Safehold 10 Through Fiery Trials

by David Weber

  And that was the true reason he felt so out of place. It wasn’t the shelved books, the whiskey bottle and glasses, the curtains on either side of that double-paned window, the ceramic-tiled stove in one corner, waiting for winter. It wasn’t even the painting on the wall facing the mayor’s desk—a painting of a much younger Ou-zhang and a slim, smiling woman in a traditional Harchongese wedding gown. Syngpu was a peasant, and he’d never owned anything nearly so fine as what he saw about him in this provincial mayor’s office. But the scene out that window—the peacefulness, the order, the sense of something almost like tranquility as those people gathered their crops. That was what made him feel so out of place, because it was something he hadn’t seen in far too long.

  “I’m sure you can understand that there’s a certain … uneasiness on the part of many of our friends and neighbors, Commander,” Squire Gyngdau said, after the whiskey had been poured and they’d sat back in their chairs.

  “Be surprised if there wasn’t,” Syngpu said frankly. “That,” he waved his glass at the view from the window, “is hard to believe, after what I’ve seen over the last year.” He shook his head, letting the grimness flow into his eyes, the set of his mouth. “After what I’ve seen for a long time, now. First with the Mighty Host, and now right here.”

  Madam Gyngdau sat behind the mayor’s desk, quill pen poised to take notes, but she cocked her head, looking up at his words, and her expression was thoughtful.

  “Did I have that,” Syngpu waved his glass again, “I’d be thinking three or four times—more like a score, really—before I was inviting a lot of men with guns into the midst of it.”

  “Well, that’s rather the crux of the problem, isn’t it?” The squire’s smile was small, tart, but genuine. “From what we’re hearing, quite a lot of other men with guns are thinking about inviting themselves ‘into the midst of it.’”

  “Not ‘a lot’ of other men, Miyang,” Mayor Ou-zhang growled. “That unmitigated bastard Spring Flower!” He grimaced, glancing at Madam Gyngdau. “Pardon the language, Yanshwyn.”

  “I am shocked—shocked—that you should use such language to describe the Duke not merely in the presence of a lady but of a sanctified servant of the Archangels such as myself, as well!” Father Yngshwan scolded, and Ou-zhang snorted.

  “Forgive me, Father. I meant to describe him as ‘that Shan-wei–damned, mother-loving, carrion-eating, slime maggot’s bastard Spring Flower.’”

  “Much better, my son,” the priest said, signing a benevolent Scepter, and Madam Gyngdau’s lips twitched.

  “I can’t argue with that characterization,” her brother-in-law said, and cocked his head at Syngpu. “Can I ask how much Master Tsungshai’s already told you about our situation, Commander?”

  It was interesting, Syngpu thought. The squire had attached the honorific “master” to young Baisung as if a mere peasant actually deserved it. It hadn’t sounded like a concession on his part, either, and he filed that away beside what he’d already learned about Gyngdau from other sources.

  “He’s told me a lot about the Valley,” Syngpu replied after a moment. “Not so much about Spring Flower and the rest. He’s been away for a while.”

  Gyngdau nodded at the generous understatement.

  In fact, Baisung Tsungshai had found himself employed as an artificer in the Jai-hu manufactory when Syngpu ambushed Captain of Horse Nyangzhi’s column and captured the rifles which had made the fall of Shang-mi possible. In fact, almost a quarter of those rifles had borne Tsungshai’s inspection stamp. Jai-hu was a long way from home for a peasant—well over four hundred miles as a wyvern might fly; at least twice or three times that far as mere humans traveled—but he hadn’t been given a choice about relocating. The Chynduk Foundry, where he’d learned his trade, had been shut down shortly after the Jihad when there’d been no more orders for Chynduk’s rifles. The reason those orders had dried up when the Imperial Army so desperately needed new, modern weapons had been obvious, of course. Its owners hadn’t been aristocrats—not even lowly barons—and no one could waste such an opportunity for graft on mere commoners.

  Technically, Tsungshai, like virtually everyone born in the Chynduk Valley, was a freeborn peasant, not a serf, but that hadn’t mattered when the Crown ordered him to Jai-hu to ply his trade in the gun-making manufactory there, instead.

  That manufactory no longer existed. Like most of the rest of Jai-hu, it had burned to the ground, much to Syngpu’s regret. There was no way he could have kept it in production for very long, given how the Rebellion had interrupted deliveries of steel and coal, but he wished with all his heart that he’d gotten his hands on it before the tooling—and several thousand barrel blanks and rifle stocks—were destroyed.

  Tsungshai had made a worthwhile addition even without the manufactory, however. Not only was he the perfect choice to teach a horde of barely literate serfs and peasants how to maintain their weapons, but he was also smart and well-educated for a peasant. In fact, he was considerably better educated than a shepherd boy from Thomas Province named Tangwyn Syngpu. If Syngpu had been tempted to promote himself to lord of foot, Tsungshai would have to be at least a captain of foot—more probably a captain of horse—and the boy was loyal, too. That counted.

  “I’ll be honest,” Syngpu said now. “What young Baisung had to say’s the real reason we’ve come to this side of the Chiang-wus.” He shook his head slowly. “Last winter … last winter was bad. Lost a good third of my men, and not more than half of ’em because they just decided to go home.”

  The ghosts of the men he’d lost to frostbite and starvation flittered through his eyes, and Madam Gyngdau looked up at him again. He didn’t notice.

  “Over the summer, we got our numbers back up. Not as much as we could’ve if we’d recruited hard, but I won’t take a man as doesn’t have someone I trust to vouch for him. And we’ve attracted Langhorne’s own camp followers! Not just whores, either.” He glanced apologetically at Madam Gyngdau as he used the noun, but she only waved her left hand dismissively while her right kept scratching notes. “These’re good women, for the most part. Most of ’em’re mothers, really. And more’n a couple of them are a right sight ‘better born’ than they want to admit these days, I’m thinking. We’ve looked after ’em. Not going to pretend it’s all been out of the goodness of my boys’ hearts, Father.” He looked at the priest. “Been some ‘arrangements’ made, and some of the women haven’t earned their keep cooking or washing, if you know what I mean. But we’ve looked after them. Long as they’re with us, they’re safe, and they know it.”

  “My son, if they are, it’s because you and your men have made them that way,” Father Yngshwan said quietly. “I’ll worry about venial sins when this is all over.”

  Syngpu nodded in acknowledgment, then looked back at Squire Gyngdau and the mayor.

  “It’s those women—them and their kids—have me worried, really,” he said. “They’re my responsibility now, and I’m not sure I could get ’em through another winter like the last on my own.” He paused, then shook his head. “No, that’s not true. I know I can’t. So when Baisung told me about the Valley, suggested you might need someone like us, I had to find out. That’s when I sent my first messenger. Didn’t have any idea about this Spring Flower of yours. I was just looking for a way to keep those kids alive.”

  His burly, powerful shoulders started to sag, but he squared them stubbornly as he faced the three far better-dressed, far better-educated men in that office and admitted his need. Silence hung as all four of his hosts looked at one another. Then, almost as one, they nodded. Yet Syngpu noticed that it was neither the squire nor the mayor, nor even Father Yngshwan, who nodded first; it was Madam Gyngdau, nodding to the priest.

  “How many men do you have under your command?” the squire asked.

  “Baisung?” Syngpu looked at the younger man, and Tsungshai pulled a battered notebook out of his tunic.

  “As of the first of the five-day, we counted
just over forty-two hundred effectives,” he said, consulting the pages. “We have half again that many rifles with no one to carry them.” His eyes, too, were dark as he recalled the grim winter which had created that imbalance. “And currently we’ve got seven hundred and three women … and one thousand seven hundred and twelve children.” He cleared his throat. “Over two hundred of them are orphans,” he added quietly.

  Madam Gyngdau’s pen faltered for a moment as he read off the numbers. She bent more deeply over her own notes, and Syngpu thought she might be biting her lip before the quill started scratching again.

  “That’s a lot of mouths to add right on the brink of winter.” The squire held Syngpu’s eyes levelly, but the ex-sergeant refused to look away. A second passed, then two, and then Gyngdau nodded with what might almost have been approval.

  “We’ll work our way,” Syngpu said then. “I think you know what we’re really bringing to the dance, but every one of my boys was a farmer or a shepherd or a miner before he found a rifle in his hands, too. Give ’em work to do, honest work, and you won’t regret it.”

  “You know, I believe you’re right,” Gyngdau said. He smiled slightly, but then his expression turned grim. “I believe you’re right, but the truth is, we’ve got enough farmers, and enough shepherds. I won’t say we can’t use more, but right this minute what we really need is something else.”

  “Figured you might when I sent that first message.”

  “But I doubt you realized how badly we’d need that something else,” the mayor said.

  “Or that your reputation preceded you,” Father Yngshwan put in. Syngpu looked at him, and the priest shrugged. “I won’t say anyone was putting you and your men up for seijinhood, Commander. But young Baisung’s not the only Valley boy to make his way back to us since the Rebellion started. From what some of the others have had to say, it sounds like you’ve spent as much time hanging peasant rapists as aristocrats.”

  “A rapist’s a rapist, Father,” Pauyin Syngpu’s father said grimly, his eyes like fire-cored ice. “Same thing’s true for any man who’s what the Bédardists call a ‘sadist.’ Didn’t really know that word ’fore I joined the Mighty Host. Learned it in Tarikah. Didn’t really need a label for it, though, and it doesn’t much matter what you call him. Don’t care how he’s dressed; don’t care how he talks, either. Langhorne didn’t die and make me God, but there’s some things a man’s got to face when they fall in his way.”

  “I’ll pray to the Archangel Bédard to ease that burden on your soul, my son,” Father Yngshwan said quietly, his worn face serene and his voice calm. “For now, though, what matters is that a man with your reputation, and fighters with the reputation your men have, aren’t going to suddenly turn into rapists themselves if someone offers them a winter roof and food in their bellies.”

  “No, Father.” Syngpu faced him unflinchingly. “No, they aren’t.”

  “That’s good,” Gyngdau said, “because we need experienced fighters, and we really need fighters with rifles, not just bows and slings.”

  “So I understand.” Syngpu sat back in his chair, his expression still grim but his heart soaring as he realized he’d just been told his men would be offered “a winter roof and food in their bellies” for themselves and, even more importantly, the women and children for whom they’d made themselves responsible. “I take it that’s where this Spring Flower comes in?”

  “You take it correctly, Commander,” Mayor Ou-zhang said. “‘Duke’ Spring Flower doesn’t share your view of rapists and sadists.”

  “In fairness—and, believe me, my son, it pains me to be fair in this case—Spring Flower was no worse than most other petty nobles before the Rebellion,” Father Yngshwan said.

  “Well, he’s made up for it since, Yngshwan!” Ou-zhang said tartly, and the priest nodded.

  “Duke Spring Flower was Baron Spring Flower before the Rebellion,” he continued, turning back to Syngpu. “Not much of a baron, either, when you come down to it.”

  “What he means, Commander, is that Miyang here—” the mayor twitched his head in the squire’s direction “—held more land than the entire ‘Barony of Spring Flower.’ And he had more people working it, too. Every damned one of them a freeman or freewoman.”

  “Be that as it may,” Gyngdau said, making a waving away gesture, “he was only a tiny fish. He’s turned into a kraken with dreams of being a doomwhale since. And if the documents he’s presented are to be believed, he’s on his way to accomplishing that. It’s been impossible for him to go south to swear fealty for his newly enlarged titles, of course, but it’s pretty clear the Emperor truly has elevated him to a dukedom.”

  “And the offal lizard figures that dukedom should include everything he can steal while the stealing’s good,” Ou-zhang said. “Bastard started out with a coin-sized barony just outside Fangkau. That’s a town a matter of two hundred miles from here by road. By now, he controls everything west of Fangkau and east of Ranlai, almost as far north as Daimyng, and as far south as the Zhauchyan River, above Kwailan. That’s damn near fifty miles each direction from where he started out and Ranlai’s barely thirty miles from Zhyndow. And Zhyndow is only seventy miles from Zhutiyan.”

  Syngpu pursed his lips in a silent whistle. That was a larger area than he’d expected. If Spring Flower could control that many square miles, given the bands of marauders ranging Tiegelkamp and the rival warlords trying to carve out their own tunic-pocket kingdoms, he had to have more manpower than Syngpu had assumed.

  “We’ve managed to keep things relatively peaceful here in the Valley,” Squire Gyngdau said. “Mostly, to be honest, that’s because we’ve never had any barons up here in the mountains. The closest we came were a few landowners—like me—with bigger parcels than most. Theoretically, we owed fealty to Grand Duke Snow Wind, but as long as we paid our rents, he wasn’t all that interested in us, and we liked that just fine. He didn’t do anything for us, but he didn’t do very much to us, either, if you take my meaning.”

  Syngpu nodded, and the squire shrugged.

  “But because we didn’t have any serfs,” he continued, “the Crown let us organize our own militia … after a fashion, anyway. No matchlocks or crossbows, of course. And God forbid we even think about rifles! But we were able to train with pikes and slings, and the Valley’s barely twenty miles across east of Zhyndow. It’s a lot narrower than that south of Ky-su at the northern end, and there aren’t more than half a dozen cliff lizard paths through the mountains on either side, so with corks at Zhyndow and Ky-su, our militia bands were enough to keep any bandit out of the Valley.”

  “But you’re thinking this ‘Duke’s’ likely to be more stubborn than that,” Syngpu said.

  “That’s exactly what we’re thinking,” the squire confirmed. “And if he is—”

  He broke off as someone knocked on the office door. They all looked in that direction, and the mayor raised his voice.

  “What?” he asked testily, and the door opened.

  “I’m sorry, Your Honor,” the man who’d opened it said. “I know you said not to disturb you, but a runner’s just come in with a message for you and the Squire. And another for the Father.”

  “A runner?” Gyngdau’s voice was considerably sharper than Ou-zhang’s had been. “A runner from where?”

  “Ranlai, sir,” the man in the doorway said, then looked back at the mayor. “And it doesn’t sound good.”

  .V.

  Ranlai, Duchy of Spring Flower, Tiegelcamp Province, North Harchong.

  “So I told him to take it easy, Sir,” Sergeant Major Hanbai Chaiyang growled, shaking his head in disgust. “The girl’s got three more brothers, and don’t figure His Grace’ll be any too happy if he kills all three of them, too!”

  “Probably not,” Lord of Foot Laurahn agreed, his own eyes bleak.

  “I swear to Langhorne, Sir, there’s times I’d shoot the bastard myself for a tenth-mark!” The sergeant turned his head and spat a jet of chewleaf
juice onto the frosty ground. “Hell! Half the time, I’d do it for a hundredth. He’s as much trouble as any three of the other men.”

  “I know. And, frankly, I’m getting close to having you shoot him. If he wasn’t one of the originals, I’d have already done it.”

  Chaiyang nodded, although there was more acknowledgment than agreement in the nod, and Laurahn didn’t really blame him.

  He stood outside the house of Ranlai’s mayor. Or, rather, of Ranlai’s former mayor. If the man was unreasonably lucky, he might get to continue breathing, but his term of office had just been cut short. The fact that his older daughter was a ripe and attractive nineteen might work in his favor, once Duke Spring Flower laid eyes on her. Of course, it might not, too, the lord of foot reflected. Dead daddies were so much easier to deal with.

  Laurahn folded his arms, watching as the lanterns he’d ordered distributed to light the town’s streets were lit and hung to cast what radiance they could. It wouldn’t be much, but he had no intention of letting the townsfolk skulk around through dark alleys they knew so much better than his troopers did. Mostly because he didn’t trust them not to sneak away, but also because even a rabbit might turn on the fox-lizard if it was desperate enough, had too little to lose. It would be terminally stupid, but it could happen. More than that, dark alleys lent themselves to planting anonymous daggers in some drunk trooper’s back, and if some hothead thought he could get away with it unnoticed.…