At the Sign of Triumph

by David Weber

  “Stand, boys!” He heard the pleading in his own voice. “Stand and fight with me!”

  No one even slowed. And then—

  “Turn around!” The voice roared like thunder, like Chihiro himself come back to do battle in God’s name. “Turn around, Dohlarans! Remember what you’re made of! Remember who you are! Remember Who you fight for and show Shan-wei what godly men can do! Turn around!”

  Acairverah knew that voice. Everyone in the Army of the Seridahn knew it, and the shambling shadows of that army paused. No other voice could have done that—except, perhaps, that of Sir Fahstyr Rychtyr himself. No other voice could have reached down through their exhaustion, the bitter varnish of their fear, to the core of the men they were.

  But that voice could.

  The men of the army had failed that voice once. They’d broken, fled, when that voice tried to stem the tide of disaster. Some of the very men hearing it now had failed it then, and the shame, the guilt, for having failed to follow where it led was arsenic on their tongues. They looked up, eyes huge in dirty, exhaustion-hollowed faces, as Sir Clyftyn Rahdgyrz came out of the dust, reins wrapped around the stump of his left arm to free his right hand for his saber. He tugged back on those reins, and his horse reared, foam flying from its snaffle, forehooves pawing the air.

  “Come on, boys!” that voice they’d heard, trusted—followed—on twice a score of battlefields thundered. “Come with me!”

  Men who hadn’t even heard Efrahm Acairverah when he shouted in their faces heard that voice. Hands which hadn’t discarded their rifles tightened on their weapons. Shoulders that had sagged and shrunken in on themselves in defeat squared themselves once more.

  “The Slash Lizard!” someone shouted. “It’s the Slash Lizard!”

  “Who’s with me?!” Rahdgyrz demanded. “Come on, boys! One more time! One more fight for me—for God! We owe Him a death, and this is a good day to give it to him! So who’s coming with me now?!”

  “We are!” One or two voices answered him, hoarse with exhaustion, cracked with thirst. “We are!”

  The shouts spread, the flow towards the rear halted. The mob of fugitives changed somehow, solidifying, turning back into an army even as Acairverah watched. There was little or no unit structure to it. No one could have called it an “organized force,” but neither was it a rabble.

  “We are!” the shout went up from twice a hundred throats.

  “Then follow me!” he shouted back, but before he could spur his horse again, a ragged sergeant grabbed his bridle.

  “No, Sir!” the man said. “We’ll go, but not you. We can’t lose you, too!”

  “Get your hand off my bridle, Sergeant,” Rahdgyrz said almost conversationally.

  “No, Sir.” The sergeant shook his head stubbornly, and the general saw the tear tracks through the dust on his gaunt, filthy face. “No, Sir. We’ll go—we’ll do it for you, I swear we will!—but you go to the rear. Please, Sir! We need you. The Army needs you!”

  “General Rahdgyrz to the rear!” more voices shouted, and men pressed in close about him, touching his legs, reaching for his bridle with the sergeant. “General Rahdgyrz to the rear!” they cried. “Slash Lizard to the rear!”

  “Not going to happen, boys!” he shouted back, and actually managed a grin. “Not going to let you have all the fun. And none of you are going anywhere I don’t lead you—you hear me?! You and me—we’ve got an appointment down that road!” He pointed his saber at the road to St. Daivyn’s Redoubt, at the stream of fugitives still pouring down it only to stop as it ran into the solidifying barricade of soldiers about him. “All of us! Every damned one of us! I’m no different from you boys—from my boys! And if God decides this is my day to die, then so be it. Because if it is, then I’ll do it with His own warriors at my back and stand proud beside them before Him!”

  The sergeant stared up at him, the muscles of his face working, and Rahdgyrz smiled down at him.

  “Let go of my bridle, Sergeant,” he said gently, and, like a man moving against his own will, the sergeant did. The other voices fell silent, the other hands fell away, and he smiled at all of them, his single eye bright.

  “Thank you, Sergeant. Thank all of you. By God, I’m proud to call you mine this day.” Rahdgyrz’ voice was soft, but then he raised it once more.

  “After me, boys!” he shouted, and then, incredibly, he laughed. “After me … and try to keep up!”

  He drove in his spurs, and his horse crouched on its hocks. Then it exploded forward, and the broken fugitives who’d heard his voice, the men who’d shouted for him to go to the rear, turned as one and followed him straight back into that hell of dust, smoke, and thundering weapons.

  * * *

  “Sit down, Colonel,” Sir Fahstyr Rychtyr said gruffly.

  “I prefer to stand, Sir,” Colonel Acairverah replied.

  “You can prefer whatever you damned well want, Colonel, but what you can actually do is something else. Now sit the hell down before you fall down!”

  “I—” Acairverah began, then stopped, swaying on his newly acquired crutch. He looked at Rychtyr for a long moment, eyes dark in a pale, haggard face. And then, finally, he nodded.

  “I expect you’re right, Sir,” he acknowledged hoarsely, and settled into the chair Lieutenant Gohzail had positioned behind him.

  “Thank you,” Rychtyr said in a far gentler voice and leaned back in his own chair.

  They sat in the farmhouse Rychtyr had commandeered for his headquarters in the village of Borahn. The mutter and rumble of artillery—most of it heretic, unfortunately—was like a distant, unending surf. But at least the “Borahn Line” was holding … for now. How long that would last was another matter entirely, of course.

  The general glanced at Pairaik Metzlyr, standing in what had been the farm owner’s parlor, gazing out the eastern windows. Dusk had fallen, although it wasn’t completely dark yet, and the horizon flickered with muzzle flashes. The tempo had dropped, probably because the heretics were dragging their heavy angles forward again, but the constant skirmishes, the unending probes at his fragile positions, warned Rychtyr any diminuendo would be fleeting.

  He looked down at the message on the field desk in front of him, and his jaw tightened. Acairverah had taken a very real risk in agreeing to carry that message to him. In a reasonable world, the fact that he’d lost his left leg just below the hip would have amply absolved him of any charge of cowardice for having given his parole so he might deliver it. Unfortunately, the world was increasingly unreasonable just now.

  He ran his eyes over the message. It wasn’t handwritten. Instead, it looked almost printed. It would appear the once hand-to-mouth Army of Thesmar’s supply position had improved radically if Earl Hanth had taken delivery of one of the newfangled Charisian “typewriters.”

  Probably part of the message, Rychtyr thought. The bastard wants me to know how good his logistics are … just in case I’ve missed how damned many shells he’s been dropping on my men’s heads. And how frigging many bullets and hand bombs he’s got to go with them.

  Perhaps that was true, but it didn’t change what the message said, and a fist of anguish closed on his heart and twisted as he read its opening paragraphs once more.

  To General Sir Fahstyr Rychtyr,

  Commanding the Army of the Seridahn;

  From Sir Hauwerd Breygart, Earl of Hanth,

  Commanding the Army of Thesmar,

  June 23, Year of God 898

  General:

  I deeply regret to inform you that General Clyftyn Rahdgyrz, died at 21:15 last night.

  From the reports of my units, he had succeeded in rallying some six or severn hundred men from several regiments which had broken under intense infantry attack and artillery fire. He led them personally into battle, and the men he’d rallied inflicted over two hundred casualties upon the Army of Thesmar before they were beaten off once more. In the fighting, General Rahdgyrz was shot through the chest. Colonel Mahkgrudyr, his se
nior aide, was killed fighting at his side, attempting to evacuate him from the field for treatment, but the General’s wound was fatal. He died in hospital at my own advanced headquarters, under our healers’ care, and one of our chaplains heard his final confession and administered last rites to him before he passed.

  He met his end with the same courage and the same resolute faith with which he always lived and fought, and his final request was that I pass on to you his apology for failing to hold his position. I assured him that no one could have held that position … or fought more bravely trying, and I now assure you that my words were no more than the simple truth. I hope that he died accepting that truth.

  I believe that you and he are fighting for a bad cause, but no man was ever more loyal to his commander, no man ever fought more gallantly, and no man ever died more bravely or confident in his faith than he. I envy you his friendship, and I extend my sincere condolences for your loss.

  I believe him, Rychtyr thought drearily. I really believe him. He shook his head mentally, tiredly, amazed to realize that was true. This isn’t just polite, pro forma flattery. He means it … and, God, but he’s right.

  The general closed his eyes in pain. He’d hoped so hard. A handful of survivors from that hopeless, valiant attack had reported that Rahdgryz had been wounded, but there’d been no confirmation of his death, and so Rychtyr had allowed himself to hope. To pray. And now.…

  He was going to miss that great, roaring dragon of a man. That friend. And if anyone had ever failed another, it had not been Clyftyn Rahdgyrz. His counterattack had been an act of desperation—of atonement to God—and Rychtyr knew it. But it had also delayed the heretics’ advance for two full hours … long enough for Rychtyr to fit four regiments from his reserve into the hole in his lines at Symyn’s Farm. Far too many of his men had been trapped when the farm finally fell, but those regiments had held it for almost two more days and at least eight thousand men who would otherwise have been lost had escaped to the Borahn Line because of what they’d done.

  Because of what Clyftyn Rahdgyrz had done.

  “You’ve lost a leg, Colonel,” he said softly, opening his eyes once more, looking up at the lines of pain across Acairverah’s face. “You’ve lost a leg, and I deeply regret that. But I—I’ve lost my good right arm. And half my heart, with it.”

  “The men tried to get him to go to the rear, Sir. They truly did—and so did I. But he … well, he—”

  Acairverah’s voice broke off, his cheeks working as if he hovered on the brink of tears, and Rychtyr nodded.

  “I know,” he said almost gently. “Believe me, I know, none better. They didn’t call him the Slash Lizard for nothing, Colonel. Sooner or later, this had to happen. I always knew that … and so did he.”

  Acairverah’s face tightened, and Metzlyr looked up sharply. Not in disagreement with anything Rychtyr had just said, but with an expression of … concern, perhaps.

  “My son,” the Schuelerite began, “it might—”

  “I only meant that when a man is so dedicated to God and Mother Church, when he commands from the front and insists on leading by example, no matter how many times he’s been wounded, sooner or later that man is going to be killed, Father.” Rychtyr returned the upper-priest’s gaze levelly. “The men who came back from that counterattack all say he told them ‘we owe God a death,’ and he was right. We do. And because he believed that so strongly—because he could conceive of no higher calling, no better end—it was inevitable that eventually he’d surrender his life in God’s service.”

  Metzlyr looked at him for several seconds, then nodded.

  Not because he agrees with me, Rychtyr thought. And not because he thinks that’s actually what I meant. But he’s a good man, Father Pairaik. He knows what I really meant. That’s why he’s worried the Inquisition may figure it out, as well.

  The general leaned back in his chair, closing his eyes and pinching the bridge of his nose as he faced the bleak reality.

  His army was crumbling. Despite the twenty-five thousand reinforcements Duke Salthar had somehow found to send to him, despite the eight thousand Rahdgryz’ sacrifice had saved, he was down to barely forty-eight thousand men, including his remaining militia. Many of those missing men were stragglers who’d simply been separated from their units, and at least some of them would turn up in the next few days. But that still represented the loss of over fifty-seven thousand men, seventy percent of the army he’d commanded less than three five-days ago, and he’d lost damned nearly two-thirds of his artillery to go with them. Hanth’s losses had been heavy, as well. Despite his advantages in artillery—and despite the fact that, however much it galled Rychtyr to admit it, his infantry was not just better equipped but simply better than the best Dohlar could offer, even now—he’d paid dearly to storm those successive lines of fortifications.

  But this time he hadn’t stopped. He hadn’t tried to flank Rychtyr out of position, hadn’t sought the casualty-saving maneuvers he’d always used before. No. This time he’d fastened a death grip on the Army of the Seridahn and he intended to follow it wherever it went, drive it into its last desperate burrow, and then drag it out for the kill.

  And he’s going to do it, Rychtyr admitted bleakly. However heavy his casualties may have been, they’ve been one hell of a lot lighter than mine. His mind flinched away from the raw wound of Rahdgyrz’ death. And he’s obviously been pouring in a steady stream of replacements—a hell of a lot bigger one than anyone in Gorath’s been able to send me.

  Sir Fahstyr Rychtyr knew how this had to end, barring some miracle … and so far, God and the Archangels had vouchsafed precious few of those to Their defenders. Worse, his men knew what was coming for them, too. Their morale was collapsing, and much though that pained Rychtyr, he couldn’t blame them for it. He knew the inquisitors assigned to the Army’s units were increasingly concerned, even desperate, and that desperation was filling some of them with fury. But it was inevitable. Whatever else they might be, his men weren’t fools. No one had told them about the spy reports or the reasons Earl Silken Hills’ Harchongians had been shifted to cover the front north from Alyksberg, but they knew they were about to be totally overwhelmed by fire and death in what had always been a secondary theater for the heretics.

  No, not for the “heretics”—for the Charisians. You’ve known that for at least two years … and now the men have figured it out, too. This isn’t about heresy, not about Charis’ sudden decision to defy the will of God, and it never has been. There’s a reason the boys are starting to call this “Clyntahn’s War,” a reason not even the Inquisition can stop the rot now. And where does that leave you, Fahstyr?

  And if the Charisians could do this, produce this sort of carnage in a secondary theater, what possible chance did the Harchongians stand when Charis and the Republic unleashed their main attack? The men could answer that question for themselves, as well, he thought grimly, and even men thoroughly prepared to die in God’s service might reasonably turn away from a death which could accomplish nothing in the end.

  We’re not all Clyftyn, he thought drearily. Not all Slash Lizards with that magnificent internal compass. The men are mortal, they have wives, children, people they love. People to live for. How can I keep feeding them into the furnace this way? But if I don’t, then I fail not just the Kingdom but Mother—

  “Sir Fahstyr?”

  Rychtyr lowered his hand and opened his eyes.

  Acairverah had disappeared. He hadn’t heard a sound, and the colonel hadn’t asked his permission before withdrawing. But there was no sign of young Gohzail either, and his face tightened ever so slightly as he realized Colonel Mohrtynsyn had gestured both of them out of the room without a word. There could be only one reason for him to do that.

  “Yes, Ahskar?” Rychtyr kept his tone calm, conversational, with no sign he knew what he was about to hear.

  “Forgive me for asking, Sir, but … what about the rest of Earl Hanth’s letter?”

&nb
sp; Mohrtynsyn’s voice was very quiet. Metzlyr looked up again, quickly, at the question, darting a warning glance at the man who headed Rychtyr’s staff, but the colonel’s eyes were steady as he looked back at the intendant.

  “We have to reply one way or the other, Sir,” the colonel continued, speaking to Rychtyr but never breaking eye contact with Metzlyr. “And if we accept, even only temporarily, it would give us time to reorganize. God knows we need it!”

  “That’s true,” Rychtyr conceded. “Of course, there are a few other things to consider before we give him an answer, aren’t there?”

  “Yes, Sir. Of course.”

  Rychtyr pushed back his chair, stood, and began pacing back and forth across the narrow dining room with his hands clasped behind him.

  That was the most dangerous part of Hanth’s entire letter, he thought. The offer of a “temporary cease-fire.” The Charisian had justified it as an opportunity for both sides to collect their wounded and bury their dead—possibly even to exchange wounded prisoners, although he must know how many fewer Charisian prisoners Rychtyr held. But however he might have justified it, his intent was clear enough.

  “I know we could use the respite, Ahskar,” he said finally, pausing beside Metzlyr to look out at that flickering eastern horizon. “God knows the men’ll be hard-pressed to stand if Hanth keeps coming this way, and I’d love to have time to finish the lines around Artynsian! But you know as well as I do what he really has in mind.”

  Mohrtynsyn only looked at him, and Rychtyr snorted.

  “Oh, trust me, Ahskar. If I could buy these boys even twenty-six hours with none of them getting killed, I’d sell my immortal soul for it. I’m sure Father Pairaik would disapprove of the transaction,” he smiled briefly at the intendant, although the smile disappeared as quickly as it had come, “but I’d lay down the cash in a heartbeat, and you know it. But what he really figures is that if we ever agree to stop—to pause—even once, two-thirds of the fight will go out of our men. This—” he flicked a gesture at the message lying on his desk “—isn’t really an offer of a couple of days in which to collect our wounded. This is the opening shot he hopes will lead to an outright surrender.”