Hell's Foundations Quiver (91 page)

“Pick a good, reliable man to take the truce flag to Eastshare,” Kaitswyrth told him. “Someone you can rely on to keep his head. I think that'll probably be important.”

“Of course, My Lord. I think Colonel Zhames would probably be our best choice. I'll inform him you need to speak to him.”

“That's probably a good idea,” Kaitswyrth agreed in a curiously tranquil voice. “Why don't you go get him now?”

“Certainly, My Lord.”

Maindayl nodded and started up the mud-slick steps in Zavyr's footsteps.

He'd made it halfway up when he heard the single pistol shot behind him.

 

.VI.

Charisian Embassy, City of Siddarmark, Republic of Siddarmark

“What do you think of Ruhsyl's surrender terms, Merlin?” Cayleb Ahrmahk asked, looking across the quiet study at Merlin Athrawes.

Merlin stood at the open glass doors to the study's small balcony, one shoulder propped against the lintel, and gazed upward. The night outside the Charisian Embassy was breezy and cool, the heavens speckled with stars no Old Terran would have recognized, with a moon too small for Merlin's memories, but that wasn't what he was actually watching, anyway. His attention was on the imagery from the SNARC hovering above the rubble of what had been the small town of Styltyn, where the Duke of Eastshare had just delivered his terms to what was left of the Army of Glacierheart. Owl's best estimate was that the better part of a hundred and eighty thousand men had been trapped inside Eastshare's net. Less than three thousand others had escaped through the swamps on Kaitswyrth's left under the command of Baron Wheatfields, and they were unlikely to get far with sixteen thousand mounted infantry from the Earl of High Mount's Army of Cliff Peak in hot pursuit. Taken altogether, the Army of God and its secular allies had just lost over a quarter million more men in killed, wounded, and—now—captured, plus the Army of Glacierheart's total artillery park.

“Well,” he replied, “they're better terms than the ones he gave that bastard at Fort Tairys last winter. They're about the same as he gave the survivors of Army of Shiloh, really.”

“They're also better than the ones General Stohnar gave Wyrshym,” Aivah Pahrsahn pointed out from the comfortable, overstuffed armchair in which she sat. She grimaced. “I'm not sure the vengeful side of me approves of that, especially given the difference between Wyrshym and Kaitswyrth—and between Abernethy and Zavyr, for that matter.”

“It's not really about some kind of fairness, Aivah,” Baron Green Valley said from his headquarters at Five Forks. “Having said that,
my
‘vengeful side' agrees with yours.”

“I think all of us could agree with that,” Baron Rock Point put in from Tellesberg. The high admiral's tone was colder and bleaker than Green Valley's. He'd taken what happened to Sir Bruhstair Ahbaht's squadron—and especially to HMS
Dreadnought
—hard, and it was difficult for him to find much sympathy for the Church's armed forces at the moment. But then he grunted sourly. “Still, I suppose the real question is how it's likely to affect the Army of God's attitude towards future surrenders.”

“They aren't really all that
much
better than the ones Wyrshym got,” Nimue Chwaeriau pointed out from Manchyr. “In fact, I think the Duke's a lot sneakier than General Stohnar, when you come down to it. Offering to ‘exchange' Kaitswyrth's senior officers for future Charisian prisoners?” She shook her head. “Assuming Clyntahn was willing to contemplate anything of the sort, what do you think would happen to those senior officers once the Inquisition got its hands on them? Not exactly conducive to future loyalty on
other
senior officers' part, I imagine. And what happens to the rest of the Army's morale when captured senior officers who could have gone home
refuse
to be exchanged?”

“Which they will, unless they're stupid enough to think they'd escape the Punishment for their ‘failures' once they got back to Zion,” Earl Pine Hollow said. The Empire's first councilor sat in his private office, his desk strewn with paperwork, with a whiskey glass in his hand. “I suppose there probably are some who really are that stupid, and that'd probably make handing them over an even better idea. If by some chance they did manage to avoid the Punishment, they might actually end up in command again somewhere they could screw up all over again. Unfortunately, anyone stupid enough to trust Clyntahn is probably dumb enough he forgets to breathe without a reminder.”

“Probably.” Merlin turned back from the balcony to face Cayleb and Aivah, and his expression was grim. “Of course, Ruhsyl didn't realize when he made the offer that the Temple was really likely to have Charisian POWs to exchange for them, did he?”

Silence fell. It lingered for a few seconds, and then he shrugged.

“Sorry. I didn't mean to be the ghost at the banquet. It's just—”

He broke off with another shrug.

“I know what you mean,” Rock Point said harshly, scowling out his flagship's stern windows at the reflections of Tellesberg's waterfront lights. “It's like Gwylym all over again, but with twice the men.”

Merlin nodded heavily, except that the Battle of the Kaudzhu Narrows had actually been far worse than the Battle of the
Harchong
Narrows. Sir Bruhstair Ahbaht had fought his way through to South Shwei Bay, but with only four of his galleons and the single schooner
Sojourn
. The entire remainder of his squadron had been taken or destroyed, and the only reason the survivors had escaped was the concealment they'd found in the sequence of storms sweeping across Hahskyn Bay and South Shwei Bay.

It was bitterly ironic. If those storms had arrived only two days earlier, Ahbaht and Haigyl would very likely have gotten the majority of Ahbaht's squadron—and probably
Dreadnought
—to safety. If not that, the Dohlarans at least would have paid an even higher price for their victory.

Not that they'd gotten off lightly. Sixteen of Admiral Rohsail's galleons had been destroyed, six of them with all hands, and four more were almost certainly beyond repair, which amounted to forty percent of his total pre-battle strength. Rohsail's flagship had been sunk along with them, and Rohsail himself had been badly wounded. In fact, it was unlikely the healers would be able to save his life, which filled Merlin with a vengeful satisfaction. And so did the fact that even though Kahrltyn Haigyl hadn't lived to see it, his ship had sent Gwylym Manthyr's old flagship to the bottom.

Eight of Admiral Hahlynd's fifteen initial screw-galleys had also been lost, most to a combination of battle damage and the stormy seas which had followed the savage engagement. And four of Rohsail's light cruisers—a trio of brigs and a single schooner—had stumbled into Ahbaht's surviving galleons the night after the battle. None of them had survived to inform Admiral Raisahndo, commanding the Western Squadron now that Rohsail was out of action, of where he might find the fleeing Charisians. Of course, even if he'd had that information, it would have taken him the better part of a full day just to sort out which of his remaining thirty-galleons were fit enough to be sent after them. He probably couldn't have come up with more than a dozen of them.

All told, Rohsail and Hahlynd between them had lost twice as many ships as Ahbaht, although many of them had been individually smaller and lighter, and only four ICN galleons had been taken intact—or close enough to it to be repaired, at any rate. One of them, unfortunately, was HMS
Vortex
, one of Ahbaht's two bombardment ships.
Firestorm
had made it out, along with
Broadsword
,
Vindicator
, and HMS
Thunderhead
. That was it, aside from
Sojourn
, and every one of the galleons was severely damaged. And far worse, what no one aboard Ahbaht's handful of battered ships yet knew was that
Dreadnought
had also survived.

No one would ever know exactly how that had happened, since not one of Kahrltyn Haigyl's officers—aside from a single wounded midshipman—had survived the battle. Paityr Gahnzahlyz would probably have fired the fuse on his own initiative if he'd realized the ironclad had been boarded by the companies of no less than three Dohlaran galleons. Perhaps he
had
realized, but if so, there hadn't been enough time between the moment that he did and the moment some idiot of a Dohlaran Marine dropped a lit hand grenade down the main companion just as Gahnzahlyz was headed up it. That grenade had exploded within less than twenty feet of
Dreadnought
's magazine, which should by rights have carried out Haigyl's last order for him. Somehow, by some perverse miracle, it hadn't. It
had
killed Gahnzahlyz, however. Merlin had no idea where the gunner had been going or why—not even Owl and the SNARCs had been able to sort the last savage minutes of the fight aboard the ironclad into a coherent picture—yet it seemed likely that Gahnzahlyz' death explained why the charges in the magazine had never been fired. The officers fighting for their own and their men's lives on
Dreadnought
's deck had known he was waiting to fulfill that last, grim duty; quite probably they'd left that to him and abandoned themselves to killing as many Dohlarans as possible before they went down themselves and Gahnzahlyz' gunner's mates had hung on too long waiting for orders from their officers.

No one would ever know, and the why of it didn't matter. What
mattered
was that the Royal Dohlaran Navy was now in possession of the only seagoing ironclad on the Gulf of Dohlar or any of its surrounding waters. And that Dynnys Zhwaigair was about to have six-inch rifled guns on Mahndrayan carriages to examine. God only knew where
that
was likely to lead!

And then there were the five hundred Charisian seamen and officers who'd been captured.

That wasn't all that many, really … given that there'd been just over seven thousand men aboard the ships which had been captured or destroyed. Ninety-three percent of the seamen and officers manning those ships had died fighting; that tended to happen when the men in question knew what would happen to them if they were surrendered to the Inquisition. At least four or five hundred of them had been killed out of hand when they could fight no more, although the SNARC imagery suggested many of those deaths had been mercy killings, not cold-blooded murder. Despite the ferocity of the Dohlarans' attack, it was clear some of Rohsail's officers and men had found they had no stomach for repeating what had happened to Gwylym Manthyr and his men.

“I don't know how you could stand to watch that,” Aivah said softly. Merlin looked at her, and she gave him a sad smile. “I know you thought you owed it to them, and I suppose it's only right that someone keep watch over them. They deserved it, I know. But even the little of it that I did watch was terrible. If I'd watched all of it, I think it would've destroyed me.”

“You live with what you have to live with,” Merlin told her, and managed a smile of his own. “Nahrmahn reminded me of that rather … forcefully. And you were right, bless your rotund little heart, Nahrmahn.”

“I wouldn't want to say anything about how frequently that turns out to be the case, since I'm such a naturally modest sort, with an instinctual aversion to using words like ‘infallibility.' Especially where Ohlyvya might hear about it.” Nahrmahn replied from his virtual reality, and several members of the conference surprised themselves with chuckles.

Cayleb wasn't one of them, although even he smiled. But then he shook his head.

“This time I want those men back,” he said flatly. “Not another Gwylym
this
time. This time we damned well find a way to get them back.”

“If we can, we will,” Merlin told him, his tone equally flat. “And if we can't, Nimue and I will damned well arrange a magazine explosion to send any ship they're aboard to the bottom. But if they send them overland again—”

“I think that's unlikely this time,” Nahrmahn said. All of them looked at his image, and he shrugged. “Clyntahn's going to want them in Zion as quickly as he can get them there. He'll want the biggest, most spectacular auto-da-fé imaginable to flaunt ‘his' triumph—especially after what happened to the Army of God—and to be sure he provides a suitable object lesson for anyone whose devotion to the jihad might threaten to waver. Besides, the way he'll see it, Dohlar's just destroyed any Charisian naval presence which could prevent it from shipping them to him across Gorath Bay.”

“That,” Rock Point conceded sourly, “is entirely too close to true. Once Sarmouth gets to Claw Island, Sharpfield will have a total of ten galleons—none of them ironclads—under his command. And that's assuming all four of Ahbaht's can be repaired out of local resources.”

“What do you think Sharpfield will do when Ahbaht gets back to Claw Island?” Pine Hollow asked.

“If he listens to Sir Dunkyn, the Earl will convene a court of inquiry, find that Ahbaht acted in the highest tradition of the Charisian Navy, and return him immediately to command,” Nimue said crisply. “We need captains like him, and
he
needs to be put back up on the horse as quickly as possible.”

“I don't think Lewk's likely to need Dunkyn's advice to come to that conclusion on his own,” Rock Point said. “I think the real problem's going to be whether or not Ahbaht can come back from this in his own head.”

“That's why I said he needs to get back onto the horse,” Nimue agreed.

Rock Point nodded. Sir Dunkyn Yairley and Hektor Aplyn-Ahrmahk weren't participating in the present conference for the same reason Sharleyan wasn't. All three of them were at sea, where it was even later at night (or earlier in the morning, depending on which time zone they happened to be in), and all of them were asleep. It was equally late for Nimue, but she had certain unfair advantages where the need for sleep was concerned.