Hell's Foundations Quiver (5 page)

“The dispatches are less than detailed,” the earl replied, never looking away from the harbor's soothing panorama. “Messages tend to be that way when people have to send them by wyvern, and the semaphore line was cut early in the Charisian attack. One thing they do make clear, however, is that the real threat didn't come out of Fort Tairys. It wasn't Eastshare; they got an entirely separate force down through eastern Cliff Peak past the Desnairian cavalry at Cheyvair. One big enough to block—and hold—the high road through the Kyplyngyr Forest.” He shrugged heavily. “According to the message I've seen”—he didn't mention that he wasn't supposed to have seen it … and wouldn't have, if not for Bishop Staiphan Maik—“Ahlverez did his damnedest to fight his way through them. His attacks obviously hurt the Charisians badly, but they pretty much
gutted
our part of the army in the process, so Harless finally agreed to pull the majority of his own infantry back from Ohadlyn's Gap for a second attempt to clear the high road. That's when Eastshare attacked out of Fort Tairys, and with one hell of a lot more than twenty thousand men.”

He gazed out over the harbor for another moment, then turned on his heel to face his subordinates.

“My best guess, reading between the lines, is that the Charisians and Siddarmarkians must've had a lot closer to
seventy
thousand men, probably more, and too many of the Desnairians were cavalry. Even an admiral knows that's
not
the sort of troops equipped or trained to take on entrenched infantry in the damned woods, and the Army of Shiloh was half starved and riddled with sickness. I doubt Ahlverez and Harless between them could actually have put much over half their official strength into the field. And let's face it—a fight with the Imperial Charisian Army at anything like equal numerical odds is a losing proposition.”

Sir Ahbail Bahrdailahn, Thirsk's flag lieutenant, looked uneasy at that remark. Not because he disagreed, but because that sort of frankness could be dangerous. Thirsk knew that, but if he couldn't trust these men there was no one on the face of Safehold he
could
trust. If one of them was prepared to inform the Inquisition that he was preaching defeatism when he shared the truth with them, there was no point even trying to stem the disaster he saw flowing towards his kingdom like some vast, dark tide.

“Do we have any idea of how severe our losses have been?” Baiket asked somberly, and Thirsk grimaced.

“Not really. Or if anybody does have an estimate, it hasn't been shared with me. I do know Hanth inflicted heavy casualties on the Army of the Seridahn when he attacked out of Thesmar, though.”

The flag captain's eyes flickered at that, and Thirsk didn't blame him. Officially, Sir Fahstyr Rychtyr's command had been renamed solely as an honor, in perhaps belated recognition of the importance to the Jihad and the Kingdom of its accomplishments. But only an idiot—which Baiket was not—could have failed to note Mother Church's tendency to rename armies in what certainly
looked
like efforts to stiffen their morale in the face of unmitigated disaster. And
that
, the earl thought, did not bode well.

“The heretics've driven General Rychtyr almost all the way back to Evyrtyn,” he continued. “I don't know what his losses were at Cheryk and Trevyr, but it doesn't sound good. And Ahlverez is probably going to lose a lot of whatever he managed to pull out of the Kyplyngyr. I don't see how anyone could've gotten a message to him yet to warn him Rychtyr's lost Cheryk, much less Trevyr, so he's probably marching straight towards Hanth right this minute. And we've lost touch with everything east of Syrk on the Saint Alyk, as well.” He shook his head and puffed out his cheeks. “Frankly, I'll be astonished if we get as much as a third of Ahlverez's troops back, and I wouldn't count on
any
of his artillery making it out.”

The only sound was wind and wave as his subordinates looked at one another in dismay. Clearly the rumor mill had yet to catch up with how bad it truly was. Probably, he thought dryly, because the gossip mongers couldn't believe even a Desnairian could truly have proved as inept as the late and—in Dohlar, at any rate—
very
unlamented Duke of Harless.

“The good news—or as good as it gets, anyway—is that about a third of the riflemen headed up to reinforce Rychtyr are equipped with the new Saint Kylmahns,” he wondered if his subordinates found that name as ironic as he did, given who'd actually designed the new rifle, “so at least they'll have breechloaders of their own. And if he can hang on for another few five-days, he'll have at least a couple of batteries of the new rifled angle-guns, too. Combined with the weather and his entrenchments, he ought to be able to hold his position fairly well. Certainly against anything Hanth can throw at him.”

The others nodded, as if he'd just said something hopeful, and he bit his tongue against an unworthy temptation to point out that the Army of Shiloh's disaster had revealed that unlike the Republic of Siddarmark Army or the Earl of Hanth's force of Marines and seamen, the Imperial Charisian Army was amply provided with the sort of cavalry—and highly mobile, new model field artillery—needed to work around a fortified position and cut the canal in its rear. Once the forces no doubt pursuing Ahlverez at this very moment reached Evyrtyn, Rychtyr was going to find himself in an even more unenviable position than the rolling disaster which had enveloped the Army of Shiloh. Unless, of course, he had both the wit and the intestinal fortitude to fall back along the Sheryl-Seridahn Canal faster than they could cut it behind him.

From what he knew of Rychtyr, he certainly had the wit, and he might well have the moral courage. Unfortunately, he might not have it, either. And even if he did, that was the sort of decision which could have fatal consequences. Lywys Gardynyr had had a little personal experience of his own in that regard, and the Inquisition had grown even less patient with faint-heartedness in the service of Mother Church over the last few years.

“Sir Rainos always was a bit … heedless, My Lord,” Baiket said. “You might say that runs in the family.”

Thirsk's lips quirked in a sour smile at his flag captain's none too oblique reference to Rainos Ahlverez's cousin, Sir Faidel Ahlverez, the deceased Duke of Malikai. Malikai had also been a cousin by marriage of Aibram Zaivyair, the Duke of Thorast, who—like Ahlverez—held Thirsk personally responsible for Malikai's disastrous defeat off Armageddon Reef. It wasn't hard to follow Baiket's logic, and the truth was that much as Thirsk regretted what had happened to the Army of Shiloh, he was far from blind to the way in which any damage to Ahlverez's reputation and standing had to reflect upon the men who'd made themselves his patrons. And anything that weakened Thorast's grip on the Navy had to be a good thing from Lywys Gardynyr's perspective.

“I think we can all agree Sir Rainos was … overconfident before he set out for Alyksberg,” he said out loud. “And if I'm going to be honest, I suppose I should admit the thought of his coming a cropper personally doesn't fill my heart with dismay,” he added with a generous thousand percent understatement. “But I've read some of the dispatches he sent home to Duke Fern and Duke Salthar. On that basis, I have to say that however overconfident he may've been before Alyksberg, he did his damnedest to prevent most of Duke Harless' … questionable decisions, shall we say.”

He decided not to mention the letters he'd received from Shulmyn Rahdgyrz, the Baron of Tymplahr. He hoped his old friend was still alive somewhere out there in the muddy, bloody wilderness of the South March, but according to Tymplahr, Sir Rainos Ahlverez had turned out to be remarkably unlike certain of his kinsmen. He'd actually learned from experience.

“Whatever part Sir Rainos may have played in bringing all this about, what's happened to his army's far too serious for me to take any satisfaction from how it may have damaged his reputation,” he went on more soberly. “And not just because of the human cost. He had over half the Army's total field strength under his command, Stywyrt. That's probably entirely gone, for all practical purposes. Even if we get some of the regiments back, they'll have to be completely brought back up to strength, reorganized, and—undoubtedly—
reequipped
before they can possibly be effective fighting units again. And where do you think they're going to look for the manpower—and the weapons—for that?”

Baiket's blue eyes darkened and he nodded soberly. The Navy had been reduced to a much smaller slice of the kingdom's available resources in order to equip and field the army the Temple had demanded be launched into Siddarmark. Now that so much of that army had been destroyed and the threat of an enemy counterattack across Dohlar's eastern frontiers had become real, the Navy was only too likely to find itself on even shorter rations.

“My Lord,” Khapahr said carefully, “they can't reduce our priorities too much. Not on the new projects, especially.”

“They may decide they don't have any choice,” Thirsk disagreed grimly. “When there's a slash lizard breaking down your front door, the great dragon raiding your neighbor's pasture has to take second priority, don't you think?”

“My Lord, the Charisians aren't loose in our
neighbor's
pasture; they're loose in
our
pasture, or they damned well will be soon enough. The Harchongians're going to be hit hard enough if they start sending raiding forces into the western Gulf again, but surely the Army has to understand the consequences if we lose control of the
eastern
Gulf!”

Thirsk nodded unhappily. His reports on the new armored galleons the Charisians had used to retake Claw Island were far short of complete. Out of Admiral Krahl's entire garrison, less than a dozen men—the most senior an army lieutenant—had escaped the debacle by commandeering a sixteen-foot sailing dinghy, somehow evading the Charisian pickets, and crossing the six hundred and seventy miles of stormy salt water between Claw Island and the Harchongese province of Kyznetzov.

In the winter … in an open boat … without a single trained naval officer to get them through it.

He was astounded they'd survived and profoundly grateful for what little they'd been able to report, but it would have been ever so much more useful if one of the
naval
officers had gotten away. All the actual escapees had been able to tell anyone was that at least two of the Charisian galleons had been invulnerable to the defending artillery. Obviously, they must have been armored, like the “smoking ships” the Charisians had sent rampaging through the canals and rivers in Bishop Militant Bahrnabai's rear last summer. The good news was that they'd been galleons, propelled by the masts and sails he understood, not whatever deviltry the river ironclads used. But to offset that smidgeon of sunlight, the artillery they'd ignored had been naval guns equipped to fire not only explosive shells but red-hot round shot—
heavy
round shot, not the lighter projectiles of the field artillery which had failed to stop the ironclads along the canals.

At least there were only two of them
, he reminded himself.
So far, at least
.

“Ahlvyn's not the most diplomatic fellow in the world, My Lord,” Baiket said, “but he does have a point. Admiral Rohsail knows his duty, and he'll do his best, but if the
batteries
couldn't stop those bastards.…”

“I know. I know!” Thirsk shrugged irritably. Not because he was angry at Baiket, but because the flag captain had such an excellent point. Still.…

“I agree with everything both of you've said. On the other hand, all the witnesses we have agree there were only two of those armored galleons in the attack. It's possible they're wrong, but I don't think so.” The earl smiled tightly. “We've had a bit of experience of our own with how much iron it takes to armor even a relatively small galley. I realize the Charisians appear to be able to conjure iron and steel magically out of thin air, but it has to take even
them
a little time to produce enough armor for ships that size. From the description of their armament, they're a lot bigger than any ironclad small enough for river or canal use could possibly be, and not even Charisians could build and armor something like that with a snap of their fingers. They're
galleons
, too, not … whatever those damned smokepots are! What does that suggest?”

“That the inland ironclads are either too unseaworthy or too short-legged to make the trip from Corisande, My Lord,” Baiket said, eyes narrowed in thought. “Or maybe both.” He nodded slowly. “However those riverboats of theirs move, they're burning
something
to produce all that smoke, and there has to be a limit on how much coal or wood they can load into something that size, especially if they're also going to armor it and put guns into it.”

“I think that's probably true.” Thirsk nodded. “It's not something I plan to count on, but one thing we have to avoid is
overestimating
Charis' capabilities. I know it's better to be pessimistic than to be overly optimistic, but we can't paralyze ourselves with ‘what-ifs.' Unless they have a hell of a lot more regular galleons based at Claw Island than reports suggest, we can meet their fleet on more than equal terms, and even an armored galleon needs spars to move. Between our own galleons and Lieutenant Zhwaigair's screw-galleys—and that other project of his—I think we'd have a pretty good chance of handing them a serious defeat if they were foolish enough to come out where we can get at them. And the fact that they seem to be staying close to home at Claw Island now that they've retaken it suggests they may feel the same way about it.”