Heirs of Empire

by David Weber

"Aye, Lord Sean. Don't worry. None of us wants to get killed, My Lord, but we'll keep 'em confident until we do clear out."

  "Good man." Sean squeezed the Malagoran's shoulder, then mounted his own branahlk and turned back to Tibold.

  "I sent one of Folmak's regiments a little way west with a company of Juahl's dragoons, just to be on the safe side," he said, urging his mount to a trot. "They've got orders to stay out of sight from the next tower, but they're our front door. They've already hauled in about thirty people."

  "That many?" Tibold was surprised. "I wouldn't have expected Ortak to allow that much traffic out of Erastor."

  "Most of them seem to be trying to get as far from Erastor as they can," Sean snorted, "and I sort of doubt Ortak even knows they're doing it. Two-thirds of them are deserters, as a matter of fact."

  "There are always some," Tibold said with a curled lip.

  "I imagine there's even more temptation than usual if you believe you're up against demons. On the other hand, they might just think they could convince Ortak not to shoot them if they hustled back to tell him we're coming. Once the main body gets up here, have them sent back to Malz and kept there till Yuthan and his boys pull out. After that, they can do whatever they want."

  "I don't envy them," Tibold said, almost against his will. "With Terrahk coming up the road, the best they can hope for is to take to the hills before he gets his hands on them."

  "That's their problem, I'm happy to say," Sean grunted back. "I'll settle for making sure Terrahk doesn't get his hands on us."

  High-Captain Ortak reread the message with enormous relief. Terrahk had set a new record for the march from Kelthar, the capital of Keldark, if he was already at Malz! He'd shaved another three days off his estimated arrival, and Ortak wondered how he'd done it. Not that he intended to complain. With those fifty thousand well-armed and (hopefully) unshaken men to reinforce it, Erastor would become impregnable. Better yet, Terrahk outranked him. Ortak could turn the responsibility over to him, and he was guiltily aware of how terribly he wanted to do just that.

  "Any reply, Sir?" his aide asked, and Ortak leaned back in his chair, then shook his head.

  "None. They're obviously already moving as fast as they can. Let's not make them think we're too nervous."

  "No, My Lord," the aide agreed with a smile, and Ortak waved him out of the room and bent back to his paperwork. Three more days. All the heretics had to do was hold off for three more days, and their best chance to smash their way out of Malagor would be gone forever.

  For all its self-inflicted technical wounds, Pardal was an ancient and surprisingly sophisticated world, Sean reflected, and its road network reflected it. He'd wondered, when they first spotted the Temple from orbit, how a preindustrial society could transport sufficient food for a city that size even with the canal network to help, but that was before he knew about nioharqs or how good their roads were. They'd developed some impressive engineers over the millennia, and most of them seemed to have spent their entire careers building either temples or roads. Even here in the mountains, the high road was over twenty meters wide, and its hard-paved smoothness rivaled any of Terra's pre-Imperial superhighways.

  He drew up and watched his men march past. Like the Roman Empire, Pardalian states relied on infantry, and the excellence of their roads stemmed from the same need to move troops quickly. Of course, come to think of it, the same considerations had created the German autobahns and the United States interstate highway system, hadn't they? Some things never seemed to change.

  Whatever their reasoning, he was profoundly grateful to the engineers who'd built this road. After their nightmare cross-country journey, the men moved out with a will, relieved to be out of the mud and muck, and they'd made over thirty kilometers today despite the hours spent crossing the Malz fords.

  They'd also nabbed three more semaphore towers without raising any alarms. He was a bit surprised by how smoothly that part had gone, but Juahl had devised a system that seemed to work perfectly. He sent an officer and a couple of dozen men on ahead of the main body in captured Guard uniforms, and they simply rode straight up to each tower and asked the station commander to assemble his men. The semaphore crews belonged to the civil service, not the army. None of them were going to argue with Guard dragoons, and as soon as the Malagorans had them out in the open, they suddenly found themselves looking down the business ends of a dozen rifled joharns at very short range. Since the signal arms were controlled from the ground, it didn't even matter if the men manning the tower platforms realized what was happening. They couldn't tell anyone, and so far none of them had been inclined to argue when the rest of Juahl's men arrived and invited them to come down.

  In the meantime, neither Ortak nor Terrahk seemed to harbor any suspicion an entire heretic army corps had nipped in between them. The towers Sean now controlled relayed all normal message traffic without alterations, but they were intercepting every dispatch either Guard officer sent the other. It was almost more delicious than what Sandy's and Brashan's stealthed remotes could tell him, for he was actually reading his enemies' mail, then dictating the responses he wanted them to receive. It looked like it was already having an effect, as well. Sandy reported that Terrahk had slowed his headlong pace just a bit thanks to the more confident tenor Sean had been giving Ortak's messages. But, of course, Ortak didn't know that, now did he?

  Sean grinned wickedly, but then he looked up at the sky and his grin faded. The sun was sinking steadily in the west, and it was about time to bivouac, but what worried him was the growing humidity. Another front was coming through, and Brashan was still figuring out Pardal's weather patterns. The mountains made prediction even harder, and Sean suspected the front was moving faster than expected. But they should still have enough time, he told himself as he urged his branahlk back into motion. All he needed was two more of Pardal's twenty-nine-hour days.

  "Two more days," Tamman murmured. He leaned back in a camp chair in his tent, eyes closed while his neural feed linked him to Israel and Sandy's remotes through the com in the stealthed cutter permanently parked in hover above "the Angel Harry's" commodious tent. He replayed the day's scan records at high speed and watched mentally as Sean's column sped up the high road towards Erastor. They were really moving, and they were still a good four days in front of High-Captain Terrahk. The way the relief column was easing up would open the gap a bit further, but sometime the day after tomorrow the Guardsmen were going to reach Malz and find out what had actually been happening.

  They'd have no way to warn Ortak, and he wondered what Terrahk would do. Would he hustle on forward as fast as he could? If he knew how many men Sean had, the high-captain might figure he could take him in the open, but he'd be too far behind to overtake before Sean reached Erastor, and he'd know it. Just as he'd know that if Sean blew Ortak out of the way, his own column would be hopelessly inadequate to face the two hundred thousand screaming heretics the Temple now assumed the Angels' Army had.

  It all came down to a guess, Tamman mused. Unlike Sean and himself, Terrahk was totally reliant on mounted scouts, and with the towers between him and Erastor in Malagoran hands, he'd have no way to know what was happening ahead of him. All he'd know was that if Ortak had somehow figured out what was coming at him and managed to throw up any sort of an east-facing defense, he'd need all the help Terrahk could send him to hold it. Or, conversely, that if Ortak had already been waxed, the only chance for his own troops' survival would be to run as hard as they could in the other direction.

  Under the circumstances, Tamman suspected Terrahk would retreat. Abandoning Ortak might cost the Guard seventy or eighty thousand men, but if he lost his own command throwing good money after bad, the Temple would also lose its last field force. It was a pity Sean couldn't ambush Terrahk first and then take on Ortak, but too many things could go wrong, including the possibility that Sean would find himself trapped between enemies who outnumbered him by more than five to one. With room to maneuver and unlimited
ammunition, odds like that might be workable; trapped between the Mortan and the valley's northern rim and with only the ammo his troops could carry, the situation would have all the ingredients for a MacIntyre's Last Stand.

  Nope. The best outcome would probably be for Terrahk to keep coming and arrive a couple of days after he and Sean had crushed Ortak. If they could reunite their own army, they'd make mincemeat out of Terrahk—assuming they could catch him. At the very least, they should be able to stay close enough on his heels to keep him from settling into the prepared positions around Baricon. But Terrahk would know that as well as they did, which was why Tamman expected the Guardsman to fall back the instant he figured out what was happening.

  He straightened and opened his eyes. One thing was certain, whatever Terrahk did, he reminded himself. Before he and Sean could get back into contact, they had to take Erastor, and he shoved up out of his chair. There was just enough light left for him and Ithun to make a last recon of Ortak's lines before darkness fell, and if it turned out that they had to storm those entrenchments to save Sean's posterior, he wanted all of his officers to know everything they could about their target.

  More rain swept up the Keldark Valley, and High-Captain Ortak glared sourly at the clouds. The valley was always damp, of course. It was the only real opening in the Shalokar Range, and wet air from the east poured through it like a funnel as it swept up towards the Malagor Plateau. Some of the Temple's experts argued that as the air moved higher and grew thinner, the moisture fell out of its own weight. Ortak didn't fully understand the theory behind it, but all he really needed to know was that it rained in the valley—a lot—and that it was starting to do it again.

  He growled a soft curse, then shrugged. Rain was his friend, not the heretics'. Their musketeers outnumbered his tremendously, and if God was kind enough to soak their priming powder for them, Ortak had no intention of complaining. Let them come in and take him on with cold steel!

  "How long is this going to last?" Sean asked fretfully.

  He and Sandy stood fifty meters from the nearest Malagoran and conferred over their coms with Brashan.

  "At least another two days," the Narhani said soberly. He sat alone on Israel's command deck, and his long-snouted, saurian face was grave. "I am sorry, Sean. We thought—"

  "Not your fault," Sean interrupted. "We all knew it was coming. We just expected it to hold off longer, and then we lost all that time in the swamps. Our window should have been big enough, Twinkle Hooves."

  "True, but it's not only coming in faster, it's going to rain harder than we'd predicted." The Narhani sounded worried. Sean was less than one day's march from Erastor, and the rain—only a drizzle now—would be a downpour by evening. What that would do to flintlock rifles hardly bore thinking on.

  "Can we hold off till it clears?" Sandy gazed up at Sean, and her voice was anxious.

  " 'Fraid not." Sean sighed. "Ortak expects his 'reinforcements' by nightfall. If we suddenly stop moving, he's going to wonder why and send someone to find out. And if he does that—" He shrugged.

  "But you can't fight him without your rifles!" Sandy protested. "You don't have any pikes at all!"

  "No, but we do still have surprise."

  "Surprise! Are you out of your mind?! There are eighty thousand men up there, Sean! There's no way you can take their position away from them before they figure out what's happening!"

  "Maybe yes, and maybe no," Sean said stubbornly. "Don't forget the confusion factor. The rain's going to cut visibility. We should be able to get a lot closer before they figure out we aren't really Guardsmen, and there's a good chance they'll panic when their 'reinforcements' suddenly attack them. They don't have the kind of communication net a modern army would have, either. It's going to be mighty hard for them to get themselves sorted out when they have to rely on messengers to carry orders."

  "You're crazy!" she hissed. "Tamman, Harry—tell him!"

  "I think Sandy's right, Sean," Harriet said quietly. "It's too risky. Besides, even if he does figure out what's happening, Terrahk's already falling back on Baricon. Wait till the rain stops. Ortak's not going anywhere, and maybe he'll surrender when he realizes he's trapped between you and Tam."

  "Wrong answer, Harry," Tamman put in unhappily. "Ortak's not the surrendering kind, or he wouldn't have stopped at Erastor."

  "What else can he do?" Harriet demanded hotly.

  "He can come out after us," Sean answered. "He knows as well as we do that it's our rifles that give us the edge. You think he wouldn't take his chances on hitting us in the open if the rain knocks them out of the equation?"

  Sandy started to snap back, then stopped and bit her lip. She hugged herself and turned her back on Sean for a long, taut moment, then sighed.

  "No," she said finally, her voice low. "That's exactly what he'll do if he figures out what's happening."

  "You got it," Sean said, equally quietly, and kicked his toe into the mud beside the raised roadbed. "Any way you cut it, we've got to carry through with my marvelous plan."

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  "All right, boys—you heard Lord Sean. Now let's go kick the bastards' asses!"

  The officers of the First Brigade growled in agreement, and Folmak Folmakson grinned fiercely. He was a long, long way from Cragsend and anxious days waiting for the Church to condemn him for error just for searching for ways to make his mill a bit more efficient, and he was passionately grateful for it. Folmak loved God as much as the next man, but Malagor had been a captive province for twenty generations, and like many Malagorans, he'd harbored a festering resentment against the Inner Circle and their absentee bishops. Father Stomald, now. He was what a priest was supposed to be, and if the rest of the Temple had been like him . . .

  But it wasn't. Folmak settled into the saddle and checked all four pistols before he tucked them away in his boots and under his captured Guard cloak. The rain was falling harder, as Lord Sean had warned, and he'd ordered his sergeants to check each individual pan to be sure it was securely shut until it was needed. They were still going to have an appalling number of misfires, but he'd done all he could to minimize them.

  He put away the last pistol and looked over his shoulder for the signal to advance. Lord Sean stood surrounded by aides, speaking quietly and urgently to Tibold, hands moving in quick, incisive gestures, and Folmak remembered his look of surprise when the men had cheered his orders.

  Folmak hadn't been surprised, but Lord Sean had actually apologized to them, as if it were his fault they couldn't just stand around and wait till the rain stopped. That sort of concern made the army love Lord Sean, but it knew what it was about. Especially Folmak's men. His was the First Brigade, already called "the Old Brigade," composed of men who'd followed Father Stomald from the very beginning. They regarded themselves as the elite of Lord Sean's army, though the Second and Third Brigades were every bit as old—and, Folmak admitted grudgingly, as good—and they understood what was forcing Lord Sean's hand. Every man in the column knew they'd taken far longer than expected getting to Erastor, yet they also knew only Lord Sean and the Angel Sandy could have gotten them here at all. And the angels' message—that men should be free to shape their own lives and their own understanding of God's will—had ignited a furnace in the Malagorans' stubborn hearts. If Lord Sean needed them now, they were proud to be here, and if he decided to fix bayonets and charge a hurricane, they'd follow with a cheer.

  The regimental pipers formed in the intervals in the brigade's column, and Lord Sean nodded to his aides. They spurred up and down the entire length of the corps, and Folmak waved to his unit commanders.

  "Move out!" he barked, and the Angels' Army slogged through blowing sheets of rain towards Erastor.

  Sean watched his men move forward and tried to look confident. Every man in Folmak's brigade had been issued a Guard cloak, and his vanguard looked as much like Terrahk's relief force as he could make them, but the rest of his men wore Malagoran ponchos. One look at them would
tell the dullest picket what they were. The rain wasn't falling as hard as he'd feared—yet—but it was getting worse, and only First Brigade marched with slung weapons. The rest of his men carried their bayoneted rifles under their arms like hunters to shield the priming with their bodies and ponchos and keep rain from running down the muzzles. It was awkward and it looked like hell, but it was the best he could do to insure their ability to fire.

  He and Tibold had reorganized the army into six-hundred-man regiments, three to the brigade, and despite the rain and the slaughter to which he'd led them, each regiment cheered as it passed him. He slapped his streaming breastplate in answering salute, and his emotions were a welter of confusion. Shame for the mistakes which sent them into battle under such a hideous handicap. Pride in how they'd responded. Dread of the butcher's bill they were going to pay, a sense of awe that they were willing to pay it for him, and a strange, shivering eagerness. He'd seen battle and its aftermath now. He knew how horrible it was, how ugly and vile and brutal, yet part of him was actually eager to begin. Not glad, but . . . impatient. Anticipating.

  He shook his head, angry with himself. He couldn't think of the word, and he was ashamed of feeling whatever it was, but that didn't change it. He spurred ahead to overtake Folmak's brigade, and as he splashed along the road, he wished he could ride away from his own complex feelings as easily.

  Under-Captain Mathan stood under the lean-to and gazed out into the rain. It was barely midafternoon, yet it looked like late evening as charcoal clouds billowed overhead. His dragoons were glad to be spared the lot of the men manning the half-flooded entrenchments facing the heretics, but that didn't make their own duty pleasant. Like most of the Host, they'd lost all their baggage at Yortown, and they'd had to cobble up whatever they could to replace their Guard-issue tents. Mathan doubted the foraging parties had left an intact roof for miles around Erastor, but the valley's frequent rains soaked them to the skin anyway, whatever they did, and he was heartily sick of it.