Hell's Foundations Quiver (93 page)

It was a beautiful day, if more than a little hot—days were always hot at Claw Island—and clouds of seabirds and wyverns gusted and eddied about the galleons. The squadron made a brave sight under its towering pyramids of canvas, with banners starched stiff by the wind, pushing through the moderate seas in bursts of spray. Baron Sarmouth's squadron had been reinforced before he left Manchyr, and the ten powerfully armed ships of his command would be welcome additions to Earl Sharpfield's command.

In fact, the baron thought bitterly, no one on Claw Island had any concept of just how welcome his squadron was going to be.

He glanced sideways at the profile of the youthful lieutenant at his elbow and recognized the tension no one else would see behind those calm, watchful eyes. Young Hektor had taken the Kaudzhu Narrows hard. In fact, he'd reported sick and retreated into his cabin for two full days, and Sarmouth had envied him. He'd wanted to do the same thing, but he hadn't had that option. No doubt some of his subordinates wondered why his temper had been so short, why his attention had seemed to stray so readily. A part of him had been angry at Hektor for “hiding” instead of doing his own bit to shore up the illusion of normalcy, but he'd realized even then that it was irrational. Perhaps he should have tried to order Hektor not to watch the engagement, but that would have been irrational, as well. They both would have known it was being fought, whether they'd watched it or not. They were only fortunate that the timing had required both of them to be about their duties, interacting with the other officers and men around them for so much of it. Neither of them had been able to watch the fight as it happened under those constraints … which hadn't prevented both of them from viewing the recorded imagery afterward.

And as hard as it hit him, it was so much better to have him “sick” in his cabin
, Sarmouth admitted.
He's a good lad—a good
man
—and that's the very reason he couldn't have pretended nothing had happened until he'd had a chance to deal with it
.

The fact that he'd been able to spend so much of that time talking with his wife—and with Maikel Staynair—over the com had helped, Sarmouth knew. Yet he'd found himself wondering how well Hektor would be able to dissemble over the next endless five-days. It would be at least fifteen or sixteen days before word from Sir Bruhstair Ahbaht could reach Claw Island. How would Hektor—how would
he
—manage to conceal their knowledge of what had happened in the meantime?

I thought I'd realized how damnable a curse knowing things like this might be when Her Majesty and Nimue explained it to me, but I was wrong. It was all still theoretical for me. Now it's
real,
and
God
how it hurts!

Like Hektor, he'd known all too many of the men serving aboard some of those ships. Not all that huge a number against a navy size of the ICN, perhaps, but it was big enough to rip a bleeding hole deep within him. The grief—and rage—had eaten at him like acid, and he'd wondered how in God's name he was supposed to smile his way through the traditional meals ashore and afloat which always greeted the arrival of a new squadron at a foreign station.

You're
not
going to be able to … so it's a damn good thing you won't
have
to after all. Here, at least
, he told himself flatly, and reached out to rest one hand lightly on Hektor's shoulder.

“Sir?” Hektor turned towards him, one eyebrow raised over a brown eye dark with the same sorts of thoughts his admiral had been thinking.

“I know you're going to be brokenhearted at spending so little time in the garden spot of the Sea of Harchong,” the baron said, twitching his head at the sun-beaten hillsides reaching out to them. “Unfortunately, our orders don't leave us much leeway, do they?”

“I suppose not, Sir,” Hektor said. “Her Majesty
was
pretty emphatic, wasn't she?”

Sarmouth's mouth quirked in a smile.

“Yes, she was,” he agreed. “And, on balance, I think she was wise. Captain Haigyl and Captain Ahbaht have been doing an excellent job, but we really should have a flag officer forward deployed to Talisman. And it won't hurt to strengthen our forces west of the Narrows.”

“No, Sir, it won't.”

Hektor nodded firmly, although Sharleyan had said nothing of the sort before they'd sailed. It wasn't as if she would have disagreed with what Sarmouth was now suggesting, even before the Kaudzhu Narrows. It was simply that it hadn't occurred to her to jostle Sharpfield's elbow with any explicit suggestions about how he ought to manage the ships committed to his command. All things were subject to change, however, and Sarmouth was still a bit bemused—grateful, but bemused—by what some of those changes meant.

It was entirely possible Sharpfield would have wanted them back underway to Talisman Island within twenty-six hours of their arrival, given the numbers and the need to maintain as powerful a forward presence as possible. It was also possible, though, that he'd want to retain them for three or four days, being certain Sarmouth was thoroughly updated and informed before he assumed his new duties. After all, the baron had to be five-days, probably months, behind on events since the recapture of Claw Island and the Charisian Navy's return to the Gulf of Dohlar. And, under normal circumstances, Sarmouth would have been perfectly content to spend those days at anchor, if only for the opportunity to establish the proper rapport with the earl.

Unfortunately, circumstances were anything but normal after the Kaudzhu Narrows disaster. He needed to get forward as rapidly as possible … which made it fortunate that he now had written orders, signed and sealed by Empress Sharleyan herself, to do just that. Of course, they'd arrived onboard
Destiny
only night before last, delivered by one of Owl's remotes, and Sharleyan had never actually personally touched them. Owl was quite capable of writing orders—or anything else—in just about anyone's handwriting. In this case, though, he'd at least had the supposed author's permission to write them, which was seldom the case in his other forgeries.

What mattered, however, was that Sarmouth had them now and they told Earl Sharpfield the Empress wanted him deployed to Talisman Island as rapidly as possible. Which meant Sharpfield would do just that.

And that
, the baron thought, nodding back to his flag lieutenant and returning his own attention to the winged escorts scolding and whistling about his flagship,
will be a very good thing indeed
.

 

.VIII.

Mahzgyr, Duchy of Gwynt

“Well, at least they've decided
something
,” Lord of Horse Taychau Daiyang, Earl of Rainbow Waters, said sourly, laying the thin sheaf of pages on the tabletop and setting the paperweight to hold them down. “Even if the something in question does leave quite a bit to be desired. To say the least.”

The commander of the Mighty Host of God and the Archangels sat in the small, exquisitely carved and painted gazebo outside his rather more utilitarian office with an eggshell-thin porcelain teacup steaming in his hand. His nephew, Baron Wind Song, sat on the other side of the lacquered tea table and raised one eyebrow a fraction of an inch.

“Oh, don't worry yourself, Medyng,” Rainbow Waters said. “I'm not likely to discuss it quite this … frankly with anyone else. But I smell the stink of desperation in our latest orders.”

“I'm … less surprised to hear that than I might have wished, Uncle,” Wind Song said after a moment.

The baron was twenty years younger than the earl, which made him a bit on the youthful side for his position as what amounted to the Mighty Host of God and the Archangels' chief of staff. He was, however, more intelligent than most and meticulously organized, and he had a great deal of energy. In addition to which, of course, he had the noble birth required for his position. In public, he was always careful to address his uncle by his title or military rank; in private, there was little point pretending the familial bond wasn't at least as important as any of his other excellent qualifications.

“Are you not, indeed?” Rainbow Waters' smile was thin. “Well, your mother always told me you were a clever lad.”

“Odd that she never shared that opinion with me, Uncle.” Wind Song's eyes gleamed with brief but genuine humor. “I believe the exact way she put it to
me
was that I was an
overly
clever lad who was bound to come to a bad end someday.”

“My sister always was an excellent judge of character,” Rainbow Waters agreed. Then his own smile faded. “In this case, however, and with all due respect for your mother's opinion, the amount of cleverness required to recognize disaster probably isn't all that great.”

“Is disaster not too strong a word at this point?” Wind Song asked a bit delicately, and Rainbow Waters snorted.

“That depends upon who uses it and to whom he applies it.” The earl sipped tea then lowered the cup. “In the case of the Army of God at this moment, I think it can be fairly applied. The question before us is whether or not the Jihad can recover from the … less than brilliant decisions which have led to that disaster.”

“I see.”

The baron sat back in his rattan chair and crossed his legs. He reached into his belt pouch and withdrew a chamberfruit foamstone pipe and a leather tobacco pouch. The chamberfruit—a native Safeholdian plant similar to Old Terra's calabash gourd—had been carefully shaped while it grew, then carved and further shaped to receive its foamstone bowl. Deceptively simple figures ran down the outside of the chamberfruit, which was bound in silver filigree, and Wind Song's fingers moved nimbly as he filled the bowl.

“Is the situation truly that bad, Uncle?” he asked as he finished the time-buying task and puffed the tobacco alight with a splinter ignited in the spirit lamp heating the teapot. “It seems sufficiently … grave to me to cause considerable concern, but you seem to be suggesting the situation is even worse than I'd assumed.”

“I may be overly pessimistic,” Rainbow Waters conceded as his nephew's fragrant pipe smoke drifted across the table to him. “The less than stellar performance of every other commander who's faced the heretics in battle doesn't precisely offer much to induce and sustain
optimism
, however.” He took another sip of tea. “The problem which currently concerns me most, though, is twofold. First, I believe the Inquisition is underestimating the heretics' actual present troop strength and being … overly sanguine about their
future
troop strength. Second, I fear the decisions being dictated to us are … militarily suspect, shall we say?”

“Overly sanguine?” Wind Song repeated. “Uncle, there's no way Bishop Militant Cahnyr could possibly have faced the half million men he
claimed
had been massed against him. I know you've seen the reports and my own people's analysis of them. The heretics' total field strength couldn't possibly have been much in excess of two hundred and fifty to three hundred thousand.”

The baron forbore to mention that he and his uncle had assembled their own staff of analysts—recruited primarily from the scholars and the sons of merchants and bankers who'd somehow found themselves serving with the Mighty Host—precisely because they no longer trusted the sorts of numbers they were getting from people like Cahnyr Kaitswyrth. Or from the Inquisition, for that matter, although they'd been
very
careful to avoid mentioning
that
to anyone else.

“No, it couldn't,” Rainbow Waters agreed. “And in our latest dispatches from Zion, his estimate's been reduced somewhat. I believe they're now placing the heretic Eastshare's total troop strength at perhaps the three hundred thousand your own analysis had already suggested. Their total estimate for the strength the heretics have in the field is now approximately five hundred thousand, or somewhat less than half the Mighty Host's strength. However, I believe they're still significantly underestimating the heretics' artillery support, and that they're making insufficient allowance for how much of the heretics' infantry is mounted. That much, at least, should be clear from what happened to the Army of Glacierheart! More to the point—and much more dangerous for the future, Medyng—I believe they continue to underestimate the rate at which the heretics are able to produce the arms needed to stand up additional fresh formations. In other words, even if their current estimate for the total number of infantry and cavalry currently facing us is reasonably accurate, their estimate of the
combat power
of the heretics' present armies is low and I believe their estimate of the combat power the heretics will be able to put into the field
next
year.”

Wind Song smoked in silence for several seconds, reflecting upon his uncle's analysis. Much as he would have liked to, he couldn't dismiss Rainbow Waters' reasoning. Still.…

“Our own weapons production rates are continuing to climb, Uncle,” he pointed out. “And the latest reports on the performance of Brother Lynkyn's … rocket artillery are promising.”

“Oh, I'm not attempting to argue that we won't be able to equip our armies with new and better weapons of our own. Nor am I unaware of the way in which Mother Church's new manufactory techniques should help to close at least some of the gap between the heretics' accursed productivity and our own. However, the events of the past few months make it evident—to me, at least—that the initiative lies presently with the heretics. Prudence suggests that we … reassess our own strategy and operational methods in light of the fact that the heretics will almost certainly launch fresh offensives as soon as they possibly can.”