by David Weber
“Of course.”
“How is Bishop Paityr? I’d hoped he might accompany you to Zion, but I can’t say I was honestly surprised when he didn’t.”
“Bishop Paityr is well,” Staynair replied. “What happened to his father and his uncle and so many of his friends and relatives in the Temple Lands left scars, of course. The fact that his stepmother and his brothers and sisters all escaped to Charis helps in that regard, but what’s helped even more are the opportunities God’s given him to serve Him in Charis. I can tell you of my own certain knowledge that his faith is unshaken and that he’s come through this ordeal even stronger than he went into it. And as I’m sure you know better than most, his strength and integrity have always been greater than most.”
“I’m glad—very glad,” Tymythy Rhobair told him. “Tell him that for me, please. I wish I’d been able to say it to him in person.”
“Your Holiness, he’s not quite ready to return to Zion, but that has less to do with unhealed wounds—although, in all honesty, not all those wounds are healed, even yet—than with his fear of the reaction the return of a Wylsynn to Zion might provoke. Especially the return of a Wylsynn who’s served the Church of Charis so long and so well. There are some situations he thinks need not be tested just yet, and I find myself in agreement with him.” The archbishop smiled suddenly. “You ran risk enough inviting an Out Islander who broke with Mother Church. God only knows how your clergy would react if you’d invited a scion of one of the Temple Lands’ great ‘dynasties’ who’d done the same thing!”
“You’re probably right. He was probably right.” Tymythy Rhobair nodded. “But please tell him for me that if the day ever comes when he does feel ready to revisit Zion, he has a permanent invitation. He remains my brother in God and the son and nephew of two men I will always deeply respect. Tell him that.”
“I will,” Staynair assured him. “Just as I’ll tell him I believe God’s blessed us with someone who I’m confident—whatever his doubts may be—will indeed prove a worthy successor to the Good Shepherd of Zion.”
.III.
Sochal, Tiegelkamp Province, North Harchong.
“—don’t like the sound of that, Your Grace. I don’t like it at all. And another thing that bothers me is that—”
Lord of Foot Laurahn broke off and looked up as Hwadai Pyangzhow entered her husband’s office. Hwadai would have liked to think that represented courtesy on his part. It didn’t. Zhailau Laurahn was capable of courtesy, although it didn’t come naturally to him, but it was Kaihwei Pyangzhow’s quick gesture which had stopped him.
“Yes, my dear? What can I do for you? I’m afraid the Lord of Foot and I are rather busy just now.”
“Yes, I see that,” she replied. “Actually, I was looking for Pozhi. We need to go over those storehouse accounts. I checked his office, but he wasn’t there.”
“Well, he’s not here, either,” her husband said. “If he isn’t in his office, try the winter store. If he’s not there, he’s probably out with the harvest masters. If he is, send one of the stableboys out with a note to tell them you need to see him.”
He looked at her, one eyebrow raised, obviously impatient to return to his conversation with Laurahn, and she bit her lip against a sharp retort.
“Of course,” she said coolly, then gave the lord of foot a graceful nod and withdrew, closing the door behind her.
She stood with her hand on the latch for a moment, then straightened her spine, drew herself up to her full five feet three, and turned away. Her rich, elegant skirts made a gentle rustling sound as she walked down the carpeted hallway, and paintings looked down upon her as she passed. She didn’t know any of the people in those paintings, just as she had no idea—and was pretty sure she wanted no idea—where the expensive plates and solid silver flatware which graced her dining table had come from. She was reasonably confident the golden candelabras in her bedchamber had once belonged to a church somewhere, although she couldn’t prove it, and the light coronet her husband insisted she wear everywhere looked suspiciously like something a bishop might have worn on an occasion which was only semiformal.
She hated it. She hated this house—which wasn’t hers; God only knew what had happened to the people who’d once owned it—and she hated the rich clothing. She hated those paintings, not one of which was of anyone remotely related to her or her husband. She hated hearing someone call her “Your Grace” and she hated what she knew her husband had done to gain her that honorific.
She paused, looking out a window over manicured lawns and autumn-colorful shrubbery, clenched hands concealed in the folds of her skirt, and her eyes were bleak. Two years ago she’d been a simple “My Lady,” and she’d thought she was unhappy then. She’d learned better since.
She drew a deep breath, squaring her shoulders, commanding herself not to weep, and remembered the despair she’d felt the day her father told her who she would marry. She hadn’t known Kaihwei Pyangzhow, Baron Spring Flower, very well—they’d met less than half a dozen times—but his reputation had preceded him. Gently reared maidens weren’t supposed to know about what happened with comely young serf women. They especially weren’t supposed to know about what happened if the comely young serf women in question were unwilling. That didn’t mean they didn’t.
But he’d been a baron. Not much of a baron, perhaps, with only a small estate, but still a baron, and her father had been a simple country squire. A relatively wealthy one, without any sons to pass his wealth to, yet merely a squire, with no hint of a connection to the aristocracy, when he longed to be so much more. But he had had daughters, her father. And so he’d sold one of them so that he could talk about his son-in-law the baron … and Pyangzhow had bought her with his title to gain her father’s wealth.
It hadn’t been all that bad a marriage. Not by the standards of many arranged Harchongese marriages, at any rate. She knew women who’d been far unhappier than she, and aside from an occasional conjugal visit to beget heirs, he’d left her to design her own life within the constraints of their marriage. He’d even treated her with relative courtesy, at least in front of others.
But then the whole world had gone insane, and he—
She bit that thought off, shook her head once, angrily, and set off once more in pursuit of Kangdyng Pozhi, her husband’s chief bailiff.
* * *
“I see no reason to disturb Her Grace with any … unpleasant details,” Duke Spring Flower said as the door closed behind the duchess.
“Of course not, Your Grace,” Zhailau Laurahn murmured, bending his head briefly.
“And from what you’ve been telling me, I’m afraid some of those details are going to be quite unpleasant,” Spring Flower continued, frowning down at the map unrolled on the large, beautifully carved desk between them. “We can’t have these … people bidding defiance to my authority. And to the Emperor’s express commands, of course.”
“As you say, Your Grace.” Laurahn looked down at the map, then tapped it with a fingertip. “It looks as if the real problem is coming out of the mountains, here.”
“Fucking mountain rats,” Spring Flower muttered, and Laurahn nodded.
The lord of foot’s finger rested between the city of Zhyndow, on the eastern flank of the Chiang-wu Mountains, and the village of Ranlai, on the road between Sochal and Zhyndow. It would have been inaccurate to call it a high road, but it was better than most Harchongese secondary roads because Zhyndow had been more prosperous—and larger—than most mountain towns. The operative word was “had,” however. Today it was a sea of burned-out, deserted, scavenger-haunted ruins.
Ranlai was far smaller than Zhyndow had once been—Laurahn doubted its population had ever exceeded four or five hundred—but with Zhyndow’s demise, it had become the closest town to the Chynduk Valley, which twisted its way for over four hundred and fifty miles along the sinuous trace of the Chynduk River, from Ky-su, in the north, to Zhyndow, in the south. It was also the marketplace to which the moun
taineers from the Valley brought their produce, now that Zhyndow was gone.
There were at least half a dozen towns considerably larger than Ranlai inside the Valley, however, threaded along the Chynduk and Haishyng, its eastern tributary. There were also dozens of smaller farming villages and hamlets tucked away in the mountains’ steep-sided coves, because for all its isolation the Chynduk Valley had always been more prosperous than many another swath of Harchong. That prosperity made the people living in those towns and villages and hamlets a potentially lucrative source of taxes and “emergency levies” to help quell the rebellions and brigandage convulsing the Empire, yet they seemed disinclined to place themselves under Duke Spring Flower’s benevolent protection.
Which, Laurahn conceded with cynical amusement, was understandable enough. Unfortunately, it was his job to teach them to be more reasonable. Or, at the very least, to keep their lack of reasonableness from contaminating the more tractable towns—like Ranlai—closer to Sochal and Fangkau by example.
“I ought to send you in there to clear them out once and for all,” Spring Flower growled.
“Nothing would give me greater pleasure Your Grace,” Laurahn lied, controlling a shudder at the thought. “But you’re right when you call them ‘mountain rats,’ and that valley is Shan-wei’s own rathole. They’d only scurry up into the mountains and wait until we left, I’m afraid.”
“Maybe during the summer.” Spring Flower frowned, fingers caressing the heavy links of the golden chain around his neck. “But what about winter, Zhailau?”
“A winter campaign in the Chiang-wus would be brutal, Your Grace,” Laurahn said with considerable understatement. “I’d probably lose more men to weather than to enemy action.”
“Yes, yes, yes!” The duke waved his hand impatiently. “I understand that. But these bastards have to have barns somewhere, don’t they? Winter pastures?”
“Well, yes, Your Grace,” Laurahn said slowly.
“Then suppose they were to ‘scurry up’ the slopes … and looked down to see you burning all their food just at the start of winter.” Spring Flower smiled unpleasantly. “Suppose you did that to a town or two—like Zhutiyan—and the farms around them, say. Don’t you think that might … inspire the rest of the whoreson bastards to be more reasonable?”
“Yes, I believe it would,” the lord of foot agreed.
“And if it didn’t, you could always burn the rest of them out, one farm at a time,” Spring Flower added coldly, and Laurahn nodded.
Of course, most of the people living along the Chynduk would starve if he burned their barns. But Shan-wei knew enough other peasants had starved over the last winter and more would follow them this winter. A few thousand—or a few score thousand—more would make little difference, and their desperation would let Spring Flower pick and choose who among them he might decide to feed in return for their submission.
And it would get the duke’s point across to the towns he already controlled.
“There are a few steps we should probably take in the next five-day or two if that’s what you wish me to do, Your Grace,” he said after a moment. “In particular, I’ll have to stage my own supplies up into the Valley. I could probably forage off those barns before we burn them, but I can’t count on that, and it’s almost a hundred and fifty miles from here to Zhutiyan. Without Zyhndow as a forward supply point, I’ll need a base closer to the Valley, especially for a winter campaign in the mountains. And, to be honest, the sooner we start making preparations the better.” He looked up, meeting the duke’s eyes. “There won’t be much time to get this arranged between now and first snowfall, I’m afraid.”
“Well, since Ranlai’s still buying their wheat despite my orders to the contrary, why don’t you use that for your base?” Spring Flower smiled unpleasantly. “I warned the mayor and his precious town council about that. You can go arrest the lot of them and send them back to Sochal to discuss that with me in person—briefly.” His smile turned even colder. “And it wouldn’t do to warn the rats we plan to put a ferret down their rathole once the harvest is in. So you could take along a few hundred of your men to take the offenders into custody and then leave them there—purely as a ‘show of force’—and establish patrols between there and Zhyndow to keep anyone from sneaking up into the mountains to tell them when your supplies begin arriving at your new base.”
“That … should work, Your Grace,” Laurahn said after a moment, carefully concealing his unhappiness.
It was possible the duke’s plan would work; it was more likely it wouldn’t, although he had no intention of telling Spring Flower that. The duke had no military background or experience, and that meant he had no idea what sending troops into the mountains on the eve of a high northern winter would be like. Even if he had known, he wouldn’t have cared any more than he—or Laurahn himself, the lord of foot acknowledged—cared about what would happen to the mountain peasants if it succeeded. If it didn’t succeed, however, Laurahn knew who’d be blamed for it, and it wouldn’t be the winter weather.
“With your permission, Your Grace, I need to go discuss this with Chaiyang,” he said. “Off the top of my head, I don’t see any insurmountable difficulties,” which didn’t mean he couldn’t manufacture some if Hanbai Chaiyang and he were sufficiently inventive, “but we’ll have to do some reorganizing to free up the strikeforce we’ll need. Frankly, the Sergeant Major has a better feel for how our more effective troops are distributed at the moment.”
.IV.
Zhutiyan, Chynduk Valley, Tiegelkamp Province, North Harchong.
Tangwyn Syngpu kept his face impassive as he followed Baisung Tsungshai up the steps into the Zhutiyan town hall. As town halls went, Zhutiyan’s wasn’t all that impressive. Certainly he’d seen far grander ones, not only in Siddarmark with the Mighty Host but even here in Harchong. The Zhutiyan town hall had one advantage over most of those he’d seen recently, however.
It hadn’t been burned down.
A small group of four people, one of them a woman, waited for them at the head of the stairs. He reached the top, and one of the men stepped forward.
“Commander Syngpu?” he asked, and Syngpu nodded. A lot of his followers thought he should embrace what seemed to be the current trend and proclaim himself “Lord of Foot Syngpu,” or even “Lord of Horse Syngpu,” but he was a sergeant, not a damned general! “Commander” seemed a workable compromise.
“Yes,” he said simply, returning the other man’s slight bow with what he knew was a less polished one of his own.
“I am Zaipau Ou-zhang, Mayor of Zhutiyan. I bid you welcome on behalf of the city.”
“Thank you,” Syngpu replied, and he meant it.
Ou-zhang was tall but rather frail looking, with silvering hair and a deeply lined face. The man standing at his right shoulder was perhaps an inch shorter, but he was also at least ten years younger, with broad shoulders, and there wasn’t a trace of white in his black hair. The third man was a white-haired, rather worn-looking fellow in the blue cassock of an under-priest of the Order of Chihiro of the Quill. The woman was the shortest of the four, a good eight inches shorter than Syngpu, with a slight build, the delicate bone structure of a wind hummer, and a face which was attractive but far from beautiful. Her head barely topped her male companions’ shoulders and she couldn’t have weighed much over a hundred pounds—if that—but there was nothing fragile about her.
“This is Squire Gyngdau,” Ou-zhang continued, indicating the broad-shouldered man, “and his sister-in-law, Madam Gyngdau.” The woman inclined her head briefly. “And this is Father Yngshwan, our senior parish priest.” The mayor smiled thinly. “He’s been sort of our acting bishop since his more senior fellows followed Archbishop Zhau south a year or so ago. I’m sure they’ll be back any day now.”
Syngpu felt his eyes widen slightly, despite his determination to let his face give nothing away, at the caustic bite in Ou-zhang’s last sentence, but Father Yngshwan only shook his head and clicked his
tongue at the mayor.
“I welcome you in the name of Mother Church’s true sons, Commander,” he said, looking at Syngpu. “And I should point out that my good friend the Mayor neglected to mention that almost everyone junior to my humble self is still at his post, right here in the Valley.”
“And every one of you excommunicated by that bastard Zhau before he hightailed it,” Ou-zhang grated.
“Which has no effect unless validated by the Grand Vicar,” Father Yngshwan pointed out serenely. “Under the circumstances, I fail to feel hell’s breath on the back of my neck, Zaipau. If Shan-wei is breathing anywhere, I suspect it’s upon more highly placed necks than my own, and I wouldn’t care to own one of those necks at the end of the day.” He laid a hand on the mayor’s shoulder and squeezed lightly. “We have rather weightier matters to consider now that the Commander is here, however.”
“Truer words were never spoken, Father,” Gyngdau said, speaking for the first time. His voice was deep and the hand he extended to Syngpu was well manicured but strong, the hand of a man who’d been known to work his own fields at need. “I hope this is going to work out, Commander,” he said frankly. “For a lot of reasons.”
“We’ll just have to see what we can do about making that happen, then, Squire,” Syngpu replied, clasping forearms with him, and Ou-zhang waved for him and Tsungshai to accompany them into the town hall.
* * *
Syngpu felt out of place in the mayor’s office.
The view through its windows was spectacular, looking northwest up the steep slopes which trended steadily upward towards the distant blue majesty of Mount Kydyn’s towering peak. Kydyn stood more than sixty miles west of the town, rising like a seventy-mile-wide giant as part of the Chynduk Valley’s God-created parapet.
Zhutiyan itself sat on a small rise, high enough to be above the inevitable spring floods, in a bend of the deep, fast-flowing Chynduk River from which the valley took its name. The river’s floodplain was about thirty miles wide at this point, dotted with patches of forest painted with fall’s bright colors and wide rectangles of wheat fields and cornfields enclosed by moss-grown stone walls which must have taken centuries to pile in place. The corn was long gone, as were most of the farmers’ other crops as winter drew steadily closer, and teams of men and women with rythmically swinging scythes were harvesting the wheat as he watched.