Like a Mighty Army

by David Weber

  “A moment, Sir Rainos. I cannot admit anyone but yourself to His Grace’s presence,” Fyrnach said quickly with an unpleasant smile. Ahlverez considered him for a moment, then turned and seated himself on one of the stools normally used by couriers waiting to deliver messages to Harless’ subordinates.

  “If you can’t admit all three of us to his presence, we’ll await him here,” he said evenly. “Understanding, I trust, that the same conditions—and time limit—apply to his appearance here. The choice is yours, My Lord.”

  Fyrnach glared at him, one hand clenching on his dagger, and Ahlverez looked back, cold-eyed as a serpent, and tugged the watch back out of his pocket. He started to reopen the cover, but Fyrnach’s nostrils flared. His handsome face wasn’t particularly handsome at the moment—puce was not a becoming color—as he jerked his head back the way he’d come.

  “Very well, Sir Rainos,” he bit each syllable out of bone and bile, “if you and your … companions would step this way.”

  “Of course.” Ahlverez stood and nodded to the two men at his back. “Lynkyn, Master Slaytyr, I believe we’re expected.”

  * * *

  Duke Harless looked considerably less furious than Ahlverez had anticipated. Perhaps the young idiot had been wise enough to keep his ultimatum to himself. If so, he was at least a little brighter than Ahlverez had thought. Given his record, that was hard to believe; on the other hand, he could scarcely be less bright.

  The lamplit dining room was warm, unlike the raw, wet night. A fire crackled cheerfully on its hearth, and Harless and his companions were dressed in the height of court fashion. Obviously, they’d found time for hot baths and a fresh change of clothing even if none of their shivering, sodden troopers could say the same.

  “Sir Rainos.” The duke nodded—not exactly curtly, but not with any effusion of joy—and remained seated. That might not have been entirely out of irritation at having been disturbed, however. Judging from the empty bottles standing sentinel among the remnants of enough food to feed an entire squad of his ravenous army, he might not have been capable of rising. “I understand this is a matter of some urgency.”

  “It is, Your Grace.”

  Ahlverez bowed in formal greeting to Harless, Father Tymythy Yairdyn, Earl Hankey, and Earl Hennet. The Schuelerite intendant looked distinctly glassy-eyed, although Hankey and Hennet appeared sober enough.

  “May we know what that matter is?” Harless’ words came a trifle more slowly than usual, but without slurring or hesitation.

  “Master Slaytyr.” Ahlverez beckoned to the tall Siddarmarkian and Slaytyr stepped forward. “Your Grace, this is Master Zhapyth Slaytyr. He comes to us from Shiloh Province.”

  Harless’ expression didn’t change for a moment. Then his eyes narrowed.

  “Shiloh Province?” he repeated more sharply, and Ahlverez nodded.

  “One of my cavalry units picked him up on his way to us,” he said, deliberately not noting the quick flicker of anger in Earl Hennet’s eyes.

  Harless’ cavalry commander deeply resented Ahlverez’ unilateral decision to send three regiments of his own cavalry to join the mounted force screening the rest of the sluggishly crawling army. Not that there’d been much he could do about it, since he was the one who’d refused any suggestion that all of the cavalry might be merged into a single force. Ahlverez wasn’t about to pretend he was unhappy over Hennet’s decision; in fact, he’d made the suggestion in the devout hope that the arrogant earl would do just that.

  Because Hennet had gratified his hope, the army’s Dohlaran cavalry was Ahlverez’ to use as he chose, and what he chose was to send out a cavalry screen in whose scouting ability he reposed some faith. And if it could just happen to be present when Desnairian foraging parties descended upon some isolated farmstead whose owners hadn’t fled in time, so much the better. Ahlverez never doubted his men would steal anything that wasn’t nailed down—and anything that was nailed down, if they had time to pry it loose—but he also knew they would prevent the outrages, ranging from simple assaults all the way to rape and murder, Harless’ foragers committed all too often out of the ancient hostility between Desnair and Siddarmark. That was another reason Hennet resented his decision so bitterly, and the earl had ordered his own troopers to make damned sure the Dohlarans didn’t embarrass them—and him—by reporting anything they missed. Which meant, given that his so-called scouts outnumbered Ahlverez’ by something like fifty-to-one, that he couldn’t be pleased that Slaytyr had passed entirely through his cavalry without being spotted.

  Pity about that.

  “Did they, indeed?” Harless asked softly

  “Indeed.” Ahlverez nodded. “He bears a message from General Walkyr. Master Slaytyr?”

  The muddy, wet Slaytyr reached into his battered belt pouch and withdrew a letter. The wafer which had sealed it had been broken, and he looked at Ahlverez for a moment. The Dohlaran twitched his head in Harless’ direction, and Slaytyr handed it across.

  The rhythm of rain beating on the roof and tapping against the windows was the only sound except the rustle of paper as Harless tilted the letter to catch the light and squinted at it. Reading was not his favorite pastime, nor was Walkyr’s penmanship of the best, and his eyes moved slowly. Then his face tightened abruptly. His eyes moved faster, reached the end, and lifted to glare first at Slaytyr and then at Ahlverez, as if the two of them might have been personally responsible for its contents.

  “Is this true?” he demanded of the Siddarmarkian, his voice harsh.

  “Wouldn’t know, M’lord,” Slaytyr replied in the slow, almost musical accent of Shiloh. He was well into middle age, his hair gray, his eyes a muddy brown. His knuckles were a bit swollen with arthritis and his shoulders—despite his impressive height—stooped. He favored his right leg when he walked, as well, and there was an air of near-exhaustion, about him, but there was no hesitation in his expression as he met Harless’ gaze. “Haven’t read it, m’self. General Walkyr, he said deliver it, an’ so I done. Didn’t ask what it said, an’ he didn’t say.”

  Ahlverez’ lips twitched at Harless’ expression, but he called them firmly to order.

  “Very well,” Harless said, passing the letter to Yairdyn. “Let me phrase it a different way. According to this letter, the heretics have placed Fort Tairys under siege.” Hennet, Hankey, and even Fyrnach stiffened. “Of your knowledge, Master … Slaytyr, was it?” The Siddarmarkian nodded. “Very well, Master Slaytyr. Is that true?”

  “Truer’n death, M’lord,” Slaytyr said flatly. “Got a great fuc—ah, I mean a right smart-sized army at each end o’ the Gap, they do. An’ I could hear them guns o’ theirs a-firin’ while I rode away.”

  “He estimates the heretics’ strength at perhaps twenty thousand,” Harless said, darting a quick glance at Ahlverez. “Would you say that’s accurate?”

  “Now that’s more’n I could be guessin’.” Slaytyr was obviously unafraid to admit ignorance, Ahlverez noted, and more power to him. “All I can tell you’s that one batch of ’em come down the Branath Canal, and t’other come by road, down by way o’ Maidynberg. I seen a passel of ’em a-comin’ in both directions when I lit out t’ find you seven days agone, an’ iffen they was sheep’r cows or maybe dragons, might be I could say how many they was.” He shrugged. “Not so good at countin’ soldiers, I’m ’fraid, M’lord.”

  Siddarmarkians had no noblemen of their own and weren’t much given to deferring to anyone else’s … especially Desnairians. They certainly weren’t interested in the proper modes of address for them, and Slaytyr’s generic “M’lord” actually represented quite a concession for him or his countrymen. Ahlverez normally found that attitude moderately irritating, but not this time. In point of fact, the anger in Fyrnach’s eyes as Slaytyr failed to abase himself properly before his granduncle’s towering nobility gave Ahlverez a profound sense of satisfaction. Slaytyr’s news grew no sweeter each time he heard it, however.

  “And why did General Walkyr sel
ect you as his messenger?” Harless inquired as a marginally less tipsy-looking Father Tymythy passed the dispatch on to Earl Hankey. “Instead of one of his own men, I mean?”

  “Didn’t ’splain ever’thing t’me, M’lord, but I’m a-guessin’ ’twas because them cav’lry o’ his can’t find their arses with both hands, come to ridin’ the hills.” Slaytyr shrugged. “Me, I grew up in ’em, man an’ boy. Know ’em like I used t’ know my wife. Prob’ly figured I might get through an’ knew damned well they wouldn’t. Not with them soldiers in th’ funny-colored uniforms a-swarmin’ around. Seemed t’know what they was about, they did, if you take my meanin’. Had t’move right smart gettin’ past ’em. Damned near caught me, time’r two.”

  Harless stiffened at the confirmation that the heretic forces west of Fort Tairys were, indeed, Charisian regulars. He looked at Hankey and Hennet, his color ashen in the lamplight, then back at Slaytyr.

  “Thank you, Master Slaytyr,” he made himself say. “Baron Fyrnach will find you a place to sit out of the wet and something to eat. I’ll ask you to wait there in case we have additional questions for you.”

  Slaytyr nodded amiably in an even more flagrant display of the Siddarmarkian disregard for noble blood and followed a stiff-backed Fyrnach from the mayor’s dining room. Harless watched them go, then drew a deep breath and gestured at an empty chair at the table.

  “Please be seated, Sir Rainos. It would seem you were quite correct to bring this to my attention immediately.”

  * * *

  “Excuse me, Sir,” Sir Lynkyn Lattymyr said cautiously as he rode through the rain—more of a blowing mist than a downpour, at the moment—at Ahlverez’ side. They were headed back out of town, towards the Dohlaran encampment and Ahlverez’ tent.

  “Yes, Lynkyn?” Ahlverez’ tone was courteous, but Lattymyr heard an echo of his superior’s stiff posture and stiffer expression in its depths.

  “I’m sorry, Sir,” the captain picked his words carefully; he’d been banished from his superiors’ meeting by a flick of Father Tymythy’s hand, probably to prevent him from observing the degree of the priest’s inebriation, “but you seem less than pleased with the result of your conference with Duke Harless.”

  “Indeed?” Ahlverez shrugged. “That’s because I am less than pleased.”

  “But didn’t His Grace—?”

  “No, His Grace didn’t.” Ahlverez cut him off abruptly, something he rarely did. “I asked, I begged—Shan-wei, I pleaded—for him to let me take our troops ahead. He refused. Because the troops between us and Fort Tairys appear to be Charisians, he fears that their artillery and those breech-loading rifles of theirs would give them too great an advantage for us to encounter without Desnairian support. Support!”

  Ahlverez was so furious he actually spat, and Lattymyr flinched.

  “It pains me more than you can possibly guess, Lynkyn,” his general continued after a moment, his voice filled with broken bits of iron, “but I’m coming to the conclusion that I owe that bastard Thirsk an apology.”

  Lattymyr blinked in astonishment, ambushed by the sudden, totally unanticipated segue, and Ahlverez chuckled sourly, even though he couldn’t possibly have seen his aide’s blink in the darkness.

  “I don’t imagine you expected to hear that out of me,” he continued in a marginally less bitter voice, “but the truth is that my cousin Faidel wasn’t a sailor and was a stubborn man. All these years I’ve blamed Thirsk—the experienced sailor, the man who was frigging well supposed to know what the Navy was doing—for not giving him the advice he was entitled to and then blaming the entire disaster on him. After all, he should have kept Faidel from making so many mistakes, shouldn’t he? That was what he was there for! And then he lost his own part of the fleet after he abandoned Faidel, didn’t he?”

  He fell silent for a moment, then inhaled sharply, the sound audible over the wet clopping of their horses’ hooves.

  “Now I know exactly how Thirsk must have felt,” he grated. “I gave them my best advice, I argued myself blue in the face, I all but got down on my knees to that stiff-necked, arrogant Desnairian prick, and I might as well have saved my breath. If that’s what Thirsk went through with Faidel—and much as I hate to admit it, it damned well could be—I’ve been blaming the wrong idiot for what happened to the Navy off Armageddon Reef.”

  Lattymyr’s amazement could scarcely have been greater if Langhorne in all his glory had appeared out of the rainy dark in front of him. Instinct suggested that saying anything of the sort would be a serious tactical error, however.

  “So what is the Duke going to do, Sir?” he asked instead.

  “He agrees ‘time is of the essence.’ And he also acknowledges that ‘the Army has made less than its best speed’—because we’ve been ‘unavoidably delayed by the unanticipated bad weather’ since leaving Thesmar.”

  The irony in his tone was withering, and Lattymyr understood it perfectly. Malyktyn was almost five hundred miles from Fort Tairys. At the Army of Shiloh’s present rate of advance, it would take them five five-days to cover that distance. Ahlverez’ troops could have made the same march in less than three, even in this weather. For that matter, they could already have been in Fort Tairys, left to their own devices.

  “In light of the emergency at Fort Tairys, however,” Ahlverez continued, “the entire Army will set out tomorrow to force march to General Walkyr’s relief. He believes we should be able to increase our speed by as much as fifty percent.”

  Lattymyr’s jaw tightened. At that rate, it would still take them fourteen days to cover the distance. And that was assuming the accursed heretics didn’t do little things like burning or blowing up bridges or dropping cut trees across the road once they were into the Kyplyngyr Forest.

  “And that, Lynkyn,” his general said, “constitutes Duke Harless’—and Father Tymythy’s—response to the news. He did, however, send word to Walkyr that help is on its way. Master Slaytyr’s already left.”

  “Master Slaytyr? By himself, Sir?” Surprise startled the question out of Lattymyr, and Ahlverez laughed harshly.

  “Master Slaytyr made it past the heretics—and that ass Hennet’s cavalry—with General Walkyr’s dispatch and covered five hundred miles in less than eight days. Obviously, he’s the best choice to return with Duke Harless’ response.”

  Lattymyr stared at him in the darkness, temporarily bereft of speech as he recalled Slaytyr’s obvious exhaustion, and Ahlverez shrugged.

  “In fairness to the Duke, Slaytyr didn’t argue. In fact, I think he’s got the measure of Earl Hennet’s men and figures he’s a lot more likely to get through by himself, without still more cavalry that ‘can’t find its arse with both hands.’ And judging from what I’ve seen of Master Slaytyr, I’m pretty sure he’s right.”

  Lattymyr nodded slowly, and they rode on into the blowing rain.

  * * *

  Several miles to the east, Zhapyth Slaytyr rode in the opposite direction on a fresh, borrowed horse.

  His hair was noticeably less gray than it had been, and stubble seemed to be sprouting on his upper lip and chin at a remarkable rate. His shoulders were less stooped-looking, as well, and the swollen knuckles and the age spots on the back of his hands had vanished. In fact, those hands looked considerably stronger and more sinewy than they had when he delivered the dispatch in Lairays Walkyr’s handwriting to Sir Rainos Ahlverez and Duke Harless.

  He kept a close watch on his immediate surroundings through the SNARC floating overhead while he worked at putting at least a few miles between himself and Sir Rainos’ reasonably competent cavalry screen before he summoned the recon skimmer. It was likely to take two or three hours, yet it was time he couldn’t begrudge. Indeed, he was much more than simply satisfied, and any observer would have been struck by the gleam of amusement in the eyes which were no longer muddy or brown.

  Watching Ahlverez pin back that little snot’s ears was a joy to behold. Even for someone who’s not all that fond of Dohlarans,
he thought. And sowing a little more discord in the enemy’s camp can’t hurt. Still, I wonder how Harless or that bastard Yairdyn would’ve reacted if they’d realized they were in the presence of “Demon Athrawes” his very self? Too bad I couldn’t tell them. Or that “Slaytyr” couldn’t give them a current update on the surprise young Raimahn and his miners’re about to give that bastard Walkyr.

  A person, he reminded himself, couldn’t have everything. Still, he wasn’t going to pretend he hadn’t been delighted by Walkyr’s failure to get a messenger of his own off to the Army of Shiloh. That oversight had at least allowed him to amuse himself seeing to it that Duke Harless got the word after all.

  Seldom done a more satisfying day’s work in my life … or Nimue’s for that matter, he thought cheerfully, and started looking for a suitable place for the skimmer to collect him and his faithful mount.

  .XVII.

  Archbishop’s Palace, City of Manchyr, Princedom of Corisande

  “Well,” Archbishop Maikel Staynair turned from the window looking out over the city of Manchyr’s Cathedral Square and smiled a bit crookedly at his host, “I must say it makes a change from my last visit, Klairmant.”