Hell's Foundations Quiver (26 page)

“I know.”

Duchairn understood the logic behind that decision. He wasn't sure he
agreed
with it—and he knew damned well Allayn Maigwair didn't!—but the logic in question, unfortunately, was Zhaspahr Clyntahn's.

By every normal rule of warfare, Cahnyr Kaitswyrth's Army of Glacierheart was likely to be attacked sooner than the Army of the Sylmahn, simply because the snow would melt so much earlier in Cliff Peak. Despite all that had happened to the Army of the Sylmahn, however, it remained little more than nine hundred miles from Siddar City itself, and the Sylmahn Gap was the only direct invasion route to the Siddarmarkian capital. If Wyrshym could hold his position against the heretics—
if
he could hold—the Army of God would be well placed to resume Mother Church's inexorable advance. Of course, it was entirely possible, perhaps even probable, Wyrshym
wouldn't
hold his position. What had happened at Esthyr's Abbey last five-day suggested the Charisians were much more winter-mobile than anyone had expected. Worse, the Church had no firsthand report on the battle because not one defender had escaped death or capture, which had to cast doubt on Wyrshym's ability to hold his other positions. But no one could expect Clyntahn to admit that, and he'd demanded that every possible resource be used to bolster the Army of the Sylmahn, no matter how problematical its chance to hold or how badly those resources might be needed somewhere else.

On the other hand, even Zhaspahr can be right
sometimes
, can't he?
Duchairn reminded himself.
It may be more a matter of spleen and bile than logic, but that doesn't
necessarily
make him wrong
.

Even a rational human being could justify running serious risks to sustain Wyrshym's army. The strategic advantages were obvious, and the sheer number of men under his command was another argument in favor of straining every sinew to preserve it. Although the Army of the Sylmahn had shrunk to little more than half its original strength, sixty thousand men were still sixty thousand men, and if Wyrshym
couldn't
hold his ground, his losses as he retreated were likely to rival those the Duke of Harless had suffered in the South March.

For that matter, we could afford to lose Cliff Peak a lot better than we could afford to lose Hildermoss. And Kaitswyrth's supply lines are in better shape. We could move fresh troops more rapidly to respond to an attack there than anywhere else. So if we have to run a risk somewhere—which, obviously, we do—risking Kaitswyrth probably does make more sense. I only wish I had more faith in
his
ability to hold his ground. After what Eastshare did to him last summer, though.…

The Treasurer gave himself a mental shake. Maigwair, he knew, shared his doubts about Kaitswyrth's mental state. The bishop militant's former brash confidence had been replaced by a querulous anxiety which saw a heretic hiding under every leaf and rock. It was bad enough when the soldiers of an army felt half defeated before the first shot was fired; it was far worse when the
commander
of an army felt that way, and Maigwair had tried repeatedly to ease Kaitswyrth out of command. Unfortunately, Kaitswyrth continued to enjoy the confidence of Sedryk Zavyr, the Army of Glacierheart's intendant, and the Inquisition because of his fiery devotion to purging the Republic of all heresy. Replacing him with someone else would have required a knock-down, drag-out fight with Clyntahn, who valued fervor even more than competence.

“One advantage of converting Bishop Militant Bahrnabai's rifles is that it gives him a degree of standardization the rifles we've been delivering to the Mighty Host don't really have yet,” Fultyn offered after a moment. There was probably a little sourness in that, Duchairn thought, given what a huge percentage of new rifle production had been poured into the task of rearming the vast Harchongese army wintering along the Holy Langhorne Canal. “The Host's rifles come from every manufactory with a rifle shop, whereas all the screws and all the taps and dies going to the Army of the Sylmahn are from right here at Saint Kylmahn's or from Saint Greyghor's. So if it's necessary to replace one of the screws, the Bishop Militant's armorers should find it a fairly simple task. For that matter, they'll have the dies to cut new replacement screws of their own, if they have to.”

“That's good to know,” Duchairn said, with a degree of understanding which would never have occurred to him before the last five or six months.

Of course, that had been before Brother Lynkyn explained the huge edge the heretics enjoyed because of the interchangeability of their parts. He and Lieutenant Zhwaigair had reached many of the same conclusions about those advantages independently, and ever since Fultyn had explained them to Duchairn and Maigwair, he and Tahlbaht Bryairs, his assistant, had bent their minds on ways to offset some of the enemy's advantages.

At least they'd had a few plusses of their own to help. The largest and most immediate was a massive increase in manpower—and
woman
power—thanks to Duchairn's non-discretionary directive that the great orders release at least twenty-five percent of their ordained members, lay members, and employees to the Jihad's needs. Those orders were by far the biggest employers in all of Safehold, yet even the Treasurer had been startled by the sheer number of warm bodies his order had produced. And to be fair, the orders had sent their fittest, healthiest people in almost every case. He hadn't really counted on their doing that without a little … encouragement from himself and the Inquisition, and the size of the workforce it had produced was one of the Jihad's happier surprises.

A large chunk of that workforce—much to its disgruntlement—had found itself assigned to the fields, to Duchairn's quartermaster's corps, or even to the canal repair crews, but even more had been assigned to the manufactories. Hands which had been soft from years of office work (or
no
work, really, in too many cases) had become hardened to actual toil in Mother Church's service, and Duchairn suspected it was doing their owners' spiritual health a world of good. Not that all of those owners would have agreed with him.

It had certainly done Mother Church's
manufactories
good, however. The influx of workers had found themselves incorporated into more of Bryairs' “circles of production,” which were rapidly spreading beyond foundries like St. Kylmahn's to other areas of manufacturing, as well. Not without resistance. The Gunmakers Guild continued to protest (despite all evidence to the contrary) that so many “new and untried methods of manufacture must inevitably reduce our ability to arm Mother Church's defenders in the field,” and some of the other guilds had joined them as they recognized the threat to their members' prestige and income. Unfortunately for the guildsmen, Zhaspahr Clyntahn found himself in the rare position of actually agreeing with the Treasurer and Captain General.

None of the new workers could have been considered masters of their new trades—the new “gunmakers,” for example, each knew how to make only a single part, using gauges and jigs provided to them—but that was fine with Bryairs. He'd built his “circles” around numbers of workers calculated to produce each of a rifle's parts in the quantities needed to allow the circle's
other
workers to assemble complete weapons as rapidly as possible. None of them could have built an entire rifle, the way trained gunsmiths could, but each circle could turn out several times as many rifles as the same number of individual gunmakers could have produced using traditional techniques.

Not content with that achievement, Fultyn and Bryairs were now pushing to supply every circle, wherever it might be, with uniform gauges and jigs for as many parts as possible. They'd all been manufactured solely at St. Kylmahn's and St. Greyghor's, initially, but each shipment to one of the other manufactories was accompanied by a member of Fultyn's staff to oversee the fabrication on-site of still more of them from the master patterns. It would take time, but once the process was completed the parts made using those patterns should be interchangeable with parts from any other source. Not to the same degree or with the same precision as the heretics managed, unfortunately. All too often, they would still require some adjustment, some filing and shaping to fit. Overall, however, the improvement would be enormous.

They'd already achieved an unprecedented degree of standardization in the three central arms manufactories around Zion: St. Kylmahn's, St. Greyghor's, and St. Marytha's. All receivers, breech screws, trigger groups, and caplocks produced by those three manufactories were fully interchangeable. The bulk of the rifles being manufactured outside Zion—which, unfortunately, meant the majority of
all
rifles at the moment—still used locally produced and cut screws and breeches, but the new gauges, jigs, and dies were spreading more rapidly than Duchairn had allowed himself to hope they might. There was no way Mother Church's manufactories were going to match the heretics' ability to swap
any
parts between rifles, wherever they'd been made, yet if they could match that capability for the most
critical
components, that might be good enough.

And, in the meantime, they'd adopted yet another heretic innovation and every manufactory had begun stamping every part it made with its own identifying cartouche. At the very least, an armorer at the front would be able to identify the source of the original part at a glance, which would significantly speed repairs by telling him where to look for a replacement that would fit with the least possible adjustment.

“I think—” the vicar began, then paused as the office door opened once more and Brother Zhoel reappeared.

Fultyn's secretary was accompanied by another lay brother, pushing a wheeled cart covered by a snowy linen cloth and bearing two tall steins of beer, two large covered plates, a loaf of crusty brown bread, napkins, and silverware. The lay brothers bustled about, whipping off the covers to reveal two more loaves of bread which had been hollowed out to contain generous servings of clam chowder, rich with fresh cream, potatoes, and corn and dusted with grated cheese. By this time of year, the clams were canned and the corn had been desiccated for preservation, but it still smelled heavenly. One bowl was deposited on Brother Lynkyn's desk while the cart itself was wheeled over and parked conveniently in front of the vicar. Brother Zhoel whipped another cloth off the butter dish, took one more critical look at the food, then bowed to Duchairn and Fultyn before he and his fellow withdrew as wordlessly as they had arrived.

“I believe some of your staff might have futures in restaurant careers after the Jihad, Brother Lynkyn,” Duchairn observed, and Fultyn chuckled.

“As long as the restaurant doesn't try to steal Brother Khalvyn or Sister Tabtha from our kitchens, Your Grace. I think you'll find the soup palatable.”

Duchairn bent his head in silent blessing for a moment, then signed himself with Langhorne's scepter and picked up his spoon. He tried the chowder cautiously, then smiled in delight.

“You don't need to worry about any restaurants raiding your kitchens, Brother,” he said. “I'll cheerfully anathematize anyone who tries! Now
my
kitchen, on the other hand.…”

Fultyn smiled back, pleased by the compliment—which, he admitted, was well deserved—and applied himself to his meal with gusto. He and Duchairn ate in a companionable silence which was made more peaceful and intimate by the increasingly angry wind-whine outside the office windows. By the time they finished, only crusts remained, and they sat back, nursing their beer steins as they returned to the matters which had brought the vicar to St. Kylmahn's.

“If I might ask, Your Grace,” Fultyn said after a moment, “how well are the foundries outside Zion converting to the new steelmaking processes?”

His tone was wistful, and despite the gravity of the situation, Duchairn smiled. Winter had closed in too quickly for any of the foundries in the northern Temple Lands to construct the new “open hearth” furnaces before everything froze solid.

“The work's coming along well, Brother—thanks largely to
your
efforts. There's been some resistance, but most of our ironmasters are kicking themselves for not having come up with the same concepts themselves. As you pointed out to me, many of them are refinements of things we already knew—very clever, but not radically new inventions—that the heretics came up with before they occurred to anyone else. And where there
has
been resistance, Vicar Zhaspahr's overcome it handily. Five new furnaces will go into production in the Episcopate of Saint Grovair, on Fairstock Bay in Hayzor, and at Malantor in the Duchy of Malansath early next month, and a dozen or so more will be beginning operations a few five-days after that in Kyznetzov and Shwei. By May, we'll have several producing in Queiroz and even a few in Tiegelkamp and Stene. And, of course, once the thaw sets in, we'll be able to begin expanding and converting Saint Kylmahn's and the other northern foundries. By the end of May, according to my inspectors' reports, we ought to be producing almost as much steel each month, just in the new hearths, as we produced each month in all the crucibles in the Temple Lands combined last year. Actually, that's in
addition to
the crucibles' production, since they're staying in full operation until we can switch over to the new hearths completely, and output's going to increase steadily as we get additional furnaces into operation.”

Fultyn's nostrils flared as he drew a deep breath of satisfaction. And quite probably of relief, now that Duchairn thought about it. He'd been the one ordered to produce the plans and directions from the captured heretic documents, and Lynkyn Fultyn was fully aware of the ambivalence with which Zhaspahr Clyntahn and the Inquisition regarded someone like him. Mother Church might need his ability to think outside the bounds of tradition, but that didn't mean the Proscriptions' guardians had to like it. Had those plans not worked.…