by David Weber
Wyrshym’s lips twitched with bitter amusement at that thought. He’d had more experience of his own with cut supply lines than he’d ever wanted.
But with Salyk and Ranshair struck from the list, that left an overland attack through Midhold, Northland, and the Northland Gap as the most likely threat. There were ports and fishing villages along the Midhold coast where supplies could be landed even in winter if they had to be. Not that it was likely such measures would be necessary. The road and canal net to Grayback Lake and then to Allyntyn was well developed and seldom seriously hampered by winter weather. Yet while he’d been aware of the possible threat for quite some time, Wyrshym hadn’t considered it an immediate probability simply because he’d known the only available Charisian forces were still bogged down in the Sylmahn Gap, thirteen hundred miles from the Northland Gap. But if there truly were Charisians at Chestyrtyn, they were already more than halfway there … and less than five hundred straight-line miles from Allyntyn.
All of which suddenly made that four-thousand-man garrison look a lot less secure than it had appeared five minutes ago.
“All right,” he said finally, turning back to Mahkswail. “Until we hear something more from Bairystyr, we have to assume the Charisians truly have taken Chestyrtyn and are advancing on Maiyam and, probably, Greentown. I’m inclined to think the column attack on Charlzvyl’s a diversion. If I were the heretics, I wouldn’t waste effort on the place; I’d want the Maiyam Locks and the line of the Mountaincross to Greentown a lot worse than a mostly destroyed town in the fork of two rivers I wasn’t planning on using anyway.” He shook his head. “No. Maiyam would give me the best supply line for an advance on Allyntyn, and as soon as I had Braikstyn and Greentown, I could pacify everything between there and the mountains with secondary forces. Considering the opposition, I could even do it with militiamen without rifles.”
Mahkswail nodded, and Wyrshym continued.
“Send a dispatch to Bishop Qwentyn. Tell him … tell him he’s to deploy his cavalry to most effectively protect the Faithful in Midhold, coordinating with the Faithful’s forces in the field to the best of its ability, while maintaining a sufficient screen between Allyntyn and Greentown to locate, identify, and harry any advance in his direction.”
“Yes, My Lord.” Mahkswail’s tone indicated that he understood why the mealymouthed arse-covering first half of Bishop Qwentyn’s orders was necessary. And that the second half was the critical one.
“After you do that, instruct Bishop Gorthyk, Bishop Adulfo, and Bishop Harys to prepare their divisions for movement. I want them fully supplied with food, ammunition, winter clothing, and artillery support. Find the wagons and dragons wherever you have to, and make their rifle regiments up to full strength even if that means drafting men from other divisions. If anyone complains, tell them they can discuss it with me personally. Bishop Gorthyk will be the officer in command. Tell him to plan on moving to Allyntyn on very short notice and that he’ll assume command of all of our forces in Midhold from Bishop Qwentyn if it proves necessary to send him there. And after you’ve done all that, I want a hard look at any additional cavalry we can squeeze out to send with him. Horsemen aren’t doing us any good in the Gap, and if the heretics truly are pushing into Midhold, we need as much mobility as possible to deal with them.”
“Yes, My Lord.”
“And while the colonel’s doing that, Ghordyn,” Wyrshym continued, turning to Lieutenant Fainstyn with a wintry smile, “I want you to request Bishop Ernyst to join me here at his earliest convenience. Please inform him that it’s very important I have the latest available information on possible additional heretic troop landings. If they really have moved significant forces into Midhold, they have to’ve come from somewhere, and we need to know where—and in what sort of strength—as quickly as we can.”
* * *
Walkyr Tyrnyr felt an uncomfortable itch between his shoulder blades. There was no reason for it that he could see, and he told himself it was simply nerves. He’d united his regiment with Bryntyn Pahlmair’s as planned last night and, as the senior colonel, taken command of the combined force. No regiment was ever fully up to strength, but he still had over six hundred troopers moving down the farm track towards Maiyam, which was certainly a sufficiently powerful striking force to look after itself. And if he could get them across the Maiyam ferry to reinforce Tahlyvyr.…
Of course, that assumed Tahlyvyr was still in possession of Maiyam, but he’d become cautiously more optimistic about that as the 16th and the 53rd trotted steadily south without encountering any refugees from the town. He wouldn’t have cared to try swimming the Mountaincross himself, but there were enough boats in the town that someone should’ve gotten across before any heretic raiders could seize the place. By his calculations, they were within three or four miles of the river by now, though, riding across the desolate, largely abandoned fields, and they’d met absolutely no one.
At least the weather was clear and dry. Tyrnyr was from the Duchy of Malansath, near the coast of the Gulf of Dohlar, and September nights this far north were overly chilly for his taste. There’d been frost this morning, and it had taken him the better part of an hour to get the blood circulating properly. Still, it had warmed up nicely since. The sky was clear, with only a handful of puffy white clouds, the sun was bright, and the breeze out of the north was merely brisk, without the bite it had carried right after dawn. It had turned into a pleasant day for a ride, in fact, and at this rate they’d reach the river in—
His thoughts paused as a horseman came cantering towards the 16th’s standard. He recognized one of his scouts, and those itching shoulders of his tightened as he observed the trooper’s rapid pace. He threw up his hand and his bugler sounded the halt as he drew rein.
“Well, Sergeant?” he said as the scout reached him.
“Begging your pardon, Sir, but there’s what does look t’ be heretic regulars—Charisians, at that—up ahead.”
“There are?”
The noncom nodded and a hollow sensation in the vicinity of his stomach joined the tension in Tyrnyr’s shoulders.
“Yes, Sir. Hard t’ mistake those uniforms.”
“How many?”
“Don’t have a hard count, Sir, but I don’t see how it could be more’n a couple of hundred.”
“You’re confident of that?” Tyrnyr asked, deliberately keeping his tone calm, refusing to pressure the sergeant, even if it did sound suspiciously short of the “forty or fifty thousand” he’d been warned to expect.
“Like I say, we couldn’t get a hard count, but it can’t be much more’n that, Sir. I think they spotted our patrol, because they were just forming up on a little hill off in the fields t’ one side of the road when we saw them. Don’t think they wanted t’ play catch-as-catch-can with cavalry in the open, and can’t say I blame ’em, given how flat and open it is between here and the river. I circled round the far side of the hill myself, though, just t’ make sure they weren’t hiding something nasty on t’other side of it, but it’s not that much of a hill, when all’s said. Barely big enough for the lot of them, and nothing behind it ’cept more weeds and empty pastures.”
“No guns?”
“None I could see, Sir. Might be they’ve got a few of those portable angle-guns, but they can’t have many if they do. No place t’ put ’em.”
“I see.” Tyrnyr inhaled deeply. “Thank you, Sergeant. You’ve done well. Get back to your patrol and keep an eye on them.”
“Yes, Sir!”
The noncom saluted, turned, and trotted back to the south, and Tyrnyr turned to Major Wyllyms.
“Thoughts?”
“Beats the Shan-wei out of me, Sir,” Wyllyms said frankly. “It’s not good news they’re north of the river, though. That’s for sure. Do you think they’ve taken Maiyam?”
“I don’t know what I think.” Tyrnyr drummed the fingers of his right hand on the pommel of his saddle while he considered. “There shouldn’t be any Charisians n
orth of the river. On the other hand, the Sergeant seems pretty confident there are only two or three hundred of them. Somehow I doubt the heretics would have the equivalent of a couple of our companies swanning around up here on their own! Oh,” he stopped drumming to wave his hand, “if they’ve got the manpower to take back Midhold, it’d make sense for them to do it. That’s why the Bishop Militant has us out here in the first place. But no matter how hard I try, I can’t quite convince myself they’d be stupid enough to stick a force that small out on its own to get the chop.”
He removed his helmet and ran his fingers through his hair, frowning thoughtfully for most of a minute. Then he squared his shoulders and nodded.
“The only one way to find out what’s going on is to go look. The Sergeant’s right about how flat the terrain is, so it’s not like they could hide another couple of thousand men to jump on us. And if they don’t have artillery, they’ve got to be feeling a little nervous. I’m going to assume they do have some of those small angle-guns of theirs, whether the Sergeant saw them or not, but as far as I know their gunners have never tried to use them with five or six hundred cavalry coming straight at them. I imagine that might shake their aim a bit.”
“So you’re planning an attack, Sir?”
“I’m not attacking anything unless I think I can kick its arse,” Tyrnyr said frankly. “It’s not my job to get a lot of our lads killed gloriously—it’s my job to find out what’s going on and report it to Bishop Qwentyn at Allyntyn. That doesn’t mean I’ll pass up the opportunity to run over these bastards if it offers itself, though.” His smile was bleak. “We all want some of our own back after Serabor. More to the point, any prisoners we take will tell the Bishop everything he wants to know by the time the Question’s through with them.”
“Yes, Sir.” Wyllyms’ smile was even colder than Tyrnyr’s.
“We’re also not going to do anything without making sure Bishop Qwentyn’ll be fully informed if it should happen something goes wrong,” Tyrnyr continued. “Go inform Colonel Pahlmair that I intend to advance, observe the situation, and—assuming conditions appear favorable—attack. And while you’re doing that, send couriers to Colonel Bairystyr and also directly to Allyntyn. Inform them that we’ve confirmed the presence of Charisian regulars in Midhold, north of the Mountaincross River, and that I’ll be sending additional reports as more information becomes available.”
* * *
“I sure do hope the Major isn’t being overly clever about this,” Lieutenant Ahbraim Mahzyngail murmured as he watched the Army of God cavalry.
“It wasn’t the Major’s brainstorm,” Lieutenant Trumyn Dunstyn replied from the corner of his mouth.
The youthful lieutenants stood just below the crest of the small hill (although in their opinion calling such a miserable elevation a “hill” maligned a perfectly respectable noun). The standard of Company A, 2nd Battalion, 3rd Regiment, Imperial Charisian Army, had been planted atop that hill by Major Cahrtair Naismyth, Company A’s commanding officer. Mahzyngail commanded the company’s 2nd Platoon, while Dunstyn commanded 1st Platoon, and their men happened to be deployed along the eastern face of their hill, waiting to find out what the Temple Boys had in mind.
“It was Baron Green Valley himself, I heard,” Dunstyn continued.
“Really?”
Mahzyngail perked up, and Dunstyn smiled crookedly. The men of 2nd Brigade—for that matter, the men of the entire Imperial Charisian Army—had enormous faith in Green Valley’s judgment. His ability to read a tactical situation was almost as legendary as Emperor Cayleb’s ability to do the same thing at sea, and he constantly pounded home the need to husband manpower carefully when he critiqued training maneuvers. Both those qualities tended to reassure people he sent to do risky things that he planned on getting as few as possible of them killed and probably knew what he was doing when he sent them out.
Probably. Even Emperor Cayleb had made mistakes upon occasion, after all. Still, some things were less likely than others.
And the baron had better have it right this time, Dustyn reflected. Company A had been deliberately parked in its exposed position, with only half its organic mortar platoon in support, when the mounted scout snipers came galloping back to Maiyam with word that enemy cavalry was headed that way. There could be several reasons for that, but the one that struck Dustyn as most likely was that Baron Green Valley wanted to tempt the Temple Boys into attacking them and figured even they’d be smart enough to leave a full battalion supported by field guns alone. Dustyn had no objection to engaging the Army of God. Any awe he might have felt for the Temple Boys had been pretty thoroughly laid to rest during the advance from Serabor to Wyvern Lake. And Duke Eastshare had kicked arse and taken names along the Daivyn, too. The lieutenant would prefer, however, to have something like at least equal odds, and at the moment the odds looked distinctly unequal.
* * *
“Be damned, Sir,” Major Wyllyms observed. “They are standing there with their bare arses blowing in the wind, aren’t they?”
“So it would appear,” Tyrnyr replied, peering through his spyglass.
The sergeant’s numerical estimate seemed to be pretty much spot on. The reports he’d read suggested that an Imperial Charisian Army company was about twice the size of an Army of God infantry company, and he saw a single standard atop the hill. So call it between two hundred and two hundred and thirty men. And there were no field guns anywhere around. The sergeant had also been correct in his estimate that the heretics couldn’t possibly’ve crammed more than a half dozen of their small angle-guns into the available space. And the patrol which had been left to keep an eye on them while the sergeant reported back had seen no evidence the heretics were trying to reinforce this isolated detachment.
On the other hand, they weren’t trying to withdraw it, either, which Tyrnyr damned well would’ve been doing in their place.
Assuming he could, that was.
Somehow they must’ve gotten across the river and then been stuck on this side, he decided, lowering the spyglass and pursing his lips pensively. But how? The scouts’ve swept all the way to the riverbank now without seeing any boats on this side. Maybe they got across on the ferry and sent it back to Maiyam for reinforcements? But if they did, why hasn’t anyone joined them? Unless.…
“I think they did attack Maiyam,” he said slowly. “I never did put much faith in that ‘forty or fifty thousand’ business, but the heretics might’ve sent a force smaller than that after the Maiyam Locks. If they did they were probably hoping for surprise, but Tahlyvyr obviously knew they were coming, since he got his messengers off to Bryskoh and Colonel Pahlmair. It’s possible—maybe even probable—they managed to push him out of the town, anyway. He didn’t have that many men, unfortunately. And if the heretics did take the town, they probably took the ferry, too, which would explain how these fellows wound up on our side of the river.”
“And why didn’t they fall back on Maiyam when they spotted us, Sir?”
“I’ve been wondering that myself, and I think it’s possible Tahlyvyr may’ve managed a counterattack. I don’t think he was able to retake the town, though. In fact, if my suspicions are accurate, any counterattack’s been beaten off by now. There’s certainly no fighting going on over there at this point, anyway. I know the river’s too broad for anyone to make out much in the way of details on the other side, but I’m pretty sure our scouts would be able to see powder smoke and hear gunfire if anyone was still engaged. It’s possible he did manage to retake it and that’s why the fighting’s over, but I think it’s more likely he only managed to burn the ferry and strand these bastards over here. If so, that’s pretty good news.”
“Good news, Sir?”
“Well, the best we could expect, anyway.” Tyrnyr grimaced. “If they came up the canal, they brought barges with them, Ahrthyr. And if they had barges on the river, they could’ve used them to pull these people back. Or, assuming they weren’t going to pull back, to reinforce
them. So obviously they don’t have barges on the river, and the only reason that would be true is that Tahlyvyr managed to blow the locks.”
“I see.”
The major nodded slowly, his expression thoughtful, and Tyrnyr methodically hung the spyglass back across his shoulder. He gazed at the infantry on the hill for a moment longer, then inhaled sharply.
“What matters at the moment, though,” he said more briskly, “is that they are stuck on our side of the river, and we’ve got them outnumbered three-to-one. I think we ought to see about making them properly welcome, don’t you?”
