Hell's Foundations Quiver (95 page)

Zhynkyns' jaw clenched, but the colonel's stony face refused to flinch. The bishop had commanded Camp Dynnys from the day its gates first opened, and he'd sorted out thousands—
scores
of thousands—of heretics and sent them to the Punishment over the last year and a half. He'd been infuriated enough when his own inquisitors started finding excuses to slow the processing of the camp's inmates after the Sarkyn fiasco and—especially—after that disgraceful incident at Camp Chihiro four months ago, and Tymahk's attitude had only made that worse. The colonel had been transferred to Camp Dynnys the previous autumn, while he was still recovering from the loss of his arm in the Sylmahn Gap fighting, and it was obvious his heart had never truly been in the performance of the Inquisition's stern duty. He'd obeyed direct orders, but he'd found ways to … mitigate their stringency whenever he thought he could get away with it, even before the godless murderer Mab had started slaughtering Mother Church's defenders. And now
this
.

The bishop realized his teeth were grating together and forced his jaw muscles to relax. He had no time to deal with this, not when the heretics' lead elements were likely to reach Camp Dynnys any time. He expected them no later than tomorrow, and given the number of barges they'd probably captured at Five Forks, they might well be here sooner than that. The last anyone had heard, the garrison at Syairnys, the small town where the Hildermoss River entered Lake Isyk, was still holding and the heretics hadn't yet come into sight, but that report was a full day old. Besides, the garrison was only a few hundred men strong, drawn from the Camp Dynnys guard force and placed under the command of one of Tymahk's lieutenants, who was probably as feckless as Tymahk himself!

If the heretics had taken Syairnys, they were less than sixty miles away by water. If they had sailing barges and knew how to use them—and they were Shan-wei-damned
Charisians
, weren't they?—they could probably reach Camp Dynnys within another ten or fifteen hours. If they had to come overland, around the eastern edge of Lake Isyk, they'd have twice as far to go, but Zhynkyns had precious little faith in the reliability of the pickets Tymahk had thrown out. They'd probably be too busy taking to their heels to save their own worthless skins the instant the heretics came into sight to even think about sending warning to the camp.

So, yes, the heretics could be arriving at any moment now … and there was their godless, blasphemous decree about the fate of any of Mother Church's inquisitors who fell into their hands to bear in mind.

He glared at Tymahk, but then he made himself straighten his shoulders and draw a deep, cleansing breath. Very well, if it was the only way to carry out the intentions the Inquisitor General had expressed to him verbally, so be it.

He stalked over to his desk, flung himself into the comfortably padded chair, and snatched a pen from the stand. He scribbled the note quickly, signed it with a flourish, then shoved himself up and stamped around the desk to hand it angrily to Colonel Tymahk.

The colonel looked down at it. It was short and to the point.

To: Colonel Ahgustahn Tymahk—

The inmates of Camp Dynnys must not be allowed to return to the heresies they have embraced. It is the Inquisition's duty to see to it that they do not, and your duty to assist the Inquisition in all ways necessary. You are therefore ordered and instructed to prevent those inmates from falling into the hands of the heretics' armed forces by any means necessary, including their execution.

Bishop Maikel Zhynkyns,

Camp Dynnys, commanding.

“There!” he snapped. “I trust that's clear enough?”

“Yes, My Lord.” Tymahk folded the sheet of paper carefully and put it into his tunic pocket. “It's perfectly clear. Thank you.”

Zhynkyns' eyebrows rose at the odd note of … satisfaction in the colonel's tone. Then his eyes widened in disbelief as the same hand which had put the order into Tymahk's pocket continued to the double-barreled pistol at his side. The pistol rose, one hammer came back, and Zhynkyns found himself staring into the weapon's gaping bore.

“What do y—?”

The pistol's deafening explosion rattled the office windows. It also cut the bishop off in mid-word and flung him back across his desk in a graceless sprawl with a dark, black-edged hole in the center of his forehead.

Tymahk stood looking at him through the thick fog of gunsmoke, pistol still up and extended, then turned as the office door opened behind him. A short, compactly built Army of God captain stepped through it and glanced at the bishop's body and the grisly crimson and gray pool spreading across the desk blotter from the shattered head.

“He wrote it down, then, Sir?” Captain Lywys Rahmahdyn, Tymahk's second-in-command, asked calmly.

“Yes, he did.” The colonel patted the pocket containing Zhynkyns' final order. “I don't know how much good it will do, but we can always hope the Charisians, at least, will see reason.”

“Hope is a good thing, Sir,” Rahmahdyn agreed. “But truth to tell, I don't think I could've done it anyway.”

“Me either.” Tymahk looked back at the body again for a moment. Then he shrugged. “Go find Father Aizak. Tell him it worked—so far, at least. Then send someone to collect that poisonous snot Cumyngs and make sure no more of the records get burned.”

“Cumyngs won't like that,” Rahmahdyn observed with a certain satisfaction, and Tymahk smiled thinly.

Zheryld Cumyngs had grown wealthy by extorting money and property from the families of prisoners in Camp Dynnys in return for false promises to smuggle their loved ones out or at least get them better food and medicine while they remained incarcerated. He'd allowed prisoners to write letters home and smuggled them out, too—for a price from the recipients—and he'd kept the official inventories of the property which had been confiscated from prisoners on their arrival at the camp. Those official inventories had been somewhat less than accurate, since they failed to list the property he and his accomplices had diverted to their own use, and Tymahk knew he'd been careless enough to leave evidence of his actions in the camp files. Probably because he'd been confident no one but him would ever see those particular files. Or not, at least, until he'd had ample time to tidy up.

“Even the Inquisition would've hanged him if they'd found out what he's been up to,” the colonel said now. “I'd hate for the Charisians to pass up the opportunity to do the same thing. Now go.”

“Yes, Sir!”

Rahmahdyn signed Langhorne's scepter in salute and disappeared back out the office door. Tymahk looked around for a moment, then crossed to the desk, grabbed the corpse by the collar of its cassock, and dumped it on the floor. The blotter followed, and he used a swath of cloth ripped from the cassock to mop up the scattered splashes of blood and brain tissue the blotter hadn't caught.

Father Aizak was going to need someplace to work, after all.

*   *   *

Baron Green Valley watched the SNARC imagery as Brigadier Braisyn's 3rd Mounted Brigade trotted steadily along the road from Five Forks to the mostly ruined buildings of what had been the town of Lakeside. Braisyn would reach that destination well before nightfall. By tomorrow morning he'd reach Camp Dynnys, the first of the Inquisition's concentration camps to be liberated.

It would be a long time before Green Valley or anyone else forgave themselves for how long it had taken, but they'd had to deal with the Army of the Sylmahn—and the Ice Ash and North Hildermoss Rivers had had to be opened and free of ice once more—before he could have assumed the logistical burden of simply feeding the camps' half-starved inmates. Even now, that burden was going to significantly impact the ability of Army of Midhold and the Army of New Northland to press the offensive. In terms of cold-blooded military logic, he ought to be striking directly for Lake City and the eastern terminus of the Holy Langhorne Canal rather than allowing himself to be diverted from what was currently the biggest strategic prize of northern East Haven, but there were times cold-blooded military logic had to be ignored.

This was one of those times.

His own forces were about to liberate Camp Dynnys. A column from Bartyn Sahmyrsyt's Army of New Northland was already en route to Camp Lairays near the town of Hyrdmyn, two hundred miles northeast of Ohlarn, and Trumyn Stohnar's Army of Hildermoss' entire cavalry corps was on its way down the Jylmyn-Waymeet High Road to Camp Shairys. From Lairays, Sahmyrsyt's mounted infantry would drive another three hundred miles to reach Camp Chihiro, while Green Valley continued down the Hildermoss to Cat-Lizard Lake and Camp St. Charlz. The number of inmates per camp varied from a low of 20,000 to just under 110,000. The average was about 70,000, which meant that over the next half-month or so, they were going to liberate the next best thing to 310,000 sick, starving, desperate people. The weather—thank God—promised to remain mild while they went about trying to evacuate them and move them to safe areas deeper into the Republic, but their numbers would actually exceed the number of men in the liberating armies, which explained the serious impact it was going to have on his logistics. That number also explained why Cayleb and Greyghor Stohnar—and Sharleyan, if Stohnar had only known—had decreed that this time humanity had to trump military expediency.

It remained to be seen how many of the other camps' garrisons would emulate Colonel Tymahk and his men. The SNARCs had suggested Tymahk intended to try
something
to prevent the wholesale massacre of the Camp Dynnys prisoners, but the decisiveness—and effectiveness—of his actions had still surprised Green Valley. Tymahk wasn't making any strenuous efforts to prevent the camp's inquisitors from fading away—aside from that rat-bastard Cumyngs and his immediate accomplices, at any rate—and Green Valley rather regretted that. Still, he supposed they'd end up catching quite a few of Wylbyr Edwyrds' loathsome minions before they were done, and Tymahk
had
hung onto the cream of the crop from Camp Dynnys. The written instruction from Bishop Maikel was a nice touch, too. It didn't really
prove
anything, but it would be at least circumstantial evidence that Tymahk and his guards had refused direct, written orders to execute the camp's inmates rather than allow them to be rescued. The colonel couldn't know Green Valley had actually watched the entire confrontation and knew every word he planned to say in defense of his soldiers was the literal truth, nor did Green Valley intend to suggest anything of the sort. Despite which, Colonel Tymahk and Father Aizak were going to find themselves being treated quite a bit better than they'd probably dared to hope.

Decency's too rare a commodity on the Church's side for me to let it go to waste
, the baron thought with a sense of profound satisfaction, shutting down the imagery and returning his attention to the paperwork on the desk before him.
Tymahk and Mohmohtahny have managed to thread the moral needle without compromising themselves. That's one hell of an achievement, under the circumstances. I suspect we're going to see more of that, too, and not all of it out of people who do it because they genuinely are decent human beings. The bastards' morale's starting to crumble; the trick is to keep the process moving … and accelerating
.

 

.X.

The Temple, City of Zion, The Temple Lands

The atmosphere in the luxurious council chamber could have been chipped with a knife, assuming someone could have found a knife strong enough and sharp enough for the task. The faces of three of the vicars sitting around the enormous table might have been masks carved from frozen marble. The fourth radiated the heat and fury of molten lava, instead, driven by what might possibly be the dawning awareness that his power was less than absolute after all. It was at least remotely conceivable that the man behind that fury had actually realized he could no longer simply hammer aside anyone who opposed him and make the truth be whatever he needed it to be.

And it's always conceivable that he
hasn't
, too
, Rhobair Duchairn thought bitterly.

He didn't feel that bitterness because he gave a single solitary damn about what Zhaspahr Clyntahn thought he needed, and he would have been more than human if he hadn't felt an enormous caustic satisfaction at watching the Grand Inquisitor come face-to-face with the consequences of his own vicious arrogance and cruelty. No, he would shed no tears for Zhaspahr Clyntahn or his minions like Wyllym Rayno or Grand Inquisitor Wylbyr. But that didn't prevent him from recognizing catastrophe for Mother Church, as well, when he saw it.

“So General Rychtyr believes he'll be able to hold his position on the Sheryl-Seridahn at Fyrayth for the rest of the summer and fall, now that the new artillery's come up in sufficient numbers,” Allayn Maigwair was saying. “By the beginning of September, he should have another forty or fifty thousand men under his orders, as well. It's possible he's being overly optimistic, but I'm inclined to believe his appraisal is realistic.”

The Captain General paused and looked around the table. Clyntahn jerked an impatient nod, but it was obvious he wasn't particularly concerned about the threat to
Dohlar
at the moment, and Maigwair looked back down at the file open on the table in front of him.

“Farther north, Earl Silken Hills will be in position at the southern end of the Black Wyverns within another five-day,” he continued. “Baron Falling Rock is already in place at Lake City, and Earl Rainbow Waters' vanguard will join him there no later than next Thursday. Of course, it will take considerably longer—at least two five-days, and more probably three—for his entire force to come up, given the congestion on the Holy Langhorne.”