Like a Mighty Army

by David Weber

  The square was a-bustle with people, while Charisian merchant galleons lay to the quays and wharfs. A party of Charisian Marines stood guard outside the house which had been the Charisian viceroy’s mansion, was now the Charisian Embassy, and would soon become the Corisande headquarters of the Imperial Patent Office. Opposite the Archbishop’s Palace, the standard of the heir blew above Manchyr Palace on one staff, flanked by two more—one flying the white crossed swords and orange field of Corisande, the other a blue and white checkerboard quartered with black and charged with the golden kraken of Charis.

  “Quite a lot has changed since then, Your Eminence,” Klairmant Gairlyng agreed. The Archbishop of Corisande stepped to his superior’s side, gazing out at the sunlit square pensively. “I remember a discussion in this very palace with Bishop Zherald. A discussion of things I believed … and things I suspected.” He shook his head. “Many of those things I believed have been confirmed, to my joy.” He turned his head to look at Staynair. “And so have most of those I suspected, to my sorrow.”

  “Clyntahn?” Staynair’s voice was soft, and Gairlyng nodded.

  “And the others.” His own voice was even softer. “When he ordered Irys and Daivyn murdered, I knew I’d been right about who’d ordered Prince Hektor’s assassination, as well. And I’d met both you and Emperor Cayleb and Empress Sharleyan—and Seijin Merlin, for that matter. If I’d been inclined to doubt Earl Coris’ evidence, the Temple’s version of what happened in Delferahk would have convinced me. The men and the woman I’d met would never commit the acts of which you were accused. Almost worse, in some ways, if I’d ever needed proof that the rest of the ‘Group of Four’ was just as complicit as he in the crimes he’s committed in Mother Church’s name, the fact that none of them challenged his lies provided it. And so, would I or wouldn’t I, I had no choice but to become a full-fledged Reformist and send the souls committed to my care to war against God’s own Church to save those very souls from God’s own Church.”

  “Forgive me,” Staynair said gently, “but you’ve always been a Reformist, Klairmant. And in the end, which truly matters more: Mother Church or God?”

  “We’ve always taught—and been taught—there could be no division between them,” Gairlyng replied, looking back out the window.

  “But we’ve also always known that whatever Mother Church’s origin, she’s administered and governed by mortal men and women.” Staynair laid one large hand lightly on the younger archbishop’s shoulder. “Mortals are fallible, my friend. Even the best of us. And anything, be it ever so holy, governed by mortals may also fail.”

  “But Langhorne himself named Mother Church God’s own instrument, the Grand Vicar His inerrant voice,” Gairlyng countered, his voice troubled.

  “No,” Staynair corrected in that same gentle tone. “He proclaimed the Holy Writ inerrant, and he proclaimed the Grand Vicar infallible when he spoke from Langhorne’s own throne in accordance with the Writ and God’s will. That’s an important qualification, you know—in accordance with the Writ and God’s will—because the Writ itself teaches that even Archangels proved fallible and corruptible in the end, does it not? If Archangels can fall into the sin of setting their own wills, their own desires, before those of God, then surely a mere mortal, even the Grand Vicar—or those who control him—can do the same. And when that happens, he doesn’t speak in accordance with God’s will.”

  “I know. And I know too much of the history of Mother Church to be unaware of other times her voice has been … discordant. Yet I’ve always believed that while men might stray from the Light, the Church would hold her true course, returning to it at His touch upon the helm when the wind blew her from it. That God would correct her when she strayed from His plan.”

  “Perhaps that’s what He’s doing at this very moment,” Staynair pointed out. “And perhaps there’s still more to His plan than we’ve discovered in the Writ even yet.” Gairlyng turned his head, eyebrows rising, and Staynair smiled. “I have no new revelation to share with you at this moment, Klairmant. Nor do I propose that you and I should go down to the Cathedral and proclaim some genuine heresy just to satisfy Zhaspahr Clyntahn! But, you know, God is omnipotent and omniscient, and you and I are neither of those things. I’m a good bit older than you, and one thing I’ve acquired over the years—along with rather more aches and pains than I wish I had—is the realization that God never stops teaching us about Himself. We can close our eyes, we can shut our ears. We can pretend He’s become silent over the centuries, speaking to us only through the Writ and no longer writing His words in our hearts, as well. But when we do, we lie. We can refuse to learn; that doesn’t stop Him from teaching, and if we turn our backs on His lessons, we turn our backs on Him, as well. And that, Klairmant, would be not simply a tragedy for us but a sin against Him. Our mortal limitations mean we can never truly and fully comprehend Him, set a frame about Him that limits Him to that which we can perceive and conceptualize and describe in detail. Yet the fact that we can never fully comprehend Him can never diminish the glory of what we can comprehend about Him. Perhaps what’s happening in the world today, the Schism which has rent Mother Church, represents more than mere mortal weakness and corruption. Perhaps God’s chosen this moment to write His will across His creation in letters of fire that will ultimately teach us to know Him even more deeply and truly.”

  Silence fell, burnished by the street sounds of Corisande’s capital, drifting through the opened window. It lingered, and then, finally, Gairlyng inhaled.

  “You may be right.” His voice was soft but firm, his dark eyes level as he met Staynair’s gaze. “I’d never thought of it exactly that way, but surely the greatest sin a man or woman could commit would be to tell God what He can or cannot be, can or cannot do. All of us like to believe that had we been alive during the War Against the Fallen we would have stood foursquare for the Light, resolute and certain of our duty. No one could’ve led us astray! But much as we’d like to believe that, I suspect very few who live to see God working change at the moment of His choice recognize what they behold until the work is fully wrought. It may be we find ourselves in precisely that sort of time, yet how do we know?”

  “We know by listening not with our ears, but with this.” Staynair laid his palm flat on Gairlyng’s chest. “We know by making the choices He sets before us as best we can, trusting Him to guide us. All of His children have to do that every day of their lives, Klairmant. Should you and I, just because we wear archbishops’ rings, be any different from all our other brothers and sisters in that regard?”

  He smiled and his hand moved once more to the younger man’s shoulder, shaking Gairlyng very gently.

  “As far as our flocks are concerned, you and I are among the world’s great and powerful. Do you really feel that way in your own chapel when you open your heart? I think not. I think you already know exactly how He expects us to make our choices and our decisions.”

  “Perhaps I do.” Gairlyng raised his own hand to the one on his shoulder, and his eyes had turned warmer. “Perhaps I only needed you to remind me.”

  “I think you’ve been doing just fine without me around to play font of all wisdom.” Staynair’s eyes twinkled, yet there was something like sorrow behind their amusement. “I don’t know about you, but there are times I could wish I had fewer choices to deal with! And”—the twinkle faded—“that the ones I make affected only myself and not millions upon millions of His other children, living and yet unborn. Unfortunately, He can be rather insistent. Unreasonable of Him, I know, but there it is.”

  “So I’ve found myself.” Gairlyng chuckled and squeezed the hand on his shoulder briefly. “You seem to be doing pretty well so far, however, Your Eminence. And I’ve heard this nagging voice nattering away in the back of my brain—and my heart—telling me I’m supposed to be following. I don’t think I have whatever spark He gave you when He chose you to slog into the wind in front of the rest of us with His lantern, but wherever He may be leadin
g you, I can at least help cover your back along the way.”

  .XVIII.

  Fort Tairys, Shiloh Province, Republic of Siddarmark

  The rain was picking up again.

  The wind-driven drops came in clusters, like tiny, icy hooves galloping across any exposed skin, but they didn’t seem to bother the accursed heretics very much, General Lairays Walkyr observed grimly as he listened to the exploding shells. He and his beleaguered command were ringed by heretic positions—Siddarmarkians coming down Ohadlyn’s Gap from the north, Charisians driving up from the south—and he was unhappily certain that their infantry, at least, had managed to join hands after all, trekking through the narrow, winding paths above the Gap. Guided, no doubt, by the local heretics who hated everything the Faithful stood for and had only awaited this moment for revenge.

  Well, of course their infantry’s linked up, he thought bitterly. They’ve got frigging artillery into the hills! Sure as Shan-wei they’ve been able to move their damned infantry wherever they want it.

  He’d discovered the hard way that all the rumors about the Charisian rifles had been only too true, but the vague reports he’d received about “angle-guns” hadn’t meant much to him. He’d had no experience from which to conceptualize what they were or did. Now, unfortunately, he understood all too well. The heavy angle-guns were bad enough, lobbying their massive shells into the fort from miles away to the south. The craters they blew into the dead ground behind the earthworks were huge, and what they did to brickwork was incredible, yet the small, mobile ones were even worse when it came to simple mayhem. There were endless numbers of them, they moved rapidly from place to place, and his men could never know where—or when—the next plunging torrent of shrapnel would replace the rain.

  And then there were the rockets, he thought, glaring into the rainy darkness with red-rimmed, exhausted eyes. He’d anticipated at least being able to make repairs unobserved during the hours of darkness, but the heretics had deprived him even of that. He had no idea what to call the things that blazed against the night, suspended from umbrella-like canopies as they drifted where the rockets had left them, pitilessly illuminating the earth below, but he didn’t need to know their name to curse them from the bottom of his heart. His men had dubbed them “Shan-wei’s candles,” yet he suspected they were no more supernatural—or demonic—than the rifles and exploding shells the heretics had deployed. On the other hand, they were probably no less demonic, and who was he to say what knowledge was and was not a transgression of the Proscriptions?

  Brilliant though they might be, they were no substitute for daylight where the Charisian snipers were concerned. That was one reason he doubted they were of demonic origin. Surely if Shan-wei or her servant Proctor had provided them directly to her servants they would have been daylight brilliant. Yet while riflemen might find their illumination unreliable, the damnable artillery was less choosy. What it lacked in a rifle’s pinpoint precision, it made up for in area of effect, and working parties laboring to repair the bombardment’s damage drew tempests of shell and shrapnel whenever the “candles” drifted overhead.

  His men were as loyal to God and Mother Church as any mortals could ever be, yet he felt the despair creeping through them as the bombardment entered its fourth day and they sheltered behind the fort’s brick parapets or crouched in wet holes scooped out of the sodden ground. He’d probably lost as many as two thousand to the heretics’ rifles and artillery, and he knew it was only beginning. So did his men, and even the most faithful must find all his mortal frailties exposed as he felt death grind inexorably towards him.

  Yet there was a difference, he’d discovered, between despair and defeat. The soaked, shivering, muddy, wretched men of his regiments knew they were hunched down in this position to hold until relieved. That if they could only stand their ground long enough, the Army of Shiloh would relieve them. They would hold as long as mortal men could, and if that wasn’t long enough, they could—and would—still perform their final duty to God and the Archangels, knowing that whatever the heretics might do to their bodies would matter not at all.

  * * *

  Duke Eastshare stood on a hilltop east of Ohadlyn’s Gap, rain glistening on his oilskin poncho and his breath a misty cloud, and raised his double-glass as a fresh trio of parachute flares blazed above Fort Tairys. He felt a stir of gratitude to a man he’d never met each time one of those flares blossomed, and he made a mental note to stop by Tellesberg on his way home to Chisholm so he could personally shake Baron Seamount’s hand. And while he was at it, he’d best spend the odd hour or so thanking Ehdwyrd Howsmyn and the Delthak Works’ other wizards, as well.

  Below and two hundred yards in front of him, the eight pieces of a battery of four-inch rifled guns fired in measured, steady thunder, one after another, with metronome precision. Their muzzle flashes were enormous, awe-inspiring, in the dark and rain, and he saw their shells—“armor piercing,” the Delthak Works called them—strike Fort Tairys’ brick curtainwall like hammers. Their bores were a half inch less than that of a twelve-pounder smoothbore, but their shells weighed almost twenty-eight pounds and each carried a pound of black powder at its heart. They drilled into the brickwork like awls, riddling it with eye-cheese craters, and the six-inch angles were even deadlier. Their “high explosive” shells weighed sixty-eight pounds and carried over eleven pounds of powder. That was quite heavy enough to punch deep into anything Fort Tairys’ defenses could offer, and their volcano-like explosions shredded the rubble-filled masonry.

  They were less effective against earthworks than brickwork, unfortunately. The solid earth absorbed their explosive power far more efficiently than masonry, and it was easier to patch, as well. Still, he reminded himself, watching the steady crumbling of the fort’s outworks, there was an answer for that, too. And what the four-inch guns might lack in sheer hitting power, they more than made up in accuracy. His gunners could reliably hit a six-foot target at two thousand yards and reach a maximum range of over four thousand. He’d read the marvelous reports about the new breech-loading guns Howsmyn had started producing, and he could scarcely wait for his artillerists to get their hands on them. In the meantime, what he already had was more than good enough.

  * * *

  “I don’t want to hear about anyone doing anything stupid out there tonight, Sailys. You do understand that, don’t you?” Colonel Byrk Raimahn regarded his executive officer levelly. “And you did make that clear to Laimuyl’s boys?”

  “Aye, Sir, I do. And I did.” Major Sailys Trahskhat’s tone was patient. “Made him promise to make them behave, in fact.”

  “I hope you were more … persuasive with him than with Archbishop Zhasyn,” Raimahn said a bit pointedly. Trahskhat suppressed the long-suffering sigh the remark deserved, and the intensity of the colonel’s expression eased a bit. His lips might actually have twitched, although it was difficult to tell in the windy, uncertain lantern light.

  “I know they’ll do their best, Sailys.” He patted the major’s shoulder. “I’d just as soon not lose any of them, though. So keep an eye on them, right?”

  “Course I will, Sir.” Trahskhat nodded.

  “Then I suppose you’d best get on with it.”

  Trahskhat nodded again, touched his chest in a salute which no longer seemed unnatural to either of them, and disappeared into the rain.

  Raimahn watched him go, then bent over the sketch map on the camp table shielded—mostly—from the windy rain under the canvas tarp. He shivered and scolded himself for it. After the previous winter, the South March climate was almost balmy, rain or no rain. Indeed, his men had been sneering at the weather—“Call this a winter?”—ever since they’d moved south of Fort St. Klair.

  I suppose you can take the boy out of Charis, but you can’t take the Charis out of the boy, he told himself, and turned the lantern’s wick a bit higher. His position was invisible to anyone inside the fortifications because it was sheltered against the outer face of the third ri
ng of entrenchments around the fort, over a mile from the innermost earthworks around the fort itself.

  His nose had adjusted, however unwillingly, to the reek of corruption not even the rain could wash fully out of the air, and he wondered once again what had possessed the garrison’s commander to attempt to hold anything but that inner ring. He’d yielded the outer two rings without a fight, in a triumph of sanity over fanaticism, but he’d refused to give up the third ring that easily, and his stubbornness had cost him close to a thousand men in killed, wounded, and prisoners. Mostly killed, Raimahn reflected coldly, and lucky for the handful of prisoners that the assault columns had consisted almost solely of Charisians. He rather doubted any of the Temple Loyalists would have survived long enough to surrender if his Glacierhearters had encountered them. That bothered him. What bothered him worse was that, after last winter, it didn’t bother him very much.

  He straightened and slowly filled the bowl of the pipe he’d never smoked before he’d found himself among the snowy peaks of Glacierheart. The majority of Glacierhearters smoked, and he’d found himself picking up the habit as part and parcel of the evolution which had transformed what he still thought of as a Charisian fop into a hardened Glacierheart militia commander. And, he reflected as he struck the Shan-wei’s candle and lit the fragrant Malitar tobacco, it helped to mask the smell of death.