by David Weber
The seijin had at least prevailed upon his nominal liege lord to allow carpenters to create a proper deck atop the embassy, set far enough back to make lines of fire from street level difficult to come by. In fact, they’d set something of a fashion, with rooftop decks appearing on increasing numbers of townhouses here in the Republic’s capital. Siddar City had been larger than Tellesberg before the Sword of Schueler; now the city was more packed than ever with the influx of refugees. There’d never been a lot of room for the sorts of landscaped gardens the wealthier inhabitants of Tellesberg favored, so perhaps it wasn’t too surprising that the city should have begun sprouting additional rooftop decks. They made pleasant vantage spots, especially with the colorful awnings most of their owners had added, although Merlin wondered how well they’d weather the upcoming winter. Siddar City’s buildings and rooftops tended to be well coated with grime and soot from coal fires, and he had his doubts about what all of those splendidly varnished or painted decks were going to look like come spring.
At the moment, however, the breeze was pleasant and the view was soothing as Merlin stood behind Cayleb’s rattan chair and watched the capital’s early-morning bustle.
A bustle which, he knew, only deepened Cayleb’s awareness of the difference between his own “sheltered” existence and what was happening in places with names like the Glacierheart Gap and Thesmar.
Under the circumstances, the fact that the emperor’s question had come out in a merely interrogative tone was actually fairly remarkable.
“Not really,” the seijin replied. “I’ve talked to Nahrmahn, and he says there’re no surprises in last night’s take from the SNARCs. Ahlverez is being a bit more restrained in conversations with his officers than he was during the attack, though.”
“He could hardly be less restrained,” Cayleb pointed out with a smile. “I’ve known people with an excellent command of invective, but he rose to heights I wouldn’t’ve imagined he was capable of.”
“Are you surprised?”
“No.” The smile in Cayleb’s normally warm brown eyes vanished as they went suddenly cold and bleak. And satisfied. “No, I’m not surprised at all.”
The Earl of Hanth’s timing had been impeccable, and the quantity of canister a thirty-pounder could spew out was staggering. A twelve-pounder field gun fired thirty of the golfball-sized shot to an effective range of three or four hundred yards; a thirty-pounder fired eighty of them, with an effective range of six hundred yards. And at that range, it dispersed that torrent of shot in a pattern sixty yards across, like the devil’s own shotgun.
The Duke of Harless’ leading infantry had been seven hundred yards from Hanth’s entrenchments when the first flare blossomed above them. None had gotten within a hundred yards, and casualties had been horrendous. Of the almost eight thousand Desnairian and Dohlaran infantry committed to the attack, a third had been killed outright—at least half by artillery fire alone, before they ever entered effective range of the Marines’ rifles—and another three thousand had been wounded. Half those wounded had been taken prisoner, and almost three hundred unwounded men had allowed themselves to be taken prisoner, as well, even with those prisoners knowing exactly what the Inquisition was likely to do with such craven traitors if they ever fell back into its hands again. Less than twenty-three hundred had made it back to their own lines unscathed. A casualty rate of over seventy percent was enough to destroy any unit ever raised, and it would be a long, long time before the devastated regiments could be reconstituted as effective fighting formations.
If they could ever be restored as effective formations at all.
“You know, Harless actually reacted a lot faster than Ahlverez gives him credit for,” Merlin said after a moment.
“He got his men massacred, Merlin!”
“I didn’t say it was a remotely smart thing for him to do in the first place; I just said he reacted faster than Ahlverez thinks he did.” Merlin shook his head. “He didn’t know about the new parachute flares, either, so he had a better excuse than Ahlverez wants to admit for thinking he could get close enough to rush the parapet under cover of darkness and all that smoke. Not a good excuse, but at least an excuse. And whatever else, he’d realized what was happening and called off the second wave even before the first-wave units broke.”
Cayleb looked over his shoulder at the seijin, then grimaced.
“All right, I’ll give you that much. But he should’ve damned well known better before he sent them in at all!”
“I agree, and Ahlverez certainly thinks the same thing, but much as it pains me, we need to be fair to Harless. Oh,” Merlin waved a hand as Cayleb’s eyebrows flew up, “I’m not suggesting he’s a military genius! But we can’t afford to underestimate the other side, and even if he’s not in the same league as somebody like Gorthyk Nybar or Bishop Militant Bahrnabai, he may not be as completely feckless as Ahlverez thinks he is. He screwed up because of his own prejudices and inexperience—personal inexperience—and it cost him a hell of a lot of men. But he had the excuse that he was inexperienced, which is a hell of a lot more than Kaitswyrth had when he launched that assault on Eastshare. And he learned from it, Cayleb. I’m not saying he won’t find fresh mistakes to make, but I’ll be surprised if he makes this one again, and we need to remember the difference between incompetence born of ignorance and incompetence born of outright stupidity.”
“You’re probably right,” Cayleb said after a moment, looking back out over Siddar City’s roofs. “I’m not prepared to rule out outright stupidity in his case just yet, though.”
“I admit the jury’s still out,” Merlin agreed. “Let’s not forget Ahlverez’ performance, though. That man, at least, is a lot smarter than I thought he was. He’s still a stiff-necked, bigoted fanatic who prefers to substitute aristocratic rank for ability and who’s likely to allow his thinking to be swayed as much by fervor as logic. He’s as ambitious as the next noble, too, and it’s obvious he really can hold a grudge until it dies of old age. Earl Thirsk shouldn’t be trusting him behind him with a dagger anytime soon, for example. But Desnairian noblemen make his bigotry look like the ravings of a utopian anarchist! Worse, he’s demonstrated he can learn from experience, and I really wish he hadn’t.”
“I believe you’re the one who pointed out that we can’t expect the villains to have a monopoly on stupidity. I suppose it follows that we can’t expect our side to have a monopoly on competence, either.”
“I’m afraid not. And at the moment, given the opportunity, Ahlverez would have a hard time deciding who he’d sooner put a bullet into: Harless or a heretic. The longer that goes on, the happier I’ll be. In the meantime, Nahrmahn and Owl’re keeping an eye on them. They’ll let us know if anything unanticipated—like a sudden lovefest between them—happens. And unless it does, I don’t think anyone has to worry about whether or not Hauwerd and Fyguera will manage to hold Thesmar.” The seijin shrugged. “For now, I don’t know anything new about the situation there that we could share with the Lord Protector or Parkair. Not without getting into those interesting questions we need to avoid, anyway.”
Cayleb’s lips quirked at Merlin’s dry tone. Greyghor Stohnar and his ministers had been deeply impressed—actually, “astonished” might have been a better word—by the depth and efficacy of the Charisian spy network in the Republic. Delighted, of course, but also a bit miffed by the fact that the Charisians had been able to emplace such an extensive intelligence system without ever being noticed by Henrai Maidyn’s counterintelligence agents. Under the circumstances, they were disinclined to complain, and they were also disinclined to joggle the Charisians’ elbow by demanding any details about who their spies were and how they were organized. The Siddarmarkians understood the need to maintain operational security; they’d had conclusive proof of the impressive accuracy of their ally’s reports; and the ancient aphorism—“if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it”—had survived among Safeholdian humanity.
They would have been eve
n more impressed by the Charisian’s intelligence reports if they’d realized those reports were deliberately providing occasionally inaccurate information. Of course, had they analyzed those inaccuracies and “errors,” they would have discovered the mistakes always had relatively minor implications, although Merlin sincerely hoped they never guessed that they’d been included to prevent them from realizing that Charis’ spies were simply too good.
And then there was Aivah Pahrsahn, who’d come to function as a sort of general clearinghouse for the Allies’ intelligence reports. Her own net of agents in the Temple Lands provided quite a few of those reports (including information from Zion, where Merlin and Nahrmahn remained very hesitant about operating sensor remotes aggressively), and while she held no official standing with the Republic or the Empire, no one in either of those realms doubted her complete and total dedication to the downfall of the Group of Four. Of course, no one in either of those realms thought for a moment that she was putting all of her cards on the table any more than they were, either. For example, Merlin found it very interesting that none of Madam Pahrsahn’s agents (to judge from her reports to Cayleb and Lord Protector Greyghor, which, according to Owl’s remotes, weren’t always precisely identical to reports from her agents to her) had apparently noticed that half a dozen or so vicars had died recently under mysterious circumstances.
And more power to her, he thought now.
She was just as good as Nahrmahn Baytz when it came to putting together bits and pieces, however, and given that Bynzhamyn Raice, Charis’ official spymaster, was in far distant Tellesberg and that Henrai Maidyn’s crushing responsibilities as the Republic’s finance minister left him very little time to spend running spy networks, at the moment turning her into the Allies’ effective intelligence minister had struck both Cayleb and Stohnar as perfectly logical.
After the fact, at least. It rather amused Merlin that neither of them had even considered making that decision until they woke up one morning and realized they’d already made it.
They sure did find all kinds of “logical reasons” in the end, though, didn’t they? he thought.
“What about Eastshare and Kynt?” Cayleb asked, and Merlin blinked as the question pulled him back up out of his thoughts.
“I think Stohnar and Parkair are about as up-to-date on both of them as we could want,” he said. “Stohnar, at least, is a little more nervous about Eastshare’s strategy than he wants to admit, but he’s onboard with it. Which isn’t to say he won’t be happier when that brigade of his reaches Glacierheart to reinforce Hobsyn. But Kaitswyrth isn’t going to be trying anything aggressive for five-days yet, at the least, after the way he got his ass kicked up between his ears. And even if he did, Eastshare left enough artillery—and enough scout snipers—to give him nightmares in that kind of terrain.
“As for Kynt, the turnaround on our semaphore messages to him is barely an hour. That keeps us about as up-to-date as it gets, and so far there’s no sign Wyrshym even realizes he’s moved back from Wyvern Lake. He’ll be finding out in the next couple of days, when Kynt starts sweeping up the Temple Loyalist militia in Mountaincross. I’m rather looking forward to that.” The seijin bared his teeth briefly. “Those bastards’ve run up a damned steep tab, and it’s past time they got a chance to start paying it back down.”
Sapphire eyes met equally cold eyes of brown for a moment, and then Merlin shrugged.
“As I say, everyone’s up-to-date on Glacierheart and Mountaincross. Certainly up-to-date enough there’s no point risking someone like Mahldyn or Aivah wondering how we get information back and forth at superhuman speed. I think we could reasonably expect another report about Thesmar from Seijin Ahbraim in about another five-day, though. That should give us enough time for my mysterious network of seijins and their sympathizers to get us a message from him.” He smiled crookedly. “For that matter, if Seijin Merlin can find a reason to be somewhere else, Seijin Ahbraim could brief us in person.”
“Don’t you ever find that a bit confusing?”
“Frequently, actually.” Merlin’s smile grew even more crooked. “Frankly, the hardest bit’s remembering what conversations each of my various personalities have had with whom.”
Cayleb chuckled, but then his expression turned rather more serious.
“Are we burning that candle from too many ends, Merlin? I know it’s useful, and I know you were at least half joking just now, but it was a valid point. How many people can you be—how many balls can you keep in the air—before you finally drop one and we wind up with something we can’t explain away?”
Merlin grimaced, because Cayleb had a point.
So far as they were aware, none of the Group of Four had discovered that Seijin Merlin had “visions.” They’d been careful to restrict that particular cover story to a very small group of Charisians, despite how useful it had proven. The members of the inner circle knew the truth about the network of SNARCs upon which those “visions” depended, but they still provided a handy explanation for people like Ahlfryd Hyndryk and others who’d been cleared for that story and needed access to the information but hadn’t been included in the inner circle.
Unfortunately, “visions” could be almost as unhappy an explanation as the truth if they came to the Inquisition’s attention, and Merlin Athrawes had become increasingly visible. Or, rather, the fact that he was more than simply Cayleb Ahrmahk’s most lethal bodyguard had become increasingly evident to the Group of Four. That had been inevitable, really, although Merlin’s prominent part in rescuing Irys and Daivyn from Delferahk had made it even worse.
The Church of God’s propagandists had labeled Merlin as Cayleb’s “demon familiar” even before that particular adventure, given the seijin’s uncanny ability to prevent assassinations, yet the Inquisition had carefully not made the accusation openly for years. There’d been several reasons for that—including the fact that Zhaspahr Clyntahn would have faced the rather pressing problem that while Mother Church taught that demons existed, she also taught that their appearance in the mortal world would be answered with a divine response … which, unhappily for the Inquisition, hadn’t happened.
But that reluctance to label him as a demonic presence had changed after the escape from Delferahk provided too much evidence of Merlin Athrawes’ “superhuman” abilities for even the Inquisition to quash. Worse, the increasing evidence of his “seijin spy network” clearly proved he wasn’t the only seijin in the woodwork, and that threatened to turn into a serious problem. Both The Testimonies and The Commentaries made it clear that the original seijins had fought on the side of the Light during the War Against the Fallen. Since those same sources made it crystal clear that no seijin would ever raise his hand against the authority Langhorne himself had bestowed upon Mother Church, he must manifestly be something else.
Unless the Group of Four weren’t God’s champions after all, of course.
Given the alternatives, the Inquisition had made the label official. He could not be a true seijin; therefore, he must be the spawn of evil against whom the true seijins had always fought, and the Grand Inquisitor had solemnly proclaimed that the “Demon Athrawes” was to be slain by any means possible by any faithful child of Mother Church. Assuming, that was, that anyone was willing to get close enough to him to make the attempt.
That was undoubtedly the best explanation available to them, although it still left the problem of where his divine opposition was. Merlin expected Clyntahn and Rayno to use any Charisian reverse as proof that God and the Archangels were taking a stand against Shan-wei’s servants, but that was exactly what they’d been doing as the Sword of Schueler drove the Republic towards collapse, and the argument was rather less convincing after the last couple of months. And, of course, remarkably few Reformists—and no member of the Church of Charis—paid much attention to Clyntahn’s proclamations these days.
Yet a sort of bred-in-the-bone respect for Mother Church’s decrees lingered. Merlin suspected that respect gave
even Clyntahn’s pronouncements at least a subliminal toehold even with many who consciously rejected them. That was inevitable after so many centuries of the Church’s unquestioned authority, and thereby hung the problem. The many extraordinary abilities tradition assigned to seijins could cover quite a bit, but there were limits in all things. They really couldn’t afford to have people, especially people in critical positions, starting to wonder if perhaps in this particular case Clyntahn knew what he was talking about. If they did, the damage to the Church of Charis’ credibility could be disastrous, for if Merlin was a demon, all the accusations of blasphemy, corruption, perversion, child-sacrifice, demon summoning, and Shan-wei worship became damnably more believable.
“The possibility of one of my personae dropping a ball is one reason I’m glad we’re filtering so much of our ‘spy network’s reports’ through Aivah these days,” he admitted. “And thank God Owl’s such an accomplished forger!”
