At the Sign of Triumph

by David Weber

  Lainyl chuckled, then pushed the door fully open and ushered Truskyt into his office.

  “Sir Hahndyl,” Truskyt greeted the elder Jyrohm.

  “Major Truskyt.” Sir Hahndyl rose to clasp forearms with him once he’d disentangled his right arm from the cuff of his crutch.

  Technically, Sir Hahndyl was also the island’s senior noble. Actually, he was its only noble. What that meant was that he got to hang “baronet” on the back of his name on formal occasions. It also explained why the old man had been officially named “Governor of White Rock Island” when the Crown of Dohlar and the Harchong Empire agreed King Rahnyld’s government should have undivided responsibility for—and legal authority over—the entire Dohlar Bank at least for the duration of the Jihad. It was a thankless task, but it had also been little more than a formality … until recently. Which had been just as well. Truskyt liked Sir Hahndyl quite a lot, and he was a nice old dodderer, but he was scarcely a decisive man of action.

  “So,” Truskyt continued, turning to the elder of the Ashtyns. “I understand we have you to thank for this little meeting, Ahndru?”

  “Wasn’t rightly my idea, Major!” Ashtyn, a wizened, weathered sixty-year-old, had a powerful, thickly calloused grip after five decades spent hauling in nets. His son, Zhilbert, was only thirty-six, with a cap of thick, curly hair as black as his father’s had been before it turned snowy white. He shared his father’s hazel eyes, as well, and he was just as physically tough as the old man. A life in the boats tended to do that for a man.

  “No, I know it wasn’t your idea, but Sir Hahndyl and I have to write up a report for Gorath on what it was you saw, so it’s probably best if we get down to it. Why don’t you tell me about it?”

  “I can do that,” Ahndru said. “Course, it’ll go better—and faster—with a wee dram to oil the words, as it were. Might help after that wicked-cold fog out there in the harbor, too!” The old man shivered dramatically, and Zhilbert rolled his eyes.

  “Why am I not surprised?” Lainyl sighed, then opened a desk drawer and started extracting whiskey glasses. “Fortunately, after so long dealing with fishermen, I’m prepared. But only one glass of the good stuff until you’re done, Ahndru! Clear?”

  “You’ve a way of encouraging a man t’come t’the point,” Ashtyn chuckled, then took a slow, savoring sip. He let it roll down his throat and sighed blissfully. But then he turned back to Truskyt, and his expression had sobered.

  “We seen ’em just about sunset yesterday, Major,” he said. “Zhilbert and me, we were out in the Zhaney Su, helping old Hairahm check his buoys along the Lobster Pot. Traps needed respottin’, some of ’em, after that blow we had Wednesday.”

  Truskyt nodded in understanding. The Ashtyns were fishermen—their family operated a total of four boats—not lobstermen. But the White Rock fishing community’s members tended to help one another out, and Lobster Pot Bend, the northeastern arc of the confused mass of shoals and mudbanks known as the Dohlar Bank, teemed with lobsters and spider crab.

  “Anyway, that was where we seen them,” Ashtyn went on. “Five of ’em there was, and one of ’em drat near twice the size of t’others. Got two of them smokestacks, too, not just the one.” He shook his head, and there was more than a trace of fear in his eyes. “Biggest damned guns I ever did see, Major. Don’t think anybody’s going t’be happy t’see this bitch coming his way!”

  “Doesn’t sound like it to me, either,” Truskyt said, sipping from his own glass. “Yesterday evening, you said?”

  “Yep.” Ashtyn nodded. “Headed in soon’s we seen ’em. Figured they weren’t s’ likely t’ come calling in the dark, so we figured t’ get the jump on ’em.” He shrugged. “Wind died just as we was roundin’ Tobys Head, so we dropped th’ hook clear of the channel an’ left Zwan an’ Hektor t’keep an eye on things an’ we rowed in in th’ dinghy t’ let Lainyl—I mean, the Mayor, o’ course—” despite his obvious worry, Ahndru flashed a grin at the craft master he’d known his entire life “—know what we seen.”

  “That was good thinking,” Truskyt approved sincerely. “On the other hand, I doubt they’ll be interested in St. Haarahld’s Harbor.” He shrugged and opted not to mention that there would have been damn-all St. Haarahld’s Harbor’s six 25-pounders could have done about it if the Charisian Navy had been interested in St. Haarahld’s. “I know the water’s deep and it’s a decent anchorage, as long as the weather’s not out of the northeast, but they’ve already got Chelmsport over on Trove. I wouldn’t think they’d be looking for—”

  “Master Mayor! Sir Hahndyl!”

  The office door flew open as Lainyl’s town clerk burst through it. Truskyt looked up in surprise at the interruption, but the other man had actually grabbed Lainyl by the sleeve and was physically dragging him towards the office window.

  “What do you think—?!” Lainyl had begun as he was hauled across his office when the waterfront bell which normally summoned the St. Haarahld’s Harbor lifeboat burst into urgent life.

  “Look! Look!”

  The clerk was pointing out the window. Lainyl’s eyes followed the gesture and the mayor froze in mid stride. Truskyt could actually see the color draining out of his face as he struggled to his own wooden feet. Pahrkyns was there in an instant, his good arm lifting the major powerfully upright. Under normal circumstances, Truskyt would have resented the assistance—or, at least, the way that assistance emphasized the fact that he needed it in the first place. Under these, he only muttered a word of thanks and swung across to the window on his crutches as quickly as he could.

  “What is—?” he started urgently, then stopped.

  A breeze had come up, a corner of his mind noted, rolling away the fog, and it would appear he’d been guilty of a slight miscalculation.

  * * *

  “Well, they’ve seen us now, My Lord,” Halcom Bahrns remarked dryly as the last of the offshore fog dissipated.

  He was happy to see it go, although St. Haarahld’s Harbor was remarkably commodious and its bottom dropped off with cliff-like steepness, as if some enormous doomwhale had taken a bite out of the mudbanks and shoals on the Dohlar Bank side of the Fern Narrows. According to the charts, they had almost six fathoms even at low tide to within a thousand yards of the town itself.

  That was ample depth even for Gwylym Manthyr … which hadn’t made Bahrns a lot happier about approaching White Rock in the dark. Fortunately, he hadn’t had to, and Manthyr and her consorts had marked time, steaming at no more than a knot or two in the narrows, out of sight from the mainland, while they waited for the fog to lift.

  “I believe you can probably take that as a given, Captain,” Sir Dunkyn Yairley said, even more dryly. He stood beside Bahrns on the starboard wing of Manthyr’s tall navigation bridge, outside the glassed-in pilot house, gazing through his double-glass at the three-mile distant waterfront which had just become visible. “We’re not exactly the easiest sight for someone to miss, after all.”

  Bahrns snorted a laugh, and Baron Sarmouth lowered the double-glass he really hadn’t needed and turned to look back past Manthyr’s mast and funnels at the four City-class ironclads steaming along in her wake. The Victory ships Barcor and Iron Hill kept them company, and Gairmyn, the fifth of Hainz Zhaztro’s ironclads, tagged along astern, keeping a wary eye on the five galleons filled with good Glacierheart coal.

  Sarmouth turned back to St. Haarahld’s Harbor—And what an appropriate name that is!—with a smile of his own. The SNARCs gave him a wyvern’s eye view of Lainyl Jyrohm’s office, and the mayor’s response was well worth watching. So was Major Truskyt’s, and the baron’s smile faded into an expression that was almost more grateful than satisfied as he realized Truskyt was too levelheaded to do anything stupid. He’d hoped that would be the case when he’d decided to exercise the discretion Earl Sharpfield had granted him and move the squadron’s forward base from Trove Island to St. Haarahld’s Harbor.

  With the bulk of the Dohlar Bank in the way, it w
as over seven hundred miles from Chelmsport to the Fern Narrows, whether a raiding squadron went north or south. That wasn’t an issue for a galleon or a schooner; it simply meant they took a little longer reaching the hunting grounds. But it definitely was an issue for the short-legged Cities. Until he’d known Zhaztro was coming—officially, that was, without any embarrassing explanations about inner circles, SNARCs, and personal communicators—Sarmouth couldn’t have justified recommending White Rock over the decision to base on Trove. He’d pointed out White Rock’s many advantages in his report to Sharpfield, but until Raisahndo’s squadron had been dealt with—and until the armored steamers became available—trying to seize an island in such close proximity to the Dohlaran coast—and the powerful squadron based on Gorath Bay—had been out of the question.

  But things have changed, he thought, watching the distant harborfront grow larger.

  Astern of him, the first Marines were already going down the boarding nets into the landing craft bobbing alongside Barcor and Iron Hill. Those landing craft had been fitted with steam-powered paddle wheels which had been sent out aboard the Victory ship Iron Spine for installation at Claw Island. In many ways, Sarmouth would have preferred screw propulsion, but paddle wheels were easier to install and ate up less of the landing craft’s internal volume. And, he conceded, the boats were less likely to lose a paddle wheel than a propeller if they grounded unexpectedly. He had two complete battalions aboard the steamers, and the other two battalions of their regiment were aboard transport galleons accompanying Gairmyn and the colliers. Four thousand Charisian Marines constituted a pretty severe case of overkill for an island whose entire garrison numbered less than two hundred men, but Sarmouth was all in favor of overkill. He was in favor of anything likely to inspire the sort of sanity Truskyt was showing at the moment.

  Yes, things have changed, he told himself. And I can hardly wait to see how they react to this in Gorath. Of course, they’ll have some other news to react to pretty damned soon, too, won’t they?

  “Nothing,” he said out loud when Captain Bahrns raised a politely inquisitive eyebrow at his sudden chuckle. He couldn’t really tell the captain of his new flagship. He was looking forward to watching that reaction in real time.

  “Just a passing thought, Captain,” he said. “Just a thought.”

  .III.

  Shandyr Bulge,

  Duchy of Thorast,

  Kingdom of Dohlar.

  “It’s time, Sir.”

  Sir Hauwerd Breygart’s eyes popped open as the hand on his shoulder shook him gently. He’d be fifty years old in another seven days, and he’d recently begun feeling his age. The habits of a thirty-year military career didn’t disappear just because a man had torn a few more sheets off the calendar, though, and he still woke quickly, almost instantly.

  He sat up, swung his legs over the edge of the cot, and stood. He stretched, then massaged the small of his back with both hands. That was one of part that seemed to be aging somewhat more rapidly than the rest of him, and he missed the comfortable bed he’d become accustomed to at his headquarters in Shandyr. But he needed to be closer to the front for this, and at least he had a proper headquarters tent, which was a far cry from the hand-to-mouth, desperate days defending Thesmar.

  In more ways than one, he thought with grim satisfaction.

  The once threadbare, cobbled-together Army of Thesmar had been reinforced to almost eighty thousand well-fed, well-equipped men … exclusive of its artillery. And that artillery had been heavily reinforced, as well, with the promised 6-inch angle-guns and even a single battery of the newer and even more powerful 10-inch angles, based on a squat, sawed-off version of the King Haarahld-class’ main gun tubes. Those were actually too much gun for field use; even with double teams of dragons, they weren’t exactly highly mobile once they got off the high road. They did get around better than one might have anticipated out of weapons that weighed seventeen tons in firing position, however, and they packed one hell of a whallop.

  Lieutenant Karmaikel held out a steaming mug of cherrybean and the earl accepted it with a nod.

  “Thank you,” he said, and took a large—but cautious; it was hotter than the hinges of Shan-wei’s hell, the way he liked it—sip. Then he set the mug on the camp table by his cot and sat back down while he reached for his boots.

  “I’m assuming that if any last-minute disaster had hit you’d already have told me about it, Dyntyn?”

  “Probably not before you’d had your first cup of cherrybean, My Lord,” Karmaikel replied straightfaced, and the earl snorted as he shoved his right foot into its boot.

  “Seriously, My Lord,” Karmaikel continued, “things have gone almost too well. Everything seems to be exactly on schedule, and I tend to worry when things go that well.”

  “Sometimes, Lieutenant Karmaikel, things actually do go according to plan,” Hanth observed. “Mind you, it’s better to operate on the assumption they won’t. You get surprised a hell of a lot less often that way … and some of your surprises are actually pleasant ones.”

  “Exactly, Sir.”

  Hanth stamped into his other boot, stood, collected his cherrybean, and followed his aide out of the small, screened off section of the HQ tent set aside for the commanding general’s cot. A dozen other aides—not to mention a few dozen clerks and messengers—came to attention as Karmaikel held the flap for him to pass under it, and he waved his mug.

  “Stand easy,” he growled and crossed to the enormous map while he sipped more of the hot cherrybean.

  There was a lot of detail on that map, most of it garnered by his own patrols, although quite a bit had also been assembled from reports from the network of informants the seijins seemed to be able to put together anywhere on the face of the world. He’d lost more than a few scout snipers filling in that detail, and he didn’t like that any more than the next commander would have, but the price those men had paid was going to save one hell of a lot more men’s lives in the next few days. A few items remained a little … amorphous, but overall he was reassuringly confident of both the terrain and the Army of the Seridahn’s current dispositions. He wasn’t entirely happy about those dispositions, but at least he knew where the bastards were.

  Sir Fahstyr Rychtyr had been busy as Shan-wei over the five five-days since he’d broken contact. He’d fallen back to his current position, where the Sheryl-Seridahn Canal and the high road passed between Duhnsmyr Forest and Kaiylee’s Woods, and dug in hard. Breaking contact had cost him close to four thousand men—over half of them POWs, not dead or wounded—from the rearguard he’d been forced to leave behind. The fact that so many Dohlarans had been willing to surrender said some interesting things about the RDA’s current morale, in Hanth’s judgment, and Rychtyr couldn’t have been happy with how many men he’d lost. Still, the earl was fairly certain the Dohlaran CO thought the prize had been worth the price. He’d certainly made damned effective use of the time, anyway!

  A solid line of entrenchments, redoubts, dugouts, and—unfortunately—footstools stretched across the twenty-mile-wide gap between the two forests, with its flanks anchored on the tiny canalside village of Tyzwail in the north and the large Zhozuah Farm to the south. Most of that line had been awaiting his arrival, built by the enormous labor gangs who’d been assembled for the task, but he’d gone right on improving them from the moment of his arrival.

  He’d established similarly formidable positions covering the gap between Kaiylee’s Woods and the appropriately named “Forty-Mile Wood” farther south of it. And, for that matter, between Forty-Mile Wood and Moon Shadow Forest, just over a hundred miles southwest of his Tyzwail-Zhozuah Farm line. Those labor gangs had built two additional fallback positions behind his main line of defense, as well, the rearmost of them—still under construction at the moment—a good sixty miles behind his present front line, and every little fold in the ground between the major defensive lines had been surveyed by his engineers and marked on his army’s maps. His subordinates
knew exactly where to find the best terrain for delaying actions if his front broke, and, in many cases, the most defensible ground had been provided with at least rudimentary trenches and breastworks, as well.

  A competent opponent is a genuine pain in the arse, Hanth reflected moodily. And being told I can’t go ahead and attack as soon as I’m ready—and before the miserable Dohlaran bastard has time to dig his arse in—doesn’t make it any better. Damn it, Cayleb knows better than to screw around with his field commanders this way! I ought to send that young man a dispatch that gives him a good piece of my mind!

  He snorted in amusement as he imagined how his emperor would respond to any such note. And, however much he might grumble, he understood exactly why he’d been ordered to wait. For that matter, it even made sense, on the grand strategy level, however painful it was going to be for the Army of Thesmar. He just hoped the Navy was ready to hold up its end of the timing.

  Of course it is, Hauwerd, he told himself. You just want something to think about besides the number of men who’re about to get killed. On both sides.

  In addition to digging in like a rabid trap lizard, Rychtyr had been reinforced himself, and not just with the garrisons the overly capable bastard had pulled out of Bryxtyn and Waymeet, ether. The spies’ latest estimates were that he had about sixty thousand men suitable for field service and another twenty thousand or so odds-and-sods armed with whatever Duke Salthar had been able to scare up. Most of that twenty thousand were occupied holding down positions in the flanking redoubts. They were little more than militia and unlikely, to say the least, to stand up to a heavy new-model attack. But if their morale held, they’d give a better account of themselves from fortified positions than one might have expected out of hastily levied troops … and they freed up twenty thousand veterans Rychtyr would otherwise have been forced to fritter away covering those same positions. He still had to split his field force between the Tyzwail-Zhozuah Farm line and the redoubts and entrenchments covering the gap between Kaiylee Woods and Forty-Mile Wood, however. That gave him a combined frontage of damned near thirty-five miles, and sixty thousand men turned into a much smaller number when they were spread that thin. Rychtyr’s well-designed and laid-out field works allowed him to economize on manpower, yet Hanth was confident he could break the front at any point of his choosing. He could simply concentrate too much artillery and infantry for it to be any other way.