Hell's Foundations Quiver (48 page)

Cahnyr reached out impulsively, laying one hand on the other man's knee.

“That's a good sign,” he said. One of Eastshare's eyebrows rose, and the archbishop smiled. It was a little crooked, that smile, pulled off-center by the way Eastshare's admission resonated with his own thoughts of only a moment before. “It's a sign you have a conscience, my son. God and the Archangels gave you that for a reason, and it's good you still have it.” His smile faded. “I only wish more of those who claim to serve Mother Church could say the same.”

“I think you're right, Your Eminence. That it's good
we
still have consciences, whether or not the other side does. In fact, what worries me most is the number of good men I've seen
losing
their consciences to the need for vengeance. For that matter,” he looked away, “I can't pretend
I
wasn't … grateful when Lairys Walkyr refused my offer of quarter.”

“Not all wounds are of the flesh,” Cahnyr said quietly. “And not all of them heal. But I think you should cherish the pain you feel when you think about Fort Tairys. Don't let it prevent you from doing what you must, but remember what makes you who you are.”

“I'll try to bear that in mind, Your Eminence,” Eastshare replied, turning back to meet his gaze levelly. Then he shook himself and smiled, pointing ahead as their sleigh rounded a bend. A line of artillery pieces had been deployed, Cahnyr saw, and his eyes widened in sudden understanding.

“I'll try to bear it in mind,” the general continued, “but in the meantime, we have a small surprise demonstration to show you before we get you indoors and brief you on our current dispositions. They aren't as heavy as the angle-gun we passed on the way here, but I think once you've seen them in action you'll understand why I was so happy to see the heavy angles.”

The new guns were … sleeker than the six-inch angle, Cahnyr thought, and fitted with sloped steel shields of some sort. They had the same split trails, however, and there were spades at the end of each leg, dug into solid earth. Gun crews stood waiting—fewer of them per gun than he would have expected—and he looked back at the duke questioningly.

“Master Howsmyn's christened them the ‘M97 Field Gun, 4-inch, Model 1,' Your Eminence. Like the new angle-guns, they don't use studded shells anymore, and a trained crew can fire six or seven rounds a minute out to as much as five thousand yards. And I'm afraid,” Eastshare's smile faded into an expression of grim satisfaction, “the Temple Boys aren't going to like them a bit.”

 

.V.

Mahzgyr, Duchy of Gwynt, and The Ohlarn Gap, New Northland Province, Republic of Siddarmark

“I think you'll find this interesting, Your Eminence,” Taychau Daiyang said, waving one hand at the infantry platoon marching through the snow towards them. “It was the suggestion of a young captain of spears in the Two Hundred Thirty-First Volunteers.”

“Was it, My Lord?” Archbishop Militant Gustyv Walkyr turned to look in the direction the commander of the Mighty Host of God and the Archangels had indicated. “That would be Camp Number Four, wouldn't it?” The Harchongian nodded, and Walkyr smiled. “I understand several interesting suggestions have come out of that camp,” he observed.

“True. And I, for one, am grateful for it.”

There was quite a freight of meaning packed into that sentence, Walkyr reflected. Taychau Daiyang, the Earl of Rainbow Waters, had been appointed to the rank of lord of horse for his present assignment. An earl was rather junior for such an important post in the Imperial Harchongese Army, and lord of horse might be best described as an
elastic
rank. It was roughly equivalent to a bishop in the Army of God or to a general—possibly even a mere brigadier—in the Siddarmarkian or Charisian armies, but there was no formal step or title between it and lord of hosts, the highest Harchongese field rank. That meant it held whatever authority the emperor (or his bureaucracy, at least) decided it needed to hold at any given moment, and Rainbow Waters had been selected over the heads of at least a score of lords of horse whose seniority far exceeded his own.

He was also the fifth commander the Mighty Host had enjoyed since leaving Harchong. The first two had resigned in protest when they'd discovered what Allayn Maigwair and Rhobair Duchairn had in mind. The third had been removed in disgrace for incompetence and a degree of corruption not even the IHA had been prepared to tolerate. The fourth had also resigned, officially because he found it impossible to endure the arrogance and interference in his command's internal affairs by the Army of God “advisors” attached to it. Personally, Walkyr was confident his opposition to what those advisors were attempting to accomplish had had quite a lot to do with his decision, as well.

But Rainbow Waters was different. He was smarter than any of the others, for one thing, and far more pragmatic. The earl clearly had misgivings of his own, yet it was equally clear he understood
why
the Mighty Host had required such a massive overhaul. Unlike any of his predecessors, he'd gotten behind the effort and pushed both hard and competently, despite the passive resistance of at least a quarter of his own subordinates. He'd been remarkably ruthless about relieving the most obstructionist of those subordinates, too, despite the near certainty of bitter future feuds with their powerful families or patrons.

“What have the Volunteers come up with this time, My Lord?”

“I prefer to allow you to enjoy the surprise, Your Eminence.”

“Ah?”

“I believe Captain of Swords Tsynzhwei deserves to have you approach it without … preconceptions, although I'm not at all certain he came up with the idea himself, initially.” Rainbow Waters smiled faintly. “In fact, I rather suspect it came from one of his company commanders. Possibly even some lowly sergeant. I doubt the heretics are going to enjoy it, however.”

The marching infantry had continued to approach the covered reviewing stand on which Walkyr, Rainbow Waters, and half a dozen lower-ranking officers and aides stood, and Walkyr somehow managed not to roll his eyes as he realized the entire platoon was equipped with slings. The Imperial Harchongese Army was the only major army which still included slingers in its order of battle—mostly because peasants and serfs were prohibited by law from mastering any more sophisticated missile weapon. Despite the massive effort to reequip the Mighty Host of God and the Archangels, over sixty thousand of its million infantry were still sling-armed, which meant they were the next best thing to useless on a modern field of battle.

The archbishop militant sighed internally and prepared to find some way to express approval of whatever he was about to see without perjuring his immortal soul. Rainbow Waters might be more pragmatic than the majority of his peers, but he was still a Harchongese aristocrat which, by definition, meant proud, prickly, and deeply aware of his towering superiority to any non-Harchongian. Irritating as that might make him upon occasion, he'd made a massive sacrifice of his own honor—by Harchongese standards—simply to accept his current command, and it would never do to offend him. For that matter, he
deserved
a little diplomatic stroking. Chihiro knew more than a few of those peers of his back home were already plotting his assassination for his betrayal of his own kind!

Besides
, Walkyr reminded himself,
useless or not, there are less than seventy thousand of them in the entire Host
. His lips twitched at the irony of using the adverb “less” about a number greater than the entire current strength of the Army of the Sylmahn, but the truth was that it represented less than six percent of the Mighty Host's manpower.
We can afford to let Rainbow Waters play with them any way that amuses him
.

The oncoming infantry came to a halt on the drill field, fifty yards from the reviewing stand and deployed into a single line, and Walkyr noted the polish of its drill with approval. It was twice the size of an Army of God platoon, and its “uniforms” were a motley collection of civilian garments, but its men's movement was smoother—and quicker—than the majority of AOG units the archbishop militant had reviewed.

Hmmm. Those aren't regular slings, either
, he realized.
They're
staff
slings. Now what…?

The platoon's formation was much more open than archers, arbalesteers, or riflemen would have required, which probably reflected the additional room a slinger must require. Walkyr had never really thought about it, since the sling had become obsolete in most of Safehold generations ago. In fact, it was practically unknown outside Harchong these days, and it had probably persisted there only because slings were incredibly cheap and because of the prohibitions the Empire placed on more advanced weapons. The only reason Walkyr knew the difference between simple slings and staff slings was the sheer quantity of paperwork which had crossed his desk during the Host's rearmament.

The slingers moved briskly, inserting stones into their weapons' leather-reinforced pouches. It was little wonder they were cheap, Walkyr reflected. They were little more than a staff, perhaps six feet long, with a relatively short length of tanned leather attached to its end. He was a little puzzled by the apparent size of their ammunition, however. According to the paperwork he'd seen—which included charges for cast lead “bullets”—they shouldn't have been that large. The bullets weighed between one and a half and three ounces which shouldn't have been much larger than an old-style matchlock bullet, and whatever they were using today was a lot bigger than that, close to the size of a man's fist. It wasn't spherical, either, which he'd always assumed sling bullets had to be. It was more … elliptical. Or perhaps the word he wanted was “ovoid.” At any rate—

A crisp order rang out. The staffs whipped up with lightning speed, arcing through a sharply defined motion whose precision took the archbishop militant by surprise. Obviously, the men using those slings had begun learning how to handle them almost before they could walk!

His eyebrows flew up in even deeper astonishment as he realized just how far the slingers' projectiles could travel. He'd assumed they'd do well to reach a hundred yards, but they far exceeded that. In fact, their shots sailed well over
two
hundred yards, despite the size of the projectiles, before they thudded softly into the snow.

And exploded.

Archbishop Militant Gustyv stepped back involuntarily as flame, snow, and smoke erupted with absolutely no warning. The fountains covered a zone at least fifty yards across and ten yards deep, and the flat, staccato explosions hammered his ears. He felt his jaw drop, but there was nothing he could do about that. He could only stare at the clouds of snow and smoke rising higher and higher on the chill wind.

It took him at least ten seconds to close his mouth, shake himself, and turn back to Rainbow Waters.

“That … was remarkable, My Lord,” he said. “It never occurred to me that slings could reach
that
sort of range. And as for the explosions—!”

“I don't doubt that, Your Eminence.” The Harchongese officer shrugged slightly. “It's been my observation that Easterners significantly underestimate the range a trained slinger can reach. In fact, with a properly designed bullet, these men could reach at least twice the range they just demonstrated.”

Walkyr started to object to such a claim, almost by reflex. Fortunately, he stopped himself in time.

“If they weren't using bullets, what were they using?” he asked instead.

“Hand bombs,” Rainbow Waters replied. “We made them ourselves, based on the ones Mother Church is supplying to our infantry. They're individually smaller—they weigh only half as much and don't carry as much powder or as many shrapnel balls—but you've seen how far our slingers can throw them. Of course, these men are using
staff
slings, which have much more range than a standard sling, and they can't be used at short ranges. Their bullets—or bombs—have to travel in an arc without the flatter trajectories standard slings can achieve. On the other hand, they can reach two hundred yards with the full-size hand bombs; with the ones they used today, they can reach almost four hundred, although their accuracy falls off at that range. The hand bomb patterns become less concentrated the farther they have to sling them.”

“I see.” Walkyr looked at the earl for a moment, then back at the slinger platoon, which was now standing motionless, awaiting its next order. “Might I see them demonstrate that again, My Lord? And would it be possible for you to have them show me how well they can do with the full-size hand bombs?”

“By the strangest coincidence, Your Eminence, they happen to have a half dozen of each size with them.”

Rainbow Waters smiled broadly at the archbishop militant, then nodded to one of his aides. The young man saluted crisply, hurried down the reviewing stand's shallow steps, and jogged towards the waiting platoon.

“I know we haven't been able to duplicate the heretics' portable angle-guns,” Rainbow Waters said, his own eyes on the slingers as he stood beside Walkyr. “From the reports Bishop Militant Bahrnabai and Bishop Militant Cahnyr have shared with me, the best slinger in the world isn't going to be able to match those sorts of ranges. But once the range falls.…”

His voice trailed off, and Walkyr nodded as he watched the slingers reload.

*   *   *

“I have to admit, My Lord,” the archbishop militant said several hours later, sitting across a well-laden supper table from the lord of horse, “that I never anticipated anything like those slingers. You're right about the heretics' portable angle-guns' range advantage, but they don't have anywhere near as many of those as you have of slingers.”