At the Sign of Triumph

by David Weber

  “Sorry!” he told her while laughter sounded over the com channel. “I couldn’t resist. But,” his expression sobered, “Sharley’s put her finger on the real reason I backed Dustyn so strongly when he and Ehdwyrd first came up with the notion. I almost argued against it, really—for all the reasons you just cited. But then another aspect of their proposal occurred to me.”

  “What sort of aspect?” she asked, lowering her fist, her own expression more serious as his tone registered.

  “What’s our end strategy, Nynian?” he countered, and she frowned.

  That was a question which the Inner Circle’s members had discussed often enough, both before and after she’d become a member of it, she reflected. And while parts of it were simplicity itself to answer, others were anything but.

  Initially, Charis’ overriding objective had been simple survival, although Maikel Staynair’s quest for freedom of conscience had run a close second. Of course, Charis’ survival had required the Group of Four’s defeat, and as the jihad grew increasingly bitter and ever bloodier, that priority had broadened as all Charisians, aside from the dwindling number of diehard Temple Loyalists, had come to demand a complete separation from the Church of the Temple, coupled with the destruction of the Inquisition’s power. And that—hard though many Charisians, including a great many of the most ardent Reformists, had fought against accepting it—meant more than simply defending Charis against the immediate threat of invasion and conquest. It meant the Church itself had to be beaten into submission on the field of battle, because that was the only way a Zhaspahr Clyntahn could be forced to abandon that effort.

  But those were the strategic imperatives all Charisians knew about—the same imperatives that operated for the Republic of Siddarmark, following Clyntahn’s brutal assault upon it. They were not Nimue Alban’s overriding imperative, and Nimue’s imperative—which had become that of the Inner Circle—was the outright destruction, not simply the defeat, of the Church of God Awaiting. It was her task, her mission—the burning purpose for which the original Nimue Alban had died—to overturn the Proscriptions, proclaim the truth about the ‘Archangels,’ liberate the human race from the anti-technology shackles Eric Langhorne had fastened upon it, and—above every other priority in the universe—prepare it to face the peril of the Gbaba once again.

  “Ideally,” Nynian said finally, “the end game’s to compel the Group of Four—well, Group of Three now, I suppose—to surrender and give us possession of the Temple so we can get at whatever’s in the basement.” She grimaced. “Of course, as we’ve all agreed, the chance of pulling that off ranges between slim and none.”

  “Exactly.” Merlin shrugged. “And even if they were willing to let us into that basement, it might not solve our problem. We realized even before Paityr brought us the Stone of Schueler that we couldn’t just waltz into the Temple and start shutting off power switches.” He smiled very thinly. “Leaving aside the probability that someone as paranoid as Chihiro and Schueler would’ve left safeguards to prevent anybody from deliberately—or accidentally—shutting anything down, we know that at least one ‘Archangel’ left at least one booby-trap down there. God only knows what somebody else may’ve left! And how would every believer in Zion react if all the Temple’s ‘divine’ environmental services, lighting, and repair-mech ‘servitors’ suddenly go down? Since ‘every believer in Zion’ happens to be the same thing as ‘every living human being in Zion,’ that’s a not-minor consideration.

  “And would any vicarate, even one that somehow deposes Clyntahn and the others, be willing to let us ‘heretics’ profane the Temple, whatever happens? I suspect they’d balk at that. They might be reduced to offering passive resistance, but I could see the truly devout among them standing on the Temple steps to block our access unless we were willing to use physical force to move them, and the last thing we want to do is to physically invade the Temple. At the moment, we’re totally undermining Zhaspahr Clyntahn’s moral authority. Of course, he’s our best ally in that endeavor, but if we landed ‘heretical’ troops in Zion to violate the precincts of the Temple.…”

  He shrugged again, much less nonchalantly, and his sapphire eyes were darker and deeper than the sea.

  “I can’t think of a single thing more likely to provoke fanatical resistance. The kind of resistance where children with bombs strapped to their backs run straight into the machine guns and parents encourage them to do it. God knows we’ve seen enough of that sort of fanaticism, and not just on the Temple Loyalists’ side. Look at some of the things that happened in Glacierheart and Tarikah and Hildermoss.” He shook his head. “That’s the largest city on Safehold, Nynian. The body count could well be in the millions, even if we ‘won’ in the end … and that assumes the bombardment platform isn’t programmed to protect the physical integrity of the Temple by automatically taking out any attacking army or fleet, which I suspect it damned well is. Hell, I’m not a crazed, mass-murdering lunatic, and that’s how I’d’ve set it up!”

  “But if we can’t invade Zion,” Cayleb said quietly, drawing Nynian’s gaze to him, “then the chance of our being able to … undo the Holy Writ just because we defeat the Group of Four goes from ‘unlikely as hell’ to completely impossible. When we started this—once the ‘Inner Circle’ really understood what was at stake, at least—we were willing to settle for driving the Church back, breaking the Inquisition’s kneecaps, and creating a situation in which the Church of Charis gradually destroyed the Church’s authority. We were thinking in terms of decades, even generations, of slowly undermining the Writ and the Proscriptions through example and gradual reinterpretation. And we were willing to take however long we needed to take to find a solution to the bombardment system. But then Paityr brought us the Stone … and Schueler’s promise of the ‘Archangels’ return.’ And that gave us a deadline we hadn’t known we faced.”

  Nynian nodded, her own expression somber. None of that was new to her, although this was really the first time she’d been inside the gradual evolution of her Charisian allies’ thinking. By the time she’d become aware of them—and they’d become aware of her—that evolution had already completed itself.

  “We don’t know for certain that the ‘Archangels’ are actually going to return at all,” Merlin said. “And if they do, we don’t know how they’ll return. One possibility would be for PICA ‘Archangels’ to suddenly emerge from vaults under the Temple. Frankly, I don’t think that’s likely, because if they’d prepared a stack of PICAs in the first place, they’d probably also have continued to interact with the flesh-and-blood population of Safehold. We had the capability to build a single PICA out of the resources in my cave, once Owl and Nahrmahn figured out how to do it. It’s for damn sure Chihiro and Schueler had that capability after Langhorne’s death. Oh, they might’ve needed to do the same research Owl did, although I think it’s more likely they would’ve already had the necessary information. But they certainly could’ve done it before or during the War Against the Fallen if they’d wanted to, and if they had, they could have had clearly superhuman ‘Archangels’ and ‘angels’ leading their armies in the field instead of relying on mortal seijins, like Kohdy. Think how that would have cemented the Church’s authority—especially if the same ‘Archangels’ or their ‘angelic’ successors were still available to be the Church’s public face.” He shook his head. “No, if they’d been willing to go the PICA route, then when Nimue Alban woke up in a PICA here on Safehold, her entire mission would have been flat out impossible instead of simply damned near impossible.”

  Nynian nodded again, suppressing an inner shiver as she thought of the nightmare Merlin—Nimue—would have faced under those circumstances.

  “So, if they’re ‘returning,’ it has to be in some other fashion, and, frankly, I don’t have a clue what that might be. For that matter, as I say, we don’t know they’re really going to ‘return’ at all. There’s nothing in the Writ about it, nothing in The Testimonies or The Commentaries. For
that matter, there’s nothing in the message Schueler left. So unless there’s something in the Church’s secret archives that not even Paityr’s father ever heard so much as a hint about—which strikes me as unlikely, to say the least—the only evidence that they’re going to come back is the oral tradition passed down in the Wylsynn family, theoretically from Schueler himself but independent of the message he personally recorded.”

  Merlin grimaced, the expression as frustrated as it was worried.

  “Taking all of that together, I’d be very tempted to simply brush the whole thing off as a myth that self-started somehow over the last several hundred years. Unfortunately, Paityr tells us there are veiled allusions to the return in Wylsynn family diaries that date from within twenty years of the War Against the Fallen. So if it’s a self-starting myth, it self-started pretty damned early. And, leaving that aside completely, deciding there’s nothing to it would be the sort of wrong assumption we only get to make once.”

  “Agreed,” Nynian said. “But that’s why we’re pushing so hard to ‘get the genie out of the bottle,’” she smiled faintly as she used the phrase Merlin had introduced her to. “Right?”

  “Exactly.” Merlin nodded. “We’re looking at a binary solution set here, in a lot of ways. Either there’s going to be some sort of return of the ‘Archangels,’ or there isn’t. Even if there isn’t, we still need to figure out how to neutralize what’s under the Temple and/or the bombardment system eventually. Actually, now that I think about it, there’s no ‘and/or’ in it—we need to neutralize both of those to be sure something really, really bad doesn’t happen. We’re just under a lot more time pressure to get it done if they are coming back somehow.

  “We may or may not be able to accomplish that, but unless we can manage that and get the industrial plant in Nimue’s Cave up and running and replicating itself—with at least a decade or so to spare—we’re still screwed. If we could pull that off, and if we had that decade to work with, we wouldn’t really care if the ‘Archangels’ decided to put in an actual physical reappearance of some sort.” He smiled coldly. “Give me four or five years of open Federation-level tech to work with, and I will guarantee that anything the ‘Archangels’ bring with them gets blown to hell and gone. And I can think of very few things that would give me more personal satisfaction!

  “But if we can’t do that, we have to play for the possibility—the probability, I hope!—that whatever turns up calling itself an ‘Archangel’ isn’t quite as lunatic as Langhorne was when he pulled the trigger on the Alexandria Enclave. I have to think they wouldn’t be coming back at all if they didn’t want to make sure the human race survives. And killing the human race themselves wouldn’t strike me as the best way to do that, which is why we want the ‘genie out of the bottle.’ Spreading the violation of the Proscriptions—of their purpose, the thing they were supposed to achieve, at least—as broadly as possible, even if their word was still technically observed was always part of our gradualist strategy. But Paityr’s warning’s lent that strategy a lot more urgency, because if we can spread the new technology broadly enough that it would require a planet-wide application of ‘rakurai’ to eradicate all the threats to Langhorne’s grand plan, then anyone but a raving lunatic would realize that plan’s failed. We’re in no position to predict how he might react, but I think it’s likely any non-lunatic would see no option but to engineer as soft a landing to the Proscriptions’ collapse as possible.

  “That’s why the economic implications of Ehdwyrd’s railroads and of steam-powered maritime trade are far more dangerous to the Church in the long term than any warship or artillery piece. But let’s be honest—it’s always possible for someone to cut off his economic nose to spite his face on religious grounds. God knows it was done often enough back on Old Earth! The ultimate consequences would be disastrous, and any realm that chose to do that would be a complete political and economic nonfactor within a generation. But that doesn’t mean they won’t do it, and I can easily imagine a reactionary ‘counterreformation’ throwing up all sorts of obstacles to stretch the process out even farther. Quite possibly for longer than we have before that return visit we’re worrying about.

  “Enter the King Haarahlds.”

  He leaned back in his chair again, raising both hands in the gesture of someone who’d just completed his revelation, and Nynian frowned.

  “What are you talking about?” Her tone suggested she was on the cusp of understanding and knew it but hadn’t quite made the leap.

  “A single King Haarahld is—as Captain Bahrns told Domynyk—more powerful than every other warship on the face of the planet put together, Nynian,” Sharleyan said. “Faster, bigger, more dangerous than anything she could conceivably face … and impossible to build without embracing—fully embracing—Ehdwyrd’s innovations. At the moment, the Temple’s supporters can argue that nothing we’re using against them is completely beyond their capabilities. They may not be able to produce weapons that do what ours do as effectively and efficiently as ours do it, but they’re in a position to convince themselves that theirs come close enough for an army equipped with enough of them to survive against an army equipped with Charisian new-model weapons.”

  Nynian nodded slowly … and then her eyes widened and understanding flowed across her beautiful face.

  “I knew you’d get there, love,” Merlin said, tucking an arm around her.

  “They’re … they’re technology demonstrators!” she said.

  “That’s exactly what they are,” Cayleb agreed in a tone of grim, profound satisfaction. “Mind you, I really would like to sail them into Temple Bay, but I’ve known all along we can’t, whatever I’ve suggested to people who don’t know what this war’s really about. But when Gwylym Manthyr steams right through anything that gets in her way without even slowing down, when she steams all the way from Tellesberg to Claw Island at twenty-plus knots with only a single refueling and shows she’s twice as fast as any galleon ever built, and when she steams into Gorath Bay and blows its fortifications into gravel, it isn’t going to be just the retribution Sharley and I promised ourselves—that we promised Gwylym. It’s going to be that, and Sharley’s going to make that point for our people before she ever sails. And it’s also going to be an object lesson to Zhaspahr Clyntahn and any other bloody-minded bastard who thinks the way he does. A warning about what will happen to anyone else who butchers our people or hands them over to be butchered by someone else. That’s a lesson we damned well mean to drive home to the bone, Nynian—as Emperor and Empress of Charis, not just members of the Inner Circle.

  “But it’s going to be a different sort of object lesson, too, and no ruler who’s smarter than a rock is going to be able to miss its point. Without equivalent technology, no realm can survive against anyone who adopts it, and no one out there—from Mahrys of Desnair, to Rahnyld of Dohlar, to Emperor Waisu’s bureaucrats—hell, to that idiot Zhames in Delferahk!—is going to decide to trust that none of his enemies will build it. For that matter, they’ll know damned well we’re going to—that we already have—and even Greyghor, here in Siddarmark, is going to have to worry about the possibility that some perfectly legitimate dispute will someday arise between the Republic and us.

  “So that’s what the King Haarahlds are, Nynian,” the Emperor of Charis said levelly, meeting her eyes across the study. “They’ll do the job at Gorath—that’s for damn sure—but just like you said, so would the Cities. They’re not Earl Sharpfield’s doorknockers; they’re Merlin’s, and the ‘door’ he has in mind is a hell of a lot more important than Gorath.”

  .IX.

  Rock Coast Keep,

  Duchy of Rock Coast,

  Kingdom of Chisholm;

  and

  Manchyr Palace,

  City of Manchyr,

  Princedom of Corisande,

  Empire of Charis.

  “With all due respect, Father,” Zhasyn Seafarer, the Duke of Rock Coast, said sharply, “I’m getting pretty ti
red of waiting for Father Zhordyn to get off the tenth-mark! We need to know exactly when—or, for that matter, Schueler help us, if—Lady Swayle’s going to agree to our strategy!” He glowered, dark eyes fiery. “I thought all of that had already been agreed, frankly. Black Horse and I have certainly been proceeding on that basis, and we’ve got firm pledges of loyalty from almost all the key men here in our own duchies. And now we can’t get a firm commitment out of her?” His expression was not a happy one. “She’s the one who contacted us—and she did it through Father Zhordyn. If she’s changed her mind, we need to know it. And if she hasn’t changed her mind, we need to know that, too!”

  “I realize you need better communications, Your Grace.” Father Sedryk Mahrtynsyn raised a placating hand. “And I lnow it’s impossible to make concrete plans without knowing what your allies have in mind. But Father Zhordyn is a passionate and loyal son of Mother Church, just as Countess Swayle is a loyal daughter. Surely there’s no reason to fear their resolution has flagged!”

  “It’s not their ‘resolution’ I’m concerned about, Father!”

  The duke erupted from his chair and strode to the window, glaring out into the gray afternoon’s chill, windy rain while he worked to get his temper back under control. A spray of sleet rattled against the glass, and he turned back to the priest.

  “What I’m concerned about is their willingness to do anything,” he said in a rather calmer tone. “Well, that and the fact that at this point we don’t really know what she’s been able to arrange—or not arrange—with Holy Tree or how those contacts of hers with Earl Mandigora have gone. If he’s willing to come in with us, he’d give Dragon Hill a secure northern frontier, and between them he, Dragon Hill, and Holy Tree could probably squeeze Greentree into joining us as well … or neutralize him, if he refuses.”

  He scowled in frustration and walked across to the new model-cast iron stove heating his office. He opened the door, tossed in a couple of lumps of coal, and stalked back to the window.