by David Weber
None of which helped a great deal when it came to deciding what to do if the heretics were moving on Maiyam in force. Especially if they were already that close to the town. They could easily have already reached Maiyam—and destroyed Colonel Tahlyvyr’s garrison—by the time the message reached him.
Well, assuming there really is a column advancing towards Charlzvyl, it’s way too far away for me to do anything about it. Cahstnyr’s just going to have to be Bairystyr’s problem, and welcome to it. Greentown is my responsibility, according to orders, but Bryskoh ought to be safe enough for now. Even if they’ve actually taken Maiyam already, they’ll have almost two hundred miles of river and lake to cross before they can threaten him directly, and that assumes Tahlyvyr didn’t destroy the Maiyam Locks before they pushed him out of town. So the first move is obviously to concentrate my forces and find out what has—or hasn’t—actually happened at Maiyam.
“All right, Ahrthyr.” He looked back up at his executive officer. “When you send the message to Colonel Pahlmair, tell him we’ll be taking Third and Fourth Companies to Maiyam. I suggest he concentrate his own regiment and join us at Traylmyn’s Farm so we can proceed together.”
Traylmyn’s Farm had once been a small, relatively prosperous farming village. These days it was a clutter of charred ruins, but it made a convenient rendezvous point forty miles northeast of Maiyam on a farm road between the town and the Greentown High Road.
“After that, send a messenger to Zhadwail. Tell him to bring First and Second Companies to join us at Traylmyn’s Farm as quickly as possible. Also send a courier to Major Bryskoh with a copy of our message to Pahlmair and my orders to Zhadwail. Instruct the Major to forward both of them to Colonel Bairystyr by semaphore. Also inform him that he needs to maintain a high alert against the possibility of heretics crossing the lake in canal barges in case they really have taken Maiyam and got the locks intact.”
“At once, Sir!” Major Wyllyms slapped his breastplate in salute, then turned and left the tent quickly when Tyrnyr nodded to him. The colonel watched him go, before he turned back to Bryskoh’s messenger.
“I suspect you know the tracks and trails around here better than I do. We’ll find you a horse, and then I’d like you to guide my courier to Major Bryskoh and make sure the message gets there as quickly as possible.”
“I c’n do that,” the Siddarmarkian replied.
“Good.” The colonel shook his head, looking back down at the map, trying to think of anyone else he should be sure was informed of his proposed movements. “I doubt this is going to turn out to be as bad as the initial messages suggest, but I’m not going to take any chances either. We’ll find out what’s really going on, then do a little something about it.”
* * *
“Do you think they’ve started to scurry around yet, Sir?” Lieutenant Slokym asked, gazing up the river towards Grayback Lake.
“Oh, I imagine they have,” Baron Green Valley replied with a thin smile. In fact, he was watching the AOG’s cavalry screen “scurry around” at that very moment, courtesy of the SNARCs. And very satisfying scurrying it was.
He stood on the docks reaching out into the broad, deep-flowing Mountaincross River above Maiyam. They’d managed to take the town remarkably intact, largely because Colonel Lyndahr Tahlyvyr’s garrison had consisted of a single understrength “regiment” supported by the majority of Maiyam’s adult—and semi-adult, unfortunately—male population. Casualties among the civilian defenders had been even heavier than among the militamen, and there was little Green Valley’s healers could do for all too many of them. The screams of wounded, barely adolescent boys—and the torn, lifeless bodies of their brothers—were enough to turn anyone’s stomach. On the other hand, Kynt Clarek had seen a lot of things fit to turn his stomach here in the Republic, and there was only one way anyone could bring those things to an end.
He’d like to blame Tahlyvyr for those broken, too-young bodies, but the decision hadn’t been the colonel’s. The orders had come from Father Bryntyn Ahdymsyn, the Schuelerite under-priest who’d been Maiyam’s schoolmaster before the rebellion. It had been his demand that had sent those boys—many of them his own students—into battle, and the one point Green Valley could see in his favor was that at least he’d died leading them, fighting at their head with no better weapon than a sword he’d never been trained to use. Tahlyvyr had tried to argue with the priest, and he’d done his best to put the boys in the positions of least danger, however little good it had done in the end. He’d also realized Green Valley was coming before his men actually arrived. Not all of the Temple Loyalist commanders between Maiyam and the Sylmahn Gap had been equally alert.
Company A of the 1st Scout Sniper Regiment’s 4th Battalion, mounted for the occasion on horses borrowed from the Siddarmarkian cavalry regiment attached to Green Valley’s Charisians, had seized Chestyrvyl, at the southern terminus of the lake from the single company of Temple Loyalist guerrillas—the so-called 5th Mountaincross Rangers—squatting in the ruins of its burned buildings. The “rangers” had outnumbered Captain Rehgnyld Ahzbyrn’s men by barely two to one and they’d never had a clue Ahzbyrn was coming until his men hit them. It had gone against the grain to let any of the scum who’d wreaked such havoc in Mountaincross and Midhold escape, but the scout sniper captain had obeyed orders, and almost a dozen of the four hundred rangers had gotten away.
Major Kahlvyn Rydnauyr, Chestyrvyl’s commanding officer, had not been among them. Under the circumstances, and given Rydnauyr’s practice of burning suspected heretics’ houses with their owners still inside while his men used anyone who escaped through the boarded-up windows or doors for target practice, Green Valley had already decided not to ask exactly how it was that the major had ended up with a pistol ball behind his left ear. He did regret that Father Zefrym Shyllyr had escaped before he could receive the same treatment, however. Shyllyr had lacked even the excuse of being an Inquisitor, but the Langhornite under-priest had attached himself to Rydnauyr’s command as its “chaplain,” and whatever he’d lacked in formal ecclesiastic authority he’d more than made up in pure, vicious fanaticism. He’d actively encouraged Rydnauyr’s atrocities, and Green Valley—acting upon unspecified “spy reports”—had formally designated him an “acting Inquisitor,” subject to imperial policy where Inquisitors were concerned, before sending Company A off to Chestyrvyl. He’d really hoped Ahzbyrn would be able to enforce the policy in his case.
Well, you may catch up with him yet. For that matter, there’s a better than even chance the son-of-a-bitch will manage to drown himself for you.
The thought gave the baron a certain satisfaction. Shyllyr was too terrified of the retribution he’d earned to even think about coming back ashore anywhere where the “heretic hordes” might get their hands on him, so he’d set out on the ninety-four-mile voyage from Chestyrvyl to Greentown across the longest portion of lake by himself in a rowboat.
Colonel Tahlyvyr was also dead, a fact which Green Valley came much closer to regretting. He’d been a Temple Loyalist, an extremist, a mutineer, and a traitor, but he’d at least tried to keep his militia regiment under discipline and under control. It was possible he might have attempted to surrender, but he hadn’t had time for that. The Maiyam Locks connecting the Tairmana Canal to the Mountaincross River were a critical part of Green Valley’s planning, and Zhaspahr Clyntahn had granted a blanket dispensation allowing the destruction of locks and canals when the Jihad’s military necessity required it, despite the Writ’s prohibition of such actions. It still wasn’t anything someone was going to undertake lightly, or when he wasn’t pretty damned certain the Inquisition would agree it truly had been necessary, but thanks to the SNARCs, Green Valley had known Tahlyvyr planned to do exactly that. As a consequence, he’d ordered Brigadier Mylz to take the town—and especially the waterfront area—as quickly as possible, and Colonel Preskyt Tahnaiyr’s 3rd Regiment had discharged the assignment with dispatch.
Tahnaiyr’s 1st a
nd 3rd Battalions had circled around to the river east of Maiyam under cover of darkness, then stormed the waterfront at the point of the bayonet. They’d lost sixty men in the attack, but their assault had been preceded by a brief, violent mortar bombardment, and they’d made liberal use of the newly improved hand grenades provided by the Delthak Works.
Black powder grenades were fairly anemic, and iron casings tended to fragment into a very few large, fairly low velocity pieces, which inflicted relatively few casualties and gave them a short radius of lethality. They’d proved a disappointment in the Corisande Campaign, but Ehdwyrd Howsmyn’s artisans had taken up the challenge, and the new grenades used cylindrical, stick-mounted tin casings instead of iron. Each of them was actually a double-walled cylinder, two inches wide and four and a half inches tall, reinforced longitudinally with three thin, equally spaced iron strips. The flat top was closed by an iron plate, attached to the reinforcing strips with screws, and the central cavity was packed with two pounds of pelletized gunpowder through a threaded opening in the bottom before the throwing stick was screwed into it. The one-inch gap between the inner and outer walls was packed with lead balls, with molten sulfur poured in around them to prevent them from shifting, before the top plate was secured, and a lanyard through the hole drilled lengthwise through the stick connected to a friction primer. It was a hefty weight, but the throwing stick helped considerably, and the cloud of musket balls which punched through the tin walls when it detonated was devastating. It had also turned out to be quite effective at starting fires, although the Delthak Works promised specialized incendiary and smoke grenades sometime soon.
This was the first time they’d been used in combat, and coming on the heels of the mortar bombardment—which none of Tahlyvyr’s men had ever encountered before, either—they’d been even more devastating to the Temple Loyalists’ morale than to their bodies. The men detailed to fire the charges intended to blow the locks had fled with their companions, and Tahlyvyr had been killed leading a hopeless charge to retake the waterfront long enough to destroy them.
Whatever else he may’ve been, the man had guts, Green Valley reflected. I’m not going to shed any tears for him, but if I’d had the chance I would’ve preferred to take him alive.
What mattered at the moment, though, was that he had Maiyam and none of the garrison had escaped across the deep, swift-flowing river. There were a handful of fugitives dodging through the fields and forests south of the river, but none of them were on the Army of God’s bank and none had escaped upriver by boat, which meant Wyrshym’s screening cavalry regiments were operating blind.
“Find Major Dyasaiyl, Bryahn,” he said, still gazing up the river towards the lake. “Tell him I want his scout snipers to get across on the ferry and push out a couple of miles towards the Greentown High Road. Warn him to keep a special eye on the road to Traylmyn’s Farm, too. I’m sure he would anyway, but if there are any Temple Boys in the vicinity, that’s where they’re most likely to be, I think. And if I were Wyrshym, they’d be cavalry, not infantry. Tell Dyasaiyl I want observers and couriers who can get back to the river before any Temple Boy cavalry comes calling. Hopefully without being spotted themselves. Then ask Colonel Tahnaiyr if I can borrow Major Naismyth.”
* * *
“Heretic regulars? At Chestyrvyl and Maiyam? That’s ridiculous!”
Bishop Militant Bahrnabai Wyrshym glared at the brown-haired young lieutenant who’d had the misfortune to bring him the semaphore dispatch. Lieutenant Ghordyn Fainstyn was the bishop militant’s junior aide, an efficient young man who normally enjoyed his superior’s favor. At the moment, that favor seemed somewhat less pronounced than usual.
Wisely, the young man said nothing, and after a moment, Wyrshym’s glare abated. He dropped the dispatch on his desk and sat back in his chair, transferring his gaze from Fainstyn to Colonel Clairdon Mahkswail, his senior aide. Mahkswail, who would have been called chief of staff in the Charisian Army, looked back at him rather more calmly than he actually felt.
“How in Chihiro’s name could they possibly have Charisian regulars that far east of the Gap?” Wyrshym demanded in what both aides recognized was a rhetorical question. “Did they manage to pull them away from our front without anyone even noticing?”
That was a rather less rhetorical inquiry. Indeed, it was a distinctly pointed one, and Mahkswail grimaced.
“I don’t think so, My Lord, but it’s possible they might’ve pulled at least some strength away.” The colonel’s expression was as unhappy as his tone. “I hate to say it, but the truth is that those damned ‘scout snipers’ of theirs are better than any light infantry we’ve got. Even with local guides, trying to get our patrols around their flanks to see what’s going on behind their front is a losing proposition. We’re still trying, but we’re taking a lot of casualties for very little return.”
“And the upshot is that we don’t really know what they may be doing in their rear areas,” Wyrshym said sourly.
“Essentially, yes,” Mahkswail admitted. “The reports we’re seeing are the best ones anyone can give us, My Lord. I’d be less than honest if I suggested that they were anything remotely like definitive and complete.”
“Wonderful.”
Wyrshym closed his eyes, raised his hand, and pinched the bridge of his nose. He was confident Allayn Maigwair understood the situation on his front and why he was stuck here, holding the cork in the Sylmahn Gap against the heretics just as they’d held the cork at Serabor against him, despite his numerical advantage. From conversations with Auxiliary Bishop Ernyst Abernethy, the Army of the Sylmahn’s special intendant, he was rather less confident Zhaspahr Clyntahn shared Vicar Allayn’s views.
Frankly, the bishop militant was astounded Clyntahn had been willing to even consider, far less agree to, Vicar Allayn’s decision to pull his pikemen back to the Border States, on the far side of his sundered supply lines. There were less of them than there had been—Wyrshym had been turning them into riflemen as rapidly as he could, given the relatively low number of new rifles which had managed to make their way to the front—but there’d still been over thirty thousand. That made thirty thousand less mouths for him to feed, which would be a godsend over the winter, but it also left him with little more than sixty-five thousand men, a quarter of them cavalry. Once fighting spread beyond the Sylmahn Gap, he was going to be far too thin on the ground to pursue the sorts of adventures Clyntahn wanted him to undertake, and that could prove … unfortunate.
Wyrsym got along well with his own special intendant on a personal level. He liked Bishop Ernyst, and he knew he was fortunate to have the young Schuelerite instead of one of the narrow-minded, intolerant zealots like Cahnyr Kaitswyrth’s Sedryk Zavyr or even some of the other Inquisitors assigned to the Army of the Sylmahn’s regiments. Nonetheless, Abernethy had no choice but to pass along the reports from the Grand Inquisitor and deliver the directed homilies to the troops every Wednesday, and their tone suggested Clyntahn’s patience was limited, to say the least.
And he won’t take kindly to any suggestion that the heretics are even thinking about retaking southern Midhold and eastern Mountaincross, either. That’s the farthest east the “Rising” succeeded—Allyntyn’s less than three hundred miles from the coast. Shan-wei, it’s less than nine hundred miles from Siddar City! He won’t take kindly to coughing up the crown jewel of his Sword of Schueler, whatever the reason. That means he’s going to insist I do something to prevent it when I don’t even know where the heretics found the men to make the effort!
The bishop militant suppressed a temptation to use language which would have been far more suitable for simple Colonel Wyrshym of the Temple Guard, because if Clyntahn did insist on that, he was very probably going to be right—or much closer to it than usual—if only for all the wrong reasons.
He lowered his hand and opened his eyes again, looking at the huge map on his office wall. A large red pushpin represented his own headquarters at Guarnak, which remained the Ar
my of the Sylmahn’s primary supply head, despite the heretics’ canal raid. Other, smaller pins represented other forces, including the one at Allyntyn in Midhold, representing Bishop Qwentyn Preskyt and Bishop Zhaksyn Mahkhal. Their four thousand men were there ostensibly to support the Faithful throughout Midhold, but their true purpose—as Vicar Allayn, at least, understood perfectly well—was to protect the Northland Gap.
It was unlikely the heretics could drive him out of his present position with frontal attacks up the Sylmahn Gap. His defenses were too strong for that. Even if they’d been willing to take the casualties, any assault could only have failed, so they had to be considering other approaches to removing him. There weren’t a lot of those “other approaches” available, however, and there’d be even fewer once they evacuated their enclave at Salyk on Spinefish Bay. That had to happen in the next month or so—certainly by early November—because of the ice, and while they might—might—land troops at Ranshair to come at his rear that way, instead, he rather thought it was too late in the year for that, as well. Ranshair Bay usually froze, as well, and the heretics wouldn’t want to put a significant force into the field when winter might be all it took to cut its supply lines.
