A Mighty Fortress

by David Weber

  Hauwerd Wylsynn looked at his brother, and for just a moment, as he heard the passion still glowing in Samyl’s voice, saw the absolute, unyielding commitment still burning in Samyl’s eyes, he saw something else, as well. A memory of another day, when he’d been... what? Six years old? Something like that, he thought, remembering the day in the boat, remembering watching his older brother—the older brother he longed with all his heart to emulate—bait his hook for him.

  It was odd. He hadn’t thought about that day literally in years, but now he did, and he remembered it with such utter clarity. The Tanshar sunlight warm on his shoulders, the way he’d watched Samyl’s fingers, admiring their dexterity and wishing it were his. The desultory conversation which had gone with their long, lazy fishing expedition—with the coolness radiating up off the water and chilling the boat under their bare feet even while the thwarts grew uncomfortably hot under the honey- thick sunlight pouring down from above and the breeze blew pollen dust and the scent of spike thorn from the shore to tickle their nostrils like rich, golden incense.

  They hadn’t caught much, he remembered. Not that day. Certainly not enough for dinner for everyone, although their mother had loyally had their meager catch cleaned and broiled for the two of them—and for her, the parent whose courageous hunters and fishermen had managed to feed her after all—while their father had tried hard—so hard!— not to laugh.

  But if Hauwerd Wylsynn hadn’t caught many fish that day, he’d caught something else. He’d caught the great prize, the doomwhale of prizes, the joyous, leviathan prize to which he had given his entire life. For while they’d fished and the languid conversation had drifted like another breeze above the lake, Samyl had retold the stories. The wonderful stories, about the Archangels, and about their responsibilities. About the charge Schueler had given the Wylsynn family. About the whispered legends that they were ... might be . . . could be descended from Schueler himself. About the price their ancestors had paid to serve Mother Church and the solemn, joy- filled weight of duty.

  It hadn’t been the first time Samyl had told him those tales, but that day had been different. He hadn’t realized that, then. Not really. In fact, he thought wonderingly, he hadn’t truly realized how different it had been until this very moment. Hadn’t realized, that day when he’d seen the glow in Samyl’s eyes and felt its twin in his own, where those tales were going to lead them both.

  Now he did. And he felt a bittersweet smile hover just behind his lips as that realization touched him at last.

  Silly, really, he thought. That was the only word for it. Silly for two boys—even Samyl couldn’t have been more than fifteen—to be thinking such solemn thoughts. To recognize their priestly vocations in the incense of lakewater and pollen, the smell of the bait jar, the paint and varnish of the rowboat. To realize, as the years passed, that that had been the day they’d truly given themselves to the task God had set for their family so many centuries before. Yet that was precisely what they had done. That golden jewel of a day, he knew now, had been the true beginning of their decision to take up the task God had sent them.

  And now they had come to this, and the joy of giving themselves had been touched by the terrible ice of fear. By the bitter knowledge that they’d failed. By the horror of the fate they were about to suffer in the name of the very Archangel from whom those boys had decided they really must be descended. It changed everything, that fear. Transmuted joy into sorrow and hope into despair. Not despair for their own souls’ ultimate fates, for neither of them questioned that for an instant, but for their failure. The Writ said that all God truly asked of a man was the best he could do, and they’d done that, but it hadn’t been good enough in the end, and that knowledge prickled the backs of Hauwerd’s eyes with tears.

  Yet as he looked into Samyl’s eyes this morning, he saw the same determination still burning there. The same passion for the cause to which they had given themselves. And the same love for the younger brother who had followed his lead for so many weary years, shouldered his own share of their task’s weight without protest or hesitation. There’d been times Hauwerd had thought Samyl was hopelessly idealistic, times the younger brother had . . . modified their plans without mentioning it to the older. Yet he’d never wavered in his own commitment or doubted, for one single, fleeting moment, the constancy of Samyl’s unwavering love for him.

  Their parents were gone now, thank God. Lysbet and the children had managed—somehow—to disappear after all. And Hauwerd himself had no wife, no children. Aside from a handful of distant cousins, they were alone once more—just the two of them, drifting again in that fishing boat. God had given them that much grace, despite their failure, and—despite their failure—they were still committed. Even now. Foolish as it undoubtedly was, it was also the truth, and Hauwerd Wylsynn would not have changed that truth even if he had known from the very first day exactly where it must lead them.

  And neither would Samyl.

  In those eyes across the table, Hauwerd recognized the same argument he’d been trying to win for five- days . . . and he knew, now, that it was one he wasn’t going to win. There were other points he could have raised—other points he had raised, more than once. Like the fact that, what ever Samyl actually did, Zhaspahr Clyntahn would proclaim what ever story, what ever version of the “facts,” best served his own purposes. Or the fact that, in the end, even someone with Samyl’s powerful faith and determination might well be brought to “confess” to sins he’d never committed, to renounce the things he’d fought for all his life. Or the fact that even if he later recanted his “confession,” Clyntahn would wave it in triumph anyway, once Samyl was safely dead and unable to dispute the Grand Inquisitor’s claim that it proved the Inquisition’s victory over the forces of Shan- wei.

  Or the fact that, of the entire Circle, only Samyl and Hauwerd knew the truth about Ahnzhelyk’s involvement. That if either of them was truly broken, they could lead Clyntahn’s Inquisitors to Ahnzhelyk, to all of her own contacts . . . to Lysbet, Zhanayt, and the boys.

  It’s too much, Samyl,he thought, eyes burning as he remembered that rowboat. Too much. God may demand our willingness to die for our faith, but you always insisted He’s a loving God, and you’re right. And a loving God doesn’t— can’t— demand everything else you’re willing to pay. But I can’t convince you of that, can I? Which is the real reason I invited you to breakfast this morning. He felt his lips twitch in a brief, totally unanticipated smile and shook his head mentally . Eternity’s a long time, he told himself. Probably long enough for you to forgive me . . . eventually.

  “Samyl—” he began out loud, then stiffened as a heavy hand pounded on the door to his suite and he realized that, however long eternity might be, he’d just run out of time to convince his brother.

  Samyl’s head whipped around towards the sound of that pounding fist. His face tightened, and he inhaled deeply, but his hand was steady as he set his chocolate cup aside.

  “I’m afraid it’s time, Hauwerd,” he said in a remarkably calm voice, never looking away from the archway into the suite’s vestibule as the fist pounded yet again. “I love y—”

  “And I love you, too, Samyl,” Hauwerd Wylsynn whispered through his tears as the sword he’d hidden under the breakfast table severed his older brother’s spinal cord.

  The force of the blow hurled Samyl’s corpse out of his chair. And it was only his corpse. Samyl Wylsynn was dead before his body reached the floor; the powerful, well- trained, loving guardsman’s hand behind that blow had seen to that.

  “I’m sorry,” Hauwerd told his brother as the pounding was replaced by the high- pitched whine of one of the Inquisition’s wands. Hauwerd didn’t need the sequence of warning notes from his suite’s door to tell him the lock was being overridden, but he took one more moment to kneel beside Samyl and close the startled eyes. “Couldn’t let you do it,” he said huskily, remembering lakewater and sunlight, solemn joy, and the smell of God’s own love for the world He�
�d made in the pollen and the flowering spike thorn. “If that’s murder, I’ll take my chances arguing the case with God.”

  He traced the sign of the Scepter on his brother’s forehead, then brushed tears from his eyes with a hand stained with his brother’s blood, stood, and stepped into the archway just as the first armored guardsman came charging towards it.

  “Hauwerd Wylsynn, I arrest you in—” a voice he recognized only too well bellowed from behind the charging guardsman, only to break off as Hauwerd’s first deadly thrust drove home above the first man’s protective breastplate and blood fountained from a severed throat.

  “Oh, fuck you, Kahrnaikys!” Hauwerd snapped almost gaily across the tumbling body. “You always were a prick!”

  A second guardsman backpedaled suddenly, trying to stop as he found himself facing not a startled, panicked, unarmed vicar but a trained soldier with a weapon in his hand. Unfortunately, he didn’t have time to adjust to the unexpected situation.

  “And fuck Clyntahn, too!” Hauwerd said, as the tip of his sword drove past the guardsman’s frantically interposed forearm and took the man cleanly through the right eye.

  The luxurious vestibule was suddenly filled with the stink of blood and voided bowels. Voices were raised in consternation, and Hauwerd bounded forward. There were at least two dozen guardsmen in Kahrnaikys’ party, but no more than four could crowd into the vestibule at once. Hauwerd had counted on that when he’d laid his plans against this day, and he bared his teeth as he charged his foes. A third guardsman went down before the others finally got their own weapons drawn. Steel rang on steel, and yet another guardsman staggered backwards. This one was only wounded, not dead—or not yet at least; that might change, Hauwerd thought, watching blood pump from the deep wound in the other man’s thigh—and two of his companions split to come at the vicar from either side.

  Hauwerd gave ground, retreating, stooping to snatch a dagger from the belt of the first guardsman he’d killed. He reached the archway, where no one could flank him, and stopped, sword in one hand, dagger in the other, and a deadly, deadly smile on his lips.

  “Come on, boys!” he invited.

  Both guardsmen attacked simultaneously. The dagger in Hauwerd’s left hand parried the first thrust, driving it out and to the side, and his own sword licked out once more. His other opponent’s breastplate was no protection against a sword-point which went home a hand’s breadth above it, and Hauwerd turned on the sudden corpse’s companion. A lightning flurry of feints and thrusts, and another guardsman was down.

  Hauwerd staggered back a half step, feeling the sudden pulse of blood.

  I guess armor does help,a corner of his brain thought as his left elbow pressed in against the deep wound the fifth guardsman’s sword had opened in his ribs before he died.

  The wounded vicar shook his head, blinking to clear his eyes, and saw yet another guardsman coming at him. This one wore the insignia of a captain, and Hauwerd just managed to parry the first blinding thrust.

  “Yield!”Captain Phandys shouted, parrying the vicar’s counterthrust in turn.

  “Go fuck yourself!” Hauwerd gasped back, and steel grated on steel as the captain’s breastplate turned a powerful thrust from the dagger in the vicar’s left hand.

  The two men clashed in a swirl of edged metal. Swords rang—not like bells, but like the insane clangor of Shan- wei’s own anvil—and Hauwerd was taller and stronger than Phandys, and more experienced, to boot. But he was also older, already wounded . . . and unarmored.

  None of Kahrnaikys’ guardsmen had ever seen a fight like it. Had ever imagined they might watch one of Mother Church’s vicars and a member of the Temple’s own Guard clash in an explosion of deadly swordplay here on the Temple’s own sacred ground. Hauwerd’s orange cassock was a deeper, darker color as blood pulsed from his wound, but there was nothing weakened about his sword arm or the cold, focused light in his eyes. He drove Phandys back—one stride, then another. Another. The captain gave ground, then stopped and counterattacked, and there was something beautiful in the brutal violence of that exchange. Something fierce, predatory. Something... clean.

  Major Kahrnaikys was shouting, but no one could make out his words over the clash of swords. And no one was really listening, either. Not really. They were all watching. Watching a bleeding vicar reject the distortion of the Inquisition’s power. Watching a single wounded man—a man who knew he was doomed, that the corrupt enemy he despised with all his heart was about to crush every voice of opposition in God’s own Church—defy a score of armed and armored foes . . . and smile as he did it.

  It was something they knew they would never forget. Something they knew they would never be allowed to share with others . . . and which they already knew they would share anyway, in whispers so soft not even Zhasphar Clyntahn would ever hear them. What ever else Hauwerd Wylsynn might be, he had been one of their own, commanded some of those same men—men like Khanstahnzo Phandys himself—now forcing their way into his suite, and as they watched his hopeless battle, his refusal to yield, they knew that what ever the Inquisition’s warrant of arrest might say, he had been worthy of their obedience.

  That he was still worthy of it.

  And then, suddenly, Hauwerd rose on his toes, spine arching, as Captain Phandys’ sword drove into his chest. It caught the vicar as he was closing, and the weight and momentum of his own body combined with the power of the thrust itself to drive the blade entirely through him.

  He grunted and dropped the dagger, clutching at the guard of Phandys’ sword as he thudded to his knees. The guardsman released the hilt almost automatically, and Wylsynn bent forward, folding around the agony of his death wound. But then the fallen vicar managed to straighten. Somehow he found the strength to raise his head once more. Blood bubbled from his lips, yet his eyes found Phandys’, and there was something in them. Something like . . . gratitude.

  Then Hauwerd Wylsynn’s eyes closed forever, and he toppled forward over the sword which had killed him.

  .XVII.

  Bruhstair & Sons Warehouse

  and

  The Temple,

  City of Zion,

  and

  The Northern High Road,

  The Temple Lands

  The travel arrangements were going to be . . . unique.

  The man who was currently Ahbraim Zhevons (and he was beginning to think he really needed a program listing the team’s entire roster to help him keep his identity straight on a moment- to- moment basis) had wondered exactly how Ahnzhelyk intended to transport a couple of dozen people, all of them fugitives from the Inquisition, out of what amounted to the Church of God Awaiting’s capital city, in the middle of winter, without seeing every one of them spotted, stopped, and arrested. In fact, however, he’d discovered, she didn’t intend to transport “a couple of dozen people” at all; she meant to move twice that many of them.

  A bit more than that, actually. In fact, the exact total was fifty- seven.

  He’d gawked at her when she first informed him of that minor point. Yet it had quickly become evident that he’d (yet again) underestimated the sheer scope of her operations, and this time around, he decided, he’d had even less of an excuse. It had been clear from the moment he first arrived in Zion that Ahnzhelyk was planning on leaving the city herself, not just smuggling out the families of a few highly placed churchmen. That being the case, it should have been equally evident to him that her plans would include the escape of any members of her own organization who might have been exposed (or to whom her own disappearance might have led the Inquisition), as well. He supposed that one reason it hadn’t occurred to him was the sheer scale of the thing. It must have required a massive dose of what had once been called chutzpah to even contemplate an evacuation (especially in a single effort) on the scale of the one Ahnzhelyk had in mind.

  “You’re joking,” he said now, quietly, standing beside her in the icy, echoing emptiness of the ware house.

  Ahnzhelyk had abando
ned the expensive, beautifully tailored, exquisitely fashionable garments she’d worn for so many years. She’d also abandoned her long, elaborately coiffured hair, the elegant cosmetics, the jewelry, the flawlessly manicured hands. The smallish woman standing beside Zhevons, her breath steaming gently in the ware house’s cold, wore quilted trousers, sensible, sueded boots, and a thick but utilitarian and deplorably drab woolen sweater. She was slender, true, yet she radiated a sort of compact solidness sadly at odds with the fashionably languid, slightly fluttery, somehow ethereal Ahnzhelyk. At the moment, she also wore an unbuttoned coat that looked remarkably like one of the Imperial Charisian Navy’s winter- weather watch coats. The thing had to weigh as much as Merlin Athrawes’ cuirass, but it was undoubtedly impervious to anything as minor as a subzero blizzard.

  “Joking?” Ahnzhelyk looked up at him and used one hand to smooth her now short- cropped hair. “Why should you think that, Ahbraim?”

  “You’re telling me you actually managed to arrange all of this”—“Zhevons” waved his hands around the warehouse—“right under Clyntahn’s nose?”

  “No, not really.”

  Ahnzhelyk gazed around the ware house herself. Like many such buildings in Zion, the solidly built structure had been packed to the raf ters at the beginning of winter. Mostly with bulk foodstuffs, in this ware house’s case, although at least a quarter of its floor space had been given over to bagged Glacierheart coal, while well over half of the storage yard outside it had been covered in huge piles of the gleaming black stuff from the Mountains of Light’s deep mines. This late in the season, over two- thirds of the ware house’s contents had been disposed of (undoubtedly at a tidy profit), and its staff had been reduced accordingly.

  “As a matter of fact,” she continued, returning her attention to her guest, “I made most of these arrangements well before Clyntahn was ever confirmed as Grand Inquisitor.” She grimaced, her expressive eyes going bleak and far colder than the ware house’s interior, at the mention of that name. “I’ve always believed in planning ahead, Ahbraim. Even in the days when I was foolish enough to believe not even the vicarate could be so corrupt—so stupid— as to name someone like Clyntahn Inquisitor. Now—”