Hell's Foundations Quiver (73 page)

“And you expect me to turn consecrated priests over to you to be murdered, is that it?” Searing anger burned in the question, but Sahmyrsyt only nodded. “And what in Shan-wei's name makes you think I'd do that?!”

“In some ways, I don't really care whether you do it or not,” Sahmyrsyt said calmly. “I'm a simple man at heart, Bishop Gorthyk. I honor Emperor Cayleb and Empress Sharleyan, and my orders from them are pretty clear, but I prefer simple solutions, myself. That means I'm perfectly all right with what happened at Fort Tairys last winter, if that's the way you want to handle it instead of accepting terms. But you might want to think about the other eighteen or nineteen thousand men trapped in that spider rat hole with you.”

“You think any of my men are afraid to die for God?” Nybar sneered.

“For God?” Sahmyrsyt shrugged. “Maybe not. For that fat, fornicating pig Clyntahn?” He rolled his eyes under the solid barrier of his eyebrows. “Anybody willing to die for him is so frigging stupid we should go ahead and cull him now, before he reproduces!”

Nybar's face went first red and then white with fury. Yet even as the rage went through him, a part of him knew Sahmyrsyt had a point. Little though he wanted to admit it, even to himself, the very foundations of the Jihad had begun to quiver. Even in the Army of God, there were those beginning to differentiate between the Grand Inquisitor and Mother Church. He and his chaplains and inquisitors jumped on that sentiment with both feet whenever it reared its head, but it was like trying to quench a grass fire in high summer. Each flame they extinguished threw out its own fiery embers before it died, and the realization that the Army of Fairkyn had been left to die in place had fanned them like a high wind.

“If you expect to goad me into some … intemperate response,” he bit out, “I have no intention of obliging you. And whatever your murdering friends may have done at Fort Tairys, I think you'll find Fairkyn a much bloodier and harder to chew mouthful.”

“Whether or not you surrender now is up to you,” Sahmyrsyt replied. “What happens in the end if you
don't
surrender is another matter. At the moment, you have just over fifteen thousand infantry, twenty-seven hundred cavalry, and eighty-three guns. No, wait.” He shook his head. “It's eighty-
two
guns after that Fultyn Rifle burst Friday in Captain Zakrai's battery, isn't it?” His smile was a razor. “I, on the other hand, have the next best thing to eighty thousand infantry and cavalry, and over two thousand angle-guns, field guns, and mortars.” He shrugged. “I'll grant you most of them are mortars, not angle-guns. I'll even grant that we won't be able to target your positions as accurately as we'd like and that assaulting uphill is never easy. I don't have any doubt about the outcome if my army
has
to assault, however. And while I don't plan to be playing ‘The Pikes of Kolstyr' on the way up, I tend to doubt many of my men will be remembering Langhorne's injunctions about mercy and compassion once we get to the top. They'll have their orders about giving quarter and taking prisoners, of course. But given the Army of God's outstanding record of restraint after victory, I'm sure you'll understand how it is that sometimes the troops get out of hand.”

An icy cannonball congealed in Gorthyk Nybar's belly as Sahmyrsyt catalogued his own strength so calmly … and so accurately. There was no way—no way under God's golden sun—Sahmyrsyt could have those numbers, yet he did. And as badly as Nybar wanted to believe he'd exaggerated his own strength, he was sickly certain the Charisian hadn't.

“I suppose we'll just have to find out then, won't we?” the bishop heard himself say.

“I suppose we will.” Sahmyrsyt glanced up at the sun. The morning was ticking away, the shadows shortening, and he looked back at Nybar. “In that case, this parley's over. The truce extends until thirteen o'clock. I'd recommend that you and your chaplains spend the time in prayer. You may not have another opportunity.”

He twitched his head at his companions, and the three of them turned away and trotted back towards the redoubt without another word.

*   *   *

“Are you sure this is going to work, Sir?” Lieutenant Mahkgrudyr asked quietly as Sir Bartyn Sahmyrsyt checked his watch. He and the general stood in the shadow of the looming observation tower, and the lieutenant shrugged when Sahmyrsyt glanced at him. “It sounded really good when Colonel Ahlgyrnahn proposed it, Sir, but that was then and this is now.”

“I have a great deal of confidence in Colonel Ahlgyrnahn and his men, Cayleb,” Sahmyrsyt said mildly. “And
Seijin
Ahbraim's friends were good enough to confirm the accuracy of his navigation in addition to keeping tabs on Nybar's troop and artillery strength for us. Major Sahndyrsyn's men went exactly where they meant to go. So is there some other reason you don't
expect
it to work?”

“No, Sir. But I can't help remembering what Emperor Cayleb said in Corisande. He and General Chermyn even coined a term for it: the KISS Principle.”

“‘Keep It Simple, Stupid,'” Sahmyrsyt said with a nod. “Baron Green Valley's fond of the same phrase. But when you come down to it, Colonel Ahlgyrnahn's suggestion was about as simple as they come. Hard work, true, but certainly
simple
.”

Mahkgrudyr didn't—quite—glare at his general, but he was clearly less than amused by Sahmyrsyt's ironic tone. And, his superior reminded himself, young Mahkgrudyr was both older and much more experienced than his boyish appearance might suggest. He'd been a Marine sergeant for Emperor Cayleb's Corisande campaign, and when the bulk of the Royal Charisian Marine field force transferred to the new Imperial Army, Mahkgrudyr had come with it. He'd been all but functionally illiterate before he enlisted, but he'd caught the eye of his superiors in Corisande and been recommended for a commission before the transfer. The Army had agreed with the recommendation, and the Royal Chisholmian Army, with its tradition of recruiting commoners, had more experience than most at filling any holes in its volunteers' education. That was how he'd been sent off to the Imperial Officers School—which had previously been the
Royal
Officers School—at Maikelberg and emerged as a shiny new lieutenant just in time for Sahmyrsyt to snap him up as an aide. He'd also emerged as a committed bibliophile, determined—apparently—to catch up on the last several centuries' worth of the reading he'd missed earlier in life.

“Seriously, Cayleb,” the general said now, reaching out to rest one hand on the lieutenant's shoulder, “I think Ahlgyrnahn came up with a perfectly workable idea that's going to save a lot of lives … assuming it works. And given his men's experience and Colonel Mahknail's input, I think it
will
work. If it doesn't,” he shrugged, “we'll just have to do it the hard way after all.”

Mahkgrudyr looked back at him for a moment, then nodded, and Sahmyrsyt started the climb up the observation tower's steep zigzag stairs with his aide at his heels.

*   *   *

“Get ready,” Colonel Kynt Ahlgyrnahn said, looking at his own watch, and Major Bryntwyrth Sahndyrsyn, CO of the 63rd Infantry's 4th Company, smiled and reached for the brass ring.

Major Sahndyrsyn was three years younger than his colonel, and like almost all of the 63rd's men, he'd been born in New Province. In fact, Sahndyrsyn had been born and raised in Irondale, and his family had been miners for generations. A lot of Ahlgyrnahn's men could have said that about their families, and at least half of them had been miners themselves before volunteering when Ahlgyrnahn's regiment was recruited back up to strength after its losses to the Sword of Schueler. The original 63rd, a New Province-based regiment of regulars, had suffered well over fifty percent casualties in that first dreadful winter, and the majority of its new personnel had enlisted to avenge brothers, fathers, or cousins. They brought a certain practicality to the pursuit of that vengeance, however, and when Baron Green Valley had left General Makgrygair's 2nd Rifle Division to keep an eye on Fairkyn pending General Sahmyrsyt's arrival, they'd found themselves with time on their hands.

Colonel Ahlgyrnahn, who'd been the regiment's senior surviving company commander after the Sword, was a firm believer that idle hands were Shan-wei's workshop, so when Sahndyrsyn—whose long-armed, short-legged physique and sloping forehead concealed a frighteningly acute brain from the casual observer—approached him with the suggestion, he'd leapt on it. In fact, he'd authorized the regiment to begin work even before taking the idea to General Makgrygair.

Makgrygair had been at least a little dubious, but he, too, was a regular who recognized the negative consequences of too much idleness. He'd allowed the 63rd to continue its efforts and even championed their idea to Sahmyrsyt when he arrived. Fortunately, Colonel Thyadohr Mahknail, Sahmyrsyt's chief engineer, had embraced it enthusiastically when the rest of the Army of New Northland came up. In fact, his surveyors had helped materially in directing the effort and he'd sent back to Siddar City for something a bit more … energetic than gunpowder.

Not all of Fairkyn's bluffs were solid bedrock. That was especially true on their southern edge, where the ex-miners had toiled away for two and a half months, and the result was a three-thousand-yard tunnel extending into them from the south. The 63rd had managed to finish the excavation just in time to avoid the flooding threat of the spring floods—that time pressure had been a large part of General Makgrygair's original skepticism—and the site chosen for its mouth was on the reverse slope of one of the low hills which was still above water level, completely concealed from even the defenders' observation towers. But the tunnel itself climbed steadily as it angled to the east and ended in a two-hundred-foot-long perpendicular gallery, like the crossbar on a capital “T,” directly under the outermost of Gorthyk Nybar's defensive earthworks. The miners had hoped to drive it deeper into Nybar's position, but they'd encountered solid rock well short of their planned endpoint. That gallery lay seventy feet below the entrenchments, however, and they'd packed it with seven thousand pounds of the Charisians' new “Lywysite.” After that, the last thirty yards of the approach tunnel had been refilled with hard-packed earth to focus the blast upward by preventing it from blowing back out the mouth of the mine when the moment came.

Ahlgyrnahn wasn't certain he really believed the Charisians' estimates of the new explosive's effectiveness, but he figured three and a half tons of anything ought to make a satisfying bang, And since Sahndyrsyn's company had come up with the idea, it was only fair the major execute its final stage. Now Ahlgyrnahn watched the sweep hand bite off the last few seconds. Then he looked up.

“Go,” he said simply.

Sahndyrsyn hooked his index finger through the ring on the polished wooden box and drew a deep breath.

“
Fire in the hole!
” he announced, and pulled firmly.

*   *   *

“Perhaps you
should
consider surrendering, Gorthyk,” Father Charlz Kaillyt said somberly. He stood gazing out one window of Gorthyk Nybar's office in Fairkyn, and the bishop looked at his sword-straight spine incredulously.

“You can't be serious, Charlz!
Surrender
to a slew of godless heretics before they've even fired a single shot?!”

“If you don't surrender, the men are going to starve to death,” Kaillyt replied flatly. “The only thing you'll accomplish by
not
surrendering is to get even more of them killed in the end.”

“No, that
isn't
the only thing I'll accomplish.” Nybar's tone was equally flat. “If those bastards assault us here, then by Chihiro we'll kill a lot of
them
, too.”

“And achieve what?” Kaillyt wheeled from the window and glared at the bishop.

They'd known one another for years, and Kaillyt—originally the senior chaplain of Nybar's Langhorne Division—had become the Army of Fairkyn's acting intendant. He was a Schuelerite, although he'd never been a formal member of the Inquisition, and he was less fiery than many. Yet Nybar had never doubted his quiet, determined opposition to the heresy. Now Kaillyt raised a right hand which had lost its thumb and two fingers to frostbite over the winter and pointed at his bishop with his ring finger, in the gesture he'd acquired since his mutilation.

“However deep you stack the bodies, you aren't going to stop them, and you aren't going to save Bishop Militant Bahrnabai—assuming the heretics haven't already overrun him, as well. It's obvious the Inquisition completely underestimated how many men the Charisians can put into the field, Gorthyk. I don't doubt for one moment that Sahmyrsyt gave you accurate numbers—why in Shan-wei's name
shouldn't
he have? It's not like we'll be telling anyone, is it? And the truth is that if he has
half
the strength he says he does, this army is already completely screwed, so why inflate the numbers? And we already know the Siddarmarkians are putting fresh regiments into the field as quickly as they can get rifles into their hands, as well. You can't possibly kill enough of them to keep them from taking your position away from you, and I don't want to see any more of our men dead. My God, Gorthyk! Look what they've already given us! They deserve a chance to live.”

The last sentence came out slowly, deliberately, and Nybar's face tightened. Father Charlz wasn't saying anything he hadn't already thought. His command was already lost, as far as the rest of the Army of God was concerned. Whether they were prisoners or dead, they would be equally off the field, yet in the brutal calculus of war, every heretic they killed would be one less to continue the attack afterward. It was a cold, despicable logic—the sort to appeal to a Zhaspahr Clyntahn—but that didn't mean it was
invalid
logic.