. “And, I don’t blame you for worrying that Sharleyan’s lickspittles will devote special attention to us here in Swayle.” Her spine straightened proudly. “We’re one of the few great families who’ve had the courage to stand up for Mother Church. You know what that cost your father.” Wahlys’ jaw tightened, and she nodded. “So of course they’ll want to ‘deal with us’ as quickly as they can. But they’ll have to fight their way clear across Holy Tree or Lantern Walk to reach us, and without the Army, they’ll find that just a little bit difficult.” She smiled thinly. “And when the rest of the Kingdom realizes what’s happening—when the others who’ve been forced to hide their loyalty to Mother Church, their opposition to Sharleyan’s tyranny—seize the opportunity we’ve offered, the ‘Royal Council’ will be far too busy putting out fires closer to home to worry about us.”

  * * *

  “Where’s Grandmother?” Styvyn Rydymak demanded as he burst into Father Kahrltyn Tyrnyr’s small study. “I need to talk to her—now!”

  “And what might the rush be?” Father Kahrltyn asked calmly, looking up from his book and removing his reading glasses so that he could see his longtime student more clearly. He was almost seventy years old and growing increasingly frail, but he sported a thick head of white hair and a magnificent mustache, and his mind was as keen as it had ever been.

  “I have to … tell her something,” Styvyn said after a moment, downcast eyes studying something on the floor that only he could see with great intensity.

  “And that might be—?” Father Kahrltyn prompted, and young Rydymak actually squirmed.

  The Langhornite under-priest hid a sigh and let the reading glasses hang from the black riband around his neck as he leaned back in his chair. He’d been Styvyn’s tutor almost since the lad could walk, and he loved the boy dearly. But that was rather the point, wasn’t it? At almost sixteen, he shouldn’t still be thinking about the heir to one of the kingdom’s earldoms as a “boy.”

  “Since you’ve just gotten back from Rock Coast, should I assume this has something to do with your cousin, the Duke?” he prompted after a moment, and Styvyn flushed. Father Kahrltyn had never approved of his close association with his magnificent cousin, and he knew it.

  “Well, yes,” Styvyn said finally. Then he inhaled deeply and looked up to meet his tutor’s eyes. “I’ve done something … really stupid, Father. Stupid enough you’ll probably assign me a heavy penance once you find out about it. But right now, I’ve got to talk to Grandmother! I can’t believe how long it took Ahmiliya to make the trip, and I don’t think I have a lot of time.”

  “I see.” Father Kahrltyn contemplated him for a moment longer, then shrugged. “I believe she’s gone down to the armsmen’s quarters to talk to Sergeant Major Ohdwiar.”

  “Oh.” Styvyn’s expression fell, and Father Kahrltyn hid a smile.

  The youngster had been rather in awe of Ahzbyrn Ohdwiar ever since he’d discovered the sergeant major had served with his grandfather. He obviously didn’t want to share the news that he’d been “really stupid” with his grandmother in front of someone whose respect mattered to him as much as Ohdwiar’s did. But the boy inhaled again, squared his shoulders, nodded to his tutor, and marched back out the door.

  He made his way through the familiar halls, still uncertain how to broach the topic with Lady Karyl. “Hi, Grandmother! Look, I don’t want you to worry or anything, but I think I’ve committed treason. By the way, what’s for lunch?”

  Somehow he doubted Lady Karyl would be amused, and he’d discovered—or rediscovered—that that mattered to him. It mattered a lot, and the thought of what he was about to see in her eyes when he confessed that all her warnings about his magnificent cousin had been right made him want to throw up.

  He reached the armsmen’s quarters and his pace slowed, despite his determination. This section of Rydymak Keep was newer than much of the rest, built largely at the Crown’s expense when his grandfather had been one of King Sailys’ generals. There’d been far more men stationed in Cheshyr then, keeping an eye on Cheshyr’s neighbors. Which probably should have told him his grandmother knew what she was talking about when she warned him to be wary of what those neighbors were currently up to, he thought. Given their size, they seemed almost empty, even with the thirty-odd retired soldiers Lady Karyl had provided with living space over the winter just past, and she’d put Sergeant Major Ohdwiar in what had been an officer’s quarters.

  He climbed the stone stairs to the serg
eant major’s assigned chambers, braced himself, and knocked sharply.

  The door opened, and he found himself facing not Ohdwiar, but Sergeant Ohsulyvyn. That wasn’t much better than facing the sergeant major himself, but he squared his shoulders.

  “Good afternoon, Sergeant,” he said politely but firmly. “I understand my grandmother is visiting the Sergeant Major. I’m afraid I need to speak to her.”

  “Of course, My Lord.” Ohsulyvyn stepped back. “Come in.”

  Styvyn obeyed the invitation, then paused as his grandmother turned her head to look over her shoulder at him. She sat at Sergeant Major Ohdwiar’s small table, with what looked like a map of the Sunset Hills spread out before her. The sergeant major stood at her right shoulder, but Styvyn had never seen the very tall, blond-haired man on her left. The stranger had a full beard, trimmed close to the jaw, and a long braid. He also had a bony face, a nose any hawk might have envied, and very, very blue eyes. Bluer even than Sergeant Mykgylykudi’s.

  “Styvyn!” Lady Karyl smiled. “I didn’t expect you back until Monday.”

  “I … I had to come home early, Grandmother,” he said. “I’m … I’m afraid there’s something I need to tell you. Something—” He looked at the two retired soldiers and the complete stranger and his courage almost failed, but he made himself continue. “Something … bad,” he finished in a small voice

  “It can’t be all that bad, dear,” Lady Karyl said, rising from her chair to hold out her arms to him.

  “Yes, it can.” The words wavered and his eyes burned as his grandmother enveloped him in a tight hug. “It can. Because you were right. You were right about Cousin Zhasyn, about what he wanted, about everything.” He raised his head, making himself meet her eyes. “I’ve been so stupid. I’ve—”

  His voice broke completely, and he stared at her, trying to find the words.