Hell's Foundations Quiver (60 page)

No sword, no spear, no army is more powerful than the will of God. No shield, no armor, no fortress is greater safety than trust in Him who created all the universe. No shackle, no fetter, no prison can lock a child of God away from the love of God. Put not your trust in principalities or worldly powers, for principalities fail and any man is easily killed. But the word I have brought you from Him, the truth I have taught you as His messenger—that is invincible. It will endure more ages than the world itself, and he who places his faith in it, even though he taste of death, shall never know defeat
.

The words of the
Book of Langhorne
ran through him, and he knew they were true. The truth of God
was
invincible … and any man
was
easily killed. The inquisitors outside the council chamber would obey whatever order Zhaspahr Clyntahn gave them, and if he and Maigwair died, they would accomplish nothing but their own martyrdom. There were times when Rhobair Duchairn longed for exactly that, if only as a way to lay down his burden. But even as Langhorne had promised the invincibility of God's truth, he'd also warned that God knew how to measure a man's task.

God will show you the path set before your feet. God will teach you the task He has laid upon you. It will not always be easy, and you may groan beneath its burden. Yet you will know the task which bears your name, written upon it in words of fire. You will know it, and you will lift it up, and you will walk every weary mile of the road. You may falter, you may long to turn aside, but you will not, for you are God's, as this whole world is His, and as He will not fail you, you will not fail Him
.

What other burden, what other task, had God set before him than to repair the frightful wounds of His own Church? It wasn't simply his task—it was his duty … and his penance. His life was not his own to lay down before that task was finished. He might yet die in its doing, but he had no right—he'd
forfeited
the right—to let himself be killed
unless
that accomplished the charge God's will and his own guilt had laid upon him.

He faced that bleak awareness, and then another passage flowed through him, this one from the
Book of Bédard
.

Be patient. Wait upon God, for be you ever so heavy laden with sin, He will show you all good things in His own time. His Love is forever, He does not abandon those who do not abandon Him, and He will search through all eternity for any who are lost. No darkness can hide you from His eye, no sin can place you beyond His forgiveness, and they who return to Him and take up their tasks once more will rise up upon the wings of wyverns. That which hinders them today, He will remove in the day of His own choosing, and that which bears them down He will cause to lift them up in the morning of His victory
.

“Zhaspahr,” he said, still refusing to look away, “we may disagree about the best way to accomplish what lies before us, but whatever you may think, the Army and the Treasury have always been prepared to do their duty. As Allayn's said, he and I want to
preserve
the Army of the Sylmahn. We have no more desire than you to give ground to heresy and schism. We simply believe that in order to resume the offensive successfully and carry God's banner to victory we need to reorganize, rearm, and reequip His forces. And as part of that reorganization, we need to extract as much of Bishop Militant Bahrnabai's army as possible from the trap the heretics have built around it.”

“Reorganize and rearm all you like,” Clyntahn said coldly. “We've seen in the case of the Mighty Host what you can accomplish when you truly set your hearts as well as your minds to your task, trusting in God for success. But we will not betray our duty to Him or to the complete cleansing of heresy in Siddarmark in the process. The Army of the Sylmahn is the shield for that cleansing; it will
not
be removed, and however much mortal men may despair of accomplishing what God has called them to do, there's
nothing
He cannot accomplish through them so long as they keep faith with Him. The Mighty Host's vanguard is already in motion, and if we can't prevent the accursed heretics from reentering the Ice Ash, we can certainly destroy every river lock south of Spinefish Bay to deny them access to the Hildermoss! You may be right about the noose about the Army of the Sylmahn's neck. Maybe it
is
doomed if it stands its ground. But if it
doesn't
stand, even at the price of its destruction, we abandon all of Siddarmark west of Tarikah to Shan-wei and dark damnation. The Mighty Host will either relieve it or avenge it, but it will not betray God by abandoning the position He's called upon it to defend in His name!”

“All right,” Duchairn heard himself say. “All right. I think you're wrong, Zhaspahr. I want that clearly understood between us. But you may not be, and I can't dispute anything you've said about Siddarmark or God's ability to accomplish what fallible mortals believe is impossible. So Allayn and I will do everything humanly possible to support the Army of the Sylmahn, to expedite the movement of the Holy Host, and to prevent the heretics from using the rivers against us. But I want something from you in return, Zhaspahr.”

“What?” Clyntahn half sneered.

“I want your promise that your inquisitors will back off while we do it.” Duchairn's eyes bored into the Grand Inquisitor's. “We need—our people in the field need—the freedom to do their jobs without having one of your people who may know everything there is to know about the
Writ
but doesn't know
squat
about logistics or strategy or troop movements looking over their shoulders and hampering them every step of the way. I can't guarantee we'll succeed even with that freedom, but I can guarantee we
won't
succeed without it.”

Something flickered at the back of Clyntahn's eyes. Duchairn didn't know what that something was, but he didn't much care, either. Silence hovered for a moment, and then Clyntahn nodded once.

“Very well. Your ‘people in the field' will have the ‘freedom' you say they need. See to it that they use it well.”

 

.XIII.

HMS
Chihiro
, 50, Gorath Bay, Kingdom of Dohlar, and HMS
Destiny
, 54, Great Western Ocean

“Thank you for coming so promptly, Pawal.”

“It's not like I had anything else to do this afternoon,” Pawal Hahlynd observed dryly, reaching out to clasp arms with the Earl of Thirsk. “Except worry, of course,” he added rather more somberly.

“There's a lot of that going around,” Thirsk agreed.

Lieutenant Bahrdailahn had withdrawn after ushering Hahlynd in, leaving the two admirals alone in Thirsk's day cabin. Which might be just as well, given Hahlynd's last remark … and his own, Thirsk reflected.

“Come on.”

He twitched his head at the open glass doors to
Chihiro
's sternwalk and Hahlynd followed him out into the cool spring morning. They stood side-by-side, leaning on the railing, gazing out across the blue harbor at the warships lying to anchor and the bevy of merchant ships and coasters gliding in and out under their more martial sisters' watchful eye.

There were a lot of those merchant vessels crowding the harbor and its wharves, far more even than before the Charisian privateer onslaught with which the war had begun. Virtually every one of them was no more than two or three years old, built to replace the privateers' depredations in mass construction projects in the shipyards the Church had created to build her navy, and the building pace had redoubled since the Sword of Schueler had been loosed against Siddarmark. The Jihad's voracious appetite for the supplies which truly were the sinews of war had seen to that, and with winter still gripping northern Howard and Haven, a huge percentage of that traffic was passing through the Gulf of Dohlar's eastern ports. The pressure would ease a bit in the next couple of months, as the northern canal systems began to thaw once more, but for the moment Gorath was probably the only port in the world which could rival heretical Tellesberg's normal volume of shipping, and protecting it and keeping it flowing was the responsibility of the two admirals gazing out across it.

After a minute or two, Thirsk straightened, pulled his pipe and tobacco pouch out of his tunic pocket, and began methodically filling the pipe's bowl.

“Funny how peaceful it all looks, isn't it?” he said, pausing to wave the hand holding his pipe at the panorama before them. “Especially given what's happening elsewhere.”

Hahlynd grunted in agreement and hauled out his own pipe. The two flag officers fussed with the implements of their addiction with all of the ritual tradition demanded of them, but Hahlynd's eyebrows rose as Thirsk took an unusual-looking device out of his pocket. The earl smiled at his friend's expression, then flipped up a tight-fitting, hinged metal cover on one end of the device to reveal what looked like a lamp wick with a milled metal wheel bracketed in front of it. Thirsk's thumb spun the wheel, and Hahlynd stepped back half a pace in surprise as a fountain of sparks leapt from the wheel to ignite the wick.

The earl only smiled again and applied the flame to his pipe, drawing until the tobacco was nicely alight. Then he extended the device to Hahlynd, who leaned cautiously forward to light his own pipe. He straightened, and metal clicked as Thirsk closed the device, extinguishing the flame.

“Handy,” Hahlynd said after a moment. “Another of Lieutenant Zhwaigair's ideas?”

“No.” Thirsk held the device up between them, sunlight gleaming on its semi-polished surface. “No, actually this is something Ahlverez brought back with him. Some of his men came across it during the fighting in the Kyplyngyr. We're not sure what the heretics call it, so we're simply calling it a ‘lighter,' since that's what it does. Young Dynnys
did
recommend changing the fire vine oil the heretics used in it for something a little less poisonous if I was going to insist on lighting my pipe with it, though.”

The earl gazed at the “lighter” for a moment, then slipped it back into his pocket and met Hahlynd's gaze levelly.

“I'm sure this thing”—he tapped his pocket lightly—“has all sorts of military applications, but think about it for a minute. The Charisians don't really
need
it, but they produced it anyway. That means their ability to manufacture weapons and the ammunition those weapons need is so great that they have surplus capacity to produce things like this just because they're … what did you call it? ‘Handy,' I think? It sort of puts our current problems into perspective, don't you think?”

Hahlynd looked back at him without speaking for a second. Then he nodded, although his expression was wary.

“Don't worry, Pawal!” Thirsk shook his head. “I'm not going around making that point to just anybody. Ahlvyn and Ahbail—and Stywyrt, of course.” Hahlynd nodded at the earl's reference to his senior aide, flag lieutenant, and flag captain, then tensed again as Thirsk added, “And Bishop Staiphan. He's the one who gave me the lighter in the first place. We spent several minutes discussing the military implications of its existence.”

“I see. And the Bishop … shared your view about them?”

“Actually, he raised them with me, first.”

Hahlynd nodded slowly, looking back out across the bustling harbor, and blew a smoke ring as he digested that. The ring floated away on the breeze, shredding as it went, and he frowned, wondering if that was some sort of oracle.

“I didn't ask you here just to show you my new toy, though,” Thirsk said, and Hahlynd turned back towards him, resting his left elbow on the sternwalk rail. “I'm afraid you and your squadron are about to begin earning your pay.”

“Are we?”

The question came out calmly enough, but Hahlynd's pulse accelerated slightly. He and Thirsk were lifelong friends. There'd never been any question in the earl's mind who he wanted in command of Dynnys Zhwaigair's armored screw-galleys, and Hahlynd had spent months working out doctrine and training his officers and crews to apply it.

“You are,” Thirsk confirmed. “I wish it could be under better circumstances, but the truth is that what happened to the Army of Shiloh and … certain reports from northern Siddarmark have quite a lot to do with the timing.”

“What sort of reports?” Hahlynd asked cautiously.

“Let's just say that what happened to the Army of Shiloh could be about to happen to the Army of the Sylmahn, as well.” Thirsk's expression was grim. “I don't know that that's the case, but from a few rumors Bishop Staiphan and I have picked up, it seems … possible, at least.”

Hahlynd's jaw tightened. The Kingdom of Dohlar was still reeling from the Army of Shiloh's destruction. Everyone knew Sir Rainos Ahlverez was in a fight for his professional life as his role in the disaster was debated by his superiors, and rumor had it that Ahbsahlahn Kharmych, the Kingdom's intendant, was deeply displeased with Ahlverez, too. There were even rumors the intendant was almost equally displeased with Father Sulyvyn Fyrmyn, Ahlverez' intendant. If any of that was true, Ahlverez might lose more than simply his
professional
life before it was over.

It must be hard for Thirsk to decide how he felt about that, Hahlynd thought, given the long-standing hatred between himself and Ahlverez. But whatever the earl felt, the mere suggestion that yet another of Mother Church's armies might face the same sort of calamity.…

“I'm not happy to hear that,” he said out loud. “And I'm afraid I don't quite see how anything my squadron might do could have any effect on what happens to Bishop Militant Bahrnabai, Lywys.”