by David Weber
Makes a lot of sense, really, Abykrahmbi thought. This way he trains scads of workers, gets them accustomed to the new techniques and new ways of thinking, before he puts up the manufactories he’s going to need them to work in. It’s just a damned pity we can’t do everything at once!
He smiled wryly at the thought. He’d gotten so accustomed to watching Ehdwyrd Howsmyn that it was sometimes hard to remember that other people couldn’t do everything at once.
He paused again, laying one hand on the shoulder of a Siddarmarkian supervisor and exchanging a few words with the man, then—finally—found himself close enough to the man he’d been looking for to call his name.
“Zhak! Yo, Zhak!”
The wiry, dark, and very young ICN lieutenant turned and smiled as he recognized Abykrahmbi. Zhak Bairystyr held out one of his large, strong hands, with its calluses and ingrained oil and coal dust, and clasped forearms with his friend.
“Klymynt! I didn’t expect to see you down here today.”
“I didn’t expect to be down here today,” Abykrahmbi replied with a grin. “But then I dropped by Delthak looking for you, and they told me you were over here. So I trudged the entire three hundred yards from the dockyard to find you.”
“I am smitten—smitten, I tell you—by your staunch devotion to duty.”
“And well you should be. Especially since I was forced to subject not merely myself but also Corporal Brownyng and his men to the arduous privation of our forced march.”
“My apologies, Corporal,” Bairystyr said dryly, looking over Abykrahmbi’s shoulder at the slightly taller Marine.
“No problem, Sir,” Brownyng replied. He was a typical Old Charisian—brown-haired and brown-eyed with a tanned complexion—and he had the solid, weathered look of a long-term, professional soldier. Looking at the sleeve of his tunic, Bairystyr could just make out where a sergeant’s stripes had been removed, and he wondered what Brownyng had done. Whatever it was, it clearly hadn’t reflected any doubt about his capabilities if he’d been assigned to bodyguard Abykrahmbi. Of course, that raised another interesting question.
“Is there a reason the Corporal has to go everywhere with you?”
“I’m afraid so,” Abykrahmbi sighed. “Do you remember Zhorj Trumyn?”
“I don’t think so,” Bairystyr searched his memory. “Name doesn’t ring any bells, anyway. Why?”
“He was another member of Master Cartyr’s staff.”
“Was another member of Master Cartyr’s staff?” Bairystyr pounced on the verb tense, and Abykrahmbi nodded.
“He was on his way to a conference with Master Ahdyms last five-day. There was a riot.” Abykrahmbi’s nostrils flared. “Zhorj was killed.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” Bairystyr rubbed his right eyebrow thoughtfully. “I did hear about the riot, though. Over in Tanner’s Way, wasn’t it?”
“Yes. We thought that was a relatively safe part of town, but it was too close to the docks, apparently. Or to the sailmakers’ lofts, anyway.” Abykrahmbi grimaced. “You know how those bastards blame us for all their problems!”
Bairystyr nodded. It would have been foolish to expect skilled workers whose trades had been disordered by the new Charisian approach to producing goods not to resent Charis. Not that their resentment was going to change anything. They’d be far better employed, in Zhak Bairystyr’s opinion, learning new trades or adapting to the ways in which their existing trades had changed, but that was probably expecting too much of human nature.
“Somebody realized Zhorj was a Charisian,” Abykrahmbi said. “Or—and I think this is more likely, actually—they recognized the three men he was with as supervisors from Master Ahdyms’ foundry and figured out who Zhorj was from who he was keeping company with. Anyway, somebody started screaming about Charisian heretics snatching food out of the mouths of starving babes and before anyone knew it, it was a full-bore riot. It spread across two or three square blocks before the City Guard got on top of it, and at least three shops burned. At the end of it, the Guard took up a right young bastard named Naigail—Samyl Naigail. Found his knife still in Zhorj’s back, but he swears he didn’t do it, of course. Nobody believes him, and I’ll be surprised if he doesn’t hang within the five-day.”
One of Bairystyr’s eyebrows rose at the bitterness of his tone. Anyone could be excused for taking a friend’s death personally, but Abykrahmbi wasn’t going to be surprised if this Naigail stayed unhanged for another five-day; he was going to be disappointed.
Abykrahmbi recognized his expression and shrugged.
“Sorry. It’s not just that the rancid little son-of-a-bitch murdered Zhorj, Zhak. Once the Guard grabbed him, witnesses started coming out of the woodwork. It seems Naigail spent the attack on the Charisian Quarter torching shops and homes … when he wasn’t doing something worse. If there’s anyone in this entire frigging city who’s overdue for a date with the hangman, it’s him.”
Bairystyr nodded. He couldn’t disagree with the sentiment, assuming the testimony against Naigail was truthful. And however he might feel about it, he understood exactly why Abykrahmbi would feel nothing but vengeful satisfaction when the executioner sprang the trap.
“Anyway, they’ve decided all of us heretical Charisian masterminds need bodyguards when we wander around the city.” Abykrahmbi snorted. “And if I have to have someone following me around, I could do worse than Ahldahs here.”
“I see.” Bairystyr looked at the corporal again. “Master Abykrahmbi’s a civilian, Corporal,” he said. “Mind you, he’s always struck me as a fairly smart civilian, but he’s still a civilian who happens to be both a friend of mine and an asset to the Empire. Don’t take any crap off of him when it all falls in the shitter. In fact, you have my direct order to hit him over the head and drag his unconscious arse out of the line of fire if that’s what it takes.”
“Aye, aye, Sir!”
Brownyng jerked to attention and touched his chest in salute, and Abykrahmbi smiled. But then his smile faded as he realized both Bairystyr and Brownyng were absolutely serious.
“Zhak—”
“Klymynt, it isn’t a game.” Bairystyr met his friend’s eyes levelly. “I know you’re not stupid enough to think it is a game, but it’d only take a heartbeat for someone to plant a dagger in your back. I’m perfectly willing to believe the riot that killed your friend was spontaneous. I’m equally prepared to believe it wasn’t, and the fact that they’ve assigned you a permanent bodyguard suggests someone considerably senior to both of us has his own doubts about that spontaneity. If it wasn’t spontaneous, if someone does try to add you to the bag, an instant of hesitation on your part or on Corporal Brownyng’s could get you killed, too, and I’m not going home to that pretty wife you’ve described to me to tell her it happened on my watch. Do you understand me?”
“Yes, of course I do.”
“Good. And now”—Bairystyr inhaled deeply—“just what brought you down to the waterfront seeking me out?”
“Well, actually, I was looking for Lieutenant Blahdysnberg, first, but they told me he and Captain Bahrns were off at some sort of conference, so that left you and Lieutenant Cahnyrs. And since I know you, you’re the lucky one.”
“Lucky exactly how?” Bairystyr asked cautiously.
“We’re expecting a convoy in from Tellesberg, and when it gets here, we’re going to have to open Delthak’s casemate like a cracker box. Somebody’ll have to help the dockyard figure out how to do that, and guess who just got elected?”
“I beg your pardon?” Bairystyr stared at him, and Abykrahmbi chuckled a bit sourly.
“We’re going to need a rather … large opening,” he explained. “It seems Master Howsmyn and Admiral Seamount—oh, and Captain Rahskail—have completed work on the new six-inch breechloader, and enough of the new guns and carriages are on their way to Siddar City to rearm your ship. And given all the other things we’re rushing around doing, we’re going to have Shan-wei’s own time getting them moun
ted on schedule. So, since you’re Delthak’s engineer, in charge of all those stokers and seeing to all of those repairs and things, and since I’m sure you’re going to be up to your elbows in grease getting these newfangled recoil systems to work the way they’re supposed to, I thought it would be best if I just went ahead and warned you now that they were coming. You can expect them sometime early next five-day.”
.X.
Imperial Palace, City of Cherayth, Kingdom of Chisholm, Empire of Charis, and Charisian Embassy, Siddar City, Republic of Siddarmark
The late afternoon was sunny and surprisingly mild, almost balmy, for late September in the Kingdom of Chisholm. The evening chill waited patiently behind that sunlight, but on such a golden day some of the fifty thousand or so Imperial Charisian Army troops aboard the vast convoy sailing out of Port Royal actually felt cheerful at the prospect of their voyage to Siddarmark. Others—wiser or simply more experienced—were less cheery about the whole business. It was over nine thousand miles for a wyvern to Siddar City, and they were no wyverns. Worse, they’d be fighting headwinds the entire voyage. And, worse still, they’d be crossing the body of water mariners had christened “The Anvil,” and not because it offered such pleasant opportunities for yachting.
However glum some might be, however, the mood aboard those crowded transport vessels was primarily one of anticipation. The semaphore chain across Raven’s Land was carrying messages from the Mainland once again, which reflected a sea change among the Raven Lords. And because it was, Chisholm knew how decisively the Imperial Army had halted the Army of God which had swept to within six hundred miles of Siddar City itself. The troops departing Port Royal on that sunny afternoon tide, under those clouds of sea wyverns and seabirds, sent on their way by the fortresses’ saluting guns, felt a fierce pride in their fellows and an equally fierce satisfaction at the vindication of the radical new style of warfare in which they’d been trained.
There was as much hatred as pride and determination aboard some of those transports, for the same semaphore messages had reported what had happened to Brigadier Taisyn’s men, just as they’d reported the atrocities, the concentration camps, the burned farms and villages, the dead civilians lying by the high road’s verge, where starvation or disease had pulled them down.
Temple Loyalist sentiment in Chisholm had been stronger than in Old Charis. Hard-core Temple Loyalists had been a minority, yet Reformists and pro-Reformists had constituted a bare majority of the Chisholmian population before Queen Sharleyan married King Cayleb. It was the depth of Chisholm’s devotion to the child-queen it had watched grow into a powerful monarch without ever losing her own devotion to the people of her realm which had carried the Kingdom into support of the Church of Charis. That had been enough, especially after they met Emperor Cayleb, decided he truly loved the queen they loved, and concluded that he was worthy of her. And yet even though the Chisholmian Reformists embraced the need to reform Mother Church’s abuses, Chisholm as a whole had possessed far less of the fiery ardor which gripped Old Charis.
Perhaps that was inevitable, since Chisholm had never been the object of an unprovoked assault engineered by the Church of God Awaiting. Chisholm had lost heavily in lives and ships when it was forced to participate in that assault, however, and the more astute among Queen Sharleyan’s subjects had realized that if Zhaspahr Clyntahn could destroy Charis merely because he suspected its orthodoxy, it was almost inevitable that he would break Chisholm to his bridle as well in the fullness of time. The murder of Gwylym Manthyr and his men had underscored the threat, and so, Chisholm had given itself to the war against the Group of Four, prepared to play its part, to make the sacrifices demanded of it, but still without that spark of true fury, that sense of having met the monster face-to-face, stared into its maw, smelled the stench of its carrion breath.
But the massacre of Brigadier Taisyn’s command, the torture and murder of entire armies, the starvation and death of millions, all at the orders of Zhaspahr Clyntahn, had hit the Kingdom like a handful of gunpowder cast across dimly glowing coals. Those who’d been ambivalent saw suddenly the true difference between the two sides. Even many Temple Loyalists—especially among those who’d clung to their old faith out of habit and a natural suspicion of the forces of reform and change—had been shaken to the core, and quite a few of them had become Reformists over the past few months.
Inevitably, the Temple Loyalists who remained had become even more fiercely dedicated to the “legitimate” Church. Even though the Crown specifically protected their right to worship in the manner of their choice, the savage denunciations of Zhaspahr Clyntahn and the Inquisition they heard daily forced them into a defensive posture that hunkered down, hunched its shoulders against the storm, and clung passionately to its faith. In fact, many of them flatly denied the reports from the Republic. They were—must be—lies created to vilify Mother Church’s loyal sons! The keeper of men’s souls must occasionally be stern, as The Book of Schueler commanded, but she would never murder children or condone rape, arson, and massacre on such a scale!
Those who believed that were losing ground steadily, however. And the men of the Imperial Charisian Army, which had grown out of the Royal Chisholmian Army, had been staunchly devoted to the Crown and to the Empire long before the first Charisian boot stepped onto a Siddarmarkian wharf.
There were very few qualms aboard those ships, standing out from Port Royal into Kraken Bay.
* * *
“Well, there they go,” Cayleb Ahrmahk said.
It was four hours earlier in Siddar City, but sunset was coming sooner every day. It was already dark outside the windows of his embassy study, because unlike Port Royal’s sky, the Siddarmarkian capital’s was anything but cloudless. Rain drummed on the embassy’s roof, gurgling through downspouts and splashing on the paving, and the coal fire on his hearth was welcome.
“Yes, they do,” his wife agreed from her own palace apartment in Cherayth.
She leaned back in a comfortable chair, holding a drowsy Princess Alahnah in her lap while Sairaih Hahlmyn guarded her privacy like a restless dragon. The empress had been involved in one meeting after another since shortly after dawn before she’d finally announced that she was spending the evening with her daughter. With Sergeant Seahamper outside her door and her personal maid poised to annihilate any member of the palace staff who even looked like intruding upon Her Majesty, she could be reasonably confident of her ability to converse with Cayleb and their allies without interruption.
And after a day like today, she needed that conversation.
“You do realize White Crag and Sir Ahlber are a lot more worried about sending the entire Army to the Republic than they want to admit, don’t you?” Cayleb asked now, and she snorted.
“Is there some reason you think I arrived in Cherayth aboard this morning’s turnip wagon? Of course they’re worried! They’re my First Councilor and my spymaster. It’s their jobs to worry, Cayleb.”
“And they’re not entirely wrong to, either, Sharley,” Merlin Athrawes put in.
He was in his own room, arranged in the lotus position with his eyes closed. He’d taken to parking himself in that posture whenever he was officially meditating, and his ability to remain inhumanly still for hours on end—motionless, scarcely even breathing—had polished his official persona as mystic warrior quite nicely. No one looking at him could have guessed from his serene expression what was passing through his mind, but his voice over the com carried an edge of concern he would have allowed very few people to hear.
“The more fervent they get and the more isolated they feel, the more likely someone like Countess Swayle or Duke Rock Coast is to do something stupid,” he went on. “And this is the first time since your father took the throne that virtually the entire Army’s been out of the Kingdom.”
“I realize that.” Sharleyan’s voice was far more serene than Merlin’s. “And before you or Cayleb hit me over the head with it, I also know what the SNARCs are picking up
from Rock Coast and that snake Rydach. We’re keeping an eye on them, though, and it’s not as if the ‘entire Army’s’ really out of the Kingdom. We’ve got the training cadre here in Cherayth, and the new recruits are shaping up nicely. There’s not much question about their loyalty, and I think the Zebediahans coming in from Hauwyl may be even more rabidly loyal than my Chisholmians!”
There was some truth to that, Merlin reflected. In fact, there was quite a lot of truth to it. Although the Imperial Charisian Army had now deployed virtually all of its combat formations to Siddarmark, its training battalions remained behind. That represented a good twenty thousand men, many combat veterans, two-thirds of them stationed in or just outside Cherayth or in Maikelberg, the Royal Chisholmian Army’s traditional headquarters, less than three hundred miles to the north. And she was right about the recruits those training battalions were taking on. It might be too much to say Chisholmians were “flocking to the colors” at this late date, but the influx of new volunteers was enough to make any thought of conscription unnecessary. Still more were coming in from Emerald, Tarot, and Zebediah, and the Zebediahans’ enthusiasim burned bright.
