Hell's Foundations Quiver (37 page)

“From Ohlarn, First Corps takes Rankylyr. That should take about another five-day and a half. By then, Second Corps should've caught up with First Corps. At that point, General Brohkamp peels off someone to hold Rankylyr—probably Brigadier Traigair and Third Brigade—while First Corps takes advantage of its ability to move through deep snow and sets off cross-country for
here
.”

The cursor swooped again, this time five-hundred-plus miles almost due west to the town of Five Forks.

“This is the part that's making Cayleb nervous,” Merlin said. “Marching cross-country, Kynt can't count on moving more than twenty miles a day even with his snow lizards and caribou. In good, clear weather, he could probably come close to twenty-five or even thirty, for short bursts, with First Corps' ski troops and snowshoes. His supply echelons couldn't keep up with them, though, and in really bad weather, not even the Charisian Army's going to be able to move at all. So, call it an average of fifteen miles a day, instead. At that rate, it takes him thirty days to reach Five Forks. That
should
let him get there with at least a couple of five-days or so to spare, assuming Owl's long-range weather projections hold up and he doesn't get hit by an early thaw, on the one hand, or a series of blizzards, on the other. It'll be tighter for Second Corps, but with First Corps to break trail, Brohkamp's men should be able to stay pretty close behind Kynt's point. Barring those blizzards I mentioned, at any rate.”

“But once he takes Five Forks, he'll be in the middle of enemy-held territory, with the Mighty Host north of him and Wyrshym
south
of him, won't he?” Aivah asked.

“Sure he will … with fifty thousand Charisian infantry with artillery support.” Merlin's smile would have shamed a kraken. “Not only that, but whatever happens to the weather in New Northland and Tarikah, the thaw's going to come at least several five-days later along the Holy Langhorne Canal. That means the Mighty Host either won't be able to move at all, or else that it'll move very, very slowly. In the meantime, Nybar's trapped in Fairkyn, eating his way through his stockpiled supplies. Even if he somehow slips away from Makgrygair,
our
artillery will be emplaced at Rankylyr when he tries to move south to rejoin Wyrshym. And whatever happens to
him
, no more of those new rifles and new pieces of artillery'll be able to move past Five Forks to Wyrshym. For that matter, his entire existing supply line—such as it is and what there is of it—will be cut.”

“And what about Kynt's supplies?” Cayleb asked sardonically.

“Kynt's supplies are … problematical,” Merlin acknowledged with a crooked smile. “I did say I thought it was an ‘audacious' plan, didn't I?”

“Yes, I believe you did,” Cayleb replied affably.

“Well, according to his calculations, he ought to be able to haul along enough supplies to keep his men and his horses and draft animals reasonably well fed during his advance to Five Forks. It'll be a long way back to Ohlarn, which he plans to make his advanced supply head after Makgrygair seals off Fairkyn, but it ought to be doable. Things get dicier after that.”

Aivah cocked her head.

“Somehow that doesn't sound incredibly reassuring, Merlin,” she said. “What do you mean by ‘dicier'?”

“He means Kynt's planning on eating his snow lizards and caribou,” Cayleb told her flatly.

She looked shocked, and Merlin shrugged.

“It's always possible that if he moves quickly enough and the Church is in enough doubt about his actual objectives he'll be able to take Five Forks by a coup de main—sorry. That's from an Old Earth language called ‘French.' It means ‘a blow of the hand,' or a sudden strike that gets through your opponent's guard. Anyway, if he can take Five Forks before anyone thinks about destroying the supply center there, he'll have plenty of food and fodder. On the other hand, planning an operation which
relied
on doing that would be pretty damned stupid, so as Cayleb's comment suggests, Kynt's run his calculations on the basis that he
won't
capture Five Forks' supply dumps.

“To begin with, the caribou will find some forage even in North Haven. That'll help on the advance. The snow lizards, of course, are carnivores. That presents problems of its own, but if worse comes to worst, he'll be able to keep the snow lizards going by butchering some of the caribou as he empties the supply sleds they're pulling. After he takes Five Forks—assuming he didn't take the supply dumps intact—he slaughters the draft animals he doesn't need anymore and uses them to keep his troops and probably his snow lizards fed. If he slaughters the caribou first, it would ease his animal feed constraints and let him retain all of his available grain and fodder for his mounted infantry and his artillery draft animals.”

From her expression, she didn't feel a lot better, and Merlin shrugged.

“Best-case scenario, Aivah, he takes the supply dumps, Second Corps closes up with him, and we get enough additional draft animals forward to him—we're expecting another convoy of caribou from Raven's Land in a couple of five-days, for example—that he doesn't have to do that. More probable scenario—assuming he
doesn't
take the dumps intact—he does have to slaughter somewhere around a third of his caribou. Maybe half. That reduces his mobility, but it should keep his troops fed through early June. By that point, the roads will be improving, we should have Fairkyn, and the ice on the Ice Ash will have broken up, which means we'll be able to move up the river from Ranshair and shift his primary supply head all the way up to Ohlarn, as planned. That would shorten his overland supply route from Grayback Lake by over eleven hundred miles.” He shook his head. “That'll free up more than enough transport to keep Five Forks supplied even cross-country from Rankylyr, and by the
end
of June, the Navy'll be back in Spinefish Bay. With naval gunfire support, a couple of the new Siddarmarkian rifle divisions should be able to retake Salyk quickly, at which point we begin an advance up the North Hildermoss from the coast towards Cat-Lizard Lake. There're a lot of locks along the way that the Church can destroy to slow us down and make things difficult, but that's still going to pose a threat Maigwair has to take seriously.”

Aivah was nodding now, her eyes intent, and Merlin shrugged again.

“With Kynt at Five Forks, Wyrshym would be in the same sort of trap as Nybar at Fairkyn. Except, of course, that if Nybar manages to hold out until the ice on the river breaks, we'll be able to send ironclads and additional troop transports all the way upriver to reinforce Makgrygair. For that matter, we'd be able to release another couple of Charisian divisions from the Reserve here in Old Province to create an additional army outside Fairkyn, probably under General Sahmyrsyt, because with the shorter supply line, they wouldn't overwhelm Kynt's available transport. At that point, Nybar either surrenders or we take the town away from him the hard way.

“It's unlikely Clyntahn will let Wyrshym retreat in time to escape what Kynt has planned for him. He'd have to pull out almost immediately, as soon as he figures out what's coming, and you know even better than we do how hard it'd be for Maigwair or Duchairn to convince Clyntahn to let him do that. If he doesn't, he's stuck at Guarnak and badly outnumbered by the forces we can bring to bear once we've taken Fairkyn and opened the lower reaches of the Ice Ash to our river traffic, and he's cut off from the Church's new rifles and artillery, as well.

“If the thaw comes as much earlier in eastern East Haven than along the Holy Langhorne as usual, the Mighty Host will still be stuck in ice, snow, or mud at that point. If they are, Kynt stays put at Five Forks to block any retreat while Sahmyrsyt or Makgrygair's Siddarmarkians advance through the Ohlarn Gap and General Stohnar comes north with the army the Republic's been building up in the lower Sylmahn Gap over the winter. The chance that Wyrshym's going to get out of
that
 … isn't very good, let's say.”

“And if we're unlucky about the weather and it thaws earlier than projected along the Holy Langhorne?” Cayleb asked quietly, and Merlin shrugged.

“If the Harchongians can move sooner than we're anticipating, and if they're able to coordinate with Wyrshym—and the Church is prepared to ignore the threat coming up the North Hildermoss
and
what should be happening to it about the same time down in Cliff Peak—we could be in trouble,” he conceded. “At that point, Kynt has to hold Five Forks while the Siddarmarkians deal with Wyrshym and all of our supply calculations get a lot more … complicated. But he's absolutely right about the payoff if he can pull it off, Cayleb. And about the fact that Eastshare, High Mount, and Symkyn are going to be occupying just a
bit
of Maigwair's attention, come spring. You know he is.”

“Yes, I do.” Cayleb sighed. Then he managed a crooked, half-bitter smile and shook his head at Merlin. “I do, and if
I
were the one leading this … this ‘calculated risk' of his, I'd probably be just as eager to try it as he is. But I'm not.” He shook his head again. “I'm the one who has to authorize someone
else
to do it, and if it doesn't work—if it turns into a disaster because we get two solid five-days of blizzards nobody anticipated, or the thaw comes early in the Border States, or it comes late on the Ice Ash—I'll be the one who rolled the dice—because, in the final analysis, the responsibility's mine, whoever came up with the idea in the first place—and crapped out with the lives of sixty thousand men.”

“I know.” Merlin looked across at the emperor who was also his friend, and his blue eyes were almost gentle. “I know. But look at it this way, Cayleb. If you do decide to let him do this, you'll get to use your own dice, and the fellow you'll have actually rolling them has a pretty damned good track record.”

“That's certainly true,” the emperor admitted wryly. “And if he thinks he can pull it off, I don't suppose
I
ought to be telling him no. It still makes me nervous as hell, though. And I think before we make any decisions on this, we need to discuss it with Domynyk and Sharleyan, once they both wake up. And with Stohnar, for that matter, once Kynt's official dispatch gets to us here. Most of the Army of Midland's Charisian, but if we screw around and
lose
that army, he's the one whose northern flank's going to come apart all over again.”

Merlin nodded and Cayleb took a long swallow from his whiskey glass. His expression was sour, but Merlin knew him too well to be fooled. The emperor still didn't like the idea, for all the reasons he'd just listed, yet he already knew he probably
was
going to sign off on it.

“Well,” Aivah took another sip of her own—a far more delicate and ladylike one in her case—then set down her glass, unfolded her legs, and stood, “I'm just as happy to leave all those hard, sweaty military decisions up to you and the Emperor, Merlin.” She swept Cayleb a graceful curtsey, and the emperor chuckled. “In the meantime, however, I have errands of my own to run. I appreciate your willingness to loan me your recon skimmer.”

“You're welcome,” Merlin said solemnly. “Just try not to break it.”

“Since Owl's going to be flying it by remote while I keep
my
hands safely off the controls, perhaps you should take that up with
him
,” she suggested sweetly.

“I guess any parent worries when his kids take the air car out without him,” Merlin sighed.

“I shall endeavor to deliver it and Madam Pahrsahn to the Cave intact, Commander Athrawes,” Owl said over the com link, and Merlin chuckled, although his humor was slightly forced.

Since the PICA Owl had built had been loaded with a duplicate of Nimue Alban's memories and personality, the AI had been forced to find a way to differentiate between the different iterations of her. Fortunately, it was a situation the Federation had faced before.

Under Federation law, it had been legal to emancipate electronic personalities. Indeed, quite a few of them—only a tiny number, perhaps, compared to the size of the Federation's total population, but almost a million overall—had been housed in PICAs free of the hardwired time limit of Nimue's PICA. The ten-day limit in her case had been required because PICAs like hers
weren't
independent entities. They were extensions of an existing biological intelligence, and the limit was intended to do two things: first, prevent the cybernetic version of that intelligence from “going rogue,” and, second, to establish legal responsibility for any of the PICA's actions.

The PICAs built for emancipated personalities lacked that limitation. Instead,
they
were hardwired to prevent any other personality from ever being loaded to them in the first place, and the question of whether those copies of flesh-and-blood humans were actually human—like the question of whether or not they had “souls”—had remained hotly debated. There'd been so few of them, and the ability to create last-generation PICAs had been so comparatively recent—and the threat of the Gbaba had provided such an enormous distraction from such concerns—that any sort of definitive philosophical consensus had been impossible to achieve. Merlin Athrawes found it rather bitterly ironic that Nimue Alban had never thought too much about either of those questions. Or perhaps she had when she volunteered to die so that a PICA with her memories could awaken here on Safehold. If she had, however, neither he nor Nimue Chwaeriau would ever know a thing about it.

Legally
, however, the Federation had concluded that—like the virtual personalities created for its military R&D—the electronic people living in those PICAs had the same legal rights as any biological entity. Many of them, in fact, had been members of the military, and a handful had even served as elected members of the Federation Assembly.