by David Weber
The time was coming, Merlin thought, and sooner than anyone on the other side could possibly suspect, when commanders like Eastshare, Green Valley, and Symkyn would demonstrate just what that meant. Nahrmahn Baytz was entirely correct about the implications of the Church of God Awaiting’s new rifle design, and both the Army of the Sylmahn and the Royal Dohlaran Army were getting better much more rapidly than Merlin liked, but painful as the lessons they’d already learned had been, there were more—and worse—to come.
.X.
Fort Raimyr, North of Siddar City, Republic of Siddarmark
“I could wish we had better confirmation of the bastards’ position,” Greyghor Stohnar said. “And of just how bad their supply situation really is.”
The lord protector’s expression was sober, with more than an edge of worry, despite the afternoon sunlight as he and Emperor Cayleb rode towards the rifle range. Neither he nor Cayleb was able to get away from council chambers, meetings, discussions, and maps nearly so often as they wished. The lord protector was more than twice Cayleb’s age, but it had been his habit, before the Sword of Schueler, to ride at least two afternoons a five-day, and he’d been an accomplished polo player since boyhood. For the last year or so, however, his bodyguards had been adamant about the need to restrict his exposure to those who wished him ill, and Cayleb—the heretical foreign potentate who’d propped up Stohnar’s apostate regime—was probably the one human being in the entire Republic more hated by the Siddarmarkian Temple Loyalists than he was.
They’d put their joint foot down this morning, however, and the unified front of the heads of state of the two most powerful realms in all of Safehold had sufficed—narrowly, but sufficed—to overrule those bodyguards. Which explained how the two of them, accompanied by Daryus Parkair and surrounded by a horde of Charisian Imperial Guardsmen and troopers of the Siddarmarkian Protector’s Guard, found themselves riding across the grounds of Fort Raimyr, the huge military base just north of Siddar City. The Protector’s Guard had lobbied hard for requiring the lord protector and his guest to use a closed carriage for the trip, preferably with two other carriages dispatched to alternate destinations as decoys to divert the packs of assassins loitering just outside the Protector’s Palace’s gates—probably with field artillery concealed under their coats—but Merlin and the rest of Cayleb’s Guardsmen had known there was no hope of that. And so he and Stohnar had been permitted to enjoy the lengthy ride through a surprisingly warm and sunny day.
Enjoy it they had, yet even on a day like this, on what amounted to a pleasure excursion, the reports and maps they spent so much time poring over were their constant companions. Now Cayleb shrugged in response to Stohnar’s remark.
“Aivah has a remarkable record for getting it right where the Temple’s involved,” he pointed out, his own tone almost placid. “And we have Duke Eastshare’s and General Wyllys’ dispatches about their own progress. I agree it would be … comforting to have proof our current information on the other side’s correct, but I’m afraid there’s only one way to find out for certain. And in another couple of days, we will.” He smiled crookedly. “One way or the other.”
Stohnar snorted.
“Tactful of you to give Aivah credit. But you’re right, of course. Between her sources and your own rather remarkable spy network”—he glanced at the tall, sapphire-eyed Guardsman riding to the left of Cayleb’s chestnut—“we’ve been given remarkably solid analyses of the Group of Four’s intentions and actions. And remarkably ugly they’ve been.”
His mouth tightened and his eyes went bleak and hard. The report Aivah Pahrsahn had shared with them the day before had dealt with the conditions in Inquisitor General Wylbyr’s concentration camps and their grinding, ongoing death tolls. No one on Safehold, outside the inner circle of Merlin Athrawes’ allies, had ever heard of men named Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, or Pol Pot, but Wylbyr Edwyrds seemed determined to emulate their accomplishments. It was going to get worse before it got better—all of them knew that—and that was one reason Stohnar and Cayleb had agreed to back Green Valley’s plans, despite the lateness of the year and the severity of winter in northern Siddarmark. The camps were concentrated in the Republic’s northwestern provinces, and the shortest route to their liberation lay directly through Bahrnabai Wyrshym’s Army of the Sylmahn.
Yet passionately though both of them longed to break through to the camps, they knew they couldn’t do it now. And the primary reason they couldn’t was the vast sprawl of the Army of Shiloh grinding its way across the South March towards Fort Tairys. Duke Harless’ costly failure against Thesmar was reassuring evidence of the quality of that army, but its sheer size made it a threat which simply had to be countered. More than that, the evidence that the Dohlaran component of the Army of Shiloh had grown steadily more experienced and dangerous couldn’t be overlooked. Nor could the wreckage Shiloh Province had already become. The loyal Shiloh militia and the SRA regulars sent to reinforce them had found themselves hard-pressed to retain control of the province north of Kolstyr and east of the Blackbern River. Three-quarters of it was in rebel hands or reduced to a burned wasteland no one held. If an army the size of the Army of Shiloh was added to that situation.…
The liberation of the Inquisition’s concentration camps at the earliest possible moment was a moral imperative; stopping the Army of Shiloh short of the province for which it had been named was a survival imperative. And that was what had led to the current conversation.
“The problem,” Stohnar continued, “is that even Aivah’s current estimate of Harless’ position is only an educated guess. Granted, I think it’s a good one. Based on what we’ve seen out of the Desnairians so far, I’d be shocked if they were actually closer to Fort Tairys than we’re estimating. But I’ve been shocked before—the ‘Sword of Schueler’ comes to mind as a recent example of how that works—and as good as your army is, and as skillful as the Duke’s proved himself, the thought of his being caught between the Army of Shiloh and Fort Tairys with barely fourteen thousand men is enough to keep me awake at night.”
“I can’t disagree with any of that,” Cayleb replied, which was an interesting choice of words, Merlin reflected. Cayleb could have set the lord protector’s mind at rest, but not without bringing up little things like SNARCs and satellite reconnaissance. “On the other hand, Duke Eastshare won’t exactly be all alone by the time he reaches Fort Tairys. I don’t think nine thousand new model Siddarmarkian riflemen will hurt his chances one bit, especially under General Wyllys’ command.”
“His Majesty’s right about that, My Lord,” Parkair said. “And Wyllys is actually bringing along more artillery than the Duke. That’s not going to hurt any, either.”
Stohnar nodded, and his expression relaxed remarkably. Stahn Wyllys was one of only two Republic of Siddarmark Army colonels to have survived the bitter fighting in the Sylmahn Gap. In the process, his 37th Infantry Regiment had been reduced to a single badly understrength company, commanded by the regiment’s youngest—and only surviving—captain. He’d been promoted to general following Green Valley’s relief of the Gap’s defenders, and his 37th Infantry had been reconstituted and assigned to the 1st Rifle Division, RSA. Which was fitting, since General Wyllys had been named to command that division. General Fhranklyn Pruait, the only other regimental commander to survive the Sylmahn Gap, had been given command of the 2nd Rifle Division.
Those divisions had had no time yet to fully assimilate Charisian doctrine. Their muzzle-loading weapons weren’t as well suited to Charisian tactics, anyway, but the officers responsible for raising and training their regiments had spent long hours discussing such matters with the Charisian training cadre assigned to assist. Too many of their men were new recruits, volunteers who’d flocked to the Army to defend the Republic and their families … or to seek revenge. They were motivated, well trained, but largely inexperienced, and the question of how well they would perform once battle was actually joined loomed large in many minds, not le
ast their own. Yet Cayleb Ahrmahk’s confidence in Stahn Wyllys and his men was completely genuine, and it showed.
Two of the 1st Rifle Division’s three brigades had been earmarked for the advance on Fort Tairys. Sent up the Siddarmark River by barge as far as Holkyr, on the Glacierheart border, and then overland into Shiloh, they and the ICN thirty-pounders on field carriages accompanying them were currently well south of Maidynberg on the Maidynberg-Raisor High Road. Screened by an attached regiment of cavalry, their advance had reached the point at which the miserable excuse for a road net branched off from the high road toward Ohadlyn’s Gap and Fort Tairys, little more than a hundred miles from its objective. Despite the fact that Wyllys had marched over four hundred miles through territory still swarming with Temple Loyalist partisans—the Shiloh equivalent of the Mountaincross “rangers”—and killed over a thousand of them along the way, Lairays Walkyr, the commander of the Fort Tairys garrison, had learned of his approach only two days earlier. Partly, that was because the ill-disciplined survivors had, understandably, been more focused on taking to their heels than on warning Fort Tairys. But it was also because Walkyr had never made any effort to enlist them as a screen for his position, and that said some truly unflattering and reassuring—to his enemies at least—things about the aggressiveness of his reconnaissance efforts.
The fact that he continued to remain blissfully unaware of the Charisian force advancing rapidly towards him along the Branath Canal said even more.
Despite that, Fort Tairys was a formidable position. Built over a century earlier, during the wars between Desnair and the Republic, its thick walls were kiln-fired brick with a rubble fill and its position commanded the roadway through Ohadlyn’s Gap between Shiloh and the South March. Up until two five-days ago, it had been garrisoned by only five infantry regiments and a single cavalry regiment, with a nominal strength of around thirteen thousand. Whatever Walkyr’s preparedness might have been like, however, there was little doubt in the minds of Shiloh’s Temple Loyalists of what would happen if Fort Tairys fell. Although Walkyr hadn’t called for them and was deeply concerned about his ability to feed them now that he had them, they’d scraped up four additional regiments of militia and volunteers and sent them to Fort Tairys’ support. The 9th Cavalry was badly understrength, but most of the infantry regiments were at full strength or very close to it, which meant Walkyr now had better than nineteen thousand men under his command. Those numbers would have been more impressive if the quality of his regiments had been less suspect. Unfortunately for Walkyr, they consisted of mutineers and ill-trained volunteers who were even less experienced, no matter how many towns and farmsteads they might have burned, than Stahn Wyllys’ men. Still worse, from his perspective, he had no new model artillery, no rifles, and only a relative handful of matchlocks.
The defenders expected the fort’s walls and the earthworks Walkyr had thrown up to make up for a lot, but he might have been wiser not to attempt to cover the entire gap. The outer circumference of his entrenchments ran for over sixty-eight miles, which meant that even with the infantry reinforcements he hadn’t asked for, he had less than one man for every six yards of parapet. In fairness, he’d anticipated having to defend against an attack from only one side of the mountains at a time, which would have reduced his frontage by fifty percent, and he’d been building his fortifications not simply for his own command but for the much larger garrison he expected the Army of Shiloh to install there to protect its rear as it advanced farther east. And if he had no new model artillery, at least the fort had been equipped with fifty old-style guns. Despite the guns, the reinforcements, and the entrenchments, however, the question wasn’t whether or not Eastshare and Wyllys could take Fort Tairys; it was whether or not they could do it before the Army of Shiloh arrived. And despite the Army of Shiloh’s sluggardly pace, that might prove a near run thing.
“I’d feel better if Wyllys had all three of his brigades with him,” Stohnar confessed after a moment.
“General Wyllys has all the manpower he needs,” Cayleb said dryly, “and Duke Eastshare was right—we need his third brigade on the Daivyn just in case Kaitswyrth recovers his nerve. I know any commander prefers to have more men than he believes he needs rather than find out he doesn’t have quite enough after all, but I’m not very concerned about that in this case. Timing, yes; whether or not he and the Duke have the strength to do the job, no.”
“You’re right, of course,” Stohnar sighed. “I suppose it’s just an example of needing to find something to worry about.”
“I wouldn’t go quite that far.” Cayleb’s tone was even dryer, and he smiled. “I think it’s more a case of waiting for the other shoe, and God knows that’s not unreasonable after the last year or so.”
“Agreed.” Stohnar inhaled deeply as their party reached the rifle range. He and Cayleb had spent several hours inspecting the troops, watching training regiments pass in review, and generally encouraging the Republic of Siddarmark Army’s new formations. Now, however, the lord protector looked at Major Athrawes and smiled with the air of a man looking forward to a special treat.
“So, are you prepared to dazzle us all, Seijin Merlin?”
“‘Dazzle’ might be putting it a little strongly, My Lord,” Merlin replied mildly. “I think ‘impress’ might come closer to the intended effect.”
“I think you mean ‘reassure,’” Parkair observed with a snort and cocked his head at Cayleb. “I’ve found the seijin’s existing revolvers quite impressive enough, Your Majesty. I can’t quite escape the suspicion that a large part of today’s objective is to reassure us by demonstrating fresh evidence of the superiority of Charisian weapons. Or I suppose what I really should’ve said is the steadily increasing superiority of Charisian weapons.”
“I wouldn’t put it quite that way myself,” Cayleb said placidly. “Of course, I’m an instinctively tactful and diplomatic soul.”
“I’ve noticed that,” Stohnar agreed and looked back at Merlin as the seijin dismounted. “And I’m quite prepared for all the reassurance I can get.”
“One tries, My Lord,” Merlin murmured and advanced towards the targets prepared for his demonstration.
Five stout wooden posts had been set into the ground side-by-side to form a line about forty feet long. A nested pair of RSA breastplates had been hung on each of them, forming a double thickness of steel, and a helmet perched on top of each post. Merlin stopped twenty-five yards from the line of targets, facing them, and drew the revolver from his right side holster.
It wasn’t identical to the one Ehdwyrd Howsmyn had displayed to Ironhill, Pine Hollow, and Rock Point in Tellesberg and which now rode at Cayleb’s side. The cylinder on the emperor’s pistol was two inches long and had six chambers; the one on Seijin Merlin’s was three inches long and had only five. The pistol also weighed twice as much and had over an inch more barrel length, and there was a reason for all of that. While Merlin’s weapon would happily fire the standard forty-five caliber pistol round, it was designed to fire the all-up rifle round, instead. Even the Delthak Works’ best steel required thicker chamber walls to withstand those sorts of pressures. That was why there were only five of them, spaced rather farther apart. But the trade-off was that it produced a muzzle velocity of twelve hundred feet per second and, coupled with the rifle cartridge’s heavier bullet, generated substantially better than twice the muzzle energy of the standard round.
It was undoubedly a case of overkill for any merely mortal opponent, but Merlin could live with that. In fact, he was all in favor of overkill. After all, he never knew when Cayleb was going to be stupid enough to go slash lizard hunting with a spear again.
Taigys Mahldyn had produced a double-action design and this revolver’s action was silky smooth, its parts individually fitted and polished in a way the production pistols would never be. The trigger had a much longer pull when fired double-action, however, and Merlin suspected that most of his fellow Guardsmen would fire the production weapons
in single-action mode, thumb-cocking the hammer before each shot, whenever accuracy was more critical than rate of fire.
A PICA had certain advantages when it came to things like that.
The pistol rose smoothly, sweetly balanced in his hand, and thunder rolled. Flame stabbed from the muzzle as rapidly as he could squeeze the trigger, and holes appeared magically in the doubled breastplates, blasting not simply through the steel but punching through the supporting posts in sprays of splinters, as well. He emptied the cylinder, then he raised the muzzle to the vertical, his thumb found the release, and he swung the cylinder out and hit the ejector rod. The expended cartridges kicked free, gleaming in the sun, and he dropped the muzzle once more, pointing it at the ground, while his left hand flashed to the leather case on his belt.
