“Let’s just say that if they want to try to get six-pounders—or even twelve-pounders—into position against the Colonel’s preparations, they’re welcome to make the effort. Even if they force us to retreat downriver, I’m pretty sure Hynryk can convince them to keep a respectful distance from the bank while we do it.”
“I see.” Zhevons rubbed his chin for a moment, then nodded. “It sounds like I may’ve been worrying unduly.”
“No, not unduly, Master Zhevons,” Eastshare said. “We’re outnumbered better than ten-to-one. Against those kinds of numbers, there’s no such thing as a truly secure position. But I will say friend Kaitswyrth really, really won’t enjoy what it would cost him to push us out of these entrenchments. To be honest, though, I didn’t expect him to try after what Kynt did to Wyrshym—especially after how badly Brigadier Taisyn already hurt him—so your warning certainly doesn’t come amiss. And, while I’m being honest, I might as well admit that he’s got at least two months of campaigning season left. If he thinks he has a realistic chance to push us out of the Gap, he’d be a fool not to take it before the snow begins to fly. So I was probably overly optimistic about what he was likely to do. So optimistic he might actually have managed to surprise us without your visit.”
“I rather doubt that.” Zhevons smiled. “Nice of you to let me down easy, though, Your Grace.”
“You are a friend of Seijin Merlin’s,” Eastshare pointed out with an answering smile. “I’m always polite to friends of Seijin Merlin’s.”
His smile turned into something like a grin, then vanished, and he crossed his arms, contemplating the terrain map beside the diagram of his fortifications.
“Actually,” he said after a moment, “it’s possible I have been a little too overconfident. Lywys.”
“Yes, Your Grace?” the young captain responded.
“Go tell Major Lowayl I need to speak to him. I’m afraid he’ll have already turned in for the evening, so apologize for waking him.”
“At once, Your Grace.” Captain Braynair touched his chest in salute, bowed politely to Zhevons, and hurried off, and Eastshare glanced at Chalkyr.
“I think we need some hot chocolate, Slym.” He smiled slightly. “It may be a longer evening than anyone except Master Zhevons expected.”
“Aye, Your Grace. And might be you’d like a plate of san’wiches to keep it company?”
“That wouldn’t be a bad idea at all,” Eastshare approved, and the gray-haired corporal braced to a sort of abbreviated attention and withdrew.
“I’m afraid I won’t be able to stay, Your Grace,” Zhevons said apologetically. “I have somewhere else I have to be, and making this detour’s put me behind schedule for getting there.”
“I understand.” Eastshare nodded. “And, again, thank you for the warning. I promise we’ll put it to good use.”
“All I could ask, Your Grace.”
Zhevons bowed and followed Chalkyr out of the duke’s workspace, but he’d left another of his microscopic listening posts behind. By the time he’d performed his customary seijin’s vanishing act into the surrounding forest—and begun reconfiguring his PICA into Merlin Athrawes while he headed for his stealthed recon skimmer—Major Lowayl had appeared in Eastshare’s doorway looking improbably spruce and awake.
“You wanted me, Your Grace?”
“Yes, I did.” Eastshare moved back to the wall map and tapped it. “What would you say if I told you I had word Kaitswyrth is planning a frontal attack—with some flanking efforts thrown in for good measure—to force us to retreat?”
“I’d say he needs a good Bédardist to restore him to his senses, Your Grace,” the youthful major—he was better than twelve years younger than Eastshare—replied with a smile.
“The sort of confident attitude a general likes to see,” Eastshare approved. “But a prudent general tries to think about even unlikely things. So, I’m thinking that there are a couple of ways I’d like to tweak our main position. And I want you to pick one of your best engineers and send him back with a suitable workforce—get on the semaphore and talk to Archbishop Zhasyn; if he could scare up a few thousand of these Glacierheart miners and tell them to bring their picks and shovels it couldn’t hurt—to Ice Lake. I want a fortified bridgehead where the Daivyn flows into the lake. If we do have to fall back under pressure—or even if I just decide it would be a good idea to shorten our line of communications—I want a hard defensive position covering the approaches to the lake.”
“Yes, Your Grace.” Lowayl pulled out his pocket notebook and began writing.
“All right, once you’ve taken care of that, I want another fatigue party up here, on the northern end of our position. If I were Kaitswyrth and I was serious about bashing us out of the way, I’d seriously contemplate trying to get around onto the high road to assault Haidyrberg or at least get behind our right flank. And if it should happen he is thinking that way, I’d like to be in a position to discourage him. So, I’m thinking—”
Merlin Athrawes listened to the two army officers as he climbed the extended ladder into the recon skimmer, one hand checking the black dagger beard extruding itself to adorn his chin while his facial features resumed their normal configuration, and smiled.
.II.
Ahstynwood Forest, Southwest of Haidyrberg, Westmarch Province, Republic of Siddarmark
“There’s something up ahead, Sergeant,” Private Pahloahzky announced, and Platoon Sergeant Nycodem Zyworya tried not to grimace.
Shyman Pahloahzky was barely seventeen, with a severe case of acne and blue eyes which had seen far less than he liked to pretend they had. He’d been increasingly nervous since Bishop Militant Cahnyr’s army had bloodied itself against the heretic redoubts, and he’d adopted an occasionally irritating swagger in an attempt to disguise it, but he genuinely tried hard to be a good soldier, Zyworya reminded himself.
“And what would that be, Shyman?” he asked after a moment.
“Not sure,” Pahloahzky admitted. “I saw something move in one of the trees up there, though. It was too big for a squirrel or a tree lizard.”
Zyworya bit his tongue against a caustic recitation of all the things bigger than squirrels or tree lizards which might be found in an unconsecrated forest like this one.
“I see,” he said instead. “Well, in that case, I think you’d better tell Lieutenant Byrokyo about it.”
“Uh, yes, Sergeant.” Pahloahzky swallowed audibly at the thought of facing the lieutenant, and Zyworya hid a smile.
“He’s right back there,” the noncom offered, pointing back along the trail 2nd Platoon’s lead squad had been following, and Pahloahzky went trotting back towards the center of the platoon. Zyworya watched him go, then raised one eyebrow at the private’s squad leader.
“You think he actually saw something, Hagoh?” Zyworya asked, and Corporal Raymahndoh Myndaiz shrugged.
“I know damned well he saw something, Sarge.” The corporal grimaced. “I didn’t see it, though. Langhorne only knows what it may’ve been—including the kid’s imagination—and he ain’t telling me.”
Zyworya’s lips twitched, but he shook his head reprovingly. “You know how Father Zhorj feels about taking the Archangels’ names in vain, Hagoh.”
“Who’s taking anybody’s name in vain?” Myndaiz retorted. “I just said he wasn’t telling me what Shyman might—or might not’ve—seen, and he isn’t.”
Zyworya shook his head again, then turned to follow Pahloahzky.
Lieutenant Byrokyo, 2nd Platoon’s commanding officer, was barely two years older than Pahloahzky, less than half Zyworya’s age, and he still carried a hint of adolescent awkwardness around with him, but that was about the end of any similarity between him and the private. Byrokyo was self-confident, educated, and bookish, and he would have made an excellent schoolteacher somewhere.
And he also happened to be one of the Army of Glacierheart’s better junior officers, in Zyworya’s opinion.
“—big was it, S
hyman?” Byrokyo was asking as he came into earshot.
“I’m not sure, Sir,” Pahloahzky admitted … probably more readily than he would’ve admitted it to one of the platoon’s noncoms, Zyworya acknowledged. Young or not, Byrokyo managed to be approachable without ever undercutting his own authority. “I only saw it for a second or two, and the light’s really confusing with all those leaves and shadows.”
“But it was definitely up in the titan oak?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“And it went higher when you saw it?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“You can show the Platoon Sergeant which tree and how high up it was?”
“Yes, Sir.”
Byrokyo looked at him thoughtfully, then glanced over his shoulder at the waiting Zyworya. The platoon sergeant shrugged and raised one hand in a “beats me” gesture, and the lieutenant smiled slightly.
“All right, Shyman,” he said. “Give me a minute with the Platoon Sergeant.”
“Yes, Sir!”
Pahloahzky retired to a discreet, out-of-earshot distance in obvious relief and Byrokyo waved Zyworya closer.
“What do you think?” he asked softly.
“Sir, I think Pahloahzky’s a good kid who’s a little nervous and could be imagining things.”
“There’s a difference between ‘could be imagining things’ and ‘is imagining things,’” Byrokyo pointed out, and the platoon sergeant nodded.
“That there is, Sir. Which is why I sent him to talk to you about it.”
It was Byrokyo’s turn to nod, and he found the fingers of his right hand drumming on the scabbard of his sword. The truth was that serving with the Army of God was nothing like what he’d expected. It was his own fault, he supposed; he’d been so caught up in his books that he’d neglected to consider how shockingly different the reality his sagas recorded might be from the one that actually obtained. And none of those sagas had included the Punishment of Schueler, either. It was one thing when soldiers killed soldiers in battle—uglier and far more brutal than his scholarly imagination had ever suggested, but still different from the far worse things that happened after the battle.
His platoon was part of 1st Company of the Zion Division’s 1st Regiment, and Zion Division had been savagely hammered leading the assault that finally stormed the heretics’ Daivyn River redoubts. The division as a whole had lost over half its original strength in dead and wounded, and even though 2nd Platoon had been more fortunate than that, it had still lost nine of its twenty-four men. Ahtonyo Byrokyo had no intention of losing any more of them, because they were his men, men he’d known and led all the way from the Temple Lands. He was responsible for them, and it was better to be overly cautious than not cautious enough.
“All right,” he said. “We’re not going to jump at any ghosts, Nycodem, but we’re not going to take any chances, either. Take Myndaiz’ entire squad. Nytzah and I will hold here to watch your backs. Have Pahloahzky point out his titan oak to you, and send a couple of men around to the other side. Give it a good look.” He shrugged. “Even if it’s entirely his imagination, let’s treat it as if it weren’t. And make sure he knows we’re not just ignoring him. I’d rather have someone with an overactive imagination telling us about things that aren’t there than someone who expects to get kicked if he tells us about something he genuinely thought he saw and he just happens to be wrong.”
“Yes, Sir.” Zyworya sketched Langhorne’s scepter in salute, then twitched his head at the waiting private, and the two of them headed back the way they’d come.
* * *
Corporal Lahzrys Mahntsahlo of 3rd Squad, 1st Platoon, Company B, 1st Battalion, 1st Scout Sniper Regiment, muttered an unpleasant word as the Army of God infantry trotted cautiously down the prong lizard trail. They were in open order—or as close to it as the trail’s confines allowed—and they looked damnably alert this time. He’d been afraid one of them had spotted him, but he’d been moving at the moment the fellow came around the bend in the trail. He wasn’t moving now, and he held very still, blending into the pattern of sunlight and leaves like a hunting mask lizard, concentrating on being invisible, brown eyes watchful among the lines of his green and black face paint.
The Royal Chisholmian Army had long emphasized the value of skirmisher-trained light infantry, yet Corporal Mahntsahlo wasn’t ashamed to admit that, Marines or not, the Old Charisian scout snipers had had quite a lot to teach those skirmishers. For example, the Chisholmians had never worried about actual camouflage. He wasn’t certain why not, yet there it was; the idea simply hadn’t occurred to them. On the other hand, it hadn’t occurred to any of the Mainland armies, either … and he was pretty sure nobody in the Army of God had figured out yet just how hard to see a scout sniper could make himself, either.
The rest of his team was even better hidden than he was, but it was also down on ground level, where the Church riflemen could get at its members. On the other hand.…
The oncoming infantry halted, and two men trotted forward, leaving the trail and forcing a way through the last fringe of the blue leaf thickets, clearly swinging outward to circle around the base of the titan oak. Mahntsahlo’s heart beat a little faster, but he reminded himself that just because they were looking didn’t mean they’d find anything. Then he saw the gawky, skinny kid standing in the middle of the trail next to someone who wore the breastplate of a noncom with the three concentric rings of an AOG platoon sergeant. The kid was pointing to exactly where Mahntsahlo had been when he’d wondered if he’d been spotted. Fortunately, that was at least thirty feet lower than the scout sniper’s current position, courtesy of his steel climbing spurs.
He listened to the wind rustling the leaves and waited.
* * *
“And whatever it was, it was going higher, Sarge,” Pahloahzky said, still pointing up into the towering tree. He looked a bit sheepish, Zyworya thought, but he was sticking to his guns.
“I see.”
The platoon sergeant scratched his chin for a moment, listening to wind rattle gently in the blue leaf’s waxy leaves and the distant voices of birds and wyverns. The narrow, twisting trail they’d been sent to scout actually straightened for the better part of two hundred yards as it passed the titan oak, and the densely growing blue leaf they’d been pushing through for the last half hour thinned out on either side as it entered the footprint of the titan oak’s deep shade. A thick carpet of leaves stretched away beyond the massive tree in a sort of green twilight, spangled with patches of sunshine that somehow found chinks in the high canopy. The leaf carpet piled up like silt against an occasional fallen tree trunk and it was still dotted with scattered clumps of the persistent blue leaf, but visibility was far better than it had been. On the ground, at any rate. If there was anything up that titan oak, he sure as hell couldn’t pick it out of the leaves and branches. But that didn’t mean there wasn’t something there, and he shrugged.
“Rifles ready,” he ordered, and unslung his own rifle.
* * *
Oh, shit, Mahntsahlo thought as he watched the Army of God infantry raise their rifles. He felt a spurt of panic, until he realized they weren’t aimed anywhere near his present position. The relief when he recognized that minor fact was almost painful, but—
* * *
“All right, Shyman,” Zyworya said. “You any good at baseball?”
“What?” The private blinked. “Uh, sorry, Sergeant! I mean, yeah … I guess. Played shortstop, usually.”
“Really?” Zyworya grinned. He hadn’t thought the kid had that kind of reflexes. “In that case, find yourself some rocks and start throwing them up in those branches.”
“Yes, Sergeant!”
* * *
Great. Mahntsahlo suppressed an urge to shake his head as the first rock came arcing up and bounced off the titan oak’s bark with a sharp “thwack” of impact. The kid had a pretty good arm, and he was only about sixty feet up. The rocks weren’t likely to hurt a lot even if they hit him, but
they also wouldn’t sound like they’d hit wood, either.
Those bastards are just likely to go ahead and fire, whether they actually see anything or not, if that happens, he reflected, which would be a bad thing. On the other hand, they may not even come close to me, and Captain Gahlvayo wants us to suck in as many of them as we can before they figure out we’re here.
He clenched his jaw, making himself breathe deeply and steadily. In the end, it probably came down to how persistent the damned Temple Boys wanted to be. Lieutenant Makysak would really prefer for him and Corporal Brunohn Sayranoh to give them a little more rope in hopes of getting the column behind them farther forward, but that had to be a judgment call, and the lieutenant trusted them to make the right one. For that matter, Mahntsahlo trusted Sayranoh to make the right one, and someone had to make it. If they only tossed a few more rocks and then moved on, everything would be just fine; if it looked like they were settling in for an extended effort, though.…