by David Weber
The fourth soldier did manage to fire his weapon. He was less than four feet from his target, but that shape of darkness and muzzle flash never paused. It fired again, and the last of the soldiers was down.
“Demon!” Seegairs shrieked and discharged both pistol barrels.
He hit the attacker—he knew he’d hit him!—but his target didn’t even stagger, and then he screamed again, this time in agony, as a revolver bullet shattered his right knee. He went down, both hands clutching at the pain, and heard the drumbeat thunder of those impossible pistols go on and on and on.…
* * *
The last Schuelerite went down.
Dialydd Mab stood in the choking fog of gunsmoke, listening to the shrieks, and the thing that troubled him was that those sounds of anguish didn’t trouble him. He holstered the revolver in his left hand, cleared the other’s cylinder, and began reloading.
* * *
Seegairs sobbed, curled into a twisted knot, hands hot and slick with the blood pumping from his ruptured flesh. Agony was his entire world, yet even through the pulsing waves of pain he felt a deeper, crawling horror as the man who’d turned the deckhouse into a slaughter pen calmly reloaded his monstrous weapons. It was impossible to hear anything after so much gunfire in so small a space. Yet there was enough light through the broken doorway to touch the falling cartridge cases with glitter as they fell to the deck, and his terrified eyes crawled up to the long-fingered hands methodically replacing them in the revolver’s cylinder.
They finished with the first pistol and holstered it, then started on the second.
* * *
Mab took his time.
He could have reloaded far more quickly, but he chose not to. He chose to stand there in the darkness, in the smell of smoke and blood, in the sobs of the wounded, and replenish each chamber individually. One at a time.
The barge’s defenders had hit him three times. That was better than he’d actually expected, but small arms fire was no threat to a last-generation PICA. Even if it had been, the antiballistic smart fabric of the shirt under his coat would have prevented any damage. He wondered if Father Hahskyll realized both rounds from his pistol had hit their target without any effect at all and hoped the Schuelerite had.
He slid the second revolver back into its holster, then stepped across Seegairs, ignoring the Inquisitor’s sobs of pain. He never doubted the depth of the man’s anguish, but it was little enough compared to the agony he’d inflicted upon others … and it would be over soon.
He bent, and bloody hands flailed frantically at his wrist as he twisted his left fist in the front of Vyktyr Tahrlsahn’s cassock. Tahrlsahn screamed as Mab plucked him from the floor one-handed, as easily as he might have picked up a kitten. Mostly it was born of pain, that scream, as shattered bone and cartilage shifted in his left knee, but panicky terror fluttered at its heart. Mab wondered if the upper-priest had begun to realize he and Seegairs had been deliberately immobilized rather than killed outright.
“Please! Please!” the Inquisitor whispered. “Oh, please!”
“It’s a little late for that, Father Vyktyr,” a deep, deep voice said, and Tahrlsahn whimpered as the monster thrust him backward.
His toes, he realized, were at least an inch above the deck, yet the impossibly strong arm holding him didn’t even quiver.
“I wonder how many people have said the same thing to you?” that rumbling voice continued.
“I didn’t—I don’t—”
Tahrlsahn couldn’t have explained even to himself what he was trying to say, and it didn’t matter anyway.
“I’ve been looking forward to this moment,” his captor overrode him, and his whimper became a high whine as something cold touched his throat in a dull gleam of steel.
“This is a Charisian midshipman’s dirk.” The level calm of the other man’s voice was the most dreadful thing Tahrlsahn had ever heard. “I brought it along for the occasion. I don’t know if you remember the names, but Gwylym Manthyr and Lainsair Svairsmahn were friends of mine.”
Breath sobbed in Vyktyr Tahrlsahn’s nostrils and his eyes were huge, for he did recognize the first of those names.
“Understand me, Priest,” that executioner voice said, “because for the first time in your life, you’re about to hear the truth. Your Langhorne was no ‘Archangel,’ just a lunatic, a liar, and a mass murderer. Your Schueler was a psychotic, your Church is nothing but an obscene lie, and you’ve helped torture and murder thousands in the name of a religion whatever God there truly is would spit upon.”
Tahrlsahn’s brain whirled, whiplashed by terror and anguish. No. No! It was a lie. It had to be a lie—all of it!
“Look at me, Priest.” Despite himself, Tahrlsahn obeyed, and squealed in horror as his captor’s sapphire eyes began to glow with hellish brightness. “I’m older than your Church,” the abomination behind those eyes told him. “I’m older than your Holy Writ. I was born, lived, and died before your first ancestor opened his eyes on this world, and I will personally destroy your Church. I will eradicate it from the face of the universe. Men and women will remember it only as what it truly was—a monstrous, perverted lie concocted by madmen who only thought they were gods. They’ll be known for what they truly were … and so will the butchers who served them. Think about that, Priest. Take that thought to Hell with you. Langhorne and Schueler are waiting for you there.”
Tahrlsahn stared into those blazing blue eyes, then grunted in fresh, explosive agony as the dirk split his heart. The hilt’s cross guard slammed against his breastbone and fourteen inches of steel drove straight through his body. Five inches of that bloody blade protruded from the far side of the deckhouse wall, pinning him with his feet still off the deck, and that dreadful promise followed him into the darkness.
* * *
Dialydd Mab stepped back, watching the life and horrified knowledge fade from Vyktyr Tahrlsahn’s eyes. Then he reached into his coat’s inner pocket, withdrew the letter, and tucked it into the neck of Tahrlsahn’s cassock, where no one could fail to find it. No doubt the Grand Inquisitor would dismiss it, brush aside its promise just as he’d brushed aside Cayleb and Sharleyan’s promise that Inquisitors taken on the field of battle would find no quarter from Charis. After all, Clyntahn was in Zion, secure from any hand of vengeance.
Yet even as he dismissed it, a small, poisonous worm of doubt would gnaw its way into the secret places of his heart. And whatever he might say—or even truly think—the letter’s content would leak. Other Inquisitors would hear of it, just as they’d heard of rows of heads on stakes along the Daivyn River, and unlike their master, they were not secure in Zion.
He turned from Tahrlsahn’s corpse. He’d brought only a single dirk, but the Army of God had been kind enough to provide plenty of bayonets. He bent to detach one from a dead man’s rifle and heard Hahskyll Seegairs’ high, piercing squeal of panic as he, too, saw the glowing eyes Tahrlsahn had taken to Hell with him.
“I haven’t forgotten you, either, Father,” he promised.
.IX.
Cheryk-Kahrmaik High Road, The South March Lands, Republic of Siddarmark
The rain turned what would have been a miserable night into a wretched one. It was cold, heavy, and persistent, and it showed no sign of abating anytime soon. Nor did Sir Rainos Ahlverez expect it to. He’d grown up in the Duchy of Thorast. In fact, the estate on which he’d been born lay at almost precisely the same latitude as his present soggy position. Unlike the Army of Shiloh’s Desnairian commander, he was thoroughly familiar with the seasonal weather patterns, and this pounding rain had come out of the west which, at this time of year, strongly suggested more rain would follow close upon its heels.
He stood in his tent’s open fly, listening to water beat on its canvas, and tried not to think about how miserable his men must be. Each of his infantrymen had been issued a smallish tarpaulin which could be laced together with the ones issued to the other members of his sixteen-man section. In theory, if all s
ixteen were combined, they formed a tent large enough for the entire squad, and smaller numbers of men could combine their tarpaulins to provide nominally adequate cover.
In fact, it was often difficult to find something to use as tent poles, and even when that problem failed to present itself, the junction points had a nasty tendency to let wind—or rain—slip through. There were similar arrangements for the cavalry, and each man had also been issued an oilskin poncho, although quite a few had managed to “lose” their ponchos early on in the campaign. Before they realized just how miserable a good, drenching rain could be. Others had arranged to lash them to the sides of their attached supply wagons, usually after presenting a suitable bribe to the drovers. That was a better arrangement, although it still left the minor problem that unless the poncho’s owner realized it was going to rain before the army broke camp in the morning, the wagon—and his poncho—would be out of reach when the rain actually began falling.
Ahlverez knew all of that, and while he possessed in full an aristocrat’s ability to quash any softhearted feelings he might cherish for the men in the ranks—he was a general, not a Pasqualate!—he also knew their present misery would make them less efficient on the march, less effective in combat, and far more susceptible to coughs, colds, and all the other ills to which flesh was heir.
Yet for all their misery, his troops were far better off than the majority of the Duke of Harless’ men. Not all of them, of course. His cavalry regiments and the majority of his officers had both better tentage and an abundance of orderlies, batmen, and servants to tend to their needs. Ahlverez fully realized that he himself was provided with servants whose sole function was to see to his own comfort. He had very few of them, however, and there was a difference between the commander of an entire army and a captain in a cavalry regiment. There was a reason the Royal Dohlaran Army had imposed draconian limits on the number of servants and camp followers its units might take into the field with them.
And we were damned smart to do it, Ahlverez reflected glumly, looking out into the silvery shimmer of the rain, lit by the lanterns of his headquarters group. If I’d ever doubted that, watching Harless trying to move his army through this slop would’ve cured me!
Unfortunately, Ahlverez’ army was stuck behind Harless’, and there wasn’t a damned thing he could do about it. What had looked like a march of three five-days when they left Thesmar was well on its way to taking twice that long, and Ahlverez couldn’t quite convince himself the heretics wouldn’t find something unpleasant to do with the extra time. The dearth of any inhabitants in the vicinity—even Faithful Siddarmarkians made themselves scarce when Desnairian foragers swept through like locusts—had dried up what had been the Dohlaran Army’s best information sources, and he felt as if the entire Army of Shiloh was advancing blindly into some black, bottomless void.
He’d strongly considered asking for—or even demanding—permission to pass his troops through the Desnairians, knowing that they could have reached Fort Tairys and relieved General Walkyr long before Harless’ troops could. Unfortunately, he’d known permission would be denied and that asking for it could only have intensified the building tension between him and the Desnairian commander. Despite that, he’d sent home private dispatches, pleading, almost begging Duke Salthar and Duke Fern to grant him the discretion to operate independently. Not that he expected it to do any good … especially when Father Sulyvyn declined to endorse his request. Ahlverez’ intendant remained focused on combining with the much larger Desnairian component of the Army of Shiloh in order to provide Mother Church’s mailed fist with the greatest possible weight.
“Weight” is it? Ahlverez’ lips tightened. They’ll be lucky if they haven’t lost a quarter of their men to sickness or desertion by the time we get to Fort Tairys! Just how much “weight” are they going to be able to add to an attack after that?
The answer, he suspected, would be “not very much.”
* * *
Merlin Athrawes was unable to read Ahlverez’ mind as he considered the imagery, but if he had been able to, he would have found himself in agreement with the Dohlaran.
The “Army of Shiloh” lay sprawled along the high road like a vast, sluggish, untidy serpent. A very wet and muddy serpent. And, like any marching formation, its fastest speed was that of its slowest element … which happened to be what had originally been called the Army of Justice.
By the standards of medieval armies, the Desnairians weren’t doing all that badly; by the standards of which they ought to have been capable, they were a shambling disaster. The fall and winter rains of southern Siddarmark were setting in with a vengeance, which, given the effect it had already exerted on the invaders, was the one good aspect of what promised to be a nasty winter. The provisions of The Book of Pasquale and the efforts of the Order of Pasquale kept Safeholdian armies’ sickness rates enormously lower than for any preindustrial army in Old Earth’s history, but they were certain to rise in this sort of weather. Even better from the Allies’ perspective, the miserable travel conditions slowed Harless’ foraging parties, which in turn further slowed his army’s rate of march. It also gave the handful of farmers who hadn’t already refugeed out of the South March time to get themselves and their families out of the Army of Shiloh’s path, taking as much as possible of their livestock with them and making the foragers’ task that much harder.
But what was killing their mobility even more effectively than the weather, he thought with profound satisfaction, was the fact that no one but the Imperial Charisian Army had ever thought about adopting a corps organization.
Safeholdian armies moved in one solid mass because until very recently no single element of an army could fend for itself without the support of its other elements. Before the introduction of the rifled flintlock and the socket bayonet, light infantry—missile troops armed with bows, matchlocks, or arbalests—had required heavy infantry—pikemen—to hold off cavalry. The same had held true for the mounted arms; horse archers could shower heavy cavalry with arrows or arbalest bolts from well beyond the reach of sword or lance, but missile-armed cavalry was unable to withstand the charge of heavy horse which managed to force combat upon it and shorter-ranged than missile-armed infantry. And so, all the elements had to be kept together. Not only that, but it was difficult to deploy quickly for combat. If a commander knew the enemy was in the vicinity, he tried to arrange the units in his marching column so that they could form for battle as rapidly as possible, but “rapidly” in this case meant “somewhat faster than an arthritic snail.” It had always taken the better part of a day for a traditional Safeholdian army to simply align itself to engage an opponent … under good conditions. Under bad conditions, it could take far longer. Fortunately, any foe it had been likely to run into had faced the same problems.
The Army of God was in the process—thanks in no small part to Bishop Militant Bahrnabai and Bishop Gorthyk—of recognizing how much the situation had changed, but they were only starting to grasp the implications. Mostly that was because until the last month or so they’d still been hampered by hordes of pikemen. That had imposed the same need to combine light and heavy infantry, and it would take a while for Maigwair’s withdrawal of the pikes from his order of battle to change his own thinking. For that matter, so far he’d been able to withdraw them only from the Army of the Sylmahn; Kaitswyrth was still lumbered with them, and would be for some time to come.
The Imperial Charisian Army had never had—and the reorganizing Republic of Siddarmark Army no longer had—pikemen. All Charisian infantry were equipped with rifles and bayonets, and that meant they could not only look after themselves against opposing infantry, but as Major Naismyth’s company had demonstrated to Colonel Tyrnyr’s cavalry, they could kick the butt of opposing horsemen, as well. There was no need to combine specialized elements in an era in which the rifleman reigned supreme. For that matter, the same thing was true of Charisian cavalry. The mounted infantry of the ICA’s dragoon regiments had no in
terest in fighting opposing cavalry from horseback as long as they could find a convenient spot to dismount and shoot them from behind rocks, trees, and rail fences, instead.
That meant Charisian formations were far better articulated, far more flexible, than anyone they were likely to face. And the Charisian army had capitalized upon that articulation by developing a corps organization. So far, the relatively small size of the field formations Charis had been able to deploy had prevented the Empire’s commanders from making use of that organization’s full advantages, but as more and more of the ICA’s strength arrived in Siddarmark that would change.
A senior Charisian field commander was trained to divide his force into separate corps, each of around thirty-six thousand—ideally, two infantry divisions and a single mounted brigade—plus artillery. Corps commanders were chosen for ability and initiative, then provided with their own corps staffs, which took a great deal of strain off an army commander and his staff. Even more important, however, each of those corps was eminently capable of looking after itself in combat, and by dividing his strength, a commander could maneuver on a far broader front. He could advance on separate but parallel routes, decreasing the sort of congestion which was slowing the Army of Shiloh’s pace so disastrously and giving him a far better chance of finding the enemy. Each of his corps was well suited to holding its ground against the attack of even a much larger force—especially one which was handicapped by a traditional mix of pikes and missile troops—while his other corps closed in to envelop the enemy or massed to crush one flank. By the same token, any one of his corps could attack an enemy force and pin it in place until the rest of his corps came up in support. Even divisional commanders were trained to divide their divisions into brigade-sized “corps” as part of Charis’ unabashedly offensive tactical and operational doctrines.
