At the Sign of Triumph

by David Weber

  Not going to happen, he thought coldly, listening to the background rumble of artillery and the quieter crumping sounds of smoke rounds landing less than three hundred yards in front of them. Any pushing that gets done around here’ll be going the other way!

  Major Makwyrt was coming up with the 5th, but he wasn’t here yet. Besides, he wasn’t the sort to reach for the reins even if he had been. This was Ohygyn’s responsibility, and he checked his watch again. Timing wasn’t really all that critical, given the nature of the assault plan and what must have already happened to the poor damned Temple Boys in front of them. The fact that it wasn’t critical didn’t mean that it wasn’t important, however. Second and 3rd Companies were moving up to assault the sectors to either side of 1st Company’s, and they were supposed to go in as close to together as they could. On the other hand, they were already six minutes past the designated time. Not surprisingly, given all the uncertainties involved in their approach. But he was here now, and somebody had to open the ball …

  He closed the watch case with a snap, drew his revolver, made sure the speedloaders in the case on his left hip were secure, and nodded to Platoon Sergeant Ohtuhl.

  “Go,” he said simply, and Ohtuhl pulled the rocket’s priming ring.

  A standard flare pistol would almost certainly have gotten the job done, but Brigadier Raimahn wasn’t a great believer in “almost certainly.” He’d wanted something he was positive would be visible above the smoke and dust raised by the Charisian artillery and support squads, and the signal rocket soared upwards and burst at an altitude of several hundred feet.

  * * *

  “Flare!” Sergeant Hahskyn snapped.

  He swung his bracket-mounted double-glass quickly to take a bearing on it.

  “It’s one of ours,” he said as the bearing confirmed it was in Sahmantha’s sector. “Orange, and right about in the middle of Golf Three!”

  “Orange at Golf Three,” Ahlgood confirmed, and Hahskyn nodded sharply.

  The observer drew a deep breath. He believed the people who told him what he was about to do was actually safe—he really did! Any hydrogen that leaked would have risen well above the gondola. There wasn’t really any chance of igniting the huge floating bomb above them. Really there wasn’t.

  He fought down the temptation to close his eyes and reached for the flare pistol.

  A moment later, three orange flares arced away from Sahmantha and burst one-by-one, in a steady sequence … well over a hundred yards clear of the balloon. The artillery—and especially the mortars—responsible for suppressive fire on 1st Company’s frontage took note, and the last of the explosive rounds whistled off, to be replaced solely by smoke.

  * * *

  “Heads up!” someone screamed out of the smoke. “Heads u—!”

  The words disappeared, but the scream continued, a wordless shriek of pain as the heretic hand-bomb exploded. Hyrbyrt Ahdymsyn shoved his whistle into his mouth and blew it shrilly.

  “Stand to!” he bellowed. “Stand to!”

  * * *

  Second Platoon swept forward with practiced lethality.

  Each squad had broken down into three four-man teams, moving forward in the separate, coordinated, mutually supporting rushes which were the hallmark of Charisian small unit tactics. The first two teams in each squad consisted of three men with bayoneted pump shotguns and a dedicated grenadier, armed with a revolver and plenty of Mark 3 grenades, with the much more powerful Lywysite bursting charge. Each of his teammates carried a rucksack of additional grenades as well as his own ammunition. The third team in each squad had only two shotguns. The third man carried five satchel charges, each packed with just under twelve pounds of Lywysite … and the fourth carried an M97 flamethrower.

  The M97—christened “Kau-yung’s fire striker” by the troops—consisted of two steel tanks, one containing fifteen gallons of fire vine oil and one filled with compressed air, connected to a steel wand forty-two inches long by a flexible hose. With a full fuel tank, it weighed just over a hundred and twenty pounds, which wasn’t an inconsiderable burden. To the men of the Glacierheart Brigade, however, it was worth every pound.

  * * *

  Lieutenant Ahdymsyn clutched his St. Kylmahn rifle as he fought to sort out the savage, smoky confusion. More shouts and screams cut through the bedlam, and he heard the flatter, duller sound of Church hand-bombs, clearly distinct from the sharp, ear shattering blast of the new heretic hand-bombs. He also heard rifle shots coming from his men … and an impossibly rapid “boom-boom-boom” in reply. Not even a heretic bolt action rifle could be fired that quickly, but something out there in the smoke was—

  The heretics were no longer dropping as many smoke shells onto 2nd Company’s positions now that their own infantry was in contact, and the thinning smoke cleared for just a moment. In that window, Ahdymsyn could see for almost fifty yards, and his eyes widened as a belly-crawling heretic reached the sandbagged breastwork to his left and came up on one knee to shove the muzzle of a rifle that didn’t look quite right through the firing slit. He squeezed the trigger, and Ahdymsyn’s eyes widened in shock as he pulled the entire forestock of his rifle back, slid it forward once more, and fired again. And again!

  The lieutenant’s belly was a frozen knot as the sheer speed of the heretic’s fire registered. But then another heretic rolled up beside the first one. His arm moved sharply, and both of them ducked back down to avoid the blast of one of their powerful hand-bombs as it blew back out the firing slit.

  Even as the explosion roared, two more heretics, with the same bizarre-looking rifles, vaulted up and over the breastwork. They dropped into the trench behind it, and the earthen walls deadened the staccato booming of their weapons.

  The heretic who’d thrown the grenade pushed up off his belly, and Ahdymsyn squeezed his trigger. The grenadier flew sideways, his head a bloody ruin, and Lynyrd Owyn fired at the dead grenadier’s squadmate. He hit the rifleman in the thigh, and the heretic rolled sideways and disappeared into one of the bombardment’s shell craters.

  Ahdymsyn opened the breech on his St. Kylmahn, stuffed another round into the chamber, capped the lock, and brought the rifle back up as another quartet of heretics came out of the smoke, directly in front of him and less than twenty yards away. His and Lynyrd’s shots had marked their position for the heretics, and they were charging straight at him. He got the shot off and another heretic went down. Beside him, he was distantly aware of Sergeant Owyn raising his rifle while he began reloading his own with frantic haste, but somehow he knew there wouldn’t be time.

  There wasn’t. The heretic behind the one he’d just wounded was carrying some sort of rod in his gloved hands. A bizarre, misshapen backpack swelled his silhouette grotesquely, and Ahdymsyn just had time to see the rod swinging in his direction.

  The M97 flamethrower had a maximum range of fifty yards, twice the distance to Lieutenant Ahdymsyn firing slit, and the lieutenant’s world dissolved in shrieking agony as the river of fire roared through the opening to envelop him.

  .XII.

  The Temple,

  City of Zion,

  The Temple Lands.

  The quiet ticking of the corner clock was clear and sharp in the stillness of Rhobair Duchairn’s office. The Church of God Awaiting’s treasurer sat at his desk, expression grim as he worked through the latest reports from his logistics management staff. A ripple of chiming notes broke the stillness, and he frowned, then touched the God light on his desk, and the office door slid open to reveal one of his assistants.

  “I apologize for interrupting you, Your Grace,” the under-priest said, and while his tone was sincere it included none of the trepidation one of Zhaspahr Clyntahn’s aides might have exhibited.

  “I know you wouldn’t have without a good reason, Father.” Duchairn’s response explained why that trepidation was so thoroughly absent.

  “Vicar Allayn’s here to see you. I told him you were studying the latest dispatches, and he indicate
d that those dispatches were part of what he wanted to discuss with you.”

  “I see. In that case, by all means, show the Vicar in, please.”

  “At once, Your Grace.” The under-priest bowed and vanished. Less than a minute later, he was back, escorting Allayn Maigwair.

  “The Captain General, Your Grace,” he murmured, and disappeared once more. The door slid shut behind him, and Duchairn rose to clasp forearms.

  “Don’t tell me you’ve got even more bad news,” he said by way of greeting.

  “Actually, I do,” the captain general growled, and Duchairn’s eyebrows knitted. “I got a fresh dispatch from Rainbow Waters an hour ago.” He shook his head, and his expression was grim. “It’s gone from bad to worse. The center of the Talmar Line’s gone, and Symkyn’s finally moving from Aivahnstyn … and not south. He’s driven what looks like an entire corps between Mahrlys and Lake Langhorne, and Eastshare’s left a corps of his own on the high road about two hundred miles north of Mahrlys. Silver Moon’s dug in to hold until relieved, but with Eastshare north of him and Symkyn pushing up from the west, I don’t think there’s much chance anyone’s going to relieve him. Before the heretics pulverized a third of Brydgmyn’s band at Talmar, I’d have expected Silver Moon to be able to hold for two months, at least, and probably for as much as four or five. Now?” He shook his head. “If the Charisians are serious, they can blast his entire position to bits in a couple of five-days. Even if they don’t, there’s no way he can fall back to rejoin Silken Hills or Gustyv. That’s another twenty thousand men gone.”

  Duchairn stared at him in shock for several seconds, then shook his head like a man trying to shake off a punch to the jaw.

  “I don’t understand,” he said. “This is your area, not mine, but I read the memos you and Rainbow Waters exchanged. I know how tough those positions are! How in God’s name are the Charisians doing this? The troop movements, the advances across country, I can understand, but those defensive positions were … they were formidable, Allayn!”

  “Yes, they were, and yes, they are,” Maigwair replied. “And a big part of the Charisians’ success so far’s due to sheer surprise. It’s pretty damned obvious they must’ve spent a lot of time thinking about exactly how to break through fortifications like the ones the Host’s been building, too. But the bottom-line answer to your question is their frigging balloons.”

  “The balloons?” Duchairn repeated.

  He’d been too deeply immersed in the frantic realignment of their logistic priorities in light of Eastshare’s sudden appearance before Talmar to follow the dispatches about the newest Charisian innovation, as well. They’d clearly upset Maigwair deeply, but for the life of him, the treasurer still couldn’t see what a novelty like a balloon had to do with military operations. He’d taken two of his nephews to a balloon ascent right here in Zion two years ago as a special treat and a way to forget, however briefly, the terrible reality of the Jihad. He had to admit it had been fascinating, but still.…

  “Of course the balloons!” Maigwair snapped, much more sharply than he was in the habit of speaking to Duchairn these days.

  “But … I don’t understand,” the treasurer said. “I want to, and I’m trying to, but how can a balloon be a weapon? I can see where one might be frightening to some Harchongese peasant. And I suppose one of them could give a general a peek at the other side’s positions. But they can’t stay up very long. The one I took the boys to see year before last could only stay up about twenty minutes, and it never got higher than a couple of hundred feet. I talked to one of the aeronauts afterward and he said the limitation’s in the fuel. It’s heavy, and a balloon can’t carry enough fuel to heat enough air to stay up much longer than that. Theoretically one could stay up longer, but he said that the hot air doesn’t generate enough ‘lift’ to support very much fuel.”

  “That may be true, but it also doesn’t matter a good goddamn. They aren’t using hot air.”

  “What?” Duchairn asked blankly. “They have to! The aeronaut I spoke to explained that a balloon is basically a chimney with a top that catches the hot smoke from the fire and rides it. There are a couple of passages in Jwo-jeng and Sondheim that talk about it, too. But all of them stress that it’s the heat that makes the trapped air so much lighter.”

  “I know. I checked the same passages. But these aren’t using hot air. I don’t have the least damned clue what they are using, but there’s no smoke from them, and no sign of flames. For that matter, there’s no … flue, for want of a better word. There’s just this … this great big bag, probably steel thistle silk. God knows the Charisians seem to be able to produce miles of the stuff! They’re cigar-shaped, too, not round, and according to Rainbow Waters, they’re ascending to as much as several thousand feet. And they’re staying there, Rhobair. I can’t begin to tell you how big an advantage that gives someone like Green Valley or Eastshare! If they park a couple of observers up there—” Maigwair waved a hand at the ceiling in a sort of distracted corkscrew motion “—they can see everything—everything—and drop reports to their own people on the ground!”

  “Several thousand feet?” Duchairn repeated very carefully, and Maigwair jerked a sharp nod.

  “At least. And I don’t have any idea how damned far someone can see from that far up. Assuming anyone they can see looking down can see them by looking up, though, it’s got to be at least fifty or sixty miles. That’s an awful long way—more than two days’ march, for infantry—and knowing where the other side is and what they’re doing at any given moment is a tremendous advantage. It’s like a fistfight when one fellow has a bag over his head!”

  “Sweet Langhorne.” Duchairn signed himself with Langhorne’s scepter. “And none of Zhaspahr’s spy reports warned you this was coming?!”

  “Not one damned word about it,” Maigwair confirmed grimly.

  “How serious is it, really?”

  “I don’t know … yet,” Maigwair said with bleak honesty. “From what’s happened so far, I can already tell you it’s going to be bad, though. Really bad. Bishop Militant Ahrnahld got precious few of his people out from Talmar—Holy Martyrs Division and Rakurai Division are basically just gone, and St. Byrtrym’s down to less than half strength—so we don’t have a lot in the way of firsthand reports. From the little we do have, the Charisians’ artillery was even more effective than it’s ever been before. For one thing, no one ever worried about hiding things on the ground from someone floating around in the air. That means their damned balloons could see everything, including angle-guns and rocket launchers hidden on reverse slopes, and tell their gunners where to find them. There’s no reason they can’t spot for their own artillery during an actual bombardment, either. That’s an enormous tactical advantage, and it probably explains how they were able to punch out Talmar so quickly.

  “On the other hand, no matter how well their aeronauts can see our troops and fortifications, their troops on the ground won’t be able to see any farther than our boys can when they actually attack us. Without knowing how good the balloons’ ability to communicate with troops who aren’t directly below them might be, I can’t estimate how much of a tactical effect they’ll have at that point. But even if they don’t have any effect at all—at that point—they’ll still let their commanders pick the best spots to attack. And there’s no way anyone on our side’s going to deploy troops unobserved, no matter what the terrain’s like, in daylight. That means effectively zero chance of hitting them by surprise. That’s bad enough, but judgng from what happened at Talmar, they can finally take full advantage of their heavy angle-guns’ range. If they can see forty or fifty miles, then they can damned well spot for artillery at four or five miles—or ten miles, for all I know!—no matter what kind of terrain obstacle’s in the way.”

  “How many of these balloons has Rainbow Waters reported so far?”

  “He can’t say for certain,” Maigwair said, and snorted with something like true humor when Duchairn looked at him incr
edulously. “You know how meticulously he differentiates between what he can and can’t confirm, Rhobair! And apparently all their balloons are identical. So he can tell us how many he’s seen at any given moment or on one sector of the front, but not how many the bastards have in total. He does have reports of at least five simultaneously in the air across sixty or seventy miles of his front, though.”

  Duchairn nodded his head sickly as understanding flowed through him at last. No wonder Maigwair was so worried. The sophistication of the Charisians’ artillery had always been one of their deadliest advantages. He doubted he could fully appreciate the consequences of the new balloons, even after the other vicar’s explanation, but the mere thought of the artillery capabilities Maigwair had just sketched out was enough to freeze his blood.

  “I hope you don’t have any other surprises up the sleeve of your cassock,” he said after a moment.

  “Actually, I do,” Maigwair said flatly. “That’s the real reason I came to see you. If you were still wondering if the heretics meant to throw their main weight south, you can stop. Rainbow Waters’ forward commander at Ayaltyn’s come under heavy artillery fire … and he’s got at least two or three more frigging Shan-wei-damned balloons floating in his sky, too. And Rainbow Waters just got a dispatch from his pickets on the Hildermoss. It would appear the Charisians have the locks at Darailys back in service.”

  “What do you mean?” Duchairn asked sharply.

  “I mean there are at least five of their ironclads steaming upriver with ‘dozens’—that’s the local commander’s number—of steam-powered tugs towing barges behind them. Whether they’re stuffed with troops or ‘just’ supplies, that’s really bad news for Rainbow Waters’ left flank. Especially with Green Valley finally starting to move south of Cat-Lizard Lake.”

  “My God,” Duchairn said, his face pale, and Maigwair shrugged.