Hell's Foundations Quiver (90 page)

Another rending, tearing crash from above announced the destruction of the main topmast. The massive spar crashed downward, and Haigyl felt
Dreadnought
falter under his feet as she was progressively lamed and crippled.

Not much longer now, girl
, he thought.
Hold together for me!
Please
hold together just long enough, and then, I promise, you can rest
.

The ironclad's guns bellowed again, and again. The Dohlaran ship which had once been Charisian reeled as the six-inch shells slammed into her. Explosions ripped and tore at her planking, and splinters—shell splinters and pieces of her hull, alike—sliced through her crew, spattering her decks with their blood. Haigyl peered through one of the angle-glasses, watching her come apart under his ship's devastating fire, and exulted in her destruction.

This one's for you, Gwylym! I won't be burning Gorath to the ground for you after all, but this one's for you, but—

Another salvo of massive ten-inch round shot slammed into
Dreadnought
's stern from Pawal Hahlynd's screw-galleys, and the ironclad bucked in anguish … and then fell off, her tattered remaining sails spilling their wind as her rudder disintegrated and her helmsmen lost control. Haigyl looked up from the angle-glass as she pivoted slowly and majestically, turning downwind, and timber shrieked and splintered as she ran hard alongside one of the Dohlaran galleons.

The enemy ship rolled as the far heavier ironclad drove into her. Her damaged mainmast snapped off two or three feet above the deck level and came down in an avalanche of shattered timbers and shredded canvas. It crashed across
Dreadnought
's armored bulwark, hung for a moment on the ironclad's already truncated main topmast, then brought both sets of spars down in tangled ruin.

Dreadnought
's mainmast was a hundred and twenty feet long and almost forty inches in diameter, made of the finest seasoned nearoak, and immensely strong. Despite that, it snapped cleanly as the massive weight of the Dohlaran's rigging smashed into it. It came crashing to the deck, broken into pieces by the impact, and buried thirty-one of the ironclad's crew in its shattered ruin.

The fragment which landed on Kahrltyn Haigyl was twenty-three feet in length … and weighed “only” four tons. He never heard the fierce, savage baying of the Dohlaran crew as it swarmed across the wreckage and onto his ship's deck.

 

.V.

West Black Sand River and Treykyn, Cliff Peak Province, Republic of Siddarmark

“It's Baron Tryfeld, My Lord.”

Sir Clairync Dynvyrs, Baron Wheatfields, looked up quickly from the urgent conference with his senior Jhurlahnkian regimental commander. He waved curtly, putting the other man on hold, and then held out his right hand to clasp forearms with the newcomer who'd just been ushered into the miserable hut serving as his command post.

Sir Daivyn Wynstyn, the Baron of Tryfeld, was only fifty-three, eight years younger than Wheatfields, and bald as an egg, with a fierce, hooked nose which hinted only too accurately at the pugnacity of his personality. He was the senior Usherite commander attached to the Army of Glacierheart, which made him Wheatfields' senior subordinate, and he was also a close personal friend.

“Daivyn,” Wheatfields said, his eyes searching the other man's face while the rumble of heretic artillery swelled, crested, then eased—a little, at least—in the background. There was dried blood on Tryfeld's tunic, but it didn't look as if it was his own.

“Clairync.” Tryfeld gripped Wheatfields' forearm tightly. “Sorry to break in on you like this.”

“What do you need?” Wheatfields asked simply, and the other baron smiled. It was a fleeting smile, and a bitter one, yet there was the warmth of friendship in it, as well. Then the expression vanished, as quickly as it had come.

“What I need, you can't give me,” he said flatly, like a surgeon giving a family the last news it wanted to hear. “The heretics've thrown a column across the Black Sand seven miles north of Styltyn. The Third and the Fifth are gone. We can't hold them.”

Wheatfields' jaw clenched. He'd hoped—against hope, and in the face of all indications (and experience) to the contrary—that their flank of Cahnyr Kaitswyrth's Army of Glacierheart might somehow hold its ground long enough for him to retake Gyrdahn of the Marshes and open a path of retreat. But if the heretics had fought their way across the West Black Sand River, and if they'd routed or destroyed two of Tryfeld's regiments in the process.…

“I came to tell you personally,” Tryfeld said, and shook his head. “I'm sorry. The boys did their best, and a hell of a lot died doing it. It was the artillery that did it.” His nostrils flared bitterly. “Their regular field guns'd already done for our abatises—frigging river's less than a hundred yards wide, even with all the damned rain, so it wasn't like they couldn't see their targets!—and their small angle-guns pounded the piss out of us until the instant before their assault boats hit our bank. They were firing a mix of explosives to rip open the trenches' overhead and shrapnel to kill everyone in them once the cover was breached. And they've got a new shell—
another
new shell, I guess I should say. This one makes smoke when it lands—a
lot
of smoke. Our field guns couldn't even see to lay down fire on their boats until they were right on top of our own men.”

“Shit,” Wheatfields muttered.

“I don't know what's happening south of the Fifth,” Tryfeld admitted. “I don't think it's good, but that's only a guess. What I do know is that they're pushing as many men as they can across now that they've got a foothold. According to what the Third's survivors're saying, they've got at least two pontoon bridges across by now, and they're rolling my boys up as they push north. I'm trying to form a new position here—” he leaned over Wheatfields' map and tapped a point on the West Black Sand roughly ten miles north of Styltyn … and less than two miles south of where they stood in Wheatfields' command post, located in what had been the middle of his area of responsibility as the Army of Glacierheart's left flank commander “—with the Seventh, but the best Colonel Tylbor's going to manage is slow them down a bit.”

Wheatfields nodded, his expression grim, and looked up. He couldn't see the sky from inside the hut, but he knew what he would have seen if he could. Somewhere above the heavy clouds sweeping in from the west, the sun was no more than an hour or two from setting. It was going to be a wretched, miserable night of rain and wind, the last thing men trying to find defensible solid land in this Langhorne-forsaken swamp needed.

“I'm going back to try and find Tylbor enough men to hold at least until nightfall,” Tryfeld said. “I don't think we'll last much longer than that. It's time for that breakout of yours.”

“Stay here,” Wheatfields said. “I'm going to need your advice, and the rest of your—”

“Screw that!” Tryfeld snapped. “Those're my boys out there doing the dying right now. That's where I belong. Besides,” he managed something almost like a grin for a heartbeat or two, “they'll hang on longer if they know I'm there to kick their arses if they don't!”

Wheatfields closed his eyes for just a moment. The real reason Tryfeld's men would “hang on longer” was because so many of them would die where they stood rather than disappoint their commander. Tryfeld was that kind of man … that kind of friend.

He considered ordering the Usherite to remain, but not very hard. The only way he could enforce an order like that would be to arrest the man. Besides, he was right.

“Daivyn, I—”

“I know, and there's no time to say it, anyway.” Tryfeld gave his arm another squeeze, then stepped back. “Frankly, I don't think there's much of a chance for a breakout, anyway, Clairync. But if anybody can pull that off, it's you. So I'll buy all the time I can for your next miracle. Try to get as many of my boys out with you as you can.”

“Of course I will,” Wheatfields promised. His voice was husky and he cleared his throat harshly. “God bless, Daivyn.”

“You, too,” Tryfeld said, then turned and shouldered his way back out of the hut, shouting for his horse.

*   *   *

Bishop Militant Cahnyr Kaitswyrth's face was drawn and gaunt as he stood beside Sedryk Zavyr and stared down at the pitiless map. The lamp overhead shivered and danced, swaying, casting queasy shadows across the map and its tokens, and dust sifted down from the bunker's heavy log roof. Rain poured from the inky-black heavens, leaking down the earthen steps and sending muddy tendrils across the dirt floor, but the thunder rumbling across the rainy night and setting that lamp aquiver had nothing to do with the weather.

“Have we heard anything more from Bishop Sebahstean?” Zavyr asked anxiously.

“No, Father,” Colonel Maindayl said shortly, never looking up from the stack of hurriedly scrawled dispatches.

“What about Bishop Khalryn? Or—”

“Father, we haven't heard anything from
anyone
in the Angle in over three hours,” the colonel interrupted, “and we're not going to.”

Zavyr looked up quickly, his pinched face flushing angrily. The “Angle” was the east-pointing triangular salient just west of Styltyn which had drawn in more and more of the Army of Glacierheart's troop strength … before the Charisians punched through Bishop Sebahstean Taylar's lines north and south of the town. Zavyr had insisted that the position
had
to be held, despite Maindayl's warning that it couldn't be. Now he glared at the colonel and opened his mouth to denounce his “defeatism,” but Maindayl only shook his head.

“I'm sorry, Father,” he told the Army of Glacierheart's intendant, his voice hard and yet oddly gentle, “but that's the way it is. This—” he waved the scribbled note the most recent runner had delivered “—is from Bishop Chestyr. He's fallen back to the Swamp Grass, and the heretics're pressing him hard. If they haven't already completely crushed the Angle, they will as soon as they get around to it, because they've got everything in it locked into a pocket it's not getting out of.”

Kaitswyrth's stomach was a frozen lump of lead. He wanted to scream at the colonel, but there was no point, and it wouldn't make anything Maindayl had just said any less true. The Swamp Grass River was six miles west of Taylar's headquarters … and only five miles
east
of Treykyn.

“We're done, Sedryk,” he heard himself say. Zavyr wheeled back to face him, and he shook his head like an exhausted pugilist. “Unless Wheatfields did manage to get some of his men out through the swamps, the Shan-wei-damned heretics have
all
of us in a ‘pocket.'” He slammed his palm down on the map and swept viciously across it, scattering the useless tokens, and his lips drew back in a sudden snarl. “
Langhorne!
I told them—
we
told them—we couldn't hold against a
half million
men without more reinforcements! But would anyone
listen?
Of course not!”

“Cahnyr, surely there has to be—”

“There isn't,” Kaitswyrth cut the intendant off. “There's not one damned thing we can do, aside from making them use up more ammunition killing what's left of us. And, I'm sorry, Sedryk, but I can't do that.”

“What do you mean?” Zavyr said sharply.

“I mean I can't have any more of my men killed pointlessly if there's any way to prevent it … and there is. I know what that means for all of our inquisitors—for
you
—but that's going to happen anyway when they move in to finish us off. I can't justify getting more of our people killed trying to prevent something we can't prevent anyway.”

The color drained out of Sedryk Zavyr's face. He looked at Kaitswyrth for a long, silent moment. Then he turned—slowly, like a man moving in a nightmare—and looked at Maindayl. The colonel looked back, his face carved of stone, and the intendant drew a deep breath.

“I see.”

His voice quivered ever so slightly, and he swallowed hard. Then the inquisitor who'd ordered the massacre of Charlz Stahntyn's entire command not more than a dozen miles from where he stood that very moment nodded like a poorly strung puppet.

“I see,” he repeated. “I think we should fight on, trusting in God and the Archangels to save us, but I understand what you're saying. How long do we have?”

“I need to send the parley request to Eastshare as soon as I can,” Kaitswyrth replied unflinchingly. “As heavy as the firing is out there, we probably can't expect them to see a truce flag before dawn, but as soon as the sun rises…”

He let his voice trail off, and Zavyr nodded.

“I understand. Well, then.” He squared his shoulders and inhaled sharply. “I suppose I'd better go inform as many of my inquisitors as possible, shouldn't I?”

He looked at the two other men in the shivering lamplight, then turned and started up the bunker steps into the rain without another word.

Kaitswyrth watched him go. Then he sat down heavily on one of the stools beside the map table, pulled out his personal notepad, and jotted a half-dozen lines on it. He looked down at them, reading them over, nodded, and dashed his signature across the bottom with a sort of weary finality.

“Here, Wylsynn,” he said, tearing off the sheet, folding it, and handing it to the colonel.

“My Lord?” Maindayl raised his eyebrows as he reached to accept it.

“Your orders, Colonel.” The bishop militant managed a corpse-like chuckle, but there was no humor in his eyes. “Your last orders, as it happens.”

“My Lord?” Maindayl repeated, his tone suddenly taut and cautious.