At the Sign of Triumph

by David Weber

  “All right. I can see that.”

  “Again, I can’t promise the Lieutenant’s rockets will constitute an effective defense,” Thirsk said with the air of a man being painstakingly honest. “I can only say that they have the chance to be one … and that if they are, we can manufacture more of them far more rapidly than we can cast new cannon. And if we can get the new sea-bombs produced and placed to protect the approaches, then cover the sea-bombs in turn with direct fire from the St. Kylmahns and the rockets, we’ll have a far more effective defense than Rhaigair had. In fact, if the heretics realize what the sea-bombs are and that we have them, they’ll probably feel constrained to operate much more cautiously. As I say, the evidence suggests they don’t have a great many of those armored steamers of theirs. They aren’t going to lightly risk losing one—or more—of them. And I can definitely say that even if the defenses I’ve described are less effective than I believe they’ll be, they’ll constitute the best defense humanly possible.”

  Lainyr’s eyes flickered ever so slightly at the adverb “humanly,” and Thirsk kicked himself mentally for having used it. He wasn’t about to make it worse by trying to unsay it, however.

  “In the meantime,” he continued, “even if they do base their steamers on Trove, they seem to still be short of light cruisers of their own. Given the amount of damage Sea Dragon’s report indicates they took from Admiral Raisahndo, they’re probably going to be short on full-sized galleons for at least the next couple of months and possibly longer. And that means we should still be able to get the majority of our freight traffic through to its destination for the immediate future.”

  Lainyr’s expression eased just a bit, and he nodded.

  “That sounds more hopeful, my son!”

  “I’m glad, Your Eminence,” Thirsk replied.

  Of course, it’s also what they call “whistling in the dark,” he reflected. But that probably wouldn’t be the best thing to tell you at the moment.

  “As I said, Your Eminence, there’s no point trying to pretend we aren’t in serious trouble at the moment, and I can’t promise to work miracles. The Navy’s crewed by mere mortals, when all’s said and done. But this I can promise you—the Royal Dohlaran Navy is prepared to die where it stands in defense of its Kingdom and the Jihad. If the heretics succeed in attacking our home ports, it will be over the sunken ships—and the floating bodies—of my Navy.”

  .VII.

  The Temple,

  City of Zion,

  The Temple Lands.

  “I am getting so frigging sick and tired of ‘courageous defenses’ that don’t accomplish squat,” Zhaspahr Clyntahn said harshly. The Grand Inquisitor glared around the sumptuously furnished council chamber and slapped one beefy hand on the table. “And the fact that that gutless wonder Thirsk plans to just sit there behind his guns and his ‘sea-bombs’ instead of doing something proactive sticks in my craw sideways.” The hand slapped again, harder. “By his own admission, he’s prepared to surrender control of the entire Gulf of Dohlar—and the Gulf of Tanshar—without firing a single shot! The man’s a traitor to the Jihad!”

  “With all due respect, Zhaspahr, I disagree,” Allayn Maigwair said flatly. Clyntahn’s eyes flamed, but the Captain General met them squarely. “It says a tremendous amount for Dohlaran—yes, and Earl Thirsk’s—loyalty to Mother Church that they’re still fighting at all. The heretics’ Army of Thesmar is across their border into Reskar now. The Dohlaran Army is fighting on its own territory, destroying its own roads and canals, burning its own farms and villages and towns, to slow the heretics down, Zhaspahr! You’re the one whose spies warned us Cayleb and Stohnar may be planning to drive south instead of north this summer. Well, without the fight Dohlar’s putting up, that would be one hell of a lot easier for them! You’ve seen the sorts of casualty rates they’re suffering while they do it, too, and half the entire Dohlaran Navy just went down fighting. I don’t have complete casualty numbers for that yet, but I already know they’re going to be high—very high. I do have confirmation from my liaison officers in Stene that all but one of their screw-galleys and at least nine of their galleons went down bodily or blew the hell up, Zhaspahr. That’s a third of their entire fleet sunk, not captured or surrendered, and your own Inquisition reports also indicate they sank at least one heretic galleon and that the heretics themselves burned two or three more ships after the battle because they were too badly damaged to be repaired! That means they put up one hell of a fight even after their entire forward operating base was blown out from under them by ironclads that sailed right through the fire of a couple of hundred heavy cannon without apparently losing a single man. And after all that, Thirsk is still proposing ways to defend Dohlar’s harbors as effectively as possible! You want to compare that to what Desnair did after the Kyplyngyr Forest and Geyra?!”

  Clyntahn’s hands curled into white-knuckled fists on the tabletop, and Rhobair Duchairn held his breath. Clyntahn’s hatred for Lywys Gardynyr had grown only more intense since the death of the earl’s family, and the Treasurer suspected fear was at least part of the reason it had.

  It would appear that even Zhaspahr can grasp that a man whose entire family died because of him isn’t likely to be one of his greater fans. I doubt that bothers him as much as the fact that the loss of Thirsk’s entire family took away the only real lever we had to use against him, though.

  “You can say whatever you want, Allayn,” Clyntahn half snarled. “I don’t trust the son-of-a-bitch. I never trusted the son-of-a-bitch, from the moment he screwed up off Armageddon Reef. I want him removed from command. In fact, I want him right here in Zion to explain his … dubious decisions in person!”

  “Zhaspahr, removing the most effective single naval commander we’ve got—the most effective naval commander we’ve ever had—isn’t likely to encourage the rest of his navy to go on fightingt!” Maigwair shot back.

  “I don’t give a—” Clyntahn began furiously, but an unexpected voice intervened.

  “Zhaspahr,” Zhasyn Trynair said, “Allayn’s right.”

  The Grand Inquisitor’s mouth snapped shut and he turned on Trynair with fiery eyes, but the Church’s Chancellor continued with unaccustomed resolution.

  “I’m not speaking about Thirsk’s personal reliability,” he continued. “I haven’t seen any evidence that he isn’t reliable, but the Inquisition may very well have information I don’t that fully justifies your distrust of him. But my own sources in Dohlar tell me there’s a lot of fear and uncertainty—fear and uncertainty that could flash over into panic entirely too easily—and that Fern, Thirsk, and Salthar are doing everything humanly possible to defend the Kingdom. And, more to the point, perhaps, King Rahnyld’s subjects know they’re doing it. They regard Thirsk as the architect of the Kingdom’s only chance of survival, and if we remove him at this moment, when things are so … unsettled, we really could see a repetition of what’s happening in Desnair.”

  By rights, Clyntahn’s glare should have incinerated the Chancellor on the spot, but Trynair met it without flinching, almost as if he were still a member of the Group of Four, and Duchairn cleared his throat. The Grand Inquisitor’s eyes snapped to him, glaring like a slash lizard at bay, and he shook his head.

  “Zhaspahr, you head the Inquisition. Ultimately, decisions about spiritual and doctrinal loyalty reside with you. At this momen, however, Allayn and Zhasyn are right. You know I’ve never really agreed with your concerns about Thirsk’s possible disloyalty, and to be honest, I don’t now, either. But even assuming you’re absolutely right about him, the policies and defensive measures he and Fern are proposing are the strongest, most effective ones possible. Maybe they won’t be enough, and maybe Thirsk is a weaker reed than any of us might prefer. But nobody could do more—it’s not physically possible to do more in this situation—and removing the man responsible for doing it, the man whose resolution underpins his entire navys, can only weaken those measures.”

  It was his turn to me
et Clyntahn’s incandescent eyes, and he sat very still as he waited for the Grand Inquisitor’s explosion.

  * * *

  “—and then the gutless, puking cowards told me that if I thought I could come up with someone who could get more out of the goddamned Dohlarans I should tell them who it was!”

  Wyllym Rayno stood in Zhaspahr Clyntahn’s enormous office, watching his superior pace furiously back and forth across it. The Grand Inquisitor’s cassock swirled with the fury of his stride, and his jowly face was dark. He might have allowed himself to be dissuaded from dragging Thirsk back to Zion, but Rayno knew the signs. He was working his way into … reconsidering that decision. Which might be unfortunate in too many ways to count.

  And not just for the Jihad.

  “Your Grace,” he said carefully, “my own reports would tend to support those Vicar Zhasyn has received.”

  Clyntahn stopped pacing and whirled to glare at him, but the archbishop only shrugged, ever so slightly, his expression calm. It was, perhaps, just as well that the Grand Inquisitor couldn’t see the way his hands had tightened on one another in the concealment of his cassock’s full sleeves.

  “What did you say?” Clyntahn said icily.

  “I said our reports, including Bishop Staiphan’s, tend to corroborate Vicar Zhasyn’s analysis. I don’t defend anyone who’s allowed his faith to falter, Your Grace. I’m simply saying there’s a great deal of … uncertainty and fear. Understandably, I think, among members of the laity who have to be terrified by this fresh evidence that Shan-wei is loose in the world once more.”

  “So you’re saying I should just roll over for this? That I should let this traitorous, cowardly son-of-a-bitch stay right where he is, in command of his precious navy, even if that means he’ll just sit at anchor and let the frigging heretics do whatever they want out on the Gulf of Dohlar?” The Grand Inquisitor showed his teeth. “I might point out that that means they’ll be able to do whatever they want along the coasts of the Gulf of Dohlar … and the Sea of Harchong, for that matter. I don’t think your fellow Harchongians will be very happy when the rest of their cities start burning like Rhaigair. Of course, Chiang-wu is inland, isn’t it?”

  “Your Grace, I have kinsmen in Tiegelkamp and Stene, not just Chiang-wu.” Rayno met Clyntahn’s eyes. “I don’t want to see any Harchongese cities burning—I don’t want to see any cities burning. But in the face of the heretics’ presence in the Gulf and what’s happened to Rhaigair, it’s especially important that the man the Dohlaran man in the street trusts to do everything possible in defense of the Kingdom be left where he is, at least for now. If he provides proof, or even strong circumstantial evidence, that he isn’t doing everything possible, you’ll have grounds enough to justify taking him into custody in anyone’s eyes. And—” the archbishop allowed himself a very small smile “—this state of panic won’t last forever. One way or the other, it will ease as God and Schueler show us the path forward. It will be time to summon Thirsk to Zion when that happens. In the meantime, whether we trust him or not, let’s use him as effectively as we can.”

  “And if he bites us on the arse in the meantime?” Clyntahn demanded, although he seemed at least marginally calmer than he had been.

  “I think we’ll simply have to trust in God—and Bishop Staiphan’s vigilance—to prevent that from happening, Your Grace,” Rayno replied, and saw Clyntahn relax a tiny bit more at the mention of Staiphan Maik.

  The auxiliary bishop had been the Grand Inquisitor’s personal choice as Thirsk’s intendant, and Clyntahn retained a great deal of confidence in him. From the beginning, Maik’s reports had emphasized Thirsk’s competence and loyalty to the Dohlaran crown but acknowledged Clyntahn’s concerns about the earl’s spiritual reliability. Although Maik had never seen any signs of unreliability, he’d clearly kept a king wyvern’s eye out for it. Rayno had admired the skillful way the intendant had maneuvered within Clyntahn’s antipathy for the Dohlaran admiral, and he’d even taken it upon himself to … adjust certain of Ahbsahlahn Kharmych’s more poisonous reports to support Maik’s efforts. Whatever Clyntahn might have thought, they truly had needed Thirsk where he was.

  Unfortunately, it was evident to Rayno him that the intendant had become a much closer ally in Thirsk’s confrontations with Thorast. That had probably been inevitable, if Maik was going to do his job, but over the last several months, and especially since the death of Thirsk’s family, Rayno had begun to sense a personal closeness between the admiral and his intendant.

  That was worrisome, yet if he informed Clyntahn he’d become suspicious of Maik’s ultimate loyalties, the Grand Inquisitor would insist on personally reviewing all the relevant correspondence. That could be … inconvenient, since the raw files wouldn’t mesh perfectly with what Rayno had reported to him. Normally, that wouldn’t have worried him all that much. Clyntahn had known for years that his adjutant occasionally “massaged” information, and because the Grand Inquisitor had been confident of Rayno’s loyalty—and total dependence upon him—he’d been willing to have that information flow managed. Indeed, a part of him had recognized that he needed someone to manage it to protect him against the consequences of his occasional fits of rage.

  But those fits of rage had become ever more frequent. How he might react now to the discovery that Rayno had “concealed evidence” of Thirsk’s—and possibly even Maik’s—potential treason wasn’t something the archbishop cared to contemplate.

  Better not to mention how deeply involved Maik’s been in the formulation of Thirsk’s defensive strategy, either, he thought. The way he’s feeling right now, there’s no telling what that might touch off. At the very least, he’s likely to insist Maik come back to Zion for a debriefing. And what happens if Maik refuses?

  Rayno didn’t like that possibility at all … almost as much as he didn’t like the single, unsubstantiated report indicating that Thirsk and Ahlverez, of all people, had met clandestinely on at least two occasions. Letting that fall into Clyntahn’s hands would have precipitated the worst explosion since the destruction of Armageddon Reef, and it was not only unsubstantiated, it was suspect, since it came from Kharmych who hated both men with a blinding passion and was perfectly willing to fabricate evidence against them. After all, the Inquisition routinely fabricated evidence against people it knew were guilty rather than pursue the long, hard investigation to acquire the actual proof, and Kharmych had been an agent-inquisitor for over twenty years before his present post. He knew how the game was played, and Rayno knew he was quite capable of using the same tactics out of personal choler and spite. That was why he hadn’t passed along Kharmych’s report at the time. And because he hadn’t passed it along then it would be extraordinarily dangerous to pass it along now, when Clyntahn would almost certainly see the delay as proof Rayno had concealed evidence of Thirsk’s disloyalty well before the Battle of Shipworm Shoal.

  And then there was the minor worry of what would happen if it turned out, against all odds, that there’d been something to Kharmych’s report after all. If Clyntahn summoned Maik to Zion and he refused to go and Thirsk and Ahlverez protected him, the consequences might be deadly. Unless the Inquisition in Dohlar was able to take all three of them into custody almost instantly, the best outcome they could hope for would be either a civil war or a repeat of what had happened in Desnair. The worst outcome would be to create a new, even more dangerous Corisande—or even Siddarmark—right here on the mainland.

  Deep inside, Wyllym Rayno felt a growing dread that the Jihad was lost, yet he saw no way forward except to fight to the bitter end, trusting in the intervention of the Archangels. And after what had happened at St. Thyrmyn Prison, he was far less confident of the Archangels’ intervention than he might once have been.

  No, that wasn’t quite true, a small still voice, all but inaudible in his heart of hearts, told him. He remained completely confident of the Archangels’ intervention to prevent the triumph of evil.

  He was simply no longer co
nfident they’d intervene on the side of the Group of Four.

  .VIII.

  HMS Gwylym Manthyr,

  Howell Bay,

  and

  Tellesberg Palace,

  City of Tellesberg,

  Kingdom of Old Charis,

  Charisian Empire.

  The stupendous vessel swept across the dark blue water like one of Langhorne’s own rakurai. She was enormous, the biggest mobile structure ever built on Safehold: over four hundred and fifty feet between perpendiculars—four hundred and thirty feet long on the water line; twice the length of even a Zhenefyr Ahrmahk-class galleon or a Rottweiler-class ironclad—and seventy-eight feet across the beam. Her 10-inch guns—four of them, mounted in pairs fore and aft—were the heaviest ordnance ever sent to sea, and they were backed by no less than fourteen casemated 8-inch guns, with another twelve four-inch guns behind shields in deck mounts. She displaced over fourteen thousand tons at normal load, and the vast white furrow of her bow wave turned back on either side of her sharply raked prow as she sliced across Howell Bay at twenty knots … with at least another five knots in reserve.

  The wind was out of the southwest, but it was little more than a light breeze, not enough to break the day’s heat or raise much in the way of a sea … and scarcely even a zephyr compared to the wind generated by her passage. The thick banner of black coal smoke pouring from her twin funnels hung heavy above the water, shredding only slowly. It lingered far behind her, like an airborne mirror of her broad, white wake, and Captain Halcom Bahrns stood on the open wing of her navigating bridge, both hands on the bridge rail in front of him, his uniform tunic pasted to his chest—the sleeves fluttering—as the wind of her passage swept back across him.