A Mighty Fortress

by David Weber

  Maybe I should reconsider that decision not to simply assassinate him,he thought. He didn’t want to get into the habit of doing things like that but still . .

  “At least Sir Gwylym’s still alive,” Sharleyan said into the stillness. She was the only member of the conversation who’d never gotten to know Manthyr personally, but what she had known about him she’d liked. Now she looked across the bassinet at her husband and reached out to lay a comforting hand on his knee. “We have that much,” she reminded him.

  “Yes.” He covered her hand with his own, then inhaled deeply and smiled at her. “Yes, we do. And it looks as if Thirsk has forgiven me for marooning him and his men on Armageddon Reef after Crag Reach.”

  He actually managed a chuckle, and Merlin snorted mentally. He’d been there when Cayleb delivered his ultimatum to Thirsk, and he knew the emperor had been at least a little anxious about how Thirsk might react the first time Charisians had to surrender to him.

  In the event, he’d treated Manthyr and his officers and men with rigorous propriety under the Safeholdian customs of war. His healers had tended Manthyr’s wounded as conscientiously as they had looked after their own, and the surviving officers had been shown every courtesy by their captors. To be honest, that was exactly what Merlin had expected out of Thirsk, although it was a vast relief to have his expectations confirmed.

  And it would be an even vaster relief if I could be certain Thirsk was going to be allowed to hang on to them,he thought grimly. Which is another reason not to assassinate him, damn it.

  He snorted to himself, wondering why it was that he found the thought of assassinating someone he respected, even admired, so repugnant when he would have killed the same man in open battle with barely a qualm.

  I guess everyone has to have a sticking point somewhere. And it’s not as if there weren’t logical reasons not to kill him off. If we did, and if it was an obvious assassination—or even something Clyntahn could simply claim might have been an assassination—it would only reinforce the suspicions of everyone who thinks Cayleb had Hektor murdered. But even that’s not the worst of it. Killing him off would only make room for someone else, probably one of his “disciples,” someone who’s already imbibedhis own theories and plans, like Hahlynd. They might not be quite as good as he is, but they’d probably be good enough. And for another, he has treated his prisoners decently, at least so far. Can we afford to kill off someone on the other side who seems determined to do that? Especially in the wake of what Clyntahn did to the Wylsynns and their friends?

  That was what worried him most, at the moment, he admitted to himself. Would Thirsk be allowed to retain possession of “his” prisoners? Or would someone else be given charge of them?

  For the first time, the Church has the opportunity to get its hands on an entire clutch of Charisian “heretics,” and I hope to God they don’t do what I’m afraid they might. Clyntahn’s purge of the vicarate was bad enough. If he decides to turn this into the kind of religious war Old Earth saw entirely too many of, with atrocities provoking counteratrocities, even fromCharisians . . .

  “How do you think Clyntahn’s going to respond to this, Merlin?” Lock Island asked, almost as if he’d been reading Merlin’s mind, and Merlin shrugged.

  “I don’t know,” he said honestly. “On so many levels, I don’t know. But I do know one thing.”

  “What?” Cayleb asked when he paused.

  “I know we’d damned well better get Seamount and Howsmyn started cranking out those new shells of theirs,” Merlin told him.

  SEPTEMBER,YEAR OF GOD 894

  .I.

  Sir Koryn Gahrvai’s Townhouse

  and

  Royal Palace,

  City of Manchyr,

  Princedom of Corisande

  Sir Koryn Gahrvai walked into his study carrying a glass of Chisholmian whiskey and crossed to his desk. He used his free hand to turn up the wick on the oil lamp one of the servants had lit earlier in the evening and started to set down the whiskey, then stopped abruptly.

  There was an envelope on his desk. He hadn’t left it there; in fact, he’d never seen it before. On the other hand, he did recognize the handwriting. That he’d seen before.

  Well,he thought after a moment , at least this time there’s no broken glass.

  He finished setting down the whiskey and seated himself. He gazed at the envelope for a few more seconds, then shrugged and picked it up.

  As the last time, there were several sheets of paper, but instead of the pair of hand- drawn maps which had accompanied the first letter, there were three. Not of secret rooms in monasteries this time, but of the city of Telitha in the Earldom of Storm Keep. One was a precisely annotated street map, indicating names and addresses. He recognized some of the names already; others, he’d never heard of, but he suspected that when he got around to the rest of the letter, he’d find out who they were. The second map was a diagram of Storm House, the Earl of Storm Keep’s residence, this one marked with neat arrows indicating concealed caches of correspondence and other documentary evidence, and one small suite simply marked “the Bishop Executor’s rooms.” And the third . . .His eyes lit as he saw the ware houses and followed more neat arrows to the areas in which camouflaged crates which had arrived in Corisande by way of Zebediah had been stored.

  You know, I didn’t really believe you when you told me about all this,Seijin Merlin, he thought, sipping whiskey before he started reading the letter itself. Oh, I guess I did intellectually. But deep inside, I never really believed there truly was this vast network of seijins scattered around the world. But— he looked around the study, looked at the closed and locked glass doors leading to the central garden, thought about the sentries around the townhouse— I don’t see who else could’ve gotten in here and left this for me!

  He snorted a laugh, took another sip, then stood and crossed back to the study door. He opened it and looked out at the sentry outside it.

  “I need some messengers, Corporal.”

  “Of course, Sir! How many?”

  “Well, let me see. I need one to Sir Charlz Doyal, one to my father, one to Earl Tartarian, and one to Viceroy General Chermyn.” The corporal’s eyes had widened a bit farther with each name, but he only nodded, and Gahrvai smiled at him. “Tell Major Naiklos I said to pick good, reliable men he knows will keep their mouths shut. I’ll have notes for them to deliver by the time they can assemble here. Oh, and find Yairman Uhlstyn. I’ll want him . . . and he’ll want to be here.”

  “Yes, Sir!” the sentry said, and dashed off down the hallway. Gahrvai watched him go, then went and sat behind his desk, pulled several sheets of stationery out of a drawer, dipped a pen, and began writing.

  “What’s this all about, Koryn?” Sir Rysel Gahrvai grumbled as he marched into the meeting chamber. “I’d just settled in for the evening when your man came thundering on the front door!”

  “I apologize for disturbing you, Father, but something’s come up.”

  “Damn it, you know how I hate those words!” the Earl of Anvil Rock groused, crossing to his chair at the council table. “ ‘Something’ has been ‘coming up’ at the most inconvenient possible moment for the last two damned years!”

  He plunked himself down, leaned back, and regarded his eldest son and the apple of his eye with remarkably scant favor. His august and trusted fellow councilor, Earl Tartarian, chuckled, and Anvil Rock turned his glower upon him.

  “I suppose you think this is humorous?” he demanded, his tone irate, although there might have been just a spark of amusement in his eyes. “I happen to know that you usually stay up until all hours, anyway, instead of going to bed at a sane hour. You probably hadn’t even had supper yet when this young jack-anapes’ note reached you!”

  “Of course I hadn’t,” Tartarian soothed. “What ever you like, Rysel. And now, if you’ve got that out of your system, perhaps we could get down to business?”

  “Spoilsport,” Anvil Rock muttered, but he also turne
d his attention back to his son. “All right, Koryn,” he said in quite a different tone. “What is it?”

  “I just received a note of my own, Father,” Gahrvai replied. “The one Seijin Merlin warned me I might be receiving.”

  “Ah?” Anvil Rock sat up straighter, his eyes narrowing.

  “You’re certain this is really from one of Merlin’s mysterious . . . assistants, Koryn?” Tartarian sounded a bit cautious, and Gahrvai didn’t blame him.

  “I don’t see how anyone but another seijin could have delivered it the way it was delivered.” Gahrvai shrugged. “It was on my desk in my locked study when I walked in after dinner, My Lord. And there’s enough sensitive material in that study that it’s under guard day and night. But someone got in, anyway. I’m not going to say it would have been impossible for someone other than a seijin to pull that off, but it would certainly have been difficult. And Charlz”— he twitched his head towards the foot of the table, where Charlz Doyal was poring over the letter even as he spoke—“is confident what he’s seen so far is genuine. You know we’ve been doing a little checking of our own ever since Seijin Merlin warned us about this ‘Northern Conspiracy’ of his. We haven’t wanted to overset any potato carts or step on any of the seijin’s . . . associates’ toes, so we haven’t pushed too hard. Everything we’ve turned up, though, is consistent with this letter.”

  “I see.” Tartarian looked at Anvil Rock. “Rysel?”

  “If Koryn and Charlz are satisfied it’s genuine, so am I.” Anvil Rock’s expression was as grim as Tartarian remembered ever having seen it. “And, to be honest, I’m just as glad to hear it. I want these bastards, Taryl. I want them badly.”

  Gahrvai watched his father’s expression, as well, marveling at how Anvil Rock’s attitudes had altered since he’d unwillingly assumed the role of the absent Prince Daivyn’s regent. The earl was no happier than he had been at the notion that his princedom had been conquered by a foreign power, and as the man who’d commanded Prince Hektor’s army, he continued to take that conquest as a personal failure. At the same time, however, it was obvious he’d come to genuinely accept that the Charisian occupiers were doing their best to be no more repressive than they had to. And, Gahrvai knew, little though his father cared to admit it, Anvil Rock had grudgingly, against his will, fighting every inch of the way, come to accept that Cayleb of Charis and Sharleyan of Chisholm were better rulers than Hektor had been, as well.

  Oh,how he fought that one! Gahrvai thought ruefully. It really stuck in his craw. And I suppose I understand that, too. They were cousins, and here at home, at least, Hektor always tried to ride with a light rein. But you were too close to him, Father, weren’t you? You knew what he was like when it came to the “great game.” Just like you knew—as well as I did—who really started the conflict between Corisande and Charis. And it wasn’t Haarahld, was it?

  Even now Sir Koryn Gahrvai wasn’t even tempted to think of his father as a Charisian partisan. In fact, the mind boggled at the concept. But, especially since Archbishop Maikel’s visit, Anvil Rock had at least accepted that Charis was trying to make a bad situation better. And, Gahrvai suspected, while the earl might not yet have worked his way around to considering himself a Charisian subject, he had found himself much more firmly in agreement with the Church of Charis’ doctrine—and the growing support that doctrine was finding among Corisande’s own Reformists—than he’d ever anticipated.

  Which is the real reason you want “those bastards,” Father,Gahrvai thought affectionately. Because you don’t trust them as far as you could spit upwind. Because you know damned well people like Craggy Hill and Barcor and Zebediah aren’t trying to make a bad situation better . . . unless they can do better for themselves in the process.

  “Your note said you were informing the Viceroy General?” his father said, and he nodded.

  “Yes, Father.” He shrugged slightly. “First, because it was my responsibility to inform him, and, second, because I figured it was entirely possible he was going to get a note of his own.” Gahrvai smiled crookedly. “Under the circumstances, it seemed the most prudent thing to do. Although I did tell him I’d be meeting with you and Earl Tartarian and that you two would advise him of the Regency Council’s decision in this matter.”

  “Tactful sort, aren’t you?” his father observed, then looked at Tartarian. “Well, Taryl, I don’t see that we have a lot of ‘deciding’ to do here, despite Koryn’s efforts to spare our feelings. And I’m not sure I see any reason to go convening the entire Council, either. This clearly comes under the executive authority of the Crown, which is presently vested in me as Regent. Besides, we have—as Koryn just pointed out—an obligation to inform Chermyn and cooperate with him fully in this matter.” He grimaced. “Comes with all those oaths the bunch of us and Parliament swore to Cayleb and Sharleyan. Would you agree?”

  “With the observation that nobody in Zion or the Temple is ever going to accept those oaths as binding, yes,” Tartarian said mildly.

  “Huh!” Anvil Rock snorted contemptuously and shook his head. “Of course they aren’t! But the truth is, Taryl, I’ve discovered I really don’t give a fart for the damned Group of Four anymore. This whole mess is that lizard-loving bastard Clyntahn’s fault in the first damned place. And ‘Grand Inquisitor’ or no, if he really gives a damn what God wants, I’m a frigging Harchong grand duke!”

  Gahrvai’s eyes widened. Despite his own earlier thoughts about Anvil Rock’s attitude towards the Church of Charis, that was, by any mea sure, the strongest statement his father had ever made about the Temple’s current leadership. Yet even though he’d never expected to hear it, what surprised him the most was that he felt so little surprise when the words were actually said.

  He looked at Tartarian and felt another little spasm of surprise, because Tartarian was actually smiling at Anvil Rock.

  “Took you a little while to figure that out, did it, Rysel?”

  “His mother”— Anvil Rock twitched a thumb in his son’s direction— “always did say I could be a little slow. But I’ll tell you this, Taryl, it’ll be a cold day in hell when you see someone like Grand Vicar Erek or that murderous ass-hole Clyntahn trekking all the way out to someplace like Corisande. You think they give a spider- rat’s arse what happens to us out here?”

  “Of course not,” Tartarian said quietly. “I never did. On the other hand, I never thought there was any way to change that, either.”

  “Well, neither did I, really,” Anvil Rock admitted. “And I didn’t think there was when Cayleb sailed over here from Old Charis and kicked our arses up between our ears, either. Religious reform? Dragon shit! Old- fashioned imperial politics with a new justification, that’s what it was, and I knew it. I’m still not entirely ready to give up on that interpretation, either, but . . .”

  “But then there’s Archbishop Maikel, isn’t there?” Tartarian finished for him in a soft voice, and Anvil Rock nodded.

  “There’s Archbishop Maikel, and there’s priests like Father Tymahn, and there’s the cold- blooded bastards who murder priests like Father Tymahn. Bastards like Zhaspahr Clyntahn, who murder children and call it ‘God’s will.’ ”

  Muscles bunched in Anvil Rock’s jaw for a moment, and then he closed his eyes, inhaled deeply, and gave himself a shake. When he opened his eyes again, the jaw muscles had relaxed once more, and he smiled crookedly.

  “I don’t think Cayleb Ahrmahk is the Archangel Langhorne come back in glory, but I do think he’s a basically good young man doing the best he can in one hell of a messy situation. A young man who refused to just roll over and die when the Group of Four decided to destroy his kingdom. I also think Clyntahn and the Inquisition have shown their true colors now. And I’ll tell you this right now, Taryl—I’ll side with anyone this side of Shan- wei herself who’s willing to stand up to someone like that.”

  .II.

  City of Telitha,

  Telith Bay,

  Earldom of Storm Keep,

&nb
sp; Princedom of Corisande

  There was nothing remarkable about the two merchant galleons lying to anchor well out from the harborside quays of the city of Telitha. They’d arrived separately, hours apart, one flying the house flag of a rather disreputable Manchyr trading house, and the other of Chisholmian registry. They’d anchored within a few hundred yards of one another, then proceeded to ignore each other as they awaited their own turns to go along quayside or lighter their cargo ashore.

  Neither seemed in any particular hurry, since their skippers hadn’t made any special push to arrange to land their cargoes, but no one in Telitha cared particularly about that. In fact, no one in Telitha paid them the slightest mind as they lay there, a handful of men moving about their decks, watching darkness settle slowly over the bay. Lights began to glow here and there ashore—nothing like the illumination one might have seen out of Tellesberg or Cherayth, or even Manchyr, but glittering like beached stars nonetheless. They seemed even brighter to night than they might have been otherwise, since there happened to be no moon.

  Complete darkness closed in, turning the galleons into all but invisible black blots against the only slightly brighter water. Stars came out overhead, briefly mirrored in the oily- smooth swell, but even as they appeared, cloud began sweeping in from the east.

  This,Sir Koryn Gahrvai thought, standing on the quarterdeck of one of those galleons and watching the incoming clouds steadily erase the stars, is ridiculous. I’m willing to believe in seijins, I guess, and I suppose—especially after listening to Father; talk about conversions!— I can accept that God is on Archbishop Maikel’s side. That’s not the same thing as being on Cayleb’s side, though! And even if it were, how did even a seijin arrange a night like this? It’s like the Archangels delivered the damned weather to order!

  Under the circumstances, it was a reasonable enough question. Then again, Gahrvai didn’t know about SNARCs, or an AI named Owl, or the meteorological projections he could make. Nor did he have any idea that Merlin Athrawes, thousands of miles away in Tellesberg, could arrange to have one of Owl’s remotes quietly deliver his message on a timetable designed to get Gahrvai and his raiders here at precisely this time.