At the Sign of Triumph

by David Weber

  His tone was considerably grimmer, Walkyr noticed. Tohbyais Ahlzhernohn had never been a fan of the Sword of Schueler, and the mountaineer farmboy inside him hated how much wrack and ruin had been visited upon the hard-working farm families of Siddarmark’s western provinces. But he was right. And that same emptiness explained a great deal about the heretic High Mount’s successful flanking march to the Kyplyngyr Forest two years earlier.

  Now there was an unpleasant thought.…

  “But if they’re from Eastshare’s Army of Westmarch, they’re seven hundred miles from where they’re supposed to be. And from their own nearest supply point, for that matter!” Bairahn pointed out.

  “One thing the heretics’ve proved often enough is that they’ve got plenty of logistic flexibility,” Walkyr said. “That said, I wouldn’t want to try supplying an entire army through the sort of countryside Tohbyais is talking about. If this is Eastshare, I would’ve expected him or Symkyn—or even both of them—to hammer Silver Moon out of Marylys to free up the high road before he came so far north. On the other hand, all we’ve seen so far is Tohbyais’ brigade or two of mounted infantry. That big a force could easily be hauling its supplies with it. Let’s not forget what High Mount did when he cut across to get behind Harless!”

  “But if it is Eastshare, what’s he up to?”

  “Now that, Ahlfryd, is the real question, isn’t it?” Walkyr smiled with very little humor. “I think the one thing we can safely assume is that if we knew the answer, we wouldn’t like it.”

  * * *

  “Uh, Sarge … I think you’d better see this.”

  Sergeant Owyn Lynyrd grimaced. The voice from the dugout’s steep steps belonged to young Zhaik Tymahnsky, 1st Squad’s youngest private. He was a city boy, from Zion itself, and a strapping, sturdy young fellow. Army life obviously wasn’t what he’d expected, and he didn’t much care for long marches in the rain or standing watch on a night of sleet and snow. But he didn’t complain the way some of the others did, and for all his inexperience, he had a brain that worked.

  Unfortunately, he also had a tendency to report every little thing to his long-suffering squad leader, no matter how trivial it might be. He’d clearly decided it was better to report things that weren’t important than not to report something that was, and the hell of it was that Lynyrd agreed with him. Which made it just a little difficult to convince him that he needed to exercise a little discretion … especially while the sergeant in question was enjoying his first cup of tea after a long, long morning. Most of the platoon was finally sitting down to breakfast after an extended stand-to, starting well before dawn. No one had really expected anything exciting, but they’d all been a little concerned that it might happen anyway. And everyone knew the heretics preferred night attacks—or attacks just before dawn, anyway. Nothing had happened, but.…

  Boy’s probably still on edge like the rest of us, Lynyrd reminded himself. Having all that heretic cavalry roaming around’s enough to make anybody nervous. Shan-wei! It’s making me nervous as hell!

  And, he reflected, nervous or not, at least the kid was smart enough to pester his sergeant and leave Lieutenant Ahdymsyn to enjoy his breakfast in peace.

  Lynyrd sighed and looked regretfully down into his steaming teacup for a moment, then set it on the neatly squared earthen ledge some patient Harchongian had carved into the wall of the squad’s bunker. At least he’d know where to find it when he got done inspecting whatever world-shattering discovery Tymahnsky had made this time. And the smell of frying bacon, coming from the fireplace carved into the wall opposite the ledge, suggested he should get the inspecting done as quickly as possible.

  The thought of breakfast restored him to something approaching good humor, and he stretched luxuriously before he started for the steps. He could do that, because the bunker’s roof was a good nine feet above its floor. He didn’t really like to think about how much labor its excavation had required, and he was just as happy it had already been done before 3rd Regiment took over this portion of what had been the Mighty Host’s frontage. Other portions of the fortifications the Army of the Center had inherited were more rudimentary, and he didn’t envy the regiments assigned to those sectors. Owyn Lynyrd had developed a love-hate relationship with the shovel. Like Colonel Flymyng, 3rd Regiment’s CO, Lynyrd had served with Cahnyr Kaitswyrth’s ill-starred Army of Glacierheart and been fortunate enough to find himself invalided at home a few months before the heretics annihilated Kaitswyrth’s command. During his time in Cliff Peak, he’d discovered the beauty of deep, heavily sandbagged holes in the ground. The deeper the better, in his opinion, especially where heretic artillery was concerned. It was just that he much preferred for someone else to do the digging.

  He snorted at the thought as he climbed the steps. Not that it was really all that funny. Bishop Militant Styvyn Bryar’s Holy Martyrs Division had been rebuilt from a handful of surviving cadre. For all intents and purposes, it was an entirely new division, less than eight months old, and far too many of its personnel were like young Tymahnsky—totally inexperienced and farther from home than they’d ever dreamed they might travel. They were fortunate they’d been able to take over a defensive line which had already been carefully surveyed and laid out to take advantage of every terrain feature, but they still didn’t really know their positions as well as they ought to.

  Captain Lynkyn, 2nd Company’s commanding officer, had been running daily familiarization hikes ever since they’d occupied their sector of the front, because no map could possibly tell a man everything there was to know about the ground he was responsible for defending. In fact, Lynkyn and Lieutenant Hyrbyrt Ahdymsyn, 1st Platoon’s commanding officer, had been scheduled to take both squads out today. Captain Lynkyn wanted every man in his company to know the ground intimately, well enough to find his way around in total darkness while heretic shells exploded all about him. Second Company was still far short of that level of familiarity, and Lynyrd was in favor of spending however much perseverance, sweat, and boot leather it took to attain it.

  He damned well preferred to spend them instead of blood, anyway, he thought rather more grimly. Unfortunately, they wouldn’t be doing any hiking today after all.

  He emerged from the dugout, circling the dogleg in the stair designed to funnel grenades into the sump at the bottom of the angle rather than allowing them to sail straight into the bunker itself. The entrance was covered by firing slits on either side of the door, and other firing slits covered the slopes leading to the bunker’s position. Fighting trenches spread away from it on either side, linking it to the bunkers assigned to the company’s other platoons. The outer trenches were equipped with breastworks—solid log walls two feet high and two feet deep, pierced by firing slits every six feet, and topped by a three-foot-high parapet of sandbags—and side galleries had been excavated on the forward side of each trench every ten or fifteen yards. They weren’t remotely as deep or well protected as the bunkers, but a man could duck into one of them and stay out of the rain when the heretics’ portable angle-gun bombs started bursting overhead in sprays of shrapnel. The long, tangled abatis covering the reverse slope running up from the main defense line to the forward trenches was guaranteed to slow any assault, and a second abatis—and a hundred-yard-deep killing ground, completely cleared of trees or brush and liberally sown with land-bombs—guarded the slope running up to the first line of defense on the far side of the crest line in front of them.

  At the moment, that first trench line was more heavily manned than usual, since the cavalry which had screened the last twenty miles of the approaches to 3rd Regiment’s position had been driven in. The infantry pickets two thousand yards in advance of the trench line were still there, of course, and Lynyrd supposed the cavalry would be sent back out again once it had been reinforced.

  A second belt of land-bombs had been laid between the first and second trench lines, covered by half a dozen rifled and banded 12-pounders. Their muzzles just cleared the fr
ont lips of their gun pits, and each of them was covered by a heavily sandbagged “roof” almost five feet deep. They wouldn’t help much against a direct hit from one of the heretics’ heavy angle-guns, but they’d stand up to just about anything else. Twenty or thirty of the new portable angle-guns had been carefully sited behind the field guns, as well. The AOG’s version was still bigger and heavier—and less portable—than the heretics’, and Lynyrd doubted their gunners had acquired as much expertise, but they were one hell of a lot more than anything the Army of Glacierheart had possessed when the heretics smashed it last summer.

  And, of course, there were the half-dozen rocket batteries dug in well back on the far side of the crest line behind the company’s main position. Lynyrd was a little in two minds about that. He’d never actually seen them fired, but according to an artillery sergeant he’d discussed it with over a bottle of moonshine, somewhere around a fifth of all the rockets landed either long or short. Long was just fine with Sergeant Lynyrd; short was something he didn’t want to hear about.

  Private Tymahnsky had climbed back to the sandbagged observation tower at the center of the company strong point after summoning Lynyrd from the bunker. The boy actually loved sunrises, which the sergeant thought was profoundly unnatural. As far as he was concerned, sunrise was the perfect ending to a productive day. But since Tymahnsky actually liked being up early, and since he climbed like a damned spider-monkey, the morning overlook watch was his on a regular basis, and he’d returned to it while the rest of his squadmates settled in for their delayed breakfasts. Now the kid was beckoning urgently for Lynyrd to join him, and the sergeant sighed in resignation and started up the ladder. Given that the tower was almost fifty feet tall—it had to be high enough to see over the crest to the first trench line—and that he most definitely didn’t climb like a spider-monkey, he’d have plenty of time to work on his properly serious “sergeant’s face” while he climbed.

  “What’s this all about, Tymahnsky?” he growled when he topped out on the tower platform at last. “I was just about—”

  “Sorry, Sarge,” Tymahnsky interrupted, and Lynyrd almost blinked in surprise. The kid never interrupted. That was one of the things the sergeant liked about him, although he was confident Tymahnsky would get over it soon enough.

  “Like I say, I’m sorry,” the private went on, and Lynyrd’s eyes narrowed as he heard the tension in the kid’s voice and saw something very like … terror in his eyes. “I just—I just don’t know what in Langhorne’s name that is, Sarge!”

  Tymahnsky’s voice actually cracked a bit at the end, and he pointed to the east, almost directly into the early-morning sun, just barely topping the crest line. Lynyrd squinted his eyes, shading them with one hand as he peered in the indicated direction and tried to figure out what had the kid so worked up. It was a clear, cloudless morning, pleasantly warm for the month of June here in Westmarch. So what could—?

  His thoughts chopped off abruptly as he saw the … shape climbing steadily into the eastern sky. It was hard to make out details, staring into the sun that way, and the thing—whatever the Shan-wei it was—had to be at least four or five miles away. It was vaguely teardrop shaped, with some sort of bulges, almost like the vanes of an arrow or an arbalest bolt, at the narrow end, and if it was as far away as he thought it was, it had to be at least a hundred feet long, probably longer.

  An icy breeze blew through his bones as that thought went through his brain. Something that size couldn’t just … float into the air! Not without demonic assistance, anyway!

  The icy breeze became a whirlwind, and he swallowed hard, suddenly not at all sure he wanted breakfast after all.

  “I … don’t know what it is,” he admitted slowly.

  “Is it … I mean, could it be—?”

  “I don’t know!” Lynyrd repeated more sharply. “But what I do know is that we’d better tell the Lieutenant about it double quick!”

  * * *

  “Think they’ve noticed us yet, Zhaimy?” Sergeant Kevyn Hahskyn’s brown eyes glittered with malicious delight as the Wyvern-class balloon Sahmantha climbed steadily higher.

  They’d been in ground-hover, only thirty or forty feet up, for a good ten minutes while Lieutenant Lawsyn and the ground crew triple-checked all of their equipment. Hahskyn hadn’t minded the delay at all. In fact, he’d strongly approved. It had been over two months since he and his observer, Corporal Zhaimysn Ahlgood, had been allowed to take her up, and all sorts of faults could have developed in that long. For that matter, somebody could all too well have screwed something up just because he was out of practice! Better to take the time to be sure none of those things had happened. Now they were moving upwards again at last, and the sergeant grinned hugely as he tried to picture the Temple Boys’ reaction when they finally saw her.

  “Bet some drawers down there just got really fragrant!” he chortled.

  “I’m glad you think it’s hilarious, Kevyn,” Ahlgood said tartly. “It could get a lot less humorous if they suddenly decide to send a couple of regiments out here to find out what the hell we are!”

  “Nah,” Hahskyn disagreed. “According to the spy reports, we could just barely be in range for their heavy angles. Was I them, that’s what I’d send calling.”

  “Oh, that’s so much better,” Ahlgood said sourly, grabbing a handhold as Sahmantha’s nose pitched slightly.

  There wasn’t much breeze at ground level, but there was a little more movement a few hundred feet up. Thanks to its stabilizing fins and the carefully thought-out arrangement of its hydrogen cells, coupled with the open-ended chambers that allowed atmospheric air to fill the envelope in compensation for any hydrogen volume deficiency, the balloon was remarkably stable under most conditions. That didn’t mean it couldn’t bobble occasionally, though. He and Hahskyn both wore double-clipped safety harnesses, so plunging to his doom wasn’t very likely—unless, of course, the entire balloon went down, which wasn’t completely outside the realm of possibility. That didn’t make his footing any steadier when Sahmantha decided to dance, however.

  “Oh, relax!” Hahskyn shook his head, disdaining any handholds as he raised his double-glass and gazed westward. “Captain Poolahn didn’t pick this spot at random, you know. There’s no way the Temple Boys can see over that ridgeline in front of us, and I’m pretty sure Major Fhrankyl’s boys would take a really dim view of letting any of Zhaspahr’s artillerists get a good enough peek to actually hit anything this far in front of their lines.”

  Ahlgood grunted in acknowledgment, although it didn’t really make him feel a whole lot better. Still, the section had a full battalion of mounted infantry looking after its security, backed up by an entire support platoon of M95 mortars. That didn’t mean the Temple Boys couldn’t push all of them back the way they’d come, but it did mean they wouldn’t do it anytime soon. And with Sahmantha floating above them, they weren’t exactly likely to creep up on them.

  “They should never’ve let us get this close in the first place,” he grumbled.

  “So now you’re complaining about that?” Hahskyn lowered his double-glass to look at him and shook his head with a grin. “I swear, Zhaimy! You are the gloomiest man I know.”

  “Somebody needs to keep you anchored to reality,” Ahlgood shot back, unfolding the plotting table hinged to one side of the bamboo gondola. The proper topographical map was already pinned down on it, and he made sure the pencils and drafting tools in the fitted cutouts were ready for use. “You know, if they hadn’t decided to use hydrogen in these things, they could’ve just plugged you in and filled them with hot air!”

  “Oh, now that’s cold,” Hahskyn chuckled.

  The balloon had continued to climb while they talked.

  No one wanted to hang around generating the hydrogen to fill Sahmantha’s twenty-eight thousand or so cubic-foot volume anywhere close to an enemy position. Producing that much gas took a lot of zinc and hydrochloric acid, and it was best done under what might be called co
ntrolled conditions far away from any possibility of hostile interference. Besides, the massive wagon load of the generating equipment—not to mention the steadily swelling gasbag—would probably have been just a tiny bit noticeable. So the balloon had been ferried to the launch site already inflated and securely strapped down on one of the 3rd Balloon Company’s 30-ton flatbed freight wagons.

  Once they’d reached the deployment point, the ground crew had carefully released the tiedowns, letting Sahmantha float free of the wagon. Now that she’d been cleared to ascend to normal operational altitude, the steam-powered winch on the smaller 10-ton wagon had started paying out the heavy tether attached to the rigging at thirty feet per second. At that rate, it took just over two minutes to reach their optimal altitude of four thousand feet, and Ahlgood ostentatiously checked the straps of his parachute as they passed the three-thousand-foot mark. Hahskyn only shook his head and raised his double-glass again.

  The terrain below was beginning to assume the appearance of one of the papier-mâché relief maps the ICA’s cartographers created for senior officers, and despite his Langhorne-given responsibility to grouse, Ahlgood felt a familiar shiver of delight as he looked down from the perspective of a king wyvern at the world spread out so far beneath his feet. This was the real reason he’d volunteered for the Balloon Corps, although the opportunity to help break Zhaspahr Clyntahn’s kneecaps had been a strong secondary motive. He felt the brisk, cold breeze sweeping through the gondola, fluttering the edges of his map, and the air was like clear wine as it filled his lungs.