“Not going to happen.” There was no doubt at all in Cayleb’s tone. “Rahnyld trusts Mahrys about as far as Clyntahn trusts me. Even if the Group of Four gives him a direct order to pass Mahrys through his kingdom, he’ll drag his heels harder than Sharley ever did when the Knights of the Temple Lands ordered her to help Hektor burn Charis to the ground! He’ll argue—and with some justification, really—that he doesn’t have the bottoms to move that many men, or the logistic capability to support them all through Dohlar. And he’ll spin it out long enough that by the time he’s done, Mahrys will have his invasion route through Silkiah cleared, instead. At which point, it’ll still take another month to actually get any Desnarian troops into Siddarmark.”
It was possible Cayleb was being a bit overly optimistic, Merlin thought, but overall he agreed with the emperor’s analysis, and Sharleyan was nodding firmly.
“That’s good,” Staynair said. “Unfortunately, unless I’m mistaken, that still means Emperor Mahrys is likely to be invading the Republic before Duke Eastshare can get anywhere near enough of the Army into Siddarmark to stop him. And then there’s King Rahnyld, of course.”
“True,” Cayleb said in a harsher, darker tone. “That suggestion we send a message from Zhevons was a good one, Merlin. But even with Kynt to do the planning and prodding, the thought of marching an army through Raven’s Land to the Passage of Storms obviously doesn’t really appeal to Eastshare. And I’m not surprised it doesn’t, to be fair. Even if the Raven Lords decide to actively cooperate rather than harassing him every step of the way, any army he force-marches across those so-called roads is going to be more than a little ragged by the time it finally gets to Siddarmark. At which point, I might add, it’s going to be at the wrong end of the Republic to stop Dohlar or Desnair.”
“I know, but it would still get them there faster than we could move them the full distance by sea. This time at least. And every mile he marches them west is one less mile a transport will have to cross. Even if he only gets them as far as Marisahl before we can start getting transports to him, it’ll cut his arrival time a lot. And if he gets as far as, say, Malphyra Bay, we can cut the number of transports he needs in half because of the reduced turnaround time for the round trip. Especially if he keeps on marching west with the second echelon of his army while the first one’s en route aboard ship. He can be in Marisahl forty days after he crosses The Fence, if he pushes hard, and in Malphyra in another twenty. And we wouldn’t have to send him across to Rollings Province once we got him aboard ship, you know. There’d be time to pick another destination if it seemed like a good idea.”
Cayleb grunted unhappily. The instinctive understanding of the huge logistical advantages conferred by oceanic transport was bred into the blood and bone of any Charisian monarch. The notion of sending an army or large amounts of freight overland instead of by sea was as foreign and unnatural to them as trying to breathe water, and all of those Ahrmahk instincts were insisting that it had to make far more sense to send any expeditionary force from Chisholm to Siddarmark aboard ship. They were persistent and clamorous, those instincts, and usually they would have been right. Unfortunately, the situation wasn’t exactly usual.
A well-conditioned infantry army could make perhaps forty miles a day marching overland, assuming it didn’t have to stop for niggling little details like, oh, foraging for food or allowing its draft animals to graze. Of course, grazing in Chisholm or Raven’s Land in winter wouldn’t have been very practical, even if it wouldn’t have subtracted several hours a day from the army’s marching time. Since grazing wouldn’t be practical, an army with an overland supply route could count on adding its draft animals’ starvation to all the other minor inconveniences it confronted. A transport galleon, on the other hand, under average conditions, could make between two hundred and three hundred miles a day, up to seven times the distance that army could cover on its own feet, and without losing the dragons and horses and mules its transport would depend upon once it reached its objective to starvation and sickness.
But Eastshare had very few transports available in Chisholm. In fact, he couldn’t have squeezed more than a very few thousand men aboard the ships he had, and he couldn’t put even that many of them aboard ship until he collected those ships in one spot. And that spot would have to be on the east coast of Chisholm, so even after he put the troops aboard, he’d still be over twelve thousand miles—and forty-seven days—from Siddar City.
He could probably commandeer a few more transports from Corisande, but not very many. Certainly not enough to make any real difference. The only place he could get the amount of troop lift he required would be to request it from Old Charis, and even with the most favorable winds imaginable, it would take a dispatch vessel over a month to reach Tellesberg from Maikelberg. Even after it did, it would take Cayleb and Sharleyan several five-days just to divert ships from the Siddarmarkian relief efforts and get them gathered together. Given how dire conditions in the Republic were, they couldn’t possibly justify pulling galleons out of the relief convoys until the ships had been officially asked for, since there was no way even monarchs with their reputation for foresight could know Eastshare was going to need them. And, on top of all that, it would take at least a month and a half—more probably two months—for those galleons to reach Chisholm once they’d been collected and ordered to sail.
Those unpalatable facts had left Eastshare and Green Valley with very few options for moving troops rapidly into Siddarmark, and it was the duke, not the baron, who’d come up with the most radical solution. Green Valley had been prepared to suggest it if necessary, but that hadn’t been required, which said some truly remarkable things about Eastshare’s mental flexibility.
He didn’t have the troop lift to move a worthwhile number of men, but he did have enough sealift to move quite a lot of supplies, especially food and fodder, and those two commodities were the Achilles’ heel of preindustrial armies. An army which had to forage for food—and fodder—as it went (even assuming the season and agricultural productivity made that possible) did well to make ten miles a day, and it wreaked havoc on any civilian population in its path simply because it stripped the land bare as it went. But without that requirement, and with the ability to feed draft animals on grain and prepared fodder rather than requiring them to graze on grass, an army was limited only by the hours of daylight it had in which to march and the quality of the roads before it.
So Eastshare had sent off his dispatches to Tellesberg and begun concentrating the garrisons stationed throughout western Chisholm on Ahlysberg, the military city which had been built to support The Fence, the fortified frontier between the Western Crown Demesne and Raven’s Land. It was the westernmost of Chisholm’s true seaports, and its magazines and storehouses were well stocked with food, boots, winter clothing, and fodder. The galleons he’d been able to lay hands on in Cherayth and Port Royal were already loading additional food and supplies in Chisholm’s eastern ports; within no more than another five-day or so, they’d be setting sail for Ahlys Bay. And from there, theoretically, at least, they would be available to leapfrog along the southern coast of Raven’s Land, supplying a fast-moving army as it marched west overland.
The Chisholmian Royal Army had always emphasized physical conditioning and training in every sort of weather. It wasn’t unusual for an army battalion to find itself ordered, with no previous warning, to fall in with full field packs and two days’ iron rations for a sixty-mile march through February snows—or, conversely, June heat—and the Imperial Charisian Army hadn’t changed in that respect. Assuming the Raven Lords were as amenable as usual to subsidies (it would never do to call them “bribes”), and that Bishop Trahvys Shulmyn couldn’t convince them otherwise, Eastshare and Green Valley could theoretically have marched clear to Iron Cape, probably making good their forty miles per day, despite the narrow, snowy roads. Of course, it would have taken them several months, given the distances involved, but it was only forty days’ march fro
m The Fence to the city of Marisahl (the nearest thing the Raven Lords had to a capital), on Ramsgate Bay, while another twenty days’ march would take them to Malphyra Bay, eight hundred miles farther west. That was still a long way from the Republic, but the voyage time from Tellesberg to Marisahl was less than half that of the time from Tellesberg to Maikelberg, and from Marisahl to Rollings Province by sea was only fifteen days. From Malphyra to Rollings was under ten days.
So if Eastshare was truly prepared to put his troops into motion as soon as possible, without direct orders from Sharleyan and Cayleb, and when he had no way to be certain his request for transports to be dispatched to Raven’s Land despite winter storms and ice floes would be honored by the monarchs with whom he hadn’t even discussed moving troops to invade a sovereign realm in the middle of winter, he could cut a minimum of two months from the transit loop. He’d have enough shipping to keep his men supplied as they marched along the coastal roads, but he wouldn’t have enough troop lift to move them across the Passage of Storms. On the other hand, by reducing the total length of the sea passage by how far west his men could come on their own feet, he’d effectively reduce the number of transports needed for the voyage simply because they could make the round trip with half his men, then return for the other half, far more quickly than they could make the voyage clear from Chisholm.
If Eastshare was willing to take that gamble, the Imperial Charisian Army could have upwards of sixty thousand men—possibly as many as seventy-five thousand—in Siddarmark long before Clyntahn or Maigwair would have believed was possible. Perhaps not soon enough to stymie the general assault everyone knew was coming, but certainly earlier than anyone on the other side could have anticipated.
“Ruhsyl will do it,” Sharleyan said almost serenely, her eyes as confident as Cayleb’s had been when he was analyzing Rahnyld of Dohlar’s motives and actions.
“Are you sure?” Cayleb’s tone wasn’t a challenge, only a question. “I know he’s sent his message to Marisahl and he’s already got the first divisions on the march, but he hasn’t said a word to any of his generals about moving anywhere beyond Ahlysberg. I’d say it’s pretty clear he’s still thinking at least as much in terms of making the entire trip by sea.”
“Only because he hasn’t heard back from the Raven Lords yet,” Sharleyan replied, and shrugged slightly. “He’s hedging his bets, and you’re right that he’d much rather have a guarantee of free passage from Shairncross and the Council. I think that’s one reason he’d just as soon not start moving towards The Fence until he does hear back from Shairncross, actually. God knows the Raven Lords are a prickly, stubborn bunch, even without the religious aspect of it all! The last thing he’d want would be to look as if he were massing troops on their border to cow them into meeting his demands. Even if the Council agreed to grant him passage, those stiff-necked clansmen would consider it their sacred duty—in more ways than one!—to delay him any way they could if they thought the Council had caved in to threats. And he doesn’t trust Lord Theralt as far as he can spit, either. But he’d be staging through Ahlysberg and its stores magazines no matter what, and I’m sure he’s at least keeping the possibility of taking them all the way from Ahlys Bay to the Republic by sea in the back of his head, if something untoward happens. After all, the thought of marching through Raven’s Land, in the winter, against guerrilla opposition would be enough to give anyone pause! But in the end, he’ll do it anyway, if it comes down to it.”
Cayleb couldn’t quite expunge the doubt from his expression, but Sharleyan only looked back at him with a small, crooked smile.
“There’s not a man alive whose loyalty and judgment I trust more than Ruhsyl Thairis’. It’s obvious he understands how important it is to get troops into Siddarmark as quickly as possible, and he knows you and I will never leave his men hanging at the end of an unsupported supply route. He won’t worry about whether or not we’ll approve or disapprove; he’ll only worry about whether or not it really is the fastest way to get those men where they have to be.”
Cayleb gazed at her for a moment longer, then nodded in acceptance and agreement.
“That still leaves what’s going to be going on in the western Republic before he can possibly get there, though,” he pointed out after a moment.
“All we can do is all we can do,” Merlin said, his tone more composed than he actually felt. “Paitryk Hywyt’s going to land over five thousand Marines in Siddar City next five-day, and Domynyk’s combing out every additional Marine he can find.” He grimaced. “Admittedly, there aren’t as many of them as there were before we transferred so many to the Army after the Corisande campaign, but if he drafts them from every galleon in Home Fleet and scours Helen Island down to the bedrock, he can probably turn up another six thousand or so. And he’s prepared to draft seamen, as well.”
It was Cayleb’s turn to grimace, and Merlin chuckled.
“All right, I’ll admit they’re going to be out of their natural element. But you may have noticed it’s a bit hard to find a coward amongst them even when you need one, and I’ll take our seamen over most people’s trained soldiers any day. Even if we can’t stop Rahnyld dead, I expect we’ll be able to slow him down. And with a little luck, his troops are going to react … poorly, shall we say, the first time they meet shrapnel shells.”
“And at least most of the Marines will have Mahndrayns,” Cayleb agreed, his grimace segueing into a thin smile, edged with sad memory, as he used the term. The decision to name the Charisian Empire’s new breech-loading rifles after Urvyn Mahndrayn, the brilliant, murdered naval officer who’d come up with the design, had made itself without anyone quite knowing how. It was as fitting as it was inevitable, though, and even though the new rifles weren’t available in the numbers anyone would really have preferred, they were going to come as a nasty surprise to the Group of Four and their allies.
At the moment, however, the Imperial Charisian Marines actually had more of them than the army. Virtually all of the conversions had been made here in Charis, in the newly completed Urvyn Mahndrayn Armory Ehdwyrd Howsmyn had constructed at the Delthak Works, his massive foundry complex on the shore of Lake Ithmyn, where the tooling existed and security could be maintained. The army troops who—hopefully—would soon be marching through Raven’s Land, would be equipped almost exclusively with the old-style muzzle-loaders, whereas the Marines (the majority of whom were based either in Old Charis, Tarot, or Emerald) had been close enough to Howsmyn’s facility to be reequipped with Mahndrayns as they left the workshop floor. There were several thousand more of them already crated for shipment as well, however, and Howsmyn’s workers were laboring with fiercely focused energy to convert still more of them. More thousands were leaving the workshop floors as new build weapons, although that was slower than conversion of existing stocks. Hopefully, by the time Eastshare’s column could reach Iron Cape, enough of the new rifles would have been completed to be shipped to him and exchanged for his muzzle-loaders, which could then be returned to Charis and converted in turn.
Or, more probably, simply handed over to the Siddarmarkian Army, whose troopers wouldn’t give a damn that they were “old-fashioned.” Any rifle was one hell of a lot better than no rifle. That was what the vast majority of the Republic’s troops had at the moment, and the sudden appearance of forty or fifty thousand Siddarmarkian riflemen would come as a nasty and unwelcome surprise to Zhaspahr Clyntahn.
“I really don’t like doing all our logistic reorganization on the fly this way.” Cayleb’s unhappy tone spoke for all of them. “There’s too much chance we’re going to drop a stitch somewhere, even with Kynt tied into the com net. Simply running into more bad weather could throw everything out of gear at exactly the wrong moment.”
“That’s been true of everything we’ve done so far, love,” Sharleyan pointed out.
“Not to this extent,” Cayleb replied with an off-center grin. “I realize I have a reputation for impetuosity, but I actually have tried to mak
e sure I had—What was that expression of yours, Merlin? ‘All my pigs and chickens in a row,’ was it?—before I leapt headlong into yet another reckless adventure.”
“I used the phrase once, Cayleb,” Merlin said with a certain asperity. “One time. It just slipped out that single time, and I’ve never used it again.”
“You can’t fool me, Merlin. It’s not just ‘a phrase’ at all, is it? Not really. It’s a cliché—that’s what it is. One that no one on Safehold ever heard of until you resurrected it out of the ash heap of history, where any decent soul would’ve left it.”
“I’m not the one using it; you are!” Merlin shot back while Staynair and Sharleyan looked at each other in amusement.
“But only because you inserted that accursed string of words into my innocent and untrammeled brain. It’s like … like one of those childhood songs you can’t get out of your mind. Like that stupid jingle you taught me back in the carefree days of my bachelorhood, the one about bottles of beer on the wall. I’m doomed—doomed, I tell you! Within five-days, a month at the outside, that same fatal phrase will slip out of my mouth in a formal audience, and everyone will think I coined it. Every hanger-on, every flatterer and sycophant, will start using it when he thinks I’ll hear about it. Before you know it, it’ll creep into common usage throughout the entire Empire, and future historians will blame it on me, Merlin—not you, where the guilt truly belongs—when it’s wormed its way inextricably into the very sinews of our language.” The emperor shook his head sadly. “To think that I’ll be remembered for that rather than for my prowess in battle.”
“Given the penalties for regicide, I feel very fortunate to be here on the island instead of there in Tellesberg at this moment,” Merlin said meditatively, and Cayleb laughed. Then the emperor’s expression sobered once more.