by David Weber
* * *
“I think that’s enough, Hynryk,” Eastshare said, twenty minutes later.
“Of course, Your Grace.” It would have been unfair to call Colonel Celahk’s response disappointed, although the duke couldn’t think of a better adjective. He cocked his head at his artillery commander, his expression mildly inquiring, and Celahk grimaced. “Sorry, Your Grace.”
“That’s quite all right.” Eastshare patted the artillerist on the shoulder. “And, trust me, my report will describe your guns’ effectiveness in the most glowing terms possible. But we don’t have an unlimited supply of ammunition and I don’t imagine there are very many of them left out there for you to kill. So if you don’t mind—?”
“Of course, Your Grace.” This time it came out with a chuckle, and Eastshare grinned as Celahk turned back to Lieutenant Sahndyrs.
“Time for another rocket, Wahltayr,” the colonel said.
.II.
The Temple, City of Zion, The Temple Lands
“And what do you think Kaitswyrth thought he was doing?” Rhobair Duchairn asked sourly.
The vicar on the other side of the table glanced around, as if instinctively checking to be certain there were no purple cassocks in earshot. There weren’t. The small but comfortable—as all Temple offices were comfortable—chamber was tucked away in Duchairn’s territory in the Treasury Wing. Schuelerites found remarkably cool welcome in the Treasury these days, and Duchairn’s power remained sufficient to prevent the Office of the Inquisition from insisting on openly stationing spies to look over his assistants’ shoulders. Of course, one could never be sure in the Temple. There were those persistent rumors that the Archangel Schueler had left the Inquisition the ability to listen to conversations anywhere in the vast, mystic structure. Duchairn didn’t believe it, though. If it were true, Zhaspahr Clyntahn would already have slaughtered far more of his fellow vicars than he had.
Yet, at least.
On the other hand, one needed no official agents inquisitor to track possible opponents of the Jihad … or the Grand Inquisitor. For all he knew, a dozen of his Chihirites and Langhornites might be eyes and ears of the Inquisition. In fact, he could take it as a given that at least some of them were, so perhaps his guest’s paranoia was reasonable, even if the two of them were alone. However—
“I’m not entirely sure,” Allayn Maigwair replied after a moment. Duchairn’s eyebrows rose, and the Church of God Awaiting’s Captain General shrugged. “That Kaitswyrth was thinking, I mean,” he added acidly.
“Oh.”
Duchairn felt his lips twitch, remembering a time not so very long ago when Maigwair would have been far less assertive. A time when he’d run at Clyntahn’s heels like a faithful course lizard, too terrified of the Grand Inquisitor to risk anything that might have sounded even remotely critical of him or one of his favorites. And both of them knew Cahnyr Kaitswyrth was one of Clyntahn’s favorites.
Or had been, anyway. That might have become subject to change.
“I thought,” the Treasurer continued, “that we’d all agreed it was time to stand on the defensive until we could get the canals repaired.”
“So did I.” Maigwair’s expression was sour, but then he shook his head unwillingly. “At the same time, Zhaspahr was right about Kaitswyrth’s immediate supply situation. I hadn’t realized just how much had stacked up along the canal behind him. I’m not saying the fact that he was better supplied than we thought he was justified ramming his head into a hornets’ nest that way, but if we were going to take the offensive anywhere, that was probably the best place.”
“Really?” The one-word question dripped irony, and Maigwair flushed.
“I didn’t say it was a good place, Rhobair. I only said that if we were going to do something stupid, it was the best place.” He shrugged angrily. “Given that we’re talking about Kaitswyrth and that Zhaspahr insisted on assigning Zavyr as his intendant, we’re probably lucky we didn’t get hurt any worse than we did!”
Duchairn was forced to nod. Judging by the preliminary reports, they probably were lucky their casualties hadn’t been still worse. Or, at least, any worse than they thought they had so far. The jury was still out on how bad their final losses truly had been, and they probably wouldn’t know the true toll for a few five-days yet, when something like a final report came in from Aivahnstyn.
That was now the Army of Glacierheart’s headquarters, courtesy of the counterattacks the heretical Duke of Eastshare had launched after repulsing Kaitswyrth’s catastrophic assault, and that headquarters was apparently finding it difficult to tally its losses at this point. Even if Kaitswyrth was willing to report them honestly, he probably didn’t know what they were yet. But the numbers they did have were bad enough. Even before the heretics’ counterattacks, the Army of God’s blind, headlong assault had cost it the equivalent of seven full divisions—over thirteen thousand in dead, wounded, or prisoners—to the heretics’ “Kau-yungs” (and how Clyntahn had howled when he’d heard that name!), rifles, and—especially—artillery.
It was the sheer weight of the artillery which had broken the assault’s back. That much was obvious from the most preliminary reports … and it seemed equally clear the sheer shock of encountering that holocaust had broken the Army of Glacierheart’s morale, as well. That was the only explanation anyone could come up with, at any rate, and it made sense to Duchairn. Men were still men; even those most willing to die for God’s victory must hesitate to die when they knew victory was beyond them despite all valor might do. That was a truth Zhaspahr would do well to remember, however unpalatable he found it. Duchairn was no warrior, yet it seemed obvious to him that the assault’s catastrophic losses, combined with the rumors of what had happened along the canals and rivers behind the Army of the Sylmahn—and in the Gap itself—must have had a stunning effect on Kaitswyrth’s army.
Something had, at any rate, given the way that army’s left flank had crumpled—“dissolved” was probably a better word—before the heretics’ attack out of Haidyrberg. The flank commander hadn’t even tried to hold his ground, despite an entrenched position and superior numbers, for which Sedryk Zavyr had demanded—and gotten—his head and the head of his intendant. And while the rot might have started on the Haidyrberg High Road, it certainly hadn’t stopped there.
Kaitswyrth had attempted to shift forces from the center to reinforce his flank, only to have the heretics, whose lookouts had apparently been watching his deployment from their perches high in the titan oaks, drive a wedge of steel and fire into the position he’d weakened. The fire of those terrible, long-ranged cannon—the ones Wyrshym had reported from the Sylmahn Gap—had pounded the entrenchments’ depleted garrisons, but far worse had been the lighter, portable cannon the heretics brought forward with them. Their individual shells were far smaller, and they had much less range, but they also fired far more rapidly and detonated reliably in midair, deluging their targets with shrapnel. And they had another advantage, one Duchairn suspected was even more valuable than their rate of fire or the superiority of the heretics’ fuses. Their portability meant they could be carried immediately behind the enemy’s advancing troops, close enough for them to be directed onto their targets as needed. That let them deliver fire far more flexibly than field guns could, and their arcing trajectories meant they could be deployed out of sight, in hollows in the ground or behind walls or hillsides, to pour in their fire with impunity.
The infantry tactics Wyrshym had described from the Sylmahn Gap had played their part, as well, as soon as the Army of Glacierheart’s front began to crumble. The heretics’ disregard for normal firing lines appeared to have served them in good stead once Mother Church’s forward regiments started giving way. The dense forest behind the hard crust of the Army of God’s entrenchments must have been a smoke-shrouded nightmare for officers trying to form line with rifles and pikes, stabbed through by the flash of heretic rifles and illuminated by thunderbolts of shrapnel from above, and the hereti
cs had flowed through the trees to filter remorselessly around their flanks, probing for openings.
They’d found them, too. They’d punched all the way forward to the Haidyrberg High Road to link up with the column advancing into the Army of Glacierheart’s rear, and Kaitswyrth had been left no option but to order a general withdrawal before they could reach the river behind his center and cut off any retreat for two-thirds of his army. He’d been forced back along the Daivyn for almost a hundred miles, losing men the entire way, but once he’d finally been clear of the unconsecrated forest, he’d been able to deploy his own infantry and remaining artillery far more effectively. That had slowed the heretics’ advance, and he’d used the respite to get labor parties busy farther in his own rear. By the time he’d been pushed back halfway to Aivahnstyn, his new fortifications had been ready, this time with much heavier overhead protection against the rain of shrapnel from those portable infantry cannon, and the heretics had declined to press home a fresh attack upon them. After all, why should they have? They’d driven the Army of Glacierheart clear back into Cliff Peak Province, and along the way they’d probably inflicted casualties greater than their own beginning strength. They’d certainly shattered the confidence of Kaitswyrth’s army, at any rate. Not even its intendants were going to be able to motivate its battered, tattered divisions to take the offensive again anytime soon. For that matter, Duchairn strongly suspected that Zavyr’s confidential reports to Clyntahn told a dismal tale of his intendants’ morale, given the rather pointed message the heretics had delivered directly to them.
Under the circumstances, it’s a not-so-minor miracle Kaitswyrth’s men are still capable of defending themselves, Duchairn thought bitterly. And it doesn’t bode well for next summer’s campaign, either. Assuming there is a next summer’s campaign.
Which was rather the point of the present meeting.
“It looks like we’re all learning as we go along,” he said. “I wish Kaitswyrth had been more willing to learn from Wyrshym’s example, but I suppose it’s expecting too much for an army commander who’s never encountered all these accursed new weapons to really understand what they mean without firsthand experience. And to be fair, Wyrshym never encountered those ‘Kau-yungs,’ so no matter how carefully he’d read Wyrshym’s reports, he couldn’t’ve known anything about them until Eastshare used them against him.”
“You’re probably right,” Maigwair sighed. “It would’ve helped if he’d just followed orders, though. And he had encountered the Kau-yungs before he shoved that attack right down the heretics’ throats. I told him—”
The Captain General waved one hand irritably, and Duchairn nodded. He’d had experience enough of the way in which Zhaspahr Clyntahn could twist and warp a situation until the people caught up in it did things his way. The Treasurer would have liked to tell himself that was how this entire catastrophe had come about, but he couldn’t. In the beginning, Clyntahn had been only one member of the Group of Four, unable to simply decree the initial attack on Charis. They’d agreed with him, never realizing what they were about to launch or that they were going to effectively hand him the keys to the Temple, because they hadn’t bothered to consider the implications of that agreement. Now all the world found itself forced to pay the price for their stupidity, and Kaitswyrth certainly hadn’t had the stature to defy Clyntahn and his handpicked intendant if the other three members of the Group of Four didn’t!
“Well, one thing’s abundantly clear,” he said. “With these newest new weapons, supply lines and our own weapons production just got even more critical.”
“Agreed.” Maigwair nodded emphatically. “That’s why I had Kaitswyrth send some of the captured rifles to Gorath.” Duchairn felt his eyebrow rising again, and the Captain General shrugged. “So far, the Dohlaran foundries have been the most efficient, outside the Temple Lands themselves. For that matter, with all due respect, I think they’re actually more efficient even than ours are, and they’ve got the highest percentage of rifle-armed infantry in the field. If anyone’s able to produce this new breech-loading design in large numbers, it’s probably them.”
“I imagine you’re right,” Duchairn admitted. “On the other hand, we’re a lot more efficient than the Harchongians, and”—he smiled thinly—“we’ll be taking over all the Harchongese foundries south of the Gulf of Dohlar by the end of September.”
“All of them?” Maigwair’s eyes widened in surprise. “How are you going to manage that?”
What the Captain General really wanted to know, Duchairn reflected, was how he’d managed to pry all those lucrative cash cows out of the hands of the nobles who owned them … and of the bureaucrats to whose flow of graft they had contributed so abundantly ever since the Jihad had begun.
“I made it a condition of the new tithe negotiations.” Duchairn’s smile was thinner than ever. “You’d be amazed how persuasive a Harchongese finds the threat of an additional five percent hike in his personal tithe if he doesn’t see reason, especially since each of our assessor’s offices now has direct access to the matching Inquisition office. I’d rather not have to impose on Zhaspar,” and let him get his fist into yet another pie, “but knowing his Inquisitors stand behind the Treasury on this one hasn’t hurt. And unless I’m seriously mistaken, we’ll have control of all of Harchong’s foundries, north of the Gulf as well as south, by spring. Zhaspahr doesn’t like it, even if he has agreed to support my people on this one—you know how attentive he is when it comes to the Harchongians’ sensibilities—but I showed him the production figures and finally convinced him we don’t have a choice. It won’t be as good as having our own workers running them, but we should be able to at least get supervisory personnel into them, backed up by provincial production intendants assigned by Zhaspahr’s office to make sure the locals listen to my managers.”
“That’s good news. In fact, it’s wonderful news!”
“It’s not going to produce instant results, especially in the northern Empire, but it is going to help,” Duchairn agreed. “And I’m about to provide a sizeable addition to our labor force, too.”
“Oh?” Maigwair frowned. “How? I thought we were too strapped for marks to put still more men to work.”
“We’re too strapped for marks to put more laymen to work,” Duchairn replied with a smile which was somehow simultaneously wry, pleased, and bitter. “It took Zhaspahr’s leaning on the heads of the orders, but we’ve got Langhorne’s own lot of manpower—and womanpower—busy on the Church’s more everyday affairs. As of the first of next month, every major order and all of their affiliates in the minor orders will be required to furnish my office with the names of twenty-five percent of their ordained and lay members—and of their lay employees—to be assigned to serve the Jihad where and as required. They howled, of course, but employing those personnel in manufactories or other service positions won’t cost the Treasury a half-mark it’s not already paying out.”
Maigwair whistled softly. It wasn’t hard to understand Duchairn’s smile now. He’d been after the great orders to support the Jihad more directly for over two years, and they’d refused to budge. They’d come up with excuse after excuse—a few of which had probably even been valid—to avoid his demands. He had to feel intensely satisfied that they’d finally been forced to yield, but the manner of their yielding had only reinforced Clyntahn’s power yet again.
“That’s going to help,” he said after a moment. “Probably a lot. But all of this is still going to cost a lot more money than we have.”
“True, but your Brother Lynkyn promises me he’ll be able to reduce costs by a minimum of ten percent across the board, at least in Mother Church’s own foundries and arsenals, and I’ve come to the conclusion that I have no choice but to turn to an expedient I’d really hoped to avoid. Two of them, in fact.”
“What sort of expedients?” Maigwair asked cautiously.
“Our measures in Harchong will improve our cash flow significantly, but it’s still going to
be a few months before the cash actually starts to flow. In the meantime, my people can account for perhaps fifty percent of the new tithes in advance and begin obligating that amount now. We can’t afford to do more than that until we’ve confirmed that the new revenue stream will be as high as we expect it to be. My new expedients”—Duchairn’s lips twisted, as if the word had an actual—and unpleasant—taste—“are a bit more drastic, however. First, Mother Church is going to levy a special tithe across the board. And, second, we’re going to require all bankers, manufactory owners, and major landowners, and all of the guilds to buy a new issue of Mother Church’s notes at par. The amount of their required investment will be assessed by the Treasury based on the average of their tithes for the last five years, which should provide at least some cushion for those whose income has spiked with the expenditures of the Jihad. And manufactories providing weapons or other direct support to the Jihad will be allowed to pay their required investment in kind, accounting their obligation against their costs in Mother Church’s service. The notes themselves will be secured by the value of about one-third of all of Mother Church’s remaining secondary properties.” He smiled again, at least a bit more naturally. “The assessed value of those properites, of course, will be the ones they held before the Schism. I’ve managed to keep our core holdings out of the portfolio. And I’m also offering sale of all of our holdings in Charis, Chisholm, Emerald, and Tarot at one-quarter of their pre-Jihad value. I don’t know how many takers we’ll have on that, but at least anyone who does decide to buy will have a doubly strong motive to support our final victory.”