A Mighty Fortress (123 page)

This,
Sir Koryn Gahrvai thought, standing on the quarterdeck of one of those galleons and watching the incoming clouds steadily erase the stars,
is ridiculous. I’m willing to believe in
seijins,
I guess, and I suppose—especially after listening to Father; talk about conversions!— I can accept that God is on Archbishop Maikel’s side. That’s not the same thing as being on
Cayleb’s
side, though! And even if it were, how did even a
seijin
arrange a night like this? It’s like the Archangels delivered the damned weather to order!

Under the circumstances, it was a reasonable enough question. Then again, Gahrvai didn’t know about SNARCs, or an AI named Owl, or the meteorological projections he could make. Nor did he have any idea that Merlin Athrawes, thousands of miles away in Tellesberg, could arrange to have one of Owl’s remotes quietly deliver his message on a timetable designed to get Gahrvai and his raiders here at precisely this time.

Actually, Merlin had aimed for any spot in a four- day window. In fact, he’d been prepared to settle for missing the window completely, given the vagaries of wind, weather, and the unpredictable interference of Murphy. It had seemed worth shooting for, though, and Gahrvai—and Hauwyl Chermyn—had surprised him with how quickly they’d moved. They’d been fortunate with the wind on their passage from Manchyr, as well.

Which was how Sir Koryn Gahrvai found himself watching the galleons sway their boats—rather larger and more numerous than most merchant galleons might have carried, if anyone had noticed—over the side on a calm, windless night blacker than the inside of an old boot. He was confident they would have managed under other weather conditions, but he wasn’t about to look a gift dragon in the mouth when God decided to give him
perfect
weather conditions.

Even if he didn’t know how the
seijins
had arranged it.

Now he waited as the first wave of Imperial Charisian Marines and Corisandian guardsmen who’d hidden below decks all day swarmed quietly up out of the galleons’ hatches and then down into the waiting boats. In all, there were al-most a thousand men spread between the two merchantmen. Even with a larger than usual complement of boats, they couldn’t land that many troops at once. On the other hand, after carefully studying charts of the harbor (and the maps which had accompanied the mysterious letter), Gahrvai and Major Danyel Portyr, commanding the Imperial Charisian Marine’s First Battalion, Third Regiment, had picked likely spots to land the first wave.

Gahrvai waited until the last man—but one—of the first wave had climbed down, then dropped lightly over the galleon’s side, himself. He slid down the rope until Yairman Uhlstyn, waiting below, reached up and grabbed the heel of one boot. Uhlstyn guided his foot down to one of the boat’s thwarts, and Gahrvai released the rope and dropped the last inch or so.

“All right,” he said quietly. “Let’s go.”

Four boats rowed silently, oarlocks muffled, across Telith Bay.

The city’s lights offered a sufficient navigation beacon for experienced Imperial Navy coxswains. In fact, the hard part was less finding their way to their destination than making certain they gave other anchored vessels a sufficiently wide berth. It was no part of Gahrvai and Portyr’s plans for some civilian anchor watch to hail them and raise any sort of alarm ashore.

Nothing of the sort happened, and Gahrvai’s boat slid quietly under one of the city’s older, more rickety piers. It was almost low water, and he was pleased to see his mysterious correspondent’s notes were, indeed, accurate. The receding tide had exposed a wide expanse of rocky shingle, roomy enough for half again as many men as he’d brought with him, nestled in the ink-black shadow of the abandoned pier. The first two boats were already disem-barking their passengers—a full company of guardsmen equipped with their personal weapons and a dozen bull’s-eye lanterns with firmly closed slides—when Gahrvai stepped ashore. He looked around just long enough to reassure himself of the spot’s suitability for landing, then nodded to the senior of the quartet of coxswains.

“This’ll do,” he said quietly. “Head back for the next lot.”

“Aye, Sir.”

The petty officer had a Chisholmian accent, Gahrvai noticed. Now the coxswain looked thoughtfully at the gentle waves rolling up onto the shingle.

“Tide’s going to start making in another half hour or so, Gen’ral,” he said. “Be at least twice that long till I can get the next load ashore. Might be you and your lads’re going to find yourselves wading afore that happens.”

“If we do, we do.” Gahrvai shrugged. “The good news”— he twitched his head at one of the pier’s pilings and the necklace of high- water shellfish and weeds which encircled it—“is that it’s not going to get a lot more than knee-deep, even when the tide’s all the way back in. Not that we won’t appreciate your moving things right along.”

“Oh, o’ course, Sir!” the coxswain chuckled. “We’ll do that little thing.”

“Good.” Gahrvai’s teeth flashed in a smile so white it was dimly visible even in the pier’s shadow, then he smacked the coxswain on the shoulder. “In that case, though,” he said a bit pointedly, “I suppose you’d best get started.”

The coxswain’s estimate turned out to have been almost uncannily accurate, the sort of offhand precision twenty or thirty years’ experience at sea could provide.

The water was little more than ankle- deep by the time all four boats came sliding silently out of the night once more, although the guardsmen had been standing there long enough to demonstrate that none of their boots were truly watertight. Gahrvai could feel the cold water squishing around his own toes, seeming to swirl a bit, even inside his boots, as small wavelets slopped across the shingle. It wasn’t the most pleasant sensation he’d ever experienced. On the other hand, he could think of quite a few which had been worse, and few of them had come his way in such a good cause.

“Captain says Major Portyr’s first lot made it ashore all right and tight, too, Gen’ral,” the Chisholmian coxswain said softly as the second load of guardsmen climbed out of the boats. “Reckon his second lot’ll be going ashore in ’bout another fifteen, twenty minutes.”

“Good,” Gahrvai said again. He looked around as Major Naiklos (who’d been promoted to command his own battalion since the Manchyr raid) and Uhlstyn got things organized. He considered what the coxswain had said and the street map which had come with the letter. He compared overland distances from his current position to his objective, then considered how long it would take Portyr to reach
his
primary objective. Allow another fifteen minutes or so for slippage, and . . .

“All right, Frahnk,” he said quietly, his mouth a foot from Naiklos’ ear, “it’s time we got them started moving. Your scouts have their bearings?”

“Yes, Sir,” Naiklos replied equally quietly, and grinned tightly. “And they’re good men, too. As a matter of fact, Yairman picked them.”

“I figured he would.” Gahrvai snorted, giving his armsman a look of affectionate exasperation. “Give him an inch, and he’ll take a mile, Major. Never has known his place.”

“Now, you know that’s not true, Sir,” Uhlstyn said. “Know my place perfectly, I do. Right here.” He pointed at the water slopping over the shingle approximately two feet behind Sir Koryn Gahrvai. “As for the rest, well—”

The armsman shrugged with the confidence of a trusted family henchman, and Gahrvai shook his head.

“All right, Major,” he said resignedly. “If Yairman’s deigned to sign off on the suitability of your scouts, let’s move out.”

In point of fact, Major Naiklos’ scouts did their job perfectly. They’d had ample opportunity to study a copy of the map which had come with Gahrvai’s letter. Their copy omitted all of the detailed information whose origin would have been difficult to explain, but it was more than sufficient for them to pick up their landmarks as they circled around the harbor district. Gahrvai’s men moved through the shadows of ware houses, avoiding the glow of lanterns where still- open taverns served their customers. The lead scouts were far enough ahead to spot even the occasional prostitutes before they could notice that the better part of three hundred guardsmen were slipping through the darkened streets of Telitha.

Most of those prostitutes, and the handful of other pedestrians who fell into the scouts’ clutches, were more than a little uneasy to find themselves “requested” to accompany Gahrvai’s troopers. None were foolish enough to mistake the politeness of the invitation as an indication that they had any choice, however, and one look at the grim- faced guardsmen was enough to convince any of them to keep his—or her—mouth shut rather than risk raising the alarm. They might not know exactly what Gahrvai and his men were up to, but they knew enough to be certain it was none of
their
business . . . what ever it was.

Despite his own careful planning, and despite the experience of the scouts Naiklos and Uhlstyn had chosen, Gahrvai was actually surprised when they managed to get all the way to their initial objective without raising a single alarm. Aside from a handful of dogs who’d taken exception to their presence—and the handful of involuntary fellow travelers they’d swept up along the way—no one in the entire city seemed to have taken the least note of their presence.

Doesn’t say much for the local guard’s alertness,
Gahrvai mused.
Not that I’m going to complain about it . . . to night, at least. But, Langhorne—! I know we were taking precautions, but I have to wonder if these clowns would’ve noticed us if I’d come in with a brass band and a torchlight parade!

On the other hand, he supposed Earl Storm Keep and his fellow conspirators might have been discouraging the city guard from noticing anything they weren’t supposed to notice.

In fact,
he thought slowly,
maybe we aren’t the first bunch of armed men to be creeping around in the middle of the night. If they’ve been working on this as long as our letter- writing friend says they have, they may have marched quite a few men through Telitha to collect arms from the ware houses here. That could explain why all the locals are being so careful to avoid noticing
us.

That thought made him even more grateful for the ten additional transports—and the six escorting war galleons—which ought to be about five miles out at the moment. Of course, they’d hoped for a bit more wind when they were laying their plans, and it was entirely possible their reinforcements—an entire regiment each of Imperial Marines and Corisandian Guardsmen—were going to be delayed.

Well, if everything goes the way it’s supposed to, we won’t
need
reinforcements,
he encouraged himself, resolutely not thinking about how seldom “everything” actually did go the way it was supposed to.