by David Weber
How, he wondered, did a good Charisian boy end up a colonel in the Republic of Siddarmark Army in command of a regiment of bloody-minded Glacierheart miners and mountain clansmen? Talk about herding cat-lizards!
The hardheaded, independent, self-sufficient citizens of Glacierheart would have been a handful under any circumstances. Their sense of almost implacable self-reliance and stubborn integrity went a long way towards explaining why—and how—the reformist-minded folk of Glacierheart had crushed the rebellious Temple Loyalist militia which had attempted to seize the province as part of the Sword of Schueler. The bitterness and atrocities of the winter mountain warfare against the Temple Loyalists of Hildermoss had only honed that iron-ribbed determination and burnished it with an edge of ferocity … and a deep, burning hatred which was rare among the mountaineers. A third of the men who’d enlisted in the 1st Glacierheart Volunteers were mountain trappers and hunters like Captain Wahlys Mahkhom; the rest were miners, farmers, and small-town artisans, and all of them tended to be very tough customers. Mining was always a dangerous, brutal occupation, and farming in Glacierheart was no picnic, while most of the artisans in question had themselves come out of the mines or off the farm before they were apprenticed in their current trades. His mountaineers, Raimahn often thought, might possess the closest thing Siddarmark had ever produced to the legendary toughness of Harchongese serfs, but there was a vast difference between them and the stolid, almost animal-like endurance of the Harchongians.
They didn’t take well to military discipline, his Glacierhearters. When it came to orders, especially in combat, they were fine; they showed a bit less interest in maintaining smart formations, salutes, proper military courtesy, or any of the other hundred and one things that differentiated a professional soldier from a civilian off the battlefield. On the other hand, miners were accustomed to working conditions where their lives often depended on discipline—both their own and that of their fellow miners—and they had a short way with anyone whose lack of discipline threatened the unit’s actual functionality. In fact, the punishment they handed out was almost always more severe even than the famed discipline of the Republic of Siddarmark Army’s regulars. Tough or not, it was a very rare Glacierhearter who committed the same infraction twice once his mates had … reasoned with him. And once he got back out of the infirmary, of course.
The regulars—even the Charisian regulars—had been inclined to look down upon the 1st Glacierhearts at first. The handful of Brigadier Taisyn’s surviving Marines had been quick to set the record straight, however, and the high percentage of hunters and trappers in Raimahn’s regiment made it particularly well suited to the sort of light infantry tasks at which the Army of God was least adroit. In fact, Duke Eastshare had started using the Volunteers for jobs he would normally have assigned to his scout snipers.
The fact that my miners and canal builders are more accustomed to working with explosives than most people doesn’t hurt any, either, Raimahn thought with grim amusement. Wahlys, especially, took to planting sweepers and fountains with genuine artistry. I only wish there weren’t so many times I worried about what’s going on inside him.
He sighed, mouth tightening as he thought about Wahlys Mahkhom’s slaughtered family. Too many of his Volunteers could have told the same story, and he knew he was going to have trouble preventing the kind of counter-atrocities Eastshare was trying to avoid. He only hoped the duke would remember what Glacierheart had endured.
And he also hoped the duke knew what he was doing pulling so much combat power out of Glacierheart. At the moment, the 1st Glacierheart Volunteers and the rest of Eastshare’s column were halfway between Glacierborn Lake and Fort St. Klair, skirting the western face of the Clynmair Hills. That was a long way from the Glacierheart Gap, and he hoped like hell the forces Eastshare had left behind were up to keeping the Army of Glacierheart out of the province for which it had been named. They probably were, but “probably” wasn’t a word Byrk Raimahn was fond of when it came to the safety of the people he’d spent the last half year of his life defending. They were important to him, and he would rip the throat out of anyone who threatened them with his bare hands.
Calmly, Byrk, he told himself. Calmly! The Duke knows what he’s doing, and even if he hasn’t actually told you what he has in mind, you’ve got a pretty good idea, don’t you? After all, there’s a reason he told you to make sure you had plenty of picks and shovels.
And explosives, of course.
.IV.
St. Kylmahn’s Foundry, City of Zion, The Temple Lands
Brother Lynkyn Fultyn looked up from his pad of notes as Vicar Allayn Maigwair strode into his office. Nights were already unpleasantly chill in the northern Temple Lands, there’d been ice in some of the fountains come dawn, and the day remained distinctly cool. In short, it was a typical early September morning in Zion … despite which, Fultyn, who’d been born in the high foothills of the Mountains of Light, had his office windows open. Fortunately, the breeze through them wasn’t strong enough to be a problem for Maigwair’s more temperate sensibilities, but it carried the whiff of coal smoke and hot iron, the clangor of hammers on anvils, and the louder, slower, rhythmic thud of water-driven drop hammers.
St. Kylmahn’s Foundry wasn’t actually in the precincts of Zion, but it was close enough to come under the city’s direct jurisdiction, and it had been growing rapidly for the past several years. By now, it was the largest single industrial operation in the Temple Lands, although the Inquisition’s reports all suggested that its output remained dismally short of the heretic Howsmyn’s accursed Delthak Works. Maigwair was grateful for the estimated production figures, depressing though they might be, although he could wish Clyntahn’s agents inquisitor might have provided a little more insight into how Howsmyn was accomplishing such feats.
That would undoubtedly have been asking too much, of course. The heretics clearly understood the necessity of maintaining security about their capabilities, so it was understandable if the Inquisition found it difficult to obtain that information, especially from someplace as distant—and which had demonstrated such fiendishly good counterintelligence—as the Kingdom of Charis. He would have felt happier, however, if he’d been able to convince himself that was the only reason so little of that information was available.
Zhaspahr’s tendency to pick and choose what he decides to tell the rest of us about is going to get all of us killed, he thought grimly. It was bad enough when I only thought that was what he was doing. Now that I’ve got proof—
He chopped that thought off with the efficiency of long practice. He had a suspicion this conference was going to come close enough to the fringes of what Clyntahn would consider allowable—or even tolerable—without adding that to the fire, and while no ears except his and Fultyn should be privy to their conversation, it was far safer to assume otherwise. If the Grand Inquisitor was keeping a king wyvern’s eye on what the heretics were up to, he was keeping an even closer one on what Mother Church’s loyal sons were doing. It would never do to allow Shan-wei’s corruption to sneak past him, after all.
Even if it does risk losing the Jihad. And even if Zhaspahr knows as well as I do—or damned well should, anyway!—that Shan-wei’s had precious little to do with anything that’s happened since—
Another thought it was best to strangle at birth, he reminded himself, and nodded to Fultyn.
“Brother Lynkyn.”
“Your Grace.” Fultyn stood, bowing, and then bent to kiss the ring Maigwair extended across the desk to him.
That desk was awash in a sea of paper, with an island of bare wood in its center to make space for Fultyn’s notepad, a silver tray bearing a bottle of increasingly rare Chisholmian whiskey, and a pair of cut crystal glasses. Its top was scarred with old burn marks where Fultyn had set an overheated pipe bowl to cool while he puzzled over the latest cryptic hints of the heretics’ capabilities, and there were rings to mark where glasses had been set and left. The edge of one stack of
paperwork was stained brown where he’d spilled a cup of tea, and the scent of his tobacco, a bit stale but fragrant, permeated the very fabric of the paper and clung to walls and upholstery—even the window curtains—despite the breeze and the tang of burning coal. It was a comfortable workspace, untidy as a dragon’s cave but with the aura of a place where someone with an active, agile mind exercised it regularly.
And a damned good thing, too, Maigwair thought, watching Fultyn uncap the whiskey and pour for both of them. He hadn’t asked if the vicar wanted the whiskey; by now it was an established ritual, and Maigwair sipped appreciatively.
“That’s good,” he said with a sigh, and Fultyn nodded. Neither commented on just how rare Chisholmian whiskey—and Charisian manufactured goods—had become in the Temple Lands. Even the Charisian-built farm equipment was breaking down, and more and more precious capacity and craftsmen had to be diverted to repairing it and away from the Jihad.
Well, that particular problem’s going to ease a bit when the snow begins to fly, isn’t it, Allayn? the vicar thought sourly. Of course, it’ll be back to bite us on the arse even harder come spring.
“So!” He set his glass on the desk before him, laying his hands on either side and trapping it in the diamond of his touching thumbs and index fingers. “Your message said you’ve reached some conclusions, Brother.”
“Some, Your Grace,” Fultyn acknowledged. “To be honest, quite a few of ‘my’ conclusions are a matter of agreeing with young Zhwaigair in Gorath. The boy has an excellent mind. I could use him here.”
Their eyes met, and Maigwair’s nostrils flared.
“I agree with you about Lieutenant Zhwaigair,” he said after a moment. “I think he’s doing excellent work where he is, though, and we need someone like him in Dohlar, as well as here. I’d rather not put all our assets in one basket.”
Fultyn looked back at him for a moment, then nodded. Everything Maigwair had just said was true, but both of them understood his last sentence was the real reason for leaving Dynnys Zhwaigair where he was … far away from the Grand Inquisitor and with Bishop Staiphan to keep a protective eye on him.
“Well, at any rate, the Lieutenant’s done his usual excellent job of writing up his observations and conclusions,” Fultyn said after a moment, looking down at the top sheet of his pad. “His comments about the interchangeability of the parts of the heretics’ new rifles match my own observations. I think he’s also correct to argue that it depends on a truly universal set of measurements. Unfortunately, establishing something like that would be far more difficult than might first appear. I think it’s likely the heretics have spent years in the effort, and my own observations suggest it isn’t yet completed. At the same time, it also appears that just as their Delthak Works have been exporting their new practices and techniques, they’ve been spreading their standardized measurements with them. Unless the Lieutenant and I are both badly mistaken,” he glanced up to meet Maigwair’s eyes, “they’re now far enough along to establish interchangeability between parts from even widely separated manufactories. That’s going to increase their production rates still more and it’s also going to significantly improve serviceability levels in the field for them. As just one example of that, their armorers won’t have to individually make replacement parts when some component of a rifle breaks. They can carry stocks of the parts most likely to fail and simply replace them when they do.”
He paused until Maigwair nodded in glum understanding, then continued.
“As I say, I’m certain that process has taken them years and, frankly, we can’t duplicate it soon enough to affect the Army of God’s situation in Siddarmark. Nor is that the only problem we face. To be honest, Your Grace, I hadn’t followed the implications of the heretics’ extensive use of steel where we use iron—or, for that matter, of the quality of their iron—and the extent to which they’ve clearly refined their forging and machining processes as completely as Zhwaigair did. The simple truth of the matter is that as deceptively simple as the heretics’ rifle design is, we can’t duplicate it in the quantities we would require, and we certainly can’t approach the parts interchangeability that they’ve achieved. I’m sorry, Your Grace, but we just can’t do it.”
“I was afraid of that,” Maigwair sighed.
“I’m not saying the situation’s hopeless, Your Grace. In fact, I think very highly of young Zhwaigair’s proposed rifle design. We can readily incorporate it into new-build weapons, and we can convert existing weapons fairly easily if we withdraw them to our central facilities. For that matter, it may be possible to equip the armorer’s wagons to perform at least some conversions in the field.”
“Really?” Maigwair straightened.
“Conversion will weaken the rifles’ stocks somewhat,” Fultyn cautioned, “so they’ll be a bit more fragile. While I hesitate to underestimate soldiers’ ability to break things, however, I don’t believe it will constitute a significant drawback. And Zhwaigair’s estimates of how much more labor and time will be required to produce his design may be overly pessimistic. He doesn’t know about Tahlbaht and the improvements he’s come up with for us, and—possibly even more to the point—I’m fairly sure he’s underestimated the rate at which we can produce the necessary screws. I think he’s thinking like an ironmaster’s nephew, but iron may not be the best metal for them and I suspect he hasn’t properly considered all the possible sources for the workmen to make them. I won’t be certain until I’ve had the chance to make a few inquiries, but I estimate that once Tahlbaht and I have had the opportunity to discuss it, we could probably produce one of young Zhwaigair’s rifles—slightly modified from his original design, perhaps—in no more than twice the time required for the existing rifle. We may even be able to improve on that number, although at this point we’d clearly be wiser to err on the side of caution. It certainly won’t require more than three times the man-hours, however, and even that rate is twenty-five percent better than he’s estimated.”
Maigwair nodded slowly, his eyes thoughtful, as he considered the implications of what the other man had just said … and how fortunate it was that he was in a position to say it. The truth was that Lynkyn Fultyn and Tahlbaht Bryairs were the crown jewels of the Army of God’s weapons manufacturing capability, and it was only by the Archangels’ grace he had the two of them.
The black-haired, bearded Fultyn was a Chihirite, like Maigwair himself, although he was only a lay brother. There were several reasons for that, including the fact that he’d never felt a vocation for the priesthood. More ominously, however, he’d been disciplined several times in his youth for his curiosity and willingness to question received wisdom where the accepted practices of craft and manufactory were concerned. He’d survived mainly because the “received wisdom” he’d been most apt to question had simply been dogmatic, unthinking responses by superiors who, irritated by his willingness to think for himself, hadn’t bothered to check the actual doctrinal authorities before they quashed him. Of course, he’d only made things worse when he’d persisted in appealing to higher authority and it turned out those dogmatic superiors were wrong. Indeed, more than one of them had creatively misconstrued the Writ (or even knowingly miss-cited it) simply to shut him up, and they hadn’t appreciated it when he went over their heads … and won. None of the questions he’d raised had actually transgressed the Proscriptions, but he’d managed to exasperate enough senior churchmen—“infuriate” might really have been a better verb—to preclude any possibility of a career in the priesthood, even if he’d wanted one.
That same willingness to challenge what he saw as needlessly inefficient practices had gotten him interested in metallurgy and the development of manufactories for Mother Church. His belief that the Church ought to be directly engaged in the promotion of manufactories in the Temple Lands had received virtually no support from the vicarate prior to the Jihad, however. Maigwair was aware of that. In fact, he’d been part of it, although he’d since realized that the Church’s nat
ural aversion to dangerous and unrestrained innovation had been taken entirely too far. Of course, the fact that it had been cheaper to buy the manufactured goods Mother Church—and the vicarate—required from Charis, via Siddarmark, without the risk of introducing that contaminating innovation into the Temple Lands themselves had been a factor, as well.
But the Jihad had changed things completely. At least, it had in Allayn Maigwair’s opinion, and in Rhobair Duchairn’s, and the two of them had seen in Fultyn the man they needed to coordinate their own manufacturing programs. It had taken them almost two years to convince Clyntahn, thanks to those youthful disciplinary hearings, but Fultyn had been put in charge of St. Kylmahn’s three years ago, and output had increased dramatically under his leadership.
In no small part, that was as much due to the efforts of Tahlbaht Bryairs as to Fultyn’s leadership. Bryairs was thirteen years younger than Fultyn and as red-haired, blue-eyed, and fair as Fultyn was dark. He was also taller than Fultyn and clean-shaven, but his brain was just as sharp, although it worked in rather different ways. That was what made them so effective. Fultyn was constantly looking at processes, concepts, new ideas, while Bryairs was focused on the most efficient way to accomplish any given task. The proliferation of water-powered machinery, the emulation of the “hydro-reservoirs” the heretics had devised, and an unceasing effort to find more efficient ways to combine the labor of St. Kylmahn’s workforce were all passions of his.