At the Sign of Triumph

by David Weber

  “And why did the Major approach him now?” Irys asked, her expression intent.

  “Because of what happened to Zahmsyn Trynair,” Merlin said. “I don’t think they’ve acted out of fear for their own lives. If they’d been going to do that, they’d have done something a long time ago. I think what we’re seeing is a combination of factors. Trynair’s death—and Clyntahn’s threats to Duchairn and Maigwair—have convinced both of them that he’s prepared to pull the entire Church down with him rather than face the personal consequences of defeat. At the same time, Zion’s become a pressure cooker. When you combine the news from the battle front with the casualty totals, the number of families who’ve lost someone they loved, the number of people the Inquisition’s ‘disappeared’ in the capital, Helm Cleaver’s actions and the way they’ve provided detailed lists of their victims’ crimes, and the way the broadsheets we’ve been putting up all over the capital for years now flatly contradict Clyntahn’s version of events, the reservoir of reverence and piety that always supported the Inquisition has pretty much evaporated. There are a lot of people in Zion who no longer believe a single thing Zhaspahr Clyntahn says, Irys. A lot of them. And there’s a much smaller but still significant number of people who find themselves actively opposing him, passively at least. That’s been a factor in the success of several of Helm Cleaver’s operations. People who might have been able to give information to Rayno’s agents inquisitor frequently don’t.

  “What it boils down to is that Clyntahn’s maintaining his power through a reign of terror, and every report that comes in from Tarikah or Cliff Peak or the South March—every word about the front that goes up in one of our broadsheets—is one more piece of evidence that the Temple is about to lose the Jihad. Clyntahn and his core supporters are unwilling to admit that, but they’re probably the only people in Zion—maybe even in the entire Temple Lands—who don’t understand that the war’s lost. And it’s a funny thing, Irys. People have a strong aversion to seeing their sons and husbands die in a war that’s already lost, especially when they realize they were systematically lied to about the reasons that war was begun in the first place. That’s true even when they haven’t come to the sneaking suspicion that God Himself is on the other side.

  “So right now, Clyntahn’s control is stretched thin—maybe even thinner than he realizes—in Zion at the very moment when he’s about to commit the Church and every Temple Loyalist to an apocalypse that will kill millions of more people. If Duchairn’s ever going to act, it has to be now, and he doesn’t think he can succeed, even now, solely out of his own resources. So he sent the Major out to see if he could find the help he needs.”

  “So Phandys was on a fishing expedition when he approached Master Mahkbyth,” Earl Coris murmured. “He didn’t know anything for certain, and all he had was what might or might not have been a code phrase Vicar Hauwerd overheard used in a conversation more than a decade ago. Is that about it?”

  “Just about,” Nahrmahn agreed. “And that’s one reason my ‘professional pride’ is offended. This isn’t the sort of carefully calculated, exquisitely coordinated, brilliantly polished strategy upon which I pride myself, and it’s still about to do one hell of a lot of damage to Zhaspahr Clyntahn.”

  “That remains to be seen,” Maikel Staynair said rather more somberly. “There are a million things that could go wrong. And even if there weren’t, we haven’t actually decided we’re going to give Duchairn the help he’s looking for.”

  “What?” Irys twitched upright in her chair. “Of course we are!” She looked around the images projected onto her contact lenses, then turned to Coris … and saw the expression on his face. “Aren’t we?” she asked almost plaintively.

  “Irys, if we help Duchairn—and, I’m pretty sure, Maigwair, even though Phandys refused to name anyone besides Duchairn—we may sabotage our own ultimate objective,” Sharleyan said quietly. “If Duchairn, with or without Maigwair, topples Clyntahn and manages to retain control afterwards—which is scarcely a given, I realize—he’ll offer us everything the Church of Charis has been demanding from the start. He’s already pledged to do that through Phandys, and while he may have lied to Phandys, Phandys definitely didn’t lie to Merlin or Nynian.”

  Irys looked at Sharleyan’s image, her expression perplexed, and Coris sighed.

  “Irys, we want to overthrow the Church of God Awaiting. Duchairn wants to reform it. He wants to stamp out its abuses, rein in the Inquisition, root out the corruption and the corrupters, and make as much honest, forthright restitution and recompense as he can for all the atrocities Clyntahn’s version of the Church has committed. If he offers to do those things, we can’t reject the offer. We can’t explain to our own people, much less to Greyghor Stohnar or all the other people trapped in this war, that we need to destroy the entire religion in which all of them believe. We just can’t do it, for the same reasons we haven’t been able to openly explain it to anyone already. So if we help Duchairn save the Church rather than continuing the war in hopes Clyntahn will ultimately destroy it, we may throw away our best chance to accomplish Nimue Alban’s true mission.”

  “But all those people, Phylyp,” Irys half whispered. “All those people who might not have to die!”

  “And that’s the heart of the problem, Irys,” Sharleyan said compassionately. “How far are we prepared to go to accomplish the objective we can’t tell anyone else about? And how many good and courageous people—like Major Phandys—are we willing to abandon to death while we do it? Because the one thing I can tell you for certain from having watched his conversation with Merlin and Nynian is that whether we support them or not, he and Duchairn are going to try.”

  A long moment of silence hovered over the com link, and then Merlin smiled crookedly.

  “You said this wasn’t one of your brilliant strategies, Nahrmahn,” he said, “and you’re right. What it is is more up Maikel’s alley than yours.”

  “I beg your pardon?” The archbishop arched his eyebrows.

  “It’s what you’ve talked about again and again, Maikel—the finger of God moving in the hearts of men. Think about how much how many people have sacrificed to bring us to this moment, to this decision point. Think about Samyl and Hauwerd, think about Zhorzhet and Marzho, about Duchairn and Phandys, and about the Sisters and Helm Cleaver. Think about all of that, and the chance Duchairn and Phandys took just contacting us in the first place. And then think about all the lives—our soldiers’ lives, not just those on the other side—we could save. That we might save. Do you really think we have a choice?”

  He shook his head, and Nimue Chwaeriau’s holographic eyes met his across the link. Met his and agreed with them.

  “God wouldn’t have given us this opportunity if He didn’t want us to take it,” Merlin said softly. “Maybe I’m wrong about that, but you know what? If I am, I don’t care. Not now. We’ve killed enough people. I’ve killed enough people. We’re not going to kill any more than we have to, whichever side they’re on, and we’ll just have to trust God to give us another opportunity somewhere down the road to accomplish Nimue’s mission. Because if He doesn’t want us to do this, then He’s been Zhaspahr Clyntahn’s God all along, and I know damned well He hasn’t.”

  .VII.

  Great Tarikah Forest,

  and

  Chyzwail,

  West Wing Lake,

  Tarikah Province,

  Republic of Siddarmark.

  Zhwozhyou Puyang, Earl Golden Tree, rubbed his eyes wearily. It didn’t help a lot. He was sixty-one years old, and those eyes no longer took candlelight in stride. Unfortunately, he was out of lamp oil, courtesy of the heavy heretic angle shell which had landed directly atop his headquarters bunker. He hadn’t been in it at the time, but most of his staff had, and all of his lamp oil—and the lamps to burn it and the fragments of all of his personal possessions—had been left strewn in the crater where the bunker once had been.

  Along with the bloody bits and pieces
of the staff who’d served him for over two years.

  Golden Tree didn’t know what in Kau-yung’s name the heretics filled their goddamned shells with now, but some of them, at least, struck like Langhorne’s own Rakurai. The sheer size of the craters they left was enough to turn a man’s bowels to water. Actually seeing one of them explode—and surviving the experience—could destroy the resolve of even the most faith-filled.

  He was proud of his men. It wouldn’t have done to admit that, of course, since most of them were the scum of the earth—peasants, at best, and conscripted serfs, the most of them. But they’d stood tall and fought hard for God even after the heretics managed to cut their only line of retreat behind them.

  Golden Tree still didn’t know how the heretics had done that, either. In fact, there were Shan-wei’s own lot of things he didn’t know … including how God expected him to get his command out of this trap. All he knew for certain was that eight days ago the heretic Stohnar had somehow gotten one—at least one—of his outsized infantry brigades deep enough into the Great Tarikah Forest to overwhelm his pickets on the South Tairyn River. Now the heretics controlled his only avenue of supply … or escape. And even if they hadn’t held the river, only God and the Archangels knew if the Mighty Host still held the other end of the high road, where it exited the forest. Earl Rainbow Waters’ last dispatch had indicated that Gleesyn was still holding and that the line he’d stitched together to cover the high road beyond the forest remained intact. But that dispatch was eight days old.

  Golden Tree lowered his hand from his aching eyes and picked up the common pottery mug on the corner of his improvised replacement desk. He grimaced as he sipped and reminded himself—again—not to ask the cooks what they were using for “tea” these days. He was quite sure he wouldn’t have liked the answer to that question any more than he’d liked the answers he’d already gotten to a whole host of questions.

  He sipped more “tea” and scowled down at the report he’d been reading. Or trying to read, at any rate. Captain of Foot Hiyang’s handwriting was atrocious. Then again, four years ago Zynghau Hiyang had been a small shopkeeper in the imperial capital. He’d never expected to be a soldier, much less an officer, and far less an officer battling heresy, apostasy, and demon-worship. He had his rough edges, did Captain of Foot Hiyang, and no one would ever accuse him of brilliance. But when his regimental commander had been killed, he’d taken over the regiment and fought it with more gallantry and determination than Golden Tree had seen out of any of his other commanders, and that was a very high bar, given how magnificently his entire command had fought.

  Yet there was nothing left of Hiyang’s regiment. Not anymore. That was how the captain of foot had come to be available when Golden Tree’s staff died under the shell he’d somehow avoided. And now, glaring down at Hiyang’s latest casualty report, Golden Tree faced the truth.

  He’d entered the Sairmeet position with two almost full strength bands of infantry, over forty thousand men—closer to fifty, when his artillery and engineers were added in. They’d settled into a well laid out set of defensive works under the loom of the massive northern spine trees of the unconsecrated forest and been grateful for the evergreens’ deep, cool green shade. It had been like living at the bottom of one of the ornamental koi ponds back home.

  Now those trees were broken stumps. Now the branches which had shielded them from the sun—and from the heretic balloons—were gone, or stripped bare and ugly by heretic shells. Now the well laid out entrenchments were churned and broken, their perimeter littered with decaying bodies, too many of them Harchongese and too few of them Charisian or Siddarmarkian. And now the ammunition and supply dumps which hadn’t been destroyed outright by the heretic artillery were empty.

  As of sunset tonight, by Hiyang’s best estimate, he had twenty-three thousand effectives left, and the captain of foot estimated the artillerists had barely a dozen rounds per piece. His riflemen were down to their last forty rounds per man, and hand-bombs were in even shorter supply. He had rations for two more five-days … if he fed the men one meal a day. His healers were out of Fleming moss, reduced to boiling whatever rags they could find for bandages—when they could find fuel and the heretics’ harassing infantry angle shells let them—and they’d exhausted all their painkillers … and the alcohol and Pasquale’s Cleanser to keep their surgical instruments clean of corruption.

  He’d hung on desperately, hoping for the supply column Earl Rainbow Waters had promised to fight through to Sairmeet … if he could. The Mighty Host’s commander was a man of his word, and Golden Tree had known that if mortal men could get those supplies through, then the Mighty Host would do it.

  But it hadn’t.

  Face it, Zhwozhyou, he told himself. Your men are done. It’s not that they won’t fight any longer; it’s that they can’t. Not without food and medical supplies. Not without shells and hand-bombs. Langhorne! Not without bullets! And if the heretics have pushed the Host back from Gleesyn, there’s no point in your getting more of these men killed holding Sairmeet. They may be peasants, they may be serfs, but even serfs’ lives have to count for something.

  He shivered at the thought of what Zhaspahr Clyntahn’s Inquisition might demand of his and his officers’ families, but he knew what he had to do.

  * * *

  Earl Rainbow Waters rose as his nephew ushered Gustyv Walkyr and Ahlbair Saintahvo into his office. He kissed Saintahvo’s proffered ring, then waved an invitation at the chairs awaiting his guests. They settled into them, and the ugly rumble of artillery formed a backdrop of distant thunder. The Charisian gunners couldn’t possibly see their targets in the darkness, even from their accursed balloons, but they didn’t seem to care, and their profligate expenditure of ammunition in what amounted only to harassing fire was its own message. It said their supply lines were capable of delivering everything they needed, and that their manufactories—and the treasuries behind them—were capable of producing everything they needed.

  Neither of which was true of Mother Church any longer.

  “I thank you for coming,” the earl said quietly as Wind Song poured wine into the waiting porcelain cups and then silently withdrew, leaving his uncle with his guests. “I realize both of you are sufficiently busy without my dragging you away from your headquarters in the middle of the night.”

  “It’s not like we had that far to come, My Lord,” Walkyr observed with what might a trace of genuine humor, and Rainbow Waters’ lips twitched.

  The Army of the Center had fought hard since his meeting with Walkyr and Saintahvo at Cheryk. Its inexperience and lack of artillery had shown, but its survivors had gained experience far more rapidly than they’d undoubtedly desired, and they’d inflicted severe casualties on the heretics when a brigade from the Army of Westmarch moved too precipitously against St. Vyrdyn and been caught in column by AOG rocket launchers.

  The Charisians had probably lost in excess of two or three thousand men in that single disaster, and the Army of the Center’s gunners had been jubilant. But then the Charisian angle-guns had been brought up once more and the balloons the advancing column had outrun had caught up with the front. The Army of Westmarch had resumed its methodical advance, and Army of the Center had been driven back once again.

  By now, Walkyr’s army had been driven clear back to Rainbow Waters’ Ferey River Line. It had lost contact with St. Vyrdyn—which the heretics had entered yesterday, if Rainbow Waters’ latest intelligence was correct—but its right flank continued to cling to the edge of the Tairohn Hills sixty or seventy miles north of the city. The garrison at Glydahr continued to hold out, but the heretics had punched two mounted brigades between St. Vyrdyn and Glydahr and taken Four Point, cutting the high road between Gyldar and the Holy Langhorne Canal. It was only a matter of time before the isolated Sardahnan capital fell … a point the Army of the Daivyn’s heavy artillery was making clear as it steadily and mercilessly obliterated the city’s outworks. It would be interesting to see h
ow long the intendants and inquisitors in Glydahr could … inspire Archbishop Militant Klymynt Gahsbahr’s men to resist.

  In the meantime, the portion of Walkyr’s army still under his direct command—perhaps a hundred and sixty thousand men, all told—had become the Mighty Host’s reserve behind the southern end of the Ferey River line, and the archbishop militant had moved his own headquarters to Chyzwail to facilitate conferences just like this one.

  No, Rainbow Waters reminded himself. Conferences, yes. But like this one? I think not.

  “May I ask why you needed to see us, My Lord?” Saintahvo asked, leaning forward and ignoring the wine glass at his elbow. “I assume it’s to share still more bad news,” he added caustically.

  The archbishop inquisitor had become steadily more querulous—although Rainbow Waters would have denied he could have become more querulous after their first meeting—as the situation worsened. He’d made it amply clear that he knew the true reason for all their reverses could be found in the fecklessness of their commanders. He’d become increasingly strident, and he no longer hesitated to show his displeasure with Rainbow Waters as clearly as with Walkyr. The earl had been unable to decide whether that was simply because Saintahvo was such a natural pain in the arse or if it reflected the tone of the private dispatches the archbishop inquisitor received regularly from Zion.